We replaced our sales team with 20 AI agents—here’s what happened | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr)
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How did Jason replace his 10‑person sales team with AI agents?
Used to have about ten people full time. Now you have one point two humans, twenty agents. We have ten desks that used to be go to market people. They're all just labeled with our agents. Reply for replit, quali for qualified, Artie for artisan, agent force needs a nickname. Agents work all night and they work weekends and they work on Christmas. We're done with hiring humans and sales. We're done.
The business is doing very similar.
To what it was when you had 10 humans. If I had two more great humans that wanted to join, don't get me wrong, I would hire them tomorrow. But I'm not gonna hire someone that after their third month in the job doesn't know what Saster does. I just can't do that. AI is replacing the jobs people don't want to do today, and it is displacing the mid-pack and the mediocre. How do you see the future of the sales profession? We should have $250,000 a year SDRs, but they'd be like at Vercell, they'd be managing 10 agents, not 10 people. Classic SDR junior kid that is hired out of college to send emails, we don't need them. Folks that qualify leads coming in, the contact me's that we see, we have no need for them today.
They should be extinct next year. Someone's listening to this like, oh man, my job is in trouble. If you can go do this, you're hyper employable.
Today, my guest is Jason Lemkin, founder and CEO of Saster, the world's largest community for B2B founders, and one of my absolute favorite sales and go-to-market minds on the planet. Jason is not only deeply knowledgeable about everything sales, he's also extremely articulate and direct, and is also now personally going super deep on what AI can do for a sales org. He's transformed his own Saster sales team from around 10 SDRs and AEs to one full-time AE, a part-time chief of AI named Amelia, and 20 AI agents. He is seeing the same performance from his AI team as he saw with his former human team, and he's just getting started. These are my favorite kinds of conversations because the guest is living in the future and comes here to show us what the future is like, where we're headed, and how we can get there ourselves.
Also, just how to avoid all the pitfalls that he had to deal with along the way. We cover all of the things that he has learned about where sales and go-to-market is going in the AI age. He gives a bunch of advice for salespeople and the future of their careers, the future of the go-to-market org, how to win as an AI startup right now, what tools he's finding most useful, what it took to shift a sales team, and so much more. This episode is going to get your mind. Mind spinning in the best way possible. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It helps tremendously. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get 19 premium products for free for an entire year, including a year free of lovable, rep lit, bolt, N8N, Gamma, Linear, Devon, Postoc, Superhuman, Descript, Whisperflow, Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, Raycast, Chapir D, Mobbin.
And Stripe Atlas. Head on over to Lenny's Newsletter.com and click Product Pass. With that, I bring you Jason Lemkin after a short word from our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by DX, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers. To thrive in the AI era, organizations need to adapt quickly. But many organization leaders struggle to answer pressing questions like: which tools are working? How are they being used? What's actually driving value? DX provides the data and insights that leaders need to navigate this shift. With DX, companies like Dropbox, Book,
To learn more, visit DX's website at getdx.com slash Lenny. That's getdx.com/slash Lenny. This episode is brought to you by VZero from first sell. vZero is the web development assistant designed for performance. Professionals of all technical backgrounds, whether you're a product manager, designer, or developer. Transform how you bring products to life. With VZero, everybody can cook.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Jason replace his 10‑person sales team with AI agents?
0:00–4:40
2
What is Jason’s background and what does SaaStr actually sell?
4:40–30:53
3
How do you train and orchestrate AI sales agents for real‑world results?
30:53–45:13
4
What will the go‑to‑market landscape look like in the next year?
45:13–50:34
5
How do AI agents replace traditional SDR/AE roles and what human oversight is still needed?
50:34–1:02:19
6
What is a Forward‑Deployed Engineer and how does that role differ from a traditional sales engineer or solution architect?
1:02:19–1:13:35
7
Which sales and GTM functions are disappearing first (support, SDRs, qualifiers) and which are likely to survive?
1:13:35–1:25:41
8
What practical advice does Jason give for founders, salespeople, and junior professionals to thrive in the AI‑first GTM era?
1:25:41–1:42:07
Speakers
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