# Core SaaS systems will remain, while point apps get rebuilt

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/core-saas-systems-will-remain-while-point-apps-get-rebuilt/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Arvind Jain](https://realalpha.app/builders/arvind-jain/) · Arvind Jain is founder and CEO of Glean. · Founded Glean, the AI work assistant, after co-founding and leading R&D at Rubrik and a decade at Google.
- Host: [Nakul Mandan](https://realalpha.app/people/nakul-mandan/) · Host, Knuckle Up with Nakul · General partner at Audacious Ventures; his show goes deep with founder CEOs on how they build.
- Show: Knuckle Up with Nakul
- Episode: [$7B AI founder: "AI is not capable of replacing you right now" | Arvind Jain (CEO, Glean)](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/), Sep 9, 2026
- Moment: 12:33 to 14:55 of the episode (2 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/core-saas-systems-will-remain-while-point-apps-get-rebuilt/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/?t=753

## Quote

> “So I just actually went and gleaned and asked it to, you know, code up that application and just, you know, **connect to the backend database**.”
> — [Arvind Jain](https://realalpha.app/builders/arvind-jain/) at [14:17](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/?t=857) · Knuckle Up with Nakul

## Takeaways

1. Major productivity, CRM and HR systems will remain in the near term.
2. Narrow apps that wrap existing data may be easy to rebuild.
3. Jain connected a generated app to a backend database.

## About this segment

Arvind Jain expects major systems of record to persist, while companies recreate narrow apps built around their data. He says he built an asset-management interface in five minutes.

From “$7B AI founder: "AI is not capable of replacing you right now" | Arvind Jain (CEO, Glean)”, Sep 9, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[12:39](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/?t=759) What does the enterprise stack of 2027, 2028 look like in your view? What do Google and Microsoft have? What do Salesforce Workday have? Like, do these systems of record continue and you are on top of them? Because there's also a thesis in the world that agents might just completely take away interface-based SaaS applications. The truth is kind of like, you know, it makes both of those things make sense to some degree.

[13:02](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/?t=782) Like I personally believe that most of these systems of records will remain in the next few years. The Google Productivity Suite, Microsoft, you know, Productivity Suite, Salesforce, and many of these, you know, like your HR systems like Workday, ITSM systems like ServiceNow, each of them will be just fine. They will all be there. And in fact, they will all get very Asian-tic in nature. So if they don't, then of course they will not stay there.

[13:25](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/?t=805) In fact, those are the products that are going to go away, which are not advancing with AI. I think businesses will actually build more systems internally. And the number of applications may end up reducing because if you're building like, if there was a very point use case, like, you know, one specific thing that a SaaS app did for you, you know, where, and that SaaS app is, you know, really let's say UI wrapper on top of your system of record data and Salesforce, let's say, that kind of app, like we do think, that people are going to start to build those kind of systems on their own.

[13:56](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/?t=836) It was very easy. In fact, I'm doing it myself. Like we had this asset management app and it was very, very hard to actually use. I couldn't do any kind of like, literally it's an Excel spreadsheet that you're trying to view in a few different ways. And that system didn't allow you to do that. It didn't allow me to sort, it didn't allow me to filter the way it was not convenient and I couldn't actually ask a quick question off of that.

[14:22](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/?t=862) So I just actually went and gleaned and asked it to, you know, code up that application and just, you know, connect to the backend database. And like, it actually took me like, you know, five minutes. And even the first version of that app was actually pretty good. Behind the scenes, you know, we must have used, I don't know what model it used, probably we must have used Cloud to actually, you know, compute that app.

[14:41](https://realalpha.app/v/zPtwI6JaRy0/?t=881) But that's an example of where users are feeling more confident of building some systems themselves. So we will see that. We will see a lot of like internally built applications.