Expertise Matters More Than Ever | The Aboard Podcast 2026-03-17

Summary

Paul Ford and Rich Ziade tackle the thorny question of how to price professional services when AI has collapsed the time it takes to deliver work. Rich tells the story of a client engagement where Paul vibe-coded a fully functional data explorer in two hours — work that would have been a $30,000-$40,000 proposal just five years ago. The client was intrigued but confused: if the prototype already exists, what exactly are they paying for? Rich admits he had no idea how to price it, and the two hosts wrestle with the implications in real time.

The conversation broadens into a wide-ranging discussion about the death of billable hours across professional services — not just software, but law, accounting, and consulting. They compare AI’s disruption to the transition from propeller planes to jets: the shift is happening too fast for people to process emotionally, even if the economics are clear. Paul argues that architecture and deep expertise remain genuinely hard, while the prototyping and scaffolding work that used to justify large bills has been commoditized overnight. Rich points to a lawyer named Zack Shapiro who runs a subscription-based law practice as a model for the future: $1,000 a month for ongoing legal services, enabled by AI tools that let two people serve 100 clients.

The hosts conclude that the future lies in the “middle” — not the DIY crowd who will hack things together in Claude Code, and not the enterprise buyers who want massive custom implementations, but the organizations that need real expertise paired with AI-accelerated delivery. The key insight: relationships and trust matter more than ever precisely because the technical work has gotten cheaper. Clients are paying for a dedicated team, judgment, and the ability to evolve software over time — not for hours logged.

Highlights

”I vibe-coded a data explorer in two hours”

“Sure. So I went home and I vibe-coded a little bit. And actually in two hours I had a pretty good data explorer going. The PDF was all turned into images, it was searchable, you could search the data.” — Paul Ford, 4:43

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”I don’t have the first freaking clue how to price this”

“And I had to just go like, I don’t have the first freaking clue, man.” — Rich Ziade, 6:48

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”That’s what AI is doing to our industry”

“That’s what AI is doing to our industry. Yeah, it’s doing it to many industries, by the way. And what it’s causing is for people to sort of take a step back and think about how to present themselves.” — Paul Ford, 14:02

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”Billable time is no more”

“So, we can’t sell time. Billable time, the idea of billing your time is no more. Like, we have to come to terms with that.” — Rich Ziade, 24:49

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”He can probably assign 100 subscriptions to two people”

“That is the future. Do you know why that’s the future? Because he can probably assign 100 subscriptions to two people.” — Rich Ziade, 31:52

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Key Points

• Vibe-coding collapses delivery timelines (4:43) - Paul built a functional data explorer in two hours that would have been a $30K-$40K proposal five years ago
• Clients don’t know what to do with unsolicited artifacts (5:05) - Sending a working prototype instead of a proposal confused the client; two weeks of silence followed each delivery
• Pricing is now the hardest question (6:48) - When the work that justified big bills takes hours instead of months, no one knows how to set prices
• AI is the midlife crisis of the software industry (12:46) - Paul compares AI disruption to middle-aged men reinventing themselves — the same frantic energy and identity confusion
• Doctors have the healthiest relationship with tools (14:22) - Doctors use AI tools but maintain their own judgment and intuition; they don’t outsource diagnosis
• Architecture remains genuinely hard (15:54) - LLMs can advise on system design but often miss actual business needs; this is where human expertise still matters
• The airplane analogy (17:11) - AI is like going from first-class-only flights to cheap flights overnight; the shift is too fast for people to process
• Subscription model for professional services (18:51) - A lawyer charging $1,000/month for ongoing service represents the new model that AI enables
• Billable hours are dead (24:49) - Both hosts agree that selling time is over; value-based pricing is the only sustainable path
• The “middle” is the most interesting market (28:57) - Between DIY hackers and massive enterprise, organizations that need expertise plus AI acceleration are the sweet spot
• Make it up in volume (30:25) - Lower per-engagement pricing offset by dramatically more engagements; two people can serve 100 subscription clients
• Accenture giving 30,000 people Claude Code (34:25) - A signal that large firms are serious about transformation: giving everyone premium AI tool access

