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2 Minute Read

The Great Software Reckoning, And What It Means For Public Affairs

If you've seen any financial news lately, you've certainly noticed that Wall Street has been hammering software stocks. The rest of the country may have just felt this earthquake, but the Bay Area triggered it years ago—and already rebuilt on the rubble. In today's brief read, we unpack what The Great Software Reckoning means for public affairs.

Software Isn't Dying, But Legacy Tools Are

Let's be clear: software isn't dying. If anything, it's more critical than ever. But what has fundamentally changed is the power to create more effective software solutions for specific challenges, and to create them faster and less expensively than ever.

The catalyst for the recent sell-off in software stocks was Anthropic's release of Claude Cowork and other advanced coding agents that can build, debug, and deploy software exponentially faster and less expensively than legacy engineering teams. Wall Street panicked. Silicon Valley had already rebuilt on the wreckage. If you've been reading along here, you weren't blindsided like Wall Street. We've been warning about the tremors for months.

In reality, Claude Cowork is just the latest evolution of Claude Code and other "vibe coding" tools that rolled throughout the market last year. These tools use AI to generate code from natural language—dramatically accelerating the coding process, and democratizing coding to even people with little technical knowledge.  

The productivity gains that Wall Street suddenly noticed left the chat long ago—they were compounding silently in startups, tech companies, and forward-thinking organizations. Wall Street just needed a few scary earnings calls to finally feel the ground shifting beneath it.

Wall Street's Panic Is Your Opportunity

Here's the upside for you in Wall Street's belated pearl clutching—the AI earthquake has everyone's attention now. If internal stakeholders, clients, or employees thought before that they could "wait out AI," that illusion of solid ground has crumbled. Now is the ideal moment to reinvigorate your conversations about AI adoption that others may have been slow-walking. (We suspect this is not you if you're reading this newsletter).  

And as you have those conversations, here's where the tectonic plates have shifted the most for public affairs organizations—new tools now exist to drive advocacy outcomes in ways that were inconceivable even this time last year. These tools harness the same creative destruction that Wall Street just woke up to. The result for public affairs practitioners is AI-native tools, purpose-built for specific advocacy challenges. 

As you explore new solutions, move beyond your legacy vendors, because they will respond predictably: "But we're adding AI features!" Sure. And Blockbuster added a website. The question isn't whether your current tools can add AI—it's whether tools built from scratch to tackle your specific challenges work better and cost less. The painful truth is that legacy platforms are contracting, not transforming. You cannot pivot when your legacy cost structure is built on headcount, outdated code, and high fees to customers. Only tools built specifically for the AI Age can win the AI Age.

And finally, remember that your opponents are reading the same headlines you are—they're no longer asleep at the fault line either. So you're not just fighting the political opposition—you're fighting the clock to win this era.

Three Ways To Operationalize This Email

🔱 Wall Street's reaction just made every conversation about AI adoption easier. The ground is shifting—use that momentum to reinvigorate your AI conversations with your internal stakeholders, clients, and employees.  

🔱 Audit your tech stack with fresh eyes. Stress test your current tech stack with the following questions: (1) what are our challenges? (2) where do our current tools excel and where do they fall short (3) when was the last time we actually tried a new solution?

🔱  Change your vendor evaluation criteria. "How long has your tool existed?," is still a critical question. But now the best answer has flipped on its head. If the tool has been around for years, it was not built for the AI age. This means it is almost certainly both too expensive, and not maximizing the potential to tackle your challenge.

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