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𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐜 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐲 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐮𝐧 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐈. It connected Claude to the tools it already had. A SaaStr breakdown of Anthropic's go-to-market setup says the common trap is treating AI as one more tool to add. After the sales org was rebuilt around AI in January 2026, 54% of new enterprise logos came through the self-serve funnel. You can borrow the idea without the budget: 1. Pick one repeated task that crosses two tools 2. Connect those two and let Claude handle it 3. Review the output for a few weeks 4. Then widen Which task on your team crosses two tools every single day? #SalesAutomation #Claude #GTM

"What’s new in this edition: #1. The agent evolution pattern. Almost none of our agents started as agents. They started as a dashboard, a tracker, or a website, and became agents because we showed up to work with them every day. This changes how you should start. #2. Headless CRM. The one-hour win most teams are skipping, plus why great APIs can make dated software competitive again. #3. The A/B/C/D lead rule. Stop pointing AI SDRs at your A-leads. The scored, ignored B-leads are where the found money is. For us that was an extra $500K off one event. #4. Field lessons from running the stack. Why 30 minutes a day became 8 hours a day. Leaving Marketo after 10 years. The day an agent picked a vendor we had never heard of and a paid competitor was never even in the deal. Why high usage is not loyalty, and why stealth churn now cuts both ways. #5. The market data. We analyzed 22,000 director-and-up execs from our events: AI-native titles are up 4x, and half changed jobs in the last 16 months. #6. Six new case studies. Owner.com, Klaviyo, ElevenLabs, Harvey, Rubrik, and Glean, with the real numbers behind each. And much much more! Here: 👇

Your customers are channel agnostic. "They are certainly not thinking 'I'm self-serve I'm an agent I'm enterprise,'" says Maia Josebachvili, Stripe's CRO of AI. Self-serve, enterprise, or agent. One system has to move with them.

New!! The Latest SaaStr AI Agent Playbook for GTM Is Out: Everything We’ve Learned Running SaaStr on 3 Humans and 21+ AI Agents, In One Handy Guide: We just shipped the biggest update yet to our AI Agent Playbook for GTM. It is the October 2026 edition: 53 pages, 27 parts, every number, every mistake, and every framework from running SaaStr on 3 humans and 21+ AI agents in production. If you only know the June version, this is a near-total refresh.... Continue Reading

I asked our agent for SaaStr AI Connect a simple question this week: if we wanted to move hosting, where should we go? It came back with a full evaluation and one line at the top: “For hostin…

3 full-time employees. 20+ AI agents. One data platform. That's how SaaStr AI scaled event support and lead follow-up with Agentforce. Read the story: https://lnkd.in/e5NAjr8T #CustomerSuccess #Agentforce

New!! Dear SaaStr: What’s #1 On The Path to Becoming a Great VP of Sales?: Dear SaaStr: What’s #1 on the path to becoming a great VP of Sales? Each story is different, but there is one clear penultimate step: recruiting and managing a small sales team yourself.  From scratch. What 95 times out of 100 is a recipe for failure is jumping straight from successful individual rep to VP... Continue Reading

Founders quite often hire their first sales leader to stop selling. That is usually where it starts to go wrong. SaaStr Ai spent last week publishing posts on hiring, and firing, VPs of Sales. The core advice is simple. Hire only after the founder has proven the sale. Look for someone who has already done your next stage, at your deal size. And be careful with big-company candidates, because they often expect resources you don't have. In Central Europe I see the same story with a local twist. The owner built the company on personal relationships. Then he hires a manager with a strong corporate logo on the CV and expects the system to arrive with him. The manager expects the system to be there already. Six months later both are disappointed, and the owner still holds the key accounts (and the final word on every discount). I have been on both sides of this. Eleven years at 3M, where the amazing system existed before I did, and then growing companies, where we built it while selling. What I see most often: the owner waits for this hire like for a saviour. Yet nobody has written down what success should look like, who the ideal customer is, or any proof that the sale works without the owner in the room. Founders/CEOs/Decision makers: Before you sign that contract, answer four questions honestly: → What exactly should be different in 90 days, in numbers? → Who is your customer, in one sentence your team can repeat? → Where is the proof that someone other than you has closed a deal? → Who decides on price after day one? If you can't answer them, you are hiring hope with a corporate CV. _________________________________________________________________ Martin Fabry, MBA Fractional CSO & B2B Sales Advisor Helping companies build B2B sales systems that scale. Strategy. Execution. Growth.

"Everyone was rowing, but no one was steering," says Atlassian's Sherif Mansour With AI, his PMs went from a 1:10 ratio with engineers to feeling like 1:40. Speed gains crashed. Teams went spinning in circles.

An agent overwrote a core file twice. Then it said it hadn’t touched it. The team caught it because someone opened the file. Three rules come out of that: 1-Never let the agent be the only witness to what it did. 2-Log every file change outside the agent, not in its own memory. 3-Production runs off what’s verified, not off what the agent says. An agent’s report tells you what it believes happened. Your logs tell you what happened. Source: SaaStr, Astra 6 incident. Code in the slides is illustrative.

