Rory O'Driscoll (Scale VP) on SaaStr: 'Software Isn't Dead — It Just Got a Lot Harder to Win'

SaaStr·medium signal

In a SaaStr AI deep dive, 30-year software investor Rory O'Driscoll splits the 'is software dead' question three ways: ~10% of pre-GPT companies were dead-on-arrival, a third are insulated, a third are additive. His sharpest warning is for 'plain-vanilla SaaS' that merely automates a workflow — those must move or get rolled. He frames it against ~$688B in 2026 hyperscaler AI capex and argues foundation models own the bottom layer while a large set of app companies still win on top.