Mentions

Companies

• Aboard (0:03) - Hosts’ company; builds AI-powered software platform with consulting services
• Accenture (34:25) - Gave 30,000 employees Claude Code access as a sign of AI adoption
• Mailchimp (2:50) - Mentioned for their “cluster of customers” ad campaign

Products & Technologies

• Claude Code (28:48) - Referenced as tool DIY crowd uses to build things themselves
• TurboTax (22:34) - Analogy for self-service vs. human professional relationship
• WordPress templates (21:52) - Paul jokes they were “half the Brazilian economy”; now threatened by AI

People

• Zack Shapiro (19:28) - Lawyer who runs subscription-based law firm, cited as model for AI-era professional services

Surprising Quotes

“But I also don’t buy this thing where it’s like, well, they should just pay you for your value, which could be $10,000 a minute. Like, that’s not how it works.” — Rich Ziade, 6:58

“Imagine one day it’s first class and very expensive and the next day anybody can fly. The shift is too fast and that’s why this person is so scrambled.” — Rich Ziade, 17:13

“You used to sell what was a highly valued rare commodity: skilled people’s time.” — Paul Ford, 22:00

“It also goes both ways, where if a person calls me up and is like, ‘Hey, it used to take ten hours, now it takes two. I’m going to give you $100.’ I’m going to hang up the phone.” — Paul Ford, 24:31

“Honestly, why you should call us is you want to gently shatter your culture.” — Paul Ford, 35:32

Transcript

Paul Ford: 0:00 Hi, I’m Paul Ford.

Rich Ziade: 0:02 And I’m Rich Ziade.

Paul Ford: 0:03 And this is the Aboard podcast, the podcast about how AI is changing the world of software. Richard, how are you? I’m good. Let’s play the theme song and let’s get into it.

Rich Ziade: 0:13 Let’s get to work!

Paul Ford: 0:14 I want to talk about, get ready, this is gonna be pretty exciting: pricing.

Rich Ziade: 0:18 Oof.

Paul Ford: 0:38 First of all, I want to actually just help everyone who has people from the Middle East in their life. Because a lot of people are confused about the etiquette of what to say to the person from the Middle East with family in the Middle East in your life during yet another global crisis.

Rich Ziade: 0:54 Yes.

Paul Ford: 0:55 And I’m going to just give everyone this advice. You go, here, we’ll work, we’ll do it. Ready? How’s your family?

Rich Ziade: 1:02 You wanna make an egg and cheese as you walk into my bodega?

Paul Ford: 1:05 That’s about right. Like everybody, because Americans are like, ‘I’d like to explore your trauma.’ No, it’s ‘How’s your family?’ Everybody’s okay? Okay. That’s it. Nobody wants anything else. Uh, yeah.

Rich Ziade: 1:21 There’s a, I can’t speak for, like, there’s many countries in the Middle East, but the Lebanese are, don’t wear pity well. They don’t want you saying, ‘Are you okay?’ They just, they don’t like it.

Paul Ford: 1:31 They do, people, people like a ‘How’s your family?’ That’s it. And then what they’ll do is they’ll divert the conversation.

Rich Ziade: 1:37 They don’t want ‘How are you?’ Yes.

Paul Ford: 1:39 I don’t know when this airs. The world may have moved on. It is early March right now and the world’s a little on fire. So say hi to everyone. Yes. So that’s what we’re doing right now. Your family’s good.

Rich Ziade: 1:57 And I’m going to tell you a story, and it’s a true story about projects coming into our organization. Because we have a platform that we build on, but the way that AI works is you actually need to kind of help and advise organizations too. Okay, so that’s what we do. You come to us and we’re like, ‘Hey, I can build that for you, sometimes in like a minute.’

Paul Ford: 2:22 Yeah. Anyone who’s selling you shrink-wrapped boxes of AI, be wary is what I would say.

Rich Ziade: 2:30 Yeah. So someone came in, I would say this is like four, five months ago. And somebody I knew, and I won’t give, it’s a client project, so I’m not going to like, or customer project, depending on how the weather is on a given day. I like to use the term ‘clustomer’ for the — for the client in the age of AI, where you can deliver so much so quickly.