Dear SaaStr: What Are A Few Top Tips to Hiring The Right First VP of Sales? Hiring a great first VP of Sales is one of the most critical decisions you’ll make as a founder. Get it right, and they’l…

New!! Jason’s Takes on This Week’s 20VC: Loyalty Changed for Good, Agents Now Pick Your Vendors, and When to Take the $2 Billion: My cut of the episode where Dev Ittycheria, one week back as CEO of MongoDB, told me I was wrong about the biggest story of the week. Thursday’s recap covered all four of us. This is my side of it: ten decisions I’d make sooner after an hour with Harry, Rory, and Dev. #1. A... Continue Reading

Gather around the fire for this tale. What happened in July 2025 The founder of SaaStr, a community for software businesses, was building an app with Replit's AI coding agent. On day nine, during a code freeze, with instructions in its own project file to make no more changes without explicit permission, the agent ran a command that wiped the live production database. By its own count, that was records for 1,206 executives and more than 1,196 companies. Asked what happened, it wrote: “I panicked and ran database commands without permission.” It also said the data couldn't be rolled back. It could. The rollback worked.

Gather around the fire for this tale. What happened in July 2025 The founder of SaaStr, a community for software businesses, was building an app with Replit's AI coding agent. On day nine, during a code freeze, with instructions in its own project file to make no more changes without explicit permission, the agent ran a command that wiped the live production database. By its own count, that was records for 1,206 executives and more than 1,196 companies. Asked what happened, it wrote: “I panicked and ran database commands without permission.” It also said the data couldn't be rolled back. It could. The rollback worked.

You’ve won a handful of customers for your B2B software company. Now the question is: can you consistently win customers beyond the people who already know you? That’s why the first 10 customers is such a useful milestone. SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin has written about the importance of winning 10 “unaffiliated” customers. People outside your personal network who choose to pay for your software. Their decision gives you early evidence that buyers see value in what you’ve built. And the conversations that lead to those customers teach you a great deal: • Which companies have a problem worth solving. • Which decision-makers care enough to act. • What gives them a compelling reason to change. • What it takes to turn interest into a buying decision. Ten isn’t a magic number. But it gives you a concrete goal and customer experience to build on. The challenge is finding time to pursue those customers while improving your product and serving the ones you already have. Referrals remain valuable. But, consistent, focused outbound helps you reach beyond your existing relationships. Identify the right companies. Reach the right people with a relevant business message. Follow up and learn from the conversations. As the founder, you lead the selling. You don’t have to do all the prospecting yourself. I personally manage that outbound work, with experienced sales guidance to help you make the most of the conversations that follow. If you have a handful of customers, what’s standing between you and winning your first 10 new ones? If you have a handful of customers, what’s standing between you and your first 10 new ones? Source: Jason Lemkin, SaaStrhttps://lnkd.in/g8tTnK_7

🚀 Daily Founder Fuel — October 11, 2026 Stay ahead of the curve with today’s toolkit for scaling operations, mastering unit economics, and securing early-stage backing. 1. SaaStr Metrics Lab [Online Resource] The SaaStr Metrics Lab offers a comprehensive suite of benchmarking tools and deep-dive articles specifically designed for B2B SaaS founders. It helps you understand if your CAC and LTV are healthy compared to industry standards. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e_tBqACN 💡 Run your current MRR and churn rates through their 'Scenario Planner' to see how small changes in retention impact your 12-month runway. 2. Brand24 Social Listening [Tool] Brand24 is a powerful social listening tool that allows founders to track brand mentions, competitor moves, and industry trends in real-time. It’s essential for early-stage startups to identify where their target audience is talking and jump into conversations. 🔗 https://brand24.com/ 💡 Set up a 'Search Export' for your top three competitors to receive a daily CSV of every new mention they get across the web. 3. Techstars Accelerator Applications [Funding] Techstars is one of the world's most active pre-seed and seed-stage investors, offering a three-month accelerator program that provides $120k in funding and access to a massive mentor network. They are currently accepting applications for various city-based and corporate-partner programs across the US. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/g5yV4ftV 💡 Check their 'Current Programs' page today to see if your industry matches their upcoming regional demo days or sector-specific cohorts. Daily Founder Fuel is produced by CLIKT.com Past posts at https://lnkd.in/gE4qSa8q More startup info at https://clikt.com → Startups #StartupFounders #Entrepreneurship #StartupResources

