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AI is killing B2B SaaS

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Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#371

Post by bawolff »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #342
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?

If you can gin these things up in a weekend then why would you bother with a monthly subscription model for software? The only valuable part is the specification and possibly the hardware to run it. If I were a CTO trying to save money I might pay for the labor to develop good specs, but I would prioritize getting out from under software companies with a rent seeking models and 80 to 90% margins

> If I were a CTO trying to save money

A CTOs job isn't to save money but to spend money effectively. Saving money by increasing risk is not neccesarily a prudent move.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#372

Post by bandrami »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #332
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…

> "just do the parts of it we actually use". 25 years here. You can absolutely do this. Most software is orders of magnitude more complex than it needs to be. The junior programmer you are talking about who wanted to rewrite it in a weekend tends to come back with a working program, not empty handed.

Yes, I didn't really doubt the developer could do it, the problems are:

1. That's not a great use of the developer's time, and

2. anything in-house increases our training and support costs

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#373

Post by trhway »

sevensor wrote: post #362
trhway wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the 90-ies anyone could easily prototype with tools like Access (and all the other "4GL" tools which were similarly all the rage back then). That still didn't preclude companies from buying their major software from software vendors instead of doing it themselves. In some sense having customer able to prototype what they want is a good thing. I did it myself as i was at the time on that side, and having a quick-wh…

Access is not as dead as you might hope. The long tail of internal tools written with Access continues to shamble along. I had to figure out how to dump MDB files on Windows last year for just this reason. As an industry I think we often fail to grasp how much outsider art there is, in the form of internal departmental tools. LLM coding is going to create a cambrian explosion of these tools. It’s going to be very int…

One of the key questions here - will LLM coding decrease the proliferation of app-specific Excel files (by for example accelerating and simplifying Excel-to-webapp conversion) or would result in an opposite outcome by making feasible managing even orders of magnitude more of those disparate Excel files :)

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#374

Post by mamcx »

sbarre wrote: post #317
mamcx wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Nope, normal insanity of mine!

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#375

Post by camdenreslink »

snowwrestler wrote: post #267
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…

I totally agree about the management reluctance to just own everything in house. But I think it’s plausible that SaaS companies will be easier to start with AI coding, and with lower costs (thanks to AI) they will be able to get into the black with a smaller addressable market. So each one can have a different mix of fewer features, for different segments of customers, at lower prices. The result would be a loss of p…

This was all possible pre-AI. The reasons that some Saas companies win have nothing to do with how quickly or cheaply code can be written for the Saas.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#376

Post by alphager »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #332
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…

> "just do the parts of it we actually use". 25 years here. You can absolutely do this. Most software is orders of magnitude more complex than it needs to be. The junior programmer you are talking about who wanted to rewrite it in a weekend tends to come back with a working program, not empty handed.

I've seen this happen with both juniors and seniors. They do come back with a working solution /for the happy path/. Because the happy path is easy. It turns out that most of the complexity sits in the unhappy paths.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#377

Post by jaybrendansmith »

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…

The difference between a vibe-coded prototype product, even a good one, and an enterprise SaaS platform is the difference between a Lightning bug and a Lightning Bolt.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#378

Post by Aperocky »

mym1990 wrote: post #216
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…

We are certainly closer now to being able to prototype and go to market faster with a product. In one weekend is a little much but I think its hard to deny that building will continue to expedite. What most developers don't think about is that the marketing, sales, customer service are all non-trivial parts of the business/product and all require legwork that is more than just sitting at an IDE. The nail in the coffi…

> bootstrap a one man enterprise without actually doing any kind of social interaction will run into a wall.

But you are not limited to only using LLM for coding.

I agree that marketing and sales is as important as product and technology, but they are not necessarily safe.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#379

Post by hunterpayne »

aspenmartin wrote: post #326
bandrami wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has to actually work at least once before we can start predicting it will be the norm.

Can you be clear what you mean? What are you saying has not worked once? And "it will be the norm" is a clear corollary of, absent any significant and unforeseen roadblock, even with the current highly imperfect agentic sausage-making factories we have today, what capabilities will be in like 6-12 months time.

When the effectiveness of vibe coding an internal workflow was measured, only 5% of efforts worked. That's pretty rare and bad. And those are the early adopters who tend to be more adaptable and effective with new technology. That's a big part of why people don't believe the (your) hype. Its great at simple things with a low cost of failure. Problem is, its rare to pay a good wage for simple things with a low cost of failure. Also, writing new code isn't a big part of most engineers jobs. To put it more simply, vibe coding optimizes the wrong things about engineering.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#380

Post by niyikiza »

swiftcoder wrote: post #132

Until Claude Code comes with indemnity insurance for HIPAA / GDPR / etc… B2B SaaS is here to stay. You want me to convince my auditor that the vibe-coded in house software handles PII correctly? Making the audit someone else’s problem is 90% of the ‘buy’ value in ‘build vs buy’

Spot on. You could argue that most companies buying B2B SaaS could almost always build a clone internally but they need someone to assume SLA and liability.
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