Jason Lemkin
Founder & CEO, SaaStr. On 5 shows, 242 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderinvestorexecutivehostauthor@jasonlk ↗LinkedIn ↗saastr.com ↗
Jason Lemkin is the founder and CEO of SaaStr. He previously co-founded EchoSign, serving as CEO until its acquisition by Adobe, and now invests in early-stage SaaS companies through the SaaStr Fund.
5shows
242appearances
3,111statements
644resolved
356supported
105contradicted
55%fully supported
568said about them ↓ Everything Jason Lemkin said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Lemkin: AI will replace half of knowledge workers in 24 months
“Half of these knowledge workers are going to be gone in 24 months”
Every crypto company offering an Earn program is a fraud
“I believe every crypto company that has an EARN program is a fraud.”
Lemkin: Coinbase's 10% high-yield crypto program is a pyramid scheme
“And even, I know Coinbase is the good one, but where are they getting this 10%? It's a pyramid scheme. It's fraud.”
Lemkin: Every venture capital firm has a fraudulent company in its portfolio
“And every VC has a fraud in their portfolio. Every single VC has a fraud in their portfolio.”
Lemkin: Do not hire people who complain about burnout
“Lazy people always say they're burnt out... But the people that complain about burnout, I think deserve a scarlet L burned into their forehead and don't hire them.”
SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI IPOs will exceed all past tech IPOs combined
“We're going to see three trillion dollar plus IPOs over the coming months. It's never happened before. The value of SpaceX plus Anthropic plus OpenAI will be more than all the other tech IPOs combined ever.”
Lemkin: Will only invest in startups working in-office six days weekly
“I want small high paid teams that work in the office over six days a week. That's I'm not interested in investing in anything else. I'm just not interested. And it's not because I don't have empathy. It's because they're gonna fail.”
Lemkin: Four Upcoming Tech Mega-IPOs Will Eclipse All IPOs Since 2000
“SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, we'll add in Databricks, we'll have Arsan, one of the co-founders here in about half an hour after this. That's going to create more market value, more value, and more wealth than every other IPO since 2000.”
Lemkin: A $100B Startup Acquisition Will Occur in the Next 12 Months
“I bet there'll be a hundred billion dollar startup acquired in the next 12 months.”
Lemkin: Anthropic Will Reach $50B in Revenue in Four Years
“Anthropics revenue is like nothing we've ever seen. Okay. It'll be at fifty billion in less than four years or four years plus or minus.”
Lemkin: SpaceX market valuation will triple in 2026 driven by retail investors
“I'm going to take this bet that it's going to trade up three X, In twenty-twenty-six, just based on GameStoppers driving it up.”
Lemkin: Fire employees who brag about team size on LinkedIn
“Anyone on LinkedIn that talks about their team, fire them. My team this. They're all so precious about their team. Lead from the effin' front with AI.”
Lemkin: A $100 billion startup exit will happen within a year
“The big exits will solve it, right? The whizzes and the, I mean, we thought whizz was big. Now we have cursor. Now I'm going to win the bet of a hundred billion dollar exit in the next year.”
Jason Lemkin: SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic combined IPO values will top past 20 years
“The big three, SpaceX plus OpenAI plus Anthropic, their value at IPO will exceed every other IPO for the last 20 years combined.”
Lemkin: Nvidia will reach $10 trillion cumulative bookings in 5-7 years
“I think there's a high degree of confidence that most of the roads lead back to Nvidia reaching 10 trillion of cumulative, cumulative bookings over the next five to seven years.”
Lemkin: Non-engineering software categories face existential seat shrinking
“Every category that I know of outside of engineering and product is at existential risk of shrinking seats.”
Lemkin: Governments should guarantee 0% financing for AI data centers
“We have to guarantee zero percent financing for all data centers. We'll get all our money back.”
Lemkin: 1.2 humans and 20 AI agents match 10 human GTM reps
“At the end of the day, on 1.2 humans is plus 20 AI agents is doing about what 10 human GTMs is.”
