@helloitsolly: Lots of founders are crashing out A year ago AI felt like an incredible opportunity. Most of us were able to ship fast…
Olly
@helloitsolly
Lots of founders are crashing out
A year ago AI felt like an incredible opportunity.
Most of us were able to ship faster, remove admin, and get time back.
Lots of engineering founders were even able to explore marketing for the first time: SEO, organic social, outbound.
Building complex systems that felt extremely productive.
But since then, a lot has happened.
Here’s some of the themes I’m seeing:
AI marketing isn’t working. At first it feels impressive and it looks good but for most it’s not driving results. This is made worse by the fact everyone has access to the same tools. Inboxes are flooded, buyers are fatigued, the economy is flat.
Engineers are fried. Yes you can ship more but for many the flow state has gone. It’s a new way of working and it’s not for everyone. The speed leaves many of us exhausted before 11am.
There’s a feeling of what’s the point? Is my product’s next feature going to be redundant in a year, or a month? Can’t AI do what my business does, better?
SaaS valuations have collapsed. From 3-4x revenue to 1x. There’s a sinking realisation that a large number of SaaS companies will go to 0 in the next few years. Building to exit seems almost crazy right now.
There’s far fewer buyers and far more sellers. These include vibe coders cloning products without the care or craft, contributing to the distribution challenges from people doing it the right way.
Lots of people are trying to make money by selling shovels. This just adds to the frenzied energy.
Build in public stopped being fun. A few makers realised that the new game is attention, and now everything feels insincere and stunt-driven. They are influencers not founders. Changes to the X timeline compounded the issues.
There are exceptions and there are still moats remaining, but the challenges feel existential
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8:42 PM · Sep 30, 2026 · View on X
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Olly @helloitsolly
Our focus is to be more human in our marketing
I hired @startupwithana to speak to customers, partners and leads
She's basically a fulltime yapper
She uses @SenjaHQ to collect their stories and share them in our marketing, on our website, sales pages, socials, and emails
Replies (83)
Daniel Nguyen @daniel_nguyenx
> and now everything feels insincere and stunt-driven
I do feel like this now. Making BIP on here a lot less fun like it was a few years ago.
Geoff Roberts @GeoffTRoberts
I think the answer is simple enough...
We can all sit here and cry over spilled beer.
Or we can try to build more defensibility into our businesses (per @MicroConf) and embrace what @sobedominik says here:
https://x.com/sobedominik/status/2104963583503446271…
That's my gameplan, anyhow.
Olly @helloitsolly author
There was definitely some crying over spilled beer at @MicroConf
You just gave me a flashback
Rupert @hffschmdt
It's brutal. But AI competes with human intelligence itself, so this is not limited to SaaS founders. This affects knowledge workers at large
Olly @helloitsolly author
Yes absolutely
We’re all a bit screwed
Dam - Building Hawkscan @damitour
AI didn't create this problem, it made it obvious.
Distribution always mattered more than Product.
Now the product is so easy to build that's hard to ignore.
Olly @helloitsolly author
I think you just proved my point about slop
小白脸 @zhenbailian
I think we can get more niche software though. Personally I quite like where AI is at, feels more fun than one year ago. Distribution is still hard, and some worse slop apps are better than me at this. I must be better
jaggery_spice @jag_99
The shift is so fast that people are not adapting to it they're just extending themselves to their existing paradigms.
There will be consolidation but it'll sort itself out. Other than that I agree many will go to zero.
Namilele @Seikan1190
You clearly have a point. It's a bit depressing tbh.
Mohammad Totonchy @CyberrDevv
I think its right, alot of us are overwhelmed at work nothing feels authentic anymore tbh I go to work and everyone and their cat using AI to automate the simplist thing , I feel exhausted to even wanting to learn anything when AI is there to do it for you! 😶 its the future ig
Hatim @ti10601
You forgot about the image/video slop being pushed hard online and mislabled on purpose
Liam Jones @byliamjjones
Fair play for speaking up a vote. A lot of people don’t want to talk about this - being more human is going to be a valued asset. who knew?
