Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin

GET funded ➡ $200m FREE PLAYBOOK ➡ CHAT Digital Jason ▶ Founder AdobeSign

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

Boom!! The #1 AI agent for eCommerce

[Romain Lapeyre @Romain_Lapeyre]

We’ve raised over $100M to create AI customer support that doesn’t sound like AI slop.

Introducing Gorgias AI Agent 3.0: the first AI customer support that’s better than any human.

How it works 👇

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

"We asked our AI VP Customer Success live on stage what the odds are our sponsors would renews.

It flagged:

- folks that never logged in
- those that went dark for a while
- the most that complained the most

Better than most humans

Next step? Integrate the human conversations it wasn't part of."

The latest The Agents #006 is out!

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@DanaWojtech @Bloomberg Dana happy to but kinda burnt on spending 30-60 minutes with folks and then seeing it all cut or 1 random sentence in an article :)

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

New!! "The Agents #011: From 0 to 20 Agents and Back Again, Are Agents Finally Consolidating?"

https://t.co/dnDM33KmZ7

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@zachcoelius Yes our AI VC could do this today with a hour of work. But building something higher value now

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@liav_chen Building any moderately complex features takes 20-60+ minutes or longer.

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

Right now, I’d be good with Opus 4.8 as is, just 10x faster at 50% the cost

Nice evals are great, but 10x faster would also really help

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@cameronlevy % annnual upfront

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

"Make sure every month you collect at least 100% of your MRR. Ideally, 110%.

If it falls below 100%, you have a process failure in finance.

And your runway may be far shorter than you expect."

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@rhanley Yeah for sure. When it clicks, it really should … click. But the advice is misconstrued constantly these days to just Quit in the age of AI.

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

Not saying Mark is wrong — he’s right — but I still hate this advice

Too many founders in B2B including myself have had big outcomes by pushing that rock up the hill for years and years until it finally really clicks

Too much of this advice -> quitting which works for some but man

[sourcery @sourceryy]

.@markpinc's best advice for founders: life is too short to struggle:

"From a product standpoint, when something works, everything works."

"It's not this feeling of pushing a rock up a hill."

"It's not this feeling of, 'Ugh, this is really hard.'"

"You're better off not struggling, but spending 10 years trying to get to your lightning in a bottle, and then have it just all work magically, than 10 years pushing up a rock up a hill."

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@Kellblog I’m not sure today with LLMs and analytics you can do in Databricks, etc. you need a Domo

I could be wrong

We don’t need any third party analytics ourselves anymore

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@bksun @Etched Epic

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

"After 5+ years of trying to move off our marketing automation solution, we finally got the bulk of it done with an LLM Lift.

That part took about $14, and took about an hour."

The latest on The Agents #010!!

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

Replit lowers many prices by 30%-50%

Love these guys

(Meanwhile, Marketo adds no new features in 10 years and raises prices again 12% this year. Goodbye!)

[Replit ⠕ @Replit]

Your apps get the new rates automatically, which match or beat industry benchmarks.

Pricing updates take effect for all users from your next monthly term. Check it out.

https://t.co/Yb1YFCYqNW

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

The reality: LLMs goal seek, so AI agents goal seek

That makes them extremely powerful. It also makes them almost inherently a security risk in many applications.

The vendors you buy, and partner with, protect you from that. It's a real part of what you pay for.

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@jamescham You really have to give the YT algorithm >exactly< what it wants or you disappear instantly

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@Jason @dhh @AlexHonnold Can you still stay competitive?
Can you still recruit?
Is your COGS low?

If so, do it

“Even” a $20m software business can spit out $10m of cash a year if leanly run

Just can you stay competitive

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@dshahh They were certainly off in the desert for quite a while!

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

@CristinCulver @cognition It’s super cool but also I can’t do this kind of stuff anymore

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

We’re back!!

[Harry Stebbings @HarryStebbings]

1.⁠ ⁠Should Chinese open models be banned?
2.⁠ ⁠⁠Will Anthropic and OpenAI hit their targets in 2027?

These are honestly the two biggest questions right now that we discuss in the only show you need to listen to every week with @jasonlk and @rodriscoll

My notes below:

1. Why the 10x Price Cut of Chinese Open Models Is an Enterprise Security Trap

Chinese open models like Kimi and Qwen are driving the search for cheaper intelligence. A 10x cost cut has pushed regulated enterprises to run more error-catching supervisor models, increasing token usage by 2.5x. But it also creates unprovable data export and leakage risks, leaving CIOs with a painful tradeoff between cost and security.

2. Why the Low-Cost, Open-Weight LLM Layer Is a Brutal Margin Trap for US Startups

Massive valuations for Chinese open-weight models raise a hard question: is low-cost AI a good standalone business? US giants have left a vacuum for much cheaper intelligence, but much of the advantage comes from distillation, which faces legal hurdles in the US. That leaves providers exposed to brutal margin compression.

3. Why Turning Down a $6BN Acquisition Offer Is a Sucker Bet for Most Founders

OpenRouter leaking sale talks at a $5 billion to $6 billion valuation is savvy as Ramp, Databricks, and others launch competing routing features. Private liquidity windows are rare, and exiting before a feature becomes commoditized is often optimal. Turning down life-changing cash only makes sense if a founder is certain they can build a 10x larger company.

4. Why Hypergrowth Inference Providers Must Vertically Integrate to Survive the CapEx Wars

Fireworks hitting a $17.5 billion valuation shows the best AI investments are still in infrastructure. Massive developer demand has turned low-margin compute brokering into a strong business with mid-30s gross margins. To avoid commodification, hypergrowth inference providers must vertically integrate into their own data centers.

5. Why the Entire US Stock Market Is Held Hostage by the 2026 AI Growth Rate

The tech ecosystem and hyperscaler CapEx trajectory depend on OpenAI and Anthropic’s growth rates into 2026. Frontier models face pricing pressure from cheap open-weight alternatives but remain trapped by real inference costs and massive training investments. If growth slows or forced price cuts erode margins, the market dislocation could be severe.

6. Why Stripe Swallowing PayPal Is a High-Stakes Bet on Legacy Tech Rationalization

Stripe partnering with Advent to take PayPal private would show how attractive late-stage scale has become for capital deployment. While absorbing a legacy giant growing at 7% could slow Stripe’s standalone growth, it would instantly expand its processing footprint. The deal would mark a historic passing of the torch from legacy payments to the modern upstart.

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

"The burn rate just runs away from so many founders. Even when they think they are being stingy.

And you just can't run the tank down to empty. You really can only burn 60%-70% before you have to raise again.

If nothing else, know your Zero Cash Date exactly. In real-time. Don't get this wrong."