Silicon Valley comments on SaaS and $CSU
and an allegory on The Blind Men and the Elephant
This isn’t a long post but perhaps a long time coming.
I feel like the $CSU cat has come out of the bag since COVID. For a while it was an open secret in the investing circles and then sometime around 2020 it became more of a household name in the tech circles as well.
I’ll shut up now and let you read recent the randomly selected and extremely small sample I’ve come across on FinX regarding SaaS and $CSU specifically:
I don’t have any immediate responses to these questions (but I suppose that’s what this whole Substack publication is for, so shameless plug — please subscribe if you want to explore along with me).
But here’s what I do want to say about it. It’s an allegory that I often think it when doing a lot of thinking. And it’s of the The Blind Men and the Elephant. Have you come across it?
Read the link for yourself, it’s short.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!”The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!”The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!”The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he:
“’Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!”The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!”The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!”And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!- John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)
I meditation on this story a lot. Like a lot.
I feel like I never know the answer to anything. No amount of my investigating and studying to ever make me completely feel like I know all the answers. But to people, including me who are exploring and trying to determine the future, it’s even more stark to me to heed this parable.
In the case of $CSU and SaaS in general, we have a few random comments about the general state of software right now — especially with AI and AGI encroaching.
And like all these men in the story (and they all happen to be men in these FinX circles too), that we tend to fall back into our own biases, our domains, our circles of comfort and competence when prognosticating about the future of software. Where will CRM 0.00%↑ go? Where will $CSU.to go? Where will NOW 0.00%↑ go tomorrow and by the end of the decade?
Some folks will only see the trunk and say it’s a tree.
Some folks will see SaaS as distribution-only.
Some folks will see SaaS as a business model.
Some folks will see SaaS as a billing model.
Some folks will see $CSU as enterprise software.
Some folks will see $CSU as a true vertical market software company.
Some folks will see that AI will soon be able to not only build, maintain but be able to remove humans-in-the-loop entirely.
Some folks will see that regulatory hurdles like compliance will be too big of a hurdle for totally automated software creation and maintenance.
I have my own opinions, loosely held.
But nonetheless where I sit in Jan 2026 and from the many commentary that I’ve read on the subject, I’m not inclined to think we are all flying blind individually.