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 1,353 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 22 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: 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…”
Lemkin: AI will eliminate middle-tier tech jobs while elites amass unprecedented wealth
“We're gonna enter this weird world where the best VCs are gonna make money like we've never seen before, right, and the best engineers, and then, you know, the middle is gonna have no jobs.”
Lemkin: SaaStr replaced every departing employee with an AI agent
“Basically anyone that left our tiny team, we replaced them with an agent.”
Lemkin: AI agents outperform mid-pack sales reps and SDRs
“Our AI agents are better than a mid pack AE or SDR or BDR better than a mid pack. Not maybe not mid packet owner. But I've been doing this for a while. Better than the mid pack people I've worked over in my career. Not better than the best.”
Lemkin: Average GTM sales jobs are in terminal decline
“These mid pack jobs, they're just in terminal decline in GTM and you should be aware of it. They're in terminal decline. We won't need the mid now there will be pockets.”
Lemkin: Half of HubSpot's Partner Agencies Are Obsolete
“And HubSpot hasn't figured this out with his AI training. That's why I'd like basically half of HubSpot's agencies are obsolete.”
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.”
Lemkin: Top AI companies have mediocre sales reps who misunderstand their products
“Some of the very best AI companies across the globe, not just any ones we're talking about, the best ones I know have really mediocre sales teams that do not understand the products they're selling. They just don't understand. How AI coding tools work and how …”
Lemkin Calls Adobe's $5B AI-Influenced Revenue Metric 'Malarkey'
“Adobe on its last earnings called Adobe is, I mean, it has some AI tools in, in create creative, but it's not ahead of a lot of the competition. I think it said it had five billion of AI influenced revenue. What malarkey.”
Net Tech Hiring Is Now Negative in Austin and Miami
“SF, almost all the hiring and net hiring in tech is in SF. It's twice New York. And basically after SF in New York, there is no net hiring. It's net negative in Austin. It's net negative in Miami.”
Lemkin: Generic $20-a-Month AI Copilots Are a Failure
“This is why co-pilots are like a failure. No one wants to pay for the office co-pilot. That does a little bit extra for another 20 bucks a month. They want something that does something incredibly powerful and very meaningful with almost instant ROI.”
Lemkin: A B-Plus AI Handles Sales Leads Better Than Humans
“It's better to give a precious lead to an ad to a B plus AI than to give it to someone in sales. That's going to quit, not show up or screw up the deal.”
Lemkin: Fire Any Executive Who Is Not Deeply Curious About AI by July
“If anyone on your executive team, or honestly, I know this is tough love, anyone on your team that by June, is not deeply curious, like is not pretending to use chat GPT once a week to get recipes... By June, if not, if July won, I would like just start taking…”
Lemkin: Sales Commission Rates Will Halve by End of 2026
“I actually think what's going to happen because of attribution is commissions are going to have by the end of next year. Because this is how the math is going to work. You're going to get credit for the It's not just PLG. You're going to get credit for Kyle's …”
Lemkin: CROs must manage 50/50 AI and human teams by year-end
“I think this year, To be a RevOps professional imminently in a CRO by the end of this year, you will have to know how to manage a fifty-fifty team. 50% AI, 50% human. Not just tools, but you will have to learn how to manage agents, agents, AIs, whether that's …”
Lemkin: AI Will Outperform 80% of Sales Reps by 2026
“Because your AI, at least by next year, is going to be better than 80% of sales reps. Not the best.”
Lemkin: All $100M+ ARR SaaS Portfolios Have Slowed to 10-20% Growth
“If you talk to VCs here that have been around for a while and you have a quiet conversation, ask them how many folks in your portfolio are north of a hundred million, and now are seeing growth in the 10 or 20% range. All of them. All of them. It didn't used to…”
Lemkin: A $100B+ Public SaaS Company Threatens Customers With Lawsuits
“Even worse, a number of public SaaS companies you probably know threatened to sue users or threatened legal action. One of them is well over a hundred billion dollars in market cap has repeatedly. You can see it on X. If you search sent messages threatening to…”
Lemkin: Legacy SaaS outbound playbooks fail close to 100% of the time
“Like the best ones are growing faster than ever, but it's not by running the old clicky playbooks. I'm just seeing them fail close to a hundred percent of the time.”
Lemkin: RTO mandates are about supervising mid performers, not collaboration
“It doesn't, you don't need to return to office for high performers. The best people will get it done. They'll get it done from Antarctica or they'll get it done in the office, but the mid performers just don't work from home, right? They barely work. And so th…”
Lemkin: S-tier AI agents will quickly replace B-tier and C-tier employees
“My limited experience is that an S-tier agent is better than a C-tier employee. This is what across the contact center is. You usually see that the agents are like in the, they can't do everything, but they're in the top 10% of CSAT because what they do, they …”
Lemkin: Tech cares less about inclusion than it did two years ago
“I think overall tech cares less about inclusion and being representative than it did two years ago.”
Lemkin: SaaS Growth Slows From Losing Product-Market Fit, Not Macro Downturns
“Because I really think growth slows because you fall out of product market fit. Too many people blame the markets or the VCs or the downturn, but there's no downturn in the US economy.”
Lemkin: VCs give terrible hiring advice due to lack of operating experience
“Why your VCs give you terrible hiring advice. It's very short. You can go find it right now. And it's because most of them haven't been operators or were a long time ago or another category. And if you've never done something, you want the person from wherever…”
Lemkin: Cutting sales headcount in half increases revenue at $50M ARR
“The tactical answer for more kumbaya people is probably cut half your sales team. This always works. Concentrate your leads in tougher times. It may not work at Matt. Maybe it doesn't work at zoom info scale, but even at fifty million, it's going to work.”
Lemkin: SaaS companies must compete in categories where they lose most deals
“You gotta play in categories where you lose most deals to win. This is a weird thing. You gotta play in categories where you lose most deals.”
Lemkin: SaaS growth slowdowns stem from lost product-market fit, not macro
“If growth has slowed, it is not a downturn or macro. It's a little bit of it. It is that you have fallen out of product market fit. If two years ago you were growing a hundred percent and today you're growing. It is not just the market. It is that you do not h…”