Opinion
Lemkin: Jony Ive's $6B AI device valuation is a great bet
“And then, you know, people think this Johnny Ive thing for six billion is crazy. It's a great bet because we're going to go from 20 minutes a day, 22 minutes a day in ChatGPT to 24 hours a day in ChatGPT.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Traditional B2B SaaS interfaces and CRMs are going to die
“And when we're in ChatGPT 24 hours a day, we're not going to like pull up a CRM. We're not going to use the interfaces. Like these interfaces are all Already dying. You can see it, Sam. And then the amount of time you spend in GPT, like then go to like a B to …”
Opinion
Lemkin: AI means software products are no longer durable
“I used to think all these products were durable. That they were durable. Now. I don't think any of them are durable.”
Opinion
Lemkin: Founders without AI clarity should cash out $5M to $10M now
“The smartest play, if you can possibly pull it off today, is to go make five or ten million, cash out, and just chill. Because you can't predict where it's gonna go. Like, this is, the world's gonna, like, whatever you could do to liquidate your assets now, th…”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Lemkin: There will be no BDRs in one year
“There will be no BDRs in a year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Unemployed tech workers rejected jobs under $200k requiring direct individual work
“Enough that I had like a micro connection that had been out of work for six months and I gave them jobs. All of them in the end basically said, I want to make 200 K or more only to do meetings or manage teams. None of them were willing to do any work themselve…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Enterprise AI software will shock users within 24 months
“This is why your jaw is going to drop over the next 24 months, because just mediocre engineers cannot, like the engineers at OpenAI are so good. They're just so good. And so, but the average engineer working at a struggling CRM, right, it's just not that, that…”
Insight
Lemkin: Weighting domain expert content makes AI twins vastly superior to ChatGPT
“So what's interesting is that content's already there, but by weight, by heavily weighting it toward my content for my type of knowledge, it's much, it's not a little bit better than ChatGPT. It's like much better.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jun 2030
Lemkin: OpenAI will be worth one trillion dollars
“OpenAI will be worth a trillion.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Half of sales and marketing teams will be gone in two years
“Half of our sales and marketing teams are going to be gone in two years.”
Opinion
Lemkin: AI clone reviews VC pitch decks better than anything he's seen
“I didn't expect it's so good at reviewing VC pitch decks. It's so good at it better than anything I've seen.”
Insight
Lemkin: Rebuilding AI model context takes only a month of daily use
“So yes, it is a moat, but if you decided Claude was much better for you and you, the point is, and you spent a month just including your day each day, you're probably there. You're not, not a hundred percent. It's enough.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Lemkin: By next year, AI will generate synthetic multi-person video discussions
“Next year, it will be me and Yamini talking for 10 minutes about AI, and neither of us will have had the conversation.”
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Anthropic grew from $1B to $3B in revenue in five months
“Anthropic went from one to three billion in revenue in five months. They just announced one to three billion in revenue in five months. Okay. And that is basically all infrastructure plumbing revenue.”
Opinion
Lemkin: Intense AI competition is slaughtering lifestyle software businesses
“In the age of AI, when there's so much competition, you can build a two or three person company that's small, but the lifestyle businesses are being slaughtered. Because when these three kids come to SF working in the mission, and they're working eight days a …”
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr generates $5M in revenue per employee with five people
“We have five people and we do five million per person now.”
Disclosure
Lemkin has budget for 20 hires but cannot find top operational talent
“I've just struggled to find enough A-tier talent that wants to do this non-sexy stuff, okay? I would love to have 20 people on the team tomorrow. I have budget for it, or at least 15”
Disclosure
Lemkin refuses warm intros and only backs inbound SaaStr superfans
“I only, I'm different than 99.9% investors. I only do Saster super fans that are high intent inbound. I don't take favorite meetings. I don't do warm intros.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Every Successful Investment Was Decided Before Meeting the Founder
“Every investment I've done that's good, I've wanted to invest before the meeting. Every good outcome I've had this.”
Opinion
Lemkin: Stanford freshmen plan for grad school primarily to defer entering work
“They all want to go to grad school now as freshmen. So they're all architecting their classes, their majors, so they can go to grad school so they can defer work.”
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Public SaaS revenue multiples fell from 70x in 2021 to 5x today
“In 20, 20, 21, the average public SaaS company traded at 70 x ARR. Public in 2021. It's almost unimaginable today when it's at five, right?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: OpenAI has only ~60% employee retention over two years
“They only have about 60% employee retention over two years.”
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: ChatGPT holds 85% market share among consumers and prosumers
“I don't think we realized that open, that chat GBT would have 85% market share at the prosumer consumer level.”
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: There are already 100 billionaires in B2B software
“There's already a hundred billionaires in B to B software I wrote up, a hundred billionaires.”
