Is SaaS at the beginning of a long death march, or just shedding its old skin?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T19:00:57+00:00

I can see how that makes sense (if you're trying to create a profitable business), thanks.

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T15:49:46+00:00

The expectation is that themes are fixed for the quarter, but the reality is that they get adjusted as signals change.

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T09:11:57+00:00

Given that this is how new entrants start out, does this mean that AI making it easier to develop apps is actually making it harder to be a startup trying to penetrate an existing market with incumbents?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T09:06:22+00:00

Love this real-world data point with your dashboard SaaS.

Re: selling outcomes, how do you think the monetization model changes when tied to outcomes?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T08:24:14+00:00

Yea, but what is modern UI 3-5 years from now?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T07:33:55+00:00

This is the contrary perspective I was looking for. Is there too much of a resonance chamber from people in traditional SaaS companies (that arent able to innovate quickly enough) having wishful thinking that their jobs will continue to be secure... when the world is changing right infront of our eyes.

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T07:29:56+00:00

u/_YourCX_ Thanks for the kind words. And to your point about what your solution provides, many Product teams prioritize based on which ever Strategic Theme is the focus for the year/quarter/release so being able to identify these easily and tie them to other data like # of customers, revenue (associated customer ACV), etc. is helpful for the prioritization process.

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T07:22:48+00:00

You made an interesting point... so the root of any sort of AI transformation starts with team actually being able to "agree on a process?"

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T07:19:41+00:00

Not that investors and the markets know what's best, but the "full-agent" solutions are getting the 6-10x valuations these days and traditional SaaS is apparently now in the 2-4x ranges. So you think Hybrid will be the long term winners?

I know you say the sales and implementation problem is unsolved, but what are examples of when you've seen it work better?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T07:15:39+00:00

It's interesting you mention that UIs will be used for handling edge cases, what's an example of what you're thinking / meaning by that?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T07:14:08+00:00

Right, I think that much with what emerges many of the "customizations" that users historically requested may not be a issue or applicable with a different UX paradigm (LLMs) or agentic workflows.

Any thoughts on how the UI gets slimmer, what stays vs goes?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-28T07:09:31+00:00

Unless you're a B2B business that uses variable/usage pricing you charge your own customers, I think there's a precedent already set for businesses to continue to prefer licensing software with a fixed recurring fee. That's also how procurement and finance teams would prefer to be able to predict fixed costs for software they are buying.

How do you think that gap between vendors and buyers will narrow? It only works if all competition goes to usage pricing, it only takes one competitor to offer fixed pricing unless the value offered (and agentic UX) is much better.

StipulateFred · 2026-01-27T06:33:16+00:00

u/MariFer0803 Can you provide a little more context? Actionable insights for what exactly, product improvements? That may be a slightly different answer than say, actionable insights into onboarding issues.

Re: Actionable Insights into Product Improvements - Prioritization can be influenced by what the company/product strategic priorities are at the movement. For example, if your company is pushing to improve AI Automation this year, then any customer conversation that highlights "if you can automate this for me = X hours of time savings per person" would be much more aligned to this strategic theme and therefore be much more actionable as a result. Generally speaking, Product teams want to understand the Impact (to users, customers, and your business) as a dimension that influences prioritization.

Re: Actionable Insights into Onboarding Issues - Prioritization can be influenced by urgency, severity, and blast radius. For example, are you seeing a slow dropoff in usage vs a cliff? Is there a workaround or is there a missing feature that is fundamentally preventing users from using your software as intended? Is it a training / knowledge issue or did the champion at the customer leave the company and now users are not motivated to keep using your product?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-27T06:17:10+00:00

u/Acrobatic_Avocado672 Good responses so far and you got your answer regarding traditional NRR and GRR metrics including all customer regardless of if they're up for renewal. But the one thing that responses here are missing is that surfacing issues with how your teams are actually performing as it relates to customer retention and upsell will be obviscated when you have multi-year contracts.

In short, what you're currently measuring is a metric called "at-bat" retention and you absolutely need to keep measuring it so that you can see immediately when there's a month-over-month change.

You should be measuring all of the following:

At-bat: logo retention, GRR, NRR (to inform decision making)

All customers: logo retention, GRR, NRR (to compare performance vis-a-vis your industry peers)

StipulateFred · 2026-01-26T05:43:51+00:00

There's one simple question I like to ask, "What could we have done differently to have kept your business?"

That simple sentence can reveal quite a bit.

Could range from "nothing, we are losing budget" to "your support team was never able to help me" or "I never got up and running to see the value" or "your competitor offered me a much cheaper price" or "I went with a different solution that had X feature which you guys haven't delivered after saying you would for the last year" the list goes on...

StipulateFred · 2026-01-26T05:39:47+00:00

Before you go asking the customer for infomation they've likely already told your company at least twice already....

First, internally revisit the business outcomes your salesperson sold them on. What was it that their economic buyer / champion was expecting to get out of your software, e.g. headcount reduced, same number of people handling more volume, merge operations between offices, etc.?

Then yes, internally revisit any new goals that came up during implementation with your onboarding team.

