6 ms·

Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

55 points by Adrig 2mo ago

lekevicius 2mo ago
Unrelated, but since I see that the author posted this to HN: for a reader like me who likes to select text / fidget with mouse clicks as I read, this website is a nightmare.
- nchmy 2mo ago
  WTF?!? That is INSANE
- featherless 2mo ago
  Omg the effect gives me physical jitters
- AlienRobot 2mo ago
  https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Yeah my bad, this is a fun effect for the landing, didn't think much of it when publishing the first article, fixing now, thanks for feedback!
- sss111 2mo ago
  I actually like the creativity
- swiftcoder 2mo ago
  I don't know, I feel like my OCD clicking has finally been rewarded appropriately. Usually it just results in navigating to weird places via links that are hidden in the formatting. But this time it was delightful! And I was rewarded with a game!
  - Adrig 2mo ago
    Glad to see I'm not alone! I removed it from the articles pages, but you can still go wild on the index page. BTW my high score is 1626
- djoldman 2mo ago
  You might want to try what I do: run JS in allowlist mode: https://github.com/maximelebreton/quick-javascript-switcher https://github.com/maximelebreton/quick-javascript-switcher By default, I don't run into these problems and save a lot of compute!
- sodapopcan 2mo ago
  Has it been fixed? What was the effect, I'm so curious now.
  - Adrig 2mo ago
    Yes, disabled on the heavy text pages, still present on the home page!
    - sodapopcan 2mo ago
      Oh, haha! I actually love shit like this, but ya, not in a blog as I'm also a mouse-fidgetter. You could tone activating it down a bit by only activating it on a quick click and not at all if there is selected text [/END advice-no-one-asked-me-for]
skiing_crawling 2mo ago
This has that weird "AI written" sentence structure.
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Fable helped me edit since I'm not a native English speaker, so I might not catch these subtleties. Thought and structure are my own
  - jerf 2mo ago
    A general question for HN: Are there any translation services that I can recommend that people use instead just asking a standard AI to translate in the naive way? I'm saddened by the number of times I'm seeing non-native speakers get tarred with using an AI because the naive way an LLM translates slathers its own style on top of the translation rather than being a more faithful translation.
    - ornornor 2mo ago
      DeepL is pretty decent.
    - Adrig 2mo ago
      Standard translation services lack the understanding of LLMs and LLMs are hilariously prone to these AI tells, even when you ask to avoid them. I try to learn writing and copywriting directly in english to avoid the awkward translation effect, but I focus more on the rythm, structure and content than the prasing itself
    - bbg2401 2mo ago
      > because the naive way an LLM translates slathers its own style on top of the translation rather than being a more faithful translation. If you're sincere then I'm afraid you're being led on by the lazy. When tasked with translating a document, unless instructed otherwise, the LLM does not inject its own cliched stories, narrative structures and assorted engagement tricks.
chenster 2mo ago
Great post except that light grayish blue background is killing my eyes.
- nchmy 2mo ago
  yeah, strange given that the article is about design systems...
soulchild37 2mo ago
> Senior interface designer > The website fails accessibility color contrast
- hoppp 2mo ago
  He can design good looking interfaces, just not accessible ones I guess. I mean the website does look good, it's just hard to read.
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Text is WCAG AAA?
  - evilduck 2mo ago
    Chrome's built in Lighthouse scoring fails your site on lacking sufficient contrast. Subjectively, even without vision problems, I strongly dislike your choice also.
    - Adrig 2mo ago
      Thanks for the feedback. I wonder which system they use, WCAG is notoriously limited so I often use APCA and both cleared this combo
  - jaggederest 2mo ago
    Thus demonstrating that the final accessibility gate must be "the mark I human eyeball". Looks impossible to read without reader mode on my screen. Your "paper" choice is #bfbfc4 - even going to #ddd makes the APCA go from ~63 to 80 and would probably address the complaints handily. WCAG has a lot of gaps.
    - Adrig 2mo ago
      But human eyeballs can vary wildly, hence the need for tools. I'm the kind of person who uses the sepia mode for reading, so I didn't expect such strong discomfort from readers. This feedback surfaced a lot here, so it was a blind spot on my part. Anyway, did a quick fix, should be enough for now
hoppp 2mo ago
"Built a SaaS in a few hours" Yeah, okay so why would anyone buy it? They can build the same in a few hours.
- nchmy 2mo ago
  this is quite literally the point of the article...
  - hoppp 2mo ago
    I didn't read all because the background hurts my eyes.
    - worldthruword 2mo ago
      You can ask AI to read it. I do the same with HN comments as well.