Paul Ford: 2:50 Mailchimp apparently has some ad campaign where they’re like ‘cluster of customers’ and they kind of amass everyone in — Yeah. I’m saying it’s a combination of client and customer, and if we’re gonna come up with really terrible words, I want to claim it back.

Rich Ziade: 3:01 So someone comes along. Can I tell the story? You’re going to fill in the blanks. Sure. I had someone come along and say, I have this immense body of data that, that, you know, I need people to be able to explore, search. It’s a big data product.

Paul Ford: 3:57 Big, like thousand page PDF, lots of stuff in it. Okay, and lots of ecological data, things like that. And then a whole bunch of spreadsheets.

Rich Ziade: 4:08 Okay. Pile of stuff.

Paul Ford: 4:09 So here’s five years ago it would have been like, ‘Alright, let’s go take a look at this and then we’ll describe how we’re going to convert it and what the design will be.’ Maybe write a proposal. And the goal here is to make a product that people use, that people can use to explore the data, they maybe you could, you know, do some newsletters or other things with it. And so, you know, as I’m writing that proposal five years ago, the numbers are going up: 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000. Like it’s expensive because it takes time.

Rich Ziade: 4:40 Takes time. Data — just scaffolding and setting up the database takes time.

Paul Ford: 4:43 Sure. So I went home and I vibe-coded a little bit. And actually in two hours I had a pretty good data explorer going. The PDF was all turned into images, it was searchable, you could search the data. Okay. So I threw it over the wall. I put it on a website. I was like, ‘You know, I was going to send you a proposal —’ It became a website. I was like, ‘I was going to send you a proposal, but here’s the data if you want to explore it. We can use this to guide the next conversation.’

Rich Ziade: 5:15 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Ford: 5:17 And this is — I was expecting this because these are not — like if I send you a proposal you’re going to go, ‘Oh, received it. We’re going to talk about it Tuesday.’ But I sent you a data product that you didn’t ask for. So person comes back. Two weeks have gone by. They’re like ‘This is truly interesting, okay, I kind of get my head around it’, ropes some other folks in. Great.

Rich Ziade: 5:47 You kept going.

Paul Ford: 5:48 Well I was like, why not?

Rich Ziade: 5:49 Why’d you keep going?

Paul Ford: 5:50 Because have you — you’ve written proposals. How would you describe that process?

Rich Ziade: 5:54 It’s terrible. It’s boring as shit. Yeah.

Paul Ford: 5:58 You’re playing around — well this is the other thing. You enjoy building stuff.

Rich Ziade: 6:01 This is also a person I like. I want to like have a relationship here. A professional relationship. Yes.

Paul Ford: 6:14 Okay. All right. So you kept going and what, you made another version of it?

Rich Ziade: 6:22 I made… well, now I built the whole app with the onboarding. And it did a really good job. Like, like really good. Like, I would have put a junior designer on this prototype and gotten this result.

Paul Ford: 6:30 So let me throw this back at you for a second. Wait.

Rich Ziade: 6:35 So then I throw this over. Two weeks go by. We have another call and they’re like, I guess who want to move forward. But we don’t even know what that means. And then they’re like, and what would it cost?

Paul Ford: 6:47 Yeah.

Rich Ziade: 6:48 And I had to just go like, I don’t have the first freaking clue, man. Like, I’m trying to be transparent. I’m trying to drive this value towards people. I know that I bring a lot of value because very few people can currently do what I just did. But I also don’t buy this thing where it’s like, well, they should just pay you for your value, which could be $10,000 a minute. Like, that’s not how it works. So I’m throwing this back to you to do real-time strategy because how do you price these things now? Where is the value? How is this going to look?

Paul Ford: 7:13 Okay, before I go into real-time strategy mode… What was your favorite real-time strategy game?

Rich Ziade: 7:19 Command & Conquer.

Paul Ford: 7:21 Okay. And then Command & Conquer Red Alert. We don’t need to go there. That’s a separate podcast.

