Jason Lemkin

“Great AI marketing tools and AI SDRs are still in early stages with significant room for development and market capture.”

“It may be too late to build the next ChatGPT on the cheap, but for most business opportunities, it is not too late.”

“Building your own AI tools can be more fun and rewarding than just buying existing tools.”

“We are heading towards a future where AI agents handle various business functions, and hands-on experience with these tools now provides practical insights into how to navigate that future.”

“We are still very early in AI adoption, particularly for AI marketing tools and AI SDRs, and these markets have not yet hardened.”

“Great AI marketing tools and AI SDRs are still in early stages with significant room for development and market capture.”

“A sales executive he knew experienced significant job instability, cycling through roles at 100k, 800k, 200k salary levels before leaving the industry entirely to return to school.”

“A sales executive he knows experienced significant income volatility, ranging from $100k to $800k to $200k positions, and eventually couldn't find employment and returned to school.”

“The best approach to reading sales and GTM books is to extract two or three valuable ideas from them rather than follow them as complete playbooks.”

“Marketing adoption of AI tools is slower than sales adoption.”

“There is a SEO issue preventing the migration of the domain from the current setup, so the naming structure cannot be easily changed.”

“SaaStr has built tools including a valuation calculator and an AI VC, which are available at saastr.ai for community members to test and provide feedback on.”

“Reeve is an imaging app built with proprietary image LLMs that enables marketers to create great images through prompts.”

“I use Reeve every single day for GTM-related tasks.”

“Pluribus agents can share data together, enabling better collaboration across the platform.”

“A video about Mailchimp's founder discussing how a billion-dollar deal almost fell apart and challenging conventional B2B metrics like CLTV and CAC is valuable educational content despite having only 23,000 views.”

“A conversation between Matt Plank (CRO of Rippling) and Sam Blonde (former CCO of Brex) about Rippling's growth is valuable because they worked together and bring authentic, learner-focused perspectives rather than purely promotional ones.”

“I use Reeve every single day for GTM-related tasks.”

“Pluribus agents can share data together, enabling better collaboration across the platform.”

“I recommend Reeve as a valuable GTM tool for creating marketing images with AI.”

“Elena Vernon, head of growth at Lovable, reported that all the playbooks she used over twenty years in growth no longer work at any current companies.”

“Sales and GTM playbooks don't work as well as individual plays, and many GTM books focus on playbooks rather than adaptable plays.”

“The best approach to GTM and sales books is to extract 2-3 specific plays rather than adopting entire playbooks wholesale.”

“Most current GTM and sales books are too backwards-looking, and better books on this topic are needed in 2026.”

“GTM playbooks are not working as well as they used to because the current business landscape, particularly regarding AI, has changed significantly.”

“It's now possible to build things without being able to code using modern AI tools.”

“Building with AI tools is much easier when replicating existing solutions, but truly novel products remain just as difficult to build.”

“AI agents can now debate with each other to arrive at correct answers on the first attempt, enabling non-coders to build functional applications without coding knowledge.”

“AI tools are highly productive because they have been trained on virtually all open source code available.”

“Claude v2 showed improvement in reducing hallucinations compared to earlier versions.”

“It may be too late to build the next ChatGPT on the cheap, but for most business opportunities, it is not too late.”

“The best startup you will ever work at is probably the one you are working at today.”

“Founders should not quit their current startup if they have happy customers, as those customers will buy more from them.”

“It is often easier to return an existing company to $10 million in revenue with 100-200 happy customers than to start from scratch, even in the age of AI.”

“Approximately 800 out of 1,000 unicorns born in 2021 are growing slowly and may never IPO or achieve a meaningful exit.”

“Building your own AI tools can be more fun and rewarding than just buying existing tools.”

“Jason had a third conversation with a founder who crossed $100 million in revenue and wanted to leave to start a robotics company after ten years.”

“After waiting ten years to build tools for the SaaStr community, the goal is now to build approximately twenty tools.”

“If you're not feeling excited or tired by the current AI opportunities, you're not truly living the AI dream.”

“Entrepreneurs should either commit to working harder and pursuing aggressive growth, or accept slower growth paths with 8-15% annual growth rates.”