Episode 813 | SaaS Predictions for 2026 (+ Reflections on 2025)

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How will AI, SEO, and market shifts change SaaS next year? In this solo episode, Rob Walling revisits his predictions for 2025, what he got right, what he totally missed and shares nine new predictions for 2026. He reflects on trends shaping bootstrapped SaaS, from the rise of AI-first startups to the challenges facing horizontal SaaS founders. Interested in Sponsoring this Podcast? If your product or service helps SaaS founders, bootstrappers, or indie entrepreneurs, you can reach thousands of listeners each week through Startups for the Rest of Us. Email us at sponsors@startupsfortherestofus.com Topics we cover: (1:09) – Lessons from common SaaS plateaus and the Core Four framework (4:39) – Rating his 2025 predictions: what came true (and what didn’t) (12:46) – Prediction #1: Horizontal SaaS will face major headwinds (15:56) – Prediction #2: Overreliance on SEO will hurt SaaS founders (16:26) – Prediction #3: Top brands will dominate as AI narrows discovery (21:04) – Prediction #4: The AI VC bubble won’t burst in 2026 (21:47) – Prediction #5: Open source AI models will double in usage (22:28) – Prediction #6: A major no code platform will struggle or shut down (23:33) – Prediction #7: M&A for small SaaS startups will accelerate (24:31) – Prediction #8: Bitcoin will hit a new all-time high (25:31) – Prediction #9: Stripe will not go public (again) (26:26) – Reflections on MicroConf and TinySeed milestones Links from the Show: MicroConf US – Portland, April 2026 Rob Walling YouTube Channel Apply to TinySeed TinySeed Portfolio The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to another episode of Start Up to the Rest of Us.
0:03.0	I'm Rob Walling, and in this episode, I'm going to look back and revisit my predictions that I made a year ago for 2025.
0:11.6	I'm going to look ahead at some predictions I have for 2026.
0:15.9	And I'm also going to reflect on a few new concepts introduced on this podcast over the past year, as well as
0:21.9	some of the accomplishments of me and my teams at MicroConf and Tiny Seed. Before I dive into that,
0:28.8	this podcast is looking for sponsors. Do you feel like your product serves the folks that listen to this
0:33.8	podcast? Imagine getting in the earbuds of tens of thousands of founders and aspiring
0:38.6	founders who are part of this incredible community. If you're interested in potentially sponsoring
0:43.1	this podcast, send us an email, sponsors at startups for the rest of us.com. We are close to filling
0:49.0	Q1 of 26 and we're already starting to plan Q2. So reach out if you're interested. Sponsors at
0:56.5	Startups for the Rest of Us.com.
1:09.1	Before I get into predictions, revisiting the fail whale, that is the list of predictions I made for this past year, I was going through episodes from the past 52 weeks.
1:20.2	And there were a few concepts that I felt like I kept touching on.
1:24.8	They kept coming up through listener questions or through just the
1:29.0	kind of gestalt of the startup community that we live in. One was a lot of talk about plateaus,
1:35.5	folks trying to make it through plateaus, wondering why they've plateaued, and wondering what
1:40.7	the tactic or solution is to getting through plateaus.
1:45.5	I talked about that on a few episodes of this show,
1:47.3	and I also did a talk at MicroConf.
1:50.8	Well, it was about a year ago.
1:52.0	I did one in Europe, and then I did one in New Orleans just six, seven months ago.
1:58.0	And I believe you can find that on the microcomf YouTube channel,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Rob Walling, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Rob Walling and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.