DEV Community: Adam Ilcisak

Why Will SaaS Dinosaurs Survive Longer Than Expected

Adam Ilcisak — Thu, 14 May 2026 20:02:41 +0000

By “SaaS dinosaurs,” I mean the big, shiny, pricey software products.

CRMs like Pipedrive.

Project tools like Jira.

Platforms like Monday.com.

You probably heard this line already:

“SaaS is dead.”

It is NOT and I will tell you why.

AI makes software easier to build. That part is true.

Building a “new Jira” is no longer impossible for a small team. It is still a little challenging, but doable.

When I first tried AI-assisted engineering, I expected thousands of low-cost indie tools to flood every SaaS category.

Cheaper CRMs.

Cheaper project management tools.

Cheaper everything.

So why didn’t it happen?

I believe there are 3 main reasons:

1. Cheap is not enough. Trust is what matters.

Copying a successful product and making it cheaper sounds like a good business plan.

But companies don’t want “cheap Jira.”

They want software that will still exist in 3 years.

When researching tools on Product Hunt I noticed many of them dead or abandoned.

That creates a real trust problem for small SaaS products.

For a company, switching costs are often higher that what they will save in a year.

At the same time…

Price signals quality.

Not always fairly, but it does.

A more expensive product often looks more serious. More stable. More powerful.

A cheap product can look like a side project, even when it is actually good.

2. Google and LLMs love the dinosaurs
Quick story from my own experience.

I built a resource planning tool.

At my previous job, we used a similar tool. It was expensive and missing some features I wanted.

I called it ResourcePlanner and bought resourceplanner.io domain.

And at the beginning, it performed great.

Without any huge SEO effort, I was the first non-paid Google result for relevant searches.

The product did what it said. People who found it usually stayed. I was happy.

Then last December, it crashed. Google traffic basically flatlined.

There was Google Search Engine Core update.

Search is becoming much harder for small tools.

It is not enough to create a few AI-generated blog posts.

It is not enough to comment on Reddit.

It is not enough to have an exact-match domain.

Search engines increasingly reward brands with history, authority, backlinks, mentions, and real demand.

And LLMs work in a similar way.

Ask ChatGPT for the top project management tools.

You will see the old folks names: Jira. Asana. Monday. ClickUp.

Not because they are always the best fit.

But because they have years of mentions, comparisons, reviews, Reddit threads, documentation, integrations, and public data around them.

It is unfair advantage…

3. Big SaaS owns the ecosystem

The product is no longer just the product.

Big SaaS companies have marketplaces, tutorials, implementation partners, templates, communities, certification programs.

You are not just competing with their features.

You are competing with their ecosystem.

That is why “I built a better app” is usually not enough.

Today, you need some form of distribution or community around it.

For example, I am building ResourcePlanner.

But I also built platform managerbay.com for project managers to share knowledge.

I run a Facebook group around remote project management jobs.

And I am trying to identify other places where I can be useful to the management community.

Because one app alone is not enough anymore.

This is where big SaaS companies have another huge advantage.

They are everywhere.

So where is the opportunity?

I still believe a pricing shift is coming.

Big SaaS will move more and more toward enterprise customers.

Atlassian already publicly declared it.

But in order to succeed, I think small SaaS builders need more guerrilla moves.

Less pretending we can outspend enterprise SaaS on advertisement.

More helping each other become visible.

Even between products that are kind of competitors.

Because here is the thing:

We are usually not identical.

One tool is better for agencies.

Another one is better for software houses.

Another one has stronger reporting.

The customer will decide based on their specific needs anyway.

I think it is better approach than believing every indie SaaS founder will beat enterprise SaaS alone with 20 AI-generated blog posts.

Let's help each other a little…

If you are building something in the management / project management / resource planning space, hit me up.

And if you know someone I should talk to, introduce us pls.

How big is the EU tech dependence on the US?

Adam Ilcisak — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 16:52:17 +0000

During his inauguration, Donald Trump was accompanied by some of the world’s most influential tech leaders: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. There is no doubt that technology and politics are deeply connected in the US, and the country is, without question, a global technology leader. At the same time, Trump’s threat to slap steep tariffs on European goods shows how quickly policy can become a weapon.

So the question is: How big is the problem?

Data from the European Parliament

A recent study for the European Parliament states that non-EU companies control most of the critical layers of the European digital stack. US firms hold intellectual-property “choke points” in operating systems, cloud platforms, chip architectures, and machine-learning frameworks.

About 70 % of the EU cloud market is dominated by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Around 80 % of corporate spending on cloud and software in Europe flows to US companies.

