5 Critical Phases of Building Your SaaS Sales Machine: Jason Lemkin + Harry Stebbings
SaaStr co-founder Jason Lemkin and investor/podcaster Harry Stebbings updated their deep-dive guide on building a SaaS sales machine, refreshing a 20+ minute playbook for 2025 that outlines five critical phases for creating a first sales team. The piece details practical steps—hiring and role sequencing, compensation and quota-setting, go-to-market motions, process and tooling, and metrics to track—to move startups from founder-led selling to repeatable revenue. For SaaS founders and early-stage CEOs, the framework clarifies when to invest in people versus process, how to de-risk scaling, and what KPIs signal readiness to expand field sales, directly impacting speed to scale and cash-burn efficiency.
Gen AI, Challenger Sale Insights for Revenue Leaders
CMOs, CROs, CXOs — this one’s for you. We’ve been working hard on the Breakthrough Executive Experience agenda, and I couldn’t be more excited about what’s in store: 👉 A powerhouse panel of PE operating partners sharing what’s actually working...
Founders Must Stay Engaged, Focus, and Play the Long Game
Founder came up to me yesterday and told me he’s been stuck at the same 7-figure revenue for years. Here’s what I learned about breaking through revenue ceilings: 1. People think you can ‘hire a CEO and get out of their...
Major Federation of Unions Calls for ‘Worker-Centered AI’ Future
The AFL-CIO launched a “workers first initiative on AI,” urging employers and policymakers to embed labor protections into AI deployment through stronger collective bargaining, regulation, and worker involvement in development. The federation — representing 63 unions and nearly 15 million...
Excellence Grows From Adversity, Discipline, and Collaboration
At GITEX, I had the chance to speak with David Popovici, Olympic champion, Global Ambassador for UiPath, and someone I’m lucky to call a friend. We talked about how excellence can emerge even when the conditions aren’t perfect. David became...
Balance Core Operations with Innovation for True Value
Mission-critical work keeps your business running but rarely wins customers. Too often it absorbs the resources that should fuel innovation. Volkswagen ’s decision to partner with Rivian on software shows how to control essential work without diluting focus on what...
The Right Mental Model For Agentic AI
A forthcoming report preview argues that companies need a clear mental model for 'agentic' AI—autonomous, goal-driven systems—to effectively reshape work and capture value. It outlines practical frameworks and design principles for integrating agents across enterprise functions, plus metrics for measuring...
AI Hype on LinkedIn vs Marketers' Reality
LinkedIn vs Reality - when it comes to how we are using AI….. I think on LinkedIn you open up the feed and every day you see new use cases and examples of how people are supposedly using AI. But...
The Odds of Making It
A new look inside startup growth from zero to $25 million ARR
Effective Planning Turns Chaos Into Clear Direction
🎯 From Chaos to Clarity: Planning Done Right Every fall, marketing teams gear up for annual planning. For many, Q4 becomes a scramble—rushed budgets, unfinished goals, and vague decks. But one of my clients, an 11-person marketing team, decided to...
AI Works Best When Used Thoughtfully and Ethically
Using AI Responsibly — Out Today on Tippie Leads from The University of Iowa Tippie College of Business 🎙️ AI can make our work faster and more efficient — but only if we use it wisely. In this week’s episode,...
AI Success Requires Ops Redesign, Not Just UI Upgrade
Overheard at World Forum today ⬇️ #ServiceNowPartner “We're reimagining critical processes such as hire to retire and source to pay and record to report, so that everyone and everything, people, systems, suppliers, agents, can work together in one place.” If your team's...
Your Apps and Social Channels Depend on Email More than You Think
MarTech warns that despite the rise of apps and social platforms, email remains the most durable channel for building customer trust, loyalty and long-term engagement. The article argues apps face high churn and social trends are transient, while email—an owned...
AI Is Your Key to Better Market Research and Planning
MarTech argues that generative AI is transforming market research and planning by drastically shortening cycle times—turning processes that once took days into hours—and enabling faster, data-driven decision making. The piece highlights practical use cases and tools that streamline research, synthesis,...
196. Ines Lourenço, VP of Product Growth, Usercentrics. Growth = Product Distribution: How Usercentrics Hit €100M ARR with Activation-First Pods
In this episode, Inês Lourenço, VP of Product Growth at Usercentrics, explains how she scaled a 50‑person growth organization into cross‑functional pods that treat growth as product distribution, putting activation ahead of acquisition. She details the evolution from manual signal detection...
Pricing Calculators Outconvert Contact Forms—Upgrade Your Lead Strategy
Did you know the average "contact us" page has a 3-4% conversion rate? Did you also know the average pricing estimator (i.e. calculator) on a website has a 41% conversion rate? Here's the most interesting part: 👉 99% of websites...
