Karim Traiaia 💭

Massive week for agent launches and funding. Here is everything that you need to know.🧵 1/ Mendable released teams, 2x rate limits, map endpoints, a more reliable and developer friendly API, and more. Nicolas Silberstein Camara + Caleb Peffer https://lnkd.in/gv9x8wmf 2/ Salesforce Marc Benioff + Clara Shih Agentforce launch. https://lnkd.in/gd2JTpf3 3/ Adept Workflow Language (AWL) launched to simplify the creation of AI workflows. https://lnkd.in/gkssiYUa 4/ Cohere launched an improved version of Command R/R+. It has a performance boost on agentic tasks. Sandra Kublik, Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst, Jay Alammar https://lnkd.in/gcRZqF3E 5/ Magic launched a 100 million token context window. That’s 10 million lines of code, or 750 novels + a recent investment of $320 million https://lnkd.in/gbtVmVxU 6/ Bland AI announced $22M in funding.  Their phone agent can talk in any language, handle millions of calls, and never hallucinate. Isaiah N. Granet https://lnkd.in/g99-QgHt 7/ Jack Altman announced $4.4M in funding for Retell AI https://lnkd.in/gg_uXhtd 8/ $2.6M in funding for Agency! We’re building AI agents that are safe, reliable, and accessible to everyone. Alex Reibman shared how thousands of developers, startups, and enterprises rely on Agency every day. https://lnkd.in/gSbfx_2a 9/ Softgen AI has made building websites easier than ever! Marko O. Kraemer https://lnkd.in/gc_ViK3w 10/ An agent that will roast your website built with Composio, Agency, Browserbase, Ollama https://lnkd.in/gC-3yW9e 11/ AI Newsletter Summarizer: Karan Vaidya https://lnkd.in/gYzfsAxb 13/ MattVidPro AI about Lindy. https://lnkd.in/gR3xiCu2 14/ Mert Deveci ✊ shared a video I did with David Ondrej about the best AI Agents https://lnkd.in/ggKtB_Gv 15/ Abacus.AI AI showed off its software planning agent. https://lnkd.in/gq6FfXKR 16/ Angela Strange from a16z "Every white collar role will have an AI co-pilot. Some roles will be near fully automated with AI agents.” https://lnkd.in/gZpbMexe 17/ Klarna's AI support agent does the work of 700 employees, reducing average resolution time from 11 minutes to 2 minutes. https://lnkd.in/gq-ZZjmg 18/ Box CEO Aaron Levie on why AI agents are a $1 trillion opportunity https://lnkd.in/gujCcgAR Follow Agency and Adam Silverman (Hiring) for all things AI agent-related. Last weeks updates: https://lnkd.in/gkcVwyrX

64

7 Comments

What early indicators signal that a SaaS startup is ready for rapid scaling? 🚀 In last week's episode of The Vertical SaaS Podcast, I was joined by Jamil Jaoui and Jeremy Parker from Jitterbit. Jeremy shared his invaluable insights on driving growth and transformation in vertical SaaS, leading to successful M&A outcomes. With a track record of stabilising businesses, pushing boundaries, and scaling companies to exits, Jeremy has been instrumental in multiple successful transitions, contributing to $billions in transactions. If you're navigating the challenges of scaling or wondering what it takes to position your startup for an exit, this episode is a must-listen. 🎧 Check out the full episode via the links in the comments below! 👇

26

1 Comment

SaaS tools focus on product differentiation so much they forget the one thing that actually matters... Distribution advantage. In today's Whiteboard [Thurs]day, I'm diving into: 1. How the launch of our FRMT couture line highlighted the difference in distribution advantage opportunities between DTC and SaaS. 2. How SaaS can achieve high growth using its distro opps. [ICYMI: We launched FRMT, our luxury couture line called "Style As A Service," taking ordinary pieces of clothing and blending them with timeless craftsmanship. Link below to check it out.] Aside from being an experimental marketing campaign sold through FERMÀT funnels, this venture accomplished the hardest thing in the sea of software: Being memorable. How? "Moonshot marketing" - Rabah Rahil, CMO of FERMÀT. Within DTC, the distribution advantages are a dime a dozen. You've got: ➝ Meta ➝ Influencers ➝ Riding the wave of cultural moments ➝ And so on... Within SaaS, you have fewer options: ➝ Truly fresh ideas (like an outlandish couture line) ➝ Product-driven distribution trick (+1 product that makes you want the primary)  ➝ Partner-driven distribution trick (I.e. what eBay is to Paypal) Our FRMT line has taught me SaaS has these 3 major options. So experiment within these to figure out your distro advantage and product differentiation (aside from good engineering). It's how you'll be top of mind and make a high-growth company grow even faster. For us, it's so far so good on FRMT. I'll let you know how it goes.

36

9 Comments

Excited to share that Humanloop’s LLM evals platform is now generally available! This is the same platform that is: • Used by Duolingo, Gusto, Vanta, Fundrise and Apollo to accelerate AI product development • Responsible for tens of millions of AI generations per week • Was named by Gartner as an Emerging Leader for Emerging Market Quadrant for Generative AI Engineering in the 2024 We've raised $8M to accelerate enterprise AI adoption ⬇

60

9 Comments

tech version of 'rock, paper, scissors' is 'quick call, recurring meeting, bad docs' quick call nullifies recurring meeting recurring meeting clarifies bad docs bad docs creates quick sync on a call

59

2 Comments

We've now done over 50 episodes of Monetizing SaaS, which has been an amazing experience to speak with and learn from some of the smartest founders, product & engineering leaders, and pricing consultants in B2B SaaS. A few highlights from recent conversations👇 🔹 Jules Boiteux, who is helping companies understand the anatomy of -- and how to drive conversion from -- the pricing page via Roast My Pricing Page 🔹 Joe Ryan, whose experience evolving pricing from seat-based to usage-based at LaunchDarkly presents a master-class for companies going through a similar transition. 🔹Jeff Escalante, who is helping Clerk.com build the future of user management & whose experience set and consideration around pricing & packaging for developers, as well as when and how to layer on enterprise sales is instructive for anyone building developer tooling. 🔹 Scott Mitchell, who for 7+ years was the CTO at Salesloft, leading them to a multi-billion dollar exit, and in the process building an automated provisioning system to decouple pricing from code. 🔹 Aubrey Rhodes & Justin Gagnon who built pricing & packaging infrastructure for Calendly so that monetization could function as a first-class citizen in the product. 🔹 Kent Keirsey, who as the founder/ceo of Invoke is building gen AI for professional studios and creators and who has approached the complex task of AI pricing & packaging through the lens of reducing friction for the customer. 🔹 Harