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The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

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Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#51
Yes and no.

At the individual level, I think most people will be writing software, whether they realise it or not. Asking Claude to do something for you will often result in a purely generated script built for that one specific task. Some might even take it further, generating custom dashboards or whatever else they need to support their work.

At the company level though... most companies can hardly maintain opensource deployments, let alone write and maintain their own bespoke software. Pick any company that uses GitLab, they're probably a few major versions behind. It's across the board.

There's no doubt people will try to write more software.

But we've all seen how this plays out.

The smart engineer who built a weekend solution leaves, and nobody supports the software afterward. Coding agents certainly help, and only time will tell, but my bet is that for most organisations it will end up miserably.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#52
Do some people really believe that SaaS margins are dropping because the public at large has discovered that to save 20$/month on some app they can instead vibe code their own and use that instead?

My current guess about the future is that the age of SaaS is coming stronger than ever. I expect many vibe coders to come up with half-assed prototypes that will be copiously replicated and improved by more qualified devs aided by LLMs. In a similar way, I also expect smaller qualified teams (3 to 5) to leverage LLMs to become more relevant competitors of medium to large SaaS players. By 2029, we'll have more, but smaller SaaS companies.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#53
post #42

I vibe coded a saas and it went nowhere because it wasn't a good enough idea to begin with. I consulted with multiple varied models along the way for competitive analysis, pricing structure etc. AI doesn't solve for ideas and product market fit. But it did allow me to fail pretty fast before I sunk too much time into it. But also, I should have spoken to potential users earlier rather than vibe coding.

Why wouldn’t just make some AI generated user personas to talk to? Whatever their opinion is, it’s already been captured and is in the training data. You don’t need to talk to users.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#54

I don’t disagree if models stay as capable as they are today. But devils advocate: the point of the saaspocalypse isn’t just that anyone will be able to make their own software, it’s also that the AI will be good enough and interconnected enough to maintain it. The world these investors are envisioning is not one where a software engineer gives a detailed spec to a model and reviews its output, deploys the resulting…

Everything you describe is fantasy, though. It’s not real. It’s not possible to be real. “Give me a new billing system”?? No way is that going to produce a good result for the company or their clients. But the second that Joe Schmo has to start laying out all the ever-evolving requirements for his custom billing system, he will run back to traditional SaaS providers. At best, if AI is supergenius enough to just intui…

I think the idea is you'd basically have it take a look at your current system, it would learn what features you're actually using at all, it'd check company emails for past and current pain points or stuff you wish was possible or just simpler, it'd Slack everyone in the company asking what their biggest wish and biggest pet peeves are currently, it'd do a small interview with Joe himself presenting the above to see if it's gotten the right idea, create a very detailed spec and then implement it.

Of course both models and tooling will need to be far more powerful for all this, but it doesn't exactly seem sci-fi to me.

Once system is built it could run detailed analysis on its usage and figure out what parts seem to be confusing or slow for users, and simply refine, deploy, keep analyzing, rinse and repeat.

The biggest upside is probably that workers could also simply request features, have Joe sign off on them (would get messy otherwise) and minutes later they actually roll out.

To me anyways most systems are a PITA because they do so much and your own organization only utilizes a small subset. Good systems actually let you turn off stuff you don't use so that users don't even know it's possible and don't have to drown in menu options, but that's still rare enough. And good luck getting dev focus on your specific requests regarding the parts of the system most important to your specific company, since there are a zillion other things and hundreds or thousands of other customers.

Something literally tailored to what you need will surely be the norm eventually. In five years or whatever I'm sure we'll be plenty on our way towards something like that.

But again just like LLM training in general this all requires having something existing to analyze and work off of. So yeah nobody will be going from paper to custom agent-built system.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#55
post #28

The main point everyone seems to be making is that now with AI anyone can make a SaaS. The initial reaction I think most people have to this is "SaaS companies/devs are in trouble." I actually think the opposite is true. With an outpouring of vibe-coded apps/SaaS, you have the new wave of vulnerabilities/leaks/problems that happen even with the best software. Except now, it's worse because it's being done on platform…

You're most certainly wrong on this one. Superior models give superior products and security over time. Until every 3-6 months stops bringing a large improvement in coding capability and scaffolding, there's no reason to assume we are nearing a hard limit. You also have to factor in that bespoke software is... bespoke. ie. much more suited to your org's use-cases than the primary solution is. Way less bloat. Way less…

I also suspect AI is going to make software more secure rather than less.

Even today it can probably find a lot of issues automatically. With basic knowledge of what to look for, it certainly helps in understanding data flow too.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#56
post #30

It will be race to bottom for SaaS in terms of pricing, with lots of alternatives to every SaaS. It’s not about personal software it’s about how 1-3 people team will deliver a SaaS that actually works at scale for the 1/10th of the price. In terms of personal software, he’s absolutely right, it’s great for hobbyist and things like in house tooling but that’s it.

Competing on price was never a good strategy. Moreover, price segmentation is still a thing. You can buy Chinese Rolex knockoffs for $7, but people still buy $10k Rolex.

That's for signaling purposes, not for functional purposes. Who is buying SaaS for signaling purposes over function?

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#57
post #37

The main point everyone seems to be making is that now with AI anyone can make a SaaS. The initial reaction I think most people have to this is "SaaS companies/devs are in trouble." I actually think the opposite is true. With an outpouring of vibe-coded apps/SaaS, you have the new wave of vulnerabilities/leaks/problems that happen even with the best software. Except now, it's worse because it's being done on platform…

This is basically why I buy the tech dip. When you pay for software, you pay for infrastructure, expertise, QA, consumer relations, having staff on call, etc. It was always possible to replace enterprise software by 2 guys coding a product in 6 months, but you still need everything around the code before serious clients will want to work with you, and at that point you're a regular software company. All these vibe co…

+ the domain expertise collected from multiple clients

From a market perspective bundling this into SaaS players is more efficient.

But: AI might enable niche applications which were to expensive to capture thus far

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#58
post #52

Do some people really believe that SaaS margins are dropping because the public at large has discovered that to save 20$/month on some app they can instead vibe code their own and use that instead? My current guess about the future is that the age of SaaS is coming stronger than ever. I expect many vibe coders to come up with half-assed prototypes that will be copiously replicated and improved by more qualified devs…

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that when people talk about the Death of SaaS, they are not talking about $20/month consumer apps. They are talking about six-figure+ enterprise deals that are the source of so much profit for SaaS companies.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#59
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competing on price was never a good strategy. Moreover, price segmentation is still a thing. You can buy Chinese Rolex knockoffs for $7, but people still buy $10k Rolex.

That's for signaling purposes, not for functional purposes. Who is buying SaaS for signaling purposes over function?

People who need support, and compliance? Things that AI generated slop can not provide
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