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A Founder's Guide to the Next Platform

AI is changing what defensibility means for Vertical SaaS companies. Our new playbook shows founders how to build your AI advantage.

Every software era brings a new platform—and with it, a shift in where product control and defensibility come from.

On-prem put it in infrastructure.
SaaS moved it to the interface.
Cloud pushed it toward data and integration.

Now it’s shifting again—and AI is testing whether your control point still holds.

For the past decade, Vertical SaaS companies built defensibility through three core pillars. Data ownership was paramount—if you owned the schema, you owned the workflow. Companies invested heavily in workflow engagement, operating on the principle that time-in-tool equals stickiness. And interface control mattered because users lived in your UI, making switching costs prohibitively high.

But AI is systematically weakening each of these traditional moats. LLMs can now parse unstructured data across silos, making your carefully structured schemas less of a competitive advantage. AI agents are reducing the need for UI engagement altogether—they can fetch insights, trigger actions, and automate workflows without users ever touching your interface. And models can bypass the rigid schemas and predetermined workflows that once locked customers into your system.

If you're a Vertical SaaS founder, you've probably felt this shift viscerally. Maybe you've watched AI companies demo features that took you years to build, assembled in minutes with a few prompts. Maybe you've wondered if your decade of proprietary data still matters when models can approximate insights from public sources. The ground beneath your feet is shifting, and the old rules of defensibility no longer apply the way they once did.

The Good News: Your Advantage Isn't Gone

Control isn't disappearing—it's moving. And if you already own a control point, AI is how you keep it.

The key insight? While AI brings broad generative reasoning, you bring the lived depth of the workflow. You understand the decision paths, edge cases, data trails, and taxonomies that encode real operational intelligence.

The winners in this transition won't be those who simply add AI features to existing products. They'll be those who fundamentally reimagine their role in the ecosystem—evolving from passive systems of record to active systems of action (check out our latest thinking on systems of action here!).

A Practical Guide for Builders

Informed by our conversations with technical leaders at companies successfully navigating this transition—from Clio's modular AI architecture to Karbon's data activation strategy to ServiceNow's platform evolution—we've distilled these insights into "A Founder's Guide to the Next Platform," a comprehensive playbook for Vertical SaaS companies building in the age of AI.

The guide covers:

  • How control points are shifting—and why interface and data gravity no longer guarantee stickiness
  • Strategies to reinforce your moat as agents, APIs, and open models erode traditional advantages
  • How to embed AI into your product without exposing your core
  • Why the next defensibility layer is execution—and how to become the system of action
  • How leading teams are designing AI orgs, infra, and metrics to ship fast and stay grounded

The Next Move Is Yours

The model is replaceable. Your orchestration layer isn't.

If you're ready to evolve from static storage to dynamic orchestration, from interface stickiness to outcome delivery, from being a destination to becoming the system that gets work done—this playbook is for you.

Authors:
Annamarie Kelly
Rocky Gowni