Running a SaaS Company in the AI Age

It’s Time for a New B2B SaaS Playbook

At Bonfire Ventures, we pride ourselves on being somewhat of a lunch-pail crew that goes to work with our founders at the seed stage to help them on their journey.  We work hand-in-hand with our founders as they go through the two complex journeys - 1) finding and scaling product-market fit and 2) advancing their leadership talents, as their companies can only grow as fast as they can. While each company is different in its own ways, there are repeatable patterns and playbooks to follow in building SaaS companies. We endeavor to accelerate our founders’ success by guiding them to understand and follow those approaches and avoid the mistakes we have all seen firsthand as investors or as former operators.

In this light, we asked ourselves: Now, in the age of Generative AI, what changes? Is the playbook different, and if so, how? What parts of it are entirely obsolete? Is it true that I can raise / waste / burn less cash and suffer less dilution? Is T2D3, along with the associated cash burn and magic number metrics, still the proper north metrics for winners?

At the highest level, how should founders think about a 10x problem/solution pair - i.e., what their product is and its value? How should they think about how to build that company? Which functions and which related processes would be most impacted/improved? How should founders change their hiring plans and sequencing? Are they hiring less or more of a given resource? Has the hiring criteria changed from what they once were? 

For the last 60 days, we have interviewed 35+ experts across the industry - founders, functional leaders, etc - all world-class that would be considered OGs & NGs. Special thanks to all of those who gave us their valuable time and input.  Our end goal is to provide the beginnings of a new operating playbook for founders of SaaS application companies that we will share with our founders and the entire ecosystem.  The structure of this initial work is as follows:

• A few introductory longer form pieces that reflect on the biggest meta trends we are seeing and their specific implications for the market and founders. Hopefully, this sparks more than a few light bulbs, explains the urgency for action, and sets the context for actionable change.

• A destination site where we will provide our top reflections on the biggest changes to both processes (the work you do) and roles (the work done by whom) in Sales, Marketing, Success, and R&D.

This is an ambitious endeavor that we do along with our day/night jobs of supporting our existing founders and identifying and investing in new ones. I am confident it will be far from complete and often miss the mark, but we look forward to everyone’s feedback, insights, and improvements to what becomes helpful content for all B2B Founders.

The TLDR of everything we are publishing - is so much CHANGES across the board.  Here are some teasers of the most significant changes:

• What you specifically build and the value it offers changes - is this worth pursuing?

• The competitive dynamics of your market change - how do I win?

• The people you hire and what they must do changes - what’s the team I need?

• How much & when you spend your money changes  - how much do I need to raise?

While change might be scary, it is also extremely exciting.

I have never been more excited in my close to 30+ years in application software. We are at the cusp of something mind-blowing, and for those founders who get it right, they will be able to build far more valuable software and far more exciting companies without a ton of the hassle and friction of the last 30 years. 

Let’s Reinvent!