Speak it into existence: Your next app won't be bought it'll be built by AI
The shift from buying software to speaking it into existence is here and small business is ground zero
A few years ago, people would send me software purchase requests. A project management tool here, a reporting dashboard there, a niche workflow app that solved one specific problem or another. I’d look at the price tag and think, “I’m not going to pay for this, when in eighteen months Microsoft will just bake it into my M365 subscription for free.”
I was usually right.
But what I didn’t predict was what came next. Because today, my instinct isn’t “Microsoft will build this eventually.” Why would I pay for this when I can ask an AI to build it?
That’s not a hypothetical. That’s my Tuesday.
The Moment Everyone Missed
When Brad Gerstner sat down with Sam Altman and Satya Nadella on the BGsquared podcast episode 39, most of the attention was on Sam Altman’s abrupt departure after a series of tough questions from Brad Gerstner. Sam’s combativeness was all anyone, including the media, could talk about for days, weeks, and months. That was the headline, but it wasn’t the story.
But what Nadella revealed later, almost as an aside, is a game-changing vision where everything evolves into a CRUD database and an AI application layer on top, signaling a fundamental shift in the software industry.
In plain language, we will speak everything into existence.
Everyone was busy debating whether Altman was a genius or a liability. Meanwhile, Nadella was quietly describing the end of the software industry as we know it. That’s the moment that mattered, and almost nobody caught it.
Three Eras of Getting the Software You Need
Think about how small businesses have acquired software over the past two decades. It’s happened in three distinct phases, and we’re entering a fourth.
Era 1: Buy it off the shelf.
You found a vendor, negotiated a contract, and deployed on-premise. It was expensive, slow, and rigid.
Era 2: Subscribe to it.
SaaS changed the game. Lower upfront costs, faster deployment, and automatic updates. But you were still adapting your workflow to someone else’s product. For some, the bills added up.
Era 3: Get it bundled.
Microsoft, Google, and other platform players started absorbing point solutions into their suites. That project management tool? Now it’s Planner inside Teams. That form builder? Google Forms. That niche reporting tool? Power BI is included in your license. This is where my old instinct lived. Patiently wait, and the feature comes to you.
Era 4: Build it with AI.
This is where tools like Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Replit, and other AI coding assistants come in, allowing you to describe your needs in plain English and receive functional software in minutes, not just mockups or prototypes.
Vibe Coding Is Real, and It’s Not Just for Developers
Andrej Karpathy, one of the founders of OpenAI, coined the term “vibe coding” in early 2025 to describe a new approach to software development. You describe what you want, and the AI figures out the rest, no coding, just intent.
It sounded like a joke, but it wasn’t.
By mid-2025, Y Combinator reported that 25% of its current batch startups had codebases that were 95% AI-generated. GitHub’s own data showed that Copilot users accepted AI-generated code in nearly 30% of all suggestions. Replit reported millions of users building full applications without writing traditional code.
For SMB owners, this isn’t about becoming a developer. It’s about something bigger. The gap between what your business needs and what it actually gets is about to close.
Think about how software decisions have worked until now. Someone on your team has a problem. They either submit a request to IT and wait months, or they go rogue and buy some tool on a credit card that nobody else knows about. Shadow IT. Every business has it because the people closest to the problems have never had the power to build their own solutions.
That is about to change if it hasn’t already. Your operations manager doesn’t need to file a ticket or sneak a subscription past accounting anymore. They describe what they need from AI and have a working version by lunch. Not a workaround. Not a spreadsheet held together with duct tape. An actual tool, built exactly for their workflow, integrated into the business, that does precisely what they envisioned.
The business is finally closer to what it needs than ever before. And for the first time, the people who understand the problems best are the same people building the solutions.
The Next Leap: Software That Builds Itself
Here’s where it gets really interesting, and where Nadella’s vision starts to feel real.
Today, you ask an AI to build something. You describe the problem, and it writes the code. That’s powerful, but it still requires you to know what you need and ask for it.
The next phase eliminates even that step.
AI agents that live inside your business, monitoring workflows and understanding bottlenecks, will start building solutions proactively. This shift can inspire SMB owners by showing how automation will anticipate and solve problems before they arise.
Your CRM shows that follow-up emails sent within two hours of a meeting close deals 40% more often. The AI builds an automated follow-up workflow and deploys it. Your accounting data reveals that invoice disputes spike with a particular client segment? The AI creates a pre-approval checklist for those accounts.
You didn’t ask for these features. You didn’t even know you needed them. They just appear because the intelligence understood your business well enough to act.
This isn’t science fiction. Platforms like OpenClaw are already moving in this direction, building AI systems that don’t just respond to commands but anticipate needs and ship solutions autonomously.
The implications for SMB Spending are enormous, offering a future where owners feel more in control and less dependent on costly vendors, leading to greater financial confidence.The implications for SMB spending are enormous.
If AI can build custom software on demand, tailored exactly to your workflow, integrated directly into your existing stack, then the value proposition of most SaaS products inverts. You’re no longer paying for capability. You’re paying for not having to describe what you want.
That premium is shrinking fast.
I’m not saying every SaaS product is dead. Tools with massive network effects, like Slack, Salesforce, and SAPs of the world, software with deep regulatory compliance, like payroll and healthcare, and software with proprietary data moats will survive. But the long tail of niche business software, the tools that do one thing well for one type of business, is in serious trouble.
What is the average small business’s spending on SaaS? A meaningful chunk of that is going to evaporate. Not because the tools stop working, but because building your own version becomes trivially easy.
The Three-Year Shift
Here’s how I see the next three years playing out for SMBs:
Now
AI coding tools are useful but require someone technical-adjacent to drive them. Early adopters are building internal tools and automations. Cost savings are real but require effort.
Year Two
AI agents handle more of the specification and deployment. You describe a business problem in a message, and a working tool appears by morning. The “builder” in the loop becomes optional.
Year Three
Proactive AI systems monitor your business and build what you need before you ask. Software becomes a living layer that evolves with your company in real time.
Nadella saw this coming in the middle of a corporate crisis that had nothing to do with it. While everyone was debating boardroom politics, he was describing the end of software as a product category and the beginning of software as a capability of intelligence itself.
What to Do About It
In practice, you need to audit your software stack, experiment with new tools, and stop thinking about which software and tools you need to procure. The tool you need next probably doesn’t exist yet, and it doesn’t have to. You’ll speak it into existence.