12.11.2025·00:11:55

They Called Us WRONG About SaaS

Our "SaaS is Dead" video sparked major backlash in the comments, and we're breaking down why everyone misunderstood our point. We're NOT saying people will build SaaS to sell - we're saying people will build their own software instead of paying for subscriptions. Why pay £3 a month for a meditation app when you can just build your own meditation app? The comments show how people "lack the ability to think progressively" and can't see the exponential progression from "Will Smith eating spaghetti" two years ago to today's AI capabilities. We discuss why people are stuck in "restrictive thinking" and can't imagine a future where "normies build apps" - and why we're frantically retraining for this future whether we want it or not. — TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - The Backlash Begins 1:15 - What "SaaS is Dead" Really Means 2:03 - Why People Can't Think Progressively 3:19 - The Retraining Reality 4:18 - The Moon Landing Comparison 5:16 - Why Predictions Fail 7:28 - Ancient Hardware, Medieval Software 8:44 - How COVID Changed Everything 11:44 - What is "CMD + AI"? — Unlock the full potential of your online presence with Kabarza and Samuel—experts in web design and development (respectively), powered by cutting-edge AI solutions. We blend creative design with advanced tech to deliver smart, high-impact websites that stand out. Ready to elevate your business? Contact us today and see what AI-driven innovation can do for you! LINKS & RESOURCES: 📷 Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cmdaishow Check out Kabarza's amazing work: https://kabarza.com Visit Samuel's website for more: https://samuelgregory.co.uk — Hashtags: #SaaS #AI #FutureTech #SoftwareDevelopment #TechDebate #AIProgramming #SaaSisDead #TechPredictions

Transcript
There's a lot of negativity on this video. This is me talking about the how cheap it is and how easy it is to now build software. The first thing I want to address with the comments here, I think they've I think a lot of them have misunderstood what I was saying. A lot of like nah nah, this is never going to happen and um fake news. Uh you don't need an engineering degree to vibe code. A few actually a few of them seem to think I was talking about that people can build SAS applications and then sell them and and there's a lot of commentary around the the the maintenance that's involved in building SAS you know the the uh yeah security databases or and all the rest of it I'm not talking about rebuilding SAS I'm saying SAS is dead because people will be empowered to build their own software. They They're like, "Instead of paying for zero, why don't I just just build my own little tool and I don't need to pay for anything ex, you know, external." I've got a sponsor sponsor that I'm chatting to right now, which makes it even easier to use your iPhone to build native apps. So again, that why would I why would I pay £3 a month for this meditation app? I'll just build my own meditation app. It's like it's it's easy now. So this is this is what I'm saying here. It's it's now very surprising to me and you know I want you to challenge me on this, right? People lack this ability or or people just don't have this ability to think progressively. They're kind of like there's two aspects because AI has faults, right? They're locked into the current way that AI messes up and it just it hallucinates and it it gets things wrong. But for whatever reason lack the ability to really just project into the future and say, well actually a year and a half ago or maybe two years ago, Will Smith eating spaghetti was an absolute mess. But now you probably couldn't tell the difference between the two. Well, you probably could, but it's exaggeration. the exponential progression. All you've got to do is extrapolate that into the future and say, well, why can't why won't we be able to build apps? Why won't normies be able to build apps in the future? I don't necessarily um enjoy or agree or want this future that I'm I'm speaking about. Heck, I'm frantically trying to become a better AI developer beyond. Well, I mean, I kind of enjoy it, but like if it was my choice, I would just I would just keep with my current skill set and just have make money off my current skill set, but no, I've got to retrain now. I'd prefer not to have to retrain. I'd prefer just to be able to But I'm read I'm reading the tea leaves and I'm thinking, right, I need to prepare for a future that I see whether I want it or not. I think a lot of it is because we had Catch GP 3.5 which was the best um like the the the thing that got the most attention at the start right since [snorts] then have we gotten like a [clears throat] like a true big update? I think it not really not something fundamentally different because any anything from the you you know we went from the old AI to the transformers that Google introduced and then the new transformers since GPT 3.5 I believe if I'm not wrong they haven't gotten a massive massive upgrade. Maybe that's why people don't see um these AI tools being able to do anything like truly meaningful and big. Right now we can do a lot of prototyping and it seems like the rate we have a we definitely have a progress in the complexity of the prototypes that we can make and the even MVPs in some on some level but to create something like making notion you know that's not something that AI can do anytime soon. you. No one's saying soon. And you know, we're not I'm not saying with the AI that we have now. I'm saying just extrapolate what we have, how far we've come in two years and paint that into the future on a undetermined. Okay. So, time frame. Can I can I play devil's advocate and be like uh advocate for the comment section? Well, if you do the same thing with the moon landing, we should have been now somewhere else in the galaxy. But we haven't gotten back even to the freaking moon. We we are not uh we we can't say for sure like tech will evolve the way that we imagine it will. Uh the same thing that happened with uh cars. We thought we will have like flying cars, but we still don't. Um, it's physically impossible to have flying cars. And I don't mean like yes, we do have flying cars right now, but it's physically impossible for all of us to like have it as a norm to have flying cars because to move that amount of air is extremely loud. It I have a drone here. Like my neighbors get annoyed by this, let alone with, you know, a freaking car. Yeah. So we um get over excited about so many things and we we think that okay take the the current thing and just scale it in whatever direction just scale it up we'll get to the moon but we don't always and with software I'm honestly not convinced that the current um models can get us there. Anything that can happen obviously will happen if we given enough time you know but I'm I'm not sure if let's say in the next 10 years I'm not sure and Anu Karpathy I don't know if you've seen that video of him that I mentioned last week um he's the AI guy he's an AI scientist he's done research he knows how to code uh these AI models he has done the work in the field and he's saying that these agentic models are a decade away, not a few years with the moon landing or you know go flying to the moon. It wasn't it's not technology that's holding us back. It's actually learning that well there's no reason to go to another planet really. We need to be looking at um Sirius A, whatever it's called, you know, the closest star. The reason why I bring that up as well is like and this this goes both ways is is mo more so a soci socioeconomic factor which is once again this rest in my opinion restrictive thinking in that we apply our current understanding of the world around us and are unable to like we we we put the world around us into the future. And it's like, well, you can't do that. And I'm always reminded of what um Rhyar was saying he, what was the phrase he said? Like, we're a we're ancient hardware running in medieval software living in the future or something to that effect. like we're always kind of playing catchup and we're always like we're always kind of you know we're never um fully in the I mean for that matter we can't imagine it but like I think what we care about will be different you mentioned a browser this is a very stupid example and I don't want to labor on the browser thing but there there will be a few there's no reason to think of or care about building a browser anymore right in the future it might be that people don't feel the need we might be living in a future where SAS dies because you know what AI is off doing everything and there's universal income and we're not working anymore. SAS might die because of that, not because of um people building their own applications. We we we need to understand that the the world we operate in, the world model that we operate in is not going to be the same as what we what we operate in now. the things we we care about, the things we do, the thing the thing our dayto-days just will look very very different and the the quickest easiest example I can give on that is co how that came a year of our lives maximum two years completely has changed everything and now we just know no different and we just don't even think about it. This is a now a new world model that you could not have one you couldn't have anticipated it but you also could not apply the things we did and you know the things we like now people care like I know mothers who care so much more about the being there you know raising their kids they care that so much more because they have access to it does that make sense like this whole the world model does it it totally makes sense and this is what I'm saying about predictions. We [snorts] did in the past overpredict and also underpredict things. We we sometimes over overestimate and underestimate. A good example and it's quite funny is uh wireless power. There was a time where people thought every device will run on wireless power that we won't have any cable to plug in anything. it will be just charged wirelessly because we can do it. we can actually do it and it's like to some degree but it's not it's not efficient like we we could not figure out a way have not at least for now and I'm not sure even if it's possible physically to find a way to efficiently move electricity sort of from a source to another even like the short distance we have with our phones we lose like 20% minimum to the to the heat and things like this technical stuff But there we did think that we'll have wireless power everywhere and we don't have it. It's not even close and it seems like we won't uh have it at all with AI. I'm not saying it's literally the same. No, it's going to obviously change the world. But I'm not super convinced as somebody who I I would by the way call myself like very optimistic, but I'm still [laughter] not very convinced by AI being to that level that some altman that is trying to sell it to us. It's it's an interesting debate. I'm I'm just We'll see. I'm just so I'm so like amazed at how certain people are about their uncertainty, if that makes sense. It's like nobody knows. Nobody knows. But there's so much like all all I know I know enough to know that we don't know but all we can do is predict and we're always looking for to the future but some people just can't do that thing. By the way, let us know if you if you have comments like let us know because we will read them and we'll they create such amazing discussions um for some of the stuff we go through. This is part of a larger conversation on my show, Command AI, which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web. Catch us next week and join in the banter.