Rich Ziade: 7:27 I know. The audience would far prefer if we went there.

Paul Ford: 7:29 I know. They’re wonderful games. There are great current real-time strategy games today. Total Annihilation and then Planetary Annihilation, which came after. Okay.

Rich Ziade: 7:34 But wait, so for people who are not as cool as you are, what is real-time strategy? It’s not turn-based. Stuff is happening in real time. You’re making decisions on the fly. And that’s kind of where we are.

Paul Ford: 7:55 That’s really where we are. Okay, so, speaking from experience, one of the dynamics of what you just described, so this is, in fact, a new kind of problem. Can I describe the old kind of problem? Yep. The old kind of problem was, what I described as the most difficult thing in the world is when someone calls you up and says, “I have $10 million, now go build me a stadium.”

Rich Ziade: 8:06 No, big stadiums.

Paul Ford: 8:07 But that’s, that’s the, the new version, the old version is that you’d go in with a million dollar estimate. Right? And the, and the client would say, “Okay, we’re probably two months from actually signing.” And you’d say, “Great, let me know.” And then over two months, you’d whittle it down. And then you’d do the project.

Rich Ziade: 8:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was usually like a phased thing. Like, here’s the plan, here’s the timeline. It’s gonna be about six to eight months. Like a human pregnancy. So a lot of people got used to understanding that.

Paul Ford: 9:04 And they would buy your time, they would buy your capacity, and then you would go execute.

Rich Ziade: 9:09 And sometimes you, sometimes they’re like, well, what am I getting for that? And then you’re like, we can do a fixed bid on this. And sometimes that’s how they bought.

Paul Ford: 9:16 Okay, so there was a whole, there’s a whole body of knowledge around how to sell, how to get someone to sign off, how to set expectations, and how to make money as an agency selling services.

Rich Ziade: 9:51 Oh, but when they did. And there’s some horrible dynamics around it, not just from the agency side. You know, for the people who’ve done this for a long time from the client side too. Like there’s a lot of gamesmanship. Ugh. Yeah, it’s not great. Sometimes it comes down to like, pick two of three.

Paul Ford: 10:44 It’s true. This is the real thing that happens, is usually the decision-maker wants to feel very smart. They want to feel like they’ve picked a good partner. And so the proposal process — this is the game. You’re not selling them software. You’re making a decision-maker feel smart.

Rich Ziade: 11:23 I was going to say, you’re selling one person a good night’s sleep. That’s it.

Paul Ford: 11:27 That’s right. That’s what you’re selling. You’re selling confidence.

Rich Ziade: 11:30 And so now, all of that is kind of scrambled. I mean, it’s not totally scrambled. There are still projects coming in the conventional way. And we’re an agency with a product. So like we deal with both tracks. But the thing that’s happening here is interesting, right? Because you can show stuff. And it doesn’t cost you hours and hours and hours to build stuff.

Paul Ford: 12:31 The thing is, and I want you to listen very carefully to this, when someone is befuddled by the proposal, it means the relationship is not going well. It’s not going well. That means you’re trying to calm them down, you’re trying to get some relax. To be clear, this is someone who I knew so I’m ready to invest.

Rich Ziade: 12:41 We don’t do this with everyone. That’s a huge point. It’s too confusing.

Paul Ford: 12:46 You know what it is? It’s as you were talking, I’m just like, we’ve all known a lot of dudes. Everyone who listened to this podcast has known a lot of dudes who hit around 45 to 50 and they’re like ‘I’m going to get in shape’ and they have a new plan and you’re like ‘oh well that’s not going to work out well.’ Then someone’s about six months in and they’ve got the cool new girlfriend who’s 15 years younger. And then you see them in a year and they’ve dyed their hair and it’s too dark. And then they’ve got new clothes. And it’s sort of like it’s not, the thing you’re watching is somebody reinventing themselves who’s past their peak.

Rich Ziade: 13:21 It’s doing it. I mean, we’re here and we’re focusing on software.

Paul Ford: 13:23 The you see middle-aged guys, it’s the middle-aged guy with the crazy younger girlfriend and then suddenly they’re getting into shape and then they dye their hair and then the sweater gets tight.

