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

So far I've watched 3 VC seed deals this year where the founders just decided to keep the money for themselves and not build the product.

All were on SAFEs, and they took the position they owed investors nothing and that in fact they were not even investors. Just SAFE holders.

One eventually returned cash after keeping a large chunk for themselves.

Another hired an attorney who said plainly nothing was owed to the investors and the founders could pay themselves whatever they wanted.

I did not personally invest in these deals but I might have, they had a lot going for them (or so it seemed).

This is going to happen in the Age of AI. It's the flip side of so many things also exploding so quickly and growing at insane rates.

It's just a risk to be more aware of perhaps than in the past.

SaaStr AI Annual ’26 is May 12-14 in SF Bay!! See You There!!

Engineering: sell what we have

Sales: build what I can sell

This, is The Enterprise

You can't scale if you can't recruit 

First, learn to love it

Then, learn to staff it

So I’ve been vibe coding for about 4 months and shipped 10 apps and now I’m doing something I didn’t want to do.  I’m starting to build our own vibe’d marketing automations (on top of Resend).

If there’s one thing I don’t think you should do yourself, it’s marketing automation.  Building lists, segmenting lists, sending millions of emails … this is something you don’t want to get wrong.  Or wing it.  Buy a tool that does this all day long.  

But … but … we’ve reached the limits from our existing vendors, too.

I want to use AI to hyper personalize emails in many of the same ways we do for our AI SDRs.  Not exactly the same (that would be time and cost prohibitive), but to some extent.

And our existing horizontal tools just can’t do this.

So I vibe’d a series of new campaigns to SaaStr AI this week.  We’re sending 5 different campaigns ourselves now, outside our marketing automation tools.  Soon it will be more. 

I didn’t want to.  But we needed to.

Journey

Director, ABM & Demand Generation

Publicis Sapient

Senior Manager, Account-Based Marketing

Notable

DRI for the success of all demand generating channels, including syndication, digital advertising (social, search, display, out of home, direct mail). Launched industry- leading direct mail program for net-new acquisition, with a 17% opportunity to closed-won conversion rate (single highest converting channel). Owned ABM strategy for all enterprise & strategic accounts, using predictive tools like 6Sense to identify, engage & accelerate orgs through the customer journey.

Head of Demand Generation/ ABM 

Paro.io

Oversaw campaign planning across all promotional channels. Directly responsible for all paid marketing strategy and agency oversight. Managed over $1 million in annual budget, which drove 81% of total company lead volume. Oversaw SEO-focused site redesign, resulting in a 340% increase in MoM interaction. Collaborated with sales to launch dedicated ABM motion.

Digital Marketing Lead 

Sprint

Acted as Marketing Manager at U.S. arm of Home Credit International, one of the largest privately held investment management firms in Europe. Spearheaded digital co-branding efforts for Sprint Credit Card at a national scale. Responsible for launching all paid search, display and social efforts, utilizing RLSA
for precise customer retargeting. Led SEO-based restructuring of website.

Senior Marketing Manager

AdParlor

Diversified marketing mix by launching paid search, display and direct mail programs promoting Adknowledge to fortune 500 brands. Consulted on creative social strategy for some of the organization’s largest clients, including Starbucks, Wingstop and Hermès. Planned and executed highly targeted, omni-channel campaigns that drove new business for Adknowledge’s social agency subsidiary,  AdParlor. 

Clients included Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, Wing Stop, Bath & Body Works, LG, Timberland, QVC, Greyhound, Amtrak and Rogers.

Marketing Manager

Developed and maintained the social media content strategy/ execution for AdParlor. Handled all remarketing efforts through Google Display, Google Search, and paid social media advertising. Collaborated on, edited and approved all outgoing campaign content, including one-sheets, emails, proposals, sales decks, and news releases (strong B2B focus). Worked as liaison between platform partners (i.e. Snapchat, Pinterest, Facebook) for new initiatives and product launches.

Senior Marketing Strategist

DEG Digital

Acted as main point of contact for more than a dozen companies’ marketing teams to manage paid media efforts as a part of overall campaign strategy. Assisted in the preparation and presentation of multiple service pitches to fortune 500 companies. Created and optimized ad campaigns for a range of clients, including consumer brands, B2B, and non-profit organizations. 

Clients included Hallmark, Lee Jeans, Waddell & Reed, Nebraska Furniture Mart, Helzberg Diamonds, Essense of Australia

Digital Marketing Coordinator

Highly creative, award-winning, multi-disciplined marketer. I'm uniquely experienced in bridging the digital & tangible worlds and crafting unforgettable customer journeys. In my current role, I've focused on highly bespoke account-based initiatives that combine hyper-targeted digital touchpoints with experiential mailers— driving unprecedented conversion rates for the company.

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Jason M. Lemkin

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The Battle

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Kaitlin Xouris

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Engagements

Likes

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