SaaStr 843: Software Stocks Have Massively Crashed. Here's What Founders Need to Know.
episode
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
43 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 16 days ago
Transcript
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What is Jason Lemkin’s rule for identifying a true AI‑driven SaaS company?
Welcome to the official Saster Podcast, where you can hear some of the best Saster speakers. This is where the cloud meets. Up today on the Saster Podcast. My so here's my simple rule, guys. If growth isn't accelerating, you're not an AI company. This is the flaw with the publics. All the performative stuff, all the public companies you guys talk to and follow. Has growth great that you built an agent, great that but is growth reaccelated. And that's for medical service now. And it's a big service now.
Meta. I mean, this is the bold case for Meta. Like they they did accelerate growth. They're spending a ton on CapEx, but there's clearly the AI that they're baking into the ad matching platform is helping accelerate. And so it's working. And the retail, the advertisers that are generating the ads. Hey Saster, imagine having agents for every support tab. One that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risk. That'd be pretty amazing, right? Happy Fox just made it real was Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as two cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the Happy Fox Omnichannel AI First, support stack, chatbot, copilot, and autopilot.
working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com slash faster.
Hey everybody, Saster Annual will be back May 2026, the world's largest SaaS and AI gathering for executives. Just as last May, we hosted 10,000 attendees with 68 VP level and above attendees, 36% CEOs and founders, and 25% were AI-first professionals. It's the very best of S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to Saster Annual and AI Summit each and every year. But here's the reality. Folks. The longer you wait, the higher ticket prices get. They're cheap now. They're cheap, so just get them. Early lock in your spot today. Use my code Jason 100 for exclusive savings. Get your tickets at podcast.sasterannual.com or just use code Jason 100 when you check out. See you there. Saster Annual and AI Summit 2026.
It will rock. I'm super excited to be here guys. Thanks for having me. I'm so happy to have you. Long, long,
long, long, long. Long overdue. I'm so happy uh that we were able to uh you know commiserate over the fantastic business that Davos is. And uh and now we have our planning session. We just talked to Tyler Cowan about how you're supposed to keep everything a secret. Um, but here we need to do some open brainstorming. We need to do some open brainstorming about how we how we drive to half a billion in revenue. Because apparently that's what Davos is doing. That's what Alice is doing.
I'm sure you want to stay on point. If you want my advice, which you should ignore, um starting next year, take some off the table. Okay. Um listen, T D B N is on fire, right? It it is great. You're you you've reached the point where you almost have too many sponsors. You have to turn them away. Sure. Um, but listen, if both you guys could take out, say four million next year, um, just put it away, might might not be the worst idea for a media business, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Small bit of advice. When did you get into media? Like what uh what is the inciting element? We were the opposite. I mean, there's good and bad for being in the early days or old school, right? Uh you don't know what you're doing, just like the early days of like SAS. But we just did meetups for our community and twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, like a thousand people would show up to a meetup. And now in SF it's like, well, at least last year wasn't a big deal for AI, but imagine in 2013, a thousand folks coming together to talk about enterprise software. It was it was nutty, right? And so it so it built a community and then accidentally did events, which you guys should not do, and then did media, but I did it backwards, right?
You guys were very intentional and it's pretty cool. I was utterly accidental and dragged into it. Um but it's convergent evolution.
Yeah. We are what what what what are the best practices for events? I mean, we the people talk to us about it.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Jason Lemkin’s rule for identifying a true AI‑driven SaaS company?
0:01–5:23
2
How did SaaStr shrink its team from 15 to 3 using AI agents?
5:23–10:53
3
What are the hidden costs and economics of running large‑scale SaaS events?
10:53–16:36
4
Why are private‑equity firms saying goodbye to B2B software deals?
16:36–23:55
5
How is “vibe‑coding” flooding the market with low‑cost competitors?
23:55–29:16
6
What does the recent crash of software stocks mean for founders and investors?
29:16–34:44
7
How can AI‑driven agents close $100K deals on a Saturday night and replace sales teams?
34:44–40:46
8
What should founders focus on now—IPO window, bootstrapping, or AI discoverability?
40:46–43:52
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
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