To view this email as a web page, click here

Go-To-Market Isn’t Dead. It’s You: A Wake-Up Call for B2B Leaders in the AI Era with Jason Lemkin

In our latest SaaStr AI Workshop Wednesday, Jason Lemkin joined us for “Go-To-Market Isn’t Dead. It’s You: A Wake-Up Call for B2B Leaders in the AI Era”

Top 5 Take-Aways:

The Same Execs in Many Cases Are Running the Same Playbooks — But Leaner and Better – Go-to-market leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other hot AI companies are the exact people who spoke at SaaStr in recent years, running upgraded versions of what already worked. If something’s “not working” for you, the fundamentals haven’t changed.
Mediocre and “Rinse and Repeat” Execution Is Dying Faster Than Ever – Low-energy campaigns, mediocre outbound, recycled content, and boring events are failing harder than before. AI has made it easier to produce mediocre work at scale, which means only truly excellent execution cuts through. Make everything awesome or don’t bother.
AI Budget Exists—But Only for Instant, Massive ROI – CIOs are drowning in AI tool requests while cutting efficiency software budgets. Companies like Notion, Dialpad, and Filevine are reaccelerating by tapping into AI spend. If you’re not seeing growth, you’re not delivering transformative value fast enough.
Traditional Channels Still Work (When Done Right) – Webinars, case studies, SEO, outbound, pilots, events, and brand building all still work. SaaStr’s SEO is up 3-5x in 12 months. OpenAI does pilots. Anthropic runs webinars. The difference is execution quality and adding genuine value.
PLG Is on Steroids in Age of AI, Sales Teams Are Real But Much Smaller – The hottest AI companies have intense product-led growth but lean sales teams. Perplexity has five salespeople. Vercel has one human SDR and ten agents. The demand is unprecedented, but the go-to-market motion has been AI-amplified, not replaced.

GTM ISN'T DEAD

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Salesforce

Watch the AI event of the year. Anytime, anywhere, for free.

Discover how data, AI, and a connected platform helps growing businesses and startups navigate change, scale operations, and enhance customer experiences, with real stories from growing customers.

Watch the SMB & Startups Keynote live on October 15th, streaming on Salesforce+.

REGISTER FOR FREE

Want A Job in Tech? SF Added 11K Net New Hires — 2x NY, 40x Austin, 30x Miami

The Bottom Line: San Francisco isn’t just back — it’s absolutely dominating tech hiring. Yes, AI is the engine, but it’s simply a fact.

The Bay Area added nearly 11,000 net new tech hires in the last 12 months, nearly 2x the next closest metro (NYC at ~5,700). If you’re looking to break into tech or make your next career move, geography still matters. A lot.

Let me be direct: If you want a job in AI or most of B2B right now, you need to be looking at San Francisco.

The data says otherwise. And it’s not even close.

The Numbers Don’t Lie: SF Is Crushing It.

According to Pave’s real-time compensation dataset tracking 337,700 current employees across select metro areas, San Francisco added 10,970 net new hires in the last 12 months. That’s nearly double New York (5,690) and more than triple Los Angeles (3,050).

Here’s the breakdown of the top metros (and the “alternatives” everyone talks about).

SF IS CRUSHING IT

5 Questions to Ask When Growth Slows

It’s happened far more in the past 24 months than ever before in my years in B2B software.

A startup that’s been crushing it for years suddenly hits a wall. Growth rates that used to be 40% quarter-over-quarter drop to 20%, then 15%, then single digits. And what do most founders do?

Most hide. Or at least ignore it.

They defend their teams. They point to seasonal fluctuations or market conditions. They promise that next quarter will be different. “We’ve got three big deals in the pipeline that slipped.” Or “Our new product launch is going to change everything.”

Maybe it will. But after two or more quarters of consistently slowing growth, you need to stop hiding and start confronting reality.

The Reason Is Almost Always Beginning To Fall Out of Product-Market Fit.

Growth doesn’t slow down by accident. It’s not just a bad quarter or two. When you see sustained deceleration, there’s always an underlying cause. And the longer you wait to acknowledge it, the harder it becomes to fix.

Admitting that growth is slowing can feel like admitting failure. It means difficult conversations with investors, employees, and customers. It means questioning decisions you were confident about just months ago.

But here’s what I’ve learned after working with hundreds of B2B and SaaS companies: the ones that acknowledge problems early and dig deep to understand them are the ones that come out stronger. Always. The ones that hide from slowing growth? More often than not, they never recover their momentum.

The Five Questions You Must Ask.