This dominance extends to cybersecurity and consumer software. Most firewalls, identity-management systems, and threat-monitoring tools used in Europe come from US or Israeli vendors.

Android and iOS together command virtually 100 % of the mobile operating-system market, while Microsoft Windows dominates desktops.

European leaders recognize that the continent is falling behind in the digital race. 1

While the US has produced five tech firms valued at more than €2 trillions, Europe has none.

What can you do as a business or individual?

You don’t need to wait for EU regulation or billion-euro initiatives. One of the simplest and most effective actions is to choose European software where viable. Purchasing decisions shape markets.

Opting for European software is also an investment in Europe’s economic future. Many European businesses want to use tools built with their own languages, regulatory environment, and market needs in mind. The EuroStack report emphasizes that purchasing European solutions creates high-skilled jobs, reduces dependencies, and supports critical industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and energy. 2

By selecting software hosted and owned within Europe, users benefit from GDPR-compliant data protection, avoid extraterritorial data access, and reduce exposure to unpredictable US policy.

Where to look for European alternatives?

I would say “Google them.” But, you know… you should probably use a Europe-based browser—such as ecosia.org
(Germany-based). You can also browse curated lists at https://euroalternative.co
.

Shameless plug: The author of this article is part of the ResourcePlanner.io
team (a European alternative to Float). If you’re looking to support EU-based SaaS while solving real planning problems, we’d be happy if you took a look.

In an era of trade wars, tariffs, and geopolitical uncertainty, choosing European software isn’t just a technical decision, it’s a strategic one. By investing in home-grown solutions today, businesses and institutions can foster innovation, protect their data, and contribute to a more resilient and sovereign digital Europe.

Resources

I Blew 400€ on Cursor — 10 tips for AI Coding in 2025

Adam Ilcisak — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 13:02:04 +0000

I spent 400 Euros with Cursor in a couple of days… and these are my lessons learned. Building software with Cursor is super fast, and you should definitely use it. However, there are some downsides. AI can fail to keep your code consistent and can introduce vulnerabilities into your application.

So these are my tips:

Don’t use “Free” or “Premium” models. Coding with them is like coding with a “junior programmer.” As I like to say, a junior programmer is the most expensive programmer in a company — the result of their work is spaghetti code that somehow works, but nobody wants to touch it again, and everything needs to be refactored. The exception is the use of gpt-4o if you want to include an image in your request (for example, if you have a design that you would like to build).
The most expensive model is chatGPT 4.5-preview (costs 2 Euros per request via Cursor). However, at the moment of writing this blog, the performance is not worht it. Don’t use it; don’t waste your money.
Use the o1 model. It’s not included in Free or Premium models; you need to allow it in Cursor account settings under “Enable usage-based pricing.” If used via Cursor, it costs 40 cents per request. Is it expensive? It depends on how much you charge. If you save 15 minutes with such a request, how much did you actually earn?
Use your own API key for OpenAI. It is much cheaper. Moreover, there is a promo on the OpenAI platform where you get 10 million tokens daily for free if you share data with them — so you can pretty much build anything for free. (Available until April 30th, 2025, for some users.)
Allow a large context — requests will use more tokens, but it’s worth it for better results and better consistency. In Cursor, go to Settings → Features → Chat & Composer.
Use default instructions (Rules for AI and Project rules in Cursor settings). Once you decide to use a library, add it to the default instructions. For example, if you decide to use HeroIcons, add it to your context. Otherwise, you might end up sometimes using lucide-icon, sometimes HeroIcons, and sometimes it creates an entire SVG icon from scratch.
Use a reference file to help with consistency. If you have one API endpoint ready and you’re going to build another one, provide the existing file as a reference. For example, “Create a CRUD API endpoint for resources using the similar approach as in projects/routes.” This helps maintain consistency.
Do the PR review. Sometimes it removes important parts; sometimes it introduces vulnerabilities. For now, you shouldn’t use Cursor for complex projects with user data stored if you have no idea what you are doing.
Don’t use paid or brand-new libraries. This makes sense if you think about it: AI is trained on available data, and there is much more vanilla JavaScript in public repos than use-cases for some paid libraries. Also, documentation is often not sufficient and can be unclear even to humans. However, you can build pretty much anything very fast with vanilla code.
Focus on providing the right context. This is pretty obvious, but it’s actually crucial — if the context is incorrect, AI will try to fix the wrong issue. If you struggle to fix or build something, reconsider your context and try again.

I built my micro SaaS, resourceplanner.io, in a couple of days with Cursor. However, building software has always been just a small piece of the business puzzle, so sharing, commenting or supporting me by reactions is highly appreciated.