Most enterprise software was priced on a belief that never gets written down. Humans would always sit in the middle of work.
If that belief breaks, a lot of very successful companies start to look expensive very quickly.
ServiceNow is a clean example of why.
ServiceNow is down roughly 50% from its highs despite beating earnings and buying back stock. Writing that off as multiple compression misses the point. The market is questioning the value of software designed to organize people when fewer people are expected to be involved.
For years, ServiceNow’s go to market math was simple. As headcount grew, coordination costs grew with it. More tickets, more approvals, more workflows. Software that managed that complexity became necessary. Seat expansion followed.
AI weakens that entire chain.
Fewer humans means fewer handoffs
Fewer handoffs shrink approvals and sprawl
Coordination starts to feel like overhead
Seat based expansion becomes harder to justify
That’s the GTM problem. ServiceNow’s growth model depends on humans sticking around. AI pushes in the opposite direction by automating motion and compressing coordination. Value shifts away from managing work and toward completing it.
Software that replaces work feels lighter, but software that routes the work feels busier.
This is not just a ServiceNow issue. Any company whose GTM strategy assumes headcount growth as expansion fuel is exposed to the same problem.
That’s it for today. Connect with me on Linkedin if you actually want to understand what an Autonomous Organization looks like in the real world.
