Your Next Cofounder Is an AI | Edward Kim, Co-Founder & CTO of Gusto ($10B)

Eddie Kim is the co-founder and CTO of Gusto — the $10B payroll and HR platform that millions of small businesses run on. Gusto just launched Gusto Cofounder — an AI teammate for small businesses: payroll, compliance, and daily ops handled before they become problems. Learn more about cofounder here -> https://gusto.com/cofounder?idgm=2mm6b6i2 We covered: The two levels of using AI in a business, and why almost everyone is still stuck on the first oneHow Gusto's AI found $70M in tax credits owners had no idea they qualified for, including one pool company now collecting $50K a yearHow to hand off the "work before the work" so payroll runs itself two days early and all you do is tap approveHow to run your whole back office from a text message, with your Notion and spreadsheets plugged straight inHow to stay ahead of tens of thousands of changing tax rules without reading a single one Links: Subscribe to my newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=Edward Kim ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=EdwardKim⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ X: ⁠⁠https://x.com/siliconvalleymm⁠⁠ https://x.com/siliconvalleymm LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko My Companies & Products: ⁠https://partnerships.marinamogilko.co https://partnerships.marinamogilko.co #GustoPartner

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot, designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month, or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  In 2030, every small business will have a co-founder type agent that is running their business for them. And they're really just focusing on why they started that business in the first place.

• 1:10Marina Mogilko?

  This is Eddie Kim, co-founder and CTO of Gusto, a $10 billion company millions of businesses run their payroll benefits and hiring on. They just launched Gusto Co-Founder, an AI that runs your back office. You just approve the important stuff and it might just change the way we run business itself.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Just imagine like the amount of time savings that a business gets when they no longer have to like

• 1:33Marina Mogilko?

  Do the manual stuff, yeah.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  babysit these like AI has accelerated so many things. Actually, these like 10 things that you have, these are the bottlenecks, yeah.

• 1:41Marina Mogilko?

  If you have this very powerful AI that knows everything, what does it change in the way you run your business in like two or three years? Will it be able to help you make strategic decisions?

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:51Marina Mogilko?

  We live in this interesting time when everything's changing. And I'm sure a lot of small business owners are using Gusto and they're also listening to this podcast. Can you talk about what AI is changing for small business owners? Because a lot of people are not using it yet and they're like, oh, I used it a little bit. I haven't seen any impact.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we're seeing in our data, a lot of small businesses start starting to use AI to help run their business. And I think maybe even a little bit more so than your average like tech startup or enterprise business. And I think the reason why is because just out of necessity, right? Small businesses have so much less resources, they have to be a lot more creative. So we see a lot of small businesses actually use ChatGPT and Anthropic and Claude and things like that to help run their business. I'd say a lot of them are still using it a little bit more as like a chatbot or like a question and answer, maybe more of like a search type functionality and occasionally content creation.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  But I think there's a huge next level of unlock that we're starting to see some of the even more on the edge small businesses use AI for to help automate and actually run large parts of their business.

• 3:02Marina Mogilko?

  So you would say level one is this chatbot, level two, or just say

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Level two is like, is, yeah, I mean, you can call it agents, but really it's moving one step up from the like question and answer, like search type functionality and the and the content creation functionality. And more into like, here's my business that operates, it has a set of processes that are usually recurring, like running payroll, approving time sheets, approving time off, and things like that, that I have to do week in, week in and week out. And now I can have AI through agents, through a product like Gusto, actually run all this for them. And they can be involved as much or as little as they want, but we're seeing some of the more cutting edge small businesses be more comfortable with being less involved and maybe just kind of like saying, responding yes on their phone, like I approve this.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  But really Gusto is doing everything else for them.

• 3:54Marina Mogilko?

  That's, you know, when it comes to things like payroll and taxes, there are so many things that you just don't know about, like if you Don't know, you don't know.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:02Marina Mogilko?

  And things just go on by themselves. And I've read that you actually saved small businesses seventy million dollars.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:09Marina Mogilko?