AI Works When Humans Orchestrate With Right Tools
AI is still being oversold. And it's such a shame. They tell you it will: - Think for you - Run everything for you - Make money for you It's obviously not true. And people had it enough of this... And as a result, you might go 180...
Free Trials Fail when They Solve Advanced, Not Basic Problems
Your free product is probably solving the wrong problem. I've seen this kill conversion at hundreds of product-led companies. You build something technically impressive with unique features and powerful capabilities. But free-to-paid conversion stays under 3%. The problem is you're...
AI Is Changing How We Quantify Pain
Care homes and clinical researchers are turning to AI-driven tools to quantify pain in nonverbal patients, replacing or augmenting subjective observational scales like the Abbey Pain Scale. These systems use computer vision, sensor data and pattern recognition to detect facial...
AI Auto-Editing Empowers Authentic Human Video Messaging
Congrats on the launch of Supercut , David Okuniev and Neil Kinnish ! I've known David since we invested in Typeform back in 2013, and it's been a great pleasure to work together again! It's super impressive what Supercut has...
Dfinity Launches Caffeine, an AI Platform that Builds Production Apps From Natural Language Prompts
Dfinity on Wednesday launched Caffeine, an AI platform that builds, deploys and continuously updates production web applications from natural-language prompts without human coding, running on the decentralized Internet Computer Protocol. The publicly available service — tested by more than 15,000...
Ship Fast, Test Minimal, Cut Dead Weight
Not shipping because you're still "polishing"? The market doesn't care. Test the smallest version. Measure. Cut what stalls you. Build lean. Automate only what saves time. Scale the wins - kill the rest.
Essential SaaS Insights: Magic Number, NRR, Valuation, and More
Want to join 95K of your SaaS colleagues? My next newsletter is about to drop. Today, I'm covering: - The SaaS Magic Number - NRR's impact on your valuation - The latest founder story - New revenue automation players -...
Checkmarx One Surpasses $150M ARR and Expands Global Leadership in AI-Powered Application Security
Checkmarx said its Checkmarx One platform has surpassed $150 million in annual recurring revenue just three years after launch, driven by rapid global adoption of its agentic-AI application security tools. The company also introduced a new AI Coding Security Assistant...
MyNeutron Adds Persistent AI Memory Across Models
If you bounce between ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini & co, myNeutron might just become your favorite Chrome extension. It gives you that personal memory layer, context you can save, combine, and reuse across models ✨ How it works: → Save “Seeds” from web pages,...
Rethinking How Life Sciences Organizations Approach AI - Mathias Cousin of Deloitte
In this podcast episode, Mathias Cousin, Managing Director at Deloitte, discusses how life‑sciences firms can successfully adopt AI by focusing on high‑impact "string of pearls" use cases, investing in data quality, and hiring AI‑native talent. He emphasizes practical change‑management tactics...
SaaStr 825: How the AI Era Has Directly Impacted Marketing and Sales with Snowflake's CMO and Founding CRO
In this episode, Snowflake’s founding CRO Chris Degnan and CMO Denise Persson explain how the AI era has reshaped the company’s culture, security posture and data‑first strategy, enabling both marketing and sales teams to automate busywork and deliver more personalized experiences....
Five AI Skill Mistakes Costing Companies Millions
5 AI-Era Skills Mistakes That Will Cost Your Business Millions In 2026 With $5.5 trillion at stake globally due to workforce #skills gaps, businesses in 202 6are making five critical #mistakes that threaten their survival in the #AI era. From...
OpenAI Has Five Years to Turn $13 Billion Into $1 Trillion
OpenAI is generating roughly $13 billion in annual revenue—about 70% from $20/month ChatGPT subscribers—despite only ~5% of its 800 million users paying. The company has locked in more than 26 gigawatts of compute capacity from vendors including Oracle, Nvidia, AMD...
AI Agents Gain Memory Through Hyperspell Integrations
Hyperspell (@hyperspell) gives AI agents memory. It connects to Slack, Gmail, Notion, and Drive, so agents get context and remember what they learn. Congrats @conor_ai and @maebert on the launch! https://t.co/WkfMWkUs5p https://t.co/BQj8QMpdkF
AI and Connectivity Drive Enterprise Resilience
At #MWC Las Vegas 2025, Keynote 2 explored what resilience really means in the age of intelligent automation. ✅ @ServeRobotics is scaling physical AI to 2,000 robots this year. ✅ @boingo is turning connectivity into infrastructure for airports and arenas. ✅ @IBM's...
E187: Digital Guardians: Where AI Meets Cybersecurity
The episode explores the escalating battle between AI and cybercrime, highlighting how artificial intelligence serves as both a powerful defense tool and a new vulnerability. Guest Grant McCracken, founder of Dark Horse Security, explains how AI-driven detection, automated threat analysis,...