Lemkin: 900 late-stage unicorn startups generating nine-figure revenues will never go public
“And then we've got 900 unicorns that are never going to IPO. Poor guys. We have nine, we all have one or two in our portfolio that are at nine figures in revenue that are still growing and will never IPO. And there is no PE buyer for them.”
Lemkin: Fire half your team if AI hasn't reaccelerated growth
“If you haven't gotten a boost this year from AI, fire half your team right before the holidays, give them a turkey and three months of severance, but they failed. You have a, your team is not good enough. They had 18 months to ship a product that mattered in t…”
Lemkin: A Top VC Firm Will Give Sam Bankman-Fried $100M
“I don't think Rory or I would, I'll defer to Rory, but I think someone will fund him. He's smart as Rory, Rory said, like he showed the upside as well as the downside. I don't know if there's a lot of morality in the business. I think someone will give them ju…”
Lemkin Advises CEOs to Mandate RTO and Fire Non-S-Tier Engineers
“The only advice I gave to this particular CEO is immediate, like he was hybrid. So I said to force a hundred percent of people returned to office in 30 days and let everyone go, except your S tier engineers, letting them all go. Because you don't need them.”
Lemkin: AI will replace half of sales and customer success teams
“Half of these sales teams will be gone in two years. Half of these sales and customer success teams will be gone in two years because they're mediocre. They'll be gone. They're all going to be laid off.”
Lemkin: B2B SaaS CEOs should be embarrassed to conduct layoffs
“If you're a great SAS CEO, you should never have a RIF. It's called recurring revenue. You should have the ability to, I get it in B to C or D to C or X and Y and Z to C. I don't think good SAS CEO should, I think it's an utter failing to ever have a RIF unles…”
The other half of the tape: Jason Lemkin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 535 times in 261 episodes across the shows. 33 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 245Sam Blond 39Eran Zinman 15Nathan Latka 12Nick Mehta 7Andy Wilson 7Ivan Mazour 6Brendon Cassidy 6
Statements about Jason Lemkin, by other people (33)
Hunter Walk: Early-stage investors must back misunderstood companies
“So I'd say Lemkin is totally correct when you're playing in a space where the goalposts are well documented. But I think as an early stage investor, you also need to be willing to back companies that are going to be misunderstood for a long period of time and …”
The SaaStr Community Will Drive Significant Deal Flow for Jason Lemkin
“SASTR to me is a great example of that because the community he built, that's just really hard to replicate, and it will deliver a significant amount of deal flow to him”
Algolia Delayed Post-YC Series A to Take Small Investment From Jason Lemkin
“And so we finally decided not to raise any series A after weight combinator, but to take the risk to just raise a very small round to onboard new investors that we thought could provide a lot of value. That's when Jason Lemkin joined, joined us as an investor.”
SaaStr built its AI agent over five months of daily work
“We've been building with Tenk literally every day between myself and Jason for the last five months, and so it might take you some time after this session, if you leave with a basic one, to build it to the full feature and functionality that we have at Saster.”
Lerutte: Most users who query Jason Lemkin's Delphi AI become repeat users
“When we looked at the data, most people come back to it. So they'll actually ask Jason's AI a question.”
Owner.com's growth bottleneck is customer onboarding, not demand generation
“Owner.com. Jason introduced me to the company. Jason's an investor. Their bottleneck is implementation. They have a lot of demand. They have a lot of customers that are signing up. And right now it's just taking too long to onboard those folks that are raising…”
Adobe Document Services ARR Doubled From $50M to $100M in 2012–2013
“He oversaw the growth of Adobe Document Services ARR from fifty million dollars in 2012 to a staggering one hundred million dollars in 2013.”
