What operators said on podcasts for founders and revenue leaders, so you can read the point without listening to the hour.
AI agents now drive 50% of Vercel's new business, up from 3% at the start of the year.
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Jason Lemkin said on 20VCAgents are already picking vendors: Resend went from 106,000 MCP calls in April to 3 million in September, and 'when agents pick you, it's a force of nature right now.'Pipeline & demand generation
2 sources
Resend grew from 106,000 MCP calls in April to 3 million in September as agents recommended it, after Jason Lemkin's agent steered him away from SendGrid.
Jason Lemkin said his first agent-driven purchase was Resend for email. Agents kept recommending SendGrid, but he couldn't get it working: free access had been deprecated, he couldn't figure out the key and it kept breaking. When he asked his agent what to use, it said Resend. He cited the MCP call growth as evidence of agents choosing products.
“Resend April, 106 ,000 MCP calls to September, 3 million. That's agents saying to use products.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
Companies whose pre-AI infrastructure suits agents, like Vercel, are seeing agents drive a rapidly growing share of new business.
Harry Stebbings cited Vercel at $600M ARR with agents driving 50% of new business, up from 3% at the start of the year. Jason Lemkin said founder Guillermo could not have foreseen this when founding Vercel in 2020, and pointed to Replit (founded 2016) as another example. From memory, he cited Vercel growing about 170% with roughly a 20% increase in customers, implying huge expansion revenue. From his own heavy building he said agents have opinions that are hard to argue with.
“when agents pick you, it's a force of nature right now.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Strategy & market Link to this
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Dev Ittycheria said on 20VCVendors must now market to AI agents, because 'if you're missing from an AI generated answer, it's like being invisible on Google,' and startups must deliberately educate agents through docs and APIs.Positioning & marketing
2 sources
Vendors must now market to AI agents, because being missing from an AI-generated answer is like being invisible on Google.
Dev Ittycheria said that for 25 years marketers optimised to show up on page one of Google and educate human buyers. Now they must ensure agents can find them, understand what they sell and see current, accurate information across the sources agents read. He said this extends beyond tech to e-commerce and retail, where failing to educate agents could send a business 'to zero'. He disclosed that Sequoia backs Profound, which works on this problem.
“if you're missing from an AI generated answer, it's like being invisible on Google.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Positioning & marketing Link to this
Startups are disadvantaged with agents because agents see far more data about incumbents, so they must deliberately educate agents.
Dev Ittycheria said an agent knows your whole stack and application and makes very specific recommendations. However, the corpus of data about incumbents is far larger than about startups, so agents easily default to the incumbent. He said the onus is on startups to make their documentation, APIs and surrounding infrastructure show they are a first-class experience for an agent.
“it's actually incumbent upon the startup to figure out how they basically educate agents on what they do, the documentation, the APIs”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Positioning & marketing Link to this
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Jeanne DeWitt Grosser said on GritVercel resolves 91% of its support volume with an AI agent, freeing its technical support team to find real product problems and sometimes write the fixes themselves.AI
1 source
Vercel resolves 91% of its support volume with an AI agent, and the remaining human support team finds and fixes real product problems instead of working through tickets.
Grosser said Vercel gets a lot of support volume and 91% of it is resolved by an agent. The remaining support team, which is technical, now focuses on legitimate product problems, works closely with engineering, and in some cases writes pull requests to fix issues itself.
“Vercel gets a lot of support volume, as you'd expect, and 91% of it, we resolve with an agent.”
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Sam Jacobs said on ToplineLetting anyone sign up online without qualification was Pavilion's 'single biggest mistake,' and fixing the diffuse focus it caused will take three to five years.Strategy & market
3 sources
Removing the qualification barrier and letting anyone sign up online was the single biggest mistake Pavilion made.
Pavilion, formerly Revenue Collective, originally had strict membership requirements and an application process. After it opened sign-up to everyone, the company moved away from its focus on go-to-market executives and let in CEOs, and Sam says the impact of those decisions was still being worked through years later.
“we made it so that you could sign up online without talking to anybody and we let in so anybody can join. That's the single biggest mistake we've made.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Strategy & market Link to this
Fixing the problems caused by opening up Pavilion would take three to five years, and that slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Sam says the company has to slow down and that fixing the problems will take three to five years. He wants to keep the idea that there can be a Pavilion for everybody while building programs for members who are not the very best and keeping an exclusive top tier.
“It's going to take three to five years to fix”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Strategy & market Link to this
After opening up, Pavilion became too diffuse in its focus and lost sight of what had made it work.
Sam says Pavilion expanded from go-to-market executives to CEOs and then began planning an operations collective for CFOs and COOs. He describes this as losing focus on what got the business there.
“we just got so diffuse in our focus”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Strategy & market Link to this
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AJ Bruno said on [Un]ChurnedSeat-based SaaS tools that don't become AI-native services will be forgotten, since SaaS tools are 'not even getting 1x multiples' now; QuotaPath plans to fully pivot within six to 12 months.Strategy & market
2 sources
AJ Bruno predicts that seat-based SaaS tools that don't move to AI-native services will be forgotten, and that each category will have only one winner.
AJ Bruno says QuotaPath has no choice: without this move it becomes a forgotten SaaS tool, and SaaS tools are not even getting 1x multiples right now. He wants QuotaPath to become the premier AI-native services company, creating a category the way Gainsight once did. He sees Gainsight and QuotaPath as non-competitive allies in getting buyers to accept the new model, and says the old SaaS mentality must change for companies to survive.
“if we do not make this move, we will be a forgotten SaaS. Tool like everyone else and no one no one cares and you're not even getting 1x multiples on SaaS tools right now”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Strategy & market Link to this
QuotaPath's path to AI-native services followed a crawl-walk-run sequence: product, then a benchmarking AI platform, then a combined service that takes the work off customers' plates.
AJ Bruno says the crawl was building the product, the walk was building Atlas, its AI-native service tool containing benchmarking data from 50,000+ reps who use QuotaPath daily, and the run is combining the two to run commissions for customers. QuotaPath still sells seats today, but he says that within the next six to 12 months it will have fully pivoted the business. Whether outcome-based pricing makes sense for QuotaPath is still an open question.
“The run is, how do we combine those two things and just take this off of our customers plate in an AI native service way?”
Listen on Apple Podcasts Episode Strategy & market Link to this
From 11 episodes that week, checked against their transcripts.
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