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AI is killing B2B SaaS

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Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#221

Post by rishabhaiover »

baxtr wrote: post #199
bandrami wrote: post #162

It's a tale as old as time that developers, particularly junior developers, are convinced they could "slap together something in one weekend" that would replace expensive SAAS software and "just do the parts of it we actually use". Unfortunately, the same arguments against those devs regular-coding a bespoke replacement apply to them vibe-coding a bespoke replacement: management simply doesn't want to be responsible…

This vibe-coding-will-replace-SaaS insanity is the new crypto-will-replace-fiat-money insanity.

No serious programmer "vibe" codes. I admit creating SaaS may not be feasible with current infrastructure but you can't ignore the insane jump in productivity that these tools can offer with the right scaffolding.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#222

Post by kakacik »

mittensc wrote: post #186
bandrami wrote: post #162

It's a tale as old as time that developers, particularly junior developers, are convinced they could "slap together something in one weekend" that would replace expensive SAAS software and "just do the parts of it we actually use". Unfortunately, the same arguments against those devs regular-coding a bespoke replacement apply to them vibe-coding a bespoke replacement: management simply doesn't want to be responsible…

what if this time it's senior developers and they actually can slap something together better then the expensive SAAS offerings? what if the expensive SAAS offering is just as vibe coded and poor quality as what a junior offers?

Nice what ifs, but not valid so far. I get the motivation to think/hope so, but thats not the proper business world right now where big money are. Maybe next year it could start becoming true but then market will be a bit different too

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#223

Post by insom »

AstroBen wrote: post #179
llmslave wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no the difference is 90% cost savings, which was previously impossible

How does a company charging 10% their competitor afford to compete on marketing, sales, design, user testing or customer service? (this is even granting that AI is a 10x speedup for developers, which I don't agree with and no-one has shown)

Well for marketing and sales your bigger competitor is already doing the work of showing companies that they want the functionality at all, and the cheaper competitor's sales and marketing pitch can be: we are much cheaper.

This is pretty much what blacksmith.sh does -- GitHub Actions but it's on faster and cheaper hardware. I'm sure they spend non-trivial amounts on marketing but "X but much cheaper" doesn't sound like a difficult sale.

(edit) And the design, sadly, can be as simple as "rip-off bigger competitor" -- of course if one day you are the big competitor because you "won" in the market, you'll need to invest in design, but by then I guess you'll have the money?

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#224

Post by DiscourseFan »

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.

For one, if my power goes out for an extended period of time I'd still like to be able to access my email. Communications really can't be hosted locally.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#225

Post by pverheggen »

sbarre wrote: post #173
misiti3780 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry, what do you mean?

1. Enthusiastic employee (vibe-)codes a replacement for a turnkey SaaS product that the company uses. 2. Company uses it, maybe even starts to rely on it for important business operations, and for a time the employee supports that app. 3. Bugs creep in, feature request pile up. 4. Employee either leaves the company or moves on to another project. 5. Pain

I think you can avoid the pain by thoughtfully designing it to avoid lock-in. You want it so that if needed, a dev can vibe-code a migration tool to the equivalent SaaS offering. AI lowers the barrier for creating these in-house replacements, but it also lowers the barrier for scrapping them too.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#226

Post by vegabook »

With a new agentic-lashup tearing across the internet every week, pointing the way to "gradient descent" software development, any purchasing manager worth their salt is going to ask some serious questions about their enormous SaaS bill before committing to another expensive long term contract. It follows that valuations must decline. Even if only because risks to moats have increased, but also because it makes sense to negotiate hard on pricing when there's fear in your counterparty.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#227

Post by gwbas1c »

Reminds me of the story of when the Surgeon General (in the US) reported that smoking causes cancer.

People stopped smoking immediately, and cigarette sales tanked. The cigarette companies laughed (with all the phlegm in their throats and lungs) and sales came back 1-2 weeks later.

I suspect in a few months or a year companies with vibe-coded replacements for SaS products will find they need to go back: But, just like how many less people smoke today than in the past, the writing is clearly on the wall. At some point someone will figure out how to replace SaS with AI; it's just going to take a lot longer than many think.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#228

Post by andix »

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.

What a weird take. I was running my own email server 25 years ago on a 512 kbit ADSL line. No problem at all, would even be enough bandwidth today for most messages.

(Back then email still worked from residential IP addresses, and wasn't blocked by default)

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#229

Post by robocat »

sbarre wrote: post #187
bandrami wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do tea leaves so I wouldn't commit to that, particularly because I think SAAS was oversold in general even before LLMs came out. But I think the idea that the industry as a whole will shrivel away just isn't feasible, even if there is a correction.

The B2B startup motto of "where someone is using Excel to do something other than accounting, there's a startup waiting to happen" has been shockingly resilient over the decades, and I suspect will continue to be.

Paper forms used to be our main competitor.

Paper forms have some amazing features that software really can't compete with. And also some significant downsides that software fixes.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#230

Post by mym1990 »

g947o wrote: post #213
mittensc wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if this time it's senior developers and they actually can slap something together better then the expensive SAAS offerings? what if the expensive SAAS offering is just as vibe coded and poor quality as what a junior offers?

It that works, nobody would be using Jira anymore, because people would just use a competitor that's cheaper or vibe code their internal Jira tool. Somehow that has not happened yet in 2026.

This is because what management wants and what builders want are not aligned, not because the quality of JIRA is so amazing that no other alternative could ever be created. JIRA is fine but many people I know that use have some qualms with it because the bloat is pretty crazy.
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