Gary Tan claims Zoho will be out of business due to vibe coding
35 comments
·December 2, 2025da_grift_shift
nextaccountic
When I see this kind of comment, I read it as a disclosure that he invested in crypto and NFTs
alephnerd
One of the things us VCs do is
1. Advertise our thesis by building a narrative
2. Evangelize our portfolio
By posting a narrative comparing Zoho (who btw does offer an Agents marketplace for domain-specific agents [0]) against a vibe coded product, Garry is able to both craft a narrative that helps support YC's portfolio as well as bring a couple of people to start thinking about Vibecoding. It also acts as an indirect attack against G-Suite without calling out a massive organization like Alphabet which YC needs to coexist with.
All businesses do this, and knowing Zoho, they will probably leverage this as well as a way to market data sovereigninty and "make in India" by raising the specter of the big bad American capitalist trying to undermine a bootstrapped Indian company.
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yoavm
> Why pay $30/seat/month for over bundled SaaS when soon even nontech ops ppl can vibe-code a custom solution in a weekend?
I don't get his suggestion. I'm paying Zoho for email hosting. What am I even supposed to vibe-code successfully for me to drop Zoho? There's no shortage of open-source IMAP/SMTP servers, in fact Zoho is probably using them too. Sure I can spin one myself, but I'm paying for Zoho for the *service*, not the software.
iso1631
I used to run my own smtp server, but it's far easier to point my MX records and let someone else do it.
If zoho go bust I'm sure another company will replace them.
ZiiS
He said `would`; I 100% agree. If vibe coding was going to take over the world, then Zoho going out of business is a very good leading indicate. As soon as that happens, I will invest heavily; till then it is safe to ignore it.
giarc
Will they lose a small customer or two to custom vibe coded solutions, yes. Will they be "competed away" due to vibe coding, definitely not.
You have to remember that no one gets fired for selecting an established software provider. Zoho is a 'safe' pick for SMBs because you know it will work compared to some custom CRM that Bill from accounting vibe coded in an afternoon.
fakedang
Why would a small customer bother with building their own Zoho solution even? I mean, if an SMB did that, I'd call them morons.
Zoho has its flaws, but for small businesses, Zoho is a godsend. If an SMB doesn't want to pay for Zoho, I'd seriously ask them to recheck if they're making any money whatsoever.
Moreover Zoho is one of the few platforms out there that's really intuitive. Do this, do this and that, and you're good to go. Compared to setting up something like Zendesk or Freshdesk or Xero or QuickBooks , etc.
ne8il
Let's say I'm a manufacturer of widgets, and instead of buying an off-the-shelf CRM I decide to have the resident IT whiz on the team vibe-code a custom solution for our needs. Now I'm a manufacturer of widgets AND a CRM SaaS shop, responsible for software maintenance/deployment/reliability/feature roadmap/bug remediation. I guess the idea is that AI agents will take care of all of those things too - to which I guess my perspective is "good luck! I hope that works out."
andsoitis
> competed away by people building their own custom software built by people using @Replit @emergentlabs and @Taskade
Why do you need 3 platforms to vibe code a solution? Are each one of them not good enough?
mlboss
I bet all are Y Combinator companies.
villosil
Well, then I claim that it will be the companies themselves that try to replace Zoho (or any other CRM for that matter) with a vibe-coded replacement, the ones going out of business. As someone said once: focus on what makes your beer taste better.
antiloper
Obviously not? Accounting software has to work or the IRS (or your local equivalent) will come after you. Zoho "just works".
mns
Considering how much money they invested in countless AI VS Code forks and other vibe coding platforms, he needs to hype up the market.
francisofascii
I kinda hope so. When I started my career companies and orgs had in-house developers to make custom software for the org. The developers understood the business and were part of the culture. Then the labor market got tight, developers left for higher paying jobs, managers became afraid of going custom because they would lose the developers, so they starting buying overpriced SAAS products and contractors. If the job market is flush again with capable devs armed with AI, maybe we can go back to in-house developers again.
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jacquesm
It's 'Garry' and besides that guy gets too much airtime already.
"NFTs show relatively small groups of tens of thousands of people can work together collectively for a common good" - Garry Tan, 23 March 2022
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1506769562468958210
"If you own an NFT..." you are an innovator among innovators. - Garry Tan, 30 September 2021 [quote tweet]
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1443460589049704450
Web3 vs Earlier incarnations technology adoption curve [image tweet]
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1521530531568963584
"airdrops going mainstream could truly upend some % of the centralized ad-based economy of Web2" - Garry Tan, 25 Dec 2021
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1474826162408808448