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
We’re watching RevOps teams spin up their own CRMs, marketing leads build mini-campaign managers, and finance teams drop $20 on internal tools that would’ve cost $200k as a SaaS contract.This isn’t shadow IT anymore - it’s citizen product design.
🔄 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
Big SaaS was built for IT. This next wave is built for everyone else.
🤔 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?
In other words: this shift creates real mess. That’s exactly where great startups step in.
🧭 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
We think this wave will reshape internal software just like Shopify reshaped e-commerce. A million little workflows. A billion moments of “this actually works.”And that’s the level of experience transformation we love to back.Thanks for reading and as always, we’re excited to build the future, one weird little app at a time.
Warmly,Team Kinetic
