Quote · The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: $5BN in Revenue, 7 to 7,000 Employees in 9 Months, 206,000 Tests in a Single Day: The Craziest Story in Startups: Curative with Fred Turner
Where this was said
Is SaaS Dead? Why Is Curative Cutting 80% of Its Software Spend?
At 45:26 · chapter starts 45:00
The SaaS-is-dead discussion crystallises around Salesforce. Fred matter-of-factly states that Curative cancelled its $600,000 annual contract because a vibe-coded internal CRM, built in approximately two months, now works better for their specific workflows and hosts their AI agents natively. Nobody was using Salesforce anymore. The broader thesis is structural: large SaaS platforms are built to serve all customers generically, which means they serve no customer perfectly. They require dedicated administrators — Curative had a full-time Salesforce admin — and are notoriously difficult to extend with custom features. An in-house vibe-coded system can be tailored precisely, updated instantly, and integrates with every internal agent without additional configuration. Fred acknowledges maintenance is a genuine challenge and that this approach works best when you have strong technical resources. He estimates Curative will cut approximately 80% of all SaaS spend this year, with an internal tracking slide devoted to mapping every contract renewal date to the person responsible for cancelling it [1] — Fred Turner "80% SaaS spend cut: Curative is cutting approximately 80% of its total SaaS spend in the current year, replacing legacy software with inter…" 47:13 . He draws a distinction between infrastructure-layer software (Sentry, Slack) which has deeper switching costs, and application-layer software like CRMs and claims systems, which is now squarely in the crosshairs.
Curative cancelled a $600,000 annual Salesforce subscription after building a vibe-coded internal CRM in about 2 months that works better, integrates with their AI agents, and required no full-time Salesforce admin. This is their thesis for cutting 80% of all SaaS spend this year.
Curative cancelled its $600,000 annual Salesforce subscription after vibe-coding an internal CRM that worked better and integrated with their AI agents.
Curative is cutting approximately 80% of its total SaaS spend in the current year, replacing legacy software with internally built AI-powered alternatives.
