What's happening: FoodOp secures £4.4 million to scale AI‑powered kitchen SaaS
FoodOp, a SaaS platform for professional chefs, raised £4.4 million in a round led by MK Capital to accelerate its rollout in the UK and US. The service is used daily by over 2,000 chefs across more than 700 kitchens, automating procurement, menu planning and budgeting with AI‑driven tools.
Also developing:

In this episode, Ken Lempit talks with Melanie Nabar, Vice President of Volition Capital, about growth‑equity financing as a middle‑ground alternative to traditional venture or private‑equity routes for B2B SaaS companies. Nabar explains how growth equity can provide capital for scaling while allowing founders to retain control, highlights the most common post‑funding hiring error, and explores how AI is improving go‑to‑market efficiency. The conversation offers practical guidance for founders, CMOs, and CROs on when to pursue this funding model and how to avoid pitfalls that stall growth.

Sharing a draft illustration of 3 different "domains" of AI agents in marketing to solicit feedback. The 3 different domains: 1. AI agents for marketers, used internally. 2. AI agents for customers externally, but run by marketers internally. 3. AI agents operating on behalf...
SO proud to be named a Leader in Forrester's Wave for Conversational Automation Solutions for B2B. To me, it reflects how our customers are turning signals into meetings in minutes — and we're just getting started. I'll share a sneak...

In this 17‑minute episode, Dan Martell reveals 23 unconventional ways to leverage ChatGPT for massive time savings, productivity boosts, and full‑life automation, drawing on his experience building AI startups. He shares specific prompts, tool integrations, and workflow hacks that most...
I just happily sent the $5k bounty to Hjanuschka for landing a new feature in Chrome that was born in the linked discussion thread: Chrome now gets --focus cli parameter which allows you to open a website / webapp from...
Encord today released EMM-1, the largest open-source multimodal dataset with 1 billion paired examples and 100 million data groups across five modalities (text, image, video, audio and 3D point clouds), paired with an EBind training methodology that emphasizes data quality...
PromoTix saw an 8% increase in conversions by leveraging the "Promised Land" effect. The win didn't come from blind faith in best practices. Will Royall, the founder, has a simple rule: test everything. Even when something's proven to work, he wants to see...

Snowflake executives Denise Persson and founding CRO Chris Degnan outlined how the company has operationalized AI across marketing and sales to drive measurable ROI, scaling AI adoption to 90% of its 450-person marketing team and serving over 10,000 customers. Internal...
Email marketing/marketing automation is one of the most competitive categories of all time. You'd think the players there are very focused on differentiation. You'd be wrong. Most are explaining themselves as if they're the only one doing what they're doing. Send newsletters. Track...

When I founded FeedHive, I hired a 5-man team at $300 MRR. Cause I thought... that's what you do. 3 months later... $50,000 poorer... I had to get rid of them all. Best (most expensive) lesson I've ever learned. You don't need a big team to...

Venture investing is being rewritten as AI startups compress time-to-unicorns and force a rethinking of portfolio construction: early-stage funds now need ~20–25 initial bets before concentrating ~75% of capital into 3–5 winners, while the exit threshold has risen from ~$200M...
Tom Ulman (@TomUlman) acquired two small SaaS tools (Text Run and Waitlist Email) that already had users, traffic, and potential. Then he did what great founders do best: executed. > Focused on paying users > Simplified the product > Improved support > Let SEO and...
Founders keep asking: how do you manage it all without burning out? Simple: map every recurring task, automate the top grind with n8n or Lindy, then refactor the rest into assets you can reuse or sell. Almost everything can become a building...

The Oct 14 Enterprise SaaS CEO Mastermind call covered five practical topics: creative low‑budget Q4 marketing tactics (including gift‑based outreach and AI‑powered tools), navigating SaaS‑friendly banking options for revenue‑recognition challenges, founder involvement in product management versus delegation, strategies for hiring sales...
Real question - now that Screen Studio moved to subscriptions, should I package this up and include it in FounderStack so you can get it on an LTD? Would be cross-platform, macOS, Windows, Linux and would have many of the same...

