A 2026 Retailer’s Guide to the Best People-Counting Systems
The episode walks listeners through the importance of accurate people‑counting for modern retailers, outlining how precise foot‑traffic data drives better staffing, conversion‑rate calculations, marketing attribution, and store layout decisions. It evaluates key criteria for selecting a system—accuracy, privacy‑friendly sensors, intuitive analytics, and scalability—and reviews four top solutions: SenSource, Traf‑Sys, RetailNext, and V‑Count, highlighting each one's strengths. Practical strategies are shared for turning traffic data into actionable insights, from optimizing employee schedules to measuring campaign impact. Overall, the guide positions people‑counting as a critical tool for turning physical stores from a data blind spot into a performance engine.
What Is a Website Integration? How Integrations Expand Functionality
The episode explains website integrations as connections between a site and external apps or services that enable data exchange and expanded functionality. It outlines four main categories—ecommerce data, marketing, analytics, and chatbot integrations—highlighting how each can streamline operations, personalize experiences,...
The Model T Comes to Silicon Valley
The early 20th‑century assembly line slashed Model T production time by 90%, triggering a wave of consolidation that left only 44 automakers by 1929. Today, AI‑driven coding assistants are delivering comparable productivity gains—55‑81% faster development—in roughly five years. The auto boom...
AI App of the Week: Vivun — The AI Sales Engineer That Actually Does the Work
Vivun’s AI sales teammate, Ava, is a generative‑AI assistant that prepares, participates in, and follows up on technical sales calls. Unlike typical chatbot tools, it uses a proprietary Sales Reasoning Model to surface real‑time insights and generate stakeholder‑specific materials. Enterprise...
20VC X SaaStr Are Back: If Figma Isn’t Good Enough, What Hope Is There? Plus OpenAI Ads, Elon Vs. Sam,...
The 20VC × SaaStr episode argues that public SaaS isn’t dying, it’s merely being sorted by growth and AI tailwinds. Companies like Figma still command high multiples, but any slowdown triggers steep valuation cuts. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s nascent ad business could unlock $25 billion...
Scaling International GTM for B2B SaaS eCommerce Products
The episode outlines how B2B SaaS eCommerce firms can scale internationally by first establishing a stable global positioning spine and then tailoring emphasis to regional buyer priorities. It stresses redefining the ideal customer profile with regional filters and using inbound...
AI Managing AI
Recent advances have pushed tool‑calling accuracy for large language models past the 90% mark, a dramatic leap from the sub‑50% success rates seen two years ago. This improvement is driven by trillion‑parameter models that excel at context‑rich orchestration, while smaller...
June 2023 Product News At Rep AI: Self-Serve Is Here, Unleash Your Voice & Tone, And More
In this June 2023 product update, Rep AI announces a new self‑serve onboarding that lets users launch a branded AI chat in 10‑15 minutes, with the system automatically scanning their website and capturing brand voice and tone. Recent releases include...
BLOY Loyalty Alternatives: Top Picks For 2026
The episode explains why growing brands outgrow the basic BLOY Rewards app and need loyalty platforms that offer strategic guidance, deep data integration, and extensive customization. It highlights Yotpo Loyalty as the top 2026 alternative, emphasizing its dedicated eCommerce experts,...
Dear SaaStr: What Do The Top 1% of Sales Reps Do … That The Other 99% Don’t?
The post argues that the single biggest differentiator for the top 1 % of sales reps is extreme time efficiency. These reps enter every deal with a pre‑mapped playbook, knowing exactly how to replicate a winning pitch across similar accounts. By...
🧠 Community Wisdom: Managing Fragmented AI Usage Across Teams, Avoiding Generic UX when Building with AI, Tracking Funnel Metrics at...
The episode explores how startups can coordinate fragmented AI usage across multiple teams while avoiding generic, one‑size‑fits‑all UX designs, and discusses practical ways to track funnel metrics before achieving product‑market fit. It also reviews Anthropic’s new Cowork tool, weighing its...
Meritech’s Look at 2025 Exits: M&A at $587B Hits a Decade+ High … But IPOs Were a Whimper
Meritech reports that 2025 delivered a muted IPO market, with only six pure‑play software listings, while merger‑and‑acquisition activity surged to $587 billion—the highest in a decade. Leading private firms such as SpaceX, OpenAI and Stripe continued to stay private, limiting public‑market...
