{"id":313833,"date":"2025-06-05T05:15:47","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T12:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/?p=313833"},"modified":"2025-06-04T10:04:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T17:04:33","slug":"how-the-smartest-founders-are-already-winning-with-ai-saastr-on-my-first-million-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/how-the-smartest-founders-are-already-winning-with-ai-saastr-on-my-first-million-podcast\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Smartest Founders Are Already Winning with AI:  SaaStr on My First Million Podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So we came back to HubSpot&#8217;s My First Million Podcast with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri to do a deep dive on AI and SaaS.\u00a0 It was a fun one because we approached it more from a content creator and end-user perspective vs. a software builder perspective.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"How the Smartest Founders Are Quietly Winning with AI\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/53ADYulqo8w?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1&#038;origin=https:\/\/www.saastr.com\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1>The Top 10 AI in B2B Takeaways:<\/h1>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>1. <strong>AI Clones Can Outperform Their Human Creators.\u00a0 Our SaaStr AI Can Outperform Jason Lemkin.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>The Breakthrough Discovery:<\/strong> Lemkin&#8217;s AI version, trained on 20 million words of his content (equivalent to 200 books), consistently outperformed him in business conversations and advice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why This Matters:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The AI remembers everything across 12 years of content while humans forget<\/li>\n<li>It can connect insights from different time periods that humans can&#8217;t recall<\/li>\n<li>Perfect memory combined with weighted content creates superhuman advisory capabilities<\/li>\n<li>Users asked deeper, more vulnerable questions than they would to humans<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Business Implications:<\/strong> This suggests AI advisors could replace human consultants in many knowledge-work scenarios, offering 24\/7 availability with perfect recall of all relevant information.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>2. <strong>People Confess More to AI Than Humans<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>The Psychology Revelation:<\/strong> Users shared their deepest business fears and personal struggles with the AI that they wouldn&#8217;t tell human advisors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Real Examples from SaaStr&#8217;s own AI:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;I&#8217;ve partnered with Sam on this podcast, but I&#8217;m not sure he&#8217;s committed as me&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if my board&#8217;s going to fire me&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I&#8217;m only growing 18%, I have 11 months of runway&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why This Happens:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Reduced judgment anxiety<\/li>\n<li>Perceived anonymity and safety<\/li>\n<li>24\/7 availability for vulnerable moments<\/li>\n<li>No social consequences or relationship complications<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Impact:<\/strong> This creates unprecedented opportunities for AI therapy, coaching, and advisory services where emotional safety is paramount.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>3. <strong>Traditional B2B Software Workflows and Interfaces Are Dying<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>The Death of Interfaces:<\/strong> Lemkin predicts we&#8217;ll spend 24 hours a day in ChatGPT-like interfaces, making traditional B2B app interfaces obsolete.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Current Evidence:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Going from B2B apps to ChatGPT already feels &#8220;dated&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>MCP (Model Context Protocol) allows AI to pull data from any app without logging in<\/li>\n<li>Companies like Salesforce and Okta are seeing slowed growth (7-10%)<\/li>\n<li>The average public SaaS company traded at 70X ARR in 2021, now at 5X<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The New Reality:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>CRMs become invisible database plumbing<\/li>\n<li>No need to learn complex interfaces or configurations<\/li>\n<li>Voice and chat replace point-and-click navigation<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The kids these days will never use software like we use it&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>4. <strong>Zero-to-One Million in ARR is Now &#8220;Much More Likely&#8221; in AI.\u00a0 But Revenue is Also Less Stable.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>The Fundamental Shift:<\/strong> Lemkin&#8217;s famous framework has been disrupted by AI capabilities.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Old Framework:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Zero to $1M: Impossible<\/li>\n<li>$1M to $10M: Unlikely<\/li>\n<li>$10M to $100M: Inevitable<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>New AI Reality:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Zero to $1M: Very likely (can happen in weeks)<\/li>\n<li>Beyond $100M: Everyone getting disrupted<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why This Changed:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>AI tools enable miraculous product creation speed<\/li>\n<li>Small teams can now build what previously required massive organizations<\/li>\n<li>The barriers to initial success have collapsed<\/li>\n<li>But sustaining growth beyond $100M is harder due to AI-enabled competition<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>5. <strong>AI Is Already Eliminating Many Traditional Roles<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Lemkin&#8217;s Business Transformation:<\/strong> SaaStr went from many employees to 5 people doing $25M revenue ($5M per person).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Roles Eliminated:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Ghost writers:<\/strong> AI writes better content summaries in minutes vs. weeks<\/li>\n<li><strong>Content reviewers:<\/strong> AI reviewed 300 speaker sessions better than human teams<\/li>\n<li><strong>Designers:<\/strong> AI tools handle most design needs<\/li>\n<li><strong>BDRs:<\/strong> &#8220;There will be no BDRs in a year&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sales screening:<\/strong> AI handles initial sales conversations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Future Predictions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>50% of sales and marketing teams gone in 2 years<\/li>\n<li>McKinsey already laid off 10% due to internal AI<\/li>\n<li>Mass unemployment coming to knowledge work<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>6. <strong>The Great Talent Retention Crisis<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>OpenAI&#8217;s Warning Signal:<\/strong> Only 60% employee retention over two years at OpenAI.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What This Means:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If OpenAI can&#8217;t retain AI talent, traditional companies have it even harder competing for top AI talent<\/li>\n<li>AI engineers are the new gold rush prospectors<\/li>\n<li>Companies must treat AI talent &#8220;really well&#8221; or lose them<\/li>\n<li>Traditional retention strategies won&#8217;t work<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Strategic Response:<\/strong> Companies need entirely new compensation and culture strategies to compete for AI talent, or they&#8217;ll be left behind.