Jason M. Lemkin says B2B software is growing faster than ever because AI budgets are flooding in, but founders still using 2021 cold-email tactics are dead. The new rule: you need a single AI capability that's 10x better than what exists, or you won't get the money.
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But there's so much AI budget and when you add it together, business software is growing faster than it has ever before. But if you don't tap into that AI budget, it's tough. There just isn't budget. It's just not there. So if you're selling the way you sold in 2021, this is one of 50 reasons it's dead. There's no— the budget's harder. It's all going to existing investors. Inflation and price increases are doing all— and all the energy is in AI-first solutions. So if that's you, it feels dead. It feels like these are all the people on LinkedIn. The playbook doesn't work. Outbound's dead. Nothing works. Events don't work. Tell it to anyone that's on fire. It all works. Meeting with your customers works. Outbound works if anyone wants to buy your product, right?
You said something like classic SaaS is, in fact, dead, or it's geriatric, or something like that. But B2B software right now is exploding.
Yeah.
And that's something that is— I think maybe it's kind of obvious if you live here in Silicon Valley. But when you look at the software industry from the outside in, it's like a tale of two— —cities.
—Talented cities. Yeah. But the simple question I ask founders who are struggling, right, is, what if you haven't figured it out yet? What can you do in— you already have 1,000 customers, 5,000, 10,000. What can you do in AI that couldn't be done before that's magical, that's 10 times better? So take a pause and figure this out in your space. But it has to be something that's 10 times better. Yeah, but usually there is an idea. Usually there's an idea, right? I mean, even Agent— we're here at Dreamforce. If AgentForce were fully deployed at Mark's vision, like, if everyone was live with AgentForce, everyone had all this automated across a workflows, it would be magical, wouldn't it? It would be. Yeah, it would be magical. So you— maybe Mark's not— can't do— I mean, it's so much business process change, right? I mean, you work there, right? But at least that's the answer, I think. I think it's the right answer.
