alt Hacker NewsSimilar boat here. Many of these service industries are cheap. I've built my own CRM/management system that no big company will ever touch. Even if I can sell to 1000 companies and charge them $25 a month...I'd have staff overhead, maintenance to support it. SaaS isn't some little photo editing app or something you can just launch and forget.
I'd rather grow my business and make as much money. If I can crush it with my business I'd make more than that.
Yeah agree - software needs to either do a ton more, be much cheaper, have network effects (such as connecting supply and demand), or some data benefit to avoid being built in-house or replicated.
Also for me there's an element of picking the pain I want to solve for. I've run a software company before, and prefer the tech-enabled route personally.