Altshuler: Sales Hacker took a profit share for producing SaaStr Annual
“We took a percentage of profits of all profits for Saster because we managed the entire event.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 324
the Official SaaStr Podcast 131
Top Founders 75
Lenny's Podcast 4
My First Million 1
2026 92 mentions in 30 episodes 3 per episode
- Aaron Levie: Everyone is Wrong; We'll Have More Developers in 5 Years · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- a16z, Anish Acharya: Is SaaS Dead? Do Margins Still Matter? Why We Are Not in an AI Bubble? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- The Agents #011 - From 0 to 20 Agents and Back Again, Are Agents Finally Consolidating?
- Replit CEO: Why the SaaS Apocalypse is Justified & Why Coding Models are Plateauing | Amjad Masad · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Monday.com CEO on Is SaaS Dead: Will Everything Be Vibe Coded | Eran Zinman · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- ElevenLabs: Building an AI Sales Machine & Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- How to Build Your Own AI VP of Marketing Step-by-Step
- This is why I don't believe in sales quotas | Figma CRO · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 22 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 59 mentions in 26 episodes 2 per episode
- BVP Partner, Byron Deeter: The Future of Venture - Why Chanel vs Walmart is BS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Eran Zinman, Co-Founder & Co-CEO @Monday.com: Going Upmarket, International and Multi-Product |E1247 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20Sales: How the Best Sales Teams Use AI to Win Enterprise Deals | Sales Teams Will Be Dramatically Smaller | How to Ramps Sales Reps Way Faster | Why Unpaid Design Partners are BS | Why this Generation of Sales is Soft with Ishan Mukherjee @ Rox
- 5 Ways AI Has Already Changed B2B Sales Forever with Perplexity's CBO Dmitry Shevelenko
- 20Sales: From $2M ARR to $40M ARR: The Playbook | How to Use AI To Supercharge Your Sales Team | Why Pipeline Reviews are BS | The Sales Call Script that Closes 99% of Prospects and How to Hire the Best Sales Reps with Kyle Norton, CRO @ Owner
- Lovable CEO, Anton Osika: The State of Foundation Models, Grok vs OpenAI, and Replit vs Bolt · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko
- Why Only “WTF” Products Can Survive Today with Brett Queener Partner at Bonfire Ventures
- 18 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 51 mentions in 26 episodes 2 per episode
- Adam Gross: Why Startups Doing Paid Under $100M ARR are not PLG | E1145 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Sam Blond: Why Startups are Doing Outbound Wrong and How to Fix It | E1139 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Ed Sim & Jamin Ball: Did Figma Kill M&A Markets & 3 Requirements to IPO in 2024 | E1101 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Ara Mahdessian: ServiceTitan Would Not Be the Success if We Raised VC Earlier | E1175 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Deep Dive: Easy Sales Concepts So Many Get Wrong with Sam Blond
- Brendon Cassidy: Why You Should Never Hire Someone You Do Not Know in Your First Five Hires | E1124 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- David Frankel, MP @Founder Collective: Investing Lessons from Seeding Coupang, Pillpack & Suno|E1214 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- David Schneider: Why the Worst VCs are "Seagull VCs" & VC Value Add - Is it Real? | E1200 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 18 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 62 mentions in 32 episodes 2 per episode
- CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment and Hiring Managers With Ben Braverman
