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 138 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: 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.”
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: 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 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: 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: 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.”
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: 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: 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: 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: 'Founder Mode' Does Not Work For Scaling Inside Sales
“Founder mode does not work for sales. It does not work for inside sales.”
Lemkin: Experienced VP candidates joining $2M ARR startups are usually terrible
“If you hire someone that was already a VP of sales here, why are they going to join you at two million? Probably only because they're terrible. It doesn't make any sense. It's illogical. They're probably not good.”
Lemkin: Zero percent of truly great, persistent founders with great CTOs fail
“I think that all the metrics on startups that fail, that 90% fail, I think these are Sony baloney metrics. I think, Truly great founders, truly great, that have a great CTO and CTO, or a CTO that can be both, that can build amazing software, that do not quit, …”
Lemkin: Full-stack AE model does not work for most SaaS companies
“He talked about how even Brex, which is, which was still relatively SMB for a long period, how the AE's had to do half of their own deals through outbound, and so he really described, in a way, a full stack AE, right, and people talk about that, and I think th…”
Lemkin: Employees Joining Unicorns in 2023 Will Make Nothing on Equity
“If as an employee, if you join a company with, in, in, in, in 2023 with a valuation over a billion as an employee, you're gonna make nothing. It doesn't matter what it sells for, you're gonna make nothing.”
Lemkin: LPs should quit GPs lacking billion-dollar cash exits by 2022
“If you did not, as a GP, if you've been investing more than six or seven years, and you didn't have multiple billion dollar cash outcomes in 22, at the best, because they were it was just so accelerated, You never will. Like, the LPs should just quit on you.”
Lemkin: VC board members know nothing about sales or revenue
“Every single board I've been on, and I try not to be on too many boards I'm the only one that knows anything about sales or revenue. No one. No one. I don't even care where they were. They don't know. I'm always the only one”
Lemkin: High NRR SaaS companies have lazy customer success teams
“High NRR companies are friggin' lazy, especially their customer success teams.”
Lemkin: GitLab is not really a SaaS company
“GitLab just IPO to sixteen billion. It's not really a SaaS company.”
Lemkin: Reduced VC collaboration is strictly better for founders
“Without question. And without question, it's better for founders. Without question. Every element of venture that is, and I'm being binary when it's off course more subtle than this, but every much of the collaboration in venture did not benefit founders, righ…”
Lemkin: Multi-billion-dollar VC funds do not care about losing $20M checks
“The funds are so big, and they're raising funds every 12 months, right? In my, we have different portfolios. In my portfolios, when the multi-billion dollar funds have come in and led the A or the C, they're barely invested. They're, and you know what? They do…”
Lemkin: AI SDR emails beat 99% of humans but lack deep context
“The artisan Monaco agent force emails. They're all better than a human, which is all that really matters today as we record this, right? They're better than 99% of humans. But they're not great like that RepliDeck. None of them are great.”
Lemkin: Custom AI tools outperform $50k to $80k commercial SaaS solutions
“Is that listen, you could buy this functionality exists in other products, or you could buy it for 50 grand or 80 grand a year today, right? But because it is a well-known body of software, Claude knows it. So Claude can just build it for you. Buy, don't build…”
Lemkin: Claude's MCP capabilities threaten dedicated agent orchestration startups
“It is a threat to folks that are building these sort of agent substrates, which is that we, listen, every time we talk about our agents and stuff, a bunch of folks will tweet back or say, Hey, listen, I've got the substrate. I've got the, I've got a way to con…”
Lemkin claims it is entirely impossible to build sales relationships over Zoom
“I think it is impossible to build a relationship on zoom.”
Buyers re-evaluating every 8-10 months means there is no AI land grab
“I, I'm not sure that there's a land grab in AI today. Because there's a counter trend, which is that so many folks I know of who are blowing up here, who are doing five million their first month, ten million their first two months. Customer, there is budget fo…”
Lemkin: AI Agents Expanded Customer Support and Legal SaaS Markets 100x
“These Sierra Decagons, and also legal Harvey, these were niche markets before agents. These were niche markets that are like 10 to a hundred times larger because the agents add so much value.”
Lemkin: 99% of successful GTM agents are optimized around Salesforce
“In GTM, I think, 99% of the agents that are working today, that are successfully are optimized around Salesforce.”
Lemkin: Marketo API Fails for AI Agents, Graded a 'C'
“If you go down to Marketo where the API doesn't work, right? You can find it down in the C's or even search for it. It will explain to you if you want to build an agentic product, don't use Marketo.”
Lemkin: Current AI SDR tools cannot autonomously auto-segment effectively
“None of the AI tools we use today, which are all great, but none of them can really use AI to auto segment in a way that can deliver these results.”
Lemkin: All third-party AI agents are less secure than Salesforce
“The honest truth is no agents, no third party agents are more secure than Salesforce. They're all less secure is the reality of it.”
Lemkin: Inbound AI is the lowest-hanging fruit for 98% of software companies
“I'll tell you the lowest hanging fruit for 98% of folks out there. I know I use different nomenclatures than some is adding AI to inbound.”
Lemkin: Agentforce takes more setup work but outperforms in production
“Asian force is more work to set up than the rest of the agents, but it is good or better in production. It is as good because they're all good. Okay. All the good ones are good. They're all kind of the same. The emails are pretty similar, right? It is better b…”
Lemkin: Customers Rejected Microsoft's $20 Per Month Word Copilot
“No one wanted to pay an extra 20 bucks a month to talk to word. Okay. That was the great innovation. And even Microsoft couldn't get people to buy that. It doesn't work. No one wants a mediocre co-pilot.”
Lemkin: Enterprise Demand for Salesforce's Agentforce is Just Getting Started
“I'm not telling you to go buy public stocks, but I'd be long on Salesforce, even if the market wasn't true this year, because it's just getting going with the spike. The demand is just getting going.”
VCs Have Zero Interest in Classic SaaS Companies Growing 80%
“There is no interest in classic SAS companies from VCs growing at pretty good rates. If you're growing 80% at twenty million or 70% at fifty million, it's not cool, dude, but there, no one's going to fund you. Nobody.”
Lemkin: Vibe coding apps like Salesforce in 10 minutes is dangerous bologna
“There's a lot of stuff on social media about, Hey, you can just vibe code your own HubSpot or Salesforce. You can vibe code your own notion. It will take. 10 minutes. That's Sony baloney. And it is almost dangerous Sony baloney because it's not just startups t…”
Lemkin: Only 20% to 30% of VCs still back classic T2D3 growth
“If you're triple, triple, double, double, as hard as that is, as hard as that is, maybe only 20 to 30% of the investors that would have been interested, 18 months ago today, 20%, 20, 30%.”
Lemkin: Most CMOs excel at two functions and are mediocre elsewhere
“Most CMOs have like two or three things they like to do and the rest, they sort of hand off to their team or are mediocre at it.”
Lemkin: Sales AI Lags Coding AI Due to Founder Quality
“The only reason sales tools aren't as good as Windsurf is because Varun isn't building a lot of them. Okay. I just think, and there's no criticism. I love everyone that's here. There aren't enough S tier founders.”