---
title: "Coffee, Omelettes, and Five-Course Meals: A New Software Menu"
description: "Discover the rise of ephemeral software \u0026 instant questions that complement traditional SaaS. Learn how these short-lived AI applications are revolutionizing enterprise software development \u0026 user expectations."
categories: ["SaaS"]
keywords: ["ephemeral software","instant questions","SaaS","Theory Ventures","Tomasz Tunguz","project management tools","AI applications","enterprise software","business intelligence","software development"]
ai_summary: "Explore how ephemeral software and instant questions are transforming enterprise software and user expectations."
date: 2025-09-12
lastmod: 2026-07-23
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/ephemeral-software/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---

{{< email_image src="xslw9xdpreodzhkgn6oa" alt="Screenshot 2025-09-12 at 12.00.48 AM" width="540" height="252" >}}

Like breakfast at a diner, software is cheap & fast to make. Ask for a new task management tool & you’ll have the first version in less time & for less money than an omelette.

AI-built tools may not last long. Some survive only a few minutes, long enough to answer “What’s our turnaround time this week?”

Others remain useful for a few days or weeks, like an app that can spin up a lightweight project tracker for onboarding Walmart. Sometimes they persist beyond a month.

If permanence defined the last two decades of software, impermanence may define the next.

We now see three layers forming along a continuum:

Durable SaaS: long-lived systems of record like a pipeline dashboard.

Ephemeral Apps: short-lived tools like the Walmart onboarding project tracker.

Instant Questions: one-off queries such as "Tell me about the Apple account."

By orders of magnitude, ephemeral apps & instant questions will outnumber SaaS applications, perhaps millions to one. The dopamine high of instant problem-solving is addictive & accelerates careers.

Underpinning all of these applications will be a system of record, often an existing platform but increasingly a new one.

Finance & operations teams depend on persistent dashboards for governance & reporting, as if the definition of a metric could be [standardized across the organization](https://tomtunguz.com/omni-solving-metric-management/?utm_source=chatgpt.com). Marketers spin up data apps that last a few months to analyze their paid spend performance, & support teams ask quick questions about turnaround time before moving on.

The [trusted models, permissions, & business logic](https://tomtunguz.com/omni-solving-metric-management/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) of an underlying BI platform like [Omni](https://omni.co) give users confidence to experiment with ephemeral apps & instant questions. Control of the foundation ensures control of the layers above.

This design pattern extends beyond AI to most other software.

Whether you'll have a coffee, an omelette, or a five-course meal, the next great startup will serve it all.