Shipping is easy. Landing is hard.

Beyond Shipping: Mastering Software Delivery and User Attention in the Age of AI

Mr. Ben Vinegar, Co-Founder and CEO of Modem, addressed the Web Summit Vancouver 2026 audience, stating that while shipping software is easy, “landing” it—capturing and retaining user attention—is hard. His company, Modem, utilizes an AI platform to revolutionize product management and delivery, aiming to bring the efficiency of agentic coding to product teams.

Mr. Vinegar, an engineering leader with nearly two decades of experience, including a decade at Sentry, presented stark statistics on software proliferation. GitHub commits surged from 19 million per week in 2025 to 275 million per week currently, a 14-fold increase that continues to accelerate, signifying an unprecedented volume of code.

This growth extends to consumer apps, with combined releases on Google Play and Apple App Stores doubling in two years, showing accelerating trends. This creates intense competition. Users now often react to frequent software updates with “eye-rolls” rather than excitement, unsure of the value or changes, leading to widespread update fatigue.

Products like Cursor exemplify this, with monthly changelog posts reaching record highs. The core problem is an overwhelming amount of software and updates, making it incredibly difficult for any single product to gain or maintain user attention. The challenge lies in effectively communicating value amidst this constant noise.

Mr. Vinegar cautioned against simply generating more marketing content, as it adds to the noise. Instead, he highlighted leaders employing creative strategies. Hermes’ agent, for instance, transforms release notes into engaging, animated video content with music, achieving millions of views by repackaging existing information.

Another effective approach involves bringing content closer to the user and leveraging product leaders. A Director of Engineering at Claude created rich, high-fidelity release note blog posts directly on X. Similarly, the Instagram CEO now personally highlights new features, fostering direct engagement and commanding more attention than traditional marketing roles.

Modem’s agentic AI Product Manager platform addresses this by building deeper user relationships. It captures user feedback from various channels, integrates it into a context graph, and tracks it through the software development lifecycle. This allows Modem to identify users awaiting specific improvements and proactively notify them upon release.

This targeted, personalized communication ensures that when a feature is shipped, the relevant users are informed, fostering meaningful engagement. Mr. Vinegar concluded by stressing that successful software delivery requires strategic thinking, creativity, and “taste” beyond mere content generation, to truly “land” software effectively in today’s crowded digital world.