InsideArbitrage March 2026 Mid-Month Update – The Software Double Dippers

At the height of the dot com bubble, when Steve Ballmer took over as CEO of Microsoft, he once got on stage and chanted “developers, developers, developers” in response to the question “What the hell are we supposed to do about dot net Steve?”. The video is hilarious and you can check it out here.

Dot net was Microsoft’s web technology and at that time was competing with two other web technologies called Perl/CGI and JavaServer Pages (JSP) to capture the attention of developers and convince them to build the next generation of software on dot net. This was at a time when Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) was just starting to emerge with Salesforce and NetSuite (now part of Oracle) leading the charge.

I had the distinct pleasure of implementing software with each of those technologies, and as I watch the current wave of AI disrupt SaaS companies, I am reminded of that video of Steve.

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