The UI Was the Moat: Mirko Gropp, GM of Digital, Data and Technology at The Living Company

Georgie Healy talks to Mirko Gropp, General Manager of Digital, Data and Technology at The Living Company, live from Dreamforce day three. The Living Company owns, develops and operates student housing, build-to-rent apartments and senior living across Australia, with around 2,000 people and about $17 billion in assets by Mirko's count.

Mirko's take on the week: Salesforce going headless means the UI, long the moat for software companies, is no longer the point, and Claude arriving inside Salesforce lets his team ask plain-language questions of their cases. He says agentic coding lets him build in 3 months what used to take a year, with 2 people who never touch the code.

They get into how a company rolls AI out when a small group of super users does most of the heavy lifting, and the HR question nobody has answered yet: how do you reward someone who is 10x more productive? Mirko explains why students hate email and voice, how The Living Company will build its first agent for senior living, and why most customer chat doesn't need a top-tier model.

If you have a custom tool you assumed was too hard to build, this one is the push. Mirko's advice is to describe the outcome you want, let the tool walk you there, and be a critical, proactive builder.