Services: The New Software | Sequoia Capital

The next $1T company will be a software company masquerading as a services firm.

Services: The New Software By Julien Bek Published March 5, 2026 The next $1T company will be a software company masquerading as a services firm. Every founder building an AI tool is asking the same question: what happens when the next version of Claude makes my product a feature? They’re right to worry. If you sell the tool, you’re in a race against the model. But if you sell the work, every improvement in the model makes your service faster, cheaper, and harder to compete with. A company might spend $10K a year for QuickBooks and $120K on an accountant to close the books. The next legendary

saved by

• Jonathan Pierre
• Ann Oduwaiye
• Max Ruskowski

related reading

• Julien Bek on X: "Services: The New Software" / Xx.com
• The Death of Deloitte: AI-Enabled Services Are Opening a Whole New Marketemcap.substack.com
• AI leads a service as software paradigm shift - Foundation Capitalfoundationcapital.com
• The Death of Deloitte: AI-Native Services Are Opening a Whole New Market | Emergence Capitalemcap.com
• Convictionconviction.com
• Intelligence Arbitragesdan.io
• AI startups: Sell work, not softwaresarahtavel.com
• Software Engineering Splits in Threeadventures.nodeland.dev
• After Automation | Everyevery.to
• Convictionconviction.com
• A New Year’s letter to a young person - by Luis Garicanosiliconcontinent.com
• How to fully automate software engineering | Mechanize, Inc.mechanize.work