3 ms·

it's not the end of software, there will be infinitely more of it it's the end of 80-90% margins that the valley coasted on for the last 20 years. Salesforces

by m_ke 8mo ago

it's not the end of software, there will be infinitely more of it it's the end of 80-90% margins that the valley coasted on for the last 20 years. Salesforces of the world will not lose to an LLM, they will lose to thousands of tiny teams that outship them and beat them on cost instead of 7 figure contracts you'll have customized tailored tools for enterprises, and on the other end you'll have a custom nearly free CRM for every persona this also means that VCs will stop investing in it, unless it's a platform with network effects and heavy lock in

ethbr1 8mo ago
Alternative take, in light of upthread -- Salesforce, SAP, et al. are positioned to be the biggest beneficiaries of this. Because their product is actually two things: (1) a UI/app & (2) a highly curated data model. My imagined future... they just stop building (1), or invest much less in it, and focus on (2). If they can build a compelling data foundation (ingest / processing / storage / exposing) + do much less work to still cover 80% of UI functionality + offload the remaining 20% of work onto customers, that looks defensible financially and strategically. There's a ton of feature requests that are driven by a few customers. Aka the "You're using it wrong. We don't care, we want it to do X" cases There are very few VP+'s out there that would take on strategic data integrity risk in exchange for anything, and as new SaaS code quality likely goes down (lets be honest) the imprimatur of a "known name" on the data side becomes more important.
- versteegen 8mo ago
  Agreed, and here's a real example from a tiny startup: Clickup's web app is too damn slow and bloated with features and UI, so we created emacs modes to access and edit Clickup workspaces (lists, kanban boards, docs, etc) via the API. Just some limited parts we care about. I was initially skeptical that it would work well or at all, but wow, it really has significantly improved the usefulness of Clickup by removing barriers.
  - m_ke 8mo ago
    you should try some markdown files in git
    - ethbr1 8mo ago
      I think you completely missed the point of this thread: rolling ones own data model is a non-negligible cost.
      - m_ke 8mo ago
        you missed the boat on natural language being the new interface best orgs will own their data and have full history in version control so that it's easier for LLMs and humans to work with, not walled garden traps
        versteegen 8mo ago
        Sure, depending on the particular product, having control and direct local access to the data would be desirable or deal breaker. But for this Clickup integration that's not so important to us (we can duplicate where necessary), while still using Clickup lets us use all the other features we can get via the web app. (The emacs mode includes an MCP server)
        ethbr1 8mo ago
        Natural language and LLMs as a core corporate data repository is insane.
sublinear 8mo ago
> unless it's a platform with network effects and heavy lock in I'm always slightly amused when buzzwords are thrown around vaguely such as "network effect" and "lock in". Those are not entirely a matter of a better sales pitch or bandwagoning. They're about the actual product. > they will lose to thousands of tiny teams that outship them and beat them on cost They won't, but this is the actual reason. Nobody likes dealing with support or maintenance, and having to reach out to tiny teams is death by a million papercuts for the end user too. The established players such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, etc. have a mature product that justifies the 7-figure contract price, and there are always lower tiers of the same product for those who are that price sensitive.
- m_ke 8mo ago
  i'm talking about ubers, airbnbs, amazons, googles and facebooks of the world, marketplace software that aggregates supply and demand > They won't, but this is the actual reason. Nobody likes dealing with support or maintenance, and having to reach out to tiny teams is death by a million papercuts for the end user too. you will have thousands of linear like products eating the slow moving jiras of the world. great small product driven teams, not slop thrown together by your mom AI raises the ceiling much further than the floor and it raises the floor a ton. the best software, movies, etc will still be produced by experts in their field, they'll just be able to do way more for less. the bottleneck at large orgs is communication already, this will get even worse when time to produce stuff goes way down. big cos will drown in slop and are probably better off starting from scratch

by m_ke 8mo ago

ethbr1 8mo ago

Alternative take, in light of upthread -- Salesforce, SAP, et al. are positioned to be the biggest beneficiaries of this. Because their product is actually two things: (1) a UI/app & (2) a highly curated data model. My imagined future... they just stop building (1), or invest much less in it, and focus on (2). If they can build a compelling data foundation (ingest / processing / storage / exposing) + do much less work to still cover 80% of UI functionality + offload the remaining 20% of work onto customers, that looks defensible financially and strategically. There's a ton of feature requests that are driven by a few customers. Aka the "You're using it wrong. We don't care, we want it to do X" cases There are very few VP+'s out there that would take on strategic data integrity risk in exchange for anything, and as new SaaS code quality likely goes down (lets be honest) the imprimatur of a "known name" on the data side becomes more important.

versteegen 8mo ago
Agreed, and here's a real example from a tiny startup: Clickup's web app is too damn slow and bloated with features and UI, so we created emacs modes to access and edit Clickup workspaces (lists, kanban boards, docs, etc) via the API. Just some limited parts we care about. I was initially skeptical that it would work well or at all, but wow, it really has significantly improved the usefulness of Clickup by removing barriers.
- m_ke 8mo ago
  you should try some markdown files in git
  - ethbr1 8mo ago
    I think you completely missed the point of this thread: rolling ones own data model is a non-negligible cost.
    - m_ke 8mo ago
      you missed the boat on natural language being the new interface best orgs will own their data and have full history in version control so that it's easier for LLMs and humans to work with, not walled garden traps
      - versteegen 8mo ago
        Sure, depending on the particular product, having control and direct local access to the data would be desirable or deal breaker. But for this Clickup integration that's not so important to us (we can duplicate where necessary), while still using Clickup lets us use all the other features we can get via the web app. (The emacs mode includes an MCP server)
      - ethbr1 8mo ago
        Natural language and LLMs as a core corporate data repository is insane.

sublinear 8mo ago

> unless it's a platform with network effects and heavy lock in I'm always slightly amused when buzzwords are thrown around vaguely such as "network effect" and "lock in". Those are not entirely a matter of a better sales pitch or bandwagoning. They're about the actual product. > they will lose to thousands of tiny teams that outship them and beat them on cost They won't, but this is the actual reason. Nobody likes dealing with support or maintenance, and having to reach out to tiny teams is death by a million papercuts for the end user too. The established players such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, etc. have a mature product that justifies the 7-figure contract price, and there are always lower tiers of the same product for those who are that price sensitive.

m_ke 8mo ago
i'm talking about ubers, airbnbs, amazons, googles and facebooks of the world, marketplace software that aggregates supply and demand > They won't, but this is the actual reason. Nobody likes dealing with support or maintenance, and having to reach out to tiny teams is death by a million papercuts for the end user too. you will have thousands of linear like products eating the slow moving jiras of the world. great small product driven teams, not slop thrown together by your mom AI raises the ceiling much further than the floor and it raises the floor a ton. the best software, movies, etc will still be produced by experts in their field, they'll just be able to do way more for less. the bottleneck at large orgs is communication already, this will get even worse when time to produce stuff goes way down. big cos will drown in slop and are probably better off starting from scratch