WTF is an AI maximalist software holding company?

The why, what, and how of Rocketable

Hi all 👋 I’m Alan, founder of Rocketable.

tl;dr

I’m building a large portfolio of wildly profitable software businesses by acquiring existing products and replacing human teams with AI agents.

If you haven’t already, you should watch (or read) the manifesto.

The longer version…

I started Rocketable because I think that most of the world is still underestimating the potential of AI.

Even in Silicon Valley, most people assume that humans will maintain a monopoly on the creativity and insights needed to operate a successful software product.

I think that’s extremely unlikely.

I believe the real opportunity lies in assuming there is no job in a software company that can’t be automated by AI, and building from there.

But why are you acquiring existing products?

I believe acquiring existing products is the key to speedrunning the path to building a single person, billion dollar software company.

By acquiring existing software products that already have customers and revenue, I can focus most of my attention on the challenge of automating those businesses.

By owning the products that I automate, I can ignore the management fiefdoms, data silos, and corporate politics that prevent most companies from maximizing the upside of deploying AI in their business.

By buying increasingly larger businesses, I can force myself to climb the ladder of automation complexity faster than most individual businesses evolve organically.

So what are you building?

Although it’s obvious to me that today’s foundation models already have the raw intelligence needed to do most of the jobs in a large software company, it’s equally obvious that the tools needed to fully replace the entire org chart of a software company with AI agents do not yet exist.

In addition to being competent within each function, to operate software products with 0 human employees, the agents will also need to be:

• directed towards common goals

• integrated to collaborate across functions

• tuned with feedback loops connected to product metrics

• trained to make resource allocation decisions

Rocketable needs to build the software that enables all of those things to happen. Building the automation system while also owning the products that it operates allows me to:

• underwrite the risks of early deployment and minimize the cycle time for experimentation

• connect automation decisions to the outcomes that matter to the business (profitability, growth, retention) rather than intermediate steps in the process.

• maximize value captured from automation by keeping the upside in-house

There are also significant opportunities to improve the performance of agents (and the customer experience of products they manage) by re-thinking the approach from first principles and ignoring the assumptions that many AI-enabled vertical SaaS products are built upon.

For example: instead of automating the typical customer support workflow you see in most companies (where customers interact with relatively low skill tier 1 customer service agents when they have an issue), why not use AI to scale founder-mode support (empowering your AI support agent with access to source code, production databases, and ability to open a PR that solves a customer problem)?

What makes you think you can do this?

In 2023, I acquired a small, profitable software business on Acquire.com and started experimenting with using LLMs to automate the business. That experience gave me confidence that with the right approach to automation, there is a clear line of sight to fully automating the operations of a software business.

Prior to working on Rocketable, I spent a decade building products and leading teams that used AI/ML to automate complex tasks. I worked on self-driving cars at Cruise, self-driving trucks and ADAS systems for micromobility at Uber, and an irrigation co-pilot for farmers at Tule (YC S14). Before working on AI-enabled products, I managed traditional B2C and B2B products across web and mobile platforms.

I write code, have a degree in design, build hardware, and have also worked on optimizing other complex systems (international supply chains and field operations).

Maybe you’re not crazy. How can I help or get involved?

📨 Subscribe to updates: If you’re interested in following along as I figure out the playbook for running software businesses with teams of AI agents instead of humans, subscribe here.

🚰 Help with deal flow: I’m starting to work on my next acquisition and looking to meet owners of software products that are currently generating $250K-$600K in annual profit who may be interested in selling. If that sounds like you or someone you know, please contact me here.

🛠️ Work with Rocketable: It’s likely that I will need to hire a small team of AI-augmented humans to help build the platform that enables acquired products to operate without employees. If you have the domain mastery and technical skill needed to automate one or more of the critical functions of a software business, please contact me here.