ElevenLabs Just Hit $330M ARR in 24 Months. It Took Twilio 8 Years to Get There.
ElevenLabs announced $330 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2025, achieving the milestone in just 24 months. The company added $100 million in ARR in 20 months, then another $100 million in 10 months, and the next $130 million in...
The Most In-Demand AI Services Businesses Will Pay For in 2026
In 2026 AI will be treated as core infrastructure rather than a novelty feature, with businesses paying for services that deliver measurable outcomes. The most lucrative services attach to high‑cost pain points such as time waste, revenue generation, risk mitigation,...
![Eleven Steps to the Epiphany[^1]](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://res.cloudinary.com/dzawgnnlr/image/upload/w8txbopuyfkpsbw6rwka)
Eleven Steps to the Epiphany[^1]
The author describes how Anthropic’s Claude Cowork scanned a personal folder of scripts—email, CRM, research, and drafting tools—and incorporated them into its memory, enabling the same capabilities through a conversational interface. This transformation turns static, terminal‑bound utilities into a portable...
What Is Shopify? How It Works + Pricing Guide (2026)
Shopify is a cloud‑based e‑commerce platform that lets merchants launch and run online stores without coding, offering design, payments, inventory, and shipping tools in a single dashboard. The service supports more than 5.6 million live stores and over 875 million customers worldwide,...
If You’re Going to Stick with a Mediocre VP for Now, You At Least Have to Micromanage Them
The article argues that while autonomy fuels A‑players, mediocre VPs require close oversight. Founders often retain underperforming executives due to timing or cash constraints, but leaving them unchecked can damage cash flow, sales, product velocity, and morale. The author proposes...
Open APIs Are Over
After two decades of thriving on open APIs, major software platforms are erecting barriers. Salesforce limited Slack’s API calls, Datadog disabled a rival observability startup, and Epic faces a lawsuit over restricting patient‑record access. The acceleration of AI‑driven development enables...
The Change You Need Is the Change You Make. SaaStr AI Annual 2026 Will Help You Get There.
SaaStr AI Annual 2026 positions itself as the definitive gathering for B2B SaaS leaders confronting the AI wave. The conference promises operator‑led sessions that deliver concrete frameworks for pricing, GTM, and product development, rather than abstract theory. Attendees will join...
Trajectory
The post argues that the software era has moved from merely adopting tools to mastering the specific paths—called trajectories—through which those tools are used. By tracking how users interact with CRM, IDEs, or AI assistants, companies can automate processes, refine...
Where Agency Revenue Is Heading: Fewer Big Retainers, More Mid-Market Retainers, and Longer Engagements
The 2025 State of Digital Agencies survey shows agencies are holding clients longer, with 31% retaining them for over three years and 19% for two to three years. Retainer contracts dominate, rising to 85% of engagements, yet 86% of monthly...
Beeper & Day One
Beeper, the all‑in‑one messaging hub, rolled out a September update that adds Google Voice, on‑device LinkedIn, Instagram typing indicators, and full Telegram custom‑emoji support. The company also unveiled its premium model built on local bridge technology, highlighted at an Automattic‑hosted...
How to Get Dangerously Good at AI in 99 Seconds With Better Prompts
The post argues that AI’s value hinges on how users prompt it, not on model sophistication. It introduces a four‑part prompt framework—role, context, command, format—that transforms vague queries into actionable outputs. The author also recommends system prompts and a personal...
5 Interesting Learnings From Motive at $500,000,000 ARR. And The Match Up With Samsara.
Fleet‑management startup Motive filed its S‑1, revealing $500 million ARR and a growth rate of about 27%, while rival Samsara, now public, reached the same ARR milestone with 76% growth and recently achieved GAAP profitability. The two companies differ sharply in...
How to Keep Customers Without Lowering Your Prices: A 7-Step Retention System
The article presents a seven‑step system for retaining customers without resorting to price cuts. It argues that churn stems from delayed value, confusion, and poor usage rather than cost, and outlines concrete actions such as capturing cancellation reasons, accelerating time‑to‑first‑value,...
