The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 42 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Lemkin: Fireside chats and speakers are dead at tech conferences
“So I'll have to see, but we won't do, we'll never do Unless I'm forced to, I mean, if, you know, I do it for Sam Altman, but otherwise I'm not gonna do, there's, the firesides are dead and speakers are dead. There's just no point when podcasts are better.”
Lemkin: AI Agents Replaced Almost All SaaStr Sales and Content Teams
“I Vibe Coded eight apps in a hundred days, and we have 12 AI agents working at Sastra now. Replaced all, almost all of our sales team and our whole content team.”
Lemkin: SaaStr will never again invest in 'pretty good' founders
“I have changed my mind that there is any chance on planet Earth, any chance That a pretty good founder can produce good venture returns. I will never again invest. I only invest in founders that are much better than me. I will never invest in pretty good found…”
Lemkin rejected a 10-figure secondary offer for his SaaStr fund holdings
“I recently had a conversation with one of my LPs last week about a secondary offer. You know, that was 10 figures, a 10 figure secondary offer, ok? And we both agreed no was the answer.”
Lemkin: Under 30% of startup executives are genuinely AI fluent
“Even of the best startups I've invested in, maybe 30% of the management team meets the standard at best. 30%, maybe less. And of the interviews I do in general, it's single digit percents.”
Lemkin: SaaStr team shrank to two while generating eight-figure revenue
“We have gone from 12 people to two people on my little team. Okay. That not only does investment, it generates eight figures a year in revenue, okay?”
Lemkin: SaaStr Will Generate $20 Million in Revenue With Two Employees
“If we're lucky, Saster Inc. Will do twenty million this calendar year with two people. Two people, and depending on how you count them, like two, two, two employees.”
Lemkin: SaaStr eliminated five jobs in 90 days due to AI
“Literally, we, even at Sastra, we've gotten rid of five people in our team in the last 90 days due to AI.”
Lemkin: 93% of B2B sales professionals admit lying to win deals
“I asked 2000 folks in SASTR how many folks lie in deals to win deals? 97, 93% said they lied over 2000 to win deals. If you're lying, if 93% of 2000 B to B folks are lying to win deals, lying about features, lying about feature gaps, okay.”
Lemkin wrote off all non-performing investments in latest LP report
“So I took every write off in my last LP report. There was, I just wrote it off to the max. Anything that wasn't good for my first time, I just wrote it. I just, I aggressively put the red pen or whatever to it.”
Lemkin: SaaStr Will Return to 'Stair-Stepping' Investments Needing 3x Markups
“And that's what I'm going to get back to, right? A stair stepping deals, just stair stepping them, right? Twenty million post fine, but I got to know it's going to be 60.”
Lemkin: Every successful venture investment came from inbound emails
“I only invest from inbound Saster super fans. Every deal I've tried to go out and get, I've failed. I do nothing outbound. Every warm referral doesn't work out. Nothing works out except the high velocity inbound email.”
Lemkin: All core portfolio positions maintain double-digit ownership
“When I look over my eight year history of investing, it's the ones with the double digit ownership that moved the needle. And for better or worse, when I've had my own fund, when I look at what the companies I'm sitting on today, obviously you regret ones you …”
Lemkin: Solo GPs are more conservative than partners at multi-partner VC firms
“The learning is when you're on your own in a solo GP fund, you're actually, you're more conservative. I say no to deals that I would have done in another firm, and I'm not remotely convinced that's the right decision.”
Lemkin: SaaStr spends $254 monthly on two full-time autonomous AI agents
“Two of them full-time, two full-time human equivalents, 254 dollars a month.”
Lemkin: SaaStr's 10 AI agents generate millions in revenue
“Our 10 agents at Saster generate millions of revenue, but they buy nothing.”
Lemkin: SaaStr now runs 12 AI agents, outnumbering its human staff
“We essentially have 12 AI agents running now at Sastra more than humans. Okay. And we have five sort of SDR BDRs running.”
Lemkin: SaaStr's AI SDR Booked Three Six-Figure Meetings in Two Days
“As I said, our AI BDR, we deployed this week, it set up three meetings in the last two days for six figure sponsorships.”
Lemkin: Valuation does not matter if target ownership percentage is secured
“Within a range, I simply don't care about valuation. I want to have a fair valuation where I can hit the ownership target, and I don't care.”
