The SaaS Reset: Who Keeps Pricing Power in the AI Era
The SaaS sell-off was not Wall Street "not understanding tech". It was a rational repricing of pricing power, because AI attacks economics before it shows up in churn. In the article, I break down: I. The 3 shifts quietly breaking classic SaaS economics 1) It is getting cheaper to build "good enough" alternatives, so features stop being scarce. 2) Revenue tied to headcount starts breaking, because AI lets customers do more work with fewer people. 3) The front door is moving from your app to an AI assistant, so users may stop logging in even while the work still happens. --- II. The part of the stack agents cannot disrupt (and why it matters) - The accountability layer: permissions, approvals, audit logs, and the ability to roll back when something goes wrong. - The messy real-world workflows: long processes with exceptions, edge cases, and human judgment (not just single tasks). - The hard foundations: proprietary domain data and the infrastructure that powers and monitors everything (security, observability, data pipelines). --- III. A 4-part checklist to rebuild defensibility for an agent-first world 1) Pricing that still works when customers need fewer seats, and when AI usage has real compute costs. 2) Workflows where mistakes are unacceptable, so "verification" is the product. 3) Deep vertical know-how and data you cannot scrape or copy from the internet. 4) Backend depth over UI polish: API‑first, deeply integrated, and the system of record. --- If you underwrite/build software in 2026, this is the checklist that keeps you out of the value traps.