ef2k 2mo ago
I don't know if it's a coincidence but this is the same thing an AI explained to me when prompted something like "what replaces SaaS now that AI can build most things on demand". That was like a year ago. I have no proof for this, but we might all just be getting similar responses from similar contextual bubbles and landing on the same conclusions.
fraywing 2mo ago
Adding to the topic rather than dog piling onto the website critique: I think "the context" the author defines also includes harder to unlock peripheral components that makes software products in 2026 defensible. For example, security is getting harder not easier. Enterprise trust rides on needing to have up-to-date knowledge on data regulation as well. Relationships, brand maturity, discovery; all of that becomes rarified as we continue to reduce the actual product launch curve -- but also the "harder to do" hygiene stuff that takes you from a "I vibe coded this in two days, good luck" to a "your successful company can count on us" type of hardening has become progressively more of a baseline requirement.
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Definitely. I wonder if this will be an increasing factor when choosing vendors. Will the security risk drive companies away from small software, due to their use of AI? Will we see a bundling of features in big established vendors? Will they invest more into in-house security? (Doubting the last one). For small apps used to deliver a service in my examples, I believe the risk surface is way narrower, which might make it more acceptable. For better of for worse
- Multicomp 2mo ago
  In a way, this new dynamic of 'everyone can code' reminds me of the Unbundling -> Bundling -> Unbundling cycle of how entertainment media went from 3 broadcast channels to cable channels to web videos to our current state of bundled streaming services, with no end in sight. Not to forget DVD shipping eras (Sony should not discontinue physical game sales, someone needs to get us silicon/holographic/terabyte recording media already), the focus is on the bundling/unbundling of software making. Slack + Salesforce vs 'we vibed our own chat and CRM just for us'...aka a Neo-SAP ERP program. It's a cambrian explosion of software where lots are going to learn in realtime that the code was never the value of a software engineer / software, the value is in the shared understanding of an information system or workflow or business value stream, that parts of which happen to run through digital information systems. By the time AI is done with us, its market effects mean in order to stay employable/added value beyond just widget-watchers, we will all be business strategy experts, or we will be algorithm-fed-doped-up mindless beasts, Morlocks vs Eloi, not because of AI itself, but because of the current rapaciousness of business leaders and an assumed trajectory where society doesn't adapt to social movements and actions now made possible by the existence of LLMs. Sidneote: the LLMs themselves are not IMO going to achieve AGI any time soon. There might be a compilation of disparate systems and LLMs form part of 'tissues' of an eventual AGI, but not currently.
actionfromafar 2mo ago
This feels a bit like motivated reasoning to me. This little tool of yours could instead be a seed you build around. Do you have access to a market? Yes? You are in a better position than ten thousand other vibe coders with a similar idea. No? If you have the stamina to pursue a market, you have more stamina than thousands of vibe coders who will just give up. Another way to say the same thing is that many (not all, of course) SAAS were already service with a software, especially when starting out.
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Possibly.. I admit I'm quite bad with distribution, hence why I usually work with a few clients long-term. But we do see a sharp rise in the release of apps, without the same tendency in use. [1] I do think there will be a place for SAAS, even micro-SAAS, but the competition will be fierce and I don't have a lot of hope for indiehacker without any "unfair advantages" like unique knowledge, data, network, etc [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ericseufert_this-ft-chart-visualizes-the-dramatic-increase-share-7469107226029273088-B3XS/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ericseufert_this-ft-chart-vis...
khasan222 2mo ago
Idk if I disagree completely but it feels like I do. To elaborate, I don’t think we will see less applications, I think we will see more with better features. My reasoning is people aren’t happy with many of the titans we have for certain apps, uber is my favorite example. Everyone hates the price it charges thinks it’s unfair, but to go back to a time before uber is unfathomable. That to me is a ripe market to be overtaken. What it really needs is a taxi driver or operator so fed up with the current system they spend their energy organizing and making their own uber with less greed. For sure not every tool will become huge, but most of the tools we use nowadays started with someone having a problem, being frustrated with the status quo, and having the will and means to execute. The means necessary to execute get lower and lower everyday.
