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9-9-6 Is Real, and It’s Becoming Common — At Least in SF, Per The Latest Ramp Data. How Hard Can You Go?

By Jason Lemkin
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 | Blog Posts

Summer’s Over. Time to Make the Hard Calls You’ve Been Avoiding

The data is in from Ramp: 9-9-6 work culture has officially arrived in San Francisco. For real. It’s becoming common. It’s not just a Twitter/X phenomenon.

Here’s what every B2B founder needs to know about this seismic shift in Silicon Valley’s work expectations.

For months, we’ve been talking about 9-9-6 on X and social media—the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six-days-a-week schedule that originated in China’s tech scene. Twitter has been buzzing with anecdotes, founder confessions, and heated debates about whether this hyper-intensive work culture was actually taking root in the Bay Area.

Well, the speculation is over. We now have hard data from Ramp (which has just crossed $1B in ARR!) proving that 996 isn’t just founder posturing or social media noise, it’s a measurable reality reshaping how San Francisco tech workers operate.

9-9-6 IS REAL

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Why Anthropic, Cursor & FAL Ditched Traditional Sales Playbooks: The New Go-to-Market for Technical Teams and Product-Led Growth

By Jason Lemkin
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence (AI), SaaStr.Ai

Speaker Bios

Talia Goldberg – Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
Talia leads AI investments at Bessemer and has been at the forefront of understanding how AI companies break traditional SaaS metrics and business models.
Kelly Loftus – Head of Startup Sales, Anthropic Kelly has scaled Anthropic’s startup sales team from fewer than 10 people to over 150 as the company grew from 250 to 1,300 employees in just 18 months.
Jacob Jackson – Machine Learning Engineer, Cursor (formerly OpenAI, Tab9, Super Maven) A veteran of the AI coding space, Jacob has been building developer tools since 2018 and joined Cursor 8 months ago after working as a researcher at OpenAI.
Gorkem Yurtseven – CTO and Co-Founder, FAL (Features and Labels)
Gorkem leads the technical vision at FAL, the generative media platform that hosts open and closed source image and video models via easy-to-use APIs.

DITCHING TRADITIONAL SALES PLAYBOOKS

Holy Moly! SaaStr’s New Startup Valuation Calculator Just Crossed 200,000 (!) Valuations in Its First 2 Weeks

By Jason Lemkin
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence (AI), SaaStr.Ai

Holy Moly! SaaStr’s New Startup Valuation Calculator Just Crossed 200,000 (!) Valuations in Its First 2 Weeks

The Numbers Don’t Lie: Founders Are Starving for Real Valuation Data.

Sometimes, something just clicks. And that’s our new SaaStr.ai Startup Valuation Calculator: 200,000+ valuations in just 14 days.

That’s not a typo. That’s not inflated bot traffic. That’s 200,000+ founders, VPs, and startup leaders desperately trying to figure out one simple question: “What the hell is my company actually worth?”

And honestly? It makes perfect sense.

Try it here.

TRY OUR NEW STARTUP VALUATION CALCULATOR

The Richest Person Battle: What Larry Ellison’s Rise to #1 Tells Us About AI, Enterprise Software, and Why Revenue Still Matters Most

By Jason Lemkin
Wednesday, September 10, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence (AI), SaaStr.Ai

The Richest Person Battle: What Larry Ellison’s Rise to #1 Tells Us About AI, Enterprise Software, and Why Revenue Still Matters Most

TL;DR: Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle way back in 1977 (!), is about to become the world’s richest person, surpassing Elon Musk (at least for now), thanks to Oracle’s AI surge. Here’s what every B2B founder needs to know about this wealth flip. And what it means for your company.

Oracle’s AI Bet Is Paying Off Big Time. At Least In Revenues — If Not Profits.

As of September 2025, we’re witnessing something remarkable in real-time. Larry Ellison’s net worth has surged to approximately $364 billion, closing in fast on Elon Musk’s $384 billion. Oracle’s stock exploded 40% in a single day—on pace for its best trading day since 1992—pushing the company toward a $1 trillion market cap at $950 billion.

THE RICHEST PERSON BATTLE

The #1 Reason to Hire a VP Legal By Your Series B: Get That Stress Off Your Plate (Mostly)

By Jason Lemkin
Wednesday, September 10, 2025 | Blog Posts

The #1 Reason to Hire a VP Legal By Your Series B: Get That Stress Off Your Plate (Mostly)

The Problem Folks Don’t Talk About Enough: The Stressful Legal Micro-Dramas That Come Just as Thing Start Getting Good

When you’re building your B2B startup, you’re laser-focused on product-market fit, customer acquisition, and scaling your team. But there’s a hidden tax that many founders don’t see coming until it hits: frivolous lawsuits.

Here’s what seasoned founders are seeing more of:

Patent Trolls

Claims that your product infringes on patents they “own” – often incredibly broad or questionable patents designed to extract settlements from startups who can’t afford to fight.

Copyright & Trademark Disputes

Competitors or opportunistic parties claiming you’ve violated their IP, even when the claims are weak or baseless.