  In tax credits. Can you talk to me about this? Like, as a small business owner, right? If my CPA doesn't tell me anything, I don't know it exists and I'm losing those dollars.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:19Marina Mogilko?

  Does Gusto do that for you?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's one of the ways that we're leveraging AI. We're using AI to analyze all the things that we know about a small business and proactively letting them know of things that they should be doing or the things that they should know about to help improve their business. And what you just referred to is called the R and D tax credit.

• 4:40Marina Mogilko?

  When you're like developing something?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  You're developing something, it's it's it's a tax credit that's given to any business in the US that's doing some sort of qualified research. Now, here's the thing, many people, including myself, when I first learned about this, think that it's only applicable if you're doing some sort of like hard science type research, like you're trying to build like a nuclear fusion reactor or find the cure to cancer. But actually, it's available to a lot more businesses than you may think. And we help this one company called Cabana Pools, where we use AI to let them know that they are actually potentially eligible for this R and D tax credit. And not only did we do that, we actually helped them fill out the forms,

• 5:27Speaker 02

  also very much assisted through AI, that they then submitted to the government agency and ultimately got like, I think it was like fifty thousand dollars in R and D tax credits, not just one time, but year after year. And they can, they're actually been increasing the amount that they're getting. So, literally, the tax credit, if you're not familiar, you know, there's a there's a difference between like deductions and credits, right? Credits is literally the same as like, the government just mailed you a check.

• 5:54Marina Mogilko?

  So I remember doing this for my business for Lingotrip, and I think it was dependent on how much we're paying our CTO. Is that, does there have to be a specific person who's like responsible for?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one of the, so basically, like, the way it works is like, you have like a set of like expenses, things that you spend money on that like fall in this bucket of of research, right? And some of that is like, oh, I bought this like fancy equipment, right? But some of it is also like, I spent a percentage of my time researching this new way to do something, right? And so that Is also an expense, right? Because that's that's that's part of your salary, right? So if your role is primarily in doing some sort of research or development, or really just innovating in some way, you can claim the R and D tax credit, the part of your time, AKA your salary that that is being spent towards that, right?

• 6:46Speaker 02

  And again, like, it applies, of course, to like hard sciences. It applies to software development. So if your title is like primarily a software engineer and you're building something that doesn't exist today, but also applies to a lot of small businesses are innovating on different ways to to do whatever that they do, right?

• 7:06Marina Mogilko?

  Absolutely, especially with AI. I feel like everyone is trying to build something for their company in a new way.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're they're trying to run their business a little bit more efficiently through AI, right? And they don't have, they're experimenting, they're researching how to do that. I think that would qualify as as potential free credits that they would get. One of the ways that we can help small businesses, we do help small businesses, is AI can like analyze all this data that we have about every single individual customer that's using Gusto and tell them, hey, you're eligible for this tax credit. We think it's going to be about X amount, right? And by the way, we've also done most of the work for you, filled out most of the form. All we need you to do is review it and sign it. And there's a good chance that you will get this tax credit, right? And it's like, as a small business owner, you're like, whoa,

• 7:53Speaker 02

  that's just like free money that I didn't, I just like kind of found like, like some money in my in my genes that I didn't know about, right? Like, you should be absolutely getting that. And I think that's one of the ways that AI can really help small businesses.

• 8:06Marina Mogilko?

  Is that what Cofounder does? Or what is this new Gusto Cofounder thing?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  So that is a, that that is like kind of in the same vein of what Gusto Cofounder does. Cofounder takes the way that we've kind of like thought about how are most people using AI in a small business? And how do we like level it up to do a lot more for the small business, right? And essentially what Cofounder is, it is a tool that allows you to automate anything and everything about your small business. That could be things that we already do for you, like running Payroll or approving time off, but it could also be things like emailing your customers, right? Or texting you the weather today. And you know, one example is like a tour guide company, right? Where they have a list of guests that are coming in to get a tour and it's going to rain

• 8:53Speaker 02

  today. And so the small business owner uses Gusto Co-Founder to set up an automation that says, send me a text message every time it's forecasted to rain today. And if it is, if I reply with yes, go ahead and email all of my guests that are coming in today to let them know that it's forecasted to rain and that they should, you know, wear something warm or bring an umbrella.

