Y(our) SaaS startup is obsolete

Over the past 6-12 months it’s become clear to me that every single SaaS startup — from Podia to Salesforce — is now obsolete.

It’s dreadfully obvious that there are more efficient, more effective ways of doing things than what SaaS startups are currently offering.

Knowing this, it should be the goal of all product leaders to identify how we can harness the inevitable workflow changes that AI and automation are creating — and integrate them into our products so we’re not left in the dust.

As with every technological revolution (e.g. desktop to mobile), some startups will embrace the necessary changes while others will be leapfrogged by new entrants who will erode the incumbents' market share over time.

Even though we as product leaders know that AI and automation will need to be a central part of our product — and that we’ll need to invent novel ways of doing things — we can’t yet predict what changes will resonate and what changes won’t.

When LLMs first hit the market, many of our competitors were quick to build features such as generating email subject lines with AI into their products. These AI features ended up being irrelevant as everyone now has an LLM in their pocket (as of February 2025, OpenAI has over 400 million active weekly users).

Our competitors acted too early and dedicated resources to something that didn’t really pan out (although, one could argue that it could have helped get their team’s AI juices flowing, making it a potential net benefit in the long run).

We also had these ideas, but instead of acting we decided to wait and listen, letting the world of AI and automation continue to cook.

That said, as soon as we have an idea, we need to act quickly and decisively to get it into the market. If it’s not working, we must go back to the drawing board or continue to iterate internally until we have something worthwhile.

We have some ideas, and we’re slowly taking the time to work on them internally.

While it’s not clear if these ideas will work, it’s been very fun and rewarding thinking through them. It’s almost like starting from scratch as you’re completely rethinking how your product will work in the years to come.

It’s never been clearer to me that every single SaaS startup built in the history of time is now obsolete and will need to make drastic changes over the next few years to stay relevant.

How will you adapt?