What's happening to listed SaaS companies right now is exactly what happened to listed translation companies in 2021. Regardless of fundamentals, investors became uncertain of their discounted cash flow models — unsure what LLM technology would actually do to the industry. The same dynamic is now playing across SaaS.

Markets don't fear AI itself. They fear the collapse of their predictive frameworks.

It's not the technology that creates uncertainty — it's the sudden visibility of assumptions we didn't know we were making. When LLMs emerged, translation companies faced investor panic not because the technology was unclear, but because the models investors relied on were suddenly exposed as fragile.

What Distinguishes the Organisations That Navigate This

They treat uncertainty as operational reality rather than a strategic problem to solve. You don't wait for clarity. You build the infrastructure, restructure the teams, rewrite the organisational DNA — while others are still modelling scenarios.

The vibe coding phenomenon isn't about tools becoming easier. It's about the distance between problem recognition and solution implementation collapsing. When experienced operators can build at the speed they can think, the entire economic logic of software development inverts.

This creates a paradox for incumbents: the capabilities that made you successful — structured processes, specialised roles, capital efficiency through scale — become the very things preventing transformation. You must dismantle your advantages to build new ones.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Straker is in the middle of this. Not theorising about AI-native organisations — constructing one. Cross-functional pods replacing departmental silos. MCP servers as connective tissue. Agentic workflows emerging from infrastructure designed for them.

The playbook, as I see it:

  • Not a time to raise capital — make sure you're generating free cash
  • Invest heavily in AI: build the technology and people that keep you in the game
  • Some channels and customers drag you back. Focus on the ones that take you forward
  • Everything will move to AI infrastructure — figure out how you can be part of everyone's core AI stack
  • Build an AI central brain, then build actions and agents into it
  • With technology driving pricing deflation, focus on what the future looks like — chip out of the woods and get a bogey. Trying to hit through the trees will end badly
  • If you get there first as the AI infrastructure winner for your domain, the size of the prize will be very large

The organisations that emerge from this won't be "AI-enhanced" versions of what came before. They'll be fundamentally different structures, optimised for a world where the constraint isn't building capability — it's knowing what to build.

And anyone who thinks vibe coding is a fad is dreaming. It's not kids developing stuff that will disrupt SaaS. It's experienced developers and executives building solutions quickly, at very low cost, solving the same customer problems in a better way and at a much lower price point.

Originally published on LinkedIn · View discussion →