About Sam Gerstenzang
Sam Gerstenzang is co-founder of Boulton & Watt, a startup studio that starts one company every few years, runs it until well past product-market fit and then hires a CEO to take over. John Collison calls it "the world's slowest startup incubator." Gerstenzang previously worked at Stripe.
Boulton & Watt builds for local, independent businesses in overlooked or regulated industries. Its first company, Moxie, helps nurses and doctors open and run their own med spas, covering legal setup, marketing, payments software and pharma purchasing for a 13% fee. The second company serves funeral homes and the third serves independent freight brokers.
Career Highlights
- Co-founder of Boulton & Watt, whose first company is Moxie
- Former Stripe employee
- Says Moxie is now one of the largest buyers of Botox in the US
Notable Positions
On Selling Risk
Gerstenzang argues that customers pay to offload risk: compliance, credit, delivery. Software is how the work gets done, not what is being sold. He expects systems of record to take on more risk to survive against cheap point solutions on one side and businesses that do the work on the other. See SaaS-to-AI Transformation.
On Custom Software per Customer
Since AI coding, his companies build custom front ends for individual customers on a fixed set of backend APIs, sometimes in a couple of hours. A software engineer reviews everything shipped to customers, and customers can't yet prompt changes themselves.
On Team Shape
Boulton & Watt's newer companies pair one product manager with one engineer. Spending on software development is about flat and the number of engineers is the same; the teams are smaller and cover more surface area.
On AI's Limits
He says AI summarizes but doesn't synthesize, that users forgive human mistakes more readily than a voice agent's, and that adoption in existing companies took far more data integration and change management than he expected.
Key Quotes
- "No nurse is going to vibe code her EMR." (on why regulated customers keep paying vendors)
- "Now we're sort of building this flexible custom software for each customer." (on what AI coding changed)
- "Part of the reason the one-on-one team works so well is there's no one else to talk to." (on pairing one PM with one engineer)
- "Our users were so much less tolerant of mistakes." (on replacing a human front desk team with voice AI)
Related Reading
- Boulton & Watt's Sam Gerstenzang on Selling Risk, Not SaaS - Full breakdown of the fireside
- Vibe Coding - What customers will and won't build for themselves
- SaaS-to-AI Transformation - Where software value moves next