Just been looking at the software sector and honestly, it's been brutal. We're talking a full-on bear market for a lot of these names that were flying high just months ago. The tech-software ETF is down nearly a quarter this year, and when you see Microsoft, Palantir, and Salesforce all getting hit, you know something's shifted in how the market's thinking about these companies.

The narrative's been all about AI disruption killing traditional software. Fair concern on the surface, but dig deeper and you start seeing some real opportunities hiding in this bear market. Not every selloff is justified, especially when you look at what some of these companies are actually doing.

Take Figma. Yeah, it's down 74% from its IPO peak, which sounds terrifying. But here's the thing - the company just showed Q4 revenue growth of 40% hitting $303.8 million, and they're sitting on a 136% net dollar retention rate. Those aren't numbers you see from a company getting disrupted. More importantly, they're not just defending against AI, they're building with it. Their Figma Make product is seeing weekly active users jump 70% quarter-over-quarter. They've integrated with Claude, launched in ChatGPT, and they're working directly with Anthropic. This is the opposite of a company in trouble during a bear market.

Then there's Axon Enterprise. Down 40%, but the fundamentals just got stronger. Revenue hit $797 million, up 39%, and EBITDA climbed 46% to $206 million. They're the dominant player in law enforcement tech - TASER, body cameras, software platforms for evidence management, reports, all of it. They're also leaning into AI hard with Draft One, which auto-generates police reports from body cam footage, plus they're expanding their vehicle intelligence with automatic license plate recognition. The company's projecting $8 billion in revenue by 2028, which means roughly 30% annual growth over the next three years.

What's interesting about both of these in this bear market environment is they're not just surviving - they're gaining market share. Figma's been taking share from Adobe for years, and Axon's built a moat that's tough to break. When the sector's under pressure like this, that's usually when the winners separate from the pack.

Still expensive on traditional metrics? Sure. But if you're looking at this bear market and seeing where the real competitive advantages are, these two are worth paying attention to. The question isn't whether they can survive - it's whether they can keep executing on growth while everyone else is panicking.