SaaS is dead. Long live SaaS. In the age of AI and agents, most software companies are still clinging too tightly to their past. Their demise will come quick if they do not embrace and build the technologies that are destined to disrupt them. However those who have already done so must recognize the reality of the world we still live in today. That world still has the majority of its work done by humans who still need workflow tools and technology to get their work done. While we pivoted hard to AI and agents with Fin, which will become the majority of our business quite soon, we recognize the importance of the software our customers use and so have also decided to double down on our investment in Intercom, the world's best help desk and customer service system for how customer service is done at this age. We've reinvented it and rebuilt it to work perfectly alongside your new customer agent systems and we're announcing 60+ new customer features that comprise Intercom 2 today. intercom DOT com SLASH intercom2

Looking for a few SaaS startups that: - use @stripe for subscriptions, - don't yet run [Google, Meta, etc] ads, - want to run their first ads, - and would be willing to intensely give us feedback on a dashboard for analyzing the impact of ad spend. dm or jweinstein@stripe.com

Marc Benioff to SaaS CEOs upset about AI hurting their valuations: Grow up, wipe your tears, focus on the customer Chamath: “ Let's say you were running a software company that was before the AI wave and you're private. There's a bunch of these companies that were supposed to go public, (but) didn't go public. What should they do? What do those boards do?” Marc @Benioff: “Here's some Kleenex for them for all their tears. I mean, I talk to these CEOs, they're crying, "Look at my market cap, I'm not getting paid for my work." Guys, grow up. That's what I love about the public markets, they rationalize everything all the time. So great, be in the public markets. You want to be in a private market? Your valuation is fantasyland until somebody's actually going to pay you. So I just tell them, focus on your revenue, focus on your customers, focus on your cash flow, focus on your profitability, focus on your innovation. How are you going to add value to your customers? That's what's really, truly important.”

I think AI SaaS companies are in danger if they don’t have a moat built on owned data or organizational processes. OpenAI/Anthropic clearly don’t just want to be the infra layer powering up those AI companies while watching them getting the most profits with a markup. They’re coming for your users as a direct competitor and intend to make you obsolete.