The SaaSpocalypse is the natural course
B2B SaaS was never a market. It was a hot potato, and the music just stopped.
Insanity in individuals is something rare. But in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I've been saying this for 10 years now.
B2B SaaS tools are insanely overvalued and the post-dot-com, pre-AI tech scene (let's say 2010–2022) has always been a Ponzi-esque "pass-the-hot-potato" scheme.
The market simply caught up with the scam.
From TechCrunch:
Bending Spoons is continuing its trend of buying once-sought-after software companies for pennies on the dollar. This time, the Italian company is buying Miro for $1.36 billion in cash (equity value of $1.79 billion), a mighty dip in valuation for the once-hot workplace collaboration startup that was awarded a price tag of $17.5 billion in late 2021.
Founded in 2013, Airtable has so far raised more than $1.4 billion over multiple funding rounds. At its peak, during the boom days of 2021, it was valued at over $11 billion, but earlier this year, its shares were said to be trading on the secondary markets at a valuation of $4 billion.
Can somebody tell me what the f*** Miro is? Aside from a convoluted piece of SaaS. I think an intern at my previous company sent it once to show me some flow diagram of some CX journey or whatever. I opened it once and thought "oh wow, now that's stupid."
Regardless of my personal opinion, which you might or might not like (I don't care)…
Look at the valuation: $17.5B in 2021 was 30x+ ARR. It was sold at 2.3x yesterday.
And Airtable? It was kinda useful for a bit, but still nowhere near 4 billion dollars.
I've always said it. VC is a game of pass the hot potato, with hopes that the best-suited big tech will pay for everybody's gamble.
It's a losing game for everyone but the perpetrators. Founders are more often than not fucked (literally) and big tech companies might buy a rotten apple. Happens all the time.
The thing is, most of these apps are useless and they just fabricate the need to be used. A kanban (can be a board of post-its) is 10x more effective than Notion.
They just play on the human desire to be productive. They're extremely good at creating useless needs.
Luckily, AI will correct the moronic SaaS market. It's about time.
But for some reason this fake market economy needs a scam.
And they are making a scam out of something truly useful (automating the thinking layer of an enterprise. Please name a better invention in the last 100 years). The jet engine? Nuclear fission? It's on par with those IMO.
But that's up to you to decide.
As always. Don't be stupid.
God bless.
J
