“Everyone's like, oh yeah, I can vibe code that in an afternoon. And the answer is, if you vibe code that in an afternoon, software, just like everything else, deteriorates over time. It's not like you build something and it's great and it keeps working. A CFO has to say, how much time and effort continuously do I have to put into maintaining the software versus buying the software? If the total cost of ownership doesn't add up, no one's going to vibe code it.”
Product Growth · Product & Design · November 2026
Context
Aakash Gupta asked whether SaaS without a clear moat is doomed. Linda Tong says a CFO should weigh total cost of ownership, because building in-house means taking on the maintenance forever.
Transcript
…in domain-specific areas and you have deep context and there is some meaningful amount of data or company knowledge that's stored there. I think you've got an interesting moat. And then it's a question of how you run that business to adjust for how people want to interact with you in the future.
…Something that creates a system of record, you can create some defensibility. Are those the two main paths? Does everyone need to do that? Or how do we think about the rest of SaaS? Like, let's say you're still just building a horizontal website builder. Are you doomed to fail? Aaron Ross Powell,
the two other things I would consider are governance and control is probably the most boring thing, but like governance, controls, roles, permissions, compliance. If there's deep governance and controls in your system and they need to be there, let me tell you how few people want to vibe code that and build their own systems for that. So I think that that gives you a little bit of an advantage. And then the last piece is the criticality of what you build and whether it's something that is worthwhile to like build internally. And so this is where actually I think the math is like starting to finally come to fruition. Because even if you don't have those prior three things, essentially it's a CFO question, right? What's the total cost of ownership of either paying someone to do this for you, right? Paying for some SaaS, some software that does whatever tasks you need, whether it's build a website or do some sort of accounting or manage project management, like a project management tool, right? Like all these things cost money. And the question is, how much money do you have to pay for something that meets your needs and does everything you need versus how much would it cost you to build it? And the problem is everyone's like, oh yeah, I can…
Right.
And so that's why SaaS exists in the first place. That's why people don't, you know, there are a lot of things that have turned into SaaS. Businesses like companies that manage payments or companies that help you with literally authentication. Like, these are all things you can absolutely build.…
Okay. So let's talk a little bit about whether this compression is justified. If we look at even those categories you just talked about, like payments, for instance, PayPal's multiple has collapsed. And that's one of the categories we're talking about. Well, that might actually make sense not to…
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