Jason Lemkin
Founder & CEO, SaaStr · 150 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
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.
1353statements → 556claims → 261claims resolved → 62%fully supported → 3.92/5average certainty → 2.4/5average debate potential → 3.9/5argument clarity · the sources → 144said about them ↓
161 supported 60 partly supported 40 contradicted 34 not yet assessed 261 not checkable as stated how the 556 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
116 predictions · 440 assertions · 138 opinions · 550 insights · 108 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 556 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 261 are resolved, 34 are not yet assessed, and 261 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Jason argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Their most notable contradicted claim
Lemkin: Most SDRs and qualifying BDRs will be eliminated by 2026
“And I really think most SDRs will die next year, but the meat, and I know we throw around these terms differently. The BDR that sort of smarmily qualifies you that that's going to die. Like we just, there's no need for that with these tools.”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →
3.9 / 5
directness 4 · coherence 4 ·
precision 3.9 · compression 3.3
redirected or did not address 7 of 45 assessed questions (16%). Watch them ▸
This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Jason Lemkin on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Jason Lemkin said on the Official SaaStr Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
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: 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: ServiceTitan terminated Podium integration impacting 1,000 shared customers
“That worked great for years until Service Titan shut them off the other day, shut them off after all these years with a thousand joint customers.”
Lemkin: Highest-usage SaaS customers often have the strongest incentive to leave
“And the folks with the highest usage may actually have the most incentive to leave. It's not a clear correlation to success, right?”
Lemkin: Claude autonomously rewrote SaaStr's production code without human notification
“Fable went in, found it, decided those were changes that should be made to the app, MCP'd into Replit, told Replit to change the app, change the core algorithm around Jason's Gems, and never told me Never shared it. Never did anything. Did all of this autonomo…”
Lemkin: SaaStr Is Dropping Adobe Marketo, Calling It Their Worst Vendor
“So our most expensive vendor gone, not renewing toxic threatened us, never helped us. Worst piece of software and the two by two worst and most expensive Adobe Marketo.”
Lemkin: The job market for average computer science graduates has been devastated
“There's no need for the most part, for a B tier. B level grade CS engineer. It's been devastated, right?”
Lemkin: Cerebras is going public at $40B with two Middle Eastern customers
“Like Cerebus is going public, I think today at like a forty billion dollar market cap. It has some interesting customers, but basically it only has two customers today in the Middle East that you've never heard of.”
Lemkin: A Generation of Operations Roles Will Never Be Hired
“I mean, for us there, so there'll be a whole generation of these people that are just never hired. There may be some folks that are laid off. I, and I think more commonly they'll just be slowly managed out and just replaced with agents.”
Lemkin: Idle Capacity Will Be the Biggest Issue With AI Agents
“The biggest issue we're going to have going forward is our agents are going to get so good. They sit idle all day long. They don't have enough work.”
Lemkin: SaaStr Replaced $500K in Staff With $257 in AI Agents
“We replaced 500,000 dollars worth of employees with 257 dollars worth of agents, but the productivity is higher.”
Lemkin: Companies Will Abandon Employee AI Reskilling by Year-End
“To be direct, I think by the end of this year, we're going to give up on reskilling. I think folks are going to stop pretending they can reskill folks that are not going to be able to make the jump to the agentic age.”
Lemkin: Customers Prefer High-Performing AI to Mediocre Human Account Managers
“Customers will prefer, prefer a great eye to a mediocre human. They'll prefer a great eye that solves their problem today, that knows the answer, to someone that has to get an engineer and an appointment to you next week, that doesn't know, that says I'm just …”
Lemkin: SaaStr wants to hire a human reporting to its AI agent
“We want to hire a human. To report to our AI VP of marketing.”
Lemkin: SaaStr no longer needs junior marketers due to AI agent
“Is it a partial replacement for junior marketers? Yeah, we don't need any.”
Lemkin: Pre-AI B2B SaaS companies are becoming "tragedy apps"
“And it just, I think most of the old SAS companies, the pre AIB to be players have become tragedy apps.”
Lemkin: Figma feels like 'grandpa software' despite top-decile revenue growth
“This is why now Figma feels like grandpa software. That's the thing. It feels like grandpa software. It feels like grandpa software and you don't, the NRR is still high. The company is still growing at top decile rates, but who wants to buy new stuff from gran…”
Lemkin: Clerk Is 'Mind-Numbingly Hard to Use' and Most Frustrating App
“Probably the most frustrating app I've used is clerk, right? For authentication on replica. It's just. Mind-numbingly hard to use.”
