AI Agents vs SaaS - Who Wins the Future of Software?

0:00remember when mobile apps were supposed to kill web software or when no code was supposed to make developers obsolete every few years there's a new SAS killer and every time what actually happens SAS gets stronger today everyone's panicking about AI agents but they're missing something crucial about how Founders and the software they create actually deliver value I'm Rob Walling I've started six companies I've invested in more than 200 startups and I've written five books on entrepreneurship over the last 20 years I've seen the impending end of SAS quite a few times inevitably Founders find new opportunities and build incredible companies but AI is changing a lot of things and in today's

0:41video I'm going to show you why AI agents won't kill your SAS and how to actually take advantage of this shift to grow your business and stick around to the end for one critical mistake I see some Founders making when it comes to AI so I'm going to start by answering what are AI agents an AI agent is a software program that can take actions and make decisions on their own based on goals instructions and real-time data so unlike traditional software which follows predefined rules that a developer builds AI agents can learn they can adapt and they can automate tasks dynamically like a smart assistant that can book appointments summarize

1:17emails or analyze reports without constant human input and there are a few reasons why people think they're a threat to SAS so one of the things I've heard is we're no longer going to need a user interface for SAS apps if AI agents can complete tasks via natural language and then hit the SAS apis or as people are calling them aciis agent communication interfaces another reason people think SAS is going away is that there's no need for glue SAS tools that Cobble together or connect various SAS platforms and another reason I've heard that AI agents might kill SAS is that agents can be a layer on top of many SAS

1:53tools the Doomsday scenario of course is that AI agents replace the need for all SAS but for me I do not believe that's where we're headed because there's a reality check what can agents actually do and what can't they do and even looking ahead what will they be able to do and perhaps never be able to do so we've seen this shift before right there's this human element in software usage no matter how much an AI agent is doing just like if I have an assistant or I have an SDR or I have a customer success person I have a salesperson I have a developer no matter how many

2:24humans I have I still need software to work with them to interface with them to manage them to report on them on what they're doing there's still a a database of record and that is going to be SAS SAS products will still matter they're still going to be the glue that holds all this together in addition just because people can create tools can create agents doesn't mean they will how many dentists you know that are whipping up their own dental practice management software using no code and they probably could I have people on my team building all kinds of pretty impressive apps using air table and bubble and other no

2:57code tools but a dentist is is much more likely to want to buy prepackaged software if you think about it AI agents are essentially automation layers that sit on top of existing pieces of software that's what they are today and even as they adapt I still think in the long run that's going to be true these are not Standalone businesses in most cases but they're rather enhancements they improve efficiency they reduce friction and they create new workflows within existing SAS products if you think about zapier and make they tie together SAS products they're not autonomous ages but but kind of you know they're obviously not AI but they do

3:30Cobble things together and they're a layer on top of a lot of SAS apps but they augmented SAS they didn't kill it and similarly spreadsheets didn't kill accounting software just like that AI agents are not going to eliminate SAS they're going to integrate into it even as AI gets dramatically better it will not eliminate the need for structured interfaces and clear workflows because businesses optimize for predictability not just intelligence and I think about if I had a SAS today why wouldn't I Implement my own agent or agents that sit on top of it in addition to building the ACI that other external agents can interact with but I can build my own

4:06agents and much like integrating AI into my SAS today that becomes something that helps people get more value out of my tool and stick around longer if you think about it SAS is much more than a UI it's workflows it's compliance it's data handling it's business logic many SAS businesses succeed because they solve complex industry specific problems and these are things that AI agents unless they're specifically programmed to operate in a certain way are always going to have a little little wiggle room you know there's always going to be little hallucinations a little bit of gray area that a SAS app where it has hardcoded business logic means it's

4:44compliant it's secure it has data governance it's really locked down and does exactly what you need to do when you need it done it's going to be different than agents AI agents are good at fetching information they're good at automating simple workflows but they will not replace the Deep domain knowledge the structured processes and the reliability that SAS companies provide so those are my thoughts around how AI agents are not going to take over SAS but they are going to have a significant impact on SAS and this is the thing I think that people forget is that with these big Paradigm shifts you always have someone saying this isn't

5:16going to do anything and you have someone on the other side saying this will change everything it's going to kill this entire you know uh ecosystem it's going to kill all SAS usually neither of those is true I find that the extreme opinions are usually inaccurate but much like no code did impact SAS it didn't replace it and much like 3gl programming languages back in the days did impact software development but they didn't eliminate the need for programmers I believe AI agents will have a real impact on SAS one of those is going to be changes to interfaces namely the user interface I think there's going to be less user interface

5:53interactions in the future and there's going to be a lot more API and ACI first applications and that right right now if you have a UI and an API man there's a lot of acronyms here but if you have a UI and an API that adding an ACI and even building that out and fleshing it out moving forward I'm not saying do it today I think moving forward as you build new apps or as you expand your business that you are going to have to think a lot more in terms of agent interfaces and API interfaces and still have some UI but not as much as today in

6:23addition I think there's going to be a shift in value propositions this is likely going to reduce your SAS or any SAS to its core value proposition it's going to be less about bunch of screens to enter data and report on data and more about the core database the work flows the business logic and really the Deep domain knowledge and the structured processes that you build into your software I also believe the best SAS companies will integrate AI deeply into their products making them smarter faster and more efficient and making their users and customers faster smarter and more efficient shifts similar to this have happened with SAS in the past

6:58when mobile came out SAS was impacted when Cloud became a thing instead of on Prem SAS was impacted when apis became a real going concern this people forget but it was 10 12 years ago where everyone started having apis and that's that's one of the reasons zappier Rose so quickly to prominence over the last decade API became a critical key part of every application none of those ended SAS you still need a UI you still need your database you still need your business logic but they did impact SAS and there was a shift in the space before I get to the critical mistake that I see some Founders making with AI

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8:10see Founders making is burying their head in the sand and getting AI exhaustion it's AI fatigue they pretend nothing's happening because they don't know what to do and they're hearing so much about it and frankly there is so much noise about this with all the hype it's easy to want to ignore it but realistically if you run a SAS app integrating AI do your day-to-day internal operations I think is critical potentially using AI in your functionality and your features you're building and starting to think about how agents might need to or be able to interact with your application I think all of those are critical things to be

8:45thinking about don't bury your head in the sand as you look to integrate AI into your app you really need to consider the platform risk that might come into play if you over rely on any one given provider in this next video I lay out the dangers of platform r R and how to avoid getting burned by it check it out and thanks for watching