(2026-06-18) Verna The Mom And Pop SaaS Era Has Arrived

Elena Verna: The Mom-and-Pop SaaS era has arrived. The real change is what type of software is now getting built.

only ideas large enough to justify those costs ever made it into the world. As the cost and complexity of building collapse, that constraint disappears

The winners won't just be faster developers. They'll be teachers, real estate agents, accountants, coaches, consultants, small business owners, and domain experts of every kind solving problems they understand deeply. The future of software won't be defined by a tiny group of elite builders. The future of software will be defined by everyone else.

There are so many industries, professions, communities, hobbies, and niches that desperately needed software but could never justify the cost of creating it. A local soccer club, a vacation rental operator, an orthodontist, a wedding photographer, a recruiter, a teacher, an artist ' The list is infinite.

We've seen this before

Shopify didn't create commerce. But it did create millions of new merchants.

YouTube didn't create entertainment. It did create a new type of creators that specialize in niche interests.

all of these examples did not eliminate the original category offerings

The increased economic viability historically expanded the categories, rather than just reshuffling existing demand.

There's even a fancy economic theory for this, called Jevons Paradox. Essentially, when a new technology makes it more efficient to use a resource' the demand for that resource goes up, not down.

This isn't primarily a developer productivity story. Instead, it's an economic participation story.

At Lovable, we recently studied the people building on our platform

80% of builders come from non-technical backgrounds

Even more interesting: 55% of builders have >11 years of professional experience

The future advantage may no longer be technical expertise - it may be domain expertise!

now the person closest to the problem becomes the person creating the solution. This is a much bigger shift than 'everyone can code.' And guess what, there are a lot more domain specialists in the world than software engineers.

A recruiter can create recruiting software.

A real estate agent can create real estate software

A property manager can create property management software

These aren't just hobbies, people! 80% of builders are creating something they intend to monetize. 35% are already generating revenue. The most common applications being built are websites and landing pages, business operations software, consumer applications, and dashboards and analytics.

I've been writing about career optionality for-eh-ver. The safest time to create options is before you need them. The safest time to build a second income stream is before your primary income stream becomes uncertain.

But this particular opportunity literally didn't exist for most people, a few years ago

I'm not saying we're all going to become billionaire founders

Is that what you want? I don't. Because you absolutely don't need to make something massive to make a good living. And if you're just trying to add a bit of extra income or create a bit of a career safety net, the stakes are even lower. The local coffee shop doesn't need to become Starbucks (indie)

there's a huge middle ground between hobby project and unicorn. And I actually think that space is going to be the best place to build: Who's your competition, if you're providing a specific, productized service for a particular audience that you happen to know a lot about?

Just above what any individual user finds worth building for themselves, but below what the labs and giant companies can scalably implement' that's a sweet spot!

But Elena' isn't SaaS dead?

Not (yet?). What's dying is the idea that successful software companies need to look like venture-backed Silicon Valley startups. But SaaS was never really about venture capital. It was about turning expertise into a product that could be sold over and over again.

Instead of a world powered by a few thousand software companies, we'll have a world powered by millions of builders.