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Jason Lemkin
Jason Lemkin
Founder & CEO, SaaStr
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AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin

📅 Jan 02, 2026 SaaStr AI 56 MIN 10184 VIEWS 50 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
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. 00:00...

Questions asked in this interview

1
  1. 0:53One that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risk. That'd be pretty amazing, right?
Narrator 0:01 ↗
Welcome to the official SaaStr Podcast, where you can hear some of the best SaaS speakers. This is where the cloud meets.
Jason Lemkin 0:09 ↗
Today on the SaaStr Podcast. Frankly, if you didn't accelerate growth at all, you get a D because you had a year. You had a year. I give everyone a pass for last year. I give everyone a big pass for 2023. All these tools were kind of terrible in AI. No one gets a pass this year. You saw it coming. You saw it changing. You saw these agentic tools getting better. If you didn't reaccelerate and you weren't in market with a great agent, a great agentic product this year, you get a D minus, but you don't get an F because you got through the year. But you can't get a D next year. It's you're late. So, this is your job to go find it, right? Find the tailwinds.

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Cite this transcript

APA, MLA, BibTeX
APA

Lemkin, J. (2026, January 2). AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin [Interview transcript]. SaaStr AI. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3054422/

MLA

Jason Lemkin. "AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin." SaaStr AI, 2 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3054422/.

BibTeX 
@misc{lemkin2026_3054422,
  author       = {Jason Lemkin},
  title        = {AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, SaaStr AI. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {jan},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3054422/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}