Rich Ziade: 13:59 It’s just too black. Yeah, and then the sweater gets tight.

Paul Ford: 14:02 That’s what AI is doing to our industry. Yeah, it’s doing it to many industries, by the way. And what it’s causing is for people to sort of take a step back and think about how to present themselves.

Rich Ziade: 14:22 You know who has the healthiest relationship here? Not a surprise, the doctor. But no, we had a health event. Yes we did. And what you see with the doctor is the doctor is like, I’ve got a set of tools that I’ve been using for a long time, and then new ones came in, and they actually advise me but I’m still going to use my judgment and my intuition because I’ve been at this for a very long time. There’s another reason which is by running to these tools you’re not giving people an opportunity to build intuition to build skills that really come with just doing thousands of exams.

Paul Ford: 15:22 You just get spoiled in New York because you know my GP has probably seen 50,000 people.

Rich Ziade: 15:27 It’s a high volume play.

Paul Ford: 15:29 Yeah exactly. So I walk in and he’s like ‘yep’ like it’s just like within about a minute. Okay so wait, I want to get back to the actual pricing conversation.

Rich Ziade: 15:53 Yes.

Paul Ford: 15:54 Architecture remains really hard. An LLM can advise you about how a system should work. It can even build that up, it’s often not going to be right or purpose built for your actual needs. It’s where software becomes human and so you still need human beings who understand scale and reliability.

Rich Ziade: 16:19 Yes.

Paul Ford: 16:21 So okay so first of all is it a good idea to share artifacts like this with people? You assume people want to see as much value as they can right away. But is that a mistake? Should I just be like ‘no come on in we’ll whiteboard let’s have a conversation’?

Rich Ziade: 16:40 No, it’s not a mistake. I’ll tell you why it’s not a mistake. It feels like a mistake today and it won’t feel like a mistake in two years. We went from really elaborate dinners in first class on the airplane.

Paul Ford: 16:58 Spiral cut.

Rich Ziade: 17:00 Sometimes the whole pig.

Paul Ford: 17:02 They’d walk it down you could pet it.

Rich Ziade: 17:03 It wasn’t casual. Yeah there was a day when it wasn’t casual to fly from New York to Chicago. And then a lot of time passed and then it became like taking the bus. Imagine one day it’s first class and very expensive and the next day anybody can fly. The shift is too fast and that’s why this person is so scrambled. He doesn’t know how to process it.

Paul Ford: 17:26 It’s just too soon. You know the other thing too. I’m going to bet you everyone who flew big propeller planes was like ‘this is the apex technology’. You’re never going to get faster and better and I am so good at keeping these propellers going.

Rich Ziade: 17:41 Absolutely. And then jets show up and they’re like ‘nobody wants that it’s loud, it’s fast’. Yeah, yeah. All of it. And then they got cheaper and commoditized over time.

Paul Ford: 18:00 Well it’s also because it has to be disposable. You haven’t actually put the needs of the business into the software.

Rich Ziade: 18:04 That’s confusing too.

Paul Ford: 18:06 Yeah, so it’s like I think seeing the artifact where it’s literally like hey we already made the Thanksgiving turkey like really in like five minutes. That is the conversation. Imagine saying that to your grandmother.

Rich Ziade: 18:20 Yeah.

Paul Ford: 18:21 Right? And she’s like, ‘What the hell you talking about? Go to the store and get me cranberry sauce.’

Rich Ziade: 18:25 Yeah. Alright, so here we are, architecture matters. We’re going to end up communicating and showing people really big complicated artifacts in ways they can appreciate.

Paul Ford: 18:38 Yep.

Rich Ziade: 18:39 You want some tactical advice Paul? I could bill you by the hour. I could be like my hour is really really expensive because I have 20 years of experience as an attorney. I could also say it’s going to be a thousand dollars a month for the rest of your life but I’ll take care of it for you. And I’m seeing you know I really like this guy named Zack Shapiro who runs a law firm.

Paul Ford: 19:08 They’re nearby to help with whatever.

