I'm not convinced of this post's hopeful argument near the end. If you are doing SaaS as a way of making money and don't have a deep moat aside from the code itself, it will probably be dead in a few years. The AI agents of the future will choose free alternatives as a default over your paid software, and by the way said free alternatives are probably made using reliable AI agents and are high-quality and feature complete. AI agents also don't need your paid support or add-on services from your SaaS companies, and if everyone uses agents, nobody will be left to give you money.
As a technical person today, I wouldn't pay a $10/month SaaS subscription if I can login to my VPS and tell claude to install [alternate free software] self-hosted on it. The thing is, everyone is going to have access to this in a few years (if nothing else it will be through the next generation of ChatGPT/Claude artifacts), and the free options are going to get much better to fit any needs common enough to have a significant market size.
You probably need another moat like network effects or unique content to actually survive.
He spends a lot of words talking about how saving cognition is equivalent to saving resources, but seems to gloss over that saving money is also saving resources.
Given the token/$ exchange rates is likely only going to get better for actual money over time...
If his predictions come true it seems clear that if your software isn't free, it won't get used. Nothing introduces friction like having to open up a wallet and pay. It's somewhat telling that all of his examples of things that will survive don't cost money - although I don't think it's the argument he meant to be making given the "hope-ium" style argument he's pushing.
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Arguably, this is good long term. I personally think SaaS style recurring subscriptions are out of control, and most times a bad deal. But I also think it leaves a spot where I'm not sure what sort of career will exist in this space.
As a technical person today, I wouldn't pay a $10/month SaaS subscription if I can login to my VPS and tell claude to install [alternate free software] self-hosted on it. The thing is, everyone is going to have access to this in a few years (if nothing else it will be through the next generation of ChatGPT/Claude artifacts), and the free options are going to get much better to fit any needs common enough to have a significant market size.
You probably need another moat like network effects or unique content to actually survive.