Over the past month, I’ve spoken with several SaaS CEOs across Europe. Different companies, same underlying sentiment:
It’s tough out there. There is growth, but deals are harder, and it often feels like swimming against the current, as one person told me. But in almost every conversation, there’s also a shift in tone because alongside the pressure, many are starting to see a new opening.
That opening is driven by the rise of their Agentic versions of their platforms.
For years, SaaS has largely played within the same boundaries: selling tools into IT or functional budgets, justified by productivity gains. But agentic software starts to change that framing. Because now, software doesn’t just support the work, It actually does the work.
That shift matters. Because once software starts doing the work, the value is no longer tied to productivity alone.
It’s tied to headcount.
One CEO put it to me very directly:
“For the first time, our customers can calculate the ROI themselves.”
And what they’re calculating isn’t time saved, it’s hires avoided. Teams not expanded. Future cost that never needs to exist.
I personally had an epiphany here. My mind was expanded hearing this!
You’re no longer just selling into IT budgets.
You’re stepping into the People budget.
This is where the opportunity gets interesting…and I suppose complicated.
If the value you create is tied to labor efficiency or even labor replacement, then your real buyer may no longer be IT or a functional leader. It’s the CFO, the COO, or the CEO. The conversation shifts from “improving workflows” to “changing cost structures.”
And yet, most SaaS companies are still:
- positioning around features
- selling productivity
- pricing per seat
If we believe fewer people are needed to get the job done, why is pricing still tied to users?
So the real challenge isn’t just building agentic capabilities.
It’s learning how to sell the same platform differently:
- from efficiency → to cost avoidance
- from users → to output
- from IT buyers → to economic buyers
Because even if the product hasn’t fully changed, the value story has.
Let me be honest, from my perspective, we are still in the early days on this. I can’t claim that I have seen tons of companies being successful in this positionig shift….yet. I can see tons of internal barriers to get this right, but I believe there might be a massive opportunity for growth, and actually getting more paid for software than ever before, if done right.
For years, software has been about helping people do more.
Now, it’s starting to be about needing fewer people to do it.
And that raises a simple but important question:
Are we still selling into IT budgets, or are we ready to step into the much bigger world of People budgets?
You tell me.