• 9:14Marina Mogilko?

  Does that mean you're connecting your CRM to Gusto? Or how does it get all the information about customers?

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you can think of Gusto Co-Founder as a mashup between all the best parts of, for the tech folks out there, OpenClaw, Claude Cowork and Gusto. So what about it is kind of like OpenClaw? Like, one of the primary features of Gusto Co-Founder is that you don't actually really interact with it through our website. You kind of, the first thing that you do is you set up text messaging connection. So you communicate through text, you can communicate through Slack if you prefer. So basically, it's just you can communicate with it and work with Gusto Co-Founder anywhere that you're at. You don't have to be in front of a computer. Then we add in a bunch

• 10:01Speaker 02

  of connectors. Those are MCP connectors. You can connect Gusto Co-Founder to things like your Notion, your spreadsheets, things like that. And thirdly and finally, it comes out of the box with everything that Gusto already does for you, right? So it has knowledge of all of your people, what jobs they hold, how to contact them. It has knowledge of your payrolls and it can take action on all of those things as well. And when you combine those three ingredients together, you get something really, really powerful for small businesses.

• 10:35Marina Mogilko?

  If I'm a small business and I'm, I just started talking to Gusto Co-Founder.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:39Marina Mogilko?

  What is it going to look like? Is it going to ask me, like, do you want to run payroll? Or suggest stuff?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the first thing it does is Is you go through like a really short onboarding and the first thing it actually does it it asks you for your phone number. And then it kind of establishes a connection you you verify the code and everything. And now like you you can like now it has a second second way to communicate with you, not just through the web app. But typically through the web app, when you log in, there's like a, you know, you you'll see a big chat. Input, you'll see a bunch of ideas. These ideas are like things that we think that Gusto co-founder can help you automate.

• 11:14Marina Mogilko?

  Are they personalized for your business?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  They're not personalized yet, but we we're we're we just launched it and so like we're yeah, definitely the idea is to like.

• 11:22Marina Mogilko?

  Like where is your 401k or.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Exactly, right? So if you have like a lot of hourly employees, right? You have a different set of things like timesheet approvals and and things like that. That probably wouldn't make as much sense if you're a tech startup where where all of your employees are salaried, right? So we obviously have all that data and we can kind of like customize the like. The out of the box automations that come with. Yeah. Co-founder, we could even do it, by the way, by by like verticals, right? So like the processes that a dental practice has, it might be a little bit different than the process that. Doctors off, a medical doctor. Yeah, yeah, content creator, right? And so you can get really hyper personalized and like the cool thing is that Gusto has a lot of this data.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  To sort of like curate, like here are the problems that. Either we're already solving for you that we can solve even more for you. Or here are some new things that like you might want to think about.

• 12:18Marina Mogilko?

  How does it know my process? How does it learn about it?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  So you have to you basically you you tell it, right? You say like.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Here's how I run payroll every single week. I talked to this one. Business on Gusto that is like a spa slash massage, right? And a lot of times, this is actually very common. They they track the work of their therapist, for example, in one system. Like, let's say, for example, mind body.

• 12:47Marina Mogilko?

  Whatever you use for booking, right?

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, for booking, that that information is in one system. Then they actually export data from there. They put it into Google Sheets. And then they have all these calculations, right? So in this case, they say, oh, if the massage therapist performed, you know, this many 60-minute massages and this many 90-minute massages, then we'll pay them this much for each amount, right? And if they upsell like Hot Stones or like CBD oil, they get $15 each time that they do that, right? So then they have to like calculate all that, right? And then also tips, right? Here's how we manage our tips. We pool it and here's how it gets split up based on seniority and things like that. It's pretty complicated. And so they actually spent a lot of time in that step

• 13:32Speaker 02

  to figure out what to put into Gusto, right? What's the bonus? What's the tips? What's the commission? And then when they do that, when they hit the run payroll in Gusto, as you probably know, it's very, very fast and very easy, right? But it's kind of what I call the work before the work. Yeah. That actually takes a lot of time and that sits in their processes and in their other systems. So yeah, the business has to like kind of, kind of, a lot of times they actually have this documented in a Google Doc somewhere, right? Because they give it to some employee and they say like, just run this payroll for me. Here's, here's the process that we run. All they do is copy paste that into Gusto co-founder and just say, just do this for me every week, two days before my payroll is due. And let me know like if before I, so I can have a chance to approve it.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network and no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 15:16Marina Mogilko?

