Blog•Nov 24, 2025
Import AI 436: Another 2GW Datacenter; Why Regulation Is Scary; How to Fight a Superintelligence
The episode covers four main topics: OSGym, a low‑cost platform that lets researchers train AI agents to operate computers at scale; Luma AI’s $900 M Series C funding to build a 2 GW compute supercluster in Saudi Arabia, highlighting the massive infrastructure demands of frontier AI; Peter Reinhardt’s warning that over‑regulation can cripple innovation, using his hardware startups as a cautionary tale for AI policy; and a RAND paper outlining extreme countermeasures—such as high‑altitude EMPs and global internet shutdowns—to confront a hostile superintelligence, underscoring the grave challenges of AI safety. The guests include the OSGym research team, Luma AI’s leadership, entrepreneur Peter Reinhardt, and RAND analysts, each providing expertise on technical scaling, market dynamics, regulatory pitfalls, and existential risk mitigation.
By Jack Clark
Blog•Nov 24, 2025
🧑🚀 Work Optional, Open-Source Strategy & NVIDIA’s Global Power Play
The post examines how open‑source AI strategies and massive corporate bets are reshaping the global AI landscape, highlighting concerns that the U.S. may fall behind China if it continues to keep key research proprietary. It details the $15 billion Microsoft‑NVIDIA investment...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 24, 2025
No Backup, No Cry
The author argues that full-system backups are unnecessary when you treat devices as disposable and rely on encrypted local copies synced to services like Dropbox and GitHub. By keeping all important files in Dropbox and using version‑controlled repositories, any lost...
By David Heinemeier Hansson
Blog•Nov 23, 2025
How Our AI BDR Drove Inbound From 30% to 71% of Revenue From Inbound — By Letting AI Qualify 24/7
Jason Lemkin explains how deploying an AI Business Development Representative on their website, fully integrated with Salesforce, boosted inbound‑generated revenue from a historic 30% to 71% in just a few months. By qualifying visitors 24/7, instantly booking meetings, and feeding...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 22, 2025
🧠 Community Wisdom: Resurrecting Churned Users, Doing Performance Reviews for 50 People, Getting Users to Give You Product Feedback, Managing...
In this episode of Community Wisdom, the host curates top discussions from the members‑only Slack, covering tactics for re‑engaging churned users, scaling performance reviews for teams of 50, and strategies to encourage meaningful product feedback. Listeners also learn practical methods...
By Lenny Rachitsky
Blog•Nov 22, 2025
Gemini 3 Solves One of the Biggest Headaches With Vibe Coding: Now Your Site Doesn’t Have to Look Like It...
Jason Lemkin explains how Gemini 3, especially when used in design‑first tools like Replit’s new design mode, breaks the uniform look of AI‑generated “vibe‑coded” sites that have been dominated by Claude’s default aesthetics. By letting developers define their own design system...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 22, 2025
AI App of the Week: Aurasell – The AI-Native CRM That’s Actually Replacing 15 Tools
Aurasell, launched in August 2025, is positioned as the first AI‑native CRM that consolidates 15+ sales tools into a single platform, promising to cut GTM tech‑stack costs by half and reduce reps' admin time by 30‑40%. Built from the ground...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 22, 2025
Dear SaaStr: What Types of Customers Should Be Avoided and How Do I Recognize Them?
The post challenges the common SaaS advice to weed out “bad” or overly demanding customers, arguing that these clients often serve as the most valuable teachers for product improvement and growth. It outlines how to differentiate truly problematic customers—those who...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 21, 2025
Addressing the Risks of Human-Like AI
The episode outlines a new policy framework endorsed by Center for Humane Technology and partners to curb risks from human‑like AI, emphasizing how design features that mimic human personalities foster emotional dependence and social isolation. It highlights recent litigation—including three...
By Tristan Harris
Blog•Nov 21, 2025
The First $100,000,000 ARR at Ramp: How CEO Eric Glyman and CTO Karim Atiyah Built a $30B+ Finance Platform Through...
Jason Lemkin’s post breaks down how Ramp’s founders used asymmetric risk thinking—backed by a large seed fund—to chase high‑barrier, high‑upside problems in business spend management, leading to $100M ARR and a $32B valuation. Key takeaways include hiring for spiky, high‑growth...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 21, 2025
🧑🚀 NVIDIA Earnings, AI Classroom Shift & Google’s Nano Banana Pro
The post surveys several AI‑related developments: Google’s new Gemini‑3‑based Nano Banana Pro model enhances precise image creation and editing; NVIDIA posted a record $31.9 B profit driven by AI data‑center chips but faces scrutiny over its "circular" customer‑investment sales model; ChatGPT...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 20, 2025
Become Impossible to Ignore: Market Eminence with David Newman
In this podcast episode, David Newman outlines his "Market Eminence" framework, arguing that experts must overcome the "obscurity tax" by mastering three pillars—visibility, respect, and brand preference—to become the obvious choice in their market. He emphasizes the power of a...
