SaaSpocalypse Now: The software inferno will birth an intelligence era
Henry Innis is the co-founder and CEO of marketing analytics provider Mutinex. In this piece, he delves into the pressure on SaaS (“Software as a Service”) companies following the collapse in public share prices brought on by AI replacement fears.
At the heart of the change, and of great relevance to marketers, agencies, and media owners, is this observation: “Enterprises are unlikely to keep paying millions of dollars for UI screens that can be generated in a conversation.”
"It's a scary time": Software will become more ubiquitous, not less (Midjourney)
I’ll be honest: being a SaaS CEO is one of the loneliest jobs I’ve ever had. And I say that having worked in advertising, which wasn’t exactly a warm hug in the early days (although it could be a lot of fun).
I’m venture-funded, running a company that’s growing fast, and I’m doing this for the first time. There’s no manual for me to read. There are an extraordinary number of things I don’t know — things that conventional CEOs probably handle before their second coffee. The hiring decisions (which I often get wrong), the board dynamics, the capital strategy, the product calls. I’m figuring it out in real time, and mostly in the dark.
And it’s lonely. Almost none of my peers my age are running their own companies. The few who are — other founders — are obsessively lost in their own businesses. We occasionally surface to swap war stories, but for the most part, we’re all drowning in our own private oceans.
The capital paradox
The private capital markets are the lifeblood of companies like ours. But there’s a tension that nobody talks about: every time you raise capital, to some degree, it’s because your business model hasn’t yet achieved the breakout you need.
