“Anyone who tells you they know what even four degrees of warming or more in a century will actually mean or what that will look like on a planet gripped by ice ages for the past 3 million years is full of S*** especially if they are an economist.”

— Peter Brannen, award-winning science journalist and contributing writer at The Atlantic, author of The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything and The Ends of the World

“Purpose is a perpetual motion machine”

SaaS, AI, and the Missing Rung A Reality Check for Beginners

Why This Page Exists

This page captures a core insight: the gap between “anyone can build SaaS” rhetoric and the lived reality for beginners with no capital, no ideas, and no technical judgment.

It reframes SaaS honestly and introduces a more accessible path that does not require upfront money or gambling on developers.

Executive Summary (Plain Language)

• SaaS = software delivered over the internet by subscription. You rent it; the provider runs it.
• The message “anyone can build SaaS” skips a critical truth: beginners are asked to make expert decisions before they have experience.
• The real bottleneck is product judgment, not coding.
• Hiring developers without judgment transfers risk to the least-prepared person.
• AI lowered the cost of building — not the cost of knowing what to build.

Bottom line: The path to SaaS is not zero → founder. There is a missing rung.

What’s Disingenuous About Most SaaS Advice

• It assumes prior exposure to software, business, or product thinking.
• “Hand it to a developer” is treated as neutral advice, despite requiring money and evaluative skill.

• Failure is framed as lack of effort instead of lack of context.
• The narrative benefits platforms, tool sellers, and course creators more than beginners.

The Actual Barrier

It is not:

• Code
• Tools
• Motivation

The barrier is product judgment:

• Knowing which problems are real
• Knowing what can be fake or manual at first
• Knowing when something is “good enough”

Judgment comes from exposure, not instruction.

The Missing Rung (The Honest Path)

1. User → Operator (Before Builder)

Do not start by building software.
Operate inside existing SaaS.

• Configure tools for real people
• Assemble workflows
• Fix misuse
• Deliver outcomes, not products

Examples:

• CRM setup for small businesses
• AI tool configuration for coaches
• Notion or Airtable systems
• Zapier or Make automations

No original idea required.
No developers required.
Minimal money required.

2. Become the Translator

The highest-leverage role right now:

• Translate human problems into tool configurations
• Translate AI capability into usable workflows
• Translate software limitations into realistic expectations

This role pays before SaaS.

3. SaaS Emerges Naturally

After repeated exposure:

• The same manual fix appears again and again
• The same workaround keeps being rebuilt

That is not brainstorming.
That is earned insight.

Real SaaS comes from repetition, not imagination.

Reframed Truth About the AI Gold Rush

People will not miss the AI wave because they did not code.

They will miss it because they were told to skip:

• Apprenticeship
• Context
• Judgment

And jump straight to ownership.

Join us,
Our team at Living & Loving Inquiry

Mike R Jay & Gary Gile
Founders @ The NEW LeadU

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3. Disclaimer

Mike R. Jay is a developmentalist utilizing consulting, coaching, advising and helping… emergent from dynamic inquiry as a means to cue, scaffold, support, lift, and protect; offering inspiration to aspiring leaders who are interested in humaning where being, doing, having, becoming, contributing, relating, guiding to produce resilience and wellth help people lead generative lives.

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