SaaStr AI London is Dec 1-2!! See You There!!

Helping, founding, funding, and growing B2B start-ups.  Making it a positive-sum game for everyone involved.  VC checks $500k-$4m @ SaaStrFund.com.  2x founder with nine figures of founder exits.

"Do or do not. There is no try."

Specialties: helping people grow and become their best.  Doing not the impossible, but the unlikely.  Never giving up.

Join 10,000 of us IRL at SaastrAnnual.com May 12-14 in SF Bay!!

FREE Weekly Workshops and Live AMAs, Sign up here -> https://www.saastr.com/workshop-wednesday/

SaaStrFund.com investments include:

- Co-led Series A in Salesloft ($2.3B exit)
- Co-led Seed in Pipedrive ($1.5B exit)
- Led Seed in Algolia ($2.3B)
- First VC in Talkdesk ($10B)
- Led Seed in Gorgias ($800m)
- Led Seed in Owner.com ($1B)
- First Investor in RevenueCat ($500m)
- First VC in Logikcull ($280m exit)
- Proud smaller investor in Greenhouse ($800m exit), Sqreen ($400m exit), Automile ($1B SEK exit), Opus Pro, Higgsfield.ai, and many others!
- and much more

Jason M. Lemkin

The one hire I don't need, and none of my portfolio cos need, is a "Strategist"

I know at certain stage in many folks' career, that's what they want to do

Advise on strategy more than do work themselves

No criticism

But most startups only need a few hours of this at a time

SaaStr AI 2026 is May 12-14 in SF Bay!! See You There!!

My #1 piece of advice for GTM leaders in January 2026: Deploy an AI agent yourself.  Now.  This month.  Don't hire an agency. Don't tell someone on your team to do it.  Do it yourself.  Roll up those sleeves again. 

Deploy an AI agent into production, for real, yourself. with Lenny Rachitsky

And for junior sales & GTM folks? Embrace it. Be the one that embraces every bit of output from AI Agents.

Al Newman

CRO | NED | Investor

Highly experienced CRO, General Manager and Global Sales Leader. Over 20 years of successful roles in high and hyper-growth SaaS businesses originating from US/Canada, Europe and Israel.

Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)

If you’re selling AI like magic, you’re selling to LinkedIn, not to buyers.

B2B has always been about trust. AI just made the trust bar higher.

Everyone keeps banging on about outcomes: faster, cheaper, automated, “AI-native”.
But the buying reality is more acute.

A lot of organisations are either early in adoption, or already bruised from the first wave.
They’ve seen pilots stall.
They’ve seen “works in a demo” fail in production.
They’ve seen vendors promise the world, then disappear when it gets messy.

Serious buyers don’t optimise for “cool”. They optimise for “defensible”.

Defensible to Security.
Defensible to Legal.
Defensible to the CFO.
Defensible to their own career.

Which means the real questions are rarely “does it do the thing?”

They’re asking:

Can we trust it with our data?
What happens when it’s wrong?
Can we control the failure modes, or are we just hoping?
Can we explain it internally in plain English?
Can we measure it in production?
When it breaks, who owns the call and who carries the can?

That’s why brand, credibility, and track record matter more than ever.

Not as marketing fluff. As accumulated permission.

Permission to be in the stack.
Permission to touch sensitive workflows.
Permission to be imperfect without becoming a risk incident.

From a GTM point of view, “AI-native” isn’t the strategy. It’s the claim.

The strategy is being able to show your work:

What it does
What it doesn’t
How it fails
What guardrails exist
What gets logged
How humans stay in control
What “safe” looks like in production

A lot of AI selling is still “buy the vision” and “take a chance”.

In 2026, serious buyers don’t buy that. They buy proof.

AI will reshape software. Trust will decide who gets to reshape it.

taplio

The Battle

Jason M. Lemkin

Al Newman

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Performance ScoreJason M. Lemkin's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Jason M. Lemkin

Al Newman

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jason M. Lemkin's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAl Newman's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJason M. Lemkin's LinkedIn Performance