---
title: "SaaS can survive while its growth model breaks"
description: "Customers can keep renewing important software while building the next feature or workflow they once would have bought."
canonical: "https://www.rickblalock.dev/scratch-notes/saas-can-survive-while-its-growth-model-breaks/"
date: "2026-11-11"
updated: "2026-11-11"
author: "Rick Blalock"
---

# SaaS can survive while its growth model breaks

> Customers can keep renewing important software while building the next feature or workflow they once would have bought.

Published: 2026-11-11

Catalog: SN-029

[Mike Fishbein](https://x.com/mfishbein/status/2114686222496837942) called it the “SaaSpocalypse,” pointing to ye olde [McKinsey survey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai).

“A third of companies stopped buying software” sounds a bit much, but there is something interesting here: Among respondents whose organizations already used AI regularly in at least one business function, 32% said they had declined to buy at least one software product or feature because they could build the functionality themselves with AI coding tools.

OK, so that is still enough to change the economics of SaaS, right?

A company can keep its CRM, accounting system, or ERP while building the approval flow, report, integration, or internal dashboard it once would have bought. It renews the important software and stops adding as much around it.

SaaS growth depends on more than retention. Vendors expect customers to add seats, upgrade plans, and buy adjacent products. If customers build even a narrow slice of that expansion themselves, the software can remain useful while its customers build more of their own internal software.

The flexibility agents give companies is amazing: The internal tools do not have to compete as products. They only have to solve one company’s problem well enough that another subscription or add-on is no longer worth buying.

I think this is how the SaaSpocalypse arrives, if it arrives at all. The important products stay. Customers simply stop buying the next feature, module, or workflow around them. Eventually some of them will just eat into all the features they're paying for too.

So my bet: SaaS survives to some degree in the mid-term. But the assumption that every account will keep expanding does not. And then, long-term, companies may realize they can just build out the rest too.

---

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