Or Are We Just Entering the Most Interesting Era of Software Yet?

Recently, we have started to see software stocks wobble. Investors are asking harder questions. Growth multiples are not what they used to be.
At the same time, AI agents are getting smarter every single week.

So the obvious question appears:

Is this the SaaS-pocalypse?

Short answer: not exactly.
Long answer: something big is changing. And if you are building SaaS, you need to understand what that change really means.

Let’s unpack it calmly. No dramatic background music required.

The Real Shift: Value Is Being Compressed

For the last 15 years, SaaS followed a relatively predictable formula:

1. Identify a manual workflow

2. Turn it into software

3. Add collaboration

4. Add analytics

5. Charge per seat

That playbook worked. Extremely well.

But AI is compressing value in a way we have not seen before.

Features that once required:
➡️ Months of engineering
➡️ A dedicated data team
➡️ Custom rule engines
➡️ Endless dashboard building

…can now be generated, automated, or replaced by AI in minutes.

That changes the economics and if your product is:

• A wrapper around publicly accessible data

• A task tracker without automation

• A thin UI layer over someone else’s API

• A workflow that can be replaced by a well-written prompt

… you are exposed.

Not because you built something bad. But because the barrier to replicating it just dropped dramatically.

The End of “Feature Moats”

There was a time when shipping a feature first was a moat.

Now? Features are increasingly commodities.

AI can:

📝 Draft reports
🗂️ Classify documents
📋 Extract insights
📑 Generate dashboards
✉️ Write emails
📃 Analyze contracts
📓 Summarize meetings
🖥️ Produce code

And it does not care how many engineers you have.

The old advantage was: “We built it before others.”
The new advantage is: “We integrated it deeper into the workflow than anyone else.”

That is a very different game.

But Here Is the Good News (And It Is Real)

This shift does not kill SaaS.

It kills lazy SaaS. And that is healthy. Small teams now have an unfair advantage.

You can:

✅ Design AI into your product from day one
✅ Build workflows assuming intelligence is embedded
✅ Rethink pricing around outcomes, not seats
✅ Move weekly, not quarterly
✅ Go deep into a vertical and dominate it

Large incumbents are constrained by their:

❌ Legacy codebases
❌ Enterprise contracts
❌ Slow decision cycles
❌ Political layers
❌ Revenue to protect

You have none of that. You have speed. And in an AI-native world, speed compounds.

From Software as a Tool to Software as an Operator

Traditional SaaS was a tool.

1. You logged in.

2. You clicked.

3. You updated fields.

4. You exported reports.

You did the work.

AI-native SaaS starts to behave differently:

• Suggests actions

• Executes tasks

• Automates follow-ups

• Detects anomalies

• Writes summaries

• Drafts decisions

It becomes less of a dashboard and more of an operator.

Users will increasingly expect this. No one wakes up excited to “manage tasks.” They want outcomes. And AI allows software to move closer to outcomes.

The Pricing Earthquake

Seat-based pricing made sense when value scaled with the number of humans using the tool.

But what happens when:

• One AI agent replaces three seats?

• Automation reduces manual input?

• A team of five produces the output of twenty?

We will see more:

• Usage-based pricing

• Outcome-based pricing

• Hybrid models

• Performance-driven pricing

If your revenue depends purely on adding more seats, you might feel pressure. If your revenue depends on delivering measurable value, you have leverage. This is an opportunity to rethink monetization early.

Vertical Depth Wins

Generic horizontal tools will struggle.

Why?
Because AI models are generalists.

If you are building something generic, you are competing directly with general intelligence. And that is a tough fight. But if you go deep into a vertical:

• Healthcare compliance

• Maritime logistics

• Specialty insurance underwriting

• Coffee supply chain risk analysis

Now you are layering:

✔️ Domain expertise
✔️ Structured data
✔️ Workflow specificity
✔️ Industry nuance

AI becomes your engine, not your competitor. Vertical SaaS combined with AI is extremely powerful. It creates defensibility through context.

What Makes a SaaS Startup Resilient in 2026?
Here is what we are seeing:

1. Native AI Thinking

Do not bolt AI on as a feature. Design around it.

Ask:

What would this workflow look like if intelligence was embedded from day one?

What disappears?

What becomes autonomous?

2. Real Data Loops

Your moat is not the interface. It is the data loop.

If your product:

• Learns from usage

• Improves predictions

• Adapts recommendations

• Refines automation

You are compounding value.

If it does not learn, it stagnates.

3. Deep Workflow Integration

Surface-level features are fragile. Workflow-level integration is sticky.

When your software:

➖ Connects to core systems
➖ Becomes embedded in daily operations
➖ Handles critical decisions

It becomes difficult to replace.

Even if someone can replicate your feature list.

4. Speed of Iteration

In the AI era, product cycles compress.

The winning teams:

✅ Ship fast
✅ Test aggressively
✅ Kill features quickly
✅ Iterate weekly

Not quarterly roadmaps carved in stone.

The advantage is not perfection. It is adaptation.

So Is This the SaaS-pocalypse?

No.

It is the end of comfortable SaaS.

It is the end of:

• Selling dashboards as innovation

• Raising money on feature checklists

• Assuming incumbents will stay slow

It is the beginning of something more interesting.

Software that:

🧠 Thinks
💪 Acts
📖 Learns
📈 Improves

And startups that are:

• Lean

• Opinionated

• Vertical

• AI-native

Will thrive.

A Final Thought

Every technological shift feels like a threat when you look at it from the old model. It feels like leverage when you design for the new one. The companies that win in this cycle will be the ones that quietly rebuild their entire product around the assumption that intelligence is now cheap and abundant.

If you are building SaaS right now, this is not the time to panic. It is the time to rethink. And that is a far more exciting place to be.

Book a short discovery call with WeCraft.