The entire SaaS landscape changed, are we ready?
We're living in a wild time, I get it.
And all the talk lately has been about how fast we can build. How AI has unlocked "vibe coding." How anyone can put new product into the market, in record time.
I get it. That's super exciting for me too.
But there's a dark side. And I'm pretty certain it's here already.
No one is talking about what this is doing to product pricing. To perceived value. To the marketplace itself.
Because everything has changed.
And it all comes down to how people are being sold the promise of AI.
When everyone assumes AI built something—or could have built it—their willingness to pay drops through the floor.
What used to be a $1,000 product now feels like a $100 one.
What was $59/month a year ago is now a $19/month… or worse, a $59 one-time purchase.
It's not that the products are worse.
It's that buyers now believe the effort behind them is less.
And if the effort was low, why should the price be high?
That shift in psychology, real or not, changes everything.
We can't just think about how we use new tools.
We've got to start understanding (and accepting) a whole new way of doing business.
We have to rethink:
- How we price
- How we package
- What success even looks like
- Whether MRR is still the holy grail
Most of all, I think we need to reset our expectations.
Way fewer people are going to "hit it big." And it's going to take way more work, after we build, than it did previously.
Feels like we're entering a world of:
- Building audiences
- Lower price points
- One-time purchases
- And taste as the last true moat
I don't think the old SaaS playbook survives this.
But I'm still working it out.
Anyone else feeling the shift? I never would have imagined it happening this quickly.
Would love to hear what everyone else is thinking.