What I learned in Sept 2026?
Written by Swagat Irsale, Growth Advocate.
Let me start with my learnings in the last 3 months or so. I will give a view on the initiatives I do. Sometimes I add comments and learnings from my clients as well.
I promise you will learn something today.
What I learned in Sept 2026?
Three pointers written as point 1, point 2, and point 3.
1 - 2026 till Sept has proved that Saas business model is still relevant and viable.
Most of the enterprise customers will continue to buy, adopt and use Saas for improving their business.
Enterprise Saas companies had a hard time in 2026 proving that they are still relevant. Vibe coding, point AI agents will not be able to replace the Saas software customers use.
Many Saas softwares are mission critical and it is time consuming and risky to replace the existing Saas which is working and global teams are habitual with it.
I believe in the next 5 years, some of the mid-market companies/ buyers will build their own Saas functionality with AI vibe coding etc. But that % is not enough/ significant in terms of budget spent or number of users.
2026 proved that Saas as a subscription business model continues to work. I liked the term mentioned in the below article from Saas Capital which says that Saas will evolve as Subscription AI and Services from the previous definition as Software as a service.
I believe this is the right definition. Find more details in here -
Let's continue what I learned in Sept 2026.
2 - Is AI harmful to humans? Here are my thoughts.
Before that let me ask you something -
Did fire turn out to be harmful to civilization?
Did Steam turn out to be harmful to humans?
Did electricity turn out to be harmful?
Did nuclear turn out to be harmful?
I trust Fire is more valuable than AI - no questions please. Example - how will you heat milk for your kids/ babies? Because with fire, we humans cook food and survive. Even if AI is not there, humanity will find a way to thrive.
My point is that humans have invented, launched and distributed technologies for centuries. And we will figure out a way to distribute AI as well. There is a saying, in the short run we overestimate impact and in the long run we underestimate the impact.
AI is revolutionary technology, but let's not predict prematurely that it is harmful to the entire civilization. All the above mentioned inventions percolated the society in a very well and disciplined manner.
We may not have fully utilised inventions such as nuclear; however we can still do it in the coming years.
I think new age, AI-first companies such as Anthropic and Open AI should get their PR well. Not sure what they are getting here because this is being taken as an attempt to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
Actually these companies should be doing exactly the opposite.
Because, they have to IPO in the next 3-12 months. Here are my thoughts on IPO. But before going there I want to emphasize that AI scaling and IPO are two different streams, they will intersect at certain points; however still different.
Before the IPO, security and governance for these companies will be in control. I am sure the Hugging Face kind of incidents will never happen again. And hopefully there are no long drawn legal cases from these incidents.
I think these companies need not slow down. They are in a hyperscale path. Every invention/ technology which went through hyperscale faced similar issues. Social media, mobile phones are good examples. However, refer to the above point.
The IPO of these companies can add tremendous monetary value to retail investors as well as institutions in the coming decade. I am one of the retail investors/ NASDAQ tech etf. More on that some other day.
Couple of points on AI scaling.
In 2026, the revenue of these companies will prove that enterprises are hungry for AI and wish to improve their efficiency with AI. It needs to be sold the right way.
Open source is not a threat. Example - there are three operating systems namely Apple, Microsoft and Linux. Everyone has their own advantages, users and value propositions. All are needed. Scaling of AI will create room for at least 3 plus major players. Already there are 5+ major players; similar to that of the browser era.
As a Saas guy, I trust that Saas methods such as customer concentration, land and expansion, revenue quality, NRR, etc. will surely work for these companies as well.
Good luck and I am very excited for AI to scale and I use it everyday.
3 - Investing is my hobby for the last 5+ years now.
So here are some of the updates/ movements I did in the last 6 months or so.
2030 will tell if I made the right decisions.
There are close to no gains from the Indian stock market for the last 3 years. Some are there, but I believe not even average. Glad that financial education is keeping the flow of SIPs moving. Unless AI and chips trade continues FII may not allocate any money to India. You get the point.
From a stock price/ annual gains perspective, I feel Indian IT companies may not generate average annual returns. So I decided to rotate my capital from here to digital finance and **ypto. Hope you get the point. This move is less than 10% of my overall portfolio.
I have posted an article recently on my private investments.
More on my hobby soon.
See you around and thanks for reading.
PS - In picture - a good ride maybe somewhere around 2017 or 18.
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