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The AI Solopreneur
Newsletter | The Everything App
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I spend most of my working hours inside other people's SaaS stacks. Fixing workflows, connecting tools, helping teams get more out of software they already pay for.
And the same picture keeps showing up. A company pays for ten to twenty different tools every month, thousands of euros total, and uses a fraction of what each one actually does. The rest is noise they keep paying for because switching feels harder than staying.
That is not a small inefficiency. It is the whole model, and I think it is starting to break.
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34%
of the software companies pay for sits unused or underused, according to Zylo's 2026 SaaS Management Index. Almost half of SMBs now call this sprawl a real budget problem.
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1 / A generic tool cannot become your workflow
Every SaaS tool is built for thousands of companies at once, so it has to stay generic. You bend your process to fit the software, not the other way round. Multiply that by fifteen tools and you get a company running on fifteen small compromises instead of one system built for how it actually works.
2 / Vibe coding is flooding the market, not fixing it
Right now, anyone can vibe code a working app in an afternoon, and millions are doing exactly that. Most of those apps launch with no distribution and go nowhere. Building software was never the hard part. Selling it is, and that has not gotten any easier.
3 / The real shift is companies building for themselves
In a year or two, building custom software will get easier again. I think that is when companies stop buying ten small SaaS tools and start building one internal app that covers everything they need. No more stitching tools together with automations and APIs, because the connecting is done inside one system they own. Fewer integrations to maintain, one thing to keep updated.
4 / A new job is waiting to be named
Someone still has to keep that everything app pointed in the right direction, updated as the market moves and the company grows. Call it an AI SaaS operator, or something better. Either way, it is a real role, and it looks nothing like the consultant who bolts five tools together.
I have already started
This is not a prediction I am watching from the outside. I have started swapping the tools I rent for tools I built. I used Wispr Flow to talk to my computer. I built my own version that works better for how I actually work. I dropped Asana and Google Tasks and now run my own task manager, built exactly the way I want it, connected to Claude so I can work inside Claude and push tasks straight to my own platform.
I built a meeting transcriber for my phone. There is more coming. Each one removes a subscription and replaces it with something I own and control. Piece by piece, I am becoming close to independent from the software I used to pay for every month.
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Why this matters to you
Before you renew your next SaaS contract, ask what you would build if you owned the software instead of renting it. You might not build the everything app this year. But the company that starts thinking that way now will not be caught off guard when the tools to build it get cheap.
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Tool of the week | Lovable
Build the app instead of renting the tool
Lovable lets you describe software in plain language and get a working web app back, no engineering team required. It is the clearest example of what I wrote about above. The gap between an idea and a running tool is closing fast, and Lovable is one of the tools closing it.
Start small. Rebuild one internal tool you currently pay a monthly fee for, a simple client tracker or an intake form, and own it outright. That is how a company begins the shift from renting fifteen tools to running its own.
Try Lovable
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I am not sure how fast this moves. Maybe two years, maybe five. But I have not seen a trend this clear since I watched AI take apart the music production business I used to run. Renting became owning once before. It is about to happen again, this time to software.
Talk soon.
Mikkel
P.S. How many tools does your company pay for right now, and how many would you actually miss? Reply and tell me the number.
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Want help auditing what you are actually using?
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The Lovable link above is an affiliate link. If you sign up through it, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I use myself.
The AI Solopreneur • AI Strategy for European SMBs
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