This resonates strongly, especially the shift in the build vs buy calculus happening almost invisibly. What feels under-discussed is that agents are not just reducing the cost of building software — they are collapsing the coordination and abstraction costs that SaaS historically justified.
One emerging pattern I’m seeing is teams moving toward agent-orchestrated internal tooling rather than traditional “one-off” internal apps. Instead of rebuilding entire SaaS products, they compose narrow, task-specific agents that sit directly on top of their own data and workflows. This avoids both feature bloat and long-term roadmap dependency while keeping maintenance tractable. Platforms like Coldi AI, for instance, point toward this middle ground: not “replace all SaaS,” but replace the parts that are really just opinionated CRUD, dashboards, or glue code with agents that can evolve alongside the organization. That feels like the real threat surface for SaaS — not total displacement, but systematic erosion of NRR as customers internalize more of the value chain.
AI agents are starting to eat SaaS
391–398 of 398 posts
Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
SaaS products rely on resisting commoditization. AI agents defeat that.
You're probably thinking "SaaS for other tech end users". Most SaaS is not that.
I think that's just true in general. Business users at $work are already saying that they would rather just talk to ChatGPT (with voice for some reason I, a keyboard person, doesn't understand) than deal with GUIs. They want to describe what they need and have the computer do it, not click around.
Once you've abstracted away the UI (and the training on how to use it) it will be a lot easier to just swap one SaaS for another.
Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Also, having to retrain users to use a new shitty UI after they got used to the previous shitty UI is a major moat of many SaaS services. The user doesn't care about the web portal, they just want to get work done. Switching to a different web portal needs to be a big net positive because users will correctly complain that now they are unproductive for a while because the quirks and bugs of the previous SaaS don't match those of the new SaaS.
In a world where the interface is "you talk to the computer" you will be able to swap providers way more easily.
Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree about boutique software, but see the development still being external - To attempt to summarize the debate, there seems to be three prevailing schools of thought: 1. Status Quo + AI. SaaS companies will adopt AI and not lose share. Everyone keeps paying for the same SaaS plus a few bells and whistles. This seems unlikely given AI makes it dramatically cheaper to build and maintain SaaS. Incumbents will save o…
I like this thoughtful and nuanced response, I think you could be right. Makes me wonder if choosing an extremely boring niche and just making several million dollars could be a good move right now.
Thank you!
Quite honestly, this is exactly what I am currently doing - identified a market with probably $50mm global TAM. Bootstrapping with first design partners currently.
One thing I didn't mention is that there are often a few sleepy legacy SaaS players (often public) in these niche markets who don't have the chops to add AI to their product and may be a good takeout / exit down the line. Won't be for billions, but if you bootstrap, that doesn't really matter.
Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree about boutique software, but see the development still being external - To attempt to summarize the debate, there seems to be three prevailing schools of thought: 1. Status Quo + AI. SaaS companies will adopt AI and not lose share. Everyone keeps paying for the same SaaS plus a few bells and whistles. This seems unlikely given AI makes it dramatically cheaper to build and maintain SaaS. Incumbents will save o…
Author here, really good comment and I agree with you. What _has_ surprised me though is just how many companies are (or are considering) building 'internal' tooling to replace SaaS they are not happy with. These are not the classic HN types whatsoever. I think when non technical people get to play with AI software dev they go 'wow so why can't we do everything like this'. I think your point 3 is really interesting t…
Thanks!
I agree - it is surprising how many are looking at doing in house.
I think what they miss (and I say this as someone who spent the early part of his career outside of tech) is an understanding of what goes into maintaining software products - and this ignorance will be short lived. I was honestly shocked how complex it was to build and maintain my first web app. So business types (like I was) who are used to 'maintaining' an excel spreadsheet and powerpoint deck they update every quarter may think of SaaS like a software license they can build once and use forever. They have no appreciation of the depth of challenges that come with maintaining anything in production.
My working model is that of no-code - many non-tech types experimented with bubble etc, but quickly realize that tech products are far deeper than the (heavily curated) surface level experience that the user has. It is not like an excel model where the UI is codebase. I expect vibe-coders will find the same thing.
I have on several occasions built my own versions of tools, only to cave and buy a $99 a year off the shelf version because the maintenance time isn't worth it. Non-tech folks have no idea of the depth of pain of maintaining any system.
They will learn. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS
#396I'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.…
As told in Innovator's Dilemma mainframe companies would have told the exact same story right up until the cheaper alternative met all of their core needs. But in this case I don't think you get disrupted by copycats but instead by savvy business users building their own disposable alternatives which get just enough done.
Though I think one thing that is being overlooked is that Platforms are the hidden hero under all of this. A lot of AI products are benefiting from various cloud platforms that have been created that make it easy to deploy and opperate these apps. So as long as you are providing a sufficiently general, high productivity platform that can't be emulated by one of the major vendors you'll likely become the new runtime.
Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS
#397Earlier 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…
Update us when you have an actual success story.
Update: I haven’t heard from him about this since. That might count as a success story though.
Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS
#398I'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.…
Companies and hyper focused on integrating AI right now, which means they’re building this bench strength, and the obvious eventual question become what paid software can we bring “in house”. They will of course look at revenue growth opportunities and such first and how to improve known problem areas but cost reduction is an eventuality. I’m actively building products with AI that will replace millions of value in Enterprise software. I’m not even a programmer, I can do this as a CFO with an AI consultant (human consultant that specializes in AI that is)