It seems like every CRUD application under the sun has been built, and it is difficult to carve out any value that can be productized. Anyone know of anyone that started with Saas(Non AI) recently and was successful?
I felt the same way as a naive undergrad - "every piece of code worth writing is already in a library you can import". Very clearly not the case.<p>When it comes to SaaS, no one cares about AI vs non AI. What your customer cares about is "do you solve this problem that makes my job hell?"/"does this tool make me awesome at my job?"<p>How do I know this? I built the 200th uptime monitoring alternative to Pingdom four years ago, and I'm still getting customers in this age of AI.
Not even close. I work in German immigration. There are SaaS opportunities left and right. The same is true in every niche. Developers just tend to look at what's immediately around them, and not at all the industries that are chronically underserved by tech.
SaaS products are just businesses. This like asking "Is retail dead? Every retail store seems to already exist."<p>There are always business opportunities to be had. You could probably open a business selling gravel and be wildly successful despite there already being tons of gravel suppliers in your area.
The term "CRUD application" triggers me, because it is mostly an oversimplification. Technically almost any application can be boiled down to these fundamental operations, but this level of abstraction is not very useful to talk about in terms of business value. Only because AI is hyped today means that it could solve any problem, let alone design applications anyone wants to use.
World would become a better place, and it didn't, so probably not.<p>And thinking that business is being made by fulfilling needs is very naive. Next big and successful SaaS do not need to do anything new, or anything better for that matter. It is enough that its marketing team would convince people otherwise.
Time for a new rule: The answer to every "Is xxx dead?" topic is: "No".<p>Maybe we can use AI to rewrite all these questions to a more nuanced "Has xxx peaked"?
Mmm tough one, but I do not think so. I haven't personally seen anyone strike it rich with a straight-up, generic CRUD app lately. But I've seen some smaller successes where people have built SaaS tools to solve very niche problems within specific industries or communities. Think about it – there are still tons of industries that are surprisingly underserved by technology or even within established markets, there might be a very specific workflow or pain point that existing software doesn't address well - I came across Petex the other day, a Scottish company geared towards oil and gas and are making $$
No.. it’s not dead. But it is at a point where the bar to get traction is raising significantly. You can’t make something mediocre and get traction just because the alternative is pen and paper. Need to design something that sells well and provides value.
Are you talking about the business model or the product?<p>Both a clear No. But the times of endless money for SaaS is likely gone and people are either looking for a complete SaaS&Hardware or for more intelligent SaaS that solve their problem differently.
One of the most interesting metrics I came across this week was the rise in custom built software over SaaS as AI enabled the “Build” in the “Build vs Buy” equation that has typically pushed companies to SaaS.