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AI is killing B2B SaaS

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Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#151

Post by graemep »

MrDresden wrote: post #138
stronglikedan wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B2B is a large corp is like you describe, but it's very different in SMBs, and there are many, many more SMBs.

My experience is that SMBs are generally not run by people who feel confident doing any kind of self managed IT. No amount of LLM usage is going to change them into full stack vibe coders who moonlight as sysadmins. I just don't see it happening. Not until, that is, a new generation, that has grown accustomed to the tech, takes over. Until then the current SMBs will for the most part fulfill their IT needs from SaaS…

What new generation? Younger generations are less accustomed to self-managed tech.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#152

Post by podnami »

echelon wrote: post #91
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…

I, on the other hand, can't wait to fire every single B2B subscription we've got. B2B SaaS is a VULN. They get bought out, raise prices, fail. And then you have extremely large amounts of unplanned spend and engineering to get around them. I remember when we replaced the feature flags and metrics dashboards with SignalFX and LaunchDarkly. Both of those went sour. SignalFx got bought out and quadrupled their insane pr…

If you’re working in engineering, find an exit. AI is coming for you.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#153

Post by cadamsdotcom »

rvnx wrote: post #150
isk517 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ema…

The specific concern around uptime & reliability was baked into email systems from almost the start - undeliverable notifications (for the sender) and retries.

But yes, the “trust / spam score” is a legit challenge. If only device manufacturers were held liable for security flaws, but we sadly don’t live in that timeline.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#155

Post by mritchie712 »

hansmayer wrote: post #129

"For example, to create a data visualization I won’t seek any SaaS. I’ll just code one myself using many of the popular vibe coding tools (my team actually did that and it’s vastly more flexible than what we’d get off-the-shelf)." That maybe doable in your 10-people startup, Namanyay. Try doing it in a larger organisation with layers upon layers of firewalls, databases, authentication systems and not the least import…

also, who pays for "a data visualization" SaaS?

I guess they mean BI, but for a company of any scale, they aren't paying for a chart, they're paying for a permissions system, query caching, a modeling layer, scheduling, export to excel, etc.

Stand alone BI tools are going to struggle, but not because they can easily be vibe coded. It'll be because data platforms have BI built-in. Snowflake is starting down this direction and we're (https://www.definite.app/) trying to beat them to it.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#156

Post by IhateAI »

mbesto wrote: post #136

1. This isn't rooted in data but anecdotes "One Series E CEO told me that they’re re-evaluating the quarterly renewal of their engineering productivity software because they along with an engineer reimplemented something using Github and Notion APIs. They were paying $30,000 to a popular tool3 and they were not going to renew anymore." 2. These anecdotes are about tech startups spend, not your . Nor or they grounded…

Yeah, also if a SaaS costs, 10k a year, I promise its not not more cost effecient to pull your 10k a month engineer off their usual work to build and then maintain some vibe coded slope everytime an edge case occurs.

Also many customers of SaaS have little to zero engineering staff, they are in construction, resturaunts, law offices ect. These takes are so assanine.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#157

Post by sarchertech »

colechristensen wrote: post #90
metalrain wrote: post #50

I see that Software as a Service banked too much on the first S, Software. But really customers want the second S, the Service. When you sell a service, it's opaque, customer don't really care how it is produced. They want things done for them. AI isn't killing SaaS, it's shifting it to second S. Customers don't care how the service is implemented, they care about it's quality, availability, price, etc. Service provi…

I just don't want to pay $50/user/month for an initially open source product that was relicensed and then crippled that the initial group giving something away decided they wanted to make a business of it.

Use the original open source version. They can’t relicense anything they can just use a new license for future versions.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#158

Post by no_wizard »

9dev wrote: post #145
no_wizard wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As far as the Atlassian suite goes I do much prefer Trello.

I only mean this all to be fair to Atlassian, that not all issues with Jira derive from anything they’re doing specifically

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#159

Post by sramam »

mbesto wrote: post #123
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.

> we want recent examples just look at tailwindui since it's technically a SaaS. This is a terrible example. Show me someone ripping out their SAP ERP or SalesForce CRM system where they're paying $100k+ for a vibe coded alternative and I'll believe this overall sentiment.

These examples are going to be lagging indicators of the underlying sentiment.

Just because it cannot be done today, doesn't mean there is not a real appetite in large enterprises to do exactly this.

Without naming names, I know of at least one public company with a real hunger for exactly this eventuality.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#160

Post by lateforwork »

> build once, sell the same thing again ad infinitum, and don’t suffer any marginal costs on more sales.

Unless you consider customer acquisition cost. Not considering cost of sales is one of the big mistakes software developer entrepreneurs make.

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