This week we hosted four SaasRise masterminds -- all with CEOs & founders of SaaS firms with $1M to $100M in ARR.

The SaasRise mastermind recap highlighted practical strategies for winning direct clients, leveraging authentic user‑generated content, streamlining Google Ads spend, and transitioning to a product‑led growth model with tiered SaaS pricing. Key takeaways include building ABM lists and retargeting ads for...
As AI agents get better at computer and tool use, or writing code on the fly for a task, we're going to be able to solve much broader domains of knowledge work. Here's an example of Box AI with the...
First customer is always the hardest. Then you find another one and another one. Then next thing you know you're at $1M ARR. But it all starts with the first.

Jason Lemkin argues that in startups the highest-quality leads concentrate with the hardest-working, most prepared sales reps, creating a self-reinforcing “hustle feedback loop.” He cites internal data showing top-quartile activity reps closed deals at 2.3x the rate, had 31% larger...
I was really excited about the outcome based pricing model à la what Sierra, Fin, etc are doing, but the more I look into it, the more I think it won’t become the norm. Too hard to apply in...

We're back with another deep dive into the shifting landscape of venture capital, and this week we're joined by a legend who's seen it all—Roger Ehrenberg. Roger founded IA Ventures in 2008, building one of the most respected early-stage portfolios...
So there's a growing trend in GTM leadership I'm seeing recently. It's not one I necessarily agree with, but I get it. It's ... No CMO. What do I mean? Not no marketing or no leadership. But...
Congrats to @CentralHQX on their $8.6M seed! Central is the AI-native platform that eliminates back-office work for startups. While HR/payroll platforms give you software to figure it out, Central actually does all the work using agents and human experts across payroll, benefits,...
Here's my conversation with the one and only Dylan Field, CEO and co-founder of Figma We discuss: Why AI makes design, craft, and quality the new moat for startups What actually happened with the Adobe deal, and how he kept...
While many think having a "largest customer" is an asset, it's actually a company's biggest weakness. If you can feel a single customer leave, you're in a delicate spot. If you have a customer you can't afford to lose, you're...

I asked Claude this morning about the most important news in tech. A few follow-up questions about Salesforce’s Dreamforce, Samsung’s XR headset, & TSMC earnings later, I popped over to ChatGPT Pulse. It suggested some updates about the Fed’s rates...

I asked Claude this morning about the most important news in tech. A few follow-up questions about Salesforce's Dreamforce, Samsung's XR headset, & TSMC earnings later, I popped over to ChatGPT Pulse. It suggested some updates about the Fed's rates...
Huge if true. Wrote a bunch about the Sign in with ChatGPT opportunity back in April. “Today, there’s no secure way to link a ChatGPT account to another tool. No OAuth. No scoped tokens. No way to persist context responsibly. What’s needed...
Small SaaS teams burn hours chasing the wrong numbers. Here's the new baseline I use: 1. Ship automation that buys you time back. 2. Track saved hours like real ARR. 3. Only scale what can be automated. Founders: optimize for freedom, not busyness.
Omarchy 3.1 is also shipping with unified copy/paste hotkeys. Super + C / V. No more remembering that it's Ctrl + C / V in a browser and Ctrl + Shift + C / V in a Terminal. Oh, and...

Smart marketers don't just target specific buyers. They target specific *moments*. I'm talking about the real-life trigger events that flip a buyer from "not interested" to "I need this NOW!!" Not long ago, uncovering those triggers was a major lift. You'd launch expensive surveys,...
What can happen when you unleash an agentic(ish) workflow… and this isn't even full agent mode. Feels a bit like we're in the Wild West period of figuring out the move from seat-based to outcome-based pricing. For software/AI startups with usage-based...