- CRO Confidential: 3 Secrets For Early-Stage Startups To Acquire Customers | CoSell.io Co-Founder
- Nick Mehta, CEO Gainsight: My Top 10 Failures as a SaaS CEO & What I've Learned
- Nikhil Basu Trivedi: Why 99% of AI Investments Will Go Bust | E1057 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- How to Grow Revenue Faster in the Second Half of 2023 with Founders Fund
- How To Boost Your Net Retention Revenue (NRR) to Over 140% with Insider's CEO and CMO
- From Uncertainty to +$400M: How Braze Found Opportunity in Headwinds with Braze Co-Founder & CEO
- How The Biggest Product-Led Enterprise Company In The World Did It | Atlassian CRO Cameron Deatsch
- 24 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 33 mentions in 24 episodes 1 per episode
- Big Numbers from Small Customers: How DigitalOcean Accelerated at Scale | DigitalOcean SVP, Revenue
- Balancing Growth and Efficiency in Tougher Times | Point Nine Managing Partner Christoph Janz
- Maggie Hott: 3 Questions You Must Ask When Interviewing Sales Reps | 20VC #960 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Scaling From $10M-$100M ARR: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with Showpad Co-Founder Pieterjan Bouten
- 5 Scale-Up Mistakes for Startups with Dave Kellogg | SaaStr Software Community
- Oliver Jay: How To Create and Execute a World-Class Sales Playbook | 20VC #889 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- How to Set and Hit Revenue Targets with Sam Blond, CRO at Brex | SaaStr Software Community
- 20VC Special: How To Fundraise Like a Pro: How to Size and Price a Round, How to Create FOMO and Urgency in a Fundraise, How to Structure Angel Allocations, The 7 Deadly Sins of Fundraising Decks, The 3 Signs a Potential Investor is Bad News
- 16 more episodes that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 17 mentions in 14 episodes 1 per episode
- Shifting to the Next Gear: Proven Strategies to Accelerate Growth with Intercom CEO Karen Peacock
- Nick Mehta, CEO Gainsight: 10 Things That Are Changing Now in Customer Success | SaaStr 2021
- 20VC: The Twilio Memo: Bessemer's Byron Deeter on How a $125K Initial Check Became Bessemer's Largest Position, What The Influx of Late-Stage Capital Means For Venture Today & Why The Incumbent Advantage Is Now An Incumbent Disadvantage
- Adding Outbound Sales & Marketing to a Product-Led Growth Engine Freshworks, Twilio, 1Password, Coda
- 20VC: The Contentful Memo: Point Nine's Christoph Janz on The Cold Email That Led to a Unicorn Investment, How To Approach Market Sizing and Timing & The Pros and Cons of Pre-Emptive Rounds, When To Do Them vs When Not To?
- The Most Common SaaS Sales Potholes and How to Avoid Them with Mark Roberge, HubSpot's ex-CRO
- Beyond Product-led Growth: 7 Lessons Learned in Product-Led Scaling with Dropbox GM Rachel Wolan
- State of the Cloud 2021 with Bessemer Venture Partners | SaaStr Software Community
- 6 more episodes that year, every mention in 2021 →
2020 17 mentions in 8 episodes 2 per episode
- Lessons from Logikcull: $0 to $10M in 19 Months: The How, When & Why + 10 Mistakes Along the Way
- Founder Confidential: The Top Things No One Really Tells You About Scaling
- 20VC: Upfront's Mark Suster on COVID Redefining What A Great Company Looks Like and What Valuations Look Like, Why Pay-To-Play Is Back On The Table & Why We Will See The Death of Party Rounds
- Lift-Ai Spins Out of $10m Agency, Goes $0 to $1m Run Rate in 4 Months Bootstrapped
- Starred Looking to Raise $4m Series A for HR Tech
- LivingSecurity.com: Guess What Multiple They're Raising $5m Series A At
- 1762 How Convertri Used Affiliates To Hit $1m ARR, $700k Profit
- 1629 Will a Rebrand Help this $500k MRR Company Break 30% YoY Growth?
