SaaS
also referred to as: software as a service
75 statements across 53 episodes · 33 bullish · 13 bearish · 48 people on the record · first statement Jul 15, 2019 by Pankaj Bansal · said 6 times in 1 episodes since 2025 · across every show →
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brought up most by Siddhartha Ahluwalia (6)
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Everything said about SaaS, oldest first
Jul 15, 2019
Bansal: PeopleStrong Ended Custom Client Work to Shift to SaaS
“We had to shift the whole business to SAS. It was very painful because we had people for a long time at people strong. So to help them to convert, sometimes I had to become hard. Sometimes my colleagues, my co-founders have to, Become extremely hard to tell pe…”
Aug 20, 2019 positive
Aug 20, 2019 bullish
Anandan: India will build hundreds of $100M SaaS companies
“My view is India is going to create thousands of SaaS companies. Obviously you know, quite a number of them will become very, very large, but we can build, you know, hundreds of companies that are worth a hundred million dollars each in the SaaS space.”
Aug 20, 2019
Aug 20, 2019 neutral
May 24, 2020
Orios Venture Partners avoided SaaS investments due to overseas due diligence challenges
“We have tended to sort of stay away from SaaS businesses in the past because we couldn't you know do due diligence on customers overseas. And therefore we kind of stayed away from that. We felt that it was too early in that space.”
May 24, 2020 bullish
Aug 10, 2020 positive
Kapur: SaaS startups must rely on founder-led sales until $1M ARR
“Initially, till that first, maybe even a million dollars, right? Like, it should all be done by the founders. And if the founders themselves don't have the skill set to do it, then either they should learn it, or they should bring another founder, co-founder o…”
Aug 24, 2020 neutral
Oct 26, 2020 positive
Winning Indian SaaS blends global product leadership with local operational efficiency
“My view is that what I would love to see over the coming decade is the nice blend of the two where you are coming up with that kind of global product leadership capability as you are building kind of product first companies and marry that up, like build your e…”
Dec 28, 2020
Ghorpade: All SaaS companies essentially operate as workflow management tools
“All SaaS companies really, essentially what they do is workflow management. So their understanding of the client workflows, their pain points has to be of a very, very high order. And unless you really achieve that, and unless you appreciate the issues of that…”
Dec 28, 2020 neutral
Mar 15, 2021 bullish
Indian startups are expanding into PaaS, but infrastructure still lags
“Where India has largely been successful is at the top level, which is building those applications with SaaS layers and all those things.
So what has changed in the last few years is even in the past, it was predominantly SaaS. Now we start seeing a lot of com…”
Mar 22, 2021 positive
Apr 19, 2021 bullish
Indian SaaS startups will scale to $100M in revenue within three years
“And in US, I think there are companies which can grow from zero to hundred million revenue in three years. And I expect a lot of those companies to come out of India as well in coming times. So the speed will become very different than what it is today.”
Jun 15, 2021 bearish
Sinha says SaaS businesses are merely support tools, not market changers
“So, so therefore that is also one of the reasons I don't do a lot of software, right? So I don't do SaaS. I don't do enterprise SaaS or I, Don't do B to B SaaS. It's not like I don't like those businesses or they are not, they can't make money. They can make m…”
Aug 23, 2021 bearish
Successful commercial open-source companies globally can be counted on two hands
“The number of successful open source commercial companies are not too many in the world. That's not a SaaS playbook. It's not as well known as a SaaS playbook. It's very different. There are the number of open source commercial companies you can probably count…”
Sep 27, 2021 bullish
Dec 6, 2021 neutral
Feb 28, 2022 positive
Apr 25, 2022 positive
May 23, 2022
Jul 4, 2022 positive
Pandey: SaaS Pricing Will Mirror B2C by Charging Creators, Not Readers
“So there are many things, many experiences in the world of SaaS that will actually look like that. And there's some great companies in the world of PLG today where you don't charge everybody. You don't have to get greedy upfront, where maybe the people who are…”
Jul 12, 2022 negative
Mayya: Indian accents and presentations on marketing websites reduce global buyer trust
“In SAS also, there is some little bit of racism. If you're an Indian presenting on screen, nobody cares. Nobody wants to like, then your trust goes minus minus. It doesn't matter if you're an Indian CEO talking about stuff that people will trust. But if your c…”