Rich Ziade: 19:10 Yeah. I’ll do all the contracts for you because I have this process that accelerates and isn’t expensive for me so that’s them driving the value but shrinking the cost. I’m going to imagine this lawyer is relatively young.

Paul Ford: 19:28 Well we don’t have to imagine. We looked at his profile. This guy named Zack Shapiro on LinkedIn. He is not someone that has been groomed by getting billable hour bonuses at one of the white shoe law firms. And he runs his own law firm.

Rich Ziade: 19:45 Exactly. Here’s the universal advice. The economics that worked in the past are going to get challenged and if you think you’re going to be able to hold the line, I don’t think you’re going to be able to hold the line.

Paul Ford: 20:19 We’re having this conversation we’re trying to do it in public but…

Rich Ziade: 20:22 Correct. So I mean the other thing, here’s what’s tricky. You’re going to say that and everybody’s going to be like ‘Yeah but nobody’s ready right now and the tools are too early.’ Like that’s the counter.

Paul Ford: 20:35 Oh it’s happening.

Rich Ziade: 20:36 Here’s the problem with that and this is the actual advice. When you do that you are not focusing on building infrastructure and resilience for what’s coming and it’s coming really fast.

Paul Ford: 21:00 Either don’t, you can stall, but then you might get punished later. Or you can lean in and not stall and you might lose a lot of near-term revenue.

Rich Ziade: 21:15 That’s the thing, right? And but it is a major rewiring of how you think about what you sell.

Paul Ford: 21:18 Because you can’t change culture in one room over to the side. And that’s always the fantasy.

Rich Ziade: 21:26 Correct. Yeah. So, do you think there are law firms that have like labs right now? That’s gotta be the worst thing ever.

Paul Ford: 21:30 No, I think what they’re doing is they’re repurposing their IT groups. Going from legal IT to AI innovator?

Rich Ziade: 21:35 You know who I feel for? There are, I don’t know them, but there are startups that are worth a lot of money, not startups, there are companies that are worth a lot of money and all they did was sell templates.

Paul Ford: 21:52 I mean, WordPress templates were half the Brazilian economy.

Rich Ziade: 21:55 It’s a big, big deal, right? And so back to pricing, let’s reset it for a second. Okay?

Paul Ford: 22:00 You used to sell what was a highly valued rare commodity: skilled people’s time.

Rich Ziade: 22:12 Yeah, I mean, our agency was essentially like an API to get access to a lot of actual complicated humans. The promise was we would deal with that. They’re great. Well, also, people want ‘em. People want humans. Our process, if we pitch to you, we talk about, here’s what it’s like to work with us.

Paul Ford: 22:31 I mean the thing is, what you threw over the wall —

Rich Ziade: 22:34 You could get TurboTax, but you still have an accountant. Yes, exactly. And look, the thing is you threw a thing over the wall to make a point, but the thing wasn’t deep.

Paul Ford: 22:41 No, it’s not deep.

Rich Ziade: 22:42 It’s not just that it’s not deep. Part of relationship building, even in the business context, is that you are signaling to them that you’re starting to understand them and their needs and their goals. Nobody wants the thing just thrown over the wall.

Paul Ford: 22:56 No one wants that. Even if they get it right, no one wants that.

Rich Ziade: 23:00 I think that’s really key because what they need is the relationship so that things can evolve over time, so that when something breaks they have someone to call.

Rich Ziade: 24:00 I think we can work out the strategy. I got to call you, also. I think, you know, we got most of it right, but there’s a few things we didn’t get right and I’d love to hear your input.

Paul Ford: 24:09 I mean, this is, you know, again, and this is not me defending myself, like this is just somebody I’ve known for a while and I’m kind of prototyping this approach to sales. But my initial instinct is like, yeah, you probably shouldn’t do that.

Rich Ziade: 24:21 This applies to the law, this applies to other industries where, look, don’t misread. What took ten hours will now take two. But the relationship doesn’t go away.

Paul Ford: 24:31 It also goes both ways, where if a person calls me up and is like, ‘Hey, it used to take ten hours, now it takes two. I’m going to give you $100. You used to charge $500.’ I’m going to hang up the phone.

