to kill a saas
like "to kill a mockingbird" get it?
—hiring—
browse the job posts, and if any look like a match for you, just reply to this and if relevant i’ll make an introductionordo -series b
supply chain and logistics platform connects public and private schools to fresh breakfast and lunch that students love, cooked and delivered by local chefs.
altitude -series a
ai copilot built for america’s 300K nurse practicioners, delivering supervision and skills intelligence, targetted uspkilling, role-specific simulations, and most valuable actions ahead of upcoming visits based on clinical, actuarial, and operational priority and insights.
—on a very vulnerable side note—
we crossed 1000 subscribers!a month ago when i started writing, i didn’t think this would grow so fast
especially after i started yapping philosophically
who am i? naval?
i truly appreciate each and everyone one of you
please let me know what topics do you want more of
there’s definitely tons of other sources of content out their for you
so i wanna be the best
let me know what topics would hit the trifecta for you
-emotion
-value
-entertainment
one tweet.
that’s all it took to mass-mobilize an army of developers against a funded saas product.
guido appenzeller posted two days ago that granola went closed.
encrypted their local database, killed local access, no cloud api.
his take: in a world where notes are managed by agents, the app now has zero value.
329k views later, something wild happened.
within 24 hours, somewhere between 5 and 10 open source alternatives appeared.
fully local, agent-friendly, doing exactly what people actually want from a notes tool in 2026.
built by developers and vibe coders who saw the gap and just…
shipped.
this is weirdly underrated as a case study. so let’s break it down.
the old playbook is dead
for years, the saas playbook was simple.
get users in, lock their data down, make switching painful.
the moat wasn’t the product. it was the friction of leaving.
granola did exactly this. they encrypted the local database so your own agents couldn’t read your own notes.
no api.
no export path that plays nice with the tools people are actually building workflows around.
five years ago, this would have been fine. annoying, maybe, but fine. switching costs were high enough that most people would just grumble and stay.
but here’s the thing
the cost of building a replacement just collapsed.
what actually happened in those 24 hours
guido’s tweet went viral. 329k views. and the response wasn’t just outrage or hot takes. it was code.
developers saw the gap and started shipping. not in weeks. in hours. open source meeting note tools that are:
1. fully local -- your data stays on your machine
2. agent-friendly -- your ai tools can actually read and use your notes
3. extensible -- apis, integrations, the stuff people need in an agentic workflow
4. free
the speed here is the story.
this used to take months of coordinated engineering.
now a motivated developer with cursor and a weekend can build a credible alternative to a funded startup’s core product.
that’s not a minor shift. that’s a structural change in how software competition works.
the real moat in 2026 is not your database encryption
someone will say “but granola has features these clones don’t have. polish, ux, integrations.” and yeah, probably true.
today.
but that gap closes fast when:
- ai tools make building faster every month
- the open source community is building in public with shared momentum
- users are actively motivated to switch because you locked them out of their own data
the moat used to be switching cost. now the moat is trust.
here’s what might help:
1. agent-friendliness is table stakes. if your users’ ai tools can’t access the data, you’re creating a reason for replacement, not retention.
2. data portability is a feature, not a vulnerability. the founders who get this are building products people choose to stay in, not products people are trapped in.
3. community is your real defense. open ecosystems create network effects that closed ones can’t. the products that win will be the ones developers want to build on top of.
4. speed of iteration beats speed of lock-in. you can’t out-encrypt the open source community. you can only out-ship them on the things that actually matter -- ux, reliability, the hard product problems.
what i’m seeing as a builder
the products that survive the next few years won’t be the ones with the best lock-in.
they’ll be the ones with the best reason to stay.
that means building for interoperability.
building for agents.
building for a world where your users’ workflows extend way beyond your app’s borders.
it’s counterintuitive.
opening up feels like giving away your advantage.
but in practice, the companies that make themselves indispensable to an ecosystem
not just a workflow
are the ones that become genuinely hard to replace.
the irony is that granola’s moat strategy is exactly what made them replaceable.
the bigger pattern
this isn’t just about granola. this is about the entire saas category.
we’re entering a world where:
- building a functional product takes days, not months
- the open source community has ai-powered leverage that didn’t exist two years ago
- users expect their tools to play nice with agents
- one viral moment of frustration can catalyze a replacement ecosystem overnight
granola just became a case study. but they won’t be the last.
so what do you do about it?
if you’re a founder:
audit your product for agent-hostility.
anywhere you’re blocking programmatic access to user data is a vulnerability now,
not a feature.
if you’re an engineer:
this is the golden age of replacement products. every closed saas tool with locked data is an opportunity for an open alternative. the tools to build it are better than they’ve ever been.
if you’re a user:
start paying attention to which products treat your data like it belongs to you. because the ones that don’t are about to learn this lesson the hard way.
what’s one product you use that would get the granola treatment if someone called it out publicly? i bet you can think of at least three.