Episode summary
In this episode of How I Grew This, Amanda and Adam sit down with Sy Bohy, Founder and CEO of Seam, to talk about what it takes to build in the age of AI, from choosing what not to build to finding defensibility when the cost of creating software keeps falling. They also explore how AI is changing who can build and automate software, and what that shift could mean for the next generation of connected products and businesses.
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Episode Notes
What becomes defensible when AI makes it easier than ever to build software?
In this episode of How I Grew This, Amanda and Adam sit down with Sy Bohy, Founder and CEO of Seam, a unified API for connecting and controlling IoT devices. Sy shares his perspective on how AI is changing the economics of building software, why operational knowledge and distribution may matter more as technical barriers come down, and how founders should think about what’s actually worth building themselves.
The conversation also gets into Seam’s world: the challenge of connecting thousands of different devices and brands, the rise of prosumers and small businesses using AI to build their own automations, and what happens when AI can interact not just with software, but with the physical world.
Along the way, Sy reflects on his path from Stanford to Nest to founding Seam, the value of taking calculated risks early in your career, and the skill he believes every CEO needs to develop.
What You’ll Learn
- What creates a defensible moat when AI makes software easier to build
- Why taking calculated risks early in your career can compound over time
- How founders can decide what to build in-house — and what not to
- Why prosumers and small businesses could become a much bigger software market
- How AI could change the way businesses automate and coordinate connected devices
- The skill Sy believes every CEO needs to develop
About the Guest
Sy Bohy is the Founder and CEO of Seam, a platform that gives developers a unified API for connecting and controlling IoT devices across thousands of brands and models. Before founding Seam, Sy worked at Nest, where he gained firsthand experience building products at the intersection of hardware and software.
Today, he’s focused on making it easier for developers and businesses to build experiences that interact with the physical world. In this conversation, Sy shares what he’s learned about IoT, AI, entrepreneurship, and building a company at a time when the rules of software development are changing quickly.