- pydry 2mo ago
  From what ive seen we see no more features and quality is getting worse. OP is ascribing magical powers to AI which it does not have. sure, it can replace a shitty poorly coded todo app. but nobody wanted that anyway.
  - khasan222 2mo ago
    I think people will get way better at wrangling code with ai as time passes
- JackSlateur 2mo ago
  Bad example: uber is not a saas at all It's a network.
  - khasan222 2mo ago
    Isn’t it saas that facilitates a network with a specific goal in mind?
  - owebmaster 2mo ago
    Uber is literally a software as a transport service
  - 2mo ago
mattm 2mo ago
> I built a SaaS in a few hours. It does its job better than tools people pay real money for. It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them. > Whatever niche tool you’re sketching this week, a thousand people can prompt a working version by Sunday night A lot of people on HN are naturally builders. For them it's fun to play around with AI and see what can be built. Not everyone is like that. For individuals, how many people actually want to spend their weekends building a niche tool for themselves vs just paying a few dollars a month to access something that does the job even though it may not be perfect? For businesses, the buy vs. build tradeoff does now have some new compelling evidence in favour of "buy" but there's still maintenance needed for the service internally, there will be people with feature requests for it. Before you know it, the company is diverting resources away from their core business for a support tool that doesn't really drive impact. I think we'll see more options in the marketplace as individuals will be able to get started more easily but SaaS is far from dead.
- willio58 2mo ago
  > It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them. Fully agreed. It's also just a time saver. People are lazy, and I don't mean that in a bad way, just that people don't really want to sit there and explain to an agent exactly what they want software to function like. In fact, most people don't even actually know what they want software to function like. It doesn't just stop at humans either. When I recently started creating my smart budgeting app, Claude pointed me to use Clerk for auth. So not even the AI wants to build everything from scratch.
  - cadamsdotcom 2mo ago
    To be fair to Claude on the Clerk thing, I had my agent build session management and auth from scratch, then beefed it up with all the best practice advice, and and and. It took me an extra day of agent-prodding and code review. And I still will have to add SSO and Google/whoever sign-in and passkeys and 2FA at some point. Using Clerk would've avoided that, but at a permanent cost of one more dependency.
MattPerry 2mo ago
All of the comments about the color contrast and mouse click action caused this site to change while I was reading.
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Haha sorry about that. I made the changes quickly since a lot of people were reading, and I wanted people to focus on the content
risyachka 2mo ago
>> Because AI is crushing small standalone software The only thing AI is crushing is newcomers. Standalone software has expertise and distribution, the only 2 things that matter and that your new software does not have. Also the needs of a business have nothing to do with software you vibe code for yourself. Its compliance, backups, reliability. Not a few features claude did for you.
whinvik 2mo ago
I kind of get what the article is saying. But I am looking at it from a different perspective. The same set of things like skills, and custom tools etc can actually be used to get faster to the a product that kind of fits 1000 customers. But the change is that one can build even more custom things for some customers with those skills and tools. Last year I built a custom integration for a customer in 2 weeks. Now I can probably do it in 2 days. What does that mean for the future, I have no idea, but surely getting custom solutions like this would be more of a moat not less.
katsudo 2mo ago
[flagged]
tahoemph999 2mo ago
Before the industrial revolution or so somebody coming up in a craft would build a chunk of their toolset as part of that process. Even today many good (not necessarily software) engineers build some of their own tools. AI has made it much easier to build tooling to make your life better. Maybe some could be sold. But that isn't the intent and, as others have noted, can take significant additional effort. I have my own "bandsintown" for example because I want to avoid the advertisement shitshow. I have a number of very specific tools for building software. I doubt I ever package up any of this for use by others much less try to monetize it. That is the vibe I got from this article. This is a good concept to have in your (meta) toolbelt.
rkuodys 2mo ago
