CFO & Strategy
Service-with-Software: Why the Best AI Companies Start with Humans
Collated by Harry Prabandham
Curated by Rubric Financial
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Pure SaaS Is Losing to Service-with-Software
- Companies clinging to 'pure software' with 80% gross margins but no proprietary data are getting outcompeted by service-first businesses
- The best AI application companies aren't pure software — they're services businesses that automate with AI over time
- You can't automate what you don't understand — services aren't a bug, they're one of the best ways to build a data moat
- Optimizing for SaaS margins from day one means optimizing for investor optics instead of building something defensible
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