Aug 23, 2022 positive
Indian B2B SaaS founders must embrace field sales over remote selling
“Do not be scared of building like field sales. Like a lot of people in the beginning told me that, you know, don't do field sales. And a lot of SaaS founders, by the way, hate field sales, right? Like they don't like it. SaaS is usually thought of as a clean b…”
Aug 23, 2022
Vertical SaaS founders must assume pitching VCs have zero domain knowledge
“Like a person like me sitting there at Bessemer, I personally cannot know hundred industries. I cannot associate with a hundred problems. So you have to go in knowing that this guy doesn't understand it. And it's okay for him to not understand it or her unders…”
Aug 23, 2022 neutral
Makkar: Bessemer evaluates vertical SaaS entirely on metrics, not domain expertise
“And at Bessemer, at least we were very, very metric driven. And I think we published like a good, better, best of SaaS, global SaaS out there. So pretty much that's how I'm going to evaluate. So there were companies in oil and gas. I have no idea about oil and…”
Nov 21, 2022 neutral
Jagannathan: SaaS is just a subscription delivery mechanism, not an identity
“If you were to ask me that question, are you a SaaS company? Maybe, maybe not, because we just use subscription as a way to reach out to our customers and have them pay us. But we're solving for a problem, right? And if there was any other way of solving the p…”
Jan 9, 2023 neutral
Jan 9, 2023 neutral
Goyal: SaaS market premiums only reward category leaders and top followers
“Even in SAS, you will find that in every category, there is like a massive market leader, which will be the outlier, 40, 50, 60% market share. There'll be two or three others, anywhere between 10 to 20, 30% kind of market share, and then there's a long tail. A…”
Jan 9, 2023 negative
Jan 9, 2023 bullish
Goyal: Indian SaaS founders can build any software model today
“Today, you don't need a recipe from India. I don't think there is a kind of company you can't build from India today. You can build for the SMB. You can build for the enterprise. You can build classical sales led. You can build product led. You can build class…”
Mar 13, 2023 positive
Ganesan: Focused outbound targeting guarantees early SaaS traction despite slower growth
“For a lot of people, I mean, to be honest, probably the easier path is to say, hey, let me build that clear ICP and reach out to specific people, and it should work even that way, right? It's not like you won't have that initial traction that way. It may be sl…”
Mar 13, 2023 bearish
Ganesan predicts SaaS multiples will max out at double their current levels
“I don't think the craziness we saw in twenty-twenty-one is something we should expect and wait to see if that happens again. Rather come to terms with reality that, okay, if we are at a certain multiple today, at max, maybe if things are very bullish, maybe it…”
Mar 13, 2023 positive
May 5, 2023 bullish
May 23, 2023 positive
Aug 11, 2023 neutral
Dec 9, 2023 positive
Ghosh: Highly Sticky SaaS Companies Require Platform and Data Moats
“SaaS companies tend to be built where there is some platform and data mode placed somewhere. If you think about ServiceNow, they're still sitting on this data mode, which is their CMDB. If you think of Salesforce, they're still sitting on a, what is essentiall…”
Dec 9, 2023 bullish
Ghosh: Network effects of knowledge will eventually hit Indian AI and data infra
“And it looks like the network effect of knowledge has happened in SaaS. Hasn't yet happened in Infra, but that's also important to point out that you're not seeing even a small fraction of the number happen in AI, Infra, Data, Infra, Cloud. Not yet. It'll happ…”
Jun 12, 2024 neutral
Jul 12, 2024 neutral
Pivoting From On-Premise to Cloud SaaS Compresses Top-Line Revenue 2.5x
“2.5 times is the number. Yeah. So 2.5, not only churn, because let's say if I'm selling goods for you for one million dollars, then typical subscription will be, say, 50 K. So not only the churn happen, your revenue top lane starts coming down and profitabilit…”
Jul 20, 2024 neutral
Garg: SaaS can reach $5M–$10M ARR via PLG without big sales engines
“If you take about SaaS, if you are operating in the US customer base in US, if again, your product solves a basic need by PLG motion or some, you know, very early sales without building a huge sales engine, you can reach that, you know, 5,000,007, at times, te…”
Aug 31, 2024 neutral
Bijapur: Indian SaaS startups compete against US incumbents mainly on pricing
“My belief is whatever you're building here as SaaS, there is some competitor in the US who's built a
product that is sort of replaceable to what you're doing.
