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Is it even possible to get funded (or noticed) in 2026 without adding an ".ai" to your landing page?

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Honestly, it feels like if your product doesn’t feature an LLM integration, investors and launch hunters look right through you. But let’s be real—not every micro-SaaS or developer tool needs a chatbot.

For those who launched or are building a "traditional" software product recently: How are you handling the marketing? Are you feeling pressure to pivot or force-feed AI features into your roadmap just to stay relevant, or are you doubling down on pure, rock-solid utility? Let's discuss.

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Hi Elmer,

It feels like no one in SaaS has the guts to turn their back on LLMs right now—and honestly, why would they? But the skepticism is definitely building. Is it a bubble? What are we locking ourselves into? And ultimately, will the ROI truly justify the spend? The market is also becoming more savvy in separating the AI-native companies from the AI-wrappers.

At , we're finding that since "AI-powered" has become ubiquitous, it has also become redundant. Our product does integrate LLM capabilities, but it still works without them. Which has, to some extent, become a point of resiliency and cost control.

What I'm building isn't AI-first. The people I build for are wary of handing personal reflections to an AI, so a statement "your entries are never sent to any AI service" is a reason they trust it, not a gap to explain away. A chatbot would cost me more than it earned. I don't market the absence of AI as a feature, I market what the product does and let the privacy part sit there as a fact. For the right audience rock-solid utility and not touching their data is the whole pitch.

No experience - since my product is AI