  Well, can you talk about other use cases? So, running payroll, I feel like it already saves a lot of time. Can you give me more like intermediate to advanced use cases? I know our business is different.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:28Marina Mogilko?

  What those small businesses can do in the first week to start actually saving hours?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so hourly employees, like there's this like kind of like wild goose chase that happens to a lot of our customers. And if you're a small business on Gusta, you have hourly employees and you have like, let's say in 20 employees, you actually have managers that are managing those hourly employees. Every single week you go on this wild goose chase of like getting people to submit their time sheets, right? So everyone's supposed to submit their time sheets by a certain time, you know, on Friday or whatever. And many people just don't do it. They don't clock out. And so you start slacking everybody. Hey, can you submit your time sheets? How much hours did this person work because they forgot to clock out and it says they worked 24 hours, which is obviously not possible. There was a mistake there.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  And so that's one of the things that Gusta co-founder can actually do for you, right?

• 16:21Marina Mogilko?

  Text on your behalf.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  On your behalf, because it connects to like text and Slack, right? So if your company is using Slack, Gusta co-founder, not you as the human CEO, is now going on this wild goose chase for you. So you don't have to worry about it. It's going to Slack your manager and say, hey, employee A and C didn't submit their time sheets. Can you have them go submit it? And then, once they've submitted, can you actually approve those time sheets? And then, and I'll check back with you in a day to see if it's all taken care of, right? And at the end of the day, like... The CEO just gets a, you know, a status report from Gusto co-founder saying, "Hey, I'm tracking these three people to submit their time sheets. If I don't hear back from them by Friday, I'll let you know."

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And that way you can kind of go ping them yourself.

• 17:08Marina Mogilko?

  What about taxes, health insurance? Is that part of what Gusto co-founder does?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so a big part of it is also just kind of not, not just like helping them automate the business processes that a small business has, but also just being very proactive about things that the small business may not know that they should be doing or things that they should know about, right? So, compliance is a huge aspect of what we do at Gusto. And there's a heavy compliance tax that businesses have to face, right? Every month or a quarter, there's new tax laws that come up. And many of them actually apply to small businesses. Like, you see them in your like city, local, like propositions that you have to vote on. And those kind of like translate to like new rules or laws that a business has to know about, right?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  And there are like tens of thousands of these. How can you expect a small business?

• 18:01Marina Mogilko?

  To just catch up with everything?

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, to just know everything. And so, the thing that, and, and like 90% of those probably don't even apply to your business because a lot of them are like, if you're in this industry, or if you, if you have people who are above the salary, or you have more than five employees. And so, what Gusto can do is take everything that we know about that business, and take all the compliance knowledge that we have, and then we proactively let the customer know, "Hey, this is something that is a new thing that you need to be thinking about, right?"

• 18:30Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  And for many of those things, we also just have a button that's just like, "Take care of it for me," right? You just click that button, and Gusto co-founder, if it's able to, can just take care of it for the, for the small business. So, there is this like proactive, like, "Here's things that you may want to know about that you haven't asked me about," right? And that's, that's, that's a big part of what Gusto co-founder does as well.

• 18:52Marina Mogilko?

  Does it suggest, because this is a big problem for me. I actually built an agent that runs through my QuickBooks and like analyzes everything that's going on in my revenue, and then tells me like, "Hey, you could have be..." You can be optimizing your taxes with these tax strategies.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 19:09Marina Mogilko?

  And then I bring them to my CPA.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:11Marina Mogilko?

  Uh, and she tells me whether it's good for you or not.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:15Marina Mogilko?

