SaaStr Founder Shares 10 Takeaways On AI Spend, Metrics, And SaaS Growth
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My takes from this week's 20VC x SaaStr with @HarryStebbings + @rodriscoll: #1. If you can hire the expertise legally, don't steal it California doesn't enforce non-competes. The talent is legal to hire. The theft is what gets you sued. #2. Tokens are a real line item now. We're all adjusting. The budgets you are selling into have to, too ClickHouse's AI spend is up 60x since Feb. Put a spend governor on it before your CFO does. #3. Stop evaluating AI on cost per token The metric is cost per completed task. If a vendor only quotes tokens, they're hiding the bill. #4. You're not consuming enough tokens Stop picking A vs B vs C. Build them all, keep what wins. The ceiling is your imagination, not your budget. #5. Net new logos is the survival metric, not NRR Above 15%/yr forgives a lot. Once it cracks, price hikes only buy time. #6. If buyers start agentically and never start with you, they never graduate to you Losing the bottom of the funnel doesn't hurt this quarter. It hollows out the next five years. #7. Know your real TAM There are only ~1.8M US devs and ~$250B in dev wages. The fastest-growing companies in history can still hit the size of the till. #8. Budget AI as ~10% of revenue in COGS That's what the market will bear. If your model only works at 2%, your model doesn't work. #9. Never take debt instead of an equity round on a slow-growth business. Constellation just bought TouchBistro at 1x. Debt is the sucker bet. #10. Renewal are no longer safe. You have to early them again Salesforce did an LLM migration off Marketo in a day; it used to take a year. AI cut switching costs by orders of magnitude. Earn the renewal every year. https://youtu.be/HoRaqNWKcpM?si=HBwOYJ00vQ6eXp_T