The creeping bill, the overlapping tools and the task-switching tax that’s quietly costing you more than the subscriptions themselves.

We’ve all accumulated a bunch of tools that run on Subscription as a Service (SaaS) models. They make sense when you have specific tasks you need done. But as you get better, your business grows, and tech improves, they might become redundant and costly.

In the age of AI, we brought in Vertiqal founder Theunis Duminy, an SA AI implementation pro who spends most of its time helping companies connect AI to the systems where their data actually lives. And he’s got a plan to help you stop paying for SaaS you don’t need…

Most founders buy software in the wrong order. They reach for a tool the moment they feel a process is messy, before they’ve worked out what the process actually is. Then the tool forces them into its way of working, and they pay forever to retrofit themselves into it.

Flip it around and only buy tools for processes you’ve already perfected.

Pull your bank and card statements for the last three months and write down every SaaS line item: What it costs per month and what job it does.

The total should be a bit shocking. But it’s good, those are the costs you’re looking to cut by eliminating the SaaS you don’t need.

Now run each tool through Theunis’s three-way filter:

Now, you’ve already decided to keep the Buy tools, so only they should be your SaaS cost from now on. The Kill ones, you’re just going to extract whatever data you need from them and then wind them down.

The Build list, you’re also going to extract data from, but with the intention of building your own systems. For more guidance, see our post on how to know when to buy software VS build.

That’s it, now you’ve sorted out your tools and can stop paying for SaaS you don’t need.

Don’t be intimidated, your build list is your core company knowledge, the stuff that makes you unique, so learning to build them is worthwhile.

See, the real problem with using SaaS for your differentiating core company competencies is that each tool operated in its own silo – they all built their own database out of your data, so you probably had copies of data all over the place.

For example, a CRM and client project tracker, both with the same client list in them, just in a different place.

To build a better system, all you really need to do is extract all that vital core business data and keep it in one place: Theunis uses Airtable to store operational data, but you could use a series of spreadsheets, if you like, and then work directly from there.

You could now connect an AI tool like Claude or GPT that can read that data, and then use that to get the insights you need – it works out so much cheaper than paying for 15 different SaaS tools you don’t need.

This audit is one piece of Automations Every Founder Needs in Their Stack: A Practical Founder OS, Theunis’s full masterclass inside the Founder Collab. The full session shows you:

You’ll also get access to 40+ other masterclasses from SA founders and operators on sales, fundraising, UX, paid media and more inside The Founder Collab.

Get more valuable SA founder workflows.