Seat-Based SaaS Is Stalling
Companies that rely on seat-based pricing and fragile wrappers are stagnating. Taping AI onto legacy code creates a brittle dumpster fire, not a product.
About Steepworks
Built in the Trenches
Steepworks was born from building first-generation AI applications. We created what we needed and discovered a lot of people would need it too.
The Industry Shift
The Old Internet Is Over
For twenty years, software was about storage and access. Today it is about intelligence in motion. The shift to agentic systems is running over old tech stacks like a tidal wave.
Agents Need an OS
Agents require an operating system, not just a prompt. They need coherent state, unified permissions, and a runtime they can observe and act within.
Wrappers Won't Survive
The software of the next decade must be robust, deterministic, and built on a solid foundation — not JavaScript fragments and API glue.
Why Steepworks
Rails for Agents
We aren't here to save the old internet. We are here for the New Builders. Steepworks provides the industrial substrate — a modern application framework where AI is native to every layer of the stack.
Legacy Approach
- WordPress and PHP drift
- JavaScript fragment chaos
- Stateless API wrappers
- No agent interface
- Every tweak costs a fortune
Steepworks Approach
- Unified backend and runtime
- Database-backed coherent state
- AI-operable by design
- Built-in governance and permissions
- You own the business; we provide the machinery
About the Founder
Joe Merrill
Joe is an experienced product builder who has taken ideas from napkins to serving millions of users, helping scale companies like Bandwidth, Dialpad, Wrike, Dataminr, and the infrastructure behind Microsoft Teams.