The SaaS companies that will survive AI — Martin Gourdeau @Vacation Tracker
Note sull'episodio
AI is coming for SaaS—but probably not in the way most founders think.
Martin Gourdeau, CEO of Vacation Tracker, has spent years operating SaaS businesses at very different scales, from a 15-person company to Workleap, where he helped grow the business from roughly 275 to 450 people.
Now he's back in a small SaaS company, deliberately testing how far AI can take a business without massively increasing headcount. And his view on the future of SaaS is refreshingly nuanced. We talk about why AI could actually supercharge SaaS, why “shallow SaaS” is much more vulnerable to vibe coding, and why companies that own important data and become systems of record may be harder to replace than ever.
We also get into AI adoption inside a real SaaS company, the productivity trap of generating more and more without actually moving the business forward, pricing, trials, distribution, LLM discovery, YouTube as an AI visibility channel, and where Vacation Tracker is going next.
One of the biggest takeaways: AI has made building software dramatically easier—but that doesn't mean building the right software has become easier.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Is SaaS dead in Quebec?
01:26 - Why nuance disappeared from the AI conversation
02:10 - Is AI actually supercharging SaaS?
03:24 - The SaaS AI can't easily replace
06:00 - When building your own software makes sense
07:12 - The hidden cost of building SaaS yourself
09:54 - Did SaaS remove too much friction?
11:00 - The new opportunity: building on top of systems of record
12:45 - Why AI hype always goes too far
14:11 - How Vacation Tracker uses AI internally
16:19 - The AI experimentation playbook
18:07 - Is AI making people work more?
19:48 - The dangerous side of AI productivity
21:20 - Producing more vs actually growing the business
23:07 - Why bigger companies may be more vulnerable
24:30 - How AI can make SaaS products worse
29:39 - From 450-person SaaS to a 15-person company
33:00 - Getting back into technology
34:41 - Avoiding AI shiny object syndrome
37:46 - Vacation Tracker's pricing strategy
38:26 - Why they doubled their trial period
40:24 - Did AI influence their pricing?
42:00 - The right way to raise SaaS prices
43:34 - Is SaaS distribution getting harder?
43:43 - LLMs are driving 30–50% of inbound
45:41 - How to rank in ChatGPT and other LLMs
46:00 - Why content matters for AI visibility
47:47 - Why YouTube matters for LLM discovery
51:47 - What's next for Vacation Tracker?
52:45 - MCP and the future of headless SaaS
53:37 - Could SaaS move to value-based pricing?
54:40 - Is SaaS actually dying?
55:35 - The technology Martin is excited about
57:04 - What kids think about AI
58:32 - Will we revisit these predictions?
Martin Gourdeau — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgourdeau/
Vacation Tracker — https://vacationtracker.io/
─── sounds good. — a podcast with Anna Nadeina
sounds good. is sponsored by saas.group — serial acquirer of profitable SaaS businesses. If you're thinking about an exit, they're worth a conversation.