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AI is killing B2B SaaS

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Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#141

Post by physicsguy »

d_watt wrote: post #2

I think one of the interesting things here is that AI doesn't need to be able build B2B SaaS to kill it. So much of the overhead of B2B SaaS companies is thinking about multitenancy, intergrating with many auth providers and mapping those concepts to the program's user system, juggling 100 features when any given customer only needs 10 of them, creating PLG upsell flows to optimize conversions, instrumenting A/B test…

Until a given company decides they need access control for their contractors that's different from their employees, etc. etc. etc. - seen it all before with internal often data scientist written applications that they then try to scale out and run into the security nightmare and lack of support internally for developing and taking forward. Usually these things fizzle out when someone leaves and it stops working.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#142

Post by 827a »

operatingthetan wrote: post #127
827a wrote: post #122

This isn't happening. The past six months has been rough on public B2B SaaS valuations, but the impact is a lot wider than just B2B SaaS (its all non-S&P10 software), and valuations are just vibes in the end. Most of these companies are, financially, doing pretty well; seeing key metric growth, including revenue and profit. This makes sense: AI does not fundamentally change the bargain SaaS brought to the table, that…

>that companies would rather pay someone to solve their problems than solve them themselves. Are they not able to just engage AI to solve those problems now? E.g. this morning I saw an app that did something interesting to me for $20 a month. 20 minutes in Gemini and I had a functional app that replicated the behavior. SaaS are more complex but give me a small team and a couple months and we could replicate most any…

No one is replacing Jira or Salesforce with an internally-AI'd analogue.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#143

Post by jabroni_salad »

kachapopopow wrote: post #86
kriro wrote: post #78

I'd actually say the opposite is the case. B2B (even SaaS) is probably the most robust when it comes to AI resistance. The described "in house vibe coded SaaS replacement" does not mirror my experience in B2B at all. The B2B software mindset I've encountered the most is "We'll pay you so we don't have to wrestle with this and can focus on what we do. We'll pay you even more if we worry even less." which is basically…

hard disagree, several b2b categories are going extinct because AI just completely replaced them. I mean if we want recent examples just look at tailwindui since it's technically a SaaS.

There is a paradigm shift but personally I like to zoom out a little:

It used to be that your new b2b product has to try and displace a spreadsheet. Now it has to displace an agent.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#144

Post by physicsguy »

jboggan wrote: post #27

I don't think it is killing SaaS. I have definitely had to extend my sales cycle when a potential customer vibe-coded a quick fix for a pain point that might have triggered a sale a few weeks earlier, but eventually the benefit delivered by someone else caring about the software as their entire mission really wins out over a feature here and there. If you are selling SaaS consider that a vibe-coding customer is valid…

The other thing is bringing in the knowledge about what other customers in the same field want. For business-focused software this can be a boon, customers often can't really envision the solution to their problem, it's like the Henry Ford attributed "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#145

Post by 9dev »

no_wizard wrote: post #125
AstroBen wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atlassian: surviving since 2002 because no-one could previously build a kanban board or project management app

I think the value is lost on the end user, but it’s more readily apparent to everyone above them. I’ve talked to many non engineering managers that love Jira, love the reports, the way they can see work flows, do intake etc. Engineers and even alot of engineering managers loathe it, largely, but I think we’re the collective afterthought Also, FWIW, a lot of pain people have with Jira is self inflicted by the people w…

Did vanilla Jira for a while, battled with a web app that is actively trying to make you hate it—switched our team to Linear, couldn't be happier ever since.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#146

Post by physicsguy »

gradus_ad wrote: post #137

One problem with centrally produced and distributed software is that a small subset of users demanding certain features results in feature bloat for everyone. Costs for all features are shared by all users. Probably one way SaaS companies will adapt is to break up their offerings into more modular low cost components. While many customers will end up paying less, the addressable market will probably increase because…

> Costs for all features are shared by all users.

To a degree but most enterprise focused software usually has differential pricing. Often that pricing isn't public so different companies get different quotes.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#147

Post by isk517 »

xhrpost wrote: post #111
kriro wrote: post #78

I'd actually say the opposite is the case. B2B (even SaaS) is probably the most robust when it comes to AI resistance. The described "in house vibe coded SaaS replacement" does not mirror my experience in B2B at all. The B2B software mindset I've encountered the most is "We'll pay you so we don't have to wrestle with this and can focus on what we do. We'll pay you even more if we worry even less." which is basically…

Reminds me of a blog post a while back saying that gigabit fiber at home would lead to everyone running their own email server.

There was no chance that everyone would be running their own email server, but if it wasn't for the lack of IPv6 adaptation a plug and go home email server solution would probably see a decent amount of use. I'd bet we'd already be seeing it as a feature in most mid-ranged home routers by now.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#148

Post by beeper-beeps »

falloutx wrote: post #72
bdcravens wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in many cases, it's 12 features, with 2 of the features not even existing in the big SaaS. I'm pretty sure every developer who has dealt with janky workflows in products like Jira has planned out their own version that fits like a glove, "if only I had more time".

If companies wanted to build thier own simple-JIRA they could have built themselves before. I dont think making a kanban board was hard even before AI.

You’re describing Excel.

AI will be used to do “excel better” more than “replace a managed, compliant, feature-rich-carefully-engineered, service”.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#149

Post by [deleted] »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #143
kachapopopow wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hard disagree, several b2b categories are going extinct because AI just completely replaced them. I mean if we want recent examples just look at tailwindui since it's technically a SaaS.

There is a paradigm shift but personally I like to zoom out a little: It used to be that your new b2b product has to try and displace a spreadsheet. Now it has to displace an agent.

[deleted]

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#150

Post by rvnx »

isk517 wrote: post #147
xhrpost wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a blog post a while back saying that gigabit fiber at home would lead to everyone running their own email server.

There was no chance that everyone would be running their own email server, but if it wasn't for the lack of IPv6 adaptation a plug and go home email server solution would probably see a decent amount of use. I'd bet we'd already be seeing it as a feature in most mid-ranged home routers by now.

The mail server in a router is easy to host, the problem is:

1) Uptime (though this could be partially alleviated by retries)

and most of all:

2) "Trust"/"Spam score"

It's the main reason to use Sendgrid, AWS, Google, etc. Their "value" is not the email service, it's that their SMTP servers are trusted.

If tomorrow I can just send from localhost instead of going through Google it's fine for me, but in reality, my emails won't arrive due to these filters.

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