Personio CRO on Scaling AI-First GTM at 1,500 Employees

Why SaaS Companies Must Go AI-First to Compete

This session starts at 9:36 in the SaaStr AI London recording.

Philip Lor is CRO at Personio, a $3B-valued HR and payroll platform with 1,500 employees and a 400-person sales team. This isn't a scrappy startup experimenting with AI - it's a scaled European SaaS company that decided to go "AI-first" from the top down.

The key insight is about moving from experimentation to scale. Lor notes that many companies get stuck in "experimentation phase" - testing lots of tools but never committing. The difference at Personio: their founder and CEO kicked off the AI-first initiative, talked to VCs and the board, and then gave explicit permission for the transformation. "When you start talking about real transformation of your go-to-market, you need to make decisions about resource allocation. You need to give people permission to spend a lot of time changing workflows."

The cross-functional approach is crucial. Personio has a dedicated data and systems team that owns the infrastructure, but the transformation touches sales, marketing, and operations. This isn't a side project for one enthusiastic IC - it's a coordinated company-wide effort with budget and executive sponsorship.

Lor's perspective on AI-native competitors is refreshingly honest: "We hear a lot about these AI-native companies. Clay was on stage, others were on stage. They're going super fast. When you're a SaaS company, I think it's your job to become AI-first." He wakes up every day thinking "we need to go faster" - the urgency is palpable.

The practical example of expansion SDRs using AI as an "assistant" shows the human-AI collaboration model working: reps love having the AI handle the tedious parts of their job, making the role better rather than replacing it.

4 Insights From Philip Lor on Enterprise AI Transformation

• Moving from AI experimentation to scale requires top-down decision making - executives must give explicit permission and budget
• Cross-functional teams (data, systems, GTM) are essential - AI transformation isn't a single-department initiative
• AI gains are "nonlinear" with a compounding effect - lean in and iterate daily/weekly
• SaaS companies must become "AI-first" to compete with AI-native startups moving super fast