Mifan

[Empire State Building @EmpireStateBldg]

The Empire State Building shines red and white tonight in celebration of @Arsenal’s Premier League Title and trophy celebration.

See the lights live: https://t.co/iavtXSm3Fx

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

We did it, together.

[Google @Google]

Today @GoogleMaps is getting its biggest upgrade in over a decade. By combining our Gemini models with a deep understanding of the world, Maps now unlocks entirely new possibilities for how you navigate and explore. Here’s what you need to know 🧵

[WSO2 @wso2]

We’re proud to partner with IIIT-B and MOSIP to advance open source digital identity with eSignet—enhancing secure, standards-aligned single sign-on and fostering global community innovation. https://t.co/5P5sHSQEp8

[Rohit Mittal @rohitdotmittal]

vertical AI SaaS is the biggest growing category of vc funding across - ai agent startups, roll ups (with ai improvements), or ai-native full service companies

forget the broad AI bubble narrative for a second.

vertical AI is doing something traditional SaaS never could: accessing the $11 trillion US labor market instead of competing for scraps of the $450 billion enterprise software spend

Harvey hit $150M ARR based on recent announcement, up from $50M at end of 2024. now valued at $8B after three funding rounds this year alone.

Abridge crossed $117M ARR deployed in 150+ health systems including Mayo Clinic and Duke.

OpenEvidence claims 40% of US doctors use their platform, just raised at $6B valuation

glean announced $200M ARR yesterday

revenue retention numbers seem solid (key point of debate generally)

traditional SaaS captured 1-5% of an employee's value.

vertical AI captures 25-50% by automating substantial portions of their actual work (Scale Venture Partners).

when software can draft a legal document or generate clinical notes, not just streamline how humans do it, the pricing model fundamentally changes

this is why markets once considered "too small" are now venture-viable.

legal software used to be one category. now theres software just for accident lawyers (EvenUp).

the TAM expansion means subfractions of markets can support billion dollar outcomes

the global vertical AI market is projected to grow from $12.9B in 2024 to $115.4B by 2034, a 24.5% CAGR

i, inititally, believed that foundation model companies will bring way better models by now, but that hasn't happened yet, and they still seem far out

unlike wrapper startups getting killed every time OpenAI ships a new feature, vertical AI companies build defensibility through domain-specific data, regulatory compliance baked into the product, and deep workflow integration.

i also believe that openai, anthropic, google, and others will target every big vertical directly - they'd rather own the customer, than just provide cheap tokens

the reason is that direct customer integrations have way higher margins and are more valuable than selling tokens

openai may needs lot of money for compute cost - and selling cheap tokens is a losing proposition

they have to work directly with the largest clients to make that money back

eg Abridge has 1.5M+ medical encounters training their models. thats not replicable

vertical SaaS already trades at nearly 2x the EV/Gross Profit multiples of horizontal peers, 11x versus 5x median. investors recognize these businesses achieve market dominance, build stickier products, and operate with more efficient go-to-market

most vertical AI startups will still fail like most startups fail. but the ones that work will be worth more than the horizontal SaaS winners from the last cycle. theyre going after bigger budgets with stickier products in industries that actually need the help

this is why im bullish

[WSO2 @wso2]

Vietnam’s next leap in finance: innovation, inclusion, interoperability. Are you ready?

Read full blog: https://t.co/LfO2OJPRDx

[Starlink @Starlink]

For those affected by Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka, Starlink is providing free service to new and existing customers through the end of December. We’re also coordinating with the Sri Lankan government to provide additional assistance → https://t.co/CgNs9mzXTe

[Aaron Levie @levie]

Lowering the cost of building software does not change the fundamental value proposition of commercial software.

Commercial software means that you get a dedicated organization that is accountable to running your tech, keeping your tech up to date with the latest features, fixing bugs, handling security, and so on. Their survival depends on doing all of this vs. your custom one-off CRM system will eventually be a pain for you to manage.

What lowering the cost of building software does do is the following:

1. More viable competition in every category of software, which means that customers will get more value over time because companies will have to compete more to retain customers. This may incrementally lower the cost of software per category, but more importantly it will just mean there’s better and more features for your every need over time.

2. Software for ever smaller niches. You’ll see software in verticals and for jobs that there previously was no viable market for because the TAM was considered too small to justify building a full solution for. Now it will be possible because a smaller team can go after these markets.

