| FAO Dan re SaaS etc 08:47 - Feb 13 with 1534 views | nrb1985 |
Genuinely interested from your side of things, as an expert, as to why you think the AI hype is over blown or won’t deliver what the “AI optimists” seem to think it might.
As you will have no doubt seen, utter carnage in the SaaS stocks this week with the various Claude releases and others. Granted, they are fund raising at the moment so it’s in their interests to show off as many new releases as possible - but it’s not just them. There was software for tax planning released this week too from a random startup which will clobber my industry for example.
And we are only in the first innings of this…
How do you see things? [Post edited 13 Feb 8:48]
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| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 12:14 - Feb 13 with 179 views | nrb1985 |
| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 09:48 - Feb 13 by BlueBadger |
I read all that Tweet and my main takeaways from it are :
1. How long can they keep up the con?
2. What the hell kind of name for a dog is 'Bayesian' |
Hi Badger - if I'm not mistaken, you work in healthcare?
Are you not seeing any AI related things "come across your desk" so to speak?
We have a couple of "medtech" funds we invest in that are showing us some really interesting stuff. Particularly in early detection of various cancers.
Most interesting though but not really AI so to speak, which you may already have seen, somebody showed me that they can now do 5D ultra sounds which look incredible. I think for now it's mostly 2D scans in the majority of places? | | | |
| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 12:15 - Feb 13 with 178 views | Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
AI can massively increase productivity rather than replace jobs. It’s all about how it’s being used and finding it’s niche.
I think people have a broad misconception of it as a construct sometimes.
It can also help talented people that have weaknesses in their skill set, even at a basic level with stuff like prioritization. The days of individual email inboxes for external comms for many companies is likely coming to an end, as it moves towards cloud based SaaS and CRM platforms where AI already has a big part to play. Increasing productivity and output leads to obvious benefits in the B2B space for both parties. |  |
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| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 12:21 - Feb 13 with 146 views | nrb1985 |
| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 12:15 - Feb 13 by Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
AI can massively increase productivity rather than replace jobs. It’s all about how it’s being used and finding it’s niche.
I think people have a broad misconception of it as a construct sometimes.
It can also help talented people that have weaknesses in their skill set, even at a basic level with stuff like prioritization. The days of individual email inboxes for external comms for many companies is likely coming to an end, as it moves towards cloud based SaaS and CRM platforms where AI already has a big part to play. Increasing productivity and output leads to obvious benefits in the B2B space for both parties. |
Not to be flippant but increased productivity usually entails less headcount if history is any judge. Also one of the reason I would presume that graduates are finding it so hard to find jobs at the moment - as AI can do a lot of that "grunt" work.
Totally agree re your last paragraph though on assisting with weaknesses, I have reasonable communication and soft skills but am appalling with Excel and PowerPoint, which is often a large part of my role. Bizarrely ChatGPT rather than copilot has been a real blessing in that respect. [Post edited 13 Feb 12:22]
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| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 12:41 - Feb 13 with 116 views | Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 12:21 - Feb 13 by nrb1985 |
Not to be flippant but increased productivity usually entails less headcount if history is any judge. Also one of the reason I would presume that graduates are finding it so hard to find jobs at the moment - as AI can do a lot of that "grunt" work.
Totally agree re your last paragraph though on assisting with weaknesses, I have reasonable communication and soft skills but am appalling with Excel and PowerPoint, which is often a large part of my role. Bizarrely ChatGPT rather than copilot has been a real blessing in that respect. [Post edited 13 Feb 12:22]
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The old man vs machine debate is as old as time in the workplace though. Of course AI takes it to the next step.
Some of our consultants have increased their portfolios and earning’s quite significantly with recent improvements. Like anything it’s how companies and people use it really.
It’s the small things that are the wins, like the “note takers” on platform that records calls. It just outlines the key points and summarizes everything, handy when you can’t make the call or have conflicts. Instead of watching them later or asking someone who was on it that might forget something, it just gets sent right to you if you’re assigned to the account or team member. | |
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| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 13:22 - Feb 13 with 70 views | Illinoisblue |
It’s interesting to me to see how media companies have jumped on the AI bandwagon seemingly with little to no thought of what they’re doing or why they have an AI feature. Case in point; my local paper has introduced an AI summary that will summarize the story you’ve just read. You know, in case you have a shoe in your head instead of a brain. But the really dumb thing is, the AI will just restate the story in a slightly different way and then link back to paper’s original story. It’s a wheel of utter pointlessness.
Also, AI still can’t do basic photo edits without distorting facial features or other elements you didn’t ask it change. |  |
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| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 13:33 - Feb 13 with 51 views | EddyJ |
| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 11:50 - Feb 13 by eireblue |
Quite a lot of software and SaaS products are built, in simple terms, in three layers.
Data, Compute, User Interface.
The third layer, a UI that humans do stuff in, is sometimes what is sold, and licensed.
So the value of a traditional SaaS company, is that they sell x number of licenses, to do Y functions.
The data, is usually a companies data. The compute and UI, is specific to the function.
Companies buy lots of SaaS software.
So let’s talk about AI…..it can do compute and present data any way like.
Why do I now need humans using a specific UI and compute that I pay for, per seat, to use my data.
All I really care about is data, and being able to process and present as efficiently as possible.
So why buy multiple SaaS products, when I could have a Data layer and an AI Agent Layer.
As an AI company is now, I would go to a organisation and say, why are you paying for 7 SaaS platforms, at £xxx per license per platform.
I’ll sell you an AI Agentic platform at £xx per license, and you can also reduce headcount.
The AI opportunity, is to simplify the data supply chain.
Just with any company, you have raw material, add value, sell.
Coals to Newcastle, Ice to Eskimos, Tofu to vegans.
As a SaaS company, still need to make it cheap to get/find data, but the add value and sell, is potentially cheaper with AI.
Companies that also make it easier to acquire data, and simply make it available for Agentic AI platforms, should also be successful.
That’s my take.
There maybe a bubble/crash/recovery, as companies start to work out how to use all this, they may start buying too much and not become efficient, and then start to get properly efficient, buy less AI. [Post edited 13 Feb 11:54]
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When I started out, everyone was aiming for a monolith. Buy in Oracle or SAP or code your own and have it do everything.
Then, we realised that having one big monolithic system makes it very hard to upgrade or change any business processes. Micro-services architectures and data mesh became the vogue. Have lots of small loosely connected systems, where you can swap out components easily. Sounds great, but its very hard to do well.
What you are suggesting seems to be an AI-assisted return to the monolith.
Everything is cyclical. | | | |
| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 13:38 - Feb 13 with 46 views | DanTheMan |
| FAO Dan re SaaS etc on 13:33 - Feb 13 by EddyJ |
When I started out, everyone was aiming for a monolith. Buy in Oracle or SAP or code your own and have it do everything.
Then, we realised that having one big monolithic system makes it very hard to upgrade or change any business processes. Micro-services architectures and data mesh became the vogue. Have lots of small loosely connected systems, where you can swap out components easily. Sounds great, but its very hard to do well.
What you are suggesting seems to be an AI-assisted return to the monolith.
Everything is cyclical. |
Monoliths would arguably be even worse for AI due to the context window issues. A microservice approach with clear boundaries would be better for them.
But, of course, getting those boundaries correct is where you really need human beings involved.
The monolith I work on is an absolute disaster because it's boundaries are all over the place and now splitting it up has become a real issue. |  |
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