This sounds awful. Software companies have maxed out all the subscription money they can squeeze out of their customers. But sometimes their customers make a profit anyway, an now the tech companies want a share of that too. FYI, Oracle has been doing that for years. The answer to the question of what does it cost is "dunno, how much do you have?"

From the title, I expected “AI is killing SaaS, and that’s a good thing”, but it’s mostly about SaaS billing potentially switching from purely seat-based to a mix of seats + a kickback for each instance of valuable they provide to the customer.

So… kinda misleading, but also I’m not convinced that we are headed that direction, and I’m also not convinced we want to head in that direction.

Their example was software that provides qualified leads. Well, if the vendors get $4k/lead, you can guarantee their criteria for “qualified” is gonna be as loose as they can possibly get away with. (Or, what if their customers are okay with low-quality leads, but they don’t want to pay the same tor both?)

It’s that old chestnut: if a metric is important for the success of your business, then for the love of god do not tie a financial incentive to it.

Title is misleading, as the article is about SaaS:

The real future is likely a hybrid: a base fee that covers the "controllable inputs" (the actual hours and effort) plus an outcome-based "kicker" for the win. This aligns incentives properly. The vendor is protected for their work, but they’re rewarded for the actual result. Everyone wins.