How can you structure a SaaS business so that AI makes your business more valuable, rather than just blowing it up?
These three strategies match AI to different parts of a product life cycle - launching, growing, or harvesting profits.
Launch to AI Buyers
SaaS companies are losing human seats. On the other hand, they are expanding sales to AI.
AI is a rapidly growing channel. It works like this: People ask their AI to do something. Then the AI finds, acquires, and uses services. Coding agents work aggressively to find and embed services. Other types of AI buyers include task-focused agents, chatbots and search engines, and personal assistants like Claude Cowork and OpenClaw.
You can sell your existing product to AI buyers. However, you will want to try some new packaging. For example, humans have spent 30 years rejecting micropayments, preferring to to buy chunky subscriptions that require fewer purchase decisions. AI agents use “X402” to make a stream of small payments, averaging around 20 cents per transaction.
Have you built an AI channel?
- Can AI find and recommend your product?
- Can it use your product?
- Can it onboard its human to use your product?
- Can it buy your product?
Grow with Increased Velocity
Is the product actively competing for new customers in an existing market?
In the age of AI, you will be less sure about what features, benefits, and channels will win. When you see that something is working, you want to grab share. A basic starting point is to maximize velocity with AI.
Your programmers have increased their velocity by using AI coders. Now it is your turn to automate more of the steps in product delivery. AI can look at data and interview customers to figure out what use cases to focus on. It can write change requests and feature requests. It can write code (we knew that). It can review code. It can deploy and monitor deployments. It can encourage each customer to expand usage. It can pull their data from competing systems. It can’t do all of these things with high quality today. It will be surprisingly good at all of them by the end of 2026.
You will free up time as you add individual agents and tools for each step. You will get a sudden surge of velocity when the steps link together into a “software factory”.
Then you will be ready to beat the competition when you see an opportunity.
Increase Profitability for Mature Products
Does the product have a bombproof customer base that renews every year and just wants the product to work?
Many SaaS products end up in this situation. The customers want continuity and reliability. As a new product developer, it causes me agony to say this, but those customers do NOT want you to bother them about a lot of new stuff.
You can run this business with six people, and a bunch of AI assistants. Then it will be more profitable. The Silicon Valley guys are talking about how AI assistants can power a billion dollar company run by a single person. That will be awesome because one person is both agile (no meetings about HR or change management) and cheap. More practically, we can catch up with SaaStr to enjoy “Eight-figure revenue with single-digit headcount.”
The classic startup team is:
- A “hustler” who makes sales, gets resources, and organizes. This is often a CEO role
- A “hipster” who handles marketing and customer experience
- A “hacker” who builds out the technical aspects of a product
You can run a business with these three roles. Because your deliverable is continuity, each person will need a backup and successor. You end up with six people.
Lock these guys down, pay them well, and find good backups. You are delivering confidence in the continuity and reliability of your product and team.
Next Steps
This article illustrates three different ways to use AI:
- As a customer for new launches. I am working on an AI channel grader that will figure out where a product is effectively selling to AI, and where we need to improve the packaging.
- As a worker in a software factory that increases production velocity. I am working on adding software factory capabilities to our TIPL project launcher.
- As an assistant for humans that increases revenue per employee. You can fill this slot with your own priorities.
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