E55: AI Native Teams with Jacob Posel from HQ

In this episode of the SaaS Operators Podcast, Jacob Posel joins Jeremiah, Jack, and Rishabh to talk about HQ, a cloud-based file system built on top of Claude Code and Codex that launched two days before recording.The origin story is good. Jacob meets Corey Epstein, sees a product called Indigo that was ahead of its time but waiting on AI to catch up. They stay in touch. Corey eventually puts Jacob on an internal tool called HQ. Jacob gets hooked, starts pushing the team to build a version for multiple people, and when Ramp published their internal Glass tool, Jacob tweets that they built Ramp Glass for everyone. The demand comes in fast, so he joined the company.The core problem HQ solves is one that Jacob kept running into across every business he consulted with. AI tools are built for solo use. Everyone's working in silos, repeating work, building their own janky version of the same thing. HQ gives teams a shared cloud workspace where skills compound. One person's breakthrough becomes everyone's baseline.Then the conversation goes somewhere more interesting. Rishabh pushes on who actually buys this. His argument is that the buyer isn't the average CEO, it's the founder, because founders are transformers and CEOs are optimizers. The person most likely to get value from HQ is someone who's willing to stay on the treadmill as the technology keeps moving, not someone who wants a finished system handed to them.Jacob's take on pricing is worth sitting with. A customer costs about a dollar a month to serve. The play is distribution. Get HQ into as many businesses as possible, stay close to how people interact with AI, and the monetization builds from there.The episode closes on something most people aren't saying clearly. Getting your team AI native isn't a software problem or a gamification problem. It's a coaching problem. And right now the gap between the people doing it well and everyone else is enormous.Time stamps:00:00 Unexpected Connections: A Humorous Mix-Up05:40 Building HQ: The Journey to Team Collaboration10:42 Targeting the Right Market: Finding HQ's Place16:10 Optimizing AI Usage: The Economics of Token Management22:00 Balancing Standardization and Personalization in Teams24:25 Navigating AI in Business Strategy25:55 Identifying Key Buyers for AI Solutions26:46 The Role of Founders vs. CEOs in AI Adoption27:45 The Mindset Shift Required for AI Integration29:34 The Challenge of Employee Adaptation to AI31:25 The Importance of Continuous Learning in AI33:26 The Future of Work: AI and Employee Dynamics35:18 The Impact of AI on Job Roles and Expectations37:10 Financial Pressures and AI Adoption38:58 Coaching and Support in AI Implementation40:44 The Evolving Nature of AI Technology42:31 Driving AI Adoption Across Organizations