# Jason M. Lemkin

Jason M. Lemkin is a B2B software founder and investor who hosts 20VC and writes about startup leadership, sales, pricing, growth, acquisitions and AI.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/jason-m-lemkin/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmlemkin
- Median of last 7 posts: 63 reactions, 24 comments (checked 2026-11-02)
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYSbIYzulx3HT5_OQLUH38A
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, leadership, startup, venture-capital, ai-agents, b2b-saas, mergers-and-acquisitions
- Based on 8 dated posts, latest 2026-10-08

## Summary

Most useful for B2B software founder and operator commentary on AI, sales, pricing, growth, acquisitions and leadership.

- Best for: B2B SaaS go-to-market, pricing, AI-era positioning, or founder-focused keynote and workshop briefs.
- Not for: Campaigns needing rate cards, media kits, guaranteed impressions, audience demographics, or consumer lifestyle focus.
- Check first: Confirm paid format, rate card, media kit, audience data, and sponsorship evidence before contacting.

### Takeaways

- AI agents have no vendor loyalty, so the SaaS playbook needs revising.
- Early-stage startups should not hire people who need training or ramp-up.
- A strong acquisition offer usually means you are compounding, but the offer may not come back.

## Main ideas

- **AI agents have no vendor loyalty, so the SaaS playbook needs revising**: Lemkin argues that the classic SaaS playbook assumed customers stayed loyal and that NPS was a leading health metric. With agents, that assumption breaks: customers and AI agents want the best result almost instantly and will switch or churn otherwise. The reason is agency — agents can make the change themselves, so they do not wait for a vendor relationship to repair. Lemkin's operating implication is that B2B software has to be legible and chosen by agents, not just by human buyers.
- **Early-stage startups should not hire people who need training or ramp-up**: Lemkin sets hard expectations for early-stage work. The argument is not that startups should be hostile, but that the first hires must be able to operate without a training program, a brand, or a long ramp. The priority is week-one shipping, selling without a known logo, and doing the basics without praise.
- **Founder mode: trust founder knowledge and promote people who share it**: Lemkin's founder-mode argument has two sides. Founders may not yet be great CEOs, but they know the product, customers, market nuances and future more closely than an outside replacement, and they care more. When a non-founder executive shows almost the same level of care, Lemkin's priority is to promote that person fast, double their equity and keep them.
- **Pricing, trials, POCs and customer support belong early, not later**: Lemkin treats several go-to-market motions as early product inputs. Transparent pricing, free trials, proofs of concept, SMB customers, one or two large customers, and everyone doing customer support are things a startup does not need to do later, but doing them early improves the product. The reasoning is that pricing and direct customer contact shape what gets built, rather than merely supporting a finished product.
- **A strong acquisition offer usually means you are compounding, but the offer may not come back**: Lemkin argues that a strong M&A offer is a signal that the company still has momentum, so it may be worth more in 12 to 60 months. The counterweight is that the buyer's priorities will change, so the founder should assume the offer will not return — roughly nine times out of ten. The decision reduces to whether the company is the founder's life's work and whether it is still accelerating. If it is not the life's work, Lemkin says take the strong offer, because the difficulty does not decrease.
- **Weekly AI and venture news should become operating tests**: Lemkin's 20VC recaps are a method as much as a product. Peer conversations and market headlines are converted into numbered takeaways, each attached to a specific number, quote or test that a B2B operator or investor can apply. The tests include whether a company is a feature or a franchise, whether a revenue metric is durable once pilots are stripped out, and whether a valuation is worth paying before a growth round.