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 18 mentions in 11 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: The Transition From Founder To CEO, How To Determine When To Stretch On Price in Venture & The Benefits of Attribution for Partnership Dynamics with Jeff Richards, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
- "Land, Expand, Explode: How to Win the Long-Game in SaaS" Egnyte Co-Founder Rajesh Ram
- How to Build a CSM Team that Generates 130% Net Retention with Talkdesk
- 20VC: The 3 Stages of Denial For Founders When Scaling, Why You Will Likely Be Unable To Hire Through Your Network & The Interview Question All Founders Must Ask with Olof Mathé, Founder & CEO @ Mixmax
- 1594 The Main Reason He Took $1.5m Government Loan at 4% Instead of VC
- 1471 How to Use a $750K "Affiliate Launch Model" To Juice Your SaaS Offering
- Lessons from Gorgias: How to Close your First 1000 Customers Based Solely on Data
- How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2019 →
2018 17 mentions in 13 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook on The Commonalities of The Truly Great CEOs, How To Hire The Very Best Execs, Why Cash is A Defensible Moat Today & The Pros and Cons of M&A and IPOs
- 1083 How she 2x ARR yoy in mobile testing space to $6m in ARR
- 20VC: Why Follow-On Investments Are Always A Better Investment, Why Spray and Pray Investing Is Like The Stock Market & Why Startups Need A Board From Day One with Jerry Neumann
- 20VC: Why Founders Should Not Always Be Raising, How To Build Relationships with VCs In A Condensed Timeframe, Why The Founder To VC Relationship Is Not Like A Marriage with Dave Vasen, Founder & CEO @ Brightwheel
- 1205 The Art of Your First $3k in ARR with Ukrainian CEO Vladimir Polo
- 1202 He Raised $20m+ in First Company, Now Bootstrapping in B2B Sales Tech Space, $1m in ARR
- 1182 Supercharged Mailchimp for Ecommerce passes $2m in ARR, Bootstrapped
- Fireside Chat with CEO and Founder of Front, Mathilde Collin
- 5 more episodes that year, every mention in 2018 →
2017 58 mentions in 35 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: DFJ's Josh Stein on Why VCs Must Adapt To Their Founders, The Major Transition Points For Aaron Levie @ Box & Why SaaS Startups Are Growing At A Rate Never Seen Before
- 693: How to 3x SaaS Revenue in 8 Months from $25k to $85k
- 867 SaaS: 80% yoy Growth, Badger Maps Passes $180k MRR
- 20VC: Evernote CEO on Why You Play For The Front of Your Jersey Not The Back, Why Success Is A Team Sport & Why Leadership Should Accept The Negative Consequences In All Situations
- 878 SaaS: Bootstrapped and $10m+ in ARR Founder Rides Mechanical Bull To Lock Down Demos
- 20VC: Why VCs Fundamentally Assess Founders The Wrong Way, Why VC Needs To Innovate On The Scouting Model & Why SAFE's and Convertible Notes Are The Future Of Investing with Elizabeth Yin, Founder & General Partner @ Hustle Fund
- The Secrets of Net Negative Churn: Customer Advocacy
- Leo Widrich of Buffer: Top 10 Learnings Going to 10 Million
- 27 more episodes that year, every mention in 2017 →
2016 111 mentions in 42 episodes 3 per episode
- EP 516: SalesHacker $2.5m 2015 Revenue Helping Sales Reps Get Smarter with CEO Max Altshculer
- 20VC: Fundraising Is Also Business Development with Nicolas Dessaigne, Co-Founder & CEO @ Algolia
- 20 VC FF 029: VC vs Angel Funding & The Future of E-Commerce with Ivan Mazour, Founder @ Ometria
- 20VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
- 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
- EP 449: SMB SaaS <3% Churn, $5M Raised, $200k MRR Helping SMB's Manage Relationships with Hatchbuck CEO Don Breckenridge
- EP 357: He Quit His Job, Lost His Life Savings, Then Hit it Big With SaaS Business
- 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel
- 34 more episodes that year, every mention in 2016 →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jason's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & CEO, SaaStr | 88 | 1,605 | 51% 187/365 | full record on 20VC → |
| SAASTRLEDGER | Founder & CEO, SaaStrhost | 150 | 1,353 | 62% 161/261 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Founder & CEO, SaaStr | 2 | 103 | 40% 4/10 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
| MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Founder & CEO, SaaStr | 1 | 29 | 43% 3/7 | full record on My First Million → |
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & CEO, SaaStr | 1 | 21 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Top Founders → |