01st July 2025,
#1 Goodbye Big SaaS. Hello Tiny, Tailored Tools.
There’s a quiet revolution underway in how people use software at work. And like most revolutions, it’s not happening through billion-dollar contracts or Gartner quadrants. It’s happening at the edges - in teams hacking together tiny tools that actually work for them.
We’re calling it the Micro-SaaS moment and we think it signals the slow death of traditional enterprise SaaS.
Let’s unpack what’s really going on.
💡 The trend: software that works for me, not for everyone
For 20 years, enterprise SaaS scaled by building one-size-fits-most tools: Salesforce, Workday, Notion, etc. They’re powerful - but increasingly feel bloated, expensive, and slow to adapt. Today, thanks to AI-native app builders like Lovable and Bolt, teams are skipping the vendor process and building bespoke tools themselves - no engineers needed.- Lovable hit $17M ARR in 90 days with a “no-code, LLM-coded” app builder
- Bolt is already at $40M ARR, letting teams go from idea → internal tool in a browser tab
- Edge hosting and usage-based DBs mean most of this runs for pennies a day
🔄 What changes when this goes mainstream?
If this pattern sticks, we’ll see second-order shifts that open up major new startup opportunities:- Velocity becomes the moat - not who has more features, but who can adapt fastest
- The social contract of SaaS breaks - it’s no longer “buy and wait for roadmap” but “build and tweak by Tuesday”
- A new UX layer emerges - orgs will need tools to navigate, govern, and unify these micro-apps, especially as they sprawl
🤔 But here’s the tension
We love this trend - but it’s not bulletproof. Here’s what we’re still thinking through:- Security is still an open question. These tools promise plug-and-play safety, but compliance and governance may lag.
- App maintenance is invisible until it isn’t. Who updates the micro-app when the LLM breaks the button that closes invoices?
- The unbundling means a new kind of bloat. What happens when a company has 53 micro-tools instead of one Slack?
🧭 Where we’re investing attention (and capital)
We're backing founders who are thinking beyond the tool and into the meta-layer:- “App managers” for internal tools: think Chrome’s extension view but for your company’s micro-stack
- Telemetry & UX tools designed for prompt-generated apps
- Governance layers that track spend, PII, and workflow redundancy - without getting in the user’s way
- Maintenance bots that quietly update, patch, and explain changes to the team - no engineers needed
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