WorkOS's Michael Grinich on Becoming the Enterprise Layer for AI's Biggest Companies
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Why does Michael think the SaaS apocalypse narrative is wrong?
What's your general take on this kind of sass pocalypse?
How did Michael’s MIT, Dropbox, and early startup experiences shape WorkOS?
I guess one of the worries people have, which you know, I don't know where you feel about it, is that everyone is gonna build their own SAS software.
What lessons did Michael learn from founding Nihilus and the notebook habit?
Everyone has a kitchen in their house, so restaurants are dead.
How did Michael discover the enterprise‑auth problem and turn it into WorkOS?
No one's gonna go out to eat anymore.
Why are AI‑native companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cursor the perfect customers for WorkOS?
We're all gonna just cook for ourselves.
What makes building developer tools the ultimate boss battle for founders?
I uh but
How does WorkOS help AI companies become enterprise‑ready in a single day?
No, what if what actually you could do that analogy.
What does Michael see as the lasting impact of AI on the software industry?
It's like if I have a kitchen and there's a robot who's gonna cook for me and they can make any food I want any time, would I go to a restaurant? Well the
experience of going to a restaurant it'll be a different thing. You know, it'll it'll serve a different purpose, you know, than just you know, feeding your body and for fuel, you know. Uh I I think that what we're we're looking at this too much in terms of back back applying like the world as it is today into the future. And the the biggest thing that I think people misunderstand is that the software industry is just gonna grow tremendously. There's just gonna be so much more software in the world in a few years than ever before. We're in this giant explosive expansion moment. So it's very much not zero sum. That's the exact
opposite thesis, right? Like the thesis I proposed is there's no software industry and you're saying actually it's exploding, which is true. Hey everyone, welcome to the Founders in Arms podcast with me, Immar Dakin, co-founder and CEO of Mercury.
And it's me, Raj Suri, co founder of Lima and Tribe. And today we're welcoming Michael Greenwich. Welcome back to or welcome to the podcast. I say welcome back because you and I have known each other for a long time when uh you were a sophomore at MIT um and you were an intern at um uh my second company, uh which was called Ela Carta at that time. No way. Wait, so
how long ago was that?
Two thousand eight or nine? Must be something. Yeah. It was that was a long time ago. Yeah. I think it was like two thousand eight. That's incredible. Yeah.
Almost twenty years.
Coming up in twenty years. Yeah. W
was Michael get into it?
He was so good that I knew he would be a successful founder one day. Like I should have like just said like you you should you should just stop working for us, start a company, I'll invest in that. And that that's what I should have encouraged. Did you did you invest in Work OS? I should have. You know, I didn't even know. I mean, Michael's been doing so many things, right? I actually I'm very curious to know about your journey, uh, Michael. And but I would have definitely invested if I could have. Did you invest?
No, I didn't know about it until like Exactly I guess. Uh Michael's in my YPO chapter, so I think that's when we really got to know each other. Uh but yeah, give us a quick journey, Michael, of like how you yeah, left MIT and started companies and got to know. How was
your intern experience working for me? I mean I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
What was the worst thing about Raj? It was great. Um, no, it was awesome working with with Raj and the kind of early team he had put together. You know, I was man, so going back to that, I was a sophomore at MIT, and actually at the time I was taking architecture classes, um, not software architecture, like building architecture. I was in a studio class. You know, after that I ended up switching to doing a physics degree and I did most of That. So I was kind of bouncing around, but I got interested in software and startups. Um, I kind of had this non-traditional background. I didn't, you know, go to one of these prep schools before MIT. I grew up in the small town in Oregon. Um, and uh and and when I got to MIT, I just started building stuff and meeting people that were building things.
And you know, the dorm I lived in uh the year before me, Kyle Vote had just Graduated who was working on this thing called Justin TV with you know Justin Kahn. And that eventually became Twitch. Through those guys, I met, you know, uh Dan Velletri, uh and Drew Houstons, who's like, of course, the co-founder of Dropbox of the Rash, um, and kind of connecting to just this MIT startup network in California.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does Michael think the SaaS apocalypse narrative is wrong?
0:00–0:03
2
How did Michael’s MIT, Dropbox, and early startup experiences shape WorkOS?
0:03–0:11
3
What lessons did Michael learn from founding Nihilus and the notebook habit?
0:11–0:14
4
How did Michael discover the enterprise‑auth problem and turn it into WorkOS?
0:14–0:15
5
Why are AI‑native companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cursor the perfect customers for WorkOS?
0:15–0:17
6
What makes building developer tools the ultimate boss battle for founders?
0:17–0:18
7
How does WorkOS help AI companies become enterprise‑ready in a single day?
0:18–0:20
8
What does Michael see as the lasting impact of AI on the software industry?
0:20–54:32
Speakers
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