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[return to "AI is killing B2B SaaS"]
1. bandra+s01[view] [source] 2026-02-04 21:50:32
>>namany+(OP)
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 for it. I didn't understand it before I was in management either, but now that I'm in management I 100% get it.
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2. mym199+j81[view] [source] 2026-02-04 22:30:41
>>bandra+s01
We are certainly closer now to being able to prototype and go to market faster with a product. In one weekend is a little much but I think its hard to deny that building will continue to expedite. What most developers don't think about is that the marketing, sales, customer service are all non-trivial parts of the business/product and all require legwork that is more than just sitting at an IDE. The nail in the coffin is that the data is a large part of company moats, and new products need time in the market to get that. Migration is also a long process and risky...so to get customers, a newcomer needs to provide way more value than what the incumbent gives.

I imagine you're going to have people trying to automate the whole GTM lifecycle, but eventually the developer that thinks they can bootstrap a one man enterprise without actually doing any kind of social interaction will run into a wall.

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3. overfe+ud1[view] [source] 2026-02-04 22:59:41
>>mym199+j81
> We are certainly closer now to being able to prototype and go to market faster with a product.

What are the higher-order effects when anyone can do this, and *aaS becomes a market for Lemons?

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4. trhway+1h1[view] [source] 2026-02-04 23:19:58
>>overfe+ud1
in the 90-ies anyone could easily prototype with tools like Access (and all the other "4GL" tools which were similarly all the rage back then). That still didn't preclude companies from buying their major software from software vendors instead of doing it themselves.

In some sense having customer able to prototype what they want is a good thing. I did it myself as i was at the time on that side, and having a quick-whip-it tool was a good thing to quickly get some feature that was missing in the major software before that major software would add it (if at all). (And if one remembers for example Crystal Reports - while for "reports", it and the likes were in many senses such quick-whip-it tools for a lot of such customization that was doable by the customer.)

So, after initial aftershock - "Ahhhh, we don't need software companies anymore!" - we'll get to the state with software companies still doing their thing just with a lot of AI as specialization is one of the main thing in modern economy and AI becomes most powerful tools of the trade. (and various AI components themselves will be part of software delivery, like say a very fine-tuned model (hosted or on-premise) specific to the customer and software - Clippy on steroids)

(Of course some companies wouldn't survive the transition just like some companies didn't survive the transitions to client/server, cloud, etc. while some new companies will emerge like Anthropic has today or Borland had at the time)

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