Growth Requires Integrated Systems, Not Single Silver Bullets
Founders often ask me: "What's the ONE thing that will 10x growth?" But breakthrough happens when multiple parts work together: messaging, activation, pricing, retention. Stop chasing silver bullets. Start optimizing systems. Ready to build yours? https://t.co/ZKzoSwMLP6
Securing AGI Future with 40k GPUs and 2GW Texas Campus
onwards to agi 🫡 looks like we’ve got stuff to chat about at the @stateofaireport nyc launch tmrw @eisokant :) https://t.co/lUthvM1nhD
Humanlike Chatbots Trigger Mental Health Crises
Earlier this year, after receiving emails from people in the throes of AI psychosis, I began to keep in touch with one man as he journeyed to recovery. I'm grateful to James that he was willing to go on record. He...
Canvas: Unlimited Visual AI Workspace for Collaborative Thinking
Canvas from @Spine_AI is an unlimited visual workspace for AI — where you can think, branch, and collaborate across hundreds of models. Chat works for Q&A. Canvas is for thinking. https://t.co/thZKTQWq0w Congrats on the launch @BudhkarAkshay & @AshwinVRaman! https://t.co/vyaNLQE88D
Petaflop Desktop AI: Powerful Yet Hybrid Future
A petaflop on your desk. Let that sink in. NVIDIA’s new DGX Spark squeezes what used to be an entire data center into desktop size — Grace Blackwell chips, 128GB unified memory, and a full AI stack out of the box....
Repetition Turns Familiarity Into Belief
Familiarity breeds belief The lesson? Repeat yourself. By the time you’re sick to death of saying the same thing, your audience is finally starting to get it.
Found a Goldmine for Scalable Search and RAG
I've been looking for how search and RAG can be done on large scale and actual data, and there's just toy examples everywhere I look. Not just some pdfs or a website with everything in context, but actual search, retrieval,...
Machines Learn From Experience Using Reinforcement Learning
🎯 Reinforcement Learning = Machines learning from experience. An agent interacts with an environment, receives rewards, and learns which actions yield the best outcomes. Used in 🚗 self-driving cars, 🤖 robotics, 🎮 gaming & more. RL turns feedback into intelligence. #AI #MachineLearning #ReinforcementLearning
Strategically Use Engagement, Team‑Building, Training for High‑Performance Teams
Here's how to recognize the need for #EmployeeEngagement and use #teambuilding and #training strategically to help create and sustain high-performing work teams. How to Build and Maintain High-Performing Teams: https://t.co/p8UJLdJsyy via @bestcorpevents https://t.co/RN6B8HfkPQ
Launching Lore: AI Infrastructure to Outpace China
BIG NEWS I'm partnering with Jesse Tinsley ($2B+ portfolio across Mainstreet, Recruiter, Bench) to build an AI infrastructure company. We're launching Lore to help America and its allies beat China in the AI race. Here's how we're doing it 🧵 https://t.co/ePyIYmKMPi
Build a Powerful FAQ for Your WordPress Blog
How to Create an Informative FAQ For Your WordPress Blog - B2B Marketing Blog | Webbiquity - https://t.co/EVatA4MJLV via @seosmarty
Ask, Get Instant Engineering Insights—No Dashboards Needed
Waydev AI (@waydevco) is the AI-native conversational platform for Engineering Intelligence. Ask questions like “What’s our AI adoption rate?”, “How’s our cycle time trending?”, “Which teams drive the most impact?” Instant insights, no dashboards. https://t.co/b2YsuqATPI
GPT-5 Codex Resc
built a community command centre with droid spec'd a plan first w/ 4.5 one-shot functionality worked switched to gpt-5-codex for pesky bug it lives! https://t.co/fqqRIAn3dn
Seeking Comparison: Nvidia Spark Vs. M4 Max
did anyone compare nvidia spark with m4 max?
500K AI Startup Valuations Hit on SaaStr AI
Holy Cow!! We crossed 500,000 AI Startup Valuations on new SaaStr Ai!! (Thx @Replit!) https://t.co/i1bef0zpBU
Runway Apps: Visual GPTs, More Practical Than Ever
Runway apps is basically the visual equivalent of GPTs — except a lot more useful. Of course the likes of Replicate and FAL have the advantage of these apps model agnostic.
From DGX-1 to Spark: Petaflop Power in Tiny Box
Things have come a long way since the delivery of the DGX-1 9 years ago; amazing to see...
Sidekick Turns Any Business Question Into ShopifyQL Report
Shopify's analytics are amazing. You can do queries across your entire org by just asking Sidekick and it will get you the unique report and teach you ShopifyQL along the way
