(This column originally appeared in Forbes)
Earlier in 2026 shares of some of the world’s largest business software companies — including HubSpot, Intuit, Autodesk, Salesforce, Drobox, Adobe and Docusign — plummeted in value. Some companies partially recovered, but most did not. Why the disruption?
A number of AI tools have been rolling out that allow non-developers to do the work that these software companies are doing. And Wall Street started waking up to this new reality. Now it’s time for business owners to do the same.
Vibe Coding: AI Replacing Traditional Developers
Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex allows a user to “vibe code” solutions using interfaces similar to Claude and ChatGPT. You tell it what you want (an order form, a marketing process, a report, a customer service ticket platform) and these tools literally build the system for you.
Cursor is an AI-powered code editor that lets users generate, edit, and understand code using natural language prompts, enabling “vibe coding” without deep programming expertise. GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant from GitHub/OpenAI that has evolved from autocomplete into an agent capable of generating, debugging, and managing code workflows with minimal human input. Windsurf and other startups like it offers an AI code-generation platforms that translates plain English instructions into working software, allowing non-developers to build applications quickly and cheaply.
These tools are easily incorporated into data storage platforms, like Snowflake, a cloud data platform that enables organizations to store, analyze, and query large datasets — and increasingly use AI agents to interact with that data via natural language. Or MongoDB, a database platform that stores and manages large volumes of flexible, unstructured data and is widely used as a backend for modern applications and AI systems. Or DigitalOcean, a cloud infrastructure provider that offers simple, developer-friendly hosting, compute, and storage services for building and scaling applications.
This is just scratching the surface. There are now countless tools for the vibe coder that creates data models, governance policies, validation sets, monetization and security protocols.
Vibe Coding: The Impact On Software Companies
You would think as a reseller and partner of popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications I’d be telling clients not to pay attention. But that would misleading…and wrong. Which is why I’m actually telling my clients: if you can wait on buying that new accounting, CRM or other business system, then wait. Too much is about to change.
Within the next few years, these tools will become more mature, faster and easier to use. If you’re of a mind to use them and build your own business platform then you’ll be able to do that without using an outside developer. If you prefer to focus on your business and hire an outside developer, their work will be done significantly faster and less expensively than ever before.
Thanks to these new tools, you or your partner will be able to create your very own system that specifically matches the processes in your business, rather than being forced to accept the processes shoved down your throat by a software vendor. You’ll pay for “tokens” every time there’s a prompt or an agent launched, but these costs are inconsequential compared to the massive monthly fees you’d be paying a traditional software platform provider.
Your data will still be in the cloud and likely hosted by AWS, Google, Microsoft or some other tech behemoth providing the same level of security you’d be getting with a traditional software application. Your support community would be multiplied many times over by anyone who works with any of these AI tools, as opposed to being stuck with a partner who only specializes in the software you have.
More importantly, the value of your business will increase. You will be able to build workflows, processes, reports and automation that maximizes the productivity of your people. You’ll be using AI tools that are commoditized and can be transferred to other systems by just about any tech team, which means that future buyers of your company won’t be shoe-horned into the business platform you have or have to incur significant costs to migrate you to their platform.
You can do this right now. Or you can wait for these tools to improve.
Vibe Coding: The Impact On Tech Firms
My company earns a small margin from the software we sell but my profits really come from the hours that we bill. Some software companies force quotas on me. Others require my attendance at conferences or to pay them for continued certifications just to have the privilege of selling their products. And yet, most compete against me, even though I’m selling their products. I hate this.
That’s going to change. I predict that a small, specialized technology services firm like mine will be selling less of these software products in lieu of simply “vibe-coding” solutions for our clients that are more effective and affordable. We’ll be able to do more work with the same people and actually deliver solutions that are specifically addressing our clients’ needs, rather than working around them.
Technology service firms like mine will have much competition from other firms and independent people who will figure out the ease of using these AI tools to code solutions for their clients. But that’s fine. Competition means that my clients can take comfort in getting support elsewhere if needed. And the more people that learn how to vibe-code the more people I can employ to do the work for the projects I find.
So where does this leave the traditional legacy software company? Not in a good place. They’ve spent countless resources on developing their own solutions which are quickly becoming outdated and useless. They’ll be forced to decide: stick with these platforms and improve them at great cost or abandon in lieu of better AI-based models? Some will figure this out. But I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.
Maybe your business is at a stage where you need an accounting or CRM or other business software application and you can’t wait. Or maybe you don’t have the patience to stick around for these many AI tools (and their providers) to become reliable with your core data and processes. If that’s your situation then it may make sense to go the traditional software route. Give me a call.
But if you can afford to wait a bit — maybe a year or two — your options will increase exponentially. Oh, give me a call then too please!