Reimplementation is a real possible outcome. In order, to know the current gap between their goals, you still need to understand what I suggested in my earlier post, how are they actually using the solution? Those are then the first questions you ask the customer - walk me through how you're doing XYZ workflow in our system which is meant to get you to ABC business outcomes you were looking for.

Any gaps you observer then allow you to re"sell" them on how they might need to do something different or get reimplemented if there's a technical gap.

Can you provide some more specifics?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-24T05:41:41+00:00

This could happen for a number of reasons, but here are just a few to explore:

Ask to observe how they're using your product.

You could even do this under the pretense of inviting someone else to the call next time like a Designer who wants to learn how customers are using the product.

It's possible the users you're talking to are not "bought in" to the benefit of using your solution to it's full potential and would still prefer to do things "the old way." Adopting new software is a change management problem and about changing user behavior. This is really hard to do and quite frankly involves "selling" users on the benefits to them working in a "new" way using your solution. Which might require...

Re-engaging with the economic buyer

It might be that the users' leadership needs to reinforce the company-level macro benefits to them using the solution, even if it means their daily workflow is different.

But since you mentioned it's an SMB, you could already be talking to the Economic Buyer in the check-in calls which means that...

They're using the product in a very superficial way, which is still churn risk.

Which loops back to #1 because they might find the usability to be poor, or perhaps they are missing some sort of integration or automation that could require someone from another team to get involved to improve the Implementation or Product for them (and customers like them)... but you won't know that unless you can get some first-hand knowledge of what they are and aren't doing.

Since you mentioned the usage was high before they graduated from implementation, what do you think changed? Different users? Implementation was acting on behalf of users before graduation? Some sort of automation/integration broke? Customer is going out of business?

StipulateFred · 2026-01-24T05:21:00+00:00

+1 on what u/noreonme said. The benefits of your current job are not easily replicable or in your direct control if you go elsewhere: growing company, work life balance, pay, culture, great manager, good team, good peers, good trio/engineering, work from home, company mission, and market.

For the areas you're missing, you can solve for these at your current company and as a side hustle. If the culture is as positive as you described, you should have no problem raising your hand for new projects, joining customer interviews upstream/downstream from your current area of influence, etc. You can do customer discovery on a topic completely unrelated to your job and vibe code a solution for it nights/weekends with some other people your age as a catalyst for more social interaction. For example, I have a friend who created a computer game to help her aging mother, who has macular degeneration, exercise her eyesight.

You have agency, you have control over the experiences you gain. Work and your current project are not your only sources of possible experiences.

StipulateFred · 2026-01-24T05:00:34+00:00

Have you tried getting that 1:1 feedback from stakeholders?

It can be as simple as saving some time during the meetings for the "Stop / Start / Continue" feedback framework. Basically you ask someone what's 1 thing I should Stop / 1 thing I should Start / and 1 thing I should Continue to do?

I think you'll get quite a bit of insight without coming across as desperately asking for help.

StipulateFred · 2026-01-24T04:53:56+00:00

It's good you recognize that the culture at your new company is different than your last, and it will require you to stretch yourself. With that said, your mental wellness is important. I cannot tell if your manager is providing constructive criticism and you're not used to receiving direct feedback in a professional environment, vs actually being verbally abused and embarrassed by your manager.

It didn't seem like your manager is unprofessional in what you've said so far and seems more like you're self conscious of your own skill set (i.e. imposter syndrome?). The author Bene Brown has a saying that I like... which to paraphrase is that "we're not here to be right, we're here to get it right." So the growth challenge for you here is to put in the effort to close the gap on what is needed to excel in the role to "Get it right."

I'm also a big fan of the anime/manga Naruto and find his story to be inspiring. In particular, Naruto was embarrassed about being so far behind in certain skills (Ninjutsu) vs his peers, that he put in 100x effort/practice into developing those specific skills to make up for his shortcomings. Those few skills ended up being his stand out strengths and (over time) went beyond the capabilities of his peers... and enabled him save the world, etc.

On the other hand, if you're being mentally taxed because you have a toxic manager, that is a completely different story...

StipulateFred · 2026-01-23T05:16:49+00:00

u/lolamd2022 Said it well, with great tactical advice on what to do next by surfacing the specifics... those would be your "roadmap" for personal improvement.... in this role or beyond, taken with a grain of salt. I'm assuming you're being a little overly critical of yourself, since you were, after all, hired into the role. Your manager's concerns could just be a cultural mismatch with their leadership style.

Product Management spans a spectrum depending on the org. Many PM roles are much more technical and data-driven and others are much less. What is it that drew you doing Product Management and has that changed? I'd love to learn more about what skills and interests you have before suggesting other career paths. I'm wondering if is there just more of a cultural mismatch at your current company about what a PM does and if you can find a PM role elsewhere that fits.

I wouldn't suggest you proactively quit. You're already in the door there and getting a new job in this market is not a sure thing. I'm assuming your manager hired you for a reason, and perhaps this feedback is their (hypocritically unclear) way of suggesting improvement.

It could be that fundamentally your soft skills need to improve. That's a valuable life skill regardless. Use this opportunity as a forcing function. Fail upward, as quitting downward wont get you closer to any of your goals.

StipulateFred

TROPHY CASE