Wyatt Mingji Lim @WyattMingjiLim
Facts.
But then the next follow up post feels like selling something immediately which was what you flagged.
Sign of the times I guess.....
Luka G @_lukaga
Even the replies in this thread all look either ai enhanced or complete ai slop is just bad. Its not just AI itself alone, labs seem to take whatever they can grab going vertical is not even an option now. You now see anthropic , openai going into finance, cyber, law etc
Phil N @TomN90033625
I couldn’t agree with you any more. What a high even earlier this year was and now it’s depressing. Need a few million to even reach anyone.
Antonio Russo @arusso4
Slop is slop no matter what tools you use.
Vinz @ImplicVincent
Is it not essentially that people built stuff that had no market value? Like a factory building useless products? One can wrap this in circonvulated vocabulary, but mere truth is people were just blinded by the production side and forgot they needed clients
Ed Giansante @edugiansante
crashing out is the right phrase - how are you holding up?
John Fuller @__johnfuller
Just saw this in a company I walked away from. So much delusion one guy basically thought he could do everything with AI. 2 guys have contacts, and they are burning through these with no further plan or expertise. Traded one slop design for another after I pointed it out.
John Parker @porquer58999
Everyone hypes too much with AI. After hyping they fail to admit because everyone else says they rock with AI. The truth is they have all realized that AI is not that smart. It’s a productivity tool, a very solid one. Period.
Jesse XYZ @jesse__xyz
Too many sellers... Mostly selling the same thing
Jim McNutty @dl_orangerie
I think nothing changed in the grand scheme of it. Without Ai you would have had similar problems but now you can place them on something new.
Chen.exe @chenchen198663
既然 ai 能代替大部分工作了，根本不用担心自己的产品下个月会被替代，而是快速适应模型，掌握技巧，新模型出现的时候快速上手。用大部分时间思考做真正有价值的产品，自己稳住方向，其余交给ai。
Hacky Sackin @HackySackin
I would say everyone is in experimentation mode right now and things will settle. Just a strange transition phase to the new.
Hermes Socraticus @H_Socraticus
Extreme fatigue and anxiety. Fear of being the only one who isn't succeeding. Fear of missing a good opportunity. It's very difficult.
Asmir @asmirkn
i agree to an extent but i believe even if we get agi there will be people that would get better use out of it than the average person, as long as you can outdo the average there's an opportunity for you. Everything you mentioned above just becomes a new problem to solve tbh
Andrew Lee Miller @AndrewStartups
you mean founders in London?
John Smith @rlntles
Funny how everyone wants to cram AI into everything but nobody wants to consume AI xD
Ken E @keneyjolfson11
I look at some of the emails in my inbox that make it pass the filter and think, how did someone approve this terribly written obvious ai outbound message and do people actually respond to this ?
HackerNoon | Learn Any Technology @hackernoon
AI has done so many amazing things for sure, but I do get your point of insincerity, in fact we actually published a piece calling out the influx of "thought influencers" recently
And that's why, after layers of AI implementations, we still keep "the second human rule" central
Max Braglia @maxbraglia
This pretty much matches what I’m seeing.
Especially on the marketing side: going full AI marketing is just a bad choice. It doesn’t work, hype or not. Truth is, and I’ll say it, AI still doesn’t “get” marketing.
Alex | SEO & Niche Sites 💸 @AlexNicheSites
This is so real... you can do so much more but the mental load is crazy. Not even mentioning how everything moves so fast and changes on pretty much daily basis.
Sometimes I wish we could get back to pre-Covid times. Everything, the whole world felt more stable back then.
LLM Codes @llmcodes
which one ate you first: seo, social, or outbound
Matt Hebard @HebardMatt
Short term pain imo. Keep grinding. Keep improving. Keep evolving. Stay positive. Feel like there’s no other option.
Oleg Kuzmenkov @oakuzmenkov
So what’s next? Is SaaS dead?
