The SaaS Industry Just Got a Wake-Up Call
A Movement Called "Pure Code" Is Coming for Your Software Subscriptions
I’ve been covering internet technology for over a decade. I’ve watched trends come and go. I’ve seen the hype cycles, the bubbles, the quiet revolutions that actually changed everything.
What I’m about to tell you feels like that last category.
Something is happening right now, quietly, in garages and home offices and coffee shops, that the billion-dollar software industry hasn’t fully grasped yet. By the time they do, it might be too late for some of them.
A movement is forming. It doesn’t have a PR team. It doesn’t have venture capital. It’s just people, regular business owners, non-coders, entrepreneurs, using AI to build software that does exactly what they need.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
I’m calling it Pure Code.
And it’s going to change everything.
Word of the Day: Pure Code
Pure Code — Software that is created purely for your business. Designed to deliver exactly what YOU need. No extra buttons. No features you’ll never touch. No bloated menus built for a thousand different companies that aren’t yours.
The code is minimal. It loads instantly. It accomplishes your goals. And you own it.
Think about the software you use every day. How much of it do you actually use?
Your project management tool has 200 features. You use 7.
Your CRM has dashboards, automations, integrations, AI assistants, pipeline views, forecasting modules, and territory management. You just need to track leads and remember to follow up.
Your accounting software? Don’t get me started.
This is the dirty secret of the SaaS industry: they build for everyone, which means they build for no one.
Every feature you’ll never click still loads when you open the app. Every button you’ll never press still takes up space on the screen. Every option you’ll never need still shows up in menus you have to scroll past.
SaaS is an off-the-rack suit. It’s made to fit ‘most people,’ which means it fits no one perfectly. Too tight here, too loose there, fabric in places you don’t need it.
Pure Code is a tailored suit. Cut precisely for your body. Nothing wasted. Fits like it was made for you. Because it was. And you look good!
Why Now? The AI Tipping Point
For decades, building custom software required one of two things:
Learn to code (years of study)
Hire someone who knows how (thousands of dollars)
Neither option made sense for a plumber who just wanted a better way to track invoices. Or a consultant who wanted a client portal. Or a landscaper who needed a quote calculator.
So we all bought SaaS subscriptions. We adapted our businesses to fit someone else’s software. We paid monthly fees for features we’d never use. We accepted the bloat because we had no other choice.
That changed.
AI tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Lovable have made it possible for non-technical people to build real software. Not toy apps. Not demos. Real, functional, business-grade software that does exactly what you need.
And here’s the part that should terrify the SaaS industry: it doesn’t just work. It works better.
A Pure Code solution built for YOUR business:
Loads faster — No bloated code for features you don’t use
Costs less — A few dollars per month in hosting, not $50-150/month in subscriptions
Fits perfectly — Built around your workflow, not the other way around
Grows with you — Add features when YOU need them, not when the vendor decides to
Belongs to you — No price increases. No features removed. No vendor going out of business.
And now, with AI built INTO these applications, they can do things that off-the-shelf software never could. Your Pure Code tool knows YOUR clients. YOUR expenses. YOUR patterns. It doesn’t need to be generic because it was never designed for anyone but you.
The SaaS Industry’s Moment of Truth
Let me be clear: big SaaS companies aren’t going anywhere. Salesforce will survive. Microsoft will be fine. The enterprise players with deep integrations and regulatory compliance built over decades? Replacing them isn't a switch. It's surgery.
But the mid-market? The simple tools charging $30-150/month for problems that could be solved with a weekend build?
They should be nervous.
Here’s my analysis of what’s at risk:
Directly Threatened (Next 2-3 Years)
These tools solve simple problems that Pure Code handles easily:
Scheduling tools (Calendly, Acuity) — A calendar, available slots, and a confirmation email. That’s it.
Form builders (Typeform, JotForm) — Forms are not complex. A Pure Code form does exactly what you need.
Basic email tools (Mailchimp for small lists) — Send emails to a few hundred people? You don’t need enterprise software.
Review management (Podium, Birdeye) — We literally built this ourselves yesterday.
Simple CRMs (Pipedrive, Less Annoying CRM) — Track leads. Add notes. Mark status. Done.
Landing page builders (Leadpages, Unbounce) — One page. One form. One goal.
Reporting dashboards (Databox, Geckoboard, Klipfolio) — You need to see 5 numbers. Not 500 widget options and 47 integrations. A Pure Code dashboard pulls YOUR data and shows YOU what matters. Nothing else.
Market Share Erosion (3-5 Years)
These will lose customers to Pure Code alternatives:
Project management (Monday, Asana, ClickUp) — Most teams need a task board with their workflow. Not 200 views they’ll never use.
Simple invoicing (FreshBooks, Wave) — Generate invoice. Send. Track payment. Export for taxes.
Basic wikis and docs (Notion for simple use cases) — Some people just need a place to store information.
Chat widgets (Intercom, Drift for basic use) — If you just need to collect leads, you don’t need enterprise software.
Safe For Now
Payment processing (Stripe, Square) — Compliance, fraud detection, security. Not going Pure Code.
Enterprise accounting (NetSuite, QuickBooks Enterprise) — Full accounting is genuinely complex.
Enterprise CRM (Salesforce Enterprise) — Deep integrations, massive data, regulatory needs.
The Reporting Dashboard Example
Love this. It’s personal, specific, and your audience will feel it. Here’s the rewrite:
The Reporting Dashboard Example
Let me make this concrete.
