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What's ACTUALLY Happening in SaaS Right Now

2025-12-21 Education
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Rob Walling
Rob Walling
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Description

Rob Walling shares how he's seeing AI affect the SaaS landscape, explains why he doesn’t believe AI will ever kill SaaS, and outlines where the biggest opportunities are for ambitious bootstrapped founders today. Links in the video: MicroConf Connect - SaaS Community: https://microconf.com/connect Watch more videos like this 👇 There’s ONLY 5 Ways to Use AI in SaaS (prove me wrong): https://youtu.be/ABnIUv7G9IA AI Agents vs SaaS - Who Wins the Future of Software?: https://youtu.be/JGqvd10ZG8U I’m Rob Walling. I’ve been building, growing, and acquiring SaaS companies for nearly two decades. I’ve started six companies (five of them bootstrapped) and exited multiple times, most notably selling Drip in 2016. I’ve invested in over 200 startups, and my focus is on helping founders build multimillion-dollar companies without the pressure of the traditional "unicorn or bust" venture capital model. 🚀 Scale Your SaaS with TinySeed If you are a B2B SaaS founder looking for funding, mentorship, and community, check out the accelerator I co-founded. We designed it specifically for bootstrappers. Apply to TinySeed: https://tinyseed.com 🤝 Join the Community at MicroConf I co-founded MicroConf to create a space for non-venture-backed startups. Connect with thousands of other founders, watch world-class talks, and find the support you need to grow your business. Explore MicroConf: https://microconf.com 🎙️ Listen to Startups for the Rest of Us Check out my podcast, where I’ve shared insights on bootstrapping and growing startups for over a decade. With over 800 episodes and 15 million downloads, it’s the longest-running podcast for software entrepreneurs. Listen here: https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com 📚 My Books on Startups & SaaS I’ve written several books to provide tactical advice on launching, growing, and selling your software company: The SaaS Playbook- My guide to building a multimillion-dollar startup without venture capital. https://saasplaybook.com Exit Strategy: The entrepreneur's guide to selling your business without regret (co-authored with Dr. Sherry Walling): https://exitstrategybook.com Start Small, Stay Small: A developer's guide to launching a startup: https://startsmall.com/ The Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together: How to handle the psychological pressure of being a founder (co-authored with Dr. Sherry Walling): https://saasplaybook.com/order/p/entrepreneursguide-ebook 👋 Connect with Me Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/robwalling LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robwalling Website: https://robwalling.com #SaaS #MicroConf #Bootstrapped

Top Comments (10)

@brennan123 2025-12-22

Spot on. It's refreshing that someone actually sees reality. Feels like the entire AI media landscape is 70% gaslighters. The people saying SaaS won't exist because of AI are the same ones that said we won't have keyboards anymore because everything will be voice.

55 2 replies
@TarasShyn 2025-12-21

I’m a Staff Engineer, and we’ve implemented around a dozen complementary AI tools into our SaaS platform. Inspired by that, and tried to build a micro-SaaS that is going to be centred fully around AI, which is simple enough for a weekend’s work, and useful enough to actually charge people for it. Well… my enthusiasm vanished quickly. AI shines if it’s 5-15% of the implementation; anything beyond that is pure chaos. The quality of the solution was far from the standard where I’d charge anyone to actually use it. Ship shit - get a high churn, and rely on fake advertising with bogus claims. To have an actual long-term product requires tech expertise beyond an AI wrapper.

47
@personofnote1571 2025-12-21

History doesn’t repeat but it sure does rhyme.

38 1 replies
@rahulgawale 2025-12-22

I am tired of people saying "this is a prompt away"

36 2 replies
@open_youtub-1 2025-12-31

This video highlights churn rates; AICarma helps us maintain low churn by keeping us relevant.

20
@yousawnothing644 2025-12-22

I've been building a high-volume online render engine without Ai being involved in the rendering portion. When I share what i'm building people are always like "Yeah but Ai will just be able to do that soon". Being in the creative space, seeing the Ai tools, their outputs, and all of that I can rest easy at night.

9
@markland1000 2025-12-23

I think you are correct. Everything I've seen and I work for a Saas company

8
@Paravathisankar 2025-12-31

really appreciate you breaking it down like this

0
@nataliazapatadiaz4797 2026-01-01

just what i needed to get back on track

0
@DamoOne 2026-01-12

“Tab, Tab, Tab. Done” was a quote I read the other day 😂. Great video - thanks! Just found your channel. I subscribed straight away.

0

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