Jason M. Lemkin argues founders should charge for AI products now, pointing to Anthropic's $22 billion valuation and customer demand. He criticizes companies like Figma and Notion for free AI features, saying they signal weak products. Public AI companies that can't monetize are in terminal decline.
Look at your portfolio companies. Why the hell would you not charge for your AI product today? Why the hell, when, when Anthropic's doing $22 billion in the blink of an eye, when people are lining up out the door to buy Agentic legal products and healthcare products and Open Evidence, why would you charge almost nothing for your AI product? Why? It's not good enough. Literally, I was with a founder this last week who was, who, who used Make and got very far with it. If, if nothing else existed, it would be amazing. If this was 14 months ago and they built their own LLM and they could do this on their own, our jaws would drop, right? But it's not. It's not good enough. If it's not good enough to charge for, it doesn't count. You're not an AI company if you can't charge for it. Very few public companies can effectively monetize AI, and that's why they're all in terminal decline. Almost all of them at the moment are in terminal decline. Will they pull it back? I'm not gonna buy their stocks until they do. I don't see any point.
For the record, that's an excellent test.
Yeah, you can't, even Figma can't charge for it. It's a bad sign. It's a very, very bad sign going into the middle of 2026. It's a terrible sign.
Terrible sign. I'm naive here, so forgive me for this. Are Notion charging for it? You've spoken before about Notion's brilliance and the integration of their AI capabilities. Are Notion charging additional for that AI capability, or is Is it just a superior product? Well, first, if I said I thought it was truly brilliant, like, I misspoke.
I barely— we, I use Notion all the time. I think that they're good. I don't think it changes the game in a way other products do.
