Sep 3, 2026 · 34 min · 12 segments
Most founders protect what's working. Tom Wilford burned his own company down while it was still growing. Tom is the founder and CEO of Ella, an AI agent for sustainability data, carbon reporting and…
Tom WilfordGuestChrisHostI have a little bit of the same thing myself where you can see what AI does and you start playing with it.
Yeah.
Vibe coding, different tools and things like that.
And it makes me think of like the whole service as a software model has kind of shot itself in the foot now with AI coming along.
Like if it used to be the old thing where you would buy a software and own it, then that wouldn't be as much of a problem now, but because everyone moves to monthly subscriptions instead.
Yeah.
As I said, I think they've shot themselves in the foot a little bit there.
I think what we're seeing now is lots of software companies having to decide what they're going to do.
So you're either having to own your software company and then continue building with the same stack, or you're going to have to re-tear it down.
There's several companies that I looked at when I did it that were doing the same process.
There were about two or three which I looked at, and they were actually doing the same thing in different industries where they already had an existing software.
What was actually wrong with the thing that was already working then?
Where we are today, we start calls and the first thing someone says is, well, you know, why would I need software when I can just build something in AI, right? Which is like a completely different frame from what it was two years ago.
And quite frankly, like the old softwares of the, say, 2020s and 2022s, they, in my head, they're just not great, not good enough, unless you've really embedded AI in from the bottom.
I have a little bit of the same thing myself where you can see what AI does and you start playing with it.
Yeah.
Vibe coding, different tools and things like that.
And it makes me think of like the whole service as a software model has kind of shot itself in the foot now with AI coming along.
Like if it used to be the old thing where you would buy a software and own it, then that wouldn't be as much of a problem now, but because everyone moves to monthly subscriptions instead.
Yeah.
As I said, I think they've shot themselves in the foot a little bit there.
I think what we're seeing now is lots of software companies having to decide what they're going to do.
So you're either having to own your software company and then continue building with the same stack, or you're going to have to re-tear it down.
There's several companies that I looked at when I did it that were doing the same process.
There were about two or three which I looked at, and they were actually doing the same thing in different industries where they already had an existing software.
What was actually wrong with the thing that was already working then?
Where we are today, we start calls and the first thing someone says is, well, you know, why would I need software when I can just build something in AI, right? Which is like a completely different frame from what it was two years ago.
And quite frankly, like the old softwares of the, say, 2020s and 2022s, they, in my head, they're just not great, not good enough, unless you've really embedded AI in from the bottom.
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