It’s never been easier to ship an AI app—and rarely harder to make one profitable. Traditional SaaS enjoys 70–90% margins; AI‑native LLM wrappers limp at 30–60% while API/GPU/moderation costs balloon. Even ChatGPT’s tiny paid conversion signals hype outrunning durable value. Meter the super‑users or they eat your lunch. | My playbook: build a real SaaS that works without AI, then add AI where it shaves hours. AI is a tool, not a business model. Keep the team tiny, price on impact, and cap throughput. Start with a modular monolith—Java + Quarkus is great—and judge success by shipped work, not vanity metrics or demo benchmarks.