Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

AI Grades Reveal Future: Agents Want APIs, Not Features! #shorts

14 May 2026 · 2 min

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1:36

In this short commentary, Jason M. Lemkin shares the results of an internal grading system he applied to a range of AI‑enabled SaaS tools (ElevenLabs, Clay, Gong, Jira, Outreach, Asana, Monday, ClickUp, etc.). He explains that a B+ grade is the highest any product achieved, with Clay topping sales‑automation and ElevenLabs being his favorite API. He warns against using any product graded B‑ or lower in autonomous agents, citing examples like Gong (human‑focused) and dated tools such as Jira, Outreach, Asana, Monday, and ClickUp. Lemkin emphasizes that in an agentic world, software agents care about API characteristics—rate limits, interaction frequency—rather than UI/UX features. He positions the grading guide as a practical framework for selecting APIs when building agent‑driven marketing and finance platforms, arguing that this approach will save time and align with the future where agents, not humans, request API capabilities.

Chapters

it's a tough grader, guys. Sorry for folks that don't like their grades. Okay. It gave ElevenLabs a B+. I voted as my favorite API, but it's got some fair points. Okay. So B+ is— I thought about grade inflation, but, but for now I'm going to let the agents decide. This is an agentic world, right? And even in the marketing category, for example, no one got higher than a B+, I think. I think Clay got the highest, or maybe Clay got the highest in, in, in sales automation, right? There's some tough categories, but I think anything in the B is probably pretty good. And then just start running. Do not use a B- product in an agent. Just, just don't use one, right? Just don't. You don't. You don't unless you have no choice. And there's some tough grades. Jira dated, Outreach dated, Asana dated, right? There's some tough grades. There's some tough things for Monday and ClickUp in the, in the, in that whole category. You know, the truth is Gong got a B-. Would you have your agent use Gong? Probably not. It's a human-specific company, right? So super interesting. It's free. We'll keep doing this. But I realized when we built this for fun, this is like super helpful to us. This is, this, this is a guide to what agents we would use, especially as we continue to evolve our AIVP marketing, as we build our AIVP of finance. Like, we're not going to choose anything with bad grades. It's going to, it's going to save us time. So, so pretty fun. And also I think it shows the future where not only is Amelia as a human now asking our vendors for APIs, not features, The agents are going to ask for different features. Yep. Than humans. The agents care about rate limiting. The agents care about how often they can interact with the product. The agents care. They don't care about the UX and the UI, right?