The Mom-and-Pop SaaS era has arrived

Entirely new markets and categories are becoming economically viable

Jun 18, 2026

∙ Paid

"Most of us have been thinking about AI as a productivity story. Elena Verna sees it as an economic one. Her argument: the biggest impact from AI won't be helping existing software companies build faster. It'll be enabling millions of people who were previously locked out of software creation to become builders and founders themselves. If she's right, we'll soon see an explosion of niche software businesses, from people who deeply understand the problem they're solving. She calls it mom and pop SaaS. "

- Lenny Rachitsky

So many stories about AI focus on developer productivity or replacing developers altogether. And sure, non-technical teams can launch their own stuff. But that framing misses the bigger shift. The real change is what type of software is now getting built.

For decades, creating software required access to a small, highly specialized group of people concentrated in a handful of tech hubs and funded by venture capital. That meant only ideas large enough to justify those costs ever made it into the world. As the cost and complexity of building collapse, that constraint disappears. The winners won’t just be faster developers. They’ll be teachers, real estate agents, accountants, coaches, consultants, small business owners, and domain experts of every kind solving problems they understand deeply. The future of software won’t be defined by a tiny group of elite builders. The future of software will be defined by everyone else.

Get ready to start seeing (and hopefully building) more and more p…

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