Now, when you go to market, your product is clearly, let's say, 3040, 50% of that more mature, more …”
Aug 31, 2024 neutral
Aug 31, 2024 bearish
Aug 31, 2024 neutral
Bijapur: ₹100 crore revenue is benchmark for Indian SaaS IPOs
“I think the numbers that get thrown around is about a hundred million dollars, a hundred crores, sorry. And we've seen success coming at that end. We've also started seeing success come at like three, 400 crores. But hundred crores is the number that People ta…”
Aug 31, 2024 neutral
Aug 31, 2024 negative
Nadhani: Bay Area values hype over revenue, treating non-AI SaaS poorly
“Bay Area doesn't care so much about as much as revenue as opposed to what sexy thing are you doing today? This is more, let's say Midwest or like more like you go to Chicago or probably even in New York Bay Area. Like today, if you talk SaaS and not AI, what i…”
Feb 14, 2025 neutral
Feb 14, 2025 bullish
Apr 17, 2025 bullish
Apr 18, 2025 bearish
Jul 11, 2025 neutral
SaaS will become merely an execution layer beneath autonomous AI agents
“SaaS is becoming more of an execution layer, not an intelligent layer. Now the intelligent layer is moving more towards the AI agents, where it is more autonomous in nature. Where, ah, where, when employees interact with it, they don't interact with the SaaS a…”
Sep 5, 2025 bullish
Sep 30, 2025 bullish
Oct 24, 2025 bullish
Bajaria: Enterprise Pricing Will Shift From SaaS to Service-as-a-Software
“We are so used to software as a service, and the reason it was you're selling to humans. It is per user pricing. Yeah, it is platform pricing, right? That was the thing that we were used to. I think it's going to shift to service as a software. Now you figure …”
Oct 31, 2025 neutral
Oct 31, 2025 positive
Nov 4, 2025 neutral
Poddar: Nexus's Best SaaS Founders Historically Relocated To The US
“And by the way, this was true. Even with SaaS. Ah, this was true even with 10 years back, 15 years back with SaaS. That's right. That the best founders, which we invested in, would eventually go to US, and the follow-on rounds would happen in the US market.”
Nov 28, 2025 neutral
Zuora CIO: AI tools surge to 8–10 per quarter versus 2–3 traditional SaaS
“Even when we take a typical SaaS application, it takes anywhere from two to four weeks for legal compliance, and we were okay with that, because we don't roll out a new SaaS application every month. Maybe every quarter we may roll out like two or three, net ne…”
Dec 30, 2025 neutral
Jan 30, 2026 bullish
Feb 21, 2026 bullish
Kohli: AI digital workers will drive SaaS adoption rather than replace SaaS
“So I feel the next decade is not about replacing SaaS, which is what, you know, it's actually using SaaS more, right? How do you actually use SaaS to deliver that promise that a SaaS provider will continue to release new feature functionality. It's get, it's g…”
Mar 19, 2026 positive
Apr 16, 2026 bearish
Sudheesh Nair: Startup failure rate will worsen beyond 92%
“92% are failing right now, and it is only going to get worse because more companies are getting founded, a rate of change is increasing, and frontier models are coming and just swallowing, and SaaS companies aren't going to lie down and take it, which means th…”
Apr 23, 2026 bearish
Reddy: Average SaaS Companies Ranked Third Or Lower Will Not Survive AI
“Unfortunately I feel, especially in the AI world now, that the average company you know, the average product or the average company, unfortunately will not make money. If you look at any US public markets, right? Every category has four, five companies that I'…”
Apr 23, 2026
Reddy: Customer-Facing SaaS Retains Value While Static Build-Once Software Commoditizes
“Customer facing or fast changing products, I think will continue to earn the value of a subscription. In the AI world, something you can build once and forget you know, I think we'll probably not, not make that bar.”
May 20, 2026 negative
Koratana: Traditional SaaS records final outputs but loses decision context
“The key insight behind context graphs was that the last decade of SaaS basically has been built around this idea of a system of record, right? I think Salesforce is a good example, right? Probably the most, you know, central system of record, probably the most…”
Jun 18, 2026 bearish
Jul 3, 2026 positive
Jul 24, 2026 bearish
Aug 22, 2026 bullish
Mehra: Idle AI startups lose product-market fit within a quarter
“Everything is moving so fast that if you actually sit idle you will basically be you will lose your PMF within like a quarter, right? So I do feel that that velocity and that sense of urgency is one of the most important traits in AI as compared to, let's say,…”
Aug 22, 2026 bullish
Aug 27, 2026 positive
Kompalli: Services and operations businesses are more defensible in the AI era
“Intuitively, it does feel like services are more defensible right now. Ah, ops businesses are more defensible. They might not be as crazily valued, but sure, there is a certain defensibility aspect to it, which is tougher to replicate.”