Will AI Kill SaaS? Triangle Founders Want to Know! We Deep Dive Into the SaaSageddon with Joe Mancini, GP at Front Porch Ventures
Front Porch’s Joe Mancini breaks down the SaaS re-rating, AI-native vs AI-immigrant companies, pricing evolution, moats in the AI era, and where venture is actually leaning right now.
Who is Joe Mancini?
Joe Mancini is a General Partner at Front Porch, a hybrid venture firm investing across the Southeast. Front Porch backs both venture funds and startups directly, giving Joe and his partners a rare cross-market lens into what’s actually happening across early-stage investing.
Before launching Front Porch, Joe worked across mobile, cloud, and broadband infrastructure, including time at Google Fiber and Digital Turbine, giving him both operator and investor perspective.
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How I Know Joe
I’ve known Joe and his partners for years through the Triangle startup ecosystem. His partner Nikan joined us for Tweener Madness last year, and we’ve had a lot of crossover conversations around venture, AI, and where software is heading. When Front Porch published their piece titled “Yes, SaaS Is Dead (As We Know It),” the timing was almost eerie as we had just published something similar at Tweener.
So I wanted to get Joe on the pod to unpack what they’re really seeing behind the scenes.
Listen/Watch Our Interview:
This episode is a big one. There’s a lot of noise right now around AI, venture, and whether SaaS is fundamentally broken. Public markets are re-rating software companies. Seed rounds are shifting. Pricing models are changing. And founders are asking the same question:
“Are we toast?”
Joe Mancini from Front Porch is in a unique position to answer that. His firm sits inside dozens of funds and startups across the Southeast and beyond. He sees what’s working, and what’s not, in real time. So we dug into the thesis behind their “SaaS is Dead” piece, what it actually means, and what founders should be doing right now.
Highlights covered
Why SaaS is being re-rated in public markets
Whether this is permanent or cyclical
AI-native vs. AI-immigrant companies
The collapse (and split) of the traditional “seed” round
Why vertical SaaS may explode in this era
How founders should think about churn in the AI era
Internal resistance to AI adoption (and why it’s dangerous)
What venture firms are actually looking for right now
The next decade belongs to founders who deeply understand their vertical, obsess over customer value, and move fast enough to build moats before the standards settle.
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📌 What’s Next
Next on Triangle Tweener Talks, we’ll continue spotlighting founders who’ve built real companies in the Triangle, digging into the decisions that shaped their journeys, the tradeoffs behind growth, and what they’re building next.
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