A public exchange between Y Combinator president Garry Tan and Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu has triggered a debate on whether vibe coding could challenge traditional SaaS.
Tan posted on X that Zoho-type products could soon face competition from custom software built by non-technical teams using platforms like Replit, Emergent Labs and Taskade. “Why pay $30/seat/month for over-bundled SaaS when soon even nontech ops people can vibe-code a custom solution in a weekend?” he wrote.
Vembu pushed back, questioning both the premise and the timing. “If our business were the first to be competed away by vibe-coded apps, why are we seeing such rapid customer growth (exceeding 50%) right now?” he wrote.
He added that essential software categories remain untouched by such tools. “Why don’t we see vibe-coded email or spreadsheet, accounting app, or messaging apps yet?”
Vembu also outlined his own approach to AI-assisted software creation. “My own personal R&D project is to enable huge gains in programmer productivity by combining compiler technology with AI,” Vembu wrote, arguing that security, privacy and compliance are central to any long-term productivity gains. “Without those guarantees, vibe coding just piles up tech debt faster and faster until the whole thing collapses.”
Vembu concluded with a direct challenge. “Let me make a bet with Garry Tan: we will outshine and outlast his vibe coding companies!”
Tan’s comment comes after Vembu recently argued that vibe coding glosses over the complexity of software creation. “All code is magic until it is lowered by the compiler to another form of code, and that code is magic until magic all the way down,” he wrote on X on December 1.
Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has emerged as a prominent advocate of vibe coding, describing it as a major change in how people, including non-engineers, will build software.
In an earlier episode of the Google for Developers podcast with Logan Kilpatrick, Pichai said vibe coding is making programming “more enjoyable” and “more approachable”, enabling anyone with an idea to create apps and websites without knowing languages like Python or JavaScript.
According to Pichai, the appeal lies in giving non-technical workers “the power to visualise ideas directly”. Instead of explaining an idea to an engineering team, users can use AI to prototype it themselves.
The post We’ll Outlast His Vibe Coding Firms: Sridhar Vembu Challenges Garry Tan’s ‘Zoho Will be Competed Away’ Comment appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.