Rich Ziade: 24:40 Yeah, so this is the crux of it. Because this is really about us and how we’re going to make money, Paul, you and I.

Paul Ford: 24:46 It’s good to finally have this conversation after four years of building this business.

Rich Ziade: 24:49 Yes. So, we can’t sell time. Billable time, the idea of billing your time is no more. Like, we have to come to terms with that.

Paul Ford: 24:58 Well, most people, like we identify ourselves kind of as a product company with a little bit of agency. So that was off the table to start, but now it’s really off the table.

Rich Ziade: 25:09 I will give you my time. I will give you my time in the spirit of this relationship. But you’re, I’m not going to run the meter. Our goal is to put something in your hands that you value deeply. And we’re going to work with you to get there.

Paul Ford: 25:53 I mean, the archetypal term is the Veblen good, right? Which is the status signal.

Rich Ziade: 26:00 Exactly. The perceived value in the market is the value is value-based. Like, so you price it against that. Even though it costs me $600 in parts. R&D and all that. But I’m going to charge $10,000 for this watch. Yep. And I can do that. Not everybody can do that, to be clear. You’ve gotta earn that.

Paul Ford: 26:26 True. Well, and the answer here is typically deep expertise. Let me just actually share a framework. So you’ve basically got the overall market where you’ve got kind of three segments. First segment: big implementation, lots of consulting, you probably knew what you were getting into. Like a Deloitte or Accenture type engagement.

Rich Ziade: 27:30 Yes. That’s still real. That’s still real.

Paul Ford: 27:35 Then you have the sort of the middle segment which is, I need something custom. You build, you put it on a platform, maybe there’s some SaaS involved, but there is a real custom need. And then on the low end, there’s like, just give me the platform.

Rich Ziade: 28:00 Just give me the tool. Self-serve.

Paul Ford: 28:03 And what’s happening is the middle is both growing and being compressed. More people need custom stuff, but it costs less. And so the real question is, can you serve enough of them?

Rich Ziade: 28:36 Yes.

Paul Ford: 28:37 And I feel like that’s the place that I most like exploring, which is sort of like, hey, it’s going to be a little bit of a premium, but you’re not going to be paying six-figure implementation costs.

Rich Ziade: 28:46 And we’re not going away.

Paul Ford: 28:48 Yeah. So over here on the left you’ve got everybody who’s like I can hack that myself in Claude Code in an hour and a half. Okay? Over here on the right you’ve got somebody who wants their Fortune 500 company to have a completely bespoke system. And in the middle which is I think the most interesting place on Earth is like you still need some custom stuff, but you can save a lot of money and time. So now how do you price that? Because you can’t, you know it used to be T&M everywhere.

Rich Ziade: 29:19 Well, I think two things. The good news for the buyer is that that incredibly expensive upfront implementation cost has plummeted. We can’t justify it either.

Paul Ford: 29:37 No. And that part of the process where it’s like the product manager will write the PRD and then we’ll build the prototype — like really you’re buying the ongoing support and evolution.

Rich Ziade: 29:49 Correct.

Paul Ford: 29:50 Now you’re more buying the relationship with software on the other side.

Rich Ziade: 29:52 I think that is like such an interesting outcome of all the robots are taking over.

Paul Ford: 29:57 Well that’s lawyers, that’s actually accountants, that’s like…

Rich Ziade: 30:00 Relationship matters a lot, right? And so, okay, so then how do I make money, right? I can’t charge you like I used to charge you because the thing took months and now it takes days. The answer is you are gonna do more of it.

Paul Ford: 30:25 You’re going to do more of it.

Rich Ziade: 30:25 You’re going to do more of it.

Paul Ford: 30:26 And then you’ll make it up in volume, literally.

Rich Ziade: 30:28 Exactly. So come to terms with it, right? And it’s okay. And this is my point about if you were doing 20 years of billings at a law firm, you’re going to struggle in the near term. But if you’re starting up now, you’re going to have a subscription model.