I expect full circle on this one. Short term - many enthusiasts build stuff. I can fully imagine someone in a given company creating something over the weekend and persuading manager to adopt the system. However, 6 months pass, the person now moved into new role or left a company, nobody knows the product and it becomes just another SaaS just without working support behind it. So for short term it is definitely bring some losses. Long term I think it will bite those who dropped the software. Over-customisation for the needs of everyone is probably here to stay in my opinion
- em-bee 2mo ago
  if it was built with AI then the knowledge of the builder is not really adding much. the next person coming in to fix issues is just going to feed the thing into an AI too, and ask the AI to fix the problem they have.
  - rkuodys 2mo ago
    While it can be true for technical state of the system, you dont have the business decision log, nor you have the intention, and most importantly - you need someone to assume responsibility for this mini system. While it can be easier for tech companies, but assuming non tech person (say customer success manager) creates something and is replaced by other none tech person - there is significant probability that new person is simply not interested in developing system that is not part of the role. Or if it is you just limited your set of potential candidates.
mariopt 2mo ago
I don't buy it, this is essentially vibe-consulting. Deal with one customer can be quite a nightmare, and honestly, sometimes using off the shelf solutions can result in saving time and money. Even today I'm creating SaaS, not every problem is simple to solve. Take a look at CRMs, there are thousands of CRMs due to enormous egos wanting to build "my way", "the way", "the superior way", "our company is not like others (LOL)", etc. At the end of the day it's just a database with CRUDish UI. My customers pay me to solve their problem well because they can not solve it themselves, when they do they just don't have the time. Reality check: I have been coding many products with all frontiers models: Still takes a lot of time and, surprise surprise!, money for tokens. Ironically software development became more expensive for serious software that won't vibe-break/vibe-delete-prod/vibe-delete-database.
sltr 2mo ago
Three days ago, Rob Walling (SaaS investor) refuted pretty convincingly the claim that genai kills SaaS. His life mission and wealth are bound up in SaaS. If he's not scared, nobody should be. https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-842-what-is-the-future-of-saas-in-an-ai-world-rob-solo https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-842-...
- em-bee 2mo ago
  or his success depends on his perceived confidence. meaning that maybe he is scared, but doesn't want to show it because it would make it worse. care to share some key takeaways? not really keen on listening to a half hour audio.
  - sltr 2mo ago
    Fair that motivated reasoning could be at play. Rob's audience is SaaS founders, but whether his listeners remain engaged and his sales funnel full does not influence how genai affects their businesses, and being duplicitous doesn't fit with his character. The episode was worth my time.
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Oh I love Rob, didn't catch this episode, thanks for sharing
sashagim 2mo ago
Some contrudictions in the article. Yes, Todo apps were always cheap to build, but some became large companies. Yes, the ai made the easy part easier. So why should the landscape change? Yes, technical people can build tools for themselves. Do they all really want to? What about non-technical people? Also, note - it's tools, not products. Tools help me achieve a specific goal. Products help me work better in a way I've not necessarily thought about myself. I do think one claim is spot on - as production costs go down customization becomes cheap. This makes it economically viable to build products, especially more complex ones, for niche markets. Hubspot for medical? No problem. MailChimp for music clubs? You got it. Ultimately, the value remained in the same place - create something people are willing to pay for. The economics might have changed, certainly for software development job market - but honestly, as a developer myself, I've always felt coding is not hard enough or valuable enough for the society to justify the insanely high salaries.
- Adrig 2mo ago
  > Todo apps were always cheap to build, but some became large companies The point is that simple apps like these have just become insanely competitive to distribute, and it's best not to think of it as mini businesses > Tools help me achieve a specific goal. Products help me work better in a way I've not necessarily thought about myself. For me a product = a packaged set of tools. What was interesting with the micro-saas wave is that a lot of people started to build products around one simple tool. It worked because sometimes a well-crafted one is better unbundled. Here's one example that thrived on this premise: https://www.bannerbear.com/ https://www.bannerbear.com/
chrisweekly 2mo ago
Awesome post. I think you're spot on w/ your insights. Also your "Design Jam" tool looks pretty cool.

55 points by Adrig 2mo ago

Unrelated, but since I see that the author posted this to HN: for a reader like me who likes to select text / fidget with mouse clicks as I read, this website is a nightmare.

nchmy 2mo ago
WTF?!? That is INSANE
featherless 2mo ago
Omg the effect gives me physical jitters
AlienRobot 2mo ago
https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
Adrig 2mo ago
Yeah my bad, this is a fun effect for the landing, didn't think much of it when publishing the first article, fixing now, thanks for feedback!
sss111 2mo ago
I actually like the creativity
swiftcoder 2mo ago
I don't know, I feel like my OCD clicking has finally been rewarded appropriately. Usually it just results in navigating to weird places via links that are hidden in the formatting. But this time it was delightful! And I was rewarded with a game!
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Glad to see I'm not alone! I removed it from the articles pages, but you can still go wild on the index page. BTW my high score is 1626
djoldman 2mo ago
You might want to try what I do: run JS in allowlist mode: https://github.com/maximelebreton/quick-javascript-switcher https://github.com/maximelebreton/quick-javascript-switcher By default, I don't run into these problems and save a lot of compute!
sodapopcan 2mo ago
Has it been fixed? What was the effect, I'm so curious now.
- Adrig 2mo ago
  Yes, disabled on the heavy text pages, still present on the home page!
  - sodapopcan 2mo ago
    Oh, haha! I actually love shit like this, but ya, not in a blog as I'm also a mouse-fidgetter. You could tone activating it down a bit by only activating it on a quick click and not at all if there is selected text [/END advice-no-one-asked-me-for]

skiing_crawling 2mo ago

This has that weird "AI written" sentence structure.

Adrig 2mo ago
Fable helped me edit since I'm not a native English speaker, so I might not catch these subtleties. Thought and structure are my own
- jerf 2mo ago
  A general question for HN: Are there any translation services that I can recommend that people use instead just asking a standard AI to translate in the naive way? I'm saddened by the number of times I'm seeing non-native speakers get tarred with using an AI because the naive way an LLM translates slathers its own style on top of the translation rather than being a more faithful translation.
  - ornornor 2mo ago
    DeepL is pretty decent.
  - Adrig 2mo ago
    Standard translation services lack the understanding of LLMs and LLMs are hilariously prone to these AI tells, even when you ask to avoid them. I try to learn writing and copywriting directly in english to avoid the awkward translation effect, but I focus more on the rythm, structure and content than the prasing itself
  - bbg2401 2mo ago
    > because the naive way an LLM translates slathers its own style on top of the translation rather than being a more faithful translation. If you're sincere then I'm afraid you're being led on by the lazy. When tasked with translating a document, unless instructed otherwise, the LLM does not inject its own cliched stories, narrative structures and assorted engagement tricks.

chenster 2mo ago

Great post except that light grayish blue background is killing my eyes.

nchmy 2mo ago
yeah, strange given that the article is about design systems...

soulchild37 2mo ago

> Senior interface designer > The website fails accessibility color contrast

hoppp 2mo ago
He can design good looking interfaces, just not accessible ones I guess. I mean the website does look good, it's just hard to read.
Adrig 2mo ago
Text is WCAG AAA?
- evilduck 2mo ago
  Chrome's built in Lighthouse scoring fails your site on lacking sufficient contrast. Subjectively, even without vision problems, I strongly dislike your choice also.
  - Adrig 2mo ago
    Thanks for the feedback. I wonder which system they use, WCAG is notoriously limited so I often use APCA and both cleared this combo
- jaggederest 2mo ago
  Thus demonstrating that the final accessibility gate must be "the mark I human eyeball". Looks impossible to read without reader mode on my screen. Your "paper" choice is #bfbfc4 - even going to #ddd makes the APCA go from ~63 to 80 and would probably address the complaints handily. WCAG has a lot of gaps.
  - Adrig 2mo ago
    But human eyeballs can vary wildly, hence the need for tools. I'm the kind of person who uses the sepia mode for reading, so I didn't expect such strong discomfort from readers. This feedback surfaced a lot here, so it was a blind spot on my part. Anyway, did a quick fix, should be enough for now

hoppp 2mo ago

"Built a SaaS in a few hours" Yeah, okay so why would anyone buy it? They can build the same in a few hours.

