SaaS companies are treating customers' data as their own to create a "data moat." This is a ridiculous concept.

Any company that does this doesn't have a future.

I've been saying this for two years.

Jeff Huber, the founder of Chroma, recently wrote about the concept of “12 factor companies”. This is my Part 1 response to his excellent post.

Number one on that list is “own your context.”

You must avoid tools that hoard your context. If a SaaS platform holds your information, the vendor must give you complete access to it. If they don't, you need a different solution entirely.

The reason is simple: AI agents need access to data.

Historically, SaaS vendors used to lock it down. It lived in their ecosystem, on their servers, and you rented access to it. Now, as the market shifts, they are creating MCP servers to allow agent access.

But some vendors are still trying to lock it down to artificially create a moat.

If your agents cannot access the context they need, they will not work.

The solution is to fundamentally reduce your reliance on other SaaS platforms.

Instead of buying another generic vendor product that traps your information, you need to write code or build agents yourself. Store the data in your own database. Give your agents direct access to your own context and data.

When you own the context, your agents can actually execute on the specific workflows your company relies on. You stop relying on a SaaS vendor to decide how and when you get to use your own information.

Bora Celik
Founder, Gentic

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