  Is there something that Gusto co-founder can do? Like, as you said, identify some expenses that would be eligible for R and D.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:22Marina Mogilko?

  Or say like, hey, I don't see your 401K. You could be saving a lot of money. Or you're overpaying for health insurance. Shall we move you on a different plan? Cause they raised your prices by 20% again this year.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 19:34Marina Mogilko?

  That's what they do.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you could even take it a step further. Like you can basically, you just have a chat with Gusto co-founder, like either through a web interface, or maybe you just like have some free time. You just have that idea, right? And you just send Gusto co-founder a text message, saying exactly what you did, right? And it'll like connect, uh, you have to authorize it of course, but it'll connect into QuickBooks. Or there's actually a lot of expenses that businesses, businesses have on Gusto as well, right? Cause like there's an expense reporting.

• 20:01Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Expense reimbursement feature that we have. And you tell Gusto co-founder exactly what you just said. And then you could also just say, hey, write this report for me. And this is the email address of my CPA and email that report to the CPA so that they can kind of like get back to you.

• 20:22Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  And when they reply, send me a text message that they replied and give me a summary of it. That's all possible with Gusto co-founder today. If you want to stay ahead in the AI era, follow Silicon Valley Girl Podcast on your favorite platform.

• 20:37Marina Mogilko?

  New episode every week on AI careers and how to not get left behind. So, once it has access to all of this, and it already has access, what does it change in the way you run your business in like two or three years? If you have this very powerful AI that knows everything, will it be able to help you make strategic decisions and what type of decisions?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so first of all, just imagine like the amount of time savings that a business gets when they no longer have to like manually babysit these like processes, right? They actually take a surprising amount of time. So I think first of all, like that frees up the small business owner to like, think about things that are more important to their business, frankly, right? How do I grow this business? What are some new products? What are some new things I should be researching, right? And then also, by the way, get more R and D tax credit for it, right? And so I think it just, step one is just like, it just. Gives a little bit more breathing room to small businesses, a little bit more headspace to think about the things that they should be thinking a little bit more longer term about.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  But then also, like, with all the, you know, compliance knowledge, all the data that we have about the the the business, again, we can kind of like practically let them know what things that they should maybe start to think about, right, based on an analysis of

• 21:58Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, of like that industry, like what's going and going on in that industry and you're part of that industry that might apply.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So one automation, I think it might be actually one of our idea, our canned automation that comes out of the box is like, do a weekly analysis of what my competitors are doing and send me a report over email or Slack, Slack me a report of what's going on with our competitors and give me three ideas of things that I can do to to to to stay ahead.

• 22:32Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Right. And Gusto Co-founder will do that for you. You'll wake up, right?

• 22:35Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  And and

• 22:37Marina Mogilko?

  I love those automations. I have one for competitors and also like running audit of like what I'm doing and inside AI, inside my dogs and saying, what can I optimize? What do you see is very repetitive.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 22:48Marina Mogilko?

  Same with Gusto, right? Like, what is, what am I repeating inside Gusto manually?

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:53Marina Mogilko?

  What could be automated?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 22:55Marina Mogilko?

  Can you talk about your own experience inside Gusto? How AI has changed processes? Like, what process looks like two years ago? What does it look like now? Something practical that small businesses can also copy from you.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  The way Gusto Co-founder was built was really interesting. It was built over nine weeks with a team of five. What was even more interesting about that was what we didn't do. And it was like, we got rid of all meetings, we got rid of all documents, we got rid of like sprint planning, retros, we got rid of FIGMs and product roadmaps.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  And the only thing that we did was we kept a 24/7, we call it a perma-zoom. So we just kept the Zoom meeting going and people would just, because the team is mostly remote, people would just like be in that Zoom all day and literally just talk to each other.

• 23:45Marina Mogilko?

  Oh, that's a cool idea. I've never heard that before.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  It's it's it's so simple and so obvious, but it really changed, it blew my mind at how much

• 23:57Speaker 02

  We were able to get done, how quickly we moved. And it's not like it was an AI slop thing. This is like the best code that I've written in my whole life, I think.

