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AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

martinalderson.com

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Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#331

Post by xnx »

JaumeGreen wrote: post #310
btown wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit surprising to me that Microsoft hasn't created a product that's "you have an Excel file in one of our cloud storage systems, here's a way for you to vibe code and host a web app whose storage is backed entirely by that file, where access control is synced to that file's access, and real-time updates propagate in both directions as if someone were editing it in native Excel on another computer. And you can…

I miss MSAccess, but for the modern age. It has been replaced by basic CRUD using your platform of choice, but it's not as easy. That would be similar to your solution, so either one would work. I think that there might be some similar alternatives (maybe Airtable? probably using Lovable or Firebase counts) but nothing that is available for me for now.

Agree. Lack of something as accessible and useful as Access is a major hole. AppSheet comes close: https://about.appsheet.com/home/

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#333

Post by rightbyte »

mulquin wrote: post #50
fzeroracer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course. It's not really a conspiracy when we have multiple examples of high profile companies doing exactly this. And it keeps happening. Granted I'm unaware of cases of this occuring currently with professional AI services but it's basic security 101 that you should never let anything even ha…

To be pedantic, it is still a conspiracy, just no longer a theory.

To be pedantic, a theory that has been proven correct is still a theory, right?

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#334

Post by somewhereoutth »

ben_w wrote: post #194
j45 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology of LLMs is already applicable to valuable enough problems, therefore it won’t be a bubble. The world might be using a standard of AI needing to be a world beater to succeed but it’s simply not the case, AI a is software, and it can solve problems other software can’t.

> The technology of LLMs is already applicable to valuable enough problems, therefore it won’t be a bubble. Dot-com was a bubble despite being applicable to valuable problems. So were railways when the US had a bubble on those. Bubbles don't just mean tulips. What we've got right now, I'm saying the money will run out and not all the current players will win any money from all their spending. It's even possible that…

> repay the cost of training

Key point. Once people realize that no money can be made from LLMs, they will stop training new ones. Eventually the old ones will become hopelessly out-of-date, and LLMs will fade into history.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#335

Post by ogogmad »

threetonesun wrote: post #298
adriand wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president of a company I work with is a youngish guy who has no technical skills, but is resourceful. He wanted updated analytic dashboards, but there’s no dev capacity for that right now. So he decided he was going to try his hand at building his own dashboard using Lovable, which is one of these AI app making outfits. I sent him a copy of the dev database and a few markdown files with explanations regarding cer…

We perpetually find worse and more expensive ways to reinvent Microsoft Access.

Interesting comment. Which ways have people been doing this?

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#336

Post by sifar »

ethbr1 wrote: post #215
cm277 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same background as you and I fully agree. Again and again you see market/economic takes from technologists. This is not a technology question (yes, LLMs work), it's an economics question: what do LLMs disrupt? If your answer is "cost of developing code" (what TFA argues), please explain how previous waves of reducing cost of code (JVM, IDEs, post-Y2K Outsourcing) disrupted the ERP/b2b market. Oh wait, they didn't. Th…

I'll take a crack. > what do LLMs disrupt? If your answer is "cost of developing code" (what TFA argues), please explain how previous waves of reducing cost of code (JVM, IDEs, post-Y2K Outsourcing) disrupted the ERP/b2b market. Oh wait, they didn't. The only real disruption in ERP in the last what 30 years, has been Cloud. "Cost of developing code" is a trivial and incomplete answer. Coding LLMs disrupt (or will, in…

>> 2) expertise to develop code

This is wrong. Paradoxically, you need expertise to develop code with LLM.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#337

Post by TeMPOraL »

nprateem wrote: post #182
TeMPOraL wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SaaS products rely on resisting commoditization. AI agents defeat that.

Yes, except for the fact that any non-trivial saas does non-trivial stuff that an agent will be able to call (as the 'secretary') while the user still has to pay the subscription to use.

Yes, but now it's easier for other SaaS to compete on that, because they don't get to bundle individual features under common webshit UI and restrict users to whatever flows the vendor supports. There will be pressure to provide more focused features, because their combining and UI chrome will be done by, or on the other side of, the AI agent.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#338

Post by runako »

martinald wrote: post #269
runako wrote: post #245

> I'm starting to see is people really questioning renewal quotes from larger "enterprise" SaaS companies This practice predates even SaaS. I read this article expecting to see a specific SaaS that was at risk, and the most I saw was "dashboards." (Which: dashboards frequently aggregate data, while the ongoing work of collection/maintenance/etc. is done by more complex applications.) The thesis seems to be that compa…

Author here. What I'm seeing in particular is CRM/ERP solutions at risk. I know of two people in my peer group who are actively trying to replace a 'niche' ERP/CRM (not salesforce) with a agent built alternative. These are both >$100k/yr contracts. They've outgrown the current (industry specific) products, arguably a long time ago. The discussions started like this: 1) Started building custom dashboards on top of dat…

Thanks for responding. This sounds like the type of thing companies have done in cycles over the years. Some % gets dissatisfied with their vendor, so they bring in-house. That predictably sucks (distraction, can't keep up with third-party tools, etc.) and so the companies go back into the marketplace. I've even been the one building some of those internal tools. :-)

Overall, that story sounds more like the niche is not well-served by software and perhaps there is an opening for a competitor to serve them well. Or perhaps the attrition will make the incumbents improve.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#339

Post by solaire_oa »

dismalpedigree wrote: post #327
solaire_oa wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I'll second that I've applied agentic LLMs to an open source project to fix bugs and forcibly coerce it to act in ways that the maintainer may or may not approve of. It has been remarkablely effective, so long as I'm willing to apply patches or maintain a fork of the project (trivial, since this particular open-source project is abandoned anyway). That said, the act of doing this- using LLMs to dominate somebo…

I support Inventree. Even have raised PRs. Im specifically referring to things that are custom to our workflow.

That's great! I'm not accusing you or anything, or myself for that matter, I'm only lamenting that open source will likely decay due to LLMs. Or at the very least, open source will no longer be seen as the height of virtue in our industry.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#340

Post by hvb2 »

bob1029 wrote: post #159
benzible wrote: post #124

I'm CTO at a vertical SaaS company, paired with a product-focused CEO with deep domain expertise. The thesis doesn't match my experience. For one thing, the threat model assumes customers can build their own tools. Our end users can't. Their current "system" is Excel. The big enterprises that employ them have thousands of devs, but two of them explicitly cloned our product and tried to poach their own users onto it.…

> Domain expertise + tight feedback loop This is the answer to a happy B2B SaaS implementation. It doesn't matter what tools you use as long as this can be achieved. In the domain of banking front/back office LOB apps, if you aren't iterating with your customer at least once per business day, you are definitely falling behind your competition. I've got semi-retired bankers insisting that live edits in production need…

I might be missing something but live edits in production and banking? Doesn't that violate all kinds of compliance controls?
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