Future of Software Investing / PE
With the emergence of AI, it seems like there will be a divergence within the software space, with players that have been raised to be AI-native and those legacy players that are sticking on AI-enabled features. How would this bode in terms of legacy software businesses acquired by sponsors pre-GPT? I doubt that it would be feasible to really get these companies up to speed in terms of AI enablement given how fast advancement has occurred, leading to more generalist or physical asset oriented investors (IND/CRG/BizServ) emerging as the winners alongside A&D given a strong trajectory in the space sector.
Nobody really knows; not looking great for some of the horizotal software names these PE companies own that don't really have any barriers to entry or diffrentiation. The PE owners of these software businesses internally are obviously thinking of ways to diffrentiate those kind of portcos; but it's very hard to sell those businesses given lower multiples due to fears of AI displacement risk.
The big wave of where PE firms have had success with AI is using lower product development times from AI to drive new products / product sells and to lower opex (primarily labor). Next wave is probably agentic AI; lots of opinons on it, but impossible to really know as it is still shaping up. Fundamentally, every piece of new innovation is disruptive to the space and thus PE portco's; so everyday in IC the most important question these days for tech investing (or at least at good funds) is: how prone are we to AI disruption (the real answer is nobody knows because nobody knows what the future will hold).
Just like every other major innovation wave; there will be winners and losers. PE space is no diferent. PE companies that can enable their companies to become AI-leaders will do very well and others will have their portcos get completely displaced or weakened by AI competition. Really hard to know who is who this early.
Don’t you think switching costs would mean the existing players that add AI will lower their own opex (development, customer support) and end up doing even better?
It's more about AI disruption risk in the sense of an AI-enabled or agentic AI product that is just simply better or disrupts the state of your offering making it obselete. Huge risk for horizontal software like payroll, recruiting, customer support, etc.
Curious your thoughts: will software be a good space to cover as a banker (versus PE)
bump
It’s gonna be a reckoning for most tech PE firms. I am in PE and am very bearish on PE overall but software PE nowadays is even worse
The golden era of software investing is way over imho
I worked in tech banking before moving to PE and I also can’t stress enough the amount of absolute dogs**t companies out there. Random useless software companies nobody needs, and sponsors getting upset nobody wants to pay 7-8x ARR for an unprofitable business with slowing growth otherwise the fund won’t pay carry. The space is also ultra competitive and alpha is a completely eaten away by the multiples these businesses trade at. Paradoxically I am more bullish on the pray and spray approach of earlier stage tech investing simply due to the speed of innovation nowadays
And thoughts about banking in the space? Agree PE will be hard…
Everything you said can be true and there can still be a ton of money to be made in software PE. There's a very clear re-orientation in the market from the ZIRP era; but AI is a major revolution that fundamentally means there is both opportunity and disruption. As software as an industry grows, there will simply just continue to be more money to be made; it's just much harder than it was with multiples continuously rising for dog-shit businesses.
One thing that might be a mitigant to this is the current legal responsibility on these new AI developed software. In other words, a company using a legacy software product or a non-AI native mission critical support service might very well have the capability/means to replicate the piece of software by itself or with AI. The main issue is that if things go bad, then they will be fully responsible and liable for the downtime and any issues. Do these non software companies want this? I actually doubt it. Will there be strong price pressure and consolidation driven by this? Very likely, but the software business will likely turn into plauers who will be paid to bear the whole legal / economic responsibility rather than a technical difficulty per se. Just as much as car companies are not internalising the production of brakes or airbags these days. They technically could, but no GM or Tesla will ever bear the risks (economical, reputational etc etc) associated with it.
Any thoughts about the buy and hold players who are rolling up these sunset software companies (e.g. Bending Spoon, Constellation and the many new players in the space)?
Feels like they're doing the job of distressed/turnaround pe funds in Software, buy cheap and cash in while they survive.
Uhh can’t they just get insurance?…how many software companies do you think are screwed?
The thing is not just monetary (which insurance could technically cover. Although it's all to be seen). If your product has a technical glitch or issue and you've developed it internally with AI, no customer will go to you. Cos they fear data breach, uptime etc etc. Many of these software are very mission critical and are actually so critical that, nowadays, you don't even think they could go down. In other words imagine a world where electricity breaks up and you are facing a blackout. It's a nightmare. Do you remember cloud flare issue a few years ago? If a CRM or an ERP goes down (not to mention platform software for every app or internal system) it's a big drama. Hence why SLAs usually have huge penalties for uptime below 99.9999999% or whatever. You're gonna be buying reliance not the technical difficulty of the product per se and internalising such thing is gonna be extremely costly, risky and more often than not suboptimal due to scale
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