nchmy 2mo ago
this is quite literally the point of the article...
- hoppp 2mo ago
  I didn't read all because the background hurts my eyes.
  - worldthruword 2mo ago
    You can ask AI to read it. I do the same with HN comments as well.

ef2k 2mo ago

I don't know if it's a coincidence but this is the same thing an AI explained to me when prompted something like "what replaces SaaS now that AI can build most things on demand". That was like a year ago. I have no proof for this, but we might all just be getting similar responses from similar contextual bubbles and landing on the same conclusions.

fraywing 2mo ago

Adding to the topic rather than dog piling onto the website critique: I think "the context" the author defines also includes harder to unlock peripheral components that makes software products in 2026 defensible. For example, security is getting harder not easier. Enterprise trust rides on needing to have up-to-date knowledge on data regulation as well. Relationships, brand maturity, discovery; all of that becomes rarified as we continue to reduce the actual product launch curve -- but also the "harder to do" hygiene stuff that takes you from a "I vibe coded this in two days, good luck" to a "your successful company can count on us" type of hardening has become progressively more of a baseline requirement.

Adrig 2mo ago
Definitely. I wonder if this will be an increasing factor when choosing vendors. Will the security risk drive companies away from small software, due to their use of AI? Will we see a bundling of features in big established vendors? Will they invest more into in-house security? (Doubting the last one). For small apps used to deliver a service in my examples, I believe the risk surface is way narrower, which might make it more acceptable. For better of for worse
Multicomp 2mo ago
In a way, this new dynamic of 'everyone can code' reminds me of the Unbundling -> Bundling -> Unbundling cycle of how entertainment media went from 3 broadcast channels to cable channels to web videos to our current state of bundled streaming services, with no end in sight. Not to forget DVD shipping eras (Sony should not discontinue physical game sales, someone needs to get us silicon/holographic/terabyte recording media already), the focus is on the bundling/unbundling of software making. Slack + Salesforce vs 'we vibed our own chat and CRM just for us'...aka a Neo-SAP ERP program. It's a cambrian explosion of software where lots are going to learn in realtime that the code was never the value of a software engineer / software, the value is in the shared understanding of an information system or workflow or business value stream, that parts of which happen to run through digital information systems. By the time AI is done with us, its market effects mean in order to stay employable/added value beyond just widget-watchers, we will all be business strategy experts, or we will be algorithm-fed-doped-up mindless beasts, Morlocks vs Eloi, not because of AI itself, but because of the current rapaciousness of business leaders and an assumed trajectory where society doesn't adapt to social movements and actions now made possible by the existence of LLMs. Sidneote: the LLMs themselves are not IMO going to achieve AGI any time soon. There might be a compilation of disparate systems and LLMs form part of 'tissues' of an eventual AGI, but not currently.

actionfromafar 2mo ago

This feels a bit like motivated reasoning to me. This little tool of yours could instead be a seed you build around. Do you have access to a market? Yes? You are in a better position than ten thousand other vibe coders with a similar idea. No? If you have the stamina to pursue a market, you have more stamina than thousands of vibe coders who will just give up. Another way to say the same thing is that many (not all, of course) SAAS were already service with a software, especially when starting out.

Adrig 2mo ago
Possibly.. I admit I'm quite bad with distribution, hence why I usually work with a few clients long-term. But we do see a sharp rise in the release of apps, without the same tendency in use. [1] I do think there will be a place for SAAS, even micro-SAAS, but the competition will be fierce and I don't have a lot of hope for indiehacker without any "unfair advantages" like unique knowledge, data, network, etc [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ericseufert_this-ft-chart-visualizes-the-dramatic-increase-share-7469107226029273088-B3XS/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ericseufert_this-ft-chart-vis...

