SaaStr 852: The Agents #003, Our Agent Now Runs Campaigns on Weekends, Plus Why We Pay More for Salesforce Than Ever Before

Here's the updated version:

This week on The Agents, SaaStr CEO & Founder Jason Lemkin and SaaStr CAIO Amelia Le Rutte dig into what it actually looks like when your AI VP of Marketing starts running campaigns on its own, segmenting lists, writing copy, and asking if you've done the work yet. They also get into why SaaStr's Salesforce bill went up 80% after cutting seats by 60%, and why that's actually a good deal. Plus: Amelia vibed a fix to a critical Marketo unsubscribe bug in under an hour that Marketo couldn't solve in 10 days, how headless Salesforce is already running inside their stack, and what an n=1 AI parking pass app reveals about the future of event ops.

They also cover the Red Point report showing 54% of CIOs are consolidating vendors, and which categories are getting cut first, plus the hardest hiring problem in SaaS right now: finding the operator who can actually build and run your agents.

SaaStr 851: The Agents, Episode 002. Managing 20+ AI Agents: Lazy Agents, Stealth Churn & the Death of 60% Solutions

In Episode 2 of The Agents, Amelia Lerutte, Chief AI Officer at SaaStr, and Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO of SaaStr, share the trials, tribulations, victories, and minor defeats of managing 20+ AI agents in production. With three humans and 20+ AI agents now driving more revenue and output than SaaStr did with 20+ FTEs in 2020, this weekly series goes deep on what's actually working, breaking, and changing in the agentic era.

This week's episode covers:

00:00 Welcome to The Agents Episode 2 01:00 Lazy Agents: How an AI agent silently deleted Amelia's session from the SaaStr Annual top 10 06:30 When agents blame the API: agentic accountability and the need for daily QA 09:00 The 60% Solution Problem: Why HubSpot's new AEO tool failed and got vibe coded better in 10 minutes 14:00 Figma Make vs. Replit, Lovable, and v0: Why no one will pay for "good enough" AI products 17:30 Classic Figma is now Grandpa Software: Production breakdowns and why Illustrator's agent is winning 21:00 Stealth Churn in Canva, ChatGPT, and beyond: The hidden metric every leader needs to watch 27:00 Why Claude Cowork created lock-in and killed ChatGPT usage for Amelia 30:00 Forward Deployed Engineers vs. Self-Serve: Why FDE light is the answer for SMB AI deployments 36:00 Vector breaks the agent freeze: How a 15-minute CEO-led deployment won SaaStr's business 40:00 The Agent API Test: Which APIs work best with AI agents (Salesforce wins, Marketo fails) 46:00 Resend, 11 Labs, and OpenRouter: The new gold standard for agent-friendly APIs 50:00 The Marketo collapse: When your marketing automation platform can't honor unsubscribes 55:00 Building an AI VP of Finance: Why collections is the next agent frontier at SaaStr 1:00:00 SaaStr Annual 2026 is three weeks away: May 12-14 in the SF Bay Area

Topics covered: AI agents, agent management, lazy agents, stealth churn, vibe coding, Replit, Lovable, v0, Figma Make, HubSpot AEO, Claude Cowork, forward deployed engineers, FDE, self-serve AI, Vector, Salesforce, Marketo, Resend, 11 Labs, agent APIs, AI VP of Finance, collections automation, SaaStr Annual 2026

SaaStr Annual 2026 | May 12-14 | Come learn how to build, deploy, and manage AI agents from the leaders at Salesforce, Replit, Vercel, Cloudflare, and more. Register at saastr.ai

Subscribe for weekly episodes of The Agents and the SaaStr Podcast.

#AIAgents #SaaS #SaaStr #AgenticAI #VibeCoding

SaaStr 850: The Agents, Episode 1: Who Maintains All This?

Welcome to The Agents, a new weekly series where Amelia Lerutte, Chief AI Officer at SaaStr, and Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO of SaaStr, pull back the curtain on everything happening across SaaStr's live agentic stack. Every week, all the bumps, breakthroughs, and real talk from running 20+ AI agents in production.

In the debut episode: the meta question nobody talks about after you vibe code your first app, which is who actually maintains it? Amelia Lerutte and Jason Lemkin walk through three live examples from the week including a preview environment outage that stumped both the agents and the humans, micro hallucinations in their AI VP of Marketing that had it reporting 44% ahead of plan one morning and 11% the next, and a model regression in their pitch deck analyzer that nobody changed a line of code to cause. They also get into a story about Clay's agent steering them toward a 5x credit spend, why no lead left behind is the simplest and most important unlock of the entire agentic journey, what happened when Salesforce swapped Agent Force for Qualified on their homepage the day the acquisition closed, and how QB1, SaaStr's AI VP of Customer Success, caught sponsors uploading placeholder graphics to fake a print deadline.

