An interesting take on how AI and SaaS is gonna play out, and how AI isn’t a feature but a shift in how companies deliver their end product.
This is how the $1.3 trillion SaaS apocalypse will actually play out
50% of SaaS companies will die. Not because AI killed them, but because they refused to kill parts of themselves.
The companies that can't imagine cannibalizing their own business models will disappear first.
The project management tool that charges per seat but won't build AI that reduces headcount.
The customer support platform that bills by ticket volume but won't create AI that slashes ticket numbers.
The marketing automation tool that charges by contact count but refuses to build AI that makes small teams as effective as large ones.
The analytics platform that sells dashboards instead of insights and can't imagine a world where the questions get answered automatically.
They'll cling to outdated pricing models while watching their customers leave for competitors who understand that AI isn't a feature, it's a fundamental shift in how software delivers value.
The SaaS companies that survive will do something counterintuitive: they'll actively work to make their traditional metrics look worse in the short term.
THE REALITY THAT NO-ONE IS TALKING ABOUT:
SaaS companies of today are the AI companies of tomorrow.
They'll build AI that reduces the number of users needed, automates tasks they used to charge for, and eliminates entire categories of problems they once solved.
They'll find new ways to capture value that align with the efficiency they're creating.
The best SaaS companies sell solutions to specific problems in specific industries.
Those problems don't disappear with AI. If anything, they just get solved more elegantly.
Shopify won't be replaced by an AI shopping assistant, they'll build it themselves.
HubSpot won't be killed by AI content tools, they'll integrate them so deeply you'll forget they weren't always there. You even have the founder of hubspot incubating his own agent companies.
My updated thinking on SaaS and AI is this:
In 5 years, we won't talk about "AI companies" vs "SaaS companies".
Just like we don't distinguish between "internet companies" and "companies" anymore.
SaaS isn't going to die.
SaaS is just going through puberty.
