It's Friday.

Somewhere right now, one of your customers is looking at what they pay you every month, looking at what they actually use, and thinking: "I could just vibe code this on Lovable this weekend."

But here's the thing. Most of them don't actually want to.

They don't want the headache. They don't want to maintain it. They don't want to be the person who ripped out a working tool and replaced it with something they duct-taped together in Claude over a weekend.

They just want you to know they could.

"Nice product you got there. Sure would be a shame if someone vibe coded a replacement. But hey... give me a discount and this whole idea goes away."

That's the energy now. It's not a competitive threat. It's a shakedown. Your customers aren't comparing you to another vendor. They're waving around the fact that AI makes building software nearly free, and they're using that as leverage to squeeze your price, reduce their seats, or both.

They don't need to actually build it. They just need you to believe they might. And right now? That belief is extremely credible. Because a 200-line markdown file from a product manager at Anthropic did the same work an entire category of legal tech companies charge thousands a month for. Thompson Reuters dropped 16% in a day. People who aren't engineers are shipping working tools in hours.

Your customer used 10% of your features and paid full price for all of them. The 90% they never touch isn't a moat. It's overhead. And they just realized that the part they actually use? That's a weekend project now.

So they don't need to leave. They just need to lean across the table and let you know they could. And that's enough for you to change your price, your margin, and your entire renewal conversation.

The protection racket is real. The shakedown is happening. And it works whether the customer ever actually builds anything or not.

The question isn't whether this is coming to your renewals. It's whether you've built enough real, irreplaceable value into the relationship that when your customer leans across the table with that look on their face, you can smile and hold your price.

If you haven't? Enjoy your weekend. Someone's spending theirs figuring out how much leverage they have over you.

My Impact Academy cofounder Johan Nilsson and I are going live Wednesday, February 18th. The NRR Battle of 2026. How you hold your ground when every customer has a loaded weapon they don't even need to fire.

​Sign up here.
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~ Lincoln

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