## Work to read

- [20VC recap: Dev Ittycheria on B2B, AI and what buyers actually do](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonmlemkin_dev-ittycheria-joined-rory-odriscoll-harry-activity-7513992842868957184-2kuH)
- [There is no loyalty with agents](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonmlemkin_there-is-no-loyalty-with-agents-customers-activity-7521936452230750209-SAgi)
- [Weekly takes: Anthropic's S-1, Microsoft's buyouts and the AI bill coming due](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonmlemkin_instinct-worth-30bn-microsoft-cuts-27000-activity-7522335416105021441-EuPU)
- [Things you don't need to do later — but that help early](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonmlemkin_things-that-you-dont-need-to-do-later-activity-7513613284034633728-At27)
- [Should you take a strong M&A offer?](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonmlemkin_if-you-get-a-strong-ma-offer-should-you-activity-7523130666851500032-R1Gg)
- [If you need training, do not join an early stage start-up](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonmlemkin_if-you-need-training-do-not-join-an-early-activity-7522719295378874368-iH4C)

## Brand relationships

- **20VC** (mention)
- **SaaStr** (mention)

## Partnerships

The material reviewed here describes Jason M. Lemkin's commentary and podcast work, not a sponsorship program. The posts show frequent appearances and recaps tied to the 20VC podcast, where Lemkin discusses B2B software, AI, venture funding, hiring, acquisitions and go-to-market with guests such as Harry Stebbings, Rory O'Driscoll and Dev Ittycheria, and one post references SaaStr as a setting for AI model testing. Nothing in the reviewed posts states a rate card, sponsorship package, media kit, audience-delivery commitment, disclosure practice, or a named brand partnership, so there is no documented partnership format a buyer can plan against yet. Three likely directions for a brand, based on what the content does show, are: presence alongside podcast episodes or recaps, participation in interview-format content with a company executive as guest, and placement in written commentary on SaaS and AI vendors. Each of these is an inference from the content format, not a confirmed offer, and each needs to be confirmed with the creator before it goes into a campaign brief. The specific evidence still missing is a publisher or media page for the podcast covering sponsor packages, rates and scheduling, plus any disclosed examples of past sponsorship. Until that arrives, treat partnership terms here as unverified.

## Alternatives

- Varun Badhwar: Choose Varun Badhwar over Jason M. Lemkin when the session is about AI-era positioning for a security or developer-facing product, and the room needs someone who turns a model release into a buyer's decision. The reviewed posts do that work on a single event: Anthropic shipped Opus 5.5 two months after Opus 5, release cycles moved from six months to a few weeks, developers take whichever model is fastest or cheapest that day, and the code plus every dependency it pulled in is already in production. The argument lands on a practical instruction — stop reacting to this release and have a plan for the next one — and on a second effect worth planning for, that better code-reading models surface more vulnerabilities in open source a team already depends on. A second post frames risk as a two-sided measurement: how fast existing risk is fixed, and how often new risk is introduced, with the second number telling a team whether it is getting ahead. For a security product's positioning workshop, that is closer to the buyer's daily problem than a broader market read.
- Aysha Khan: Choose Aysha Khan over Jason M. Lemkin when the campaign decision is about why sellers lose deals they should win — buyer psychology, the internal cost a purchase imposes on the buying team, and pitch differentiation. The reviewed post describes the buyer's side of the table directly: while a seller pitches a product, the buyer is silently adding up internal hours drained from the team, the collateral damage of switching, and how identical this pitch sounds to the last five heard that week. That is usable as workshop material for a sales-enablement or go-to-market session in a way that a market-recap format is not. The other reviewed post shows a public author platform around clarity and leadership — a book with a launch event, a signing, and a reader-facing announcement — which suits a session or event that wants a leadership-and-clarity theme alongside commercial content.
- Parker Boice: Choose Parker Boice over Jason M. Lemkin when the audience is automotive — an OEM, a supplier, or a company selling customer-experience and data platforms into vehicle brands — and the session needs current industry examples with an operating moral attached. The reviewed posts read two recent situations closely: Ford's quality turnaround, where vehicle engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and quality were put under one industrial system and expanded to include digital, design, and global teams, followed by top placement in an initial-quality study and a 41-point reduction in problems per 100 vehicles; and Nissan's nineteen consecutive months of US retail growth against a worst global sales year since 2003, set against Chinese brands taking nearly 10% of the European market and one in four cars sold in Australia. Both posts carry that industry reading into a customer-experience argument about breaking departmental walls so survey, reputation, service, and behavioural data sit in one view under one accountable team. For an automotive brief, those specific examples do work Lemkin's posts do not.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/