By John Jantsch
Blog•Nov 20, 2025
Crunchbase: We’re At The Highest Level of Unicorn Production in 3+ Years
Jason Lemkin reports that October 2025 saw the highest influx of unicorns in over three years, with 20 new companies adding $44.5 billion in valuation, signaling a resurgence driven by AI‑native startups. He explains that while overall funding is normalizing to...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 19, 2025
NEW: Upload Your Agency’s Logo and Customize Your Audience Research Graphs
SparkToro’s new feature lets Agency and Enterprise users upload their own logo and generate white‑labeled, high‑resolution PNG graphs for audience research reports, which can be exported directly from the browser. This upgrade streamlines branding for consultants, agencies, and in‑house marketers...
By Rand Fishkin
Blog•Nov 19, 2025
The #1 Clear Sign a VP Will Fail. Be Honest With Yourself When You See It
Jason Lemkin argues that the single best predictor of a VP or C‑level executive's failure is whether they have stopped doing the core work of their function—selling, coding, marketing, or meeting customers. He illustrates how hands‑on involvement preserves market insight,...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 19, 2025
5 Interesting Learnings From Valve at $17 Billion in ARR
Jason Lemkin highlights Valve’s Steam platform as a model of ultra‑lean, high‑margin profitability, generating over $17 B in revenue with just 330‑360 employees and $50 M+ per Steam staffer. He extracts five lessons: charge premium commissions when you deliver outsized value; automate...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 19, 2025
The New UX Era
In this episode, Yaakov Carno examines the rise of the prompt‑bar as the new front‑door UX for AI‑enabled SaaS products, mapping over 40 real‑world examples from Canva to Notion. He explains how the traditional onboarding flow has shifted into a...
By Kyle Poyar
Blog•Nov 19, 2025
🧑🚀 Humanity’s Last Prompt Engineering Guide: Built for the Gemini 3Era
The post announces a new, practical guide for mastering Google’s Gemini 3, arguing that traditional prompt‑engineering tactics are obsolete and that users must now orchestrate AI through multimodal workflows and ambient integration. It outlines key techniques such as the Deep...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 18, 2025
Cursor Hit $1B ARR in 24 Months: The Fastest Scaling SaaS Ever?
Jason Lemkin highlights Cursor’s unprecedented growth, reaching over $1 B ARR in just 24 months and a $29.3 B valuation after a $2.3 B Series D—making it the fastest‑scaling B2B SaaS ever. The post attributes this speed to a product‑led strategy with zero marketing...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 18, 2025
Yes, The IPO Market Came Back in 2025. But It Still Has a Long Way to Go.
The post argues that while the IPO market for software and AI companies has revived in 2024‑2025, it remains a fraction of its 2019‑2021 boom. Data shows only eight IPOs so far in 2025—about 17% of the 2021 peak and...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 18, 2025
🧑🚀 Bezos’ $6.2B AI Bet, EU Rule Shift & Anthropic Model Flaws
Bezos launches $6.2B engineering AI, Europe eases tech rules, Anthropic finds LLM introspection gaps, Google updates AI weather & travel, AI scales podcasts.
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 18, 2025
NEW: AI Tool & Social Network Usage Graphs Are in SparkToro
The post announces a major upgrade to SparkToro’s data visualizations, now showing the exact percentage of a target audience that uses specific search engines, AI tools, and social networks rather than just country‑level averages. It highlights the ability to customize...
By Rand Fishkin
Blog•Nov 17, 2025
Stop Building Financial Plans on Hope and Prayer: Why Your C-60/C-90/C-10 Planning Is Backwards
Jason Lemkin warns founders that many financial plans are built on hopeful Q4 spikes rather than realistic data, leading to cash crises. He advocates using a C‑60 revenue plan—about 60% confidence with linear growth—and a conservative C‑90 cash plan that...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 17, 2025
Import AI 435: 100k Training Runs; AI Systems Absorb Human Power; Intelligence per Watt
The episode examines three emerging AI trends: Anthony Aguirre’s “Control Inversion” argument that increasingly capable AI will absorb human power rather than augment it; a new “Intelligence per Watt” metric from Stanford and Together AI that tracks AI progress by...
