How SSW turned AI into ½ their pipeline — Ulysses Maclaren, COO of SSW

Most organisations are giving their teams AI tools and hoping for the best. The ones actually pulling ahead are doing something completely different and it starts long before anyone opens Claude.In this episode of SaaS Stories, Joana sits down with Ulysses Maclaren, COO of SSW, one of Australia's leading software consultancies, to unpack what 20 years of technology transformation actually looks like from the inside. From .NET development shop to AI consultancy, Uly has lived through every major tech wave and knows exactly what separates the organisations that adapt from the ones that get left behind.This conversation gets specific. We cover: → Why giving everyone a Claude licence without a strategy is a fast way to waste money → The enterprise vs BYO AI adoption models and the trade-offs nobody talks about → Why exec buy-in matters more than any tool purchase you'll ever make → How developers are shifting from writing code to managing "AI clankers" — and why some of them hate it → The inside story of YakShaver, the internal tool SSW built to turn a screen recording into a perfectly formatted backlog item, and what the go-to-market taught them about building for yourself vs building for a market → Why "selling to everyone" is a fast way to sell to no one and how to find the niche that actually wins → What to look for when hiring for an AI-native team in 2026🎙️ SaaS Stories is brought to you by Hat Media — B2B marketing specialists for the SaaS world. Subscribe and catch every episode at hatmedia.com.au/SaaS-Stories.Send us Fan Mail