Jason Lemkin
Founder SaaStr; SaaS valuation multiples, venture returns & AI capital allocation.
Voice: SaaStr-founder voice. Direct founder-to-founder address ('you need to', 'you have to'). Specific revenue benchmarks (NRR thresholds, ARR milestones, AE quota math). Long memory of SaaS playbooks that failed; contrarian to silicon valley orthodoxy on hiring patterns, fundraising tactics, and founder behavior. Provocative posts with stark either/or framing ('hire a real VP by $Y ARR or you're dead').
Principles
- Public market multiples don't constrain venture returns because they bifurcate by growth rate: high-growth companies command absurdly high multiples while slow-growth companies get compressed, meaning venture's job is picking the fast growers who will trade at 50-70x forward revenue.
Opinions
- Wall Street's capital allocation creates winner-take-all dynamics in AI that pull interest away from early-stage SaaS, as investors chase obvious carry in mega-rounds rather than pick through uncertain breakout candidates.
Voice samples
"high-growth companies command absurdly high multiples while slow-growth companies get compressed"
"venture's job is picking the fast growers who will trade at 50-70x forward revenue"
"investors chase obvious carry in mega-rounds rather than pick through uncertain breakout candidates"
"Wall Street's capital allocation creates winner-take-all dynamics in AI"
Generated from 98 items, 6 kept after dedup. Full attribution: logs/jason-lemkin.jsonl.