72 AI clones, 100B tokens: inside the hackathon that tried to kill a $43k/yr SaaS
josh_wills · x · 2026-10-14
swyx's Latent Space special reveals results of the "Kill My SaaS" hackathon: instead of theorizing about SaaS's death, they took a real $43,000/year mid-tier SaaS they use and ran a global weekend hackathon to clone it.
- 72 submissions judged by both AI and real human evals, consuming roughly 100B tokens across any models and any harness.
- The episode shares the collected data, reveals the $10,000 contest winners with qualitative interviews, and analyzes what remains hard about killing a nontrivial mid-tier SaaS.
One of the most first-hand, quantitative experiments yet on whether AI can actually replace SaaS — directly relevant for indie hackers and SaaS founders.
Related event: Latent Space Hackathon: 72 Teams Race to Clone a $43K/Year SaaS with AI(2 posts)→
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