Hooray, You Got Profitable. That’s Great, But It’s Not Enough. It’s Time To Reaccelerate Growth.
SaaS founders who have reached profitability are being warned that profit is only a medicine, not a cure. Market data shows companies growing 40% command 4‑5x higher ARR multiples than those growing under 10%, with high‑growth firms valued at 25x...
How Much Equity to Give Your First Employees: The Real Data From 50,000 Startups
Carta’s State of Seed report, based on 50,000 startups, reveals concrete equity benchmarks for early hires. The median grant for the first employee is 1.50% of fully diluted shares, falling to 0.85% for the second, 0.50% for the third, 0.44%...
OpenAI’s GTM Lead Maggie Hott: No Commissions, 100% Pilot Win Rates, and the Race Against Incumbents
OpenAI’s go‑to‑market leader Maggie Hott, who grew ChatGPT Enterprise from ten to 500 reps, revealed unconventional sales tactics that defy industry norms. OpenAI eliminates sales commissions, insists pilots achieve a 100 % win rate, and prioritises rapid distribution to stay ahead...
Gross Profit per Token
Meta announced a $2 billion acquisition of Singapore‑based AI agent firm Manus, which reported $100 million annual recurring revenue and 147 trillion tokens processed since its March 2025 launch. The deal underscores the relevance of gross profit per token as a valuation lens,...
This Week on How I AI: How Webflow’s CPO Built an AI Chief of Staff
In this episode, Webflow CPO Rachel Wolan explains how she built a personal AI "chief of staff" to automate calendar management, meeting prep, email triage, and provide candid feedback. She highlights that creating bespoke, disposable AI tools for oneself reveals...
Member Brief: Why Shopify Should Acquire BigCommerce
A viral LinkedIn post by venture investor Jeremy Horowitz joking about buying BigCommerce caught industry attention when Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein publicly liked it. The gesture signals Shopify’s possible interest in acquiring the mid‑market eCommerce platform. Analysts interpret the like...
One Reason The Best AI B2B Startups Are Growing So Quickly: Truly Insane Value
AI‑driven B2B startups are scaling rapidly because they deliver ROI that is orders of magnitude higher than traditional solutions. The post highlights ElevenLabs’ $22‑per‑month voice‑over service that replaced a $3,000, weeks‑long process, achieving 1,000× cost and time savings, and cites...
Dear SaaStr: My Co-Founder Is Threatening to Quit Unless I Give Him More Equity
A co‑founder threatens to quit unless granted additional equity, highlighting the common tension that arises as startups evolve. SaaStr notes that B2B co‑founder splits typically average a 2:1 ratio, but perceived fairness can shift after two years. The recommended remedy...
AI And The Death of The 2021 Sales Process
The post argues that the traditional 2021 B2B sales playbook is obsolete in an AI‑driven buying environment. Buyers now complete most research themselves and expect instant answers, so a four‑day response cost a $10k deal. Deploying AI agents that can...
4 AI Automations Behind Million Dollar Businesses With No New Hires
An article outlines four AI automation strategies that let businesses generate million‑dollar revenues without adding staff. It highlights how AI can handle content creation, lead generation, workflow management, and predictive analytics, effectively replacing traditional hires. By leveraging these tools, entrepreneurs...
This Week on How I AI: How to Get Your Whole Team Excited About AI
In this episode, product designer Brian Greenbaum shares a repeatable playbook for turning a team into AI enthusiasts, emphasizing fast tool experimentation, hands‑on workshops, and a clear adoption roadmap that won over leadership. He explains how championing AI accelerated his...
Dear SaaStr: When Should You Sell Your Startup?
The SaaStr post outlines practical signals for when founders should consider selling their SaaS startup and when they should hold off. It advises exiting before cash runs out, when the team cannot be strengthened, or when a founder’s personal “magic...
App of the Week: OpenRouter — The Universal API for All Your LLMs
OpenRouter launched a unified API that aggregates more than 300 large‑language models from over 60 providers, letting developers access any model through a single endpoint. The platform automatically routes requests based on cost, speed, accuracy, and privacy, and provides built‑in...
