AI does the work. Humans orchestrate.
Brendan King is the CEO and co-founder of Vendasta, based in Saskatoon. He writes about Liquid Software, the Dark Factory model for software development, and why AI will do the work while humans orchestrate. His work explores the shift from operating software to delegating outcomes.
Three ideas I am working on
Latest writing
All writingInside Vendasta’s Unfair Advantages: The Architecture Behind Scale
What do Amazon’s recommendation engine, Tesla’s self-driving data advantage, and Google’s search monopoly have in common with a Canadian SaaS company serving digital agencies? More than you might think. Meet…
Orchestration Is the New Leadership: Inside Vendasta’s 80/20 AI Model That Helps Agencies Do More With Less
Productivity is no longer about how much you do, It’s about what you do. In a world where 30 percent of back-office roles are projected to be replaced within five years, companies are already putting a hold on hiring…
Vendasta’s 10X Mindset: Breaking Boundaries with First Principles Thinking
The moment you stop accepting “that’s just how it works” is the moment breakthrough innovation begins. Most companies reason by analogy, by assumptions, locked into the way that other people have been doing things.…
The work behind the ideas
Less interface. More outcome. A different job for the people building and using software.
Who is Brendan King?
Brendan King is the CEO and co-founder of Vendasta, based in Saskatoon. I started a business assembling PCs in 1989, moved into SaaS in 1999, and co-founded Vendasta in 2008.
Vendasta builds software for local businesses and the partners who serve them. That is the vantage point I write from. I have lived through seven technology shifts. Underneath each one, the useful change was less interface and more outcome. The About page tells that story; the archive keeps the earlier thinking intact.
What is Liquid Software?
Liquid Software is software that adapts to the job instead of making the business owner adapt to a product. The human describes an outcome. AI does the work.
Solid SaaS asks you to learn its interface. Liquid Software recedes into a conversation, an approval or an exception. Think of a florist asking for rose inventory to be tracked and anniversary messages to be sent. Or a plumber expanding into HVAC without waiting for an add-on module. These illustrate the model, not a deployed product. Databases, permissions, cost and evaluation remain. The complexity moves to the people building the system. Read my Liquid Software definition.
What is the Dark Factory model for software?
The Dark Factory is AI-automated engineering: people define and check the work while AI writes the code. Its goal is routine bugs and features moving from a ticket through production checks without hand-written code.
The goal and the present state are different. Today, AI drafts bug fixes and finds causes, and a person reviews the work. We are extending that approach to features and more teams. The foundations are a testing harness, a separate test environment and a written record of architectural decisions. People improve the brief, tune the factory and judge its output. Review moves; it does not vanish. The Dark Factory essay sets out the model and where we are today.
What is the 80/20 AI orchestration model for agencies?
In my October 9, 2025 essay, I describe Vendasta’s allocation of 80 percent to AI execution and 20 percent to the oversight layer. This is a resource-allocation model, not a guarantee that AI replaces 80 percent of every job.
Start by choosing a job, not adding a chat box. Define the outcome, the information the AI can use, the permissions it has and the point where a human must step in. Then judge the completed work and refine the handoff. In agency operations, that can mean drafting review replies, summarizing calls, turning meeting transcripts into proposals or preparing social content. People set the voice, approve sensitive responses and own the customer relationship. My 80/20 orchestration essay describes agency examples. The point is not to remove judgment. It is to stop spending that judgment on repetitive execution.
Book Brendan to speak
I speak about Liquid Software, the shift from asking AI to assigning work, and the Dark Factory. For speaking and media enquiries, email media@vendasta.com.
If your audience is building software, running an agency or leading a company through the AI shift, these are the questions I explore. What work should AI own? Where should people stay involved? What changes when software becomes a workforce rather than a tool? Tell me about the audience, date and format you have in mind so we can discuss the fit. The Speaking page outlines the topics. I talk about this transition from the inside, not as a prediction detached from the work.