If you're on the agentic journey or about to start, this is the show.

SaaStr 849: How We Built Our AI VP of Customer Success with SaaStr's CEO and CAIO

Amelia and Jason walk through QB1, SaaStr's vibe-coded AI VP of Customer Success that started as a simple sponsor portal replacement and evolved into a fully agentic customer management system. The result: 70% fewer billable hours, 10x more customer engagement, and a hundred sponsors getting hyper-personalized weekly emails in minutes instead of days. They break down exactly how it was built, what broke, and how you can reverse-engineer it for your own business.

Slides linked here.

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Hey everybody - we are just about 30 DAYS out from the biggest B2B and AI event of the year. SaaStr Annual is coming back to the SF Bay Area this May, and if you're not registered yet, what are you waiting for?

This is where the real deals get done. 68% VP-level and above. 36% CEOs and founders. 25% AI-first professionals. This isn't a conference, this is THE room where S-tier decision makers show up to figure out what's next.

But here's the deal: ticket prices go up FAST. Like, actually hundreds. Don't be that person who waits and then pays full price.

Lock in your spot TODAY. Go to podcast.saastrannual.com and use my exclusive discount for SaaStr AI SF 2026.

May is closer than you think. See you there.

SaaStr 848: How AI Is Rewiring Sales: Quota, Retention & What's Actually Working with SaaStr, Salesforce and Mangomint

In this episode, three revenue leaders at very different stages of AI adoption get real about what's actually working, what's embarrassingly broken, and why nobody should be doubling quota just yet.

Panelists:

• Greg Beltzer — Chief Customer Officer, AgentForce (Salesforce)
• Ashley Wilson — Co-founder, Momentum by Salesforce
• Marchelle Mooney — VP of Sales, Mangomint
• Amelia Lerutte - Chief AI Officer, SaaStr

They cover:

• Why every company has leads they never followed up on (yes, even Salesforce)
• The "chainsaw without the cover off" problem with AI tool rollouts
• How Mangomint uses AI to fix terrible salon logos in minutes — and why it freaks customers out
• Why Marchelle is not raising quota in 2026, even though she could
• The real resistance to AI adoption (hint: it's not just the CIO)
• How Momentum is using AI to democratize language for SDRs in Argentina
• What retention looks like when AI is listening for slow-drip churn signals
• Why your data is probably worse than you think — and what that means for agents

Key takeaway: AI won't magically fix your sales org. Your data has to be clean, your people need training, and you have to rethink workflows from first principles — not just bolt AI onto the old playbook.

Recorded live at SaaStr London.

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Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

What happens when you go all-in on AI tools in a completely remote organization at scale?

That's where Marchelle Mooney, VP of Sales at MangoMint, found herself.

MangoMint is vertical SaaS for salons and spas with a ~$4K ACV and a five-day sales cycle. Not exactly the profile you'd expect to be running one of the most disciplined remote revenue organizations in SaaS. But Marchelle's team is closing in on a 7.2x ARR-to-OTE ratio, has increased win rates 7% in two quarters, and has given reps 16 hours back per month. All fully remote, all with lean headcount.

In this session, Marchelle breaks down the exact three-layer AI Rigor Stack she built to get there: the Clarity Layer, the Cadence Layer, and the Co-Pilot Layer. She also walks through the full tool stack (Notion, Slack, Salesforce, Snowflake, Sigma, Momentum) and how data flows automatically to reps without them ever hunting for a dashboard.

The core insight: the problem was never the tools. It was fragmentation. And the path to fixing it runs through subtraction, not addition.

If you're running a remote or hybrid revenue org and feel like you're running fast but not getting anywhere, this one's for you. ------

Hey everybody - we are LESS THAN 60 DAYS out from the biggest B2B and AI event of the year. SaaStr Annual is coming back to the SF Bay Area this May, and if you're not registered yet, what are you waiting for?

This is where the real deals get done. 68% VP-level and above. 36% CEOs and founders. 25% AI-first professionals. This isn't a conference, this is THE room where S-tier decision makers show up to figure out what's next.

But here's the deal: ticket prices go up FAST. Like, actually hundreds. Don't be that person who waits and then pays full price.

Lock in your spot TODAY. Go to podcast.saastrannual.com and use my exclusive discount for SaaStr AI SF 2026.

May is closer than you think. See you there.

SaaStr 846: 10 Things to Know Before You Deploy Your First AI SDR with SaaStr's CEO and CAIO

If you're about to roll out your first AI SDR, or you're on your second or third deployment and still not getting the results you want, this one's for you.

Amelia Lerutte, SaaStr Chief AI Officer, and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO and Founder, walk through everything they've learned from running 20+ AI agents in production at SaaStr, including four AI SDRs spanning outbound, inbound, customer success, and sponsor engagement. After 10 months, 1.5 million inbound sessions, and over 200,000 outbound messages sent, they've made enough mistakes to save you a lot of time and money.

