What Comes After SaaS?

Too Long; Didn't Read

It was a crisp San Francisco morning. Louis [name changed] was feeling confident, cable car track lines whirring in the background, as he stepped into his local cafe to grab his morning coffee. Strolling down the hill to his software-as-a-service company, the bright sun matches his prospects. The company, built from a three month coding binge in Louis’ tiny south bay apartment, was becoming a real business — in sight of the mythical “<a href="https://www.saastr.com/from-initial-traction-to-initial-scale-10m-in-arr-dont-get-killed-by-your-success/" target="_blank">unkillable</a>” stage of $10M a year in annually recurring revenue.&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>Later that week (February 2016), <a href="https://hackernoon.com/tagged/saas" target="_blank">SaaS</a> and <a href="https://hackernoon.com/tagged/technology" target="_blank">technology</a> stocks <a href="https://www.quora.com/Why-did-public-SaaS-stocks-crash-on-Feb-5-2016" target="_blank">plunged</a> by more than 30%. Some companies — such as data visualization platform Tableau, saw their values cut in half. This culminated in the mighty Linkedin acquiescing to Microsoft. The next Monday had a cold chill in the air — grimacing, Louis zipped his jacket up against the cold, rushing to his office, his quiet morning routine looking like an oddly distant memory. Along with a day of fog, this chill ushered in Cloud 3.0.