Jason Lemkin: AI and the Death of the 2021 Sales Playbook
SaaStr's founder on why the 2021 playbook is dead but the plays still work, and the one skill making marketers infinitely hireable.
How Jason Lemkin Sees the AI GTM Landscape
This AMA from SaaStr AI London is Jason Lemkin at his most direct. His core thesis: the 2021 playbook is dead, but the plays are the same - and the same people are running them. Look at who's leading the hottest AI companies: Vercel's COO came from Stripe. Replit's CRO came from ZoomInfo. Bolt's head of sales came from SaaStr's own team. "That wouldn't be possible if the plays don't work."
The timing insight is crucial: none of these AI products worked until Q2 2024. Gamma was founded in 2020 - it took 5 years to hit $1M, then one year to $80M. Replit was 10 years old before it took off. Qualified has been working on AI inbound since 2019 - their CEO (ex-SVP at Salesforce) admits "that's when it finally worked after 5 years." The magical moment was Claude 4 and GPT-4.
Lemkin's most actionable advice for marketers: "Become proficient at 2-3 leading agent tools. Do the deployment yourself. Do the training. Iterate every day for a month. If you have those skills, you will be infinitely hireable for the next 18 months because only 2% of marketers have them."
He addresses the "is inbound dead?" panic directly: SaaStr's SEO is down 8%, but their traffic is up 50%. Why? AI GTM content. People are devouring anything about agents and automation. "If we could sell that content, I'd buy islands." Meanwhile, companies running the exact same playbook from 2021 with no changes - yes, they're suffering.
The vendor consolidation reality is stark. CIOs are going around saying "give up an app or give me two if you want to add one next year." One company in his portfolio lost $1.5M in monthly recurring last month - not from unhappy customers, but from happy customers whose CIOs simply cut "attachments to CRM" to make room for AI tools.
4 Insights From Jason Lemkin on AI Sales and Marketing
- AI SDR/GTM tools didn't work until Claude 4 / GPT-4 in Q2 2024 - if you had a bad experience before March, write it off
- The #1 career advice: deploy 2-3 leading agent tools yourself, iterate daily for a month, and you'll be "infinitely hireable"
- Vendor consolidation is real: CIOs are cutting "nice to have" apps to fund AI tools, even from happy customers
- Provide value before payment: Mark Benioff wishes every customer could go live on agents before giving him a dollar
