I’ve been listening to more podcasts than usual lately, mainly to try and make sense of what the labour market is evolving into. My go to podcast at the moment is the All-in podcast that features Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg. They’re all VCs and for the most part make sensible arguments that are evidence based.
After the release of Astra by Openai and other competing models, the general consensus is that the software development problem is largely solved. This obviously puts a lot of the Bubble community in a predicament so I’ve been thinking about what and where is the next big bottleneck in tech.
My current hypothesis is that tech sales is a safe bet. As more people use vibe coding to build “finished apps” without the ability or willingness to effectively distribute them, distribution becomes the core bottleneck. Consequently, specializing in tech sales is highly valuable.
I also think tech sales is a safe bet because I don’t see AI-powered calling agents becoming viable. Generally speaking, people don’t want to listen to a machine. Hanging up on a bot is easy because an automated call signals that a company isn’t willing to invest the human effort required to earn a customer’s business. I suspect this psychological barrier is universal. Given this landscape, launching a human-centric tech sales agency makes a lot of sense.
I’d be curious to know from people who are in tech sales or have a close proximity to that type of work what the weather is like on your side, particularly if you’re an independent.
I’ll be making a lot of tech related sales shortly myself (for a startup I’m building) and I’d be curious if you’re a specialist in the field, why you’re considered to be good.
If we are being optimistic, I see AI as the opportunity to do more human work. Let’s assume the “HOW” (tech part) is mostly done by machines.
Now, we can focus on the “WHY”, the “WHAT” and the “WHO”. So jobs like product owners, UX research, and basically every job where the goal is to define a pain point, understand the need from real users, find a way to bring them a solution.
Sales in indeed a very important human part of bringing a tool to people. But it comes after.
You can only sale if the product fits. And it fits only if it brings value. And AI will not help on this part of the equation.
I agree with both points, but what does taking advantage of these opportunities mean for you?
For instance, “There’s an infinite number of problems to solve”, okay, but based on current trends those problems will be less technical over time. no? Also what makes you believe that AI will not become infinitely better and cheaper at building and maintaining systems?
I personally think the ‘opportunity’ is building businesses where commonly accepted practices are inelastic and a faster, cheaper and ‘more efficient’ technology does not produce better results. So far tech sales seems most compelling to me.
Which in my opinion is effectively a startup. Wouldn’t you agree that these questions are most likely going to be answered by the founder himself or possibly outsourced to an AI research agent?
They’re basically looking to automate everything from my POV, and for now they will be allowed to because governments are generally not comprised of smart people. At some point I’m hoping that enough countries realise that general automation in a low resource society doesn’t make sense and hopefully Bubble might bounce back then (I know this is an oversimplificatiom).
from my POV, AI has lowered the barrier of entry, not the barrier of success.
The market is getting very noisy and it’s hard to standout, but you still can if you play your cards right.
For example: everyone can take photos with their phones, but 99.99% of people still hire a professional photographer for their weddings. It’s just that now they aren’t hiring them also for the birthday party.
Good app development is in as much demand now as it was before. Probably even more!
I agree, but its pretty hard to sell prospects on why Bubble is the best tool to use.
We can debate the intricacies of the app development market, but that’s not really what I’m looking to achieve right now.
I’m looking to gauge the market in tech sales and possibly feed off the lived experience of someone in that space. I understand the Bubble forum might not be the best place to do that, but I’m sure I’ll stumble upon someone eventually. To those who’ve engaged I appreciate your input but I’m looking to engage on the the tech sales topic specifically .
THIS! I’m still getting long Wordpress quotes at least twice a year, and although the Bubble jobs have really slowed down, I still have to pass on multiples due to being enrolled in long projects
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