I use a reporting dashboard tool for my digital marketing clients. It’s one of the most complex systems I’ve ever encountered. It took me DAYS just to learn the basics. I’ve used it for years and I still struggle with it.
They overcharge me. They underwhelm me. And the reports? Half the time I don’t fully understand what I’m looking at. Which means my clients definitely don’t.
I’m paying monthly fees to confuse myself and my customers.
What if I had a Pure Code version?
I could sit down with each client and ask one simple question: “What do you actually want to see?”
One client wants to know how many leads came in this month and where they came from. That’s it. They don’t need 47 charts.
Another client wants to see their Google ranking for five keywords. Just five. Not a wall of data.
I could have a conversation with Claude Code, explain exactly what each client needs, and build dashboards that show only what matters. Clear. Simple. Understandable at a glance.
And here’s the part that gets me excited: with AI built into the dashboard, it could surface insights we’d never notice on our own. “Hey, your Tuesday email campaigns convert 3x better than Friday ones.” “Traffic from LinkedIn dropped 40% this month. Here’s when it started.”
Not just data. Intelligence. Built for each client. Costing almost nothing to run.
That’s Pure Code.
Websites Go First
If I had to predict which category goes Pure Code first, it’s obvious:
Websites.
Let’s be honest: WordPress is a disaster.
It was revolutionary in 2005. It democratized web publishing. It changed the internet. And now it’s a liability.
43% of the internet runs on WordPress — making it the #1 target for hackers
The average WordPress site runs 20-30 plugins, each one a potential security hole
WordPress sites are hacked over 90,000 times per minute
Only 36% of WordPress sites pass Google’s Core Web Vitals (basic speed requirements)
A single WordPress theme can contain 20,000+ lines of CSS code you’ll never use
And the experience of actually USING WordPress? Painful. Endless updates. Broken plugins. Mysterious errors. The constant fear that updating one thing will break three others.
Compare that to a Pure Code website:
Hundreds of lines of code, not thousands
Loads in milliseconds, not seconds
No plugins to update or break
No security vulnerabilities from third-party code
Built exactly for YOUR business with exactly YOUR content
The tools exist right now. Lovable can create a website design in minutes. Vercel hosts it for free. The Lovable → GitHub → Vercel stack we covered in this newsletter delivers Pure Code websites that load faster, rank better, and cost nothing to maintain.
WordPress was great in its day.
That day is over.
What Comes After Websites
Once websites go Pure Code, here’s the cascade:
Websites — Already happening
Internal dashboards — Companies building their own reporting tools
Lead capture and simple CRMs — Forms + tracking + follow-up
Scheduling tools — Book appointments, send reminders
Client portals — Show project status, share files
Review systems — Ask for reviews, track responses
Basic invoicing — Generate, send, track payment
Employee tools — Time tracking, simple HR forms
Each of these follows the same pattern: problems currently “solved” by bloated SaaS tools that do too much and charge too much.
Pure Code does exactly what you need. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The Objection (And Why It’s Fading)
The traditional argument against custom software has always been: “But who maintains it?”
Fair point. If you build something custom, you’re responsible for updates, bug fixes, security patches.
But that argument assumed two things:
Building custom software was hard
Maintaining it required technical expertise
Both assumptions are crumbling.
AI doesn’t just help you BUILD software. It helps you MAINTAIN it. When something breaks, you describe the problem in plain English and ask for a fix. When you need a new feature, you describe what you want and it gets built.
The maintenance burden that made custom software impractical for small businesses? It’s shrinking rapidly.
Meanwhile, the “maintenance-free” promise of SaaS comes with its own costs:
Price increases you can’t control
Features removed without warning
Vendors acquired or shut down
Your data held hostage by someone else’s business decisions
“We handle maintenance” sounds great until they triple your price or discontinue the product you built your business around. And when something breaks? You’ll submit a ticket (if you can find the option), receive a confirmation email, and enter a purgatory specifically designed to make you never ask for help again.
The Bottom Line
We’re witnessing a fundamental restructuring of how businesses use software.
For twenty years, the model was simple: SaaS companies build generic tools, businesses adapt to fit them, everyone pays monthly forever.
That model worked because there was no alternative. Building custom software was too expensive, too complex, too time-consuming for anyone but large enterprises.
The alternative now exists.
It’s called Pure Code. And it’s not a product, it’s a philosophy.
Build exactly what you need. Nothing more. Nothing less. Own it forever.
The SaaS companies charging $50-150/month for simple problems that can be solved with a weekend build? They have about 2-3 years to figure out their response.
Some will adapt. Some will offer more customization, better pricing, genuine value that Pure Code can’t match.
And some will discover that their entire business model was built on a temporary inefficiency in the market, an inefficiency that AI just erased.
It’s Time to Purify the Code
I don’t know exactly how this plays out. I don’t know which companies survive and which don’t. I don’t know how fast the transition happens or what unexpected complications emerge.
But I know the direction.
Software built for everyone serves no one perfectly.
Software built for YOU serves you completely.
The tools to build it yourself exist now. The cost is negligible. The learning curve is manageable.
The only question is whether you’ll be among the first to figure this out — or whether you’ll keep paying monthly fees for features you’ll never use while your competitors build exactly what they need.
The Pure Code era is beginning.
It’s time to purify the code.
—Scott