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AI is killing B2B SaaS

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Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#661

Post by vovavili »

cj wrote: post #263
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…

What I struggle with is developers wanting to leave platforms like Datadog for open source equivalents that need to be self-hosted. I hear all of the cost savings benefit, but I never see the team factoring in their own time (and others time) needed to set up and maintain these systems reliably long term. Something IC’s at company often struggle to understand is the reason why companies often prefer to buy managed so…

>the free alternatives are also expensive, just a different type of cost

Not if you hire reasonably competent people. These days for vast majority of FOSS services all you need is an ability to spin up a VPS and run a number of simple Docker/Podman Compose commands, it can't be that hard.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#662

Post by phil21 »

oblio wrote: post #483
phil21 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re having a correlated outage like that, then it’s likely you fix the prod issue before the cloud engineers at some giant cloud company even respond to an internal escalation much less fixes an issue. More than likely your prod issue is causing the logging problem. If you mean you are experiencing two totally unrelated issues at the same time, then I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to really assign much…

> Half of $30k/mo trivially pays for an engineer you hire to only manage such a cluster for you and just works an hour a week unless a pager goes off if you truly need that level of peace of mind. If you’re hiring for such a position I have a few rock star level folks who would love such a job. 1 person? Is that person always on call?

Yep, absolutely. I’ve come up with the term “man on the mountain” for such positions.

It’s when one person is exceedingly talented at exactly one thing - but isn’t exactly a typical employee who is good or interested in doing much else other than keeping that one thing online and reliable.

Their job is to go live on their mountain for weeks or months at a time without so much as doing anything other than keeping their phone on and answering it within the first couple rings regardless of when called. If they are good at their job you likely don’t even need to call - they already know it’s broken before you do.

I’ve employed a few such folks over my career. They tend to be the “alternative” style candidate - exceptional people with exceptional flaws. They love the simple tradeoff.

That said of course this is ignoring bus factor and overly simplifying things. Typically this is one deep subject level matter expert who sits off on the side of a small team, so there is at least one “understudy” hanging around as well.

I still advocate for such positions when they make sense though. I would much rather in-house my own “insurance” vs overpay some giant company for each month only to find out the insurance didn’t exist when I needed to make a claim. It’s certainly more risk to my career - but I have very strong feelings that as a manager or executive my job is NOT to cover my own ass because it’s easier.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#663

Post by rpigab »

metalrain wrote: post #50

I see that Software as a Service banked too much on the first S, Software. But really customers want the second S, the Service. When you sell a service, it's opaque, customer don't really care how it is produced. They want things done for them. AI isn't killing SaaS, it's shifting it to second S. Customers don't care how the service is implemented, they care about it's quality, availability, price, etc. Service provi…

I think customers sometimes want the third S, Security, which is not (yet) a given in LLM-assisted coding.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#664

Post by fhd2 »

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 can't count the times I've told clients and prospects to _not_ hire us to build something they wanted. Because they could just use off the shelf solutions that were cheaper financially, at least in the short to mid term, and much, much cheaper in terms of opportunity costs. I struggle to put even billed hours into something that doesn't make sense to me.

Of course some overdo it. I've seen companies with more random SaaS tools than staff, connected with shaky Zapier workflows, manual processes, or not at all. No backups, no sense of risks, just YOLOing. That's OK in some cases, in others really not.

I suppose it does need some engineering thinking to find the right things and employ them in a good way. Unfortunately even developers commonly lack that.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#665

Post by dsr_ »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #634
gspetr wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the prime example of Law 1 of Robert Greene's "The 48 Laws of Power": "Never Outshine the Master." The core principle is to always make those above you - your bosses, mentors, or superiors feel comfortably superior. If you display your talents too aggressively, you risk triggering their deep-seated insecurities, which can lead them to sabotage your career or remove you from your position. Galileo Galilei hand…

Sure it has been codified into a "law" but really this is just basic social skills / emotional intelligence which engineers on the spectrum struggle with. If you've spent any time in a large enough organization you realize quickly that hierarchies form based on status, power and influence & not necessarily technical merit. No it's not "the best person for the job" that rises up and tells you what to do. Casually solv…

Competent management says:

"Look how clever we were to hire this person and put them in the right place at the right time! We are now ahead of schedule and are reallocating teams."

There's remarkably little competent management.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#666

Post by re-thc »

mejutoco wrote: post #579
re-thc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see vibe coding in the business sense right now being a gateway to replace all of the ad hoc uses of excel I rather use Excel. It's likely More robust and safer than the vibe coded app that could trigger data loss / incorrectness / issues any time.

> I rather use Excel. It's likely More robust and safer than the vibe coded app that could trigger data loss / incorrectness / issues any time. Excel has had a lot of data loss / incorrectness issues. Example: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988

> Example...

It was 2020 and they were using a format that was replaced in 2007.

It. says more about their issues than Excel. I doubt paper forms would have saved them. Maybe they'll run out of paper and just ignore new entries too.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#667

Post by JALTU »

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'm a manager too, but I'm also the new guy pushing the solution to a human problem: work management. SMAR, ASAN, MNDY, etc. Not only do people not want to be responsible for it (and in some cases simply be "not responsible"), not only is the internal solution "too time consuming", the only answer thus lands on hiring external consultants to implement and maintain massively-overkill-$olution$ in $aa$ like CRM, NOW, etc. which as you know, do not solve the same problems as the aforementioned SaaS.

"Now that I'm in management, I 100% get it." 100% and win or lose I am still going to fight it...

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#668

Post by jayd16 »

vovavili wrote: post #661
cj wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I struggle with is developers wanting to leave platforms like Datadog for open source equivalents that need to be self-hosted. I hear all of the cost savings benefit, but I never see the team factoring in their own time (and others time) needed to set up and maintain these systems reliably long term. Something IC’s at company often struggle to understand is the reason why companies often prefer to buy managed so…

>the free alternatives are also expensive, just a different type of cost Not if you hire reasonably competent people. These days for vast majority of FOSS services all you need is an ability to spin up a VPS and run a number of simple Docker/Podman Compose commands, it can't be that hard.

Ok so they cost you reasonably competent people. Those are expensive!

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#669

Post by jayd16 »

xhrpost wrote: post #111
kriro wrote: post #78

I'd actually say the opposite is the case. B2B (even SaaS) is probably the most robust when it comes to AI resistance. The described "in house vibe coded SaaS replacement" does not mirror my experience in B2B at all. The B2B software mindset I've encountered the most is "We'll pay you so we don't have to wrestle with this and can focus on what we do. We'll pay you even more if we worry even less." which is basically…

Reminds me of a blog post a while back saying that gigabit fiber at home would lead to everyone running their own email server.

The email server bit directly correlates, too. Will everyone vibe-ops their own email server using AI? Of course not.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#670

Post by fourside »

kstrauser wrote: post #432
November_Echo wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Later my boss told me not to do that again because it caused havoc with schedules and such. Did you talk to anyone about your plans before you brought in the demo or let them know they were solved problems? Often these sorts of reactions come down to your boss not wanting their team to lose their jobs because of the perception that it can all be handled by one person who's happy to work weekends.

I wasn’t politically savvy enough to do that. Honestly, I don’t want to be. The reality was that the project really could have been done in a month by a couple of people. It got turned into an enterprise project with multiple unaligned teams with Gantt charts and milestones and everything. Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, for a Django CRUD app . It was a 4 person-week project turned into a major ordeal. No o…

> I wasn’t politically savvy enough to do that.

Over the years I’ve come to realize that what people call politics at times is just having interpersonal skills.

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