SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.

Apr 12, 2026 14:52 · 5:06 · English · Whisper Turbo · 1 Hátalar
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
The CEO of Microsoft got on a podcast and said three words that broke the internet.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
SaaS is dead. That was December 2024. Since then, the entire SaaS stock index dropped 6.5%.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
At the same time, the S&P 500 went up nearly 18%. And this gap is not coincidence. Something is
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
breaking and I want to explain exactly what it is because once you understand it, you will see
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
why this is either the worst time or the best time to be building software. All of this is depending
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
on which side of the shift you are on. So to understand what's breaking, you first need to
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
understand why SaaS worked so well for so long. Basically, the whole model was built on one simple
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
bet. Companies grow. They hire more people and more people means more seats. More seats means more
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
revenue. And all of this automatically without the SaaS company having to sell harder. So you land a 50
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
person company on your tool. They grow to 80. You just made more money in your sleep without doing
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
anything. And that cycle ran for 20 years. It made SaaS one of the most attractive business models
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
ever created. It had predictable revenue, high margins, low cancellations, and investors loved
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
it. The market rewarded it. But that cycle had one assumption baked into it. They assumed that head
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
count would always grow. And that assumption is now wrong. Companies are doing more with fewer people.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
AI handles the work that used to require five hires. So instead of growing headcount, companies are
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
shrinking it or freezing it. Well, the output actually stays the exact same. Fewer people means fewer
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
seats and fewer seats means the whole cycle stops. And you can already see this in the data. The average
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
number of SaaS tools per company has been shrinking. Midsize companies cut their software stack by 29%
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
in 2025. Cancellations across the industry hit the highest level since 2019. Not because the tools
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
stopped working, but because companies are rethinking whether they need them all. And here is where it gets
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
worse for the big players. Their clients are now walking into renewal calls and threatening to build
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
their own version. The CFO looks at the vendor and says, you know what? Our developers can build this
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
themselves with the AI tools that we now have. So either give us 30% off or we walk and create it
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
ourselves. And that conversation is happening everywhere right now. The pricing pressure is actually just a
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
surface problem. The deeper issue is what Nadella was pointing at. His argument was this. Most SaaS
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
products are essentially just a database with a set of business rules coded around it. And those rules,
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
the logic that makes the tool useful, that's what companies paid for. That's what justified the price.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
But those rules are now moving into AI agents. The thinking layer is separating from the product.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
And once that happens, the database underneath becomes almost replaceable. IDC published research
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
saying that by 2028, per-seat pricing will effectively be obsolete. 70% of software companies
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
will be forced to completely rebuild how they charge. And that is not just a small adjustment.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
That's a whole new game entirely. So here's the question. If that collapse, what actually wins?
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
The companies getting squeezed are the ones built on the old model. They have old infrastructure to protect.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
Massive sale teams running the old playbook. Per-seat contracts they can't easily unwind.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
They're just full-on defending something. The people in the best position right now are building from scratch
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
with nothing to defend. On top of the same AI tools that are pulling everyone else apart. The cost to build
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
a focused working software product has never been lower. What used to take a team of 10 and a year
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
of budget can now be shipped by one or two people in a few weeks. The tools that are killing the old SaaS
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
are the exact same tools making it cheaper to build the replacements. And what replaces it does not look
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
like a traditional SaaS. It's not a dashboard with 40 features most people never touch. It's a focused
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
product that solves one specific problem and charges based on what it actually does for you.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
That's what works in this new environment. Small, specific and priced on real value. The irony of
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
this whole shift is that the same technology killing the old model is what makes building the new one
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
so accessible. The window to build something real without a big team or without a big budget has never
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
been wider than it is right now. So the question isn't whether SaaS as we know it breaks. It already
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
is. The question is whether you are watching it happen from the sideline or whether you take part.
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
Whether you are one of the people building what comes next. So if you are interested in building
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S… Speaker 1 (SaaS Is Dead. Here's What Wins Next.)
SaaS make sure to like and subscribe. A lot of more content like this is in the pipeline.

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