[softwaredoug]

Nobody knows

Some hypotheses

(A) AI helps most setup simple tools - even non technical people. But once you get beyond greenfield the cognitive debt builds so you can’t reason about it it. It’s possible mature products don’t get the same gains with AI (or have different types of productivity gains).

(B) We pay a SaaS company to be responsible for an SLA. I personally don’t want to be responsible for that SLA on my vibe coded app so I outsource it. See also support, etc

(C) We pay SaaS to be a reliable source of truth (like Shopify for my Ecom business). The app holds the state of something important. That investment in the ecosystem is itself a moat.

(D) Many “SaaS” businesses are not pure software. They handle payment, benefits, payroll. Often with complex human b2b backends. It looks like just software to us, but we pay to turn a complex set of human relationships into a slick dashboard.

If my business is a pure software tool, it doesn’t have a good moat - and frankly probably nevet did.