"We have product-market fit!" You've had customers for 3 months and your NRR is 50%. I'm sorry, but you don't. Not yet, anyway. This is probably the most common misconception I see from founders in the early go-to-market stage. They think PMF is...

Huge honor being featured by @bigthink this week. We talked about why “outrageous optimism” is a required skillset for founders. Startups are built by people who believe just enough to keep going when everything says stop. When the odds are 1000...

Most people still think GPT, Claude, Gemini (and maybe a few others) are the only AI models that exist. The real number? It's closer to 2 million! - Most of them are very niche. - They solve very specific issues. You only pay for the...
Most AI products are not creating new categories as much as they are resegmenting existing ones. The distinction is critical for a team to understand. These lessons have been learned over and over again by many of us.
Semble AI automates fire-system design for construction companies. It used to take billions of dollars and thousands of hours of manual drafting, building code lookups, and back-and-forth with permitting authorities. With Semble AI, it takes 5 minutes. https://t.co/fJLjwfMRYN https://t.co/qDiY9vmn4d
At the start, you pull the product along. At the end, the product pulls you. This is the way.
Everest (@_everestai) builds AI support engineers for outsourced IT providers, who service IT for 90% of SMBs. Everest helps them resolve tickets faster and increase margins. Congrats on the launch @yolandaaacao and @spenmcke! https://t.co/bnClbudy5Z https://t.co/wtB2VTMMaM
Sourcebot (@sourcebot_dev) helps developers and AI agents understand massive codebases. It's used daily by engineers at some of the largest companies in the world, including NVIDIA, Red Hat, and Arista Networks. Congrats on the launch, @msukkarieh1 & @bshizzle28! https://t.co/aHR5KdOfOz

Solid AI automation startup listed on @acquiredotcom. Mind blowing 326% YoY growth! 🤯 > $2.9M TTM revenue > $961K TTM profit > 5000+ customers > Inc. 5000 ranked > $10M prior valuation Check it out here: https://t.co/YNOfwS36HJ https://t.co/6mEIjy6Wf5
If you’re not scaling, it’s not your market. It's not your product either. It’s these 5 overlooked GTM gaps. Most founders blame the market when growth stalls but the truth is more brutal: the real killers are five Go-To-Market gaps I see...
Healthcare staff spend millions of hours each year calling insurance companies and navigating portals. @SplendorHealth automates insurance workflows (benefits verification, prior auth monitoring, credentialing) for healthcare companies, eliminating the headaches of portal access, EDI, and AI phone calls. https://t.co/YsY0INT8ZT Congrats on the launch,...
Eventually ... everyone goes a bit enterprise Eventually ... everyone adds a sales team

With the next version of SaaStr AI VC, you won't wonder if you are a fit for any given fund anymore We'll just tell you. Right there, right now. https://t.co/ONomUsL4kw

Live now at #Dreamforce! ☁️ Google CEO Sundar Pichai joins Marc Benioff on the main stage — exploring how Google & Salesforce are partnering to build the Agentic Enterprise powered by trusted data, open AI, and human collaboration. 📍 Blue Shield...
Leadbay (@LeadbayAI) discovers and qualifies companies others can’t find. LinkedIn, Clay, and ZoomInfo miss 70% of U.S. businesses and cover only 0.001% of digital signals and intent. Leadbay’s customers achieve 5x prospecting efficiency by unlocking untapped opportunities in the most data-scarce, fragmented...
Lapis (@trylapis) is building the fastest, most accurate AI search analytics platform. Today, every business is asking, "How do we rank in AI search?" Lapis analyzes millions of user prompts daily, changes content in real-time, and links to external sites for...
The harsh truth about agencies at early-stage: You're paying them to learn. Just like any new hire, they won't hit their stride until month 3-4. If you're pre-PMF, that's a very expensive education for everyone involved. Consider contractors and freelancers first to de-risk.