Lemkin: Modern CMOs should run marketing campaigns directly using AI agents
Jason Lemkin · Anthropic's Raise & What It Means for Potential IPO? Mag7: Google & Amazon Up, Meta & Microsoft Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 7, 2026 · at 1:32:07
Jason Lemkin, SaaS investor and founder of SaaStr, argues that AI enables executive leaders to execute campaigns directly without managing layers of headcount.
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“A CMO today should be able to run their own campaigns, and this is why. I'm not saying you have to spin up Marketo or HubSpot. I'm saying you should be able to tell your agent, and our agent, our AIVP marketing started running its own campaigns the last two weeks, and it's better, and so, You don't even need to know exactly how that works, but the CMO should be able to interact with the agent and say, let's talk about the three best campaigns we should run to support, scale, whatever, and run it themselves now, because you don't need a team to do it.”
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