Your "Per-Seat" Margin is My Opportunity

Why AI agents should break traditional SaaS models

Two unstoppable forces are colliding as we head into 2025: LLMs are making agents genuinely useful, and every corporation is demanding efficiency. But what makes this moment unprecedented? Enterprises aren't just evaluating AI—they're buying it, fast. For the first time, adoption isn't a struggle—CFOs are pulling out their checkbooks.

Per-seat pricing only works when your users are human. But when agents become the primary users of software, that model collapses. You can't charge an agent for a seat. The transition will be compute-based first—enterprises understand consumption pricing from cloud services. As AI gets more reliable, we'll shift to pure outcome-based pricing.

Executives aren't evaluating software against software anymore. They're comparing the combined costs of software licenses plus labor against pure outcome-based solutions. Think customer support (per resolved ticket vs. per agent + seat), marketing (per campaign vs. headcount), sales (per qualified lead vs. rep). That's your pricing umbrella—the upper limit enterprises will pay before switching entirely to AI.

The winning strategy in my books? Give the platform away for free. Let your agents read and write to existing systems through unstructured data—emails, calls, documents. Once you handle enough workflows, you become the new system of record. Even with large AI players dominating the landscape, models are stabilizing, and enterprises are ready to buy. This is the moment to move. The incumbents are stuck defending their subscription revenue while you capture all their data flows.

There's still one major hurdle: enterprises are used to deterministic outcomes and fixed annual costs. Usage-based pricing makes budgeting harder. But individual leaders seeing 10x efficiency gains won't wait for procurement to catch up. Savvy managers will find ways around traditional buying processes.

To me, this doesn't seem like yet another wave of enterprise software. This feels like a generational reset of how businesses operate. Zero upfront costs, pay only for outcomes—that's not just a pricing model. That's the future of business.