Marko Cvijic @MarkoCvijic
Step up in humanness is needed. Space is overwhelmed with vibers, with bs slop. Penicillin is to slow the pace down, and add as much human layers, real empathy in the game
Pratibha Sharma @PratibhaEr
i couldnt agree more..and if you do land of a good PMF, the big labs come out with their own version and make you obsolete
Jeremy Huffman @jhuffman42
Yet, Astra thinks I should walk to the car wash. If you want to outcompete AI, all you have to do is choose a field that requires actual understanding of the world.
Jackson Woodpecker @JacksonW29657
You are crying at the wrong moot because the old ship has sailed. Something new is forming that is hardly evident, but any prophecy will become an insufficient blasphemy.
Chase @chasewoolard
Founding anything has and always will be hard.
Oriol Nadal @onadalserra
Olly, you are absolutely right. Creating holds no value when everyone can create, instantly without care and with the vision of with this SAAS I'll get rich.
Admire The Web @AdmireTheWeb
All very true, all very sad. Missing the positive takeaway here.
🐥Karl Ross ❤️🌈 SLSL @Karlides
I'm on the opposite side of this. Have run my small business for nearly 30 years. It's a real thing, not code, and I am more excited and empowered than ever. Rebuilding loosely tied messes if docs, sheets, forms, and saas into my own boutique software is liberating, and will
Alexandre Kantjas @akantjas
Agree, especially AI generated content fucking tanks no matter what we try
Chris Bee @chrisbeetweets
You forgot the existential dread that AI might kill us all.
Harlaksh Singh @HarlakshS
Cashing out*
Aurelio @ WP Umbrella @AurelioVolle
Perhaps it’s natural founder selection. Not everbody is meant to be a founder and most of the people trying to do so out there are doing this for the wrong reason: ego and money
тexasxbт @texasxbt
still quality projects with pmf out there, just harder to find, but yeah, I agree, the air does feel a little different these days
Trevor Taylor @Negatrev
It's far simpler than all that.
1. Most companies are doing cost cutting due to ramping costs (from wars mainly).
2. AI isn't really helping much, if at all. It just creates tech debt. Customers want a quality, stable product and AI is terrible for that.
1/2
jrm4, most places. here for now, still... @jrm4
Lol. AI is great for a number of things.
It just so happens that "making money as a big-ass company" emphatically isn't one of them.
Sucks to be them, but oh well.
James Lawrence @jamesxlawrence
1x revenue?! Where are you seeing that?
ssɐquʞunɹp 𝕏 ᯅ @drunknbass
++ you also left out that it's too easy to rip others off. Everybody is ripping off each other devaluing everything we do collectively. It's really weird when you pause.
Erin Mondays @ErinMondays
Can confirm
Everyone and their mother is hiring for senior marketing right now
I’m shocked. Absolutely shocked.
Totally different than a year ago
Guessing others are coming to your realization
Virat Singh @virattt
Builsing in public is more fun than ever.
Key: find your inner scorecard.
Shahgul | Thumbnail Strategist @ShahgulCreates
AI made building easier
distribution got harder
Netza 🐺 @netza
John E @JohnFreelancing
I agree but I also feel like in some strange way the flood of AI slop and nonsense is actually a good thing
It makes it easier to stand out if you do things the hard and right ways, exactly because everyone is caught up in the hype, and more and more lazy (both work ethic wise
Alasdair MacLullich @A_MacLullich
Judging by X, there seems to be an enormous amount of activity, but not sure what the products actually are.
Omar Guerrero @wolfvus
Race to the bottom, zero sum.
Simon Templar @SimonTemplar__
The economy is not flat
Rohidas @rohidasgowda
Even through video content we can't get the people's attention.
Double Reverse @sl0j0no
If you want your AI to actually be adopted eliminate the steps in any industry that makes customers jump through hoops from outdated systems of the past and eliminate the scam the upsell pitch and the referral bs just get something done fast. After give those customer coupon
Jacob "JB" Bryant @Jbgunter49
I think a clear problem to solve was missing in a lot of the products built during the last year. Here is the truth from my perspective after build a saas over 3 years and launching this month. Most investors are confused, most founders are trying to build for investment first
Dane O'Connor @thedeeno
We need to find a new way to contribute. We are builders, not influencers.