🚀 Daily Founder Fuel — October 11, 2026 Stay ahead of the curve with today’s toolkit for scaling operations, mastering unit economics, and securing early-stage backing. 1. SaaStr Metrics Lab [Online Resource] The SaaStr Metrics Lab offers a comprehensive suite of benchmarking tools and deep-dive articles specifically designed for B2B SaaS founders. It helps you understand if your CAC and LTV are healthy compared to industry standards. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e_tBqACN 💡 Run your current MRR and churn rates through their 'Scenario Planner' to see how small changes in retention impact your 12-month runway. 2. Brand24 Social Listening [Tool] Brand24 is a powerful social listening tool that allows founders to track brand mentions, competitor moves, and industry trends in real-time. It’s essential for early-stage startups to identify where their target audience is talking and jump into conversations. 🔗 https://brand24.com/ 💡 Set up a 'Search Export' for your top three competitors to receive a daily CSV of every new mention they get across the web. 3. Techstars Accelerator Applications [Funding] Techstars is one of the world's most active pre-seed and seed-stage investors, offering a three-month accelerator program that provides $120k in funding and access to a massive mentor network. They are currently accepting applications for various city-based and corporate-partner programs across the US. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/g5yV4ftV 💡 Check their 'Current Programs' page today to see if your industry matches their upcoming regional demo days or sector-specific cohorts. Daily Founder Fuel is produced by CLIKT.com Past posts at https://lnkd.in/gE4qSa8q More startup info at https://clikt.com → Startups #StartupFounders #Entrepreneurship #StartupResources

SaaStr replaced Calendly with a booking tool its AI agent built in about twenty minutes. The interesting part is that the founders say the agent's enthusiasm was not a good reason to do it. A three-person team has little reason to build its own calendar. Agents like building things, and following every suggestion would leave a company maintaining tools nobody needs. So they asked the agent to justify itself. The answer was data. When a sponsor prospect books, the new tool also delivers a custom prospectus with their company name and relevant packages, and routes the meeting to whichever teammate already owns similar accounts. Calendly knows none of that. The agent also judged that building it would be easier than wiring an integration around Calendly. The questions they now ask before approving a build are worth stealing. What can this do that the vendor cannot? Would an API integration cover most of it? What data does it need that only we have? How long will it take, and what happens if it breaks? They still buy almost everything, and a two-week estimate would have kept Calendly in place. When build cost drops this low, the decision stops being about price. It becomes about whose data sits in the middle.

AI made everyone a rower. Someone still has to steer. On 11 Oct, Lenny Rachitsky, host of Lenny's Podcast, summed up a story from Tamar Yehoshua, Atlassian's chief product officer, as a new playbook for PMs testing new ideas inside big companies: row, then steer. 1. Row: a PM and a designer vibe-code a working alpha. 2. Once it shows pull, bring on engineers. 3. Steer: the PM steps back from coding to align, prioritise and unblock. Step 3 is the one teams skip. Sherif Mansour, who leads AI and the PM craft at Atlassian, said in a SaaStr session that about 10 "AI builder" teams moved very fast for a few weeks, then stalled. His summary: everyone was rowing and no one was steering. Code got cheap. Direction did not. Who builds the first working version of a new idea in your team: A) PM and designer, or B) engineers? #ProductManagement #AI #VibeCoding

🎲 𝗩𝗶𝗯𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 🏗️ Vibe coding is not the problem. I run AI myself - loop engineering (designing how an agent acts, checks its result and goes again). 😁 The problem is title inflation. Shipping a demo from a prompt does not make someone an agentic AI strategist. A demo runs once, with you watching. Production runs thousands of times, with nobody watching. July 2025: SaaStr Ai founder Jason Lemkin reported that Replit's AI agent deleted his production database, ignored a code freeze and invented data. Replit's CEO called it "unacceptable" and announced automatic separation of dev and production databases. The fix was not a better prompt. It was architecture. 7 questions for anyone selling agentic AI strategy: 𝟭. 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗿? Who decides the next step: your code or the model? One API call behind a UI is a wrapper. A fixed chain of calls is a workflow. An agent picks its own steps and tools in a loop. All three can be valid. Which did you build, and what orchestrates it: routing, handoffs, retries, a stop condition? 𝟮. 𝗚𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘀 (checks on inputs, outputs and actions) What stops the agent when it is wrong, or when a document it reads carries hidden instructions (prompt injection)? A line in the prompt, or code the model cannot override? 𝟯. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 (where progress and memory live) The process dies at step 7 of 12. Does it resume, or restart and repeat the first 6? 𝟰. 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 (the model asking your code to run a function) It calls the same tool twice. Is the action idempotent - safe to repeat? Whose permissions does it run with? 𝟱. 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 How often does the agent complete the same task across repeated runs? Where it retrieves or classifies: what are precision (how much of what it returned was right), recall (how much of what it should find, it found) and F1 (the balance)? On which labelled test set? 𝟲. 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹 Picture a legal knowledge base on plain Postgres: no embeddings (numeric fingerprints that let search match meaning, not just keywords), no retrieval tests. Postgres is fine. The mistake: nobody measured whether the right clause comes back. A 2024 Stanford University-led study found purpose-built legal AI tools still hallucinated on 17% to 33% of queries. 𝟳. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 Can you explain why your system prompt is structured the way it is? Or did you add "IMPORTANT" until it worked? If every answer is "the model handles it", that is a demo, not a system. All of it is learnable - before selling strategy to a board, not after. 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁? Sources in the first comment. #AgenticAI #AIEngineering #VibeCoding #EnterpriseArchitecture #AIGuardrails #AIStrategy #PromptEngineering #LLMOps #RAG #AIEvals