Jason Lemkin

Who they are

Jason Lemkin is Seed Stage Lead Investor at SaaStr Fund — co-founded EchoSign, the e-signature service acquired by Adobe in 2011, and built SaaStr into a community of 500,000+ B2B founders.

Person

Jason joined SaaStr Fund in September 2013, launching it as a newly-minted early-stage vehicle focused on B2B startups. He came from EchoSign, which he co-founded and ran as CEO before Adobe acquired it in 2011 — a founder's exit that gave him the pattern recognition he now invests from. Before EchoSign, he co-founded NanoGram Devices Corp, a nanotechnology company building power sources for implantable medical devices, which was later acquired by Greatbatch Inc. He also held VP roles at NeoPhotonics and Adobe Systems after the EchoSign acquisition. He studied at Harvard (B.A.) and completed an Executive Management Program at Stanford GSB. Alongside the fund, he built SaaStr into a community and event series — SaaStr Annual, SaaStr AI Annual — with 500,000+ B2B and AI founders and executives, and SaaStr.ai, which offers AI tools including a pitch deck analyzer, VC matchmaking with 400+ investors, and an AI mentor. The through-line is founder-to-investor: he's running the same plays he used at EchoSign, just now from the other side of the table. He writes prolifically on LinkedIn and the SaaStr platform about B2B SaaS growth, AI in sales and marketing, early-stage investing, and founder advice — practical, opinionated, and volume-heavy.

Company

SaaStr Fund's most recent notable portfolio signal is RevenueCat, which the fund backed at a seed round — a $1.52M investment in May 2025 — and which grew to a $500M valuation by 2025. The fund has invested in 17 companies as of May 2025, with 1 unicorn and 7 acquisitions including SalesLoft, Algolia, and Pipedrive. SaaStr.ai, the fund's adjacent AI product platform, now offers B2B founders a pitch deck analyzer, VC matchmaking across 400+ investors, a valuation calculator, and an AI mentor. Lemkin founded the fund with $70 million in venture capital and it has since grown to $200M+, writing checks of $250k–$5M at the seed stage.

Market

SaaStr Fund operates in early-stage B2B and B2B+AI venture, a segment seeing a sharp uptick in deal flow as AI urgency drives CMOs and operators to buy tooling — Lemkin has noted publicly that fear of obsolescence is fueling a gold rush for companies like Clay. Portfolio companies including Owner, RevenueCat, and Gorgias compete across the SaaS stack, giving the fund broad exposure to the B2B software market. The fund's community platform, SaaStr, doubles as a distribution moat — 500,000+ founders in the orbit — differentiating it from generalist seed funds without a media or events asset.

How they likely show up

  • Founder of EchoSign (co-founded, ran as CEO, exited to Adobe) → brings operator credibility to every investing conversation; likely evaluates founders against his own experience running a SaaS company to acquisition.
  • Active, high-volume public writing on LinkedIn and SaaStr covering B2B SaaS, AI, and founder advice → comfortable being visible and opinionated; responds well to people who've read his takes before showing up.
  • Built a 500,000-member community alongside a venture fund → thinks about distribution and community as compounding assets, not just one-time events.
  • Hybrid role_type (investor + thought leader + community builder) → unlikely to operate in a single lane; probably context-switches fast between fund, platform, and media.
  • Seed-stage focus with checks of $250k–$5M → values speed and pattern-matching over process; likely makes decisions quickly on founder quality and market signal.
  • Multi-company founder history (EchoSign acquired by Adobe, NanoGram Devices acquired by Greatbatch) → has lived the full arc of founding, scaling, and selling; will spot gaps in a founder's thinking about exits and growth.

Conversation tips

  • → Reference a specific SaaStr post or episode — he publishes constantly and will immediately know whether you've actually read his work.
  • → Lead with what you're building or what problem you're solving, not your credentials — he's a founder-first investor and the company comes before the CV.
  • → Ask about EchoSign specifically — it's the formative experience that shapes how he evaluates every B2B SaaS bet, and he'll have strong, specific views.
  • → Don't pitch him on AI as a novelty; he's already opinionated that AI is creating fear-driven buying behavior and is watching it closely — come with a specific angle.
  • → If you've seen RevenueCat's growth story, mention it — it's a live example of the seed-to-scale thesis he's proud of.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on the RevenueCat outcome — SaaStr Fund put in $1.52M at seed in May 2025 and the company hit a $500M valuation; it's a clean expression of his thesis and he'll want to talk about what he saw early.
  • Reference SaaStr.ai's VC matchmaking tool (400+ investors, pitch deck analyzer, AI mentor) — he built a product on top of a community, which is an unusual structural bet worth unpacking.
  • Bring up the NanoGram Devices chapter — he co-founded a nanotechnology company for implantable medical devices before EchoSign, which is an unusual origin story for a SaaS-focused VC and signals a broader founder range than most know.

Discovery questions

  1. RevenueCat went from your seed check to a $500M valuation — what did you see at the $1.52M stage that most investors missed?
  2. You've called out fear-driven AI buying as a gold rush dynamic — where do you think that fear cycle ends, and which B2B categories survive it?
  3. You built SaaStr as a community of 500,000+ founders alongside the fund — how much does the community actually change the quality of deal flow versus just the quantity?

Avoid

Don't treat SaaStr as just a conference business — it's his distribution infrastructure and he views it as integral to the fund's edge, so dismissing or underestimating it will read as not having done the work.

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on June 5, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →