I’m not a fortune teller, and I don't own a crystal ball. But I’ve spent 28 years in enterprise software, and I’m telling you right now: the "SaaSpocalypse" isn't coming—it’s already started. If you’ve looked at the stock tickers for the "Software Aristocracy" lately—Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe—it looks like a crime scene. Over $300 billion in market value evaporated in a week. Why? Because the market finally realized that the "per-seat" subscription model is a house of cards in an AI world.
The Great Subscription Burnout
Let’s be real: companies are burned out on subscriptions. The average enterprise is currently juggling 305 different SaaS apps. That’s 305 different throats to choke, 305 different security reviews, and 305 monthly bills that keep creeping up while delivering the same old "bolt-on" AI features. The industry has treated recurring revenue like a "safe" proxy for value. But the math has changed. In 2024, if you had 100 people in HR, you bought 100 Workday seats. In 2026, if AI agents are handling 80% of your workflows, you might only need 20 seats. Wall Street just realized that "Efficiency" for the customer means "Revenue Collapse" for the SaaS vendor.
In-House is the New "Premium"
Here is where it gets interesting for those of us in the AI-assisted development space.
For 20 years, we were told: "Don't build it, buy it." Custom software was too slow, too expensive, and too buggy. But that was before I could generate one million lines of reviewed, functional code in a year. With tools like FeatureFlow, the "build vs. buy" calculation has flipped on its head:
Cost: Why pay $500,000 a year in "rent" for a generic CRM when you can prototype a custom, internal one in a weekend for a fraction of the cost?
IP Ownership: Instead of being locked into a vendor's roadmap, companies are going back to per-server licenses or owning their code outright.
Tailored Power: Companies are realizing they can kick their generic SaaS to the curb and build tools that actually fit their business processes—not the other way around.
Who Survives?
The companies that will be okay are the ones with heavy physical investment—the guys owning the data centers and the core AI infrastructure. But the middle-man SaaS companies that just "host a UI" over a database? They’re up shits creek without a paddle. It might take 5 to 10 years for the giants to become completely irrelevant, but the shift is irreversible. The era of paying for "logins" is over. The era of paying for outcomes and ownership has begun.
I spent a year doing the R&D so I could see this coming. The world changed in 2025, and the smart companies are already pivoting to building their own AI-native futures instead of renting someone else's past.
The question is: Are you still paying for seats, or are you building your own throne?