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0 pointsaurareturn9d ago0 comments

  This is the same reasoning people use to say SaaS is dead, but it makes no sense. Rolling things yourself is often 10x more costly and not worth it, even with agents you need to pay 5-10 guys 150k-250k a year to build and train your own agent, why not pay fin 250k flat and not deal with any of it? Same goes with basically all other software that has nothing to do with your core product.

I built an AI support agent in one week. It hooks into our knowledge base, app API, runs tests, and then finally sends a Yes|No|Other option to a real human to send back to the customer. It was surprisingly easy to build. The hardest part was the knowledge of how to help the customer, which Fin can't do for me anyway.

I see absolutely zero value in something like Fin. There is no model training needed. It's all context. Anyone who is training a Qwen model for their customer support is doing it wrong. Paying Fin $250k flat does nothing since it isn't going to actually know how to solve problems. The real challenge is the knowledge and context engineering and Fin doesn't help there. The technical stuff is really easy to build.

This is the same reasoning people use to say SaaS is dead, but it makes no sense. Rolling things yourself is often 10x more costly and not worth it, even with agents you need to pay 5-10 guys 150k-250k a year to build and train your own agent, why not pay fin 250k flat and not deal with any of it? Same goes with basically all other software that has nothing to do with your core product.

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10 comments · 4 top-level

DoingSomeThings9d ago· 4 in thread

"Paying Fin $250k flat does nothing since it isn't going to actually know how to solve problems. The real challenge is the knowledge and context engineering and Fin doesn't help there"

You misunderstand the model. Fin does not have flat fee. They charge exclusively for resolutions. That's the entire value prop.

Correct that knowledge and context engineering are the key. Fin DOES help here. They have an entire backend suite to help you build out areas where Fin is failing. It shows you questions it couldn't resolve, looks at the answers your human team gave, and suggests updates to help articles to

You're correct this could all be build by a skilled engineer, but that's not the point. It's built for non-techincal users to use and implement. A person who rose through the support ranks and shows some technical competency can learn the system without any software knowledge.

aurareturnOP9d ago

The bulk of the work is context engineering which is done outside of Fin. Once you do the context engineering, it's very easy to duplicate Fin's features. Seriously. Just try it.

You don't need a fancy editor for "if this then do this". A simple text document is all you need. And if you do need a fancy editor, it's extremely easy to build it in 2026. Maybe 1-2 days.

I'm not a SaaS believer anymore.

DoingSomeThings9d ago

Maybe you've done this yourself. I'm honestly jealous if solving customer support was as easy as your describe.

In my case, I've spent the past 12 months running implementations at multiple companies. I've engaged directly with smart engineering teams to assist. It was not that easy.

What you outlined might work for a simple ecom business. It probably does 95% of the job for a simple case where you're delivering information. But it will fail the second it needs to take action or deliver personalized information based on client's account data.

That leads to the exact issue people here complain about... an LLM that doesn't actually answer the question, can't solve the problem, and is worse than talking to a human

1 more reply

vanuatu9d ago

the bulk of the context engineering for users of these ai support platforms is done in the platform

and the amount of context needed to automate f500 is non trivial, plus you usually cant use reasoning because latency would blow up and you get escalated on

if this was so easy as you claim theres many millions for you to be made selling it to enterprises, but you wont

1 more reply

ai_fry_ur_brain8d ago

Have fun sinking 100s of hours into improving and maintaing that. Someone who sells software for real estate probably doesnt want to get into building software for customer service agents. This makes no sense. There should be urgency to make the product your selling better, not wasting time building support tools. Just pay for it.

spwa49d ago· 2 in thread

> I see absolutely zero value in something like Fin.

The value, of course, is that there is a website with a chatbox that some MBA can type in "never give any refunds anymore for any reason", and it just updates the AI support agent and sends an automated "I deserve a promotion and a raise" to their boss.

aurareturnOP9d ago

Yes. I agree. When I look at Fin's home page and marketing, I think to myself that this stuff can mostly just be text documentation given to an LLM. It's a tool built for MBAs but most of the work is done by a software engineer to give Fin that context in the first place.

So all Fin is is a UI on top of the context engineering done by a software engineer who integrated with Fin. It's extremely easy to duplicate Fin's UI and get rid of the $250k fee.

spwa49d ago

Well, it's a few weeks of work, systems integration, and you'll need an SRE too if you're hoping to run it on any scale. But yes, I agree.

1 more reply

rtpg8d ago

> I see absolutely zero value in something like Fin.

Y'all really over indexing on the "AI"-ness of intercom. Intercom is a chat box and help pages. Those are nice to have and nice to not have to build yourself (you can build your own help pages... great, now you're managing content and have to have an admin to update the docs etc!)

People here really forgetting the notion of "core competency".

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whstl9d ago

Rolling something yourself was a waste of time when SaaS was cheap and competitive.

Not they’re all getting incredibly expensive, even the last few startups I worked at were paying hundreds of thousands of euros for services that were total garbage.

Do I really need a crappy 20k/yr app to help me with my 1:1s? Do I really need a 100k/yr clicks counter that requires two devs to keep running and still heavily miscounts the clicks? Do I need another crappy app to manage my translation JSON files?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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10 comments · 4 top-level

DoingSomeThings9d ago· 4 in thread

"Paying Fin $250k flat does nothing since it isn't going to actually know how to solve problems. The real challenge is the knowledge and context engineering and Fin doesn't help there"

You misunderstand the model. Fin does not have flat fee. They charge exclusively for resolutions. That's the entire value prop.

aurareturnOP9d ago

The bulk of the work is context engineering which is done outside of Fin. Once you do the context engineering, it's very easy to duplicate Fin's features. Seriously. Just try it.

You don't need a fancy editor for "if this then do this". A simple text document is all you need. And if you do need a fancy editor, it's extremely easy to build it in 2026. Maybe 1-2 days.

I'm not a SaaS believer anymore.

DoingSomeThings9d ago

Maybe you've done this yourself. I'm honestly jealous if solving customer support was as easy as your describe.

In my case, I've spent the past 12 months running implementations at multiple companies. I've engaged directly with smart engineering teams to assist. It was not that easy.

That leads to the exact issue people here complain about... an LLM that doesn't actually answer the question, can't solve the problem, and is worse than talking to a human

1 more reply

vanuatu9d ago

the bulk of the context engineering for users of these ai support platforms is done in the platform

and the amount of context needed to automate f500 is non trivial, plus you usually cant use reasoning because latency would blow up and you get escalated on

if this was so easy as you claim theres many millions for you to be made selling it to enterprises, but you wont

1 more reply

ai_fry_ur_brain8d ago

spwa49d ago· 2 in thread

> I see absolutely zero value in something like Fin.

aurareturnOP9d ago

So all Fin is is a UI on top of the context engineering done by a software engineer who integrated with Fin. It's extremely easy to duplicate Fin's UI and get rid of the $250k fee.

spwa49d ago

Well, it's a few weeks of work, systems integration, and you'll need an SRE too if you're hoping to run it on any scale. But yes, I agree.

1 more reply

rtpg8d ago

> I see absolutely zero value in something like Fin.

People here really forgetting the notion of "core competency".

1 more reply

whstl9d ago

Rolling something yourself was a waste of time when SaaS was cheap and competitive.

Not they’re all getting incredibly expensive, even the last few startups I worked at were paying hundreds of thousands of euros for services that were total garbage.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse