Recovery and the AI upcharge

While I’m far from feeling great again, I feel a lot better than I did yesterday. My voice and energy levels are starting to come back, and I’m no longer coughing every 30 seconds. I’m viewing the next few weeks as a “recovery” period for me.

The past two months have been filled with various illnesses, exhaustion, and elevated stress levels. Some of this was was unavoidable like my son bringing home various sicknesses from daycare constantly which seems to be the norm in the fall. But of course a lot of it was very much avoidable as well with way too many trips and exhausting travel.

With our vacation next week and then the rest of October and November prior to Thanksgiving at home in New York, this is the period of recovery for me where I can focus on my physical and mental health. Life should get a lot more boring which is exactly what I need right now in my life.

On another note, it feels like the “AI upcharges” have started to hit our SaaS subscriptions. We upgraded our Slack this morning and it’s now loaded with AI features that supposedly previously weren’t there. Of course, this all came with a cost of these features and it was not a optional upgrade.

I suspect nearly everyone of my SaaS subscriptions will try to do the same. Slowing growth rates across the board for SaaS is going to create pressure to find growth in some areas. While this is all predictable and I’m not surprised, it’s going to be interesting to see what new products actually add value and what is effectively a wrapper on an existing product.

It’s only been an hour, but I have yet to see anything in my Slack look any different than before.