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Last night, Noremo hosted the first debate in our NOREMO Tech Plus Event Series at The Green Man in Fitzrovia, London.
We had a great turnout for a Tuesday night with a cross-section of people from Tech, Business, Finance and Investing. Many thanks to everyone that showed up.
The debate topic was “AI SaaSpocalypse: Is it over? Or is the bigger dip yet to come?” If Software ate the world, and AI is eating Software, what next for SAAS investors? If writing code is free, is this really the SaaSpocalypse? Or does the value just move somewhere else?
The topic comes from a stockmarket and social media meme that was running hot much earlier in the year. Then things seemed to go quiet for a while. But with all the craziness in the news just in the last fortnight; AI agents running wild, Anthropic’s IPO announcement, SpaceX’s Q3 results, Alphabet (Google)’s marketcap plunging $500B in a single day, we had much food for thought!
Hosted by the always fantastic Yi-Hsian Godfrey; our debaters were ace AI Product Leader, Mike Hamilton and superstar CTO and Architect, Rob Bachan.
Yi-Hsian asked our experts to share their thoughts on three questions:
- “What changes have you seen since the large drop in SaaS stock valuations early this year that leads you to think there is more doom and gloom facing this sector?
- Mike: Just because you can (use AI to write software), doesn’t mean you should. Some SaaS software is really good and does just work. Don’t forget that before you get too far with your vibe coding and screw up the service you are delivering to your customers!
- Rob: SaaS companies have been ripping off enterprise customers and overcharging on per-seat licenses that customers never use for years. Have you ever tried getting out of any of these contracts? Or reducing your spend? Spec-driven development where professionals use AI agents to write software code and to automate testing, deployment and monitoring workflows is the new normal. Those skills are no longer locked-up inside the big software companies; every business can now do it.
- “It’s great that business leaders are adopting change and leveraging Agentic AI. But what are some of the high risk areas that business leaders are maybe overlooking building on their own?
- Rob: Your company’s data and workflows are still unique to you and your company and they are still highly valuable. Don’t give them away inadvertently through careless usage of certain LLMs and vibe coding tools. They may be the only reason your business still exists in 5 years time.
- Mike: Security, Governance and Control still matter. Sometimes it’s preferred to work with a supplier who’s done the hard work to make sure their product or service complies with various product safety, data privacy, AI and business resilience laws and regulations; and your business can simply back-to-back those same terms in the contracts you write with your own customers.
- Is Agentic AI the foreseeable future or will there still be a place for SaaS products as we know them?
- Mike: SaaS companies must evolve. Most are adding their own AI layer and opening their APIs to make their data available to customer’s preferred choice of AI tools. Is that enough? Only time will tell.
- Rob: There’s a number of AI-first or AI native software companies moving at light speed. The old model of SaaS died a long time ago. Nokia’s mobile phone business collapsed way faster than anybody expected! Expect the same thing to happen this time too.
Questions
These were just some of the questions that came from our super engaged audience:
- Is it really an Apocalypse?
- How do you make your software product defensible and sticky?
- What is Agentic AI not good at?
- In the new paradigm, will companies simply be replacing SaaS with an employee (or a fraction of one)?
- Who remembers when Uber was the low cost alternative? Are AI companies just going to be putting their prices up very soon?
- If using AI to write software code is now easy, what are the barriers or risks that still exist which should stop us from doing so?
- When will open weight language models from China (and elsewhere) catchup with the Frontier Lab models?
- Should my company aim to meet the market or beat the market?
- I work in a finance role at a tech company. How should I decide whether to try building software myself with Claude rather than buying a software product that claims it does what I need?
- I work for a business in the construction industry; which are still notorious laggards for adopting new Tech. Should we really be building our own CRM (or other) apps? Or buying product?
- I run my own food packaging business. We've been overpaying on CRM for more than a decade. We are taking our time to move to a new solution. I want regular, reliable business data that I can trust to make important decisions. I'm not going to ask my one IT guy to vibe code me something up over the weekend and deliver something of unknown quality and reliability!
Takeaways
Here are the key takeaways shared by our experts Mike and Rob:
- Pick the right time and right place for do-it-yourself AI software coding. And if you get it right, you will fly. Really don’t try out-the-gate to update a codebase that’s used company-wide or is business critical.
- The SaaSpocalypse is happening. It is real. SaaS companies must rethink their business models. Bring on the revolution. This is the singularity!
Thanks to all those that made it along. Our next event is going to be on Tuesday 19th January 2027, same venue. If you are interested in joining then you can register here. The debate topic and speakers are still to be decided.
