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Jason Lemkin

Founder & CEO, SaaStr · 1 appearance on the record.

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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.

21statements → 13claims → 1claims resolved → 3.81/5average certainty → 1.52/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 76said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 12 not checkable as stated how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 11 assertions · 2 opinions · 2 insights · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 12 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

Prediction Held up
Lemkin: SaaStr Annual Will Reach Over 10,000 Attendees in 2022
“We could not, I mean, we'll have over 10,000 this year.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 5:24 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?

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 Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Lemkin: Price increase warnings are the only event marketing CTA that converts
“Prices going up. That's the only CTA that works, too. Nothing else works. Prices, discounts don't work. Great speakers, you know, nothing works but prices.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 14:20 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Opinion
Lemkin: More Than Half of Founders Are Miserable After Selling
“Some founders are great Going fishing in Cabo and doing whatever, but others, I would say more than half are miserable after selling their company.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 27:48 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Opinion
Lemkin: Post-COVID event talent decayed, making large events much harder to run
“So it's much harder to do events than it used to be because the infrastructure decayed during COVID and the human infrastructure decayed. You cannot, if you go interview a hundred folks to be your VP of events, you'll be lucky if two can produce a large scale …”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 8:11 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Half of SaaStr ticket revenue comes in the final 60 days
“Half of all the revenue comes the last 60 days, but we market it 12 months a year.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 17:31 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr generates $27M total revenue, with $20M from event sponsors
“It's roughly, it's probably more, actually, it's probably more like 27. So it's roughly five million from tickets, which we can chat about, two million from sponsorship of podcasts and newsletters and twenty million from event sponsors.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 18:25 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Insight
Lemkin: Scaled conferences flip from 50/50 ticket-sponsor splits to sponsor dominance
“Everyone starts off in the beginning. If they're trying to make any money, like half the money from tickets. And if they're lucky, half the money from sponsors and they sort of have to torture the sponsors. And a lot of the sponsors don't want to come or they …”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 18:59 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: SaaStr Lost $10M in March 2020 Due to Venue Booking Blunder
“So we lost the dates. So that was supposed to be February, 2020, which we would have pulled off, but because it was March, we lost ten million dollars because of the issues in March of 20, 20. That was a ten million dollar mistake from a lie.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 32:07 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: SaaStr core business can scale from $25M to $100M revenue
“So I think our core business can do a hundred from 25 because it's just SAS from that.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 39:12 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: SaaStr Annual base operating budget exceeds $10M
“The total turn on the lights budget will be just north of ten million to turn on the lights.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 1:39 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: SaaStr Annual spends $1M to $1.5M on outdoor tents
“Tenting is well over a million dollars, approaching a million and a half dollars for an outdoor event”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 1:48 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: SaaStr Annual year two lost money despite $3.6M revenue
“The second year we ended up doing 3.6 million the second year. And I can, and the breakdown was about 50 50. But everything broke and we lost actually lost money that year, even though we went from 400 K in revenue on 200 K in cost. We lost money in the next y…”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 4:24 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr generates $25M in revenue with only 10 employees
“We have only 10 employees doing twenty-five million of revenue, okay?”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 8:31 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: 90% of SaaStr attendance comes from single-CTA emails
“90% of our attendance comes from a single CTA email.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 13:34 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr Sales Reps Target $4M-$5M Each, Top Rep Hit $27M
“We have five sales folks. The average salesperson's goal is to do four to five million in bookings. We have one sales rep that's done twenty-seven million already.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 29:06 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: First SaaStr Annual cost roughly $200,000 to produce
“We spent about 200 grand to produce a one day low end event in the Regency Ballroom on SF.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 3:47 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: SaaStr Scaled Early Attendance Exclusively via Unpaid Organic Content
“Second year, we didn't even, I didn't even have a list like we have today, like you and I have today. It was just word of mouth. It was just blog posts and tweets.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 5:15 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Prediction Held up
Lemkin: SaaStr Annual Will Reach Over 10,000 Attendees in 2022
“We could not, I mean, we'll have over 10,000 this year.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 5:24 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Disclosure
Lemkin: Bootstrapped SaaStr for seven years without taking a salary
“That's for me, that's seven years of no salary bootstrapped business until finally it clicks.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 9:20 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Lifetime venture investing returns are roughly 10x
“I'm about 10 X lifetime.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 20:28 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: TechCrunch profile drove 20% of EchoSign's first-year customers
“I mean, I got him to profile Adobe sign echo sign the day we launched, and that's still probably got us. 20% of our customers our first year.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 38:55 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: SaaStr has 120,000 subscribers on its email list
“We only have a 120,000 people on our list.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 14:41 How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make?

The other half of the tape: Jason Lemkin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 75 times in 45 episodes on Top Founders. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 12Hank Leber 5Don Breckenridge, Jr. 5Victor Levitin 4Steve Benson 4John Lee 4Amanda Parker 3Wyatt Jozwowski 2

Statements about Jason Lemkin, by other people (1)

Disclosure
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.”
Max Altshuler Dec 22, 2016 ▶ 10:53 EP 516: SalesHacker $2.5m 2015 Revenue Helping Sales Reps Get Smarter with CEO Max Altshculer

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
001583015201620172018201920202021202220232024episodesmentions
0815201620172018201920202021202220232024episodes it came up in
002.57.5515201620172018201920202021202220232024episodesmentions per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2022 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2021 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2020 5 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
2019 5 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
2018 7 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
2017 21 mentions in 14 episodes 2 per episode
2016 29 mentions in 7 episodes 4 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
How much revenue do Jason and SaaStr make? Aug 25, 2022 29m
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