Jared Sleeper on Which Software Companies Will Survive the "SaaSpocalypse"
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The start of the year has been an absolutely brutal one for software companies. There’s a big fear that the rise of AI and advanced coding models will pull the rug out from this industry. But even before these AI fears, software companies were seeing their growth slow. So how does the business actually work? And more importantly, what types of companies will actually survive the “SaaSpocalypse”? (Or maybe “the CaSaaStrophe”?) On this episode, we speak with Jared Sleeper, a longtime software investor who is now a partner at Avenir. We talk about the history of software, the evolution of business models, and where the threat is most acute. He also talks about why investors are so nervous, and their fears that in the long term many of these companies will be worth zero, while in the short term, they’re not even making much money on a GAAP basis.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | UKG, their HR, pay, and workforce management tools help business leaders empower their people. |
| 0:06.4 | Because when work works, everything works. |
| 0:09.2 | Learn more at UKG.com slash work. |
| 0:15.0 | Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. |
| 0:19.9 | Music Podcasts Radio News. |
| 0:33.7 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. |
| 0:34.9 | I'm Joe Wisenthall. |
| 0:36.0 | And I'm Tracy Allaway. |
| 0:43.4 | Tracy, we're recording this February 11th and a IGV, the software ETF, down another 3% today. |
| 0:46.5 | It has been ugly in software. |
| 0:48.9 | Everyone's throwing around the term sasspocalypse. |
| 0:53.6 | I mean, the great thing about SaaS is there are a lot of things that like rhyme with it and a lot of hominemes. |
| 1:15.0 | So you can you can make all those puns. Yeah, exactly. SAS is trash, whatever. But I'm looking at the share price of Salesforce. Oh, yeah. In particular, because I always think of Salesforce as sort of like emblematic. The poster child. Yeah. poster child of like a software company that I'm not really sure what they do. But yeah, it's, it's just ugly. |
| 1:21.6 | It's basically been cut in half, hasn't it? Since it's peak, like an early 2025. Right now, it's 184, 84. |
| 1:28.8 | And it's all your fault, Joe. It's all my fault. That's right. Because earlier in the year, after we got back from Christmas vacation or Christmas break, you know, around that, I'd seen everyone playing around |
| 1:34.1 | with Claude Code. And then I had to do it. We did an episode. And so people are like, oh, if Joe |
| 1:38.5 | Isatthal can like figure out Claude Code, that there must not be any value to any of these |
| 1:44.0 | companies at all. |
| 1:45.4 | You mentioned Salesforce. |
| 1:47.0 | That's far from the ugliest one I'm looking at Atlassian, which makes a lot of like |
| 1:51.2 | workforce productivity companies, like some Slack competitors and stuff. |
| 1:55.2 | That was a $450 stock back in 2021. |
... |
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