Forward Deployed Nerd. Weekly extended write-ups on Software, AI & Investing. https://xitter.cf/t.co/wCDQ1Jx4dv
Joined July 2014
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I want to look at AI eating software from the buyer's perspective. Not those building it, not those investing in it. I mean the people actually writing the checks to run their organizations.
Core systems will hold. Non-critical ones will find their own level. Vertical market software sits firmly on the unshakable end, because it is the lifeblood of operations, not just a hired tool.
Companies will buy the truly mission-critical software, and the ones they cannot bother to build in-house economically. Everything in between is up for grabs.
If you view a business as a forest, it is an ecosystem and everything must flow. The middleware trees will fall. The unshakable cores will grow taller. The forest will survive.
So the real question is narrower than can you move the data. It is this: are these companies industrializing only data migration, or starting to industrialize trust migration?
Product & Investing Nerd retweeted
Former head of M&A at $CSU on why $CSU is less exposed to the AI threat compared to $ADBE, $CRM, $INTU
"We will acquire the best one, the second best one, and so on until we have a significant chunk of the market with ourselves.
At that point, switching out becomes difficult."
Product & Investing Nerd retweeted
I wrote a few weeks ago that Amazon blocking agents would be an opportunity for Walmart. Now Walmart is building an MCP server so agents can shop there directly.
Amazon has a huge ($50B+), high-margin ads business to protect. Walmart has a much smaller ecom business, and thousands of physical stores.
Walmart also cares about being disintermediated, but even if an agent does the shopping online, people will still walk into Walmart stores to buy things.
So Walmart has another way to maintain that relationship with customers, while potentially picking up some of the purchases Amazon is turning away.
xitter.cf/jgreze/status/21049883…
xitter.cf/TechCrunch/status/2112…
As Amazon blocks AI agents from shopping on its site, Walmart is taking the opposite approach, introducing new technology that lets AI agents make purchases on customers' behalf, with controls over spending and transaction approvals.
spr.ly/6019BHXyoW
If your thesis on a legacy SaaS business rests on switching costs, be specific about which ones. The data moat is eroding fast. The trust moat is still deep, but it is nuanced and company specific.