Storytelling
A great music has a story worth listening
A great movie has a story worth watching
A great software has a story worth experiencing
Tell a good story, greatness will follow!
I can fix TFR
Gahmen give subsidies, yet you don't make babies, I know why ?
LifeSG credits keep getting expired, I know why ?
Ministers say make babies, yet you remain a DINK, I know why?
I can make a million babies,
Just need more sweet GPUs, you know why ?
Claude Opus AGI
Which CEO was brilliant ?
Finbros Pvt Ltd
The CEO thinks - let me fire my 10 coders. The product manager will code everything using AI agents. I reduce salary costs and ship features 10 times features. What a brilliant CEO I am !
Probros Pvt Ltd
The CEO thinks - My coders are top notch. Let me train each of them to become product entrepreneurs. Now my company has 10 products - at least 3 will become successful. I will get 5x revenue. What a brilliant CEO I am!
SAAS is dead or is it ?
Self hosting Slack
With AI coding there is a talk that SAAS companies are overvalued and all software can now be self hosted / maintained. Let us take a simple example of replacing slack by self hosting slack using something like a Zulip
| Category | Component | Monthly Cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Server | 4GB RAM / 2 vCPU VPS (e.g., AWS t3.medium) | $20.00 |
| SMTP | AWS SES (~$0.10 per 1,000 emails) | $0.50 |
| Backups | AWS S3 Storage + Server Snapshots | $6.00 |
| Domain | Annual renewal (pro-rated) | $1.25 |
| Maintenance | Admin Labor (10 hours @ $10/hr) | $100.00 |
| Total Cost | Estimated Monthly Total | $127.75 |
Infrastructure/Maintenance is the main cost
Even before AI coding tools, open source versions of all major SAAS tools were readily available. So essentially software has been free for quite sometime. You are paying primarily for maintenance/infra
Economics of cost subsidies
As a 2024, slack had roughly 200,000 paying customer. Most of time are Fortune 500 companies. When you are using slack for free what is essentially happening is that the big companies are subsiding your infrastructure cost. Over 600,000 SMEs use free slack and its not economical for them to be self hosted
SAAS is not dead, in fact large SAAS companies will becoming bigger monopolies using AI tools
Agentonomics
The hackathon was well received . Congrats to the winner idearoast . Product market fit is the most difficult part of a startup journey. Billions of dollars have been spent on products that have no takers. The progression to PMF is very clear:
1. Users are not curious about the product
2. Users are curious but not willing to pay
3. Users are willing to pay
Getting users (not your friends) to pay is actually the fastest way to validate the product. Subsidizing a product or giving it for free creates a illusionary PMF , which can be detrimental in getting the actual PMF