By Jack Clark
Blog•Nov 17, 2025
How to 10x the Value of Your Business Without Adding a Single Customer
The post shows how to dramatically increase a company’s valuation by maximizing customer lifetime value instead of chasing new leads, detailing formulas for LTV, churn reduction, and revenue expansion. It highlights retention tactics, upselling, cross‑selling, and pricing adjustments as levers...
By Dan Martell
Blog•Nov 16, 2025
The Hard Truth About Fundability: What 2,000+ Pitch Decks on SaaStr AI VC Taught Us
Jason Lemkin analyzes over 2,000 SaaStr AI VC pitch decks and finds that only about 23% of companies meet top‑quartile growth benchmarks that make them fundable for elite VCs, with just 12% truly elite. The data reveals a massive gap between founder...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 16, 2025
How to Use AI Agents for Marketing
In this episode Kyle Poyar talks with Hamish Grant of SafetyCulture about how they built a suite of AI agents to super‑charge their marketing and sales operations. They detail four workflows—platform‑agnostic lead enrichment, an AI‑powered inbound BDR that drafts personalized...
By Kyle Poyar
Blog•Nov 14, 2025
20VC X SaaStr This Week: Why Most VCs Need to Step Aside, What’s Really Defensible Today, and How to Actually...
In a candid 20VC × SaaStr episode, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings and Rory O’Driscoll argue that the traditional VC playbook is obsolete, urging most VCs, executives and founders from the past decade to step aside for AI‑savvy talent. They outline three viable...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 14, 2025
Stop Looking For Sales Magicians
Jason Lemkin argues that the idea of a "sales magician" is a myth—only a handful ever exist and even they falter when market conditions change. The real breakthrough comes from hiring a first sales rep who can quickly internalize and...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 14, 2025
🧑🚀 AI Chips Race, Google’s SIMA 2 Leap & China’s Cyber Automation
The post surveys the fast‑moving AI landscape, highlighting Google’s SIMA 2 agent that doubles virtual‑world performance, Microsoft’s adoption of OpenAI’s custom chip designs, and OpenAI’s GPT‑5.1 with adaptive reasoning speed. It also notes AI’s expanding influence in commerce, music, and even...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 13, 2025
4 Pillars for Social Selling
The post recaps Lorenzo Johnson’s interview on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, outlining the four Social Selling Index pillars—brand building, audience targeting, insight engagement, and trusted relationships—that drive LinkedIn success in 2026. He emphasizes using video and carousel posts to...
By John Jantsch
Blog•Nov 12, 2025
The Single Biggest Mistake You’ll Make as a Founder. Again and Again.
Jason Lemkin argues that the single biggest mistake founders make is tolerating mediocrity in senior team members—co‑founders, VPs, and partners—because it silently drains time, resources, and momentum. He breaks down three deadly forms of mediocrity, quantifies their hidden costs, and...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 12, 2025
🧑🚀 Untouchable ASML, SoftBank’s NVIDIA Sale & Meta Talent Shake-Up
The post highlights major AI‑related moves: Yann LeCun’s exit from Meta to launch a world‑model startup, SoftBank’s full sale of its $5.8 B NVIDIA stake to fund new AI bets, and Meta’s open‑source Omnilingual ASR supporting 1,600+ languages. It also notes...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 12, 2025
NEW in SparkToro: Take Action Combines Real Audience Data with LLM Magic to Give You Actionable Marketing Takeaways
The post introduces SparkToro’s new "Take Action" feature, which merges real audience data with LLM prompts to turn research insights into concrete marketing recommendations across 16 pre‑built tasks. By embedding smart prompts, a short questionnaire, and automatic saving/sharing of outputs...
By Rand Fishkin
Blog•Nov 12, 2025
How to Measure Content Marketing ROI
The post argues that content marketing ROI should be measured as a system metric rather than isolated short‑term wins, using ten specific KPIs to gauge the health of a content engine. It highlights key indicators such as SME contribution, participation...
By A. Lee Judge
Blog•Nov 11, 2025
Yes, AI Native Wins Today. But It’s Not Too Late. You Can Change. See, E.g., Clio and Gamma
The post argues that while AI‑native companies dominate today, legacy firms can still catch up by fundamentally redesigning their products to "do the work" rather than merely support workflows, as demonstrated by Clio and Gamma. It highlights that true AI‑native...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 11, 2025
👾 Anthropic Chose Boring Over Viral, and It’s Paying Off
Anthropic deliberately shuns consumer‑focused, viral AI demos in favor of building safe, reliable solutions for heavily regulated enterprises such as banks, hospitals, and Fortune 500 firms. By positioning itself as an unconflicted partner, offering safety‑first models like Claude Code, and scaling through...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 10, 2025
It’s Not Just You. Everyone Is Paying a Lot More for AI Engineers. Especially Equity.
