Opinion
Dan Shipper: 'SaaS-pocalypse' is dumb; 99% will prefer maintained software
“I think the SaaS-pocalypse is so dumb because Hey, yeah, I'm like vibe coding this inbox app, but 99% of the world is going to want to use something that's maintained by someone else. Yes, you can one shot everything, but the I think the hard rare thing is mov…”
Insight
Shipper: Founders no longer need technical co-founders because everyone can code
“And I think that's a new and interesting divide where before we were like, I need a technical co-founder and that's not really it anymore because everyone can code. I think it's about your set of sensitivities and desire to make something new and go fast versu…”
Opinion
Shipper: Advanced AI models enable non-engineers to fine-tune models
“Five, six and fabled some extent if you can get around the guardrails is makes it easier, easy enough to make a machine learning pipeline and run it that, and that's everything from like grabbing the data to making, like making more synthetic data to like actu…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dan Shipper: Users can feed video into Codex to recreate apps
“But honestly, you can literally just feed this video into codex and just be like, make something like this and it will do that.”
Insight
Shipper: Agent-native SaaS restores traditional software margins without token costs
“In this world, you're just a SaaS provider. You're just hosting software. So there's no token costs. And so your margins are back to being like regular, a regular software business instead of being an AI business, which I think is great.”
Prediction Held up
Shipper predicts OpenAI and Anthropic launch agent app stores within a year
“And I bet you within a year the opening eyes in the anthropics of the world will have app stores for apps that are built specifically to be used inside of these services. Maybe even cursor too. I don't have any insight on any of this.”
Opinion
Shipper: Incumbent AI feature integrations mostly suck
“There was that whole thing of, like, for the last couple years of, like, oh yeah, every big company's just gonna, like, integrate AI and, like, no startup's gonna be able to compete, and it's just, like, pretty much all of those integrations suck. Like, maybe,…”
Opinion
Dan Shipper: Anthropic holds 'mandate of heaven' while OpenAI is underrated
“I feel like Anthropic has the, has a little bit of the mandate of heaven right now, and OpenAI is quite underrated.”
Opinion
Shipper: GPT-5.6 with Codex is best model for knowledge work
“Codex with five, six, which I find to be the most usable, most powerful, fastest model for, specifically for knowledge work and for coding, but like specifically for knowledge work”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dan Shipper: Fable AI autonomously emptied his team's bug backlog
“Like with fable, I was we were like literally The, our bug backlog was emptied out. You could just set it off and it was emptied out as long as you're willing to spend the money.”
Opinion
Shipper: Anthropic's Claude and Opus remain ahead in visual product design
“I would go to Claude for the actual design, and then port it back in here, because I still think that Claude has a better sense, especially Fable, RIP. But even, even four eight would be better at this. And I think for a product like this, being able to see it…”
Assertion Contradicted
Shipper: OpenAI and Anthropic do not really offer fine-tuning anymore
“In that case, like, you have to use open-source models, because none of the major model companies, or at least OpenAnthropic, don't really do fine-tuning anymore.”
Opinion
Shipper: Frontier AI models cannot copy edit like human copy editors
“These models can't do copy edits. They can't do copy edits like a copy editor can. And it's weird because copy editing shouldn't be that hard. At least copy editing to like 70% or something like that.”
Insight
Shipper: Anyone is a data scientist now using prompt-tuned GPT-4
“Everyone's a data scientist because, like, everyone, anyone can just, like, prompt tune, like, GPT-IV to, like, find some, like, do something interesting with the data set.”
Insight
Shipper: Science should build 'N-of-1' predictive models before generalized explanations
“The way that, like, science proceeds right now is, like, you're trying to find, like, underlying, underlying explanations for things by, like, doing high-end studies on, like, lots and lots and lots of people and, like, doing, like, a linear regression to, lik…”
Opinion
Shipper: Anyone using GPT-4 can beat a 2019 data science PhD on Kaggle
“Kaggle was built for a time when the people who could do this stuff were people who, like, had, had, like, PhDs in data science. Yep. And it's, like, totally changed now, where, like, anyone can enter one of these competitions and, like, do better than a PhD c…”
Insight
Shipper: Physical books should return to high-priced luxury goods
“I think like books started out as luxury goods. And then because of the printing press, they became like, there is this push to make them cheaper because you needed ways to get more information into people's hands. And they're no longer necessary as cheap form…”
Insight
Shipper: Incumbents cannot risk UX changes, giving AI startups an advantage
“Big companies are really limited in the risk, the amount of risks that they can take to like make their actual interface good for that specific thing. Cause they can't risk like pissing off their regular users. And that's a tremendous advantage for startups to…”
Insight
Shipper: Media creators in 2025 should start on YouTube, not newsletters
“It's much harder to grow a newsletter now than it was five years ago. I'd probably start with YouTube actually. I think, and funnel people into, from YouTube into a newsletter that feels like the right move.”
Opinion
Shipper: OpenAI's Codex CLI is trash
“It is like, Codex CLI is trash.”
Opinion
Dan Shipper: GPT-5.6 Accurately Handles 90% of Routine Emails
“I think that five five was fine, but not quite good enough. Like, I would say generally the email responses here, so like this email draft, for example, is like, It's as if I wrote it, like it's, maybe there's something that I would slightly change, and I migh…”
Opinion
Dan Shipper: People Underestimate Codex's Multi-Agent Orchestration
“I think that people are sleeping on how, Flexible and powerful of a tool this is. Because, okay, so it's got the image model in it, and then it also has the ability, like it has the ability to change other threads. So, like, I can have this thread message anot…”
Opinion
Dan Shipper: Fable is too slow and expensive for average users
“It's because it's so, it's also so slow and it's so expensive that it's really only meant for Essentially like people who are doing machine learning or are orchestrating like fleets of agents, which is just a skill that most people don't have yet.”
Opinion
Shipper: Rates GPT-5.6 Design Skills a B, Up from C or D
“This is another nice thing about 5.6 that's pretty new is, it does this like design checkpoint. So it's really, they're trying to make it better at design, and I think it's not, Perfect. Like it always wants to do warm paper backgrounds for some reason. I don'…”
