AI Exposed the Problems SaaS Already Had: Jacco van der Kooij on What's Coming in 2027

Alex Theuma (0:03)

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Jacco, my good friend, welcome to the podcast. I know you've done a few of my old podcast, The SaaS Revolution Show. Remember SaaS. Well, we're now the AI Revolution Show, a big pivot and it's great to have you on as a guest here. How are you doing?

Jacco van der Kooij (1:47)

I'm doing fantastic.

A little bit older, a little bit bolder. Wait, no, not more bolder. Actually, the exact same bold. It's a little older. Older, there's more wrinkles.

Alex Theuma (1:55)

It's the same. Look, you look the same as probably when we first met 10 years ago.

Jacco van der Kooij (2:00)

Okay.

Alex Theuma (2:01)

I look a little bit different, but constantly changing like a chameleon. But we'll move on. We'll swiftly move on. Jacco, I'm really excited not only to speak to you right now, but in 26 days now, so October the 13th and 14th, you are flying over from Palo Alto to come to Barcelona, to speak to, I guess, the European audience of transformers, SaaS companies that are moving to become AI first businesses and these AI native businesses that are building out and speaking with them and connecting with them and doing meetings with them. And I really appreciate that. So right now, crazy times, exciting times. I guess you're obviously much more focused on AI than SaaS now. I mean, that's my assumption from some of our conversations.

Tell me about what you're doing right now. What are you seeing? What are you excited about with all this AI stuff? What are you scared about? A lot of questions, sir.

Jacco van der Kooij (2:56)

I don't think of them as SaaS and AI companies any longer. I think of them as software companies, and there's different kinds of software companies. It's hard to extract who is SaaS and AI. I think that's one. What I'm scared for is that what we would call AI companies are making the exact same mistakes as what caused the SaaS companies to fail. Only at AI companies is happening much faster, meaning that we're going to see that start in 2027 having its effects. What I'm happy for, what I'm excited about, it's a basic explanation. AI did not cause the problem that the SaaS industry is in. It simply exposed it.

What I mean with that is that AI actually can be the solution to many of the problems that we have run into in SaaS. By the way, Alex, if you go back, we, you and I, were at SaaS Talk the days, warning the industry that this would happen in 2018 and 19 You can literally go back to the decks. Not that it was a massive foresight that we had. It was a logical conclusion of what came before. As a logical conclusion of what lies ahead, if people don't eat similar kind of advice, things that we are sharing at the event in Barcelona, we're going to see this happening all over again, only this time at a much higher speed. However, the good news is, this all can be prevented.

This doesn't have to be this way.

We don't have to keep running into the wall and go like, oh, that hurts. Yes, it hurts. Stop doing that. That is, I think, the major objective for me coming to Barcelona. I think that the European continent is a little bit more reasonable about what can and cannot be done with AI and therefore can be educated and taught to avoid the lessons that in America, they're learning the hard way. But obviously, under the availability of unlimited funds.