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>7. <strong>Many of The New Generation Won&#8217;t Have Traditional Jobs<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Lemkin&#8217;s College-Age Children Insights:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>One kid:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>10% of class didn&#8217;t want college at all<\/li>\n<li>Plan to move to Eastern Europe and make money online<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Worst case, I&#8217;ll work for Airbnb remotely&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Zero interest in traditional employment<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Other:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All want to go to graduate school to defer work reality<\/li>\n<li>More education-focused but still avoiding traditional work<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Cultural Shift:<\/strong> This represents a fundamental change in work expectations and career aspirations, with major implications for traditional business models.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>8. <strong>Content Creation Without AI is Dead<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>The New Creative Reality:<\/strong> Lemkin predicts no one will create content without AI going forward.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Current Examples:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Higgsfield.ai:<\/strong> Creates movies from single screenshots<\/li>\n<li><strong>Speaker promos:<\/strong> What took designers months now takes 10 seconds<\/li>\n<li><strong>Video generation:<\/strong> Can create conversations between people who never met<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Implication:<\/strong> Traditional creative roles must rapidly evolve to become AI collaborators or become obsolete.\u00a0 We&#8217;re already seeing this almost everywhere.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;No one will create content without AI going forward&quot; with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thesamparr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@thesamparr<\/a> + <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShaanVP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@ShaanVP<\/a> with me on New!!  My First Million <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QGkjemSmcU\">pic.twitter.com\/QGkjemSmcU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jason \u2728\ud83d\udc7eSaaStr.Ai\u2728 Lemkin (@jasonlk) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jasonlk\/status\/1930309045967302778?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 4, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>9. <strong>The $100 Billion Venture Bet\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Investment Strategy Evolution:<\/strong> VCs now expect $100 billion outcomes per fund (vs. $1 billion historically).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why This Matters:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Justifies $60-100M seed valuations<\/li>\n<li>Assumes extremely high loss rates<\/li>\n<li>Only makes sense if you find the next OpenAI\/ChatGPT scale winner<\/li>\n<li>Traditional venture math is broken<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Lemkin&#8217;s Personal Strategy:<\/strong> &#8220;I&#8217;m in it for one&#8221; &#8211; seeking one $10 billion outcome with 10% ownership to generate $200M+ return.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Market Reality:<\/strong> This creates a bifurcated market where you either win massively or lose everything.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>10. <strong>The Fog of War Opportunity<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>The Pattern Recognition:<\/strong> Similar to mobile and crypto transitions, everyone knows AI is huge, but no one knows exactly where the opportunities are.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Historical Context:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mobile:<\/strong> Obviously big, but winners like Uber looked nothing like previous web winners<\/li>\n<li><strong>Crypto:<\/strong> Fringe belief, most missed it entirely<\/li>\n<li><strong>AI:<\/strong> Consensus it&#8217;s huge, but complete uncertainty about execution<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Current Challenge:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Even working AI applications get disrupted quickly<\/li>\n<li>Models vs. infrastructure vs. applications &#8211; unclear where value accumulates<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;You know this is the time when all the money is going to get made&#8230; You still have no idea where to put it&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Strategic Approach:<\/strong> The smart money is either going all-in with high conviction or cashing out entirely, avoiding the middle ground of uncertainty.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>AI has quickly transformed from tool to the beginning stages of replacement across virtually every knowledge work function.<\/p>\n<p>SaaStr&#8217;s own AI demonstrates that we&#8217;re not just automating tasks\u2014we&#8217;re creating digital entities that can outperform their human creators. The implications stretch from individual career choices to venture capital strategies, suggesting we&#8217;re in the early stages of the most significant economic disruption in modern history.<\/p>\n<p>The key insight: those who embrace AI as a collaborative amplifier will thrive, while those who ignore it will become irrelevant faster than most anticipate.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"How the Smartest Founders Are Quietly Winning with AI\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/53ADYulqo8w?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1&#038;origin=https:\/\/www.saastr.com\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So we came back to HubSpot&#8217;s My First Million Podcast with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri to do a deep dive on AI and SaaS.\u00a0 It was a fun one because we approached it more from a content creator and end-user perspective vs. a software builder perspective. The Top 10 AI in B2B Takeaways: 1&#8230;. <br \/><a class=\"more-link fade\" href=\"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/how-the-smartest-founders-are-already-winning-with-ai-saastr-on-my-first-million-podcast\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":313834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpscp_schedule_draft_date":"","_wpscp_schedule_republish_date":"","_wpscppro_advance_schedule":false,"_wpscppro_advance_schedule_date":"","_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"default","_twitter_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type":"default","_pinterest_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"default","_medium_share_type":"default","_threads_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[]},"categories":[24898,31,24987],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-blog-posts","category-saastr-ai"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.saastr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/winai-scaled.jpg?fit=1000%2C590&quality=70&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5oib2-1jDP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313833"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313845,"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313833\/revisions\/313845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saastr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}