#54March 1, 202055:06

#52 - AI Teachers, Deskless Workforce & The Passion Economy with…

Vertical SaaS for pharmaceutical and industrial sectors The deskless workforce software opportunity Employee equity vs. cash compensation AI-driven human augmentation

About This Episode

Sam Parr and Shaan Puri are joined by Zak Kukoff from Emergence Capital to discuss the underserved 'deskless workforce' and the future of the passion economy. They explore how AI can augment human performance in sales and teaching, alongside strategies for acquiring and scaling boring B2B software companies.

Episode Description

Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) talk ideas, trends and businesses. We're joined by Zak Kukoff (@ZCK), a 25 year old VC of $500M Emergence Capital (emcap.com) who's home runs have been Zoom, Salesforce, Veeva, Yammer and more. Topics for today: Introducing our guest Zak Kukoff (1:22), Equity vs Cash comp debate (3:40), Zak leaving school at 16 to raise money (6:49), Does investing in young people work? Should they be building businesses or partying? (11:12), Deskless workforce (17:49), The passion economy (23:43), How and when to build a sales team to accelerate growth (33:07), Buying engineering-led businesses and raising the prices (36:22), AI teachers in sales & language (38:35) & Optimizng your copy (46:39). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Key Takeaways

Most engineering-led software businesses are significantly underpriced; tripling prices is often a low-effort way to boost revenue without significant churn.

The 'Deskless Workforce' accounts for 80% of workers but only 1% of venture funding, representing a massive blue-ocean opportunity for vertical SaaS.

Successful AI startups should focus on augmenting human performance by training middle-tier workers to emulate the habits of top-tier performers rather than trying to replace humans entirely.

Business Ideas Mentioned

Internal Corporate MailChimp with Verification

SaaS

Stripe Atlas for Homeschooling

SaaS

AI Computer Vision for Quality Assurance

AI & Automation

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Guest Graveyard Mentions

FOMS

Founders of Mystery Science

Farza

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Featuring

Zak Kukoff

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Quick Stats

Duration55:06

Guests1

Ideas Discussed3

Topics4