🧠 Community Wisdom: What PMs Need to Master in the Age of AI, Testing Product Activation with AI Browsers, Splitting...
The episode explores how product managers must adapt to AI, covering practical uses like testing product activation with AI-driven browsers and balancing traditional PM responsibilities with prompt engineering. It compares analytics platforms Mixpanel and PostHog, highlighting strengths and trade‑offs for...
Is Zendesk Building a Glean Competitor with Its Unleash Acquisition? Not Exactly, But Here’s What’s Really Happening
Zendesk announced the acquisition of Unleash, an Israeli AI‑powered enterprise search startup with more than 70 connectors, to embed permission‑based retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) and AI agents directly into Slack and Microsoft Teams. The move targets internal employee‑service workflows—IT, HR, and...
Wolfram Automattica
Stephen Wolfram has joined Automattic as a special advisor, bringing his computational expertise to the WordPress ecosystem. Wolfram, known for the Wolfram Language and the knowledge engine behind Wolfram|Alpha, has been engaging with Automattic teams since early 2024. The partnership...
Databricks Vs. Snowflake at $5B ARR: Same Revenue, 2x Valuation Gap. Here’s Why.
Databricks and Snowflake have converged at roughly $5 billion in annual recurring revenue, but Databricks is growing at over 55% while Snowflake trails at about 29%. The faster growth translates into a valuation multiple nearly twice Snowflake’s, driven by Databricks’ stronger...
The Best Growth Tactics of 2025
The episode distills the top growth experiments of 2025, revealing that outbound/ABM, partner ecosystems, and events/community dominate despite AI hype, while tactics span content, PLG, launches, and paid ads. Readers shared 50+ real‑world tactics—from LinkedIn engagement outreach and intent‑based ABM...
The $7,500 Migration Fee That Just Cost a Vendor $80,000 ARR. Really, $240,000.
An $80,000 ARR SaaS deal was lost when the vendor imposed a $7,500 migration fee, pushing the contract into the following year. The author argues that such fees create friction, extending ROI timelines and giving incumbents a chance to retain...
Klaviyo Adds Co-CEO To Get Back To Product. The Dream, But Does It Work?
Klaviyo announced a co‑CEO structure, pairing founder Andrew Bialecki with former Workday co‑CEO Chano Fernandez. Bialecki will focus on engineering, product, and AI‑driven vision, while Fernandez will lead go‑to‑market, operations, and finance. The company recently crossed $1.2 B in revenue run‑rate,...
Cloudflare CMS Stats
Cloudflare’s Radar 2025 report examined the top 5,000 domains to map CMS usage. WordPress leads the open‑source segment with a 47 % share, while Drupal lags at 4.7 %. In the proprietary arena, Adobe Experience Manager accounts for 16 %, Contentful 8 %, and...
The Bifurcation in the AI Market
The AI market is splitting into two distinct camps: open‑source models, which remain roughly 22‑25% of usage despite being 10‑100× cheaper, and proprietary providers that retain pricing power for high‑value workloads. Open‑source share held steady, briefly spiking to 35% during...
SaaStr AI App of the Week: Kintsugi — The AI That Puts Sales Tax on Autopilot
Kintsugi is an AI‑native platform that automates sales‑tax compliance for high‑growth B2B and e‑commerce firms. It monitors nexus thresholds, registers businesses, classifies products, files returns and remits payments across all U.S. states and many countries. Since its August 2023 launch the...
The First $100,000,000 ARR at Samsara: How Founder CEO Sanjit Biswas Built a Platform Giant by Digitizing the Physical World
Vertical SaaS leader Samsara has surpassed $1.75 billion in ARR, up 29% YoY, after scaling from its first $100 M ARR milestone. Founder‑CEO Sanjit Biswas leveraged a beginner’s‑mind approach, reassembled his Meraki team, and pivoted based on customer feedback to build a...
55% of All Departmental AI Spend Is Now on Coding. And It’s Not Slowing Down
Menlo Ventures reports departmental AI spending reached $7.3 billion in 2025, with coding accounting for $4 billion (55%). AI‑driven coding tools such as Cursor and Claude Code grew sevenfold year‑over‑year, pushing daily usage to half of developers and delivering 15% faster software...
