11/06/2026
Build a business that will survive even if your AI layer becomes free and universally available tomorrow. Because that's roughly what's going to happen.
The cannibalisation cycle has collapsed. In 2023, a clever AI feature could carry a startup for 18-24 months before OpenAI or the obvious incumbent SaaS shipped it natively. By 2026 that window is 4-6 months. Call summarisation, document Q&A, contract review, email drafting - features that were entire companies two years ago are now a checkbox inside Notion or HubSpot.
If your roadmap assumes your current feature set will still be differentiating when you hit profitability, you're planning for a world that no longer exists.
So where's the moat? Not the model. Not the prompts. The moat is workflow lock-in and proprietary context. Deep integrations into the systems where the actual work happens. Accumulated organisational context - history, exceptions, edge cases - that a competitor would need months to rebuild. Permissions and audit trails that make you the path of least resistance for IT and legal.
The AI layer, in this picture, is a consumable. You swap it under the hood when something better or cheaper comes along. The customer doesn't notice and doesn't care, because what they pay for isn't the AI - it's the fact that their team's work flows through your product.
The honest test: if Anthropic or OpenAI shipped your core feature as a native capability tomorrow, for free - would your customers still pay you?
If the answer is "no" - you don't have a SaaS. You have a feature waiting to be absorbed.
Full breakdown in this week's newsletter 👇
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-thing-most-founders-dont-know-before-starting-ai-saas-kulieshov-zxsof