khasan222 2mo ago

Idk if I disagree completely but it feels like I do. To elaborate, I don’t think we will see less applications, I think we will see more with better features. My reasoning is people aren’t happy with many of the titans we have for certain apps, uber is my favorite example. Everyone hates the price it charges thinks it’s unfair, but to go back to a time before uber is unfathomable. That to me is a ripe market to be overtaken. What it really needs is a taxi driver or operator so fed up with the current system they spend their energy organizing and making their own uber with less greed. For sure not every tool will become huge, but most of the tools we use nowadays started with someone having a problem, being frustrated with the status quo, and having the will and means to execute. The means necessary to execute get lower and lower everyday.

pydry 2mo ago
From what ive seen we see no more features and quality is getting worse. OP is ascribing magical powers to AI which it does not have. sure, it can replace a shitty poorly coded todo app. but nobody wanted that anyway.
- khasan222 2mo ago
  I think people will get way better at wrangling code with ai as time passes
JackSlateur 2mo ago
Bad example: uber is not a saas at all It's a network.
- khasan222 2mo ago
  Isn’t it saas that facilitates a network with a specific goal in mind?
- owebmaster 2mo ago
  Uber is literally a software as a transport service
- 2mo ago

mattm 2mo ago

> I built a SaaS in a few hours. It does its job better than tools people pay real money for. It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them. > Whatever niche tool you’re sketching this week, a thousand people can prompt a working version by Sunday night A lot of people on HN are naturally builders. For them it's fun to play around with AI and see what can be built. Not everyone is like that. For individuals, how many people actually want to spend their weekends building a niche tool for themselves vs just paying a few dollars a month to access something that does the job even though it may not be perfect? For businesses, the buy vs. build tradeoff does now have some new compelling evidence in favour of "buy" but there's still maintenance needed for the service internally, there will be people with feature requests for it. Before you know it, the company is diverting resources away from their core business for a support tool that doesn't really drive impact. I think we'll see more options in the marketplace as individuals will be able to get started more easily but SaaS is far from dead.

willio58 2mo ago
> It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them. Fully agreed. It's also just a time saver. People are lazy, and I don't mean that in a bad way, just that people don't really want to sit there and explain to an agent exactly what they want software to function like. In fact, most people don't even actually know what they want software to function like. It doesn't just stop at humans either. When I recently started creating my smart budgeting app, Claude pointed me to use Clerk for auth. So not even the AI wants to build everything from scratch.
- cadamsdotcom 2mo ago
  To be fair to Claude on the Clerk thing, I had my agent build session management and auth from scratch, then beefed it up with all the best practice advice, and and and. It took me an extra day of agent-prodding and code review. And I still will have to add SSO and Google/whoever sign-in and passkeys and 2FA at some point. Using Clerk would've avoided that, but at a permanent cost of one more dependency.

MattPerry 2mo ago

All of the comments about the color contrast and mouse click action caused this site to change while I was reading.

Adrig 2mo ago
Haha sorry about that. I made the changes quickly since a lot of people were reading, and I wanted people to focus on the content

risyachka 2mo ago

>> Because AI is crushing small standalone software The only thing AI is crushing is newcomers. Standalone software has expertise and distribution, the only 2 things that matter and that your new software does not have. Also the needs of a business have nothing to do with software you vibe code for yourself. Its compliance, backups, reliability. Not a few features claude did for you.

whinvik 2mo ago

I kind of get what the article is saying. But I am looking at it from a different perspective. The same set of things like skills, and custom tools etc can actually be used to get faster to the a product that kind of fits 1000 customers. But the change is that one can build even more custom things for some customers with those skills and tools. Last year I built a custom integration for a customer in 2 weeks. Now I can probably do it in 2 days. What does that mean for the future, I have no idea, but surely getting custom solutions like this would be more of a moat not less.

katsudo 2mo ago

[flagged]

tahoemph999 2mo ago

Before the industrial revolution or so somebody coming up in a craft would build a chunk of their toolset as part of that process. Even today many good (not necessarily software) engineers build some of their own tools. AI has made it much easier to build tooling to make your life better. Maybe some could be sold. But that isn't the intent and, as others have noted, can take significant additional effort. I have my own "bandsintown" for example because I want to avoid the advertisement shitshow. I have a number of very specific tools for building software. I doubt I ever package up any of this for use by others much less try to monetize it. That is the vibe I got from this article. This is a good concept to have in your (meta) toolbelt.

