Jason Lemkin

Who they are

Jason Lemkin is founder of SaaStr and Managing Director of SaaStr Fund — co-founded EchoSign, the e-signature platform Adobe acquired, and built NanoGram Devices, sold 13 months after launch.

Person

Jason started SaaStr Fund in 2016 when he closed a $70 million debut fund — stepping off from Storm Ventures, where he'd been Managing Director after EchoSign's exit. The arc runs from Harvard undergrad through NanoGram Devices (a nanotechnology company for implantable medical device power sources, acquired by Greatbatch for $50 million just 13 months after launch), then to EchoSign (the B2B e-signature platform he co-founded and sold to Adobe for $400 million), then to VP Web Business Services at Adobe post-acquisition. He's also completed Stanford GSB's Executive Management Program. He founded three distinct things alongside the fund: SaaStr (the community and events platform, now 500,000+ B2B and AI founders), SaaStr Fund itself, and SaaStr AI (the largest community and events platform for B2B and AI executives). He runs a Delphi AI clone at delphi.ai/saastr and a public SaaStr Fund portfolio tracker on Coda. The through-line is operator-turned-investor who builds the audience alongside the fund — every move creates another flywheel. He writes prolifically at saastr.com and jasonlk.medium.com on SaaS growth, fundraising, hiring, and AI's effect on B2B software, and shows up regularly on Lenny's Podcast, Exit Five, the Revenue Leadership Podcast, and his own SaaStr Annual keynote.

Company

The most recent move from SaaStr Fund is its June 2026 participation in RevenueCat's $50 million Series C at a $500 million valuation — the same company SaaStr Fund seeded at a $7 million valuation in 2018, a trajectory Lemkin has written about as a defining portfolio story. As of mid-2025, the fund has invested in 18 companies, with 2 unicorns and 7 acquisitions including SalesLoft, Greenhouse, and Pipedrive. A significant strategic shift occurred in June 2024: Lemkin announced SaaStr Fund would wind down new investing activity after deploying its second fund, choosing instead to focus full-time on scaling the SaaStr community and conference business rather than raise a third fund. The SaaStr community side is expanding its AI tooling — saastr.ai now offers a pitch deck analyzer, VC matchmaking with 400+ investors, a valuation calculator, and an AI mentor.

Market

SaaStr Fund operates in early-stage B2B and AI venture, where the current environment is defined by a sharp bifurcation: severe multiple compression in public SaaS alongside historically large rounds for AI-native infrastructure, reshaping how seed and Series A investors underwrite deals. The fund's decision to wind down new investing puts it outside the active competition for new deals, but its portfolio companies — at valuations like $10 billion for Talkdesk, $2.5 billion for Salesloft, and $2.2 billion for Algolia — sit inside markets where AI agent workflows, capital efficiency pressure, and geopolitical dynamics around Chinese AI models are the dominant forces in 2025–2026.

Network

Lemkin's most visible recurring collaborator on content is Pete Kazanjy, CRO and co-founder of Atrium, who appeared with him on SaaStr Podcast Pod 624 on VC investing in 2023. Lenny Rachitsky (Lenny's Newsletter) featured Lemkin on building world-class sales orgs in 2024, a relationship that reflects Lemkin's standing as a go-to practitioner voice for the product-and-growth crowd. Possibly — Harry of Stride.VC hosts the SaaStr podcast and is a close collaborator in the SaaStr orbit.

Pete Kazanjy· Co-founder and CRO, Atrium
Lenny Rachitsky· Founder, Lenny's Newsletter
Harry Stebbings· Host, 20VC / Founder, Stride.VC

How they likely show up

Long tenure building SaaStr as both community and fund since 2013 → thinks in multi-year compounding loops, not point-in-time deals.
Hybrid role type (operator, investor, media founder simultaneously) → comfortable holding multiple lanes at once; unlikely to be satisfied with a single-function conversation.
Prolific public writing across saastr.com, Medium, LinkedIn, and podcast circuits → high-output communicator who processes thinking by publishing it; he'll have a formed view on almost any B2B topic you raise.
Decision to wind down fund investing to focus on community (June 2024) → willing to make large strategic pivots when he believes the flywheel has shifted; not incrementalist.
Built a Delphi AI clone of himself and SaaStr AI tooling → early and personal adopter of AI applied to his own knowledge base; takes AI's practical implications for B2B seriously, not just theoretically.
Serial founder of companies that were acquired (NanoGram in 13 months, EchoSign to Adobe) → moves fast to product-market fit and exit, which likely shapes how he evaluates portfolio companies' timelines.

Conversation tips

→ Come with a specific SaaStr blog post or podcast episode you've read — he publishes constantly and will immediately know whether you've actually engaged with his work.
→ Ask about the RevenueCat arc specifically (seeded at $7M, now $500M) — it's a portfolio story he's written about and likely considers a model for early-stage conviction.
→ Don't treat the fund wind-down as a failure to probe — frame it as a strategic choice and ask what he sees in the community business that the fund couldn't capture.
→ Reference the SaaS/AI bifurcation (compression in public SaaS vs. AI infrastructure rounds) — he's been writing directly about this tension in 2025–2026 and has sharp views.
→ Avoid generic 'AI is changing everything' framing — he distinguishes between AI fear-buying (CMOs buying out of obsolescence fear) and genuine product value, and will call out the difference fast.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the RevenueCat story — SaaStr Fund seeded it at a $7 million valuation and just participated in its $50 million Series C at $500 million. It's the portfolio outcome he's written about most and a natural entry into how he thinks about conviction at the seed stage.
Mention the June 2024 fund wind-down decision — he chose to stop raising a third fund and go all-in on the SaaStr community and conference business. That's a rare call to make mid-career and signals exactly where he thinks the leverage is.
Reference the Delphi AI clone at delphi.ai/saastr — he built an AI version of himself to answer founder questions at scale. It's a concrete, specific bet on what AI should do for knowledge communities, worth unpacking.

Discovery questions

You seeded RevenueCat at $7M and just followed on at $500M — what did you see in 2018 that made that round obvious, and how has the bar for that kind of conviction changed now that you're not writing new checks?
You wound down new fund investing in June 2024 to focus on SaaStr community and events — what's the business model thesis there, and does SaaStr AI change the unit economics of running a 500,000-person community?
You've written about CMOs buying AI tools out of fear rather than value — where do you think that fear-buying cycle ends, and which B2B categories come out with durable AI-driven revenue versus just a spike?

Avoid

Don't ask generic 'what do you look for in founders' questions — he has answered that in hundreds of posts and podcast appearances and will disengage if you haven't done the reading.

Make it yours