SaaSpocalypse

About this episode

Software stocks shed $300 billion in market cap while YC seed rounds priced at $100 million. Something in the SaaS story has broken — and figuring out what comes next is the whole game right now.

Joe sits down with Rick Zullo of Equal Ventures, Gaurav Bhogale of Mantis VC, and Farooq Abbasi of Preface Ventures to work through what AI actually does to software economics. The conversation covers terminal value compression, where data and customer network effects hold under real pressure, and which ones don’t.

Pricing is the live wire. Seat-based models are under siege. Outcomes-based and agent-based pricing are arriving, inference costs are shifting the margin stack, and the benchmark assumptions founders built plans around two years ago no longer apply.

Anthropic’s industry penetration chart gives you an honest read on where AI adoption is real and where white space remains. Not every sector reprices at the same rate. Cybersecurity and regulated industries may prove more durable than the broad index suggests. Where white-collar labor gets displaced first — and fastest — is the investment signal worth watching.

Guests

• Rick Zullo — Equal Ventures
• Gaurav Bhogale — Mantis VC
• Farooq Abbasi — Preface Ventures