Vertical AI Agents Could Be 10X Bigger Than SaaS

Y Combinator

@

Y Combinator

Nov 22, 2024

In short

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Jared Hearne of Y Combinator discusses how vertical AI agents could become even larger than SaaS companies, potentially creating 300+ billion-dollar companies. He explains that these AI agents will not only replace existing software but also reduce the need for large teams, making companies more efficient.

"The vertical equivalence will be 10 times as large as the SaaS company that they are disrupting... They spend way more on employees than they do on software.”

Y Combinator

Y Combinator

Y Combinator is a highly influential startup accelerator and venture capital firm founded in 2005 that has launched over 4,000 companies with a combined valuation exceeding $600 billion, including tech giants like Airbnb, Stripe ($70B), DoorDash, Coinbase, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, and Twitch.

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Reid Hoffman

"When you're encountering a new technology, if you approach it as something taking away your power, you're throwing yourself under the wheels. But if you see how you can use it to extend what you can do, it becomes much better.”

Alex Rampell

"If AI handles the routine work, humans can focus on building relationships and being creative, which computers can't replicate.”

Eric Schmidt

“This is the most powerful technology that will be invented in our lifetimes. It's as important as electricity and heating and air conditioning... because it's intelligence that's available to everyone”

Sundar Pichai

"I'm very confident there'll be a lot of progress in 2025... I think the models are definitely going to get better at reasoning, completing a sequence of actions more reliably."

Mustafa Suleyman

“Memory is the key thing coming soon… it will remember your preferences and give advice based on your tastes and past interactions.”

Y Combinator

"The vertical equivalence will be 10 times as large as the SaaS company that they are disrupting... They spend way more on employees than they do on software.”

Andrew Ng

"With generative AI, applications that used to take six months to build can now be developed in just 10 days.”

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee

"There are two kinds of companies at the end of this decade: Companies that are fully utilizing AI and everyone else is out of business"

Dario Amodei

"If you extrapolate the curves that we've had so far... it does make you think that we'll get there by 2026 or 2027.”

Sam Altman

"If we could just get truly abundant intelligence and energy, what we’d be able to make happen in the world is extraordinary."

Bill Gates

"AI has the potential to finally deliver on the promise of tech in education, creating personal tutors for every student."

Matt Cynamon

“If you’re relying on AI to produce the final product, you’ll be disappointed. But if you use it to help get there, it’s extremely powerful.”

Lex Fridman

"I think we're at the beginning of a fundamental transformation in how humans create software. The relationship between human and machine in the creative process of building systems is being redefined."

Benedict Evans

"Once it works people say well that's not AI, that's just a database, it's just a computer... it's just software"

Bill Gates

“The deeper skillset, whether it's medical consultation, scientific thinking, or customer support, will have more value even in a world where productivity is enhanced by AI”

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