In this session they cover:

Why the tool doesn't matter as much as you think, and what actually does.

The single biggest mistake both early-stage startups and billion-dollar companies make when deploying their first AI SDR.

How to segment ruthlessly so your agent has the right context for every prospect instead of one big, generic brain.

Why consistency beats brilliance, and what "pretty good at scale" actually looks like in practice.

The minimum traffic and list size you need before an inbound or outbound AI SDR is worth deploying.

How many humans you actually need to run this well, and what happens when you don't have them.

What the first 30 days should look like, and why nothing is ever truly set and forget.

The real story behind Amelia AI, SaaStr's multimodal video agent, including what they'd do differently if starting over.

They also get into lookalike audiences as a list-building hack for early stage companies, when to build versus buy, and what it actually feels like when someone tries to prompt inject your agent at scale.

If you've been on the fence about deploying an AI SDR, or you've deployed one and it's underperforming, this is the most practical breakdown of what it takes to make one work.

Resources mentioned: SaaStr AI Agents directory: saastr.ai/agents SaaStr Annual 2026: May 12-14, SF Bay Area

SaaStr 845: How SaaStr Built a $5 million Pipeline Machine with 1.5 Humans and 20 AI Agents with SaaStr's Chief AI Officer and Momentum from Salesforce's VP of GTM

Amelia LeRutte, SaaStr's Chief AI Officer (and the person Jason Lemkin calls "the AI Agent Whisperer"), breaks down exactly how she went from managing a 10-person team to running 20 AI agents that generated $4.8M in additional pipeline — and closed half of it.

In this episode, Amelia walks Jonathan Kvarfordt, Momentum from Salesforce's VP of GTM through:

— Her journey from social media manager to Chief AI Officer, including the three-month deep dive where she locked herself in a room to figure out AI agents

— The full breakdown of SaaStr's 20-agent stack, including how they split work between tools like Salesforce AgentForce, Artisan, Qualified, Clay, Momentum, Gamma, and Zapier

— A live demo of their multi-agent workflow: how a single form submission triggers a chain of agents that enrich data, build personalized Gamma decks, and draft follow-up emails, automatically

— Real results: deal volume doubled, win rate doubled, and $2.4M closed from AI-sourced pipeline in just 8 months

— The "90/10 rule" for deciding when to buy an agent vs. build one with vibe coding on Replit

— Live demos of Digital Jason (Delphi), Amelia AI (Qualified), and a sponsor portal being vibe-coded in real time

Whether you're running a lean startup or scaling a go-to-market team, this is one of the most tactical breakdowns of an AI agent stack you'll find.

🎟️ Heading to SaaStr Annual in May? Talk to Amelia AI on the event site for a promo code: https://www.saastrannual.com/

The Top 5 Issues Managing Multiple AI Agents in Production

Managing 1-2 AI agents? Easy. Managing 20+? That's a different game entirely.

After 9+ months running nearly 30 AI agents in production at SaaStr, we've learned what actually breaks at scale - and nobody's talking about it. This isn't about deployment tips or vendor selection. This is about the brutal realities that only emerge when you're juggling 20+ agents generating $1M+ in revenue.

🔥 THE 5 ISSUES WE COVER:

1. The Context Switching Tax (2:15)

Managing 20 agents = managing 20 employees who all speak different languages. Each needs daily 1-on-1s. The math doesn't work: 20 agents × 20 min = 6.7 hours/day, but you only have 3-4 hours of capacity.

2. The New Agent Blackout Period (12:40)

Every new agent costs you 2 weeks of chaos. While onboarding Monaco, Artisan's response rates dropped 3% because contacts went stale. You can only safely add 1.5 agents per month max - any faster and you're running in place.

3. The AI Agent Succession Planning Crisis (23:15)

You're the single point of failure for $1M+ of AI-driven revenue. Only 2-5% of your team could manage these agents. What happens when you get hit by a bus? Go on vacation? Leave the company?

4. The Agent as Truth-Teller (32:50)

"You're 56% behind target. Block 3 hours tomorrow or adjust your goal." Your agents don't sugarcoat. They have all the data and they'll roast you every day. Is that helpful or demoralizing? We still don't know.

5. The Compliance/Security Drift (41:20)

You ran a security audit in January. It's now February. You've shipped 40 updates. Did you re-audit? Probably not. Your security posture is degrading in real-time while you iterate at AI speed.

BONUS #6: You Lose Patience with Humans (48:30)

After managing agents that respond instantly and work 24/7, humans feel painfully slow. "What do you mean you don't know the answer? My agent knows instantly." This makes you worse at managing actual people.

