"Why would anyone use your product over ChatGPT?" It’s a question nearly every investor is asking me, and it’s a good one.

There are features such as Mentor Markup or Screening Model, that a general chat application like ChatGPT can't replicate today due to technical limitations. But raw capability isn’t enough of an advantage against an entity like OpenAI (or other nimble SaaS providers). They can and will catch up with you on features, especially if customers really like what you’ve built and request it.

The real differentiator is not about having a temporary feature moat. It's about understanding the culture, especially the evolving culture, and honing your empathy for the user, the firms, and the trade.

For example. If a ChatGPT product manager has never hovered over the send button for five minutes, checked the attachment five times, and held their breath before sending their first LOI, they have lessons to learn that can’t be found in an MBB deck or customer call.

Private equity is a career long apprenticeship. You begin as an analyst or associate. You learn the ropes, own your first LBO model, get corrected for “burying the lead” because you didn’t follow the pyramid principle. With time, you become a VP, develop investment theses and apply Damodaran's views of narratives to gut check the valuation. You learn to recognize tail and headwinds and apply "second-level thinking". This progression is more than a career; it’s the development of judgment.

Weaving years of thoughtful processes passed down from senior to junior into workflows as software is an art, not just a skill, and it's a skill that cannot be purchased with resources alone. It’s a process, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the practice of honing this art.

The big tech companies build products for broad audiences, they design for scale, but they pay a price in relatability. A vertical SaaS player has a singular obsession with the user's specific world. For vertical SaaS, it's not a market to win, it's a market to lose. This is not David and Goliath, this is Michelangelo’s David, crafted over two years by a then 26-year-old, in isolation, by hand.

If you stay true to the craft, you cannot be beaten. The product managers at those lumbering, distracted giants shouldn't be YOUR fear, THEY should be the ones who are scared.