3. Custom software for all the things that commercial vendors don’t support. There will be 10X more custom software for all the bespoke requirements that companies have traditionally had but was too expensive for them to build or have an SI create.

4. And of course software for all the things we never had software for before. Software for product prototyping, software for bespoke integrations between systems, and on and on. When custom software costs almost nothing to create and can be relatively throwaway, we’ll see it show up as a solve for way more problems (for better or worse).

In all, we’re going to see orders of magnitude more software get produced because of AI agents. But it will be in different places than we expected.

[Ryan Hoover @rrhoover]

Just got my blood drawn.

I asked the Quest technician how many clients they get from Function Health.

Her answer: “A lot. More than 25% of patients come from Function every day.”

There's so much opportunity in the picks and shovels of "prosumer" health.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE M&A

I’ve looked at buying more than 100 software businesses doing $3M ARR or less in the last 3 months.

And every time I evaluated one, I asked myself the same question: how fast could a competent founder rebuild this with Claude Code?

This made me realize there are now only 2 kinds of software businesses.

Type 1: Utility businesses.

These are feature-first products with value in the code or interface. They can be rebuilt QUICKLY, depend on ads or creator posts for distribution, and have no STRONG forces (community, network, data moats etc) that strengthen over time..

If they were worth 3x ARR before AI, many might now be worth 1–2x because the core product can be rebuilt faster than ever. If someone can clone it in 48 hours with Claude Code, Cursor, and a few automations, the defensibility collapses.

Doesn’t it warrant a LOWER multiple?

Type 2: Compounding businesses.

These are products where the value sits OUTSIDE the code. Distribution loops, workflow lock-in, proprietary data, community density, and network effects.

A rebuild does not replace these dynamics, and they gain strength as they grow.

These businesses will be worth MORE going forward because they survive the collapse in creation cost.

If they were worth 3x ARR before AI, some maybe worth 6x because if you can really add features with Claude Code/Cursor etc faster then ever before/cut costs faster than ever before/grow with social faster than ever before

Doesn't it warrant a HIGHER multiple?

Type 1 companies will struggle to sell at meaningful multiples because they can be recreated faster than they can be acquired.

Type 2 companies, even at modest revenue, become premium assets because they cannot be copied by starting from scratch.

This is the FUTURE of software M&A.

Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee, and even harder to justify pretending the old playbook still works.

I haven't seen many people talk about this shift around multiples.

TLDR; mulitples are compressing for utility apps, increasing for compounding apps

Am I wrong?

[WSO2 @wso2]

SWIFT’s CBPR+ compliance deadline is fast approaching in November 2025.

Don’t let a legacy system slow you down. WSO2 Integrator helps you:

Convert messages from old MT to new ISO 20022.
Connect older systems to a modern payments hub.
Gain a competitive edge with a flexible, high-performance solution.

🔗See how we simplify ISO 20022 migration: https://t.co/uVxgQZyulF

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Something I just told a founder: Stay as small as you can for as long as you can. People who come to visit your office should always be surprised that such an important company has so few employees.

[WSO2 @wso2]

We kicked things off with our pre-conference labs, followed by a warm welcome from Devaka Randeniya and powerful keynotes by Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana & Mifan Careem. The day concluded with Navneet Kaur's closing remarks and a fantastic reception.
Ready for more tomorrow!

[Nazly Ahmed @nazly]

.@Emirates A380 (A6-EEQ), en route to Brisbane from Dubai, cruising over the skies of Colombo at an altitude of 35,000 feet. 😍

[Mifan @mifanc]

More drones in New Jersey! Spotted more than 4 in the park. Pretty creepy! #NewJerseyUFO #drones

[Megatron @Megatron_ron]

BREAKING:

🇻🇦🇺🇲 Pope Francis says both U.S. presidential candidates are “anti-life” and tells people to vote for the “lesser of two evils”:

"Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who k*lls babies."

*He declared that Kamala Harris is killing babies because she supports Israel.

[J☔ @Shadygize]

The reason Pep bought Haaland🤣
https://t.co/n3gpaXvc7Z

[Sanjiva Weerawarana @sanjiva]

Google Maps @googlemaps has updated the satellite images where the Avinya Academy at Bandaragama @avinya_f is. Very cool!

Link: https://t.co/PslqmxEFBT

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

My colleagues gave repeated standing ovations to Netanyahu yesterday.

I hope they remember the starving children of Gaza who will carry the scars of this disaster for the rest of their lives.