⚡ KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• → There is no orchestration layer yet - you're manually checking 20 different dashboards daily
• → Your agents can't talk to each other - Salesforce is the only place they meet
• → You need a "Chief Agent Officer" - someone technical enough to manage the stack
• → The math: Can only add ~1.5 agents/month max, need 10-15 hours/week for management
• → ROI calculation is simple: Which agent touched which lead? Did it close? That's it.

💰 THE NUMBERS:

• → 20+ agents in production
• → $1M+ in closed revenue from agents
• → 30% of Chief AI Officer time spent on agent management
• → 2 weeks minimum to onboard each new agent
• → 6.7 hours needed daily to properly manage 20 agents (impossible)

🛠️ AGENTS WE USE:

Sales/Outbound: Artisan, Monaco, Agent Force Inbound: Qualified RevOps: Momentum, Attention Marketing: 10K (custom AI VPM), Gamma, Opus Pro Customer Support: HappyFox Internal: SaaStr Sponsors portal (custom vibe-coded)

🔗 RESOURCES:

• → SaaStr.ai/agents - Full agent directory and how we use each one
• → SaaStr Annual 2026 (May 12-14) - SaaStr Deploy day: Build your own agents hands-on
• → Previous episodes: Deep dives on 10K AI VPM, vibe coding, build vs buy

🎤 SPEAKERS:

Amelia Lerutte - Chief AI Officer, SaaStr Jason Lemkin - Founder & CEO, SaaStr

The uncomfortable truth: Managing 20+ agents makes you worse at managing humans. You get used to instant execution, no pushback, 24/7 availability, and perfect memory. Then humans feel... inefficient.

Maybe the future isn't "how many agents can I add" but "how deep can I go with the ones I have."

#AIAgents #SaaS #GoToMarket #AIAutomation #ProductivityTools #B2BSaaS #SalesAutomation #MarketingAutomation #AgenticAI #StartupTech

Subscribe for weekly AI deployment content from the trenches. No theory. No vendor pitches. Just what actually works (and breaks) at scale.

---------------------

Hey everybody - we are LESS THAN 90 DAYS out from the biggest B2B and AI event of the year. SaaStr Annual is coming back to the SF Bay Area this May, and if you're not registered yet, what are you waiting for?

This is where the real deals get done. 68% VP-level and above. 36% CEOs and founders. 25% AI-first professionals. This isn't a conference, this is THE room where S-tier decision makers show up to figure out what's next.

But here's the deal: ticket prices go up FAST. Like, actually hundreds. Don't be that person who waits and then pays full price.

Lock in your spot TODAY. Go to podcast.saastrannual.com and use my exclusive discount for SaaStr AI SF 2026.

May is closer than you think. See you there.

---------------------

This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

SAASTR 843: Software Stocks Have Massively Crashed. Here's What Founders Need to Know. SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin joins the TBPN show for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of SaaS, AI, and venture capital. Jason shares how he shrunk his team from 15 to 3 people by going all-in on AI agents, why he's lost patience with companies that haven't re-accelerated growth, and the real economics behind running large-scale events. He breaks down why PE has "said goodbye to B2B," how vibe coding is flooding the market with competitors, and what's making the IPO window both exciting and treacherous. Plus: why the agent that closed a $100K deal on a Saturday night matters more than any demo day pitch, and how AI discoverability is quietly reshaping how businesses choose their software stack.

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This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

SaaStr 842: The 90/10 Rule for AI Agents: What to Build vs Buy with SaaStr's CEO and CAIO

SaaStr's Chief AI Officer, Amelia Lerutte, and SaaStr CEO & Founder Jason Lemkin break down SaaStr's evolving 90/10 rule for AI agents and apps: buy 90% off the shelf, build the 10% you can't find.

In this episode, they walk through two recently built tools: an internal AI VP of Marketing and an external-facing customer portal, and share the real trade-offs of deploying vibe coding apps into production.

Topics covered: Why we replaced a paid SaaS tool with a vibe-coded app (and what pushed us over the edge) How Claude Cowork changed the game for building more complex apps The role of writing a spec before vibe coding Tackling single sign-on as a non-engineer How we used Cowork to process 150+ customer contracts in hours instead of days Lovable's data on what people are actually vibe coding Maintenance costs and the hidden time suck of custom apps Why zero AI in your product should scare you The "jaw drop" test for SaaS products in 2026 -------------------------------------- Tools & resources mentioned: Replit, Claude Cowork, Clerk, Lovable, Zapier, Salesforce, Monaco 🔗 See all the AI agents and tools we use: saastr.ai/agents 🔗 SaaStr Annual 2026 (May 12-14): saastrannual.com 🎙️ 20VCwith Harry & Jason & Rory: Drops every Thursday #SaaStr #AI #VibeCoding #B2BSaaS #AIAgents #BuildvsBuy --------------------------------------

This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.