Readit NewsI see some of this, from the point of view that it's going to be cheaper to create bespoke solutions for problems. And perhaps a "neoSaaS" company is one that, from a very bare bones idea, can create your own implementation.
But, at the same time, there are two issues:
- Companies can be really complex. The "create a system and parametrise it" idea has been done before, and those parametrisation processes are pretty intensive and expensive. And the resulting project is not always to be guaranteed to be correct. Software development is a discovery process. The expensive part is way more in the discovery than in the writing the code.
- The best software around is the one that's opinionated. It doesn't fit all the use cases, but it presents you a way to operate that's consistent and forces you to think and operate in certain way. It guides you how to work and, once going downstream, they are a joy to work with. This requires a consistent product view and enforcing, knowing when to say "no" and what use cases not to cover, as they'll be detrimental from the experience. It's very difficult to create software like that, and trying to fit your use case I'll guarantee it won't happen.
These two things tension any creation of software, and I don't think they'll go away just because we have a magical tool that can code fast.
Your arguments are totally valid, niche tools will be alive and well. I think my take is that even in niche tools we will see a lot of generalization and more flexible niche tools will eventually win.
For six years I worked in a SaaS startup that built an applicant tracking system (a tool to manage recruitment efforts in big/mid-sized companies) tailored for the local market of the country we lived in. My experience tells me that our main value was in forcing them to rethink their recruitment processes, not adapting to their existing ones that were usually all over the place.
As much as I want to believe the opposite to be true as a “power user”, good tools often force you to adopt better practices, not the other way around.
The problem here is in definition. Context is quite diverse and better practice for team A is an absolute disaster for team B.
not everyone tangled himself with fibery or linear
lmao
malleable software? what a joke
Good article about it btw https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software/
A lot of people been saying this lately, that LLMs are going to make SaaS obsolete because you will be able to build the alternative yourself without the need to pay.
But (and I'll copy & paste a comment I wrote a few days ago) I disagree. This existed way before LLM. Open source alternatives to most products are already available. And install them and deploy them is much easier than do it with LLMs, and you get updates, etc.
People don't want the responsability to keep them updated, secured, deployed, etc. Paying a small amount will always be more convenient than to maintain it yourself. The issue was never coding it.
This is not what the article is about. Main idea is that rigid software can finally be replaced by flexible, since flexibility is no longer such expensive
This is the biggie; especially with B2B. It's really 3 months, these days. Many companies have the lifespan of a mayfly.
AI isn't the new reason for this. It's been getting worse and worse, in the last few years, as people have been selling companies; not products, but AI will accelerate the race to the bottom. One of the things that AI has afforded, is that the lowest-tier, bottom-feeding scammer, can now look every bit as polished and professional as a Fortune 50 company (often, even more).
So that means that not only is the SNR dropping, the "noise" is now a lot riskier and uglier.
Made my day. So true.