1) It shows you how expansive the space is and why you need proper Assisted Solution Selection:
[Successful Vendor Selection: The Series]
2) It shows you how unstable the space is:
a) Fifty-Four (54) companies are gone.
b) Ten-Plus (10+) have been acquired and/or renamed …
… and could be discontinued / go out of business at any time!
c) for some functions, there are too many options!
a+b) While a disappearance rate of roughly 6% a year is only about 20% higher than normal, it’s just the tip of the iceberg! Right now, the RCD (relative corporate debt) of a majority of vendors is too high and we’re on the cusp of a purge unseen in two decades (that most of you won’t remember). I am still predicting up to 15% disappearance for the next 18 to 24 months between
* mergers/targeted acquisitions so both firms can remain on the cusp of viability
* fire-sale acquisitions to pick up talent and customers
* outright bankruptcies from vendors who aren’t getting funding
because the market is still tight, the software project failure rate is at an all time high (88%, 94% for Gen-AI), and your C-Suite (who got burned last time) is still afraid to give you budget.
Post Edit: Happy to say I’m not alone. See THE PROPHET‘s predictions for the FinTech investment market for 2026:
c) even when you segment by spend-size (not market size), culture (not geography), and industry, you still can’t support more than a few dozen players. In some cases we have 100!
3) It proves that, statistically, there are quite a few vendors that are not good.
[How to Select a Vendor NOT likely to screw you over; Part of
The MOST important clause in your (Procure)Tech (SaaS) Contract Series]
I’m going to remind you again that some estimates put the number of psychopaths in professional positions in NA at 5%, 3 of the 4 top jobs they seek are Salesperson, Lawyer, and CEO … and they are all attracted to the industries with the most money. Right now, that’s FinTech (subsumes ProcureTech).
As many as 1/20 sales people/CEOs don’t care if you get value or not, as long as they get the deal. Especially when the firm took too much money and they have to hit unrealistic sales targets to keep their jobs!
For those of you who believe all founders and all sales people honestly want to deliver value, as a former developer/architect/CTO, I will tell you this: bullsh!t!
Some founders see their peers doing startups and getting rich in 5 years and just want the same. They’re building to sell, not to build long term customer value.
But sales people can be much worse! I have had the displeasure on more than one occasion to work for companies in tech positions where, even after the sales person was expressly told the product didn’t do X, couldn’t do X for Y months/years, and it wasn’t on the roadmap, still told the customer X was available today and they’d have it on initial implementation if they signed the deal now. (These are usually the same salespeople that never seem to stay anywhere too long …)
And here’s our updated Cascading Mega-Map 2026 Edition!