• 24:06Marina Mogilko?

  How much of it is AI code?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  So it's, it's, it's, most of it, I would say like 99% was, I would say authored by AI. But like most of the time, I was actually one of the five builders on this personally.

• 24:20Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Most of the time is spent like reviewing, editing, making sure the quality is good. That is the thing that like you have to really be really, really careful of. The writing is now very, very trivial. And then it's reviewing, making sure like it's actually what you want. And then editing and deleting, right? The cost to build now is so small that you can build really, really quickly. And if you don't build the wrong thing, just be really disciplined about deleting it, right? And trying something new. That's actually much faster than like having all these meetings and documents and Figma's. That made sense in the old world where the cost to build was so high

• 25:03Speaker 02

  that you had to like measure like 10 times and then you cut once, right? Cause like the engineering resource, the time to build is, is like so, you're so scarce on that resource that you have to like, damn, we'll make sure that you, you got it right that first time. But I think that's no longer the, the case. You can cut like a hundred different times. And one of those cuts, each, each cut is, is really quick. And like maybe one of those cuts is really, really good. Just take that one, yeah.

• 25:26Marina Mogilko?

  How much of the code have you edited? Just, just wanna understand like for engineering, how good is AI these days from your perspective?

• 25:35Speaker 02

  I'm probably changing about 30% of the code it writes. 70% is good.

• 25:42Marina Mogilko?

  What, what was it like a year ago? And what will it be like in a year? What do you think?

• 25:46Speaker 02

  A year ago was like 80%. I was one of the first people to use Claude code when it came out. And I thought it was cool, but like I could code faster than Claude code, right? And now like in the last I would say four or five months. It's gotten so much better and you can move so much faster. And it's also just, by the way, so much more fun. You can build at this pace and like you can just go from idea to like landing something in production, like in a matter of like one hour, like that's, that's really fun.

• 26:16Marina Mogilko?

  Can you talk to me about the most underrated AI use case for any small business that most people aren't talking about? Like we talked about daily briefing, automating payroll. Is there something that you think can be transformational so that every business owner who's listening to us now could just go deploy it and be fascinated by what it does?

• 26:38Speaker 02

  I know I keep talking about it, but I would say the, the, um, it's just the running, the running payroll, like get that off your plate. Like basically you don't have to, you know, do all of the work before the work. The exporting from your X system, the data manipulation in Google Sheets, then the importing into Gusto, like basically spend maybe 10 minutes with Gusto co-founder to like just tell it how you think about this process and then just have it run for you like a couple of times. And I think it's kind of like a gateway drug to like saying, okay, it did this thing. Yeah. And that's kind of how you get started, right? Like you just need to start with like one actual useful thing that it's done for you.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  And then you start to like realize, okay, I'm doing this thing. Like I could probably have it automate that. And I'd say the second under most underrated thing, and it blew my mind as well from like setting up and using OpenClaw because it sounds so obvious. It's, it's really just the ability to message from text. It turns out that this age old technology, before we had smartphones, SMS is like the best interface to run your business, right? It's very simple. It's, and it's something about like, it's just so easy to like.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Get, I don't have to log into something, I don't have to open an app. And it just replies to me in this way that like I text, you know, my friends and family.

• 28:10Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, it sounds crazy when you think about it as an advantage, like, why can't I open an app? But then, once you're in the process, you really don't want to switch apps. You want to be in the same context.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 28:21Marina Mogilko?

  For a small business owner in two thousand twenty six, can you rank by how much AI transforms the following?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 28:28Marina Mogilko?

  Jobs, tasks, bookkeeper.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Like, just kind of like.

• 28:32Marina Mogilko?

  From zero to ten, zero, not transformed, ten, super transformed with AI.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  I think bookkeepers, I mean, there's, there's aspects of bookkeeping that is very mechanical and like just formulaic. I think that gets transformed through AI. But there's actually a lot of bookkeeping, a lot of respect for accountants and bookkeepers that they do. That is more than just like what the name implies of like keeping the books, right? They do, they are oftentimes like proactive advisors, confidants and strategic partners to the small businesses. And I think some of that stuff is, is hard to replace with AI.

