The Interesting Bit in the Middle

This week, whether it's software or a blog post, it's just data in and out and what happens in between better be interesting.

On my podcast the other day, my chum Robert Rose mentioned a phrase he’d heard from a developer a couple of decades ago that went along the lines of: all code development is just data in and data out, with an interesting bit in the middle.

And I am wondering if this has ever been so relevant.

Simple product development now seems to be in the hands of anyone with an idea and some AI tokens, creating the slightly exaggerated rumor that SaaS is dead, while the very real disruption is happening in the vibe-coding Wild West as buyers (even enterprise buyers) are encouraged to take a big gulp of the build-not-buy homebrew.

The bit in the middle is now fucking important.

If all a platform does is take data in, do something dull with it, and present it, then sorry, the rumors are true.

The interesting bit in the middle is, of course, the “moat” - which is possibly going to be B2B word of the year 2026.

And today, in the sea of same, especially in B2B, whether it’s the product or the messaging, “interesting” has never been more important, and the analogy also works with people, not just code.

When it comes to AI, we need to be the interesting bit in the middle.

If we don’t understand a topic, ask AI a basic, banal question, can’t add anything to the conversation as we co-create it with our robot, and then just slop that out without question, then we are the dull bit in the middle.

Now we are all “empowered by AI” (and this genie is not going back in the bottle), and if all we do is prompt and then post it out, then we are, as many commentators seem to believe - fucked.

There is a lot of wringing of hands when it comes to synthetic content, whether it should be declared or detected, but if we are the interesting bit in the middle, orchestrating the creativity of the robots, then nobody will care, as interesting will win out over whatever tool was used to craft it.

Whether it’s a SaaS platform or this blog post, the data in and out is not the engaging bit; it’s the human bits: taste, discernment, and usefulness.

The interesting bit in the middle.