Kyle Burt came to the Channel Partners Conference & Expo last week to share his vibe-coded application with peers in the technology advisor community. He wasn’t alone.
“I think there's like 10 people trying to copy the same thing right now,” said Burt, Catch Advisors founder and chief technology advisor and the developer of a new platform called AdvisorOS. Firms across the TA community have adopted vibe coding, from one-person shops to the largest tech services distributors. Burt used a private LLM model, while many of his peers are turning to Claude Code.
“At this point, James, like 50% of the meeting invites that we receive are people who want to pitch us on their vibe-coded tool that they built,” Technology Advisor Alliance Co-Founder Ryan Rowland told Channel Dive.
TAs are throwing their hats into the developer ring, building apps tailored to their unique business model. It’s a skillset for most TAs, which, according to Informa TechTarget research, are typically smaller than 15 people and lack a full-time developer. Claude Code and its ilk have dramatically reduced the barrier to entry for app development.
“I think that's what democratizes the opportunity for an independent TA or group of TAs to get together and do something they otherwise couldn't have done, because they may not have the finances or the skillset or both,” Intelisys President Ken Mills said.
Burt built software to run marketing and sales activities for his own TA business. The tool allowed him to jettison $1,200 in monthly subscriptions to go-to-market software, including his former CRM. Burt said it no longer makes sense for small businesses like TAs to glue legacy systems together.
“People in our business only need like 20% of what HubSpot can actually do,” he said. “We only care about 20% and to get HubSpot or Salesforce to work the way we want, we have to pay these consultants to come in and re-architect the whole thing.”
Sizing up the true cost
Vibe coding the app is only half the battle, and Burt said partners are underestimating the other half.
Though Intelisys has moved quickly on app development and has created a new product, the company tread carefully on to ensure compliance and data privacy.
“Even though it works today, it still needs to be validated for the whole enterprise process before we could say it's now turned on,” Mills said. “For an organization like us, unfortunately, it's slower than we would like, because of trying to do it right. But it is something we're starting to already see happen inside the organization.”
Partners will also need to sink ongoing time and effort into maintaining the product.
“Anybody can vibe code. But after you vibe code it, then what? How do you maintain it? How do you improve it,” he said. “To get here, you need at least 160 hours, and then continuously 40 hours a month.”
Many TAs are considering hiring developers. C3 Technology Advisors is large for a TA, with more than three dozen employees. The company might hire a head developer, or possibly a head of technology. If C3 believes it can differentiate itself with app development, it will do it in-house, C3 President Matthew Toth said. And Toth won’t be the one to do it.
“How we harness technology can't be someone's side job,” Toth said.
A software arms race had already been brewing between the TSDs for years and will only accelerate as companies adopt AI tools, TSD executives tell Channel Dive.
“Stuff that used to take four months is now taking two weeks,” Avant CTO Chris Werpy told Channel Dive at Channel Partners Conference & Expo. “It's just a different world.”
AI tools haven’t led to developer layoffs at Avant, Werpy said — just the opposite.
“We're able to invest more in software development because those resources are three times as efficient as they were a year ago,” he said. “The Jevons paradox states that the more efficient a resource becomes, the more it gets consumed.”
Sandler Partners VP of Technology and Innovation Cesar Navarro agreed that vibe coding is speeding up app development — but he doesn’t consider coding the most difficult hurdle. The most challenging part is visualizing and designing the app, including its workflows.
“I get in trouble for saying this, but development is easy,” Navarro said. “I'm shocked by our competitors and how they make it seem like it's really complex and difficult; it really isn't.”
Picking a horse
TAs in future years may be choosing between building apps themselves, partnering with peers like Burt, or using a TSD platform. Each of those options is valid because TAs are so diverse, Werpy said. The winning TSD platforms will be extensible to meet those needs, he said.
“The TA universe is fast. They come in all shapes and sizes. There will be some with the ability to go outsource and invest in their own go-to-market motion based on AI,” he said. “There are some who will just stay away. And then there's this group in the middle [with] access to data, access to trained models, enhancing your own go-to-market motions with a domain-specific data set. There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all.”
