SaaStr 842: The 90/10 Rule for AI Agents: What to Build vs Buy with SaaStr's CEO and CAIO

SaaStr's Chief AI Officer, Amelia Lerutte, and SaaStr CEO & Founder Jason Lemkin break down SaaStr's evolving 90/10 rule for AI agents and apps: buy 90% off the shelf, build the 10% you can't find.

In this episode, they walk through two recently built tools: an internal AI VP of Marketing and an external-facing customer portal, and share the real trade-offs of deploying vibe coding apps into production.

Topics covered:
Why we replaced a paid SaaS tool with a vibe-coded app (and what pushed us over the edge) How Claude Cowork changed the game for building more complex apps
The role of writing a spec before vibe coding
Tackling single sign-on as a non-engineer
How we used Cowork to process 150+ customer contracts in hours instead of days
Lovable's data on what people are actually vibe coding
Maintenance costs and the hidden time suck of custom apps
Why zero AI in your product should scare you
The "jaw drop" test for SaaS products in 2026

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Tools & resources mentioned: Replit, Claude Cowork, Clerk, Lovable, Zapier, Salesforce, Monaco
🔗 See all the AI agents and tools we use: saastr.ai/agents
🔗 SaaStr Annual 2026 (May 12-14): saastrannual.com
🎙️ 20VCwith Harry & Jason & Rory: Drops every Thursday
#SaaStr #AI #VibeCoding #B2BSaaS #AIAgents #BuildvsBuy

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This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

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Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

SaaStr 841: Going From Blobs to Billions. Clay's Co-Founder Breaks Down Inbound, Outbound, and AI-Powered Sales.

Clay's Co-Founder Varun Anand takes the stage at SaaStr to break down how the company went from paying for claymation blobs before generating any revenue to powering growth workflows for companies like Cursor, Anthropic, and Figma. He explains why brand has always been core to Clay's identity, how their CFO roast videos and creative campaigns are actually capturing mindshare in a world where B2B marketing is painfully boring, and why he pushes back on the "use AI for everything" mentality that's taken over the industry.

Varun does a full live demo building an inbound qualification workflow from scratch using real audience volunteers, walking through everything from lead enrichment and waterfall data sourcing to AI-powered scoring, personalized meme generation, research brief creation, and CRM updates. He also brings audience members on stage to do live growth hacking for their actual business problems.

Beyond the product, this session goes deep on hiring. Varun shares the origin story of the GTM Engineer role, how it went from an internal job title for Clay's non-traditional sales team to the most in-demand position in B2B SaaS, and what he actually looks for when evaluating candidates (hint: it's creativity, not a traditional sales background). He talks about Clay's take-home process, work trials, why they hire generalists who commit to specific roles, and the surprising backgrounds of some of their best hires.

Whether you're building out your go-to-market motion, thinking about how to use AI without losing what makes your brand unique, or just trying to figure out what a GTM Engineer actually does, this session covers it all.

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This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

SaaStr 840: From 1 Agent to 20+: The Reality of Managing Multiple AI Agents Across Your GTM with SaaStr's CEO and CAIO

Eight months and 20+ AI agents later, what does managing a multi-agent GTM stack actually look like day to day?

SaaStr's CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, and SaaStr's Chief AI Officer, Amelia Lerutte, get candid about what's working, and what's not.

$4.8M in additional pipeline later, AI agents deployed across Go To Market have helped deal volume doubled and win rates double. But here's what nobody talks about on LinkedIn: the 15-20 hours per week each spent maintaining agents, the messy flows holding it all together, and why you still can't outrun your own AI.

They cover the 90/10 build vs. buy rule, why hyper-segmentation is the key to AI SDR success, what to demand from vendors before signing, and why bad context will always produce bad emails, whether a human or an AI writes them. Plus, they walkthrough how they built SaaStr's custom AI VP of Marketing agent to plan and execute every campaign for the year, grounded entirely in data.

If you've deployed your first agent and are thinking about what comes next, or you're skeptical the whole thing works at all, this one's for you.

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This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

SaaStr 839: Why Most SaaS Companies Will Fail at AI (And How to Avoid It) with Intercom's CPO

The Brutal Truth About Transforming a SaaS Company into an AI Company

Intercom's Chief Product Officer, Paul Adams, shares the unfiltered story of how they transformed from a struggling SaaS company with 5 quarters of declining growth into an AI-first company with a breakthrough product (Fin) that now handles 1M+ customer resolutions per week.

