Sounds Good Podcast #1 — Mike Hill on whether bootstrapped SaaS is still worth starting in 2026. His advice to anyone asking him right now: don't.
Not because SaaS is dying. He doesn't buy that — neither do I. But the gap between building a product (easier than ever) and getting your first SaaS customer (harder than ever) got pretty broken.
Mike Hill is a serial bootstrapper. His newest thing is Smile — a Slack app for sending dorky cards to your team (which I love using!).
What we got into:
- Why the SaaSpocalypse started five years ago and has nothing to do with AI
- The Google-to-ChatGPT shift is wiping out bootstrappers
- AI makes senior people better and junior people worse
- Lifetime deals stop making sense when token costs are ongoing and buyers already have your competitor's LTD
- The day Claude went down and Mike just went home, and what that says about all of us
- Why he still recommends every founder who emails him to get a technical co-founder
Timestamps:
00:00 - Is SaaS Still Worth Starting?
00:57 - SaaSpocalypse Explained
03:14 - AI Makes Seniors Faster
04:30 - Content Led Growth Edge
06:00 - Why Not Start SaaS
07:47 - AI Search Hurts Discovery
11:11 - Building SaaS for Fun
15:46 - Ship Fast New Process
17:59 - Agent Overload Limits
25:24 - Get a Technical Cofounder
28:21 - AI Skepticism and Hype
29:36 - Reliance and Outage Fear
31:09 - API Risk and Cost Creep
33:09 - Lifetime Deals vs Token Costs
37:35 - SaaS Is Not Dead
45:05 - Competition and Go To Market
48:27 - AI Sidekicks Not Replacements
50:46 - Why AI Design Still Fails
52:02 - Wrap Up
If you've been wondering whether you missed the SaaS window, this one's for you.
New episodes of Sounds Good every week.
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Mike Hill — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mymatemike/
Smile — https://smiile.co/
Curator — https://curator.io/
Juuno — https://juuno.co/
#SaaS #Bootstrapping #IndieHackers
sounds good. — a podcast with Anna Nadeina soundsgoodpod.com anna@soundsgoodpod.com
