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AI is killing B2B SaaS

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Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#711

Post by throw272526277 »

WarmWash wrote: post #637

Customers don't want to pay for rolodex + 8000-data-point-visulization + integrated-automatic-contact-form-filling + assisted-real-time-closest-contact-scanning + 15 new-features-months + Annual-UI-rewrites + All-that-amazing-businesses-functionality-for-only-$199/usr/mo. They want AI to vibecode a rolodex. And just use that. For 30 years if needed. 2000 LOC and a one time $20 cost. The cancer of SaaS cannot die fast…

Any competent programmer can write 2000 lines in a few days or less. If the SaaS could be replaced by that no AI would be needed.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#712

Post by fsloth »

chrisjj wrote: post #658
fsloth wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad corollary to "you will be noticed only if you put out fires" is nobody actually realizes the elegant solution you shipped will stop tons of these fires from happening. Rather the reaction will be "that looked simple and easy so probably is not important". And on the other hand, the complexifier (you know the type) ships rude goldberg gizmos just waiting to go off-kilter - and then they come in and save the da…

> The sad corollary to "you will be noticed only if you put out fires" is nobody actually realizes the elegant solution you shipped will stop tons of these fires from happening. Rather the reaction will be "that looked simple and easy so probably is not important". Or that reaction is really "that looked simple, easy and like the last 10 "elegant solutions" that caused fires".

Yes! There are also very good reasons for deep skepticism.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#713

Post by lifeisstillgood »

gspetr wrote: post #616
kavalg wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the beginning of my career, I've been once told by my senior management that I should never again: 1. Optimize things so that they work 10 000 times faster because it makes us look incompetent (must be done slowly to show gradual progress). 2. Brag about such optimization (to stakeholders) without first synchronizing this with them (so they can brag proportionally to their pay rate :) ).

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…

>>> Galileo Galilei handled this really well

Errr… Galileo was asked to write a book discussing both sides of the heliocentric / geocentric debate … and so wrote a book with two characters having a debate while walking in a garden - one named (I paraphrase for effect) “Galileo” and one named “Pope Simplehead”

Needless to say the next twenty years under house arrest gave him a lot of time to think about character names :-)

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#714

Post by sublinear »

sumtechguy wrote: post #650
sublinear wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you were working at a startup full of very naive people, I gotta say this sounds made up.

This happens all the time. Basically build vs buy. The problem is on the 'buy' portion of looking at things the company failed. So they took who they had on hand and built something. It took a fresh perspective to say 'hey have you tried this' and looks like they did not want to hear it. I would say the right choice was made to move on. This is wildly common. At that point they were committed to the wrong path at 'ab…

Yes, but that's not what the specific comment I replied to is saying.

It sounds like pure junior dev fantasy that anyone would care beyond whether it meets the explicitly stated requirements.

Any other flourishes that the devs add are going to be unused or ignored, and that definitely includes what the devs think about their own work.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#715

Post by anhner »

girvo wrote: post #602
NewsaHackO wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys keep using services like Jira, Salesforce, Stripe, Datadog, etc. While those are definitely the biggest names, I don't think people are referring to those SaaS platforms as the ones they will replace or try to build an inhouse version of. It will be things like ETL pipeline services, data scraping services, maybe some internal analytics SaaS. The niche things that cost a lot because they’re in a sweet spot w…

They are though, atlasians stock is in the toilet. The world seems to think Jira will be replaced by AI built in house replacements, for some reason

when it takes 10 seconds to do anything on Jira, it's not hard to see why people want alternatives

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#716

Post by GorbachevyChase »

bawolff wrote: post #371
GorbachevyChase wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if AI were erased today, most SaaS companies wouldn’t exist in 5-10 years. Doing business with a small tech company that could run out of borrowed money or sell to someone who will destroy the product or just arbitrarily change the terms of service tomorrow is a liability. That’s assuming the hypothetical tech spend isn’t just eroding margin anyway.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#717

Post by girvo »

anhner wrote: post #715
girvo wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are though, atlasians stock is in the toilet. The world seems to think Jira will be replaced by AI built in house replacements, for some reason

when it takes 10 seconds to do anything on Jira, it's not hard to see why people want alternatives

Except that is not the reason, and that’s not new haha

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#718

Post by profsummergig »

kstrauser wrote: post #397
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…

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…

Also, some people want to work on what's already familiar to them. If building a framework from scratch is what appeals to them, they'll do that even if a framework already exists. Busywork to look productive.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#719

Post by bawolff »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #716
bawolff wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Even if AI were erased today, most SaaS companies wouldn’t exist in 5-10 years. Doing business with a small tech company that could run out of borrowed money or sell to someone who will destroy the product or just arbitrarily change the terms of service tomorrow is a liability. That’s assuming the hypothetical tech spend isn’t just eroding margin anyway.

True, but that's one of the reason established SaaS can charge an arm and a leg. Not every SaaS is a start up.

Re: AI is killing B2B SaaS

#720

Post by fencepost »

kavalg wrote: post #512
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…

In the beginning of my career, I've been once told by my senior management that I should never again: 1. Optimize things so that they work 10 000 times faster because it makes us look incompetent (must be done slowly to show gradual progress). 2. Brag about such optimization (to stakeholders) without first synchronizing this with them (so they can brag proportionally to their pay rate :) ).

Sounds like when I was asked to give minimum hardware requirements for something doing backend processing (receive text submitted as print jobs, massage, send to printers).

The requirements as they went out were much higher than they needed to be, because I decided telling them that we weren't stressing anything on the obsolete NT desktop repurposed as the test system might not please everyone.

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