Most of us have had an impact because we see the world differently, not because we see the world in a way that is the most “relatable” or “entertaining”.
Ajit Banerjee @tensorport443
This disorientation is similar to what I felt during the hypergrowth phases at amazon in the early 2000s that produced S3, EC2…. I feel the exhilaration of being able to ride a wave (this time a tsunami) again.
PickAIGo | Gloopi 👀 @Mibaokey
I don't quite agree with you. AI flattens professional skills, allowing more people to enter other people's professional fields, resulting in more choices for current consumers. You only see a stock market, but what is changing is that end consumers or users who are willing to
Vilhelm Martinsson @vilhelm_scream
"A few makers realised that the new game is attention, and now everything feels insincere and stunt-driven. They are influencers not founders. Changes to the X timeline compounded the issues"
🎯
Jonathan Miller @notelife87
Spoken like someone butt hurt that thinks capitalism. Patent laws, creating new things, out preforming those with no imagination, wasn't the American dream. The same spark that drove the industrial revolution, or drove mexican cattle to Montana. I die hard! Yippi kie yi mf!
Tyler Mougey @tylermougey
The same-tools problem is real. My rule: AI handles production, but every piece has to carry something only I have, like my real weekly numbers. Generic in, generic out.
carvs_speaks @El_jay98
I consider AI marketing is not bad as a whole, or have bad results, but the people executing the strategy are the ones that need to be actually qualified to run the campaigns
Sam @sam_builds_ai
Good writeup, thankyou. It certainly feels as though there is a pressure to frenetically get off the mouse-wheel before the opportunity closes on us all.
danny mctweets @techandcards
Distribution is more important than ever. The first billionaire content creator will come in our lifetime.
AYUSH @yushbuilds
the opportunity didn't shrink, the timeline did. everyone expected 5 years of advantage and got 5 months
Victor Sango @sangodbx
Refreshing to see someone with a clear mind
Maxime R. Seknadje @maxime_raphaelS
"There’s a feeling of what’s the point? Is my product’s next feature going to be redundant in a year, or a month? Can’t AI do what my business does, better?"
I strongly believe that purpose and meaning-making is ultimately what's left for us to solve -- the why behind belief,
Murata @ieditormurata
You guys optimized so much there is no human designer left.
We killed this and that now it creates new problems.
Compute fight at this point
samuelgao @samuelgao5
People only start reflecting when they hit a wall.
Flesh Syntax @fleshsyntax
On AI projects I've worked on, despite initial hype and opportunity, the output only opened a new market of AI specialists and the costs remained largely the same. A lateral move, not a leap ahead.
I just hope that as funding fades, AI tools will remain accessible to avg ppl.
Artur Makly... @ArturMakly
You just confirmed and articulated succinctly everything I've been seeing and thinking.
Not sure how bootstrapped founders will be able to reach escape velocity traction now that there is soooo much noise and 100 copies of every idea.. unless they partner up/piggyback or get a
Uncalibrated Build @u_calibrated
«There’s far fewer buyers and far more sellers.» Yeah it’s the https://pets.com part of the cycle. It’s not new, just different context. You sound like the person who was in charge of the filing cabinets getting upset at the internet in 1999. The technology path was
LNZ Ventures @LNZVentures
Agree w/ everything except the SaaS valuations. We've helped & are helping multiple others exit between 4x and 8x recently and more to come. How well the company is structured for a buyer to underwrite is the key.
Agree tho - the light code on top of an LLM is quickly stopping.
Darke Technology @DarkeTech
Struggling with the same sentiment! We moved to Central Florida believing opportunity for AI integrations would be abundant, but two months in and we're shifting strategies already. Not giving up per se, but definitely re-evaluating our product and service offerings.
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