Jason Lemkin gets 100% of his deal flow from SaaStr
“I've learned that the blog and the Saster community is all of my deal flow. It's a hundred percent of it, but it's 10 times bigger than it was two and a half years ago.”
Lemkin: Every SaaStr investment must have $700M valuation potential
“So if you kind of back into that math with a little dilution, that means every single time that we invest, I have to believe the company will be worth at least seven hundred million dollars.”
Lemkin: SaaStr will switch from Brex to Ramp if Ramp's AI agents win
“Certainly we're going to rebuild our financial stack after Sastra annual and we will move from Brex to ramp if it is the most agent friendly and automating procurement is a huge bonus.”
Lemkin: SaaStr will not switch internal AI apps from Claude to OpenAI
“It runs on Sonnet three. I mean sorry, four, seven, and maybe a little bit of Opus. There is no way we're going to switch the model. This is dialed in. It works. Now we're going to have to deal with QA when it goes to four, eight and five. There's a little bit…”
Lemkin: SaaStr will generate around $25 million in revenue in 2024
“This will be our first crappy year, but like twenty five million.”
Lemkin: SaaStr lost $10 million when COVID cancelled 2020 event
“We did lose ten million dollars in March, 20 20. We were the first major event shut down by COVID. RSA got done and then San Jose shut us down. When there was one case off the coast. So we lost in those ten million.”
Lemkin: Usually only one investor will step up to catalyze a round
“What I have seen in my, especially the last 24 months, but across my whole career of investing for 11 years, is there's usually only one investor that will stand up for you.”
SaaStr generated approximately $27 million in revenue in 2023
“Like twenty seven million the year before.”
Lemkin: VP Candidates Frequently Do Not Know Their Startup's Operational Metrics
“I can't tell you how many VPs I interview all the time from my own portfolio companies, like ethical founders. And I asked them, well, what do you think of the metrics? They don't know them.”
Jason Lemkin limits founder pitch meetings to one per week
“And I have, I only actually, I'll read a 50 emails a week, but I only want to do one pitch a week. I only, if I can, that's my dream. And I find when I do two, three or four, the other three aren't worth it.”
Lemkin: SaaStr took two portfolio markdowns after valuation review
“And I took two markdowns, right? From this process, but not 20.”
Lemkin: Not building a large team at SaaStr was my biggest mistake
“I think my biggest mistake, and you're not making it, Harry I think the biggest mistake I've made, and this is just me, because, again, everyone's different. This is the complicated thing about ventures. Everyone has different strengths and sweetnesses. I thin…”
Lemkin: SaaStr lost $10M canceling its 2020 annual conference the night before
“Going back in time in March, 2020, when we had to cancel Saster Annual the night before, we lost ten million dollars, ok?”
Lemkin: SaaStr Will Generate $40 Million in Revenue in 2022
“So Sastro Inc. Will do forty million this year.”
Lemkin: SaaStr spends $2k monthly on tokens across 21 AI agents
“At SAS for itself, Amelia and I have, now we have 21 agents of which three are autonomous, okay? And The direct token costs that we spend, the direct AI altogether for both of us is about two grand a month.”
Jason Lemkin: SaaStr overall traffic grew 50% while SEO traffic dropped 8%
“I get about five million to our blog, ok? About five million views a year from SEO, ok? Our traffic is up 50% this year, and our SEO is down eight percent.”
Lemkin: SaaStr Requires $8M Annually in Sponsorships to Keep Lights On
“We have, you know, we have to close eight million of sponsors at Saster a year to keep the lights on.”
Blond: Brex Hired TaskRabbits to Hand Out $4 SaaStr Breakfast Burritos
“We show up, we had task rabbits outside of the event in Brex t-shirts handing out Brexfist burritos to every single person that walked in the venue. So the first experience that they have at Sastra is they get a Brex burrito on when they walk in. Four bucks a …”
Lemkin: Money20/20 and Shoptalk each generate over $100M revenue
“The two things that are closest to Saster are money, 20, 20 and shop talk and e-commerce and they're both over a hundred million.”
Lemkin: SaaStr manages a $70M fund targeting 10-15% ownership
“So we have a seventy million dollar fund. We try to buy ownership stakes in the 10 to 15% range, sometimes a little higher.”