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AI is killing B2B SaaS

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Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#311

Post by mycall »

> we have to understand the relationships in the real world, the processes involved, and the workflows needed, and representing it in a robust way to create a stable system. AI can’t do that.

That is because AI is living in our world, instead of the opposite where we live in AI's world.

Case in point: maybe the AI hallucinated a class method that never existed in our world yet, but perhaps in the AI led processes and workflows it would be written to better fit into the smooth gradient decent those same top parameters' scores.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#312

Post by mritchie712 »

ebbi wrote: post #238
mritchie712 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 direc…

Definite looks pretty interesting!

thanks! It's been a long, painful 3 years getting here.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#313

Post by [deleted] »

cj wrote: post #263
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 I struggle with is developers wanting to leave platforms like Datadog for open source equivalents that need to be self-hosted. I hear all of the cost savings benefit, but I never see the team factoring in their own time (and others time) needed to set up and maintain these systems reliably long term. Something IC’s at company often struggle to understand is the reason why companies often prefer to buy managed so…

[deleted]

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#314

Post by almosthere »

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…

Think about it differently - let's say a free OSS product can be installed and you can use ALL features except for LDAP (because that's the paywalled portion that requires you to buy it for $25k / month.)

Well, with claude, you can download the code, tell it to implement LDAP authentication, and smile all the way to the bank. And for said fortune 500 company, employing an employee to spend 100% of their time maintaining the app at 10k per month is a 15k savings! And because it _doesn't really take 100% of their time_ it's really only like $500 per month? And to be completely honest, how man times did you get Jira to fast-track your issue?

I get it however, the manager angle. It's still a distraction. But the article being referenced still shows revenue going down.

There's definitely a lot of cope in here, mostly because SaaS is keeping them employed... be ready, the crush is "almosthere".

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#315

Post by dyauspitr »

cj wrote: post #288
brianwawok wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My log bill for Google cloud log would be like 30k. For splunk I like 80k. I self host for 1.5k per month. Spend maybe an hour a month? Easiest money I ever made.

When you’re in the middle of a production down event and your whole team is diagnosing the issue, and your log server is unresponsive, who do you contact for support? No one, you pull an engineer off the production issue to debug the log server, because you need the log server to debug the production servers. See the problem? Edit: to be clear I’m no fan of Datadog and I wish self hosting were an option. I want this…

You don’t, you just look at the log like us old timers and solve the problem. It’s literally no different than solving the problem on the cloud.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#316

Post by pixl97 »

falloutx wrote: post #99
echelon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many SaaS companies are public? How is that bubble deflating? These are real risks to these companies. Your in-house teams can build replacements, it's just a matter of headcount. With Claude, you can build it and staff it and have time left over. Then your investment pays dividends instead of being a subscription straight jacket you have to keep renting. I think there's an even faster middle ground: open source…

> Your in-house teams can build replacements, it's just a matter of headcount. With Claude, you can build it and staff it and have time left over. Then your investment pays dividends instead of being a subscription straight jacket you have to keep renting. Lets take Figma as an example, Imagine you have 1000 employees, 300 of them need Figma, so you are paying 120k per year in Figma licenses. You can afford 1 employe…

>Lets take Figma as an example, Imagine you have 1000 employees, 300 of them need Figma, so you are paying 120k per year in Figma licenses.

I mean in an example that almost happened... "you are paying 120k per year in Figma licenses, Adobe buys it, you are paying 500k per year in Figma licenses"

At least up until the point of vibe coding it was still worth the SaaS provider charging at least as much if not slightly more than you doing it yourself because most businesses weren't going to anyway.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#317

Post by sbarre »

mamcx wrote: post #264
sbarre wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even more accurate (I work in this space): 3. Bugs creep in, feature request pile up. 4. Employee continue in the company and request help (or the managers see the need): 4.1 They hire more, but if all are vibe-coders too 4.1.1 The product gets more complicated (no more complex, that good developers can manage!) 4.1.2 Bugs creep in, feature request pile up. 4.1.3 People start to get desperate, not worries! now: 4.1.3…

Did you just put my post into ChatGPT with a prompt like "take this joke, make it unnecessarily longer, and get rid of the punchline"?

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#318

Post by pixl97 »

cyclo wrote: post #308

Anyone can learn to cook, and the barrier to entry is low. There's no shortage of restaurants though.

There's no shortage of restaurants that go out of business. Even big name brands have issues with location turnover.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#319

Post by georgeecollins »

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.

I don't think vibe-coding will replace anything. However, what if AI tools can make skilled developers more productive, particularly at simple tasks in unfamiliar environments? You could see that reducing the engineering costs of simple utility applications. There are tons of pitfalls that many here have pointed to but also maybe opportunities to do things that wouldn't have been cost effective.

Also: In my life the easier it has gotten to create and run software, the more software people have wanted and the more they have been willing to spend on it.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#320

Post by SecretDreams »

mym1990 wrote: post #304
overfeed wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are certainly closer now to being able to prototype and go to market faster with a product. What are the higher-order effects when anyone can do this, and *aaS becomes a market for Lemons?

I think that just because anyone can do it, doesn't mean they will. Lots of people have really great ideas but very few actually commit to execution. Ultimately ROI will go down, deincentivizing the commercialization of that thing someone wanted to bang out in a weekend. In the very long term, software will become a commodity, as you mentioned. Process and workflow may move into JIT delivery for the need at hand, in…

> Lots of people have really great ideas but very few actually commit to execution.

This is true when you had to work hard for those ideas. Now you have LLMs. It means more people can sling a lot more crap at walls with fewer barriers to entry.

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