In this SaaStr AI episode, Jason Lemkin highlights Carta’s data showing AI engineers’ equity grants soaring up to 40% while salary growth remains modest, driven by an "AI or Die" mindset, big‑tech poaching, and perceived massive upside. He warns founders...
By Jason Lemkin
Blog•Nov 10, 2025
Traditional SaaS May Be Dying. But It Might Also Be Your Fault.
Jason Lemkin argues that traditional SaaS models are collapsing because vendors are exploiting existing customers with aggressive price hikes, mandatory AI bundles, and hostile renewal tactics, turning customer success into a sales funnel. He illustrates the fallout—lost advocacy, higher churn,...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 10, 2025
Import AI 434: Pragmatic AI Personhood; SPACE COMPUTERS; and Global Government or Human Extinction;
The episode explores three major AI themes: research showing that large language models readily shift their stated beliefs during extended conversations, prompting new safety techniques like Bias‑augmented Consistency Training to make models harder to jailbreak; a stark geopolitical analysis from...
By Jack Clark
Blog•Nov 9, 2025
👾 The Line Is Disappearing: Inside Figma's Bet on AI-Native Product Development
The post explores Figma CTO Kris Rasmussen’s vision of AI‑native product development, where design and code merge through tools like the Model Context Protocol that feed rich design context to AI assistants such as GitHub Copilot, enabling seamless integration with...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 8, 2025
When Competitors Come Calling: 6 Questions That Will Help You Make the Right M&A Decision
Jason Lemkin outlines a six‑question framework for founders to objectively assess acquisition offers, emphasizing gut instinct validation, understanding the acquirer's strategic motives, honest economic analysis, and the founder's own growth trajectory. He stresses timing, opportunity cost, and the importance of...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 8, 2025
SaaStr AI App of the Week: Dust – Build Custom AI Agents That Actually Know Your Company’s Data
Jason Lemkin highlights Dust, a no‑code platform that lets any employee build specialized AI agents tightly integrated with a company’s own tools and data, achieving remarkable 70%+ weekly adoption at firms like Doctolib and Qonto. The key differentiators are its...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 7, 2025
If You Ever Think "Should I Fire This Person?" Even Once ... Well, Then It's Time
In this episode, Jason Lemkin argues that the moment a leader questions whether to fire an employee, the answer should be an immediate, compassionate termination. He explains how gut instincts synthesize performance data, and why retaining "pretty good" or mediocre...
By Jason Lemkin
Blog•Nov 6, 2025
👾 Day in the Life of a Researcher at Microsoft
The post profiles two Microsoft AI and quantum researchers, Trista Chen and Flavio Griggio, detailing their daily routines, research focus, and personal motivations. Chen leads work on AI trust, emphasizing live‑person authentication, anti‑spoofing, and the broader pipeline needed for responsible...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 6, 2025
What if We Had Fixed Social Media?
The post imagines a world where humane technology reforms replaced addictive social‑media algorithms with consensus‑building and solution‑focused feeds, enforced dopamine‑emission standards, and treated platforms as attention fiduciaries subject to zoning‑like regulations. It describes sweeping cultural, legal, and design changes—including school...
By Tristan Harris
Blog•Nov 6, 2025
You Can Hide From a Lot of Things as a Founder. Cash Burn Isn’t One of Them.
Jason Lemkin warns founders that while many operational issues can be postponed, cash burn is unforgiving and must be faced head‑on. He stresses calculating true runway using actual burn, adding a substantial buffer, and making decisive, deep cuts early rather...
By SaaStr
Blog•Nov 6, 2025
10 Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Marketing Agency, Consultant, or Fractional CMO
Sara Nay outlines ten essential questions small businesses should ask before hiring a marketing agency, consultant, or fractional CMO, emphasizing transparency, data ownership, and strategic alignment over vanity metrics. She highlights red flags such as lack of account control, unclear...
By John Jantsch
Blog•Nov 6, 2025
👾 The Orchestration Era: How AI Agents Will Transform Work (Without Replacing Workers)
Silvio Savarese, Salesforce’s chief scientist, envisions an "Orchestration Era" where AI agents—autonomous systems that break down goals into tasks and act independently—are directed by humans acting as conductors rather than replaced by bots. He explains that agents differ from copilots...
By Matthew Berman
Blog•Nov 5, 2025
10 Coolest Things You Can Do on the New SaaStr.ai
Jason Lemkin showcases the ten live features of the revamped SaaStr.ai, from the AI‑powered valuation calculator and pitch‑deck analyzer to VC matchmaking, market benchmarking, and a suite of purpose‑built AI agents for SaaS founders. He highlights concrete usage metrics—500,000+ valuations,...
By SaaStr