rkuodys 2mo ago

I expect full circle on this one. Short term - many enthusiasts build stuff. I can fully imagine someone in a given company creating something over the weekend and persuading manager to adopt the system. However, 6 months pass, the person now moved into new role or left a company, nobody knows the product and it becomes just another SaaS just without working support behind it. So for short term it is definitely bring some losses. Long term I think it will bite those who dropped the software. Over-customisation for the needs of everyone is probably here to stay in my opinion

em-bee 2mo ago
if it was built with AI then the knowledge of the builder is not really adding much. the next person coming in to fix issues is just going to feed the thing into an AI too, and ask the AI to fix the problem they have.
- rkuodys 2mo ago
  While it can be true for technical state of the system, you dont have the business decision log, nor you have the intention, and most importantly - you need someone to assume responsibility for this mini system. While it can be easier for tech companies, but assuming non tech person (say customer success manager) creates something and is replaced by other none tech person - there is significant probability that new person is simply not interested in developing system that is not part of the role. Or if it is you just limited your set of potential candidates.

mariopt 2mo ago

I don't buy it, this is essentially vibe-consulting. Deal with one customer can be quite a nightmare, and honestly, sometimes using off the shelf solutions can result in saving time and money. Even today I'm creating SaaS, not every problem is simple to solve. Take a look at CRMs, there are thousands of CRMs due to enormous egos wanting to build "my way", "the way", "the superior way", "our company is not like others (LOL)", etc. At the end of the day it's just a database with CRUDish UI. My customers pay me to solve their problem well because they can not solve it themselves, when they do they just don't have the time. Reality check: I have been coding many products with all frontiers models: Still takes a lot of time and, surprise surprise!, money for tokens. Ironically software development became more expensive for serious software that won't vibe-break/vibe-delete-prod/vibe-delete-database.

sltr 2mo ago

Three days ago, Rob Walling (SaaS investor) refuted pretty convincingly the claim that genai kills SaaS. His life mission and wealth are bound up in SaaS. If he's not scared, nobody should be. https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-842-what-is-the-future-of-saas-in-an-ai-world-rob-solo https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-842-...

em-bee 2mo ago
or his success depends on his perceived confidence. meaning that maybe he is scared, but doesn't want to show it because it would make it worse. care to share some key takeaways? not really keen on listening to a half hour audio.
- sltr 2mo ago
  Fair that motivated reasoning could be at play. Rob's audience is SaaS founders, but whether his listeners remain engaged and his sales funnel full does not influence how genai affects their businesses, and being duplicitous doesn't fit with his character. The episode was worth my time.
Adrig 2mo ago
Oh I love Rob, didn't catch this episode, thanks for sharing

sashagim 2mo ago

Some contrudictions in the article. Yes, Todo apps were always cheap to build, but some became large companies. Yes, the ai made the easy part easier. So why should the landscape change? Yes, technical people can build tools for themselves. Do they all really want to? What about non-technical people? Also, note - it's tools, not products. Tools help me achieve a specific goal. Products help me work better in a way I've not necessarily thought about myself. I do think one claim is spot on - as production costs go down customization becomes cheap. This makes it economically viable to build products, especially more complex ones, for niche markets. Hubspot for medical? No problem. MailChimp for music clubs? You got it. Ultimately, the value remained in the same place - create something people are willing to pay for. The economics might have changed, certainly for software development job market - but honestly, as a developer myself, I've always felt coding is not hard enough or valuable enough for the society to justify the insanely high salaries.

Adrig 2mo ago
> Todo apps were always cheap to build, but some became large companies The point is that simple apps like these have just become insanely competitive to distribute, and it's best not to think of it as mini businesses > Tools help me achieve a specific goal. Products help me work better in a way I've not necessarily thought about myself. For me a product = a packaged set of tools. What was interesting with the micro-saas wave is that a lot of people started to build products around one simple tool. It worked because sometimes a well-crafted one is better unbundled. Here's one example that thrived on this premise: https://www.bannerbear.com/ https://www.bannerbear.com/

chrisweekly 2mo ago

Awesome post. I think you're spot on w/ your insights. Also your "Design Jam" tool looks pretty cool.