The Era of Raising $10M for Mediocre SaaS Is Over — Building Was Never the Bottleneck

Martijn Verbove argues that the era of raising $10M to ship a mediocre SaaS product is over. He pushes back on the narrative that AI has suddenly made software buildable, pointing out that software was already buildable years ago — and most products still failed regardless.

The core insight is that building was never the bottleneck. The real challenge has always been solving a genuine customer pain point with measurable output. This reframes the current AI hype around software development, suggesting that the fundamental problem in startups remains one of product-market fit and value creation, not technical capability.