Alain Breillatt

VP Product @relexsolutions, former CPO @optoro innovation $ITW & @Nielsen, Lin’s bin addict, Red Sox rule, @byu @kelloggschool, dad to 5 girls, I ride bikes

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

It’s not looking pretty for overvalued SaaS orgs that are still chasing PMF and profitability. ZIRP gave so much runway and false hope.

[carried_no_interest @carrynointerest]

I don't talk about it often, but I work in software private equity.

The next 4 years are going to be a MOVIE:
-Huge funds with pretty big write downs
-LLMs/AI removing technical moats for development / evening playing fields
-IPO market closed/possibly reopening / maybe not reopening at all (WHO KNOWS?!?!?!)
-Strategics stepping back
-interest rates (WHO KNOWS?!?!?!)
-Capchase survey has software sales cycles LONGER and ACV DOWN. Will that trend continue?

Something fascinating about 4 years ago vs now:
-Companies raised too much at too high a valuation. This is clogging up M&A BADLY. All these post vals are so high that VCs don't want founders to sell and get out when they absolutely should.
-it used to take $1-3mm in VC dollars in just engineering talent to build a solid software platform you could hire a sales team for
-now takes much less (thanks ai)
-the software companies who raised and spent $ on engineering talent technically had a higher marginal cost of engineering talent for a product that can be copied today
-new competitors will emerge. Vertical Competitors may pivot up or down given AI enabled engineers
-$ per hour of engineering cost will have a different outcome going forward

My take given all the above: I do not understand how a PE fund ever pays >6x ARR for a barely profitable SAAS business again.

INSANITY IMMINENT

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@BlackLabelAdvsr @BasedMikeLee This is the evangelical bigotry I always anticipate from you Jon. At least you’re consistent.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@BasedMikeLee It seems to me Mike you probably have the guy’s phone number to specifically ask that question as a US Senator. Better yet set up a hearing and call them in.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@Roadman_Podcast The future? No, it’s a discipline among half a dozen others. Did road replace track? Did time trial / triathlon replace leisure / commuting? Did Cyclocross replace Mountain?

I realize you ask these questions to drive engagement Anthony but this one is ridiculous.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@StallionCornell To scoff at those who step away and declare they’ve worked themselves out of the Church isn’t what I expect our efforts of ministering should look like.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@StallionCornell Dan’s objections facile and overly generalized. I’ve encountered some people who post online regularly who fit his description but most I’ve spoken with personally have grappled with real concerns whether history, lgbtq, women’s place within the Church, or mishandling of abuse.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@LDS_Dems These don’t have to be emotionally fraught conversations. They may start with that tenor but as we’ve built trust in each other a recognition and respect of choices evolves. We don’t have to agree or even see things the same way. Mutual respect goes a long way.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@LDS_Dems You have never been asked by someone who left the Church why you stay? Really?

I scratch my head because I have these conversations regularly and at some point in our interactions and relationship I have been asked it by almost every former member who has left.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@sizzlerbuckie @CyclingWerewolf Ineos has Kevin Vauquelin, Thymen Arensman, and Oscar Onley right now. He’ll have to prove more complete than them to get a GC podium.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@CyclingWerewolf @BenjiNaesen Without a doubt. Sepp Kuss did it in the Vuelta in 2023. There are strong American talent between Kuss, Riccitello, Jorgensen and McNulty. All depends on whether Visma and UAE let them chase it. Riccitello is probably the most likely to podium in the next 5 years.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@JeffSBennion @OpenAI

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@dafpath @Roadman_Podcast I said what I said. If you don’t know the history of what Lance did and I mean the full history don’t pretend to understand. There’s a difference between doping and maliciously destroying lives and careers.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@Roadman_Podcast Because not everyone was doping it’s just that those who weren’t got spit out the back. Lance was the most egregious and vicious in his efforts to protect his personal cheating.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@Roadman_Podcast No. Lance sought to destroy the careers of any who disagreed with him or sought to reveal the truth. He is irredeemable as far as cycling is concerned and we’re better off that the bandage was ripped off. Is it all better? Probably not but still better.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@dmbkparker This feels like a potential corollary to the software joke that if it takes 1 woman 9 months to deliver a baby then 9 women should take 1 month. Does a house get moved 2x as fast now?

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@dmbkparker They’re usually contracted drivers + truck who then hires a local crew on each end. Somebody at scheduling screwed up.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@devilfruitbat We have an annual Wine & Garlic festival in Virginia that’s been running for decades. And Gilroy, CA processes 100 million pounds a year while Fresno is one of the largest global growers.

There was a day and age when this might have been a fair critique but that was 50 years ago

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

Funny how the pendulum shifts

1. "GPT wrappers are worthless" → the value acrues to application layer

2. "AI will eliminate white collar jobs" → someone needs to manage all these AI agents and everyone is now saying white collar workers will rise due to AI

3. "Open source will never catch up" → Gemma and DeepSeek are good enough for 80% of tasks

4. "I only use Claude Code, Codex is mid" → Codex is becoming a super app. Coding, docs, browser, computer use, automations, all in one surface.

4. "You need to pick a model and go deep" → model loyalty is dead, the best founders swap weekly based on the task

5. "SaaS is dead" → This was mostly true but for some SaaS margins actually improve when agents pay for their own tokens and need their own seats

6. "AutoGPT is the future" → AutoGPT died. Then agents actually got good 2 years later with Hermes, OpenClaw, and managed agents. The idea was right. The timing was wrong.

7. "Prompt engineering is a career" → lasted about 18 months as a job title. Workflow engineering replaced it.

8. "Computer use is a gimmick" → "sent from computer use/ai agent will be the new sent from iphone

9. "AI design looks generic" → the generic look is a taste problem not a technology problem. The founders feeding their agents references from Japanese packaging, brutalist architecture, and 1960s print are getting beautiful output.

10. "Fine-tuning is the moat" → a well-structured Obsidian vault with good markdown files outperforms fine-tuning for most use cases and costs nothing.

11. "Benchmarks tell you which model to use" → benchmarks tell you which model won a test. I think we're all waking up to this lol.

12. "AI will consolidate into 2-3 winners" → AI is fragmenting into thousands of vertical applications built on commodity models. The consolidation is at the model layer. The explosion is at the application layer. Both are happening simultaneously.

13. "The hard part is building" → the hard part is choosing what to build. Building takes a weekend. Choosing the right thing to build takes taste, domain knowledge, and customer conversations. thats why i built https://t.co/a5ARFnvky2 to make it easier for you.

14. "The terminal is the future" → desktop apps just ate the terminal. Claude Code desktop, Codex app, both shipped GUI versions in the same month. The next 100 million agent users will never open a terminal (thank god).

I guarantee you I'm holding at least 2-3 beliefs right now that will look stupid by Christmas. I just don't know which ones. Neither do you. No one does. Build anyway.

Keep moving because this is the greatest time to be building.

I'm rooting for you.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

How we build the AI factory from agent to orchestration to automation is not going to be how we did it 2 years ago. Software creation needs to fundamentally change.

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

We're still writing code like it's 2013: no latent space, no intelligence. When there is intelligence we gate the agents like workers at a Foxconn factory.

The future of software is just-in-time and is 10x less code because of the markdown.

And the agents will be free.

[Alain Breillatt @alain7]

@texasrunnerDFW In my 50s, Dad with 5 daughters, a job that has me traveling. I found a second wind by taking up road / gravel biking and an indoor trainer for when I’m strapped for time or weather is bad. Vastly more energy when I ride daily and fuel properly with the right foods.