• 29:05Marina Mogilko?

  So from zero to, to ten, what would you say?

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Uh, three.

• 29:09Marina Mogilko?

  So you said, no, really, some, some basic stuff is transformed.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's stuff that gets really transformed and stuff that like is like, it's hard to have AI like know that all the nuances of your business and history of like, you know, they, they have deep, a business owner and a bookkeeper have deep relationships that go many, many years.

• 29:24Marina Mogilko?

  Oh, yeah. You know what is, what's interesting? And can you, can you rank engineering from zero to ten? I just wondered, so what I'm seeing right now is this, how AI has impacted engineering? And you say like thirty, you only edit thirty percent of the code.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:38Marina Mogilko?

  I feel like it's moving into the knowledge workers markets. Uh, and we're gonna see the same transformations in the knowledge, uh, for knowledge workers.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:47Marina Mogilko?

  In the next couple of years, I'm not seeing it quite yet. Yes, it's helpful, but if I rank my job, con creation, yeah, like two, three out of ten.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:57Marina Mogilko?

  It, it helps us a lot, but it's not like it's fully there.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 30:02Marina Mogilko?

  So what would you say about software engineers from zero to ten?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Well, it's probably a little bit ahead, but actually like content. Creation is probably a lot like using AI. Content creation through AI is probably a lot like writing code through AI. If you just tell AI to like, write the thing and just take it like it sucks, like it's slopped. You know, like, nobody's gonna read it. Everybody knows it's written by AI. Like, it's kind of like the same concept, but like, I'd say like, the difference in content creation is there's probably a little bit more taste in like, what, what is good content than like, there's still a lot of taste in software engineering, but it's much more like, um, defined, I think, like, what is a, a good engineer looks at a piece of software and they're like, a piece of code and they're like, this is good code or this is bad code. I think there's a, there's like mostly universal.

• 30:46Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, aspect, whereas content is a little bit more like, it's like, there's a few different people, there's just such a variety of,

• 30:51Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Taste. Um, where, where was I?

• 30:54Marina Mogilko?

  No, we're ranking jobs, ranking jobs.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Oh, so I think engineering is, to me is, I mean, it's, it's a 10, like, it's, engineering has transformed significantly for me personally. Like, the way I spend my time is significantly different. Um, now, it doesn't mean it, 10 doesn't mean it goes away. I think if anything, like, engineers, like myself, like, have superpowers to do way more incredible things.

• 31:18Marina Mogilko?

  The whole product in nine weeks with five people.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Right, and so it's transforming in a way that like, you have now superpowers, right? Not that you're, not that engineers are absolutely.

• 31:28Marina Mogilko?

  Interesting, like, I wonder when I would, will be able to say for content creation, it's 10 out of 10, because now I'm, I'm a 2 or 3. Okay, recruiter.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Maybe like a,

• 31:40Speaker 02

  six or seven?

• 31:41Marina Mogilko?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Um, there's an aspect of recruiting that I think is, uh, very, uh, mechanical. You have like kind of these requirements, uh, you need to go search for people that fit those qualifications. Uh, and you need to sort of like, do kind of some high level vetting of like, do they actually fit versus just kind of what they say on LinkedIn?

• 32:05Marina Mogilko?

  Going through profiles.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:07Marina Mogilko?

  Very manual.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Um, but I think there's a, you know, having spent a lot of time recruiting myself, and this is probably the most important part of recruiting, is like, sort of the, relationship building to see if there's an actual fit between you and the company, both ways. Um, getting to know them, helping them to, like, kind of, just this, like, personal aspect of recruiting that is really important, and I think that's hard for AI to replace.

• 32:30Marina Mogilko?

  Totally. Customer support.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Customer support is is also the, I think, very similar. There is a part of customer support where just a lot of mechanical things that are just kind of very common workflows that like the customer doesn't want to talk to a human and the human doesn't want to be doing the mindless things like day in and day out from from nine to five every single day. I think that that's class of customer support problems like goes away. So I'd say like 10 on that one. But there's a class of customer support problems that are much more complex, like the ones that like us oftentimes has to handle. You know, someone's got a tax notice in the mail from the IRS. They're really stressed out. They want to talk to a human. The human like can, you know, just walk them through, assure them.