Lemkin: Buyers have zero interest in profitable pre-AI B2B SaaS companies
“These B to B companies, pre AI ones at fifty million, a 100,000,200 1,000,800 million, no one wants to buy them. It doesn't matter that you, hooray, you got profitable. Thank you. That means you're not going bankrupt. You have not solved your existential probl…”
The other half of the tape: Jason Lemkin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 131 times in 67 episodes on the Official SaaStr Podcast. 13 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Sam Blond 34Nick Mehta 7Andy Wilson 7Amelia LeRutte 6Christoph Janz 4Brendon Cassidy 4Hande Cilingir 3Cliff Bockard 3
Statements about Jason Lemkin, by other people (13)
Ibarra: Managing 20 AI agents takes the majority of our time
“Right now it does take literally the majority, I would say, of both mine and Jason's time to run all these agents and use them successfully”
Norton: Inbound-trained sales leaders rarely succeed running outbound motions
“I wouldn't say hopeless, but I would say it's not very likely. If you want to run an out, if you want to run an outbound model and you've got a VP of sales who is being in 80% inbound models, it is Because for them to be to, for that person to really grok outb…”
Kellogg: Enterprise SaaS startups should wait until $100M+ ARR for second product
“In terms of second product, I talked about Jason Lemkin's work before, but he's done a series of tweets and blogs, and from his research to me, for most companies, it's probably a hundred million plus in ARR, and maybe multiple, for the companies I work with, …”
Schuck: ZoomInfo Drives 10x LTV to CAC on $20k-$50k Lands
“It's a lot of science that goes into the way that we generate the leads, we route the leads, and then we close new business, and that drives a 10 X LTV to CAC, a sub-thirty day sales cycle, often deals are closed same day, and these are not like, you know, two…”
Hoffman: 10x performers take more management time than average employees
“The better the person, the less time it takes to manage them. That's the obvious thing, but that's only up to a point. The true 10 Xers actually take more time to manage than the average performers.”
Ibarra: Most companies adopting AI agents fail to see impact
“So I think we're in this right now sort of paradoxical world in November of 2025, where a lot of folks have adopted at least one sort of AI or agent, but maybe to Jason's point that he just made, a lot of them aren't seeing the impact because either they're ex…”
Blond: Current challenging sales environment is a return to normal
“Well, my personal perspective on this, which is relatively aligned with Jason Lemkin's is we've sort of returned to normal. Normal is, is still much more challenging selling environment than we've experienced over the last two to three years.”
Schuck: ZoomInfo Calls Inbound Leads Within 90 Seconds via Algorithmic Matching
“If you go fill out a form on the ZoomInfo website today, somebody will call you within 90 seconds. The person who's calling you has been algorithmically chosen as the SDR who's most likely to convert your type of company and your level of buyer into, ah, an op…”
Peacock: SaaS NRR Benchmarks: 120% Enterprise, 110% Mid-Market, 100% SMB
“Some of the things that we've seen in terms of benchmarks are for enterprise companies, so B to B SaaS companies selling to the enterprise. You want to have a net revenue retention of a 120% or above. Oftentimes the best companies are way, way above this. If y…”
Wilson: SaaS is a business model, not a company mission
“SaaS is a business model, and unless you're Jason Lemkin, it is not your mission.”
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…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 16 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- The Agents #011 - From 0 to 20 Agents and Back Again, Are Agents Finally Consolidating?
- How to Build Your Own AI VP of Marketing Step-by-Step
- How AI Is Rewiring Sales: Quota, Retention & Follow-Up with Agentforce, Momentum, Mangomint + SaaStr
- CRO Confidential: 0 to $600M in Under 4 Years. The ElevenLabs GTM Playbook with Carles Reina
- $0 to $100M ARR Fast. How Gamma Scaled Quickly without a Sales Team
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 10 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- 5 Ways AI Has Already Changed B2B Sales Forever with Perplexity's CBO Dmitry Shevelenko
- Why Only “WTF” Products Can Survive Today with Brett Queener Partner at Bonfire Ventures
- Building AI-First Companies: Insights from Zapier’s CEO Wade Foster
- From $1M to $3B ARR: Databricks CRO Ron Gabrisko on Scaling a Revenue Rocket Ship
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 10 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- Deep Dive: Easy Sales Concepts So Many Get Wrong with Sam Blond
- 6 Questions Founders Should Ask Themselves to Drive Value from Generative AI with Base10 Partners
- Bringing Product-Led and Sales-Led Growth Together For Go-To-Market Success with Zapier's CRO
- Deep Dive: AI-Powered Marketing to Get More Leads and Customers with HyperGrowth Partners
- What It Really Takes to Be Successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales with Christian Smith, CRO of Splunk
- The 7 Biggest Mistakes CMOs Make (And How to Avoid Them) with the CMOs of Databricks, Zoom, and Okta
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 38 mentions in 16 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
- 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
- 10 Things Top CROs Wish They Knew Early in Our Careers with CRO Justworks
- 8 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 22 mentions in 15 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
- 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
- How to Set and Hit Revenue Targets with Sam Blond, CRO at Brex | SaaStr Software Community
- SaaStr CRO Confidential: Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond + Rippling VP Sales Matt Plank
- How to Manage 100+ SDRs Across 4 Continents | Snowflake VP, Global Sales Development Lars Nilsson
- Growth vs. Efficiency: How to Weatherproof Your SaaS Startup for Tougher Times | Christoph Janz
- 7 more episodes that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 11 mentions in 9 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
- Adding Outbound Sales & Marketing to a Product-Led Growth Engine Freshworks, Twilio, 1Password, Coda
- 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
- How to Build a Unicorn in 8 Simple Charts with SafeGraph
- How to Build a Great Intern Program from Scratch | @shopify VP of Engineering Farhan Thawar
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2021 →
2020 10 mentions in 2 episodes 5 per episode
2019 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- "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
- 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
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →