Dry Powder: The Private Equity Podcast
Over the last three decades, enterprise software has gone through a series of transformations, from on-premise to SaaS and the cloud. Ironically, one of the biggest ideas in AI may bring the industry back toward an old concept: keeping the most valuable data and intelligence inside the enterprise.
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“Do you have sovereignty and dominion over the workflows and the data sets?” asks Robert Smith, founder, chairman, and CEO of Vista Equity Partners. “If you do not, you have to question your right to exist as a software company.”
Today on Dry Powder, Robert explains why the firms with the best customer relationships, workflows, and proprietary data may have the biggest advantage in an AI-driven world.
We’ll unpack the new rules of the game, how inference costs could erode margins, and why data sovereignty matters more than ever. We’ll also talk about exit pressure amid headlines of a coming “SaaSpocalypse” and why Robert believes the news of enterprise software’s demise has been greatly exaggerated, once again.
“I think we’ve converted more companies from on-prem to the cloud than any institution on the planet,” Robert says, “but what it did was it ushered in a major rerating of enterprise software … Well, our sense is this is going to be the same sort of dynamic.”
The Private Equity Podcast
In our podcast series, Bain's Hugh MacArthur interviews leading experts on the trends and opportunities that will redefine the private equity industry.
First published in Juni 2026