In January, close to $1 trillion was wiped off enterprise software valuations in a sell-off, nicknamed the "SaaSpocalypse" by traders, triggered by Anthropic's launch of Claude Cowork, an agentic AI platform capable of executing multi-step SaaS workflows autonomously. Valuations have yet to recover. At the time of writing, Salesforce (despite a recent rally) is sitting at less than two-thirds of its peak January value. Workday and Adobe follow a similar pattern.
These juicy headlines are not what Boards should be reflecting on. Better to debate the juxtaposition between these companies’ market performance and their financial performance. Salesforce's most recent results (Q1 FY27, reported in May) showed revenue up 13% year-on-year, and the company raised full-year guidance. If your own Board faced a similar split between results and market confidence, which signal would carry the most weight? And what other, much longer-running signals would be quietly swept under the rug so as not to muddy an optimistic growth story?
Perigon’s second edition of Business in Command centres on precisely this “Quiet Liability": a strategy quietly drifting from the world it assumes, tolerated until the numbers force the reckoning. The question here is how headline-grabbing the numbers need to get before they’re taken seriously. In the case of the SaaSpocalypse, a sudden reaction from the market follows several years where the capabilities that triggered that reaction have been building steadily.
For any SaaS Board whose growth still rests on licences or seats, it’s time to stop grabbing for numbers that give false hope. For all other Boards, use this as a moment to examine the signals in your own sector. Do it in an open, non-defensive way, and you have a hope of spotting your own version of drift before the market prices it for you.
