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The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

SaaStr 868: Software Isn't Dead. It's Gotten Harder with Scale Venture Partners' Rory O'Driscoll

Jul 15, 2026 · 38m

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SaaStr 868: Software Isn't Dead. It's Gotten Harder with Scale Venture Partners' Rory O'Driscoll When you've spent 30 years making money in software, "is software dead?" feels like a personal attack. Rory O'Driscoll, who has been a software investor since before most of the companies in this room existed, decided to actually answer the question. He went back through his portfolio. About 10% of pre-2022 companies were DOA the moment ChatGPT launched, solving problems that foundation models made trivially easy overnight. Another 30% are genuinely threatened and need to move fast or die. The rest are either insulated, made stronger by AI, or sitting on opportunities that didn't exist before.…