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AI is killing B2B SaaS

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Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#552

Post by sinnsro »

neya wrote: post #448
kstrauser wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, I was hired by an enterprise that was many months into a giant backend rewrite. After wrapping my head around the many plans, I realized they were rewriting Django, badly. One weekend I prototyped the whole thing… in Django. It worked. It met the specs. It was a CRUD app with a REST API. I came in to work Monday morning, showed it off, and inadvertently triggered a firestorm. Later my boss told me not to do tha…

I can relate to this so much. When I was a newly joined Google consultant at a partner firm, we went to their office - some 13 different types of cuisines, different types of game rooms, lounges and what not. A luxury star hotel experience. We were waiting for our meeting on behalf of this one particularly large media client who was bleeding money on Wordpress. 3 engineers arrived - fashionably late. We explained the…

Thanks for sharing! Every time I see a post about Elixir and how it Just Works™, I get an urge to learn and build something with it.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#555

Post by wjnc »

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…

My firm has partially transitioned through this curve. We went went from "fully externally supplied" systems, to an architecture that combines "externally supplied" (core functionality) with "low code" about 6 years ago. I would argue (as a financial manager) that that lead to a more flexible and more affordable architecture. A funny mixed bag problem arose though: the curve of business demands grew harder than that of IT-delivery. So IT delivered more value, but business keeps demanding a faster pace. If I project this line to the future AI will most certainly harm our external suppliers. We keep getting better at DIY development and "low code" will transition towards "no code". Not really "no code" of course, but DIY IT developed tooling.

The age of the business developer has re-arrived.

For the first time in my career, I can point to multi million euro external suppliers, tell my environment "that's basicly an API + authentication from X to Z, let's develop that ourselves" and get a response of "When" instead of "No". B2B SaaS is toast in my perspective, as are boutique firms delivering solutions + consulting. I can create a million euro team easily (that's like five developer years), if they deliver a successful insourcing. And now I feel like writing MBA-slop, but's it's all about growing your IT maturity. All insourced code is future maintenance expenditure. You need to balance that to the benefits.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#556

Post by yurishimo »

sinnsro wrote: post #552
neya wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate to this so much. When I was a newly joined Google consultant at a partner firm, we went to their office - some 13 different types of cuisines, different types of game rooms, lounges and what not. A luxury star hotel experience. We were waiting for our meeting on behalf of this one particularly large media client who was bleeding money on Wordpress. 3 engineers arrived - fashionably late. We explained the…

Thanks for sharing! Every time I see a post about Elixir and how it Just Works™, I get an urge to learn and build something with it.

One day I'm gonna build some sort of product in Elixir. I was super interested in LiveView when it was announced and I think the component story has gotten a lot better than when I tried back in pre-1.0 days.

This video by Sasa Juric is still the gold standard (imo) of Elixir demos for anyone who hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#557

Post by philipmoses »

It’s about the "Per User Tax"

The panic over SaaS vs AI is simpler than people think. For years, we’ve been paying "Enterprise" prices for tools that are essentially just a UI on top of a database.

I'm a solution architect, and we recently looked at the $30/user/mo price tag for legacy test management tools. It’s insane. Why am I paying a "per user per month tax" for a glorified spreadsheet when I can pay $20 for an AI agent that can build me a custom version in a week?

So, we did exactly that. We used Claude and Cursor to "vibe-code" EZTest. A 100% open source, self hosted alternative that does 90% of what the expensive SaaS tools do, but with zero recurring fees and total data ownership.

The market is crashing because the "Application Layer" has been commoditized. If you can build and own your infrastructure for the cost of a few API calls, the era of renting basic software is over.

We aren't just building a tool; we're proving that the "SaaS Tax" is now optional.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#558

Post by emptyfile »

sramam wrote: post #159
mbesto wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we want recent examples just look at tailwindui since it's technically a SaaS. This is a terrible example. Show me someone ripping out their SAP ERP or SalesForce CRM system where they're paying $100k+ for a vibe coded alternative and I'll believe this overall sentiment.

These examples are going to be lagging indicators of the underlying sentiment. Just because it cannot be done today, doesn't mean there is not a real appetite in large enterprises to do exactly this. Without naming names, I know of at least one public company with a real hunger for exactly this eventuality.

[dead]

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#559

Post by bigfatkitten »

keyle wrote: post #487
selcuka wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That did not go down well Enterprise customers are more likely to use a product that they paid $1M over the same product that they "only" paid $40K.

It was a case of pay $1M and take no responsibility vs. set a budget of 40K and own it internally. When salesforce leaks your customer's information, whoopsie! not our fault! it's salesforce! And yet they're far more likely to have the leak. BASICALLY.

In fairness to Salesforce, it was the garbage third party apps in their ecosystem which got compromised and did the leaking, not Salesforce themselves.
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