"The SaaS Apocalypse Is A Myth" with Freddie McKenzie, Co-Founder & CEO of Manifest

Freddie McKenzie is the co-founder and CEO of Manifest, an AI platform that helps creative and marketing agencies capture the real value of their work without timesheets. Before Manifest, he built and exited VIVID Creative, an Auckland-based production agency behind campaigns for Jetstar and other major brands, and in this conversation with Georgie Healy he traces that journey and where he thinks AI agents, and the AI hype cycle, are actually heading.

Freddie shares his AI hack of stacking meeting transcripts to actually see progress over time, and explains why he refuses to automate the one interface he thinks matters most: his inbox. He unpacks why Manifest's CTO built a proprietary AI model instead of wrapping an off-the-shelf one, the real story behind Manifest's $2 million pre-seed raise in a tough funding market, and his take on why most companies experimenting with AI agents still can't get past their first prompt. He also makes the case that the so-called SaaS apocalypse is a myth, and shares his simple rule for founders chasing product-market fit: find the ugly problem, not the sexy one.