Eric Vishria – The Past, Present, and Future of SaaS and Software - [Invest Like the Best, EP.183]

Software businesses are undergoing a fundamental shift as digital transformation moves from a secondary concern to an existential requirement for corporate survival. SaaS companies command high valuation multiples because their business models—characterized by recurring revenue and compounding growth—create win-win outcomes for vendors and customers. The evolution of software spans three generations: from initial delivery and economic improvements to streamlined micro-adoption models, and now toward API-first architectures where business processes are directly encoded in software. This transition enables a "Moneyball" approach to corporate functions, replacing qualitative decision-making with data-driven precision. Future defensibility for these companies lies in leveraging cross-customer data and marketplace dynamics to create network effects. As the cost of building software declines, the competitive frontier continues to expand, allowing specialized, data-intensive applications to solve increasingly complex problems across global markets.