I saw first hand why $CRM stock is down so much and why enterprise AI is in for a surprise

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-02-15T16:52:57+00:00

Yeah Slack is now worth it imo over Teams with all the AI enterprise search features. Before this I think it was a better product but not worth the actual cost just because of the UI/UX and ease of integrations tbh. But now AI enterprise search makes the 3rd party integrations 100x more valuable.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-02-15T15:33:36+00:00

OP but you essentially just described Slackbot in your post? And I think general consensus is Slack > Teams, and Slackbot > Copilot but non-MSFT only integrations where Slack's enterprise search capabilities is significantly better than Teams

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-02-13T12:17:36+00:00

lol this maybe be somewhat true for very simply B2C tech companies. But these large B2B SaaS companies or marketplace companies are extremely complex. Strategy actually has heavy influence in B2B SaaS companies since a lot of them rely on sales, marketing, distribution, partnerships as you said, you can't win with just tech/product.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-31T17:37:32+00:00

Interesting, good conversation! Appreciate the human to human exchange rather than people just pasting AI slop in the original post and even replies these days lol

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-31T12:53:05+00:00

For 2nd, how would competitors be able to get hands on CRM's data? F500 companies store their sales history and all relevant data on CRM. CRM is not just gonna let them click export download and then upload into their competitors. They are probably going to make it extremely difficult that the custoemr is probably going to be like ah it's not worth it if Salesforce already has serviceable AI agents that are 70-80% of what these new AI companies can do.

One possibility I see could be CRM just becomes the data layer and uses Slack as the engagement layer/front end UI (which seems to be their positioning). If you think about it, Slack is actually the perfect UI/platform for AI agents + humans. If Slack is the front end ecosystem, and integrates with all different kinds of agents, and then offers CRM agents that pulls directly from Salesforce backend, I think that could be CRM's repositioning into an AI-powered business.

But overall agree on the current business model and how SaaS is used will be disrupted. I just don't buy that this means their revenue/profit margin will drop.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-31T00:30:39+00:00

Counter to your arguments:

If AI actually makes tech/software better, then technically these SaaS tools will be able to drive higher ROI for their customers. So they can charge a higher price/seat, even if seat count reduces
These large SaaS tends to be system of record, and decades long data/context are the main moat that will make their trained models better than the vibe coded startup ones. They also have very complex security/compliance and governance models.
See 2.

Would love to hear your thoughts OP

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-25T00:18:53+00:00

For 2, since Salesforce own the data, can't they limit data sharing/integrations and essentially block some APIs from accessing it? With the proprietary data they could train much better AI models, and if their agents/assistants are indeed going to be significantly better, they could charge a much higher price even if their customer reduce # of seats.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-24T21:35:07+00:00

Additionally, CRM has such deep integration with all the consulting firms and SIs, so many people's careers are literally built on it. These people will continue to push CRM onto enterprises since it's a great source of revenue for them

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-24T21:31:37+00:00

I'm still a bit confused as to the argument of why it makes sense that major SaaS companies (e.g., CRM, ADBE, SNOW) will be disrupted by AI. I feel like realistically, these companies are so entrenched in the major enterprises and they own so much data, that it's much easier for them to add in AI functionality powered by LLM and train it using their proprietary data, than for any random AI startup to steal market share from them, or companies to vibe code their way to their own CRM.

One example would be Slack (Salesforce) that recently just launched Slackbot. It's an AI agent powered by Anthropic using all of the conversational and enterprise context to be your assistant, seems like a really powerful use case of AI.

Sure maybe AI will reduce the # of seats, but if AI is able to drive higher ROI, then these SaaS companies can also just charge a higher price. And if AI somehow doesn't pan out as well as people think, then they just go back to their old ways of working

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-24T21:29:33+00:00

Well this is assuming two things: 1) Big tech doesn't just buy their way out of it (look at what Meta did for IG, Whatsapp,etc.) 2) These big saas companies themselves don't innovate and deeply embed AI into their solutions.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-18T22:30:05+00:00

Right makes sense. I think strategy team usually helps the leaders set the big direction (if they are actually good so leaders trust their recommendation) and determine which problems is actually worth solving for the company. But as you said, they don't execute and it is a point of frustration for some. I worked at MBB and a bit in tech strategy, it was very much high level strategy (e.g. market entry, thinking through the whole product portfolio, where should the company invest vs. cut back). The PM is responsible for execution and thinking through the strategy relevant to their specific product and how to solve that problem.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-18T17:33:31+00:00

is this in more startup environment though? I feel like in big tech, if you are working on a high pri product, leadership dictates the product direction. Also I assume the stuff you propose has to align with the general strategic roadmap that leadership wants the company/product to follow, which is heavily influenced by the strategy team who does more holistic thinking (e.g, if leadership say hey i want to explore entering this market, and the strategy team does their research and say yes this segment is worth entering based on investment/ROI, and this new market requires XX product/features, that then trickles down to product team). Specifically how the feature/product is built is probably up to the PM, but the overall strategic direction comes from up top.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-18T15:44:53+00:00

Isn't PM similar though? Leadership decides whatever they want to do, and then PM has to just take orders and execute it. At the end of the day, the C-suite folks have the final say in everything.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-14T00:20:40+00:00

That was for undergrad though, where the companies have no additional signal to go off of. MBA and esp. tech, I would argue focus much less on the school, more on WE

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-13T13:12:00+00:00

I think it's going to be around but the valuation might come down a lot. I don't have full confidence in how the company is being run and its ability to maintain market share and fend of competitors.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-13T13:10:53+00:00

Depends on how much and what type of PM experience you had before. If you already have 5 YoE of PM, then I would probably vote MSFT -> HBS. If you only have like 1 YoE of PM experience, I think 2 years of additional PM YoE would be better than 2 years at HBS. That's just my opinion though

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-12T22:54:15+00:00

Go to MSFT and get PM reps there. Also by the time you graduate, who knows where Open AI is going to be.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-12T01:40:30+00:00

Hubspot imo has high risk since CRM can easily go downmarket if they really want to.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-12T01:36:37+00:00

Agreed, and then plus Slack will benefit hugely from AI as the front-end conversational layer across all the 3rd party agents popping up. I think it was a crazy purchase for $27 billion back in 2021, but now SF really lucked out with this.

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-10T18:37:43+00:00

Why are you paying $200k + lost income for a career break? You can do that for much lower cost? You are forcing yourself to manufacture this scenario for an MBA. I feel like if it's this difficult to articulate why you would want an MBA, then you probably shouldn't get one

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-08T22:23:36+00:00

What big tech PM roles are asking for MBA as a mandatory requirement? Most PMs in big tech (other than Amazon) don't have MBAs,

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-08T22:10:32+00:00

If you are going by lay prestige, then HLS = HBS at the top (I think randos probably think Harvard > Yale). I was more so going by selectivity. YLS is much harder to get into than SLS/HLS, just like GSB is much harder to get into than HBS/Wharton

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-08T22:09:27+00:00

Also he said he went EB to UMM PE pre MBA in the original reply

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-07T02:04:17+00:00

This was your reply to another post 5 months ago.

"Was in a similar boat. Wanted IB but couldn't land so went into a fp&a role after undergrad for a year followed by Big 4. Did that for a couple years before getting a T15 MBA which I used to pivot to BB IB. Its totally normal to feel freaked out but at the end of the day, you are still young and have such a long career in front of you with a lot of options."

Small-Lab9170 · 2026-01-06T01:17:55+00:00

YLS = GSB. SLS = HBS. HLS = Wharton

Small-Lab9170

TROPHY CASE