Competitor Lawsuits

Strategic litigation designed to drain your resources and slow your growth while competitors gain market advantage.

Cease & Desist Letters

A constant stream of legal threats across various issues, many naming founders personally to increase pressure.

THE #1 REASON TO HIRE A VP LEGAL

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Red Flags in a Founder?

By Jason Lemkin
Wednesday, September 10, 2025 | Q&A

A few:

Doesn’t know the market cold. Always pass. The best founders know the market cold, even in the earliest days.
Doesn’t understand or respect the competition. The best always do. Even if they are beating the competition.
Can’t recruit a strong management team. This is half the job, ultimately.
Too tired. Yes, being a founder is insanely hard. But you have to find a way, and to find the energy, to go long.
Lies about anything. If they do, it will just be the beginning.
”Woe is me” attitude. Woe is you, indeed.
Always blaming the markets, or claiming it’s all due to a “downturn” or “recession”. Tech and innovation makes its own growth.
Running out of money. It’s your job not to.
Letting the mediocre stay — and lead. Everyone stops working hard enough when the mediocre are allowed to lead.
Not very responsive. The best CEOs always are.

The best once in a while exhibit 1 or 2 of these issues for a little while. But not for long.

RED FLAGS IN A FOUNDER

ElevenLabs: From 0 to $300M ARR in 3 Years. Why The Best AI B2B Apps Are Exploding

By Jason Lemkin
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 | Scale

ElevenLabs: From 0 to $300M ARR in 3 Years. Why The Best AI B2B Apps Are Exploding

How the AI application layer is creating a new class of hypergrowth B2B companies—and what separates the winners from the noise.

We’re witnessing something unprecedented in SaaS: AI application companies achieving growth rates that make traditional SaaS hypergrowth look slow. ElevenLabs just hit $200M+ ARR and is projecting $300M+ by year-end—representing 1,100% growth in 24 months while remaining profitable.

But here’s what’s really interesting: ElevenLabs isn’t alone. The best AI B2B applications are exploding past traditional SaaS growth curves, and there’s a pattern emerging that every SaaS leader needs to understand.

WHY THE BEST ARE EXPLODING

Dear SaaStr: Should I Visit My Customers More?

By Jason Lemkin
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 | Q&A

Yes. Absolutely.

You should visit your customers more. I can’t stress this enough—getting in front of your customers is one of the most effective things you can do to drive growth, retention, and expansion. It’s not just about building relationships, it’s about understanding their needs, getting unfiltered feedback, and showing them you’re invested in their success.

Here’s why it works:

1. You Always Learn More Than You Expect

When I was scaling Adoe Sign / EchoSign, I didn’t visit customers enough early on. My mentor called me out on it, and he was right. Once I started visiting them, I learned things I never would have over email or Zoom. Customers opened up about what they loved, what they hated, and what they needed next. That feedback directly shaped our roadmap and helped us grow faster.

And two big ones — BT and GE — took a risk on us they wouldn’t have over Zoom.

2. It Strengthens Relationships

Especially with your top customers, in-person meetings build trust. When you visit, you’re not just another vendor—they see you as a partner. I’ve said this before: I never lost a customer I visited in person. Never. That’s how powerful it is.

3. Roadmap Presentations Are Gold

If you’re unsure how to structure these visits, do a roadmap presentation. Show them what’s coming in the next 12 months and ask for their input. It’s not a sales pitch, but it often leads to upsells and renewals because they see you’re committed to their success. Plus, it gets more stakeholders in the room, which is a win.

4. It’s a Competitive Advantage:

Your competitors probably aren’t doing this. In today’s remote-first world, most founders and execs avoid travel. But the vendor that shows up in person wins the deal, the upsell, and the long-term loyalty. It’s that simple.

Start with your top 5-10 customers. Visit them at least twice a year.

Bring your head of customer success or product with you—they can answer questions and show your team’s commitment. And if you’re worried about the cost, think of it this way: the ROI on retaining and expanding your biggest accounts far outweighs the price of a plane ticket and a steak dinner.

Here are some guidelines:

Show up in person to any $50k+ competitive deal. If the deal is competitive, and you show up, your odds of winning go way, way up.
Show up in person to any $100k+ deal if you can, even if you think you’ve “won” it or are the clear default choice. These deals are worth the time and effort to travel, almost always, unless you are very remote.
Show up in person to every local $50k+ deal. There is no excuse if you are in the Bay Area, and your prospect is as well, to not go meet in person.
Show up in person to every Top 100 logo deal. Figure out the Top 100 logos you want to get. And force the team to go in person. Even if it’s a $5k deal today, of course, a top logo deal can be six figures over time.
Show up in person if the competition does, period, if you want to win it. Thing is, it’s hard to know until it’s too late.
Customers outside of tech often expect an in-person visit for bigger deals, period. If you are struggling to close non-tech customers over Zoom, there’s a reason why. It’s not SOP there. Go visit. Go make a customer call in person.

WHY YOU SHOULD VISIT YOUR CUSTOMERS

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9-9-6 Is Real and It’s Becoming Common