When growth starts slowing, there are five critical questions every founder needs to answer honestly. Not the sanitized versions you might present to your board, but the brutal, unvarnished truth.

THE 5 QUESTIONS TO ASK

Iconiq’s State of Software in 2025: Forward Deployed Engineers Up 12x; 55% of GTM is Now in Post-Sales; 2025 Is Crushing 2024 For Funding

ICONIQ Capital just dropped their annual State of Software report, and inside the 73 (!) pages are some data that shows just how much the software industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation.

Here are my top 5 take-aways (and 5 more bonus ones).

TOP TAKEAWAYS

Dear SaaStr: From 0 to $10m ARR, At What Point Do We Start Hiring and Whom?

From $0 to $10M ARR, every hire has an outsized impact, and there’s little to no redundancy. So timing and prioritization are critical.

Here’s how I’d break it down:

$0 to $1M ARR: Founder-Led Everything.

Sales: Founders should lead sales. You need to close the first 10-20 customers yourself to refine the pitch and understand objections. Maybe hire 1-2 scrappy AEs or SDRs to assist with lead gen, but you’re the closer.

Marketing: Often no VP of Marketing / Growth yet — but if you can find someone great that is “hands on keyboard” and will do the work themsleves, hire them! If you’re seeing steady leads, consider a growth hacker or someone scrappy to help with demand gen. A great VP of Demand Gen can be accretive even at $10K-$20K MRR if there’s demand to build on.

Customer Success: Hire 1-2 individual contributors to handle onboarding and support. If you land 2 big customers, hire someone full-time to make them successful. Neglecting them will hurt.

$1M to $3M ARR: Build the Foundation.

Sales: Once you have 2 reps consistently hitting quota, hire your first VP of Sales (usually around $1M-$2M ARR). They’ll scale the team from 2 reps to 10+ and build a repeatable process.
Marketing: Around $1M ARR, you’re ready for a VP of Marketing or Demand Gen. If they can increase qualified leads by even 20%, they’ll pay for themselves.
Customer Success: If churn or renewals are a challenge, or you have larger customers, hire a VP of Customer Success around $2M-$3M ARR. They’ll focus on retention and building a scalable CS function.

$3M to $10M ARR: Scale the Team

Sales: Your VP of Sales should now be hiring aggressively. You’ll likely need 10-20 AEs to hit $10M ARR, depending on deal size and quotas. Start layering in Sales Ops and Enablement as the team grows.
Marketing: Your VP of Marketing should build out a team, including content marketing (some with AI, but still), paid acquisition, and events. If targeting SMBs, consider a growth hacker to optimize funnels.
Customer Success: By $10M ARR, you’ll need a full CS team to handle onboarding, renewals, retention, and upsells. A dedicated Head of Support is likely necessary if ticket volume is high.
Engineering/Product: As complexity grows, hire a VP of Engineering to manage technical debt and integrations. A hands-on VP of Product is also critical by this stage to handle the increasing product demands.

The key is to hire just ahead of the curve. At least try. You’ll get burnt out if you hire strong leaders too late. And growth will stall. And … don’t settle. Take risks, hire stretch VPs and stretch hires. But don’t hire anyone you aren’t 90%+ sure can do the job well.

If you wait until you’re drowning in leads, churn, or bugs, you’ve waited too long. Every hire should be accretive within a few months, so don’t hesitate to invest when you see the need.

MORE HERE

Dear SaaStr: What is the Standard Commission Percentage in SaaS?

In B2B, the standard commission percentage for sales reps typically falls around 10% of the Annual Contract Value (ACV) for deals they close.

Sometimes a bit more for orgs rapidly scaling and that are well-funded, but rarely too much more.

This is part of a broader On-Target Earnings (OTE) structure, where the rep’s total comp (base + commission) is designed to be about 20%-25% of the total revenue they bring in annually.

For example:

If a rep closes $1M in annual deals, their OTE might be $200k-$250k, split roughly 50/50 between base salary and commission. That means $100k-$125k of their comp would come from commissions, which aligns with the 10%-12.5% of ACV range.

Reps are expected to close 4x-5x their OTE in bookings after the earliest days at least. Sometimes 3x in high volume, lower OTE SMB models.

It ensures the business model remains viable and the sales team is accretive — while still highly incentivizing the reps.

If you’re setting this up, you can also include accelerators for overperformance—e.g., paying 15%-20% commission on deals closed above quota. This keeps top performers motivated to push beyond their targets.

STANDARD COMMISSION IN SAAS

644 Emerson St. Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA, 94301

If you'd like to stop receiving the SaaStr Daily, click here