Paul Ford: 30:41 You know, it’s funny though, the software industry has always said that this is the future, but we liked it when we commoditized things into subscription models for other people.

Rich Ziade: 31:06 It’s in the middle. I think that’s the message here, which is, okay, so I don’t get to charge as much. So wait, can I make enough money? Is there enough business out there? Is there enough volume? And I think the answer is yes, but you have to restructure. There are old men in the big firms looking at that and snickering.

Paul Ford: 31:46 Oh, yeah, they think that’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard.

Rich Ziade: 31:49 Dumbest thing ever. That is the future. Do you know why that’s the future? Because he can probably assign 100 subscriptions to two people.

Paul Ford: 31:59 I think that’s right. Because the tools are incredible, right?

Rich Ziade: 32:03 Well, and what’s going to happen is the deep expert. So I’m thinking of people in our firm. The product manager who is now a solution engineer. Everybody’s roles are changing. But the engineer can go off and do really ugly database stuff that used to take an enormous amount of time. They can do 10 times more of it. They can be like, ‘Oh, you know what? I wanted a vector database here, but it was always a chore to set up and it was going to be too expensive. Now I can do it.’ So the engineer can be going really, really deep. The product manager can be shipping. Those worlds can line up. But that I think is the new middle.

Paul Ford: 32:58 And what is a buyer paying for? I’m not going to —

Rich Ziade: 33:00 Be orthodox about exactly what they’re paying for. We have clients today that frankly want to know that — Customers, that we have a dedicated team committed to them. And that they just want that. And that’s okay. That you can have a successful business.

Paul Ford: 33:16 I want that. I don’t want to call my lawyer and then I get an answering machine with somebody else’s voice from a different firm.

Rich Ziade: 33:22 Exactly. And we have others that don’t want to pay that upfront, and they don’t have to, but they are going to pay something akin to our licensing plus some level of support.

Paul Ford: 33:34 Anything over like three, 400 bucks a month people would like to talk to somebody.

Rich Ziade: 33:39 Always. You just kind of need to, because otherwise you’re getting fleeced.

Rich Ziade: 33:43 It’s not easy. Look, we’re not young upstarts. Like I said, we had an old way of billing and so we are having to reboot it. And that’s just life. Rebooting is a real bitch. But it is what it is.

Paul Ford: 34:25 There’s two signals. One is are they giving everyone really good high value access to expensive LLMs? Like, you know, the premier package? I mean, like Accenture gave 30,000 people Claude Code. I’m like, alright, that’s good. Step one. That’s good. Good news for Accenture. If they’re saying, well, we’ll try it with a little team of five people on the side? That’s not going to work.

Rich Ziade: 34:59 100 percent. You have to be willing to allow these changes to insinuate themselves into your culture, into your social dynamics and power dynamics. People aren’t going to like it.

Paul Ford: 35:14 Thank you everybody for listening. This has been the Aboard podcast.

Rich Ziade: 35:17 Now if you are an SVP —

Paul Ford: 35:19 And you want to innovate —

Rich Ziade: 35:21 Get in touch. Because —

Paul Ford: 35:22 And you don’t want to shatter your culture.

Rich Ziade: 35:24 Yeah, that’s right. You should reach out to us because we have amazing people and amazing tools that ship production grade software.

Paul Ford: 35:32 Honestly, why you should call us is you want to gently shatter your culture.

Rich Ziade: 35:37 Yeah, exactly. That’s what we’re for. Alright, so get in touch. Hello@aboard.com. Check out aboard.com, a lovely website made for everyone. Give us five stars on whatever podcast platform.

Paul Ford: 35:51 Yes.

Rich Ziade: 35:51 We love feedback, good and bad. We want to know about all of it. And honestly, ask questions. We love that too. It’s great. And just last point, Paul, all you old men and women are aging very gracefully. I just want to say that as we pitch our own product to them.

Paul Ford: 36:03 I’m not aging gracefully the last couple of months.

Rich Ziade: 36:05 It’s been a rough couple of months. Alright, let’s get out there.

Paul Ford: 36:09 Have a great week.

Rich Ziade: 36:10 Bye!