SaaS companies have had a relatively steady playing field for the last 10 years. No major disruptions have put off the steady growth and adoption of SaaS.
But now generative AI and large language models are looking like the next disruptive technology platform change.
I think it will be a disruptive platform too. Even for those practical SaaS companies that aren’t about slinging sexy buzzwords to eager investors.
It’s too early to tell exactly how it will play out in a year or two.
I’d say there’s a 50% chance that the game of growing a valuable software company will be very different two years from now in most of these areas:
- Different ways to create and deliver software products
- Different ways to go to market and engage with customers
- Different ways to scale efficiently without big funding
- Different competition and ways of competing
- Different funding and exit strategies
- Different business models and pricing
Generative AI technologies are progressing and improving so quickly that it’s hard to predict what exactly will happen.
This is a huge opportunity for nimble smaller companies that can find leverage in most areas of their businesses from new AI tech.
I’m trying to find the 10X benefits from these new tools too.
I have lived through many previous disruptive tech waves, starting with initial PC adoption, then Internet 1.0 and Web 2.0, then mobile/social with cheap bandwidth and ever-growing computing power, then B2B SaaS.
The speedy innovators who rode the new waves won big and the old-guard laggards who didn’t keep up lost big, in each one of those waves.
It’s still very early, so I don’t know exactly how this will play out with Generative AI disruption.
But I’m betting that it will play out in disruptive ways for the B2B software industry in the next few years, in both positive and negative ways.
I’m not making any specific predictions other than change is coming.
I’m spending at least an hour a day seeing what is getting created and playing with GPT tools myself. It’s changing every week and month.
I think this is good news for savvy, practical software founders who are solving big customer problems in creative and efficient ways.
How are you thinking about and preparing to make the most of the GPT AI wave?