• 33:15Marina Mogilko?

  Those situations, you really want a human.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:17Marina Mogilko?

  You're like, oh.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 33:18Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah. Lawyer.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  I think seven. I think there's a lot of legal documents and I get these like hundred page documents. And I just want to know like what's where are the critical like things that I need to know about? And what's like kind of the template boilerplate stuff? Right? And it turns out like I've seen so many like documents, legal documents. I'm pretty sure lawyers that some have some system where they say, okay, I'm want this like confidentiality agreement. And it's just copy paste. This is like pretty standard stuff. Everybody kind of like mostly agrees with it. There's nothing like crazy out there. And then there's this one like section. If you're if if they're nice, it's like kind of in the appendix clearly laid out. But sometimes it's like buried within like all that template stuff.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  I think AI can like suss all that out like really, really quickly.

• 34:07Marina Mogilko?

  Cool. Okay, I have a few final questions. Finish this sentence. In 2030, every small business will have.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  In 2030, every small business will have a co-founder type agent that is running their business for them. And they're really just focusing on why they started that business in the first place.

• 34:25Marina Mogilko?

  What are they not doing at all?

• 34:28Speaker 02

  They're not doing any of the back office stuff that like they have to do to keep that business compliant and running, but they don't want to do.

• 34:35Marina Mogilko?

  Does it help with strategic execution as well?

• 34:37Speaker 02

  It does because again, like I think it'll free them up to think a little bit more strategically about their business. And then AI combined with like all the information that we have about that business cannot proactively like let the customer know about, you know, strategic things that they should be thinking about that they're not.

• 34:56Marina Mogilko?

  Top three AI tools every business owner should start using right now.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Well, obviously Gustav co-founder, I'd say Claude Code.

• 35:05Marina Mogilko?

  Even for non-technical?

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yes, because I think you can use Claude Code and actually at our company, we have a lot of folks in the finance team, the marketing team actually using Claude Code. When you say, when you talk to Claude Code, like there's nothing in there that says it can only code for you, right?

• 35:23Marina Mogilko?

  Just the name.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It isn't, yeah. And some people have figured out the secret that like if I ask Claude Code to go tell me the weather today, it'll actually respond. Yeah.

• 35:37Marina Mogilko?

  And number three?

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Voice dictation. So I use Whisperflow.

• 35:42Marina Mogilko?

  Whisperflow?

• 35:42Speaker 02

  And these days I don't really type. I just talk and it's so much faster.

• 35:48Marina Mogilko?

  Totally.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  It's kind of also one of those like musings that I have is like AI has accelerated so many things that like actually these like 10 things that you have.

• 36:00Marina Mogilko?

  They're resting.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  I'm wiggling my fingers right now. These are the bottlenecks now. These are actually the bottlenecks. And so if you're still typing, you're slowing yourself down.

• 36:09Marina Mogilko?

  Oh, yeah. It's funny how we go from one bottleneck to another, right?

• 36:14Speaker 02

  And some of them are really funny. It's like, hey, this is not the bottleneck. What?

• 36:17Marina Mogilko?

  Exactly. Thank you so much. I think it was really useful.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Well, thanks for being such a great customer.

• 36:22Marina Mogilko?

  I also write a newsletter where I go deeper on AI tools that I use, career strategies and things I can't fit into 60 minute podcast. It's free. Link is in the.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger: Fresh for Everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.

• 37:04Speaker 05

  When you're building a company, you learn that trust is what closes deals. You may have the best product, but buyers won't sign without proof that your product is secure, especially if it has AI. Vanta gets you compliant fast with SOC 2, ISO 27001, and more, and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring. Hyperbound, a YC-backed startup, used Vanta to unlock the Fortune 100 in under a year. Snowfire got audit-ready in a month and closed a multimillion-dollar deal. Trust matters. Get started at vanta.com.