What You'll Learn:

• Why AI transformation requires "refounding" your entire company - not just adding AI features
• The self-harming decisions you must make to win (including parting ways with ~33% of your team)
• How to go from 0 to 6,000+ AI customers with 65% average resolution rate
• Why demos ≠ products and the "marketing overhang" problem
• The complete shift in how you build software (empirical evaluation vs. traditional product development)
• Why designers now ship code to production at Intercom
• How the buyer has changed (hint: it's no longer just the department head)

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This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

SaaStr 838: The Present and Future of AI in Sales and GTM with SaaStr's CEO and Owner's CRO

Jason Lemkin on Going All-In on AI Agents: 20 Agents, Zero SDRs, and the Death of Mid-Pack Sales

Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO of SaaStr, sits down with Kyle Norton, CRO at Owner, to share the raw story of how frustration with sales team turnover pushed him to deploy 20 AI agents in under a year, and why we'll never go back.

In this episode, we cover:

→ Why Jason stopped hiring SDRs after two senior reps ghosted him right before SaaStr Annual → The real reason most AI agent deployments fail (hint: it's not the technology)

→ How to pick your first AI vendor: "Talk to your forward deployed engineer before you sign"

→ Why Salesforce is having a Renaissance as the hub for AI agents

→ The brutal truth about mid-pack sales jobs being in "terminal decline"

→ How to get started with AI agents when your CFO won't give you budget

→ AgentForce vs. the hot startups: what actually works in production

→ Why the $250K SDR is coming, but only for the truly elite

Jason's advice for revenue leaders: "Roll up your sleeves. If you haven't trained an agent yourself, you'll be utterly ignorant in the age of AI."

🔗 See the AI agents SaaStr uses: saastr.ai/agents

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This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

SaaStr 836: The Step-By-Step Playbook for Building AI-Powered GTM Teams with Personio's CRO

Philip Lacor, CRO of Personio, shares his company's journey to building an AI-powered go-to-market motion, including 5 critical lessons learned and 4 real-world use cases delivering measurable results.

In this podcast, Philip breaks down:

✅ The 5 lessons for AI transformation: top-down + bottom-up motion, cross-functional teams, prioritization frameworks, building AI culture, and combining great stack with context

✅ How to build AI-powered workflows that actually work (not just more tools to test)

✅ Real use cases: Win/loss analysis, expansion SDR assistants, intent scoring, and AI chat

✅ Why their expansion SDRs went from 2 hours of research per day to 15 minutes while doubling pipeline per rep

✅ The truth about AI ROI: where it shows up and how long it takes

✅ How to get your team excited about AI (not scared of it) Philip doesn't hold back on what's working, what's failed, and what questions they still haven't answered.

If you're a CRO, founder, or GTM leader trying to figure out how to actually implement AI beyond the hype, this is the playbook.

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This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

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More from SaaStr: https://www.saastr.com

📺 Subscribe for more AI & SaaS insights

#AIinSales #GTM #SaaStr #AIAgents #SalesAI #RevenueOperations

SaaStr 835: AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

Software spend is set to hit record levels in 2026, but you're not getting any of it unless you change.

SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin breaks down the paradox facing B2B companies right now: It's never been easier to scale to $100M (for a select few), while everyone else struggles. Half of all VC dollars are going into just 4 deals. IPOs ended the year with a whimper.

And that AI copilot you built? It doesn't count.

In this session, Jason shares the data on what's actually happening and what you need to do to capture your share of the hundreds of billions flowing into software.

Key insights:

• Why "seed is for suckers" in today's VC environment
• The 3 types of AI products that unlock budget (and the one that doesn't)
• Why 30% of new IT budget is going to AI and how to steal it
• The TAM expansion math behind Cursor, Gamma, and AI SDR tools
• Why copilots and AI features alone won't save you
• The efficiency metrics every founder needs to track in 2026

If you didn't reaccelerate growth in 2025, you get a D. You can't get a D in 2026.

🎤 Recorded at SaaStr London AI Summit | December 2025

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This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.