Ask HN: Are SaaS businesses going to zero?

2 points | by nomilk 10 hours ago ago

12 comments

  • frasermarlow 10 hours ago ago

    At the moment, the economics of software are out of whack. It's not about agentic replacing traditional painstakingly coded applications, but more about the massive influx of capital, and the subsidies from the newcomers to try and gain ground and demonstrate aggressive growth. In the early 2000's, Facebook's growth was described as "selling dollar bills for 90 cents." That is where we are now. Nobody will know for sure where all this lands until companies have to demonstrate their worth through real profits and stable growth.

  • preflight 10 hours ago ago

    Personally, I think this is the trend we'll see.

    AI doesn't mean everyone will build their own software, at least not in the next 5-10 years. It means the unit economics have completely changed.

    If you're charging $100/seat - you need to completely refactor your business. We might see the end of the $1 million+/yr enterprise software contracts.

  • ShreyashM17 9 hours ago ago

    There is a nice quote I read in the book "Zero to one" from peter thiel, "Under perfect competition, in the long run no company makes an economic proft". Thats whats happening with SaaS.

  • mindmesh 9 hours ago ago

    The bigger shift might be pricing moving closer to actual usage/value instead of traditional per-seat SaaS pricing.

  • breckenedge 10 hours ago ago

    Yes. Probably not free, but yea, whatever it costs to keep the agents running to keep the lights on.

  • alexavilov 10 hours ago ago

    could be anything: competition is better now and legacy app looks outdated / less desirable, studios are having hard time and saving money, etc

  • rvz 10 hours ago ago

    Most will go to zero.

  • wazulu 10 hours ago ago

    ya that's crazy

  • streetcat1 10 hours ago ago

    Wait until token based pricing. And then the open AI / antropic IPO (This will be the top).

  • ares623 9 hours ago ago

    people are tightening their belts. Sadly for SaaS, you can't eat software, and neither can it keep you dry and warm.

  • wazulu 10 hours ago ago

    claude

  • affordex 10 hours ago ago

    [dead]