Founder News This Week: SaaS Re-rating, Andreessen's Hot Takes, AI Leapfrogging and More!
SaaS under pressure, AI-native builders, and the signals that matter
We’re back with your weekly founder friendly news for the week 👋
This week’s reading list circles one big question from a few different angles: what does durability look like in an AI-accelerated world?
From SaaS valuation pressure and investor scrutiny, to founders navigating agent-written code, to AI-native companies leapfrogging entire eras of software, and finally, a signal flare from one of the people shaping the modern AI zeitgeist.
If you’re a founder, operator, or investor trying to separate signal from noise right now, this one’s for you. But before we dive in, this series is made possible by our sponsors, so let’s give them a quick shout-out 👇
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#MUSTREAD for SaaS Founders
“AI is creating huge questions about what the future retention rates of these “stable” software companies will be. Software bears will say this platform shift will lead to deteriorating retention rates as companies leave behind legacy SaaS vendors for modern AI native alternatives. At the same time (and related), this is increasing the probability that the terminal value is in fact 0 for some companies.”
Jamin Ball
If you’re building a SaaS company, you need to read this.
This piece by Jamin Ball at Altimeter hit for two reasons, one operational, one existential.
Operationally, SaaS valuations are under pressure as investors reassess two things that used to be taken for granted:
Churn: is your “recurring revenue” actually recurring?
Terminal value: can customers eventually vibe-code their way out of needing you?
Those two are tightly linked. If customers are churning because they’re DIY-ing with AI tools, that’s huge.
From a venture perspective, the bar for raising rounds past seed has gotten very high. This piece lays out exactly what founders now need to prove:
Churn understood down to three decimal places
A defensible answer to the AI displacement / vibe-code risk
Clear evidence that your value compounds, not erodes, over time
