Isenberg says give away the SaaS, charge for the agent
One post, no numbers behind it, and a pricing idea worth arguing with.
Greg Isenberg posted a four line argument about where software money goes next. SaaS is becoming free, he says. Give away the CRM, give away the dashboard, give away the app, and charge for the agent that does the work.
saas is becoming free
and charge for the agent that does the work
That is the whole post. No pricing, no customer, no company named as running this way, no revenue number attached. It is a claim about monetisation moving, not a result anyone has shown.
What the claim actually says
The interesting part is the split it implies. Under the old shape, you charge for access and the customer supplies the labour. Your pricing page lists features, your revenue scales with seats, and the product's job is to be the place where work happens. Isenberg's version flips which half is scarce. The place where work happens becomes the free part, the giveaway, the thing you hand over to get the account. What you bill for is the work itself.
If that holds, a pricing page stops describing what the software has and starts describing what it finishes. Seats stop being the unit. Nobody in the post says what the new unit is, whether that is per task, per outcome or per hour of agent time, and Isenberg does not get into it.
How much weight to put on it
Not much on its own. This is one founder's framing in a single post with nothing underneath it, not a case study and not a number from a business doing it. Treat it as a bet being stated out loud rather than a pattern someone has measured.
It is still worth sitting with for a minute, because the test is cheap. Look at your own product and ask which half a customer would miss more, the interface or the output. If the honest answer is the output, Isenberg's split is already describing your business and your pricing just has not caught up. If it is the interface, you have a reason to think he is wrong, which is more than the post gives you either way.
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