Denver AI , a local group focused on moving AI out of theory and into execution; bringing together operators, founders, and builders to share real-world use cases, demos, and practical approaches to applying AI inside businesses.
The format leans less on presentations and more on working ideas in the open, which makes it one of the better environments right now for understanding how quickly things are actually shifting. If you’re thinking about how AI shows up inside your company (not just talking about it), it’s worth checking out: https://www.meetup.com/denverai/events/313518600/
Some reflections from the session. We went from ASP → SaaS → and now… something else.
Application Service Providers (ASP) was basically: “we’ll host the software for you.”
SaaS was: “we’ll make it accessible, scalable, and easy to use.”
That model worked really well. But it also quietly forced every company into the same shape.
You bought software. You trained people. You adjusted your workflows to fit the tool.
And for a while, that was a great trade.
What’s changing now isn’t that software is going away.
It’s that the constraint is going away.
You don’t actually have to buy the same tool as everyone else anymore.
You can just… build what you need.
Faster than most people are comfortable admitting.
I’m seeing this everywhere right now:
People spinning up internal tools in a weekend Replacing systems they used to pay thousands a month for Stitching together workflows that actually match how their business runs
Not perfect.
But close enough—and getting better fast.
The part that feels important:
SaaS assumed the user was the center.
Seats. Logins. Interfaces.
AI doesn’t really care about any of that.
It cares about: what needs to get done.
And it will just… do it.
Which means the value shifts.
Not from software → better software.
But from: software → systems
I think that’s the piece people are still catching up to.
We’re not moving into a world where everyone just buys better tools.
We’re moving into a world where: every company ends up with its own system.
Designed around how it actually operates.
That creates a weird gap.
Because just because you can generate software now…
doesn’t mean you know what to build.
Or how to structure it. Or how to make it hold up under real use.
I don’t think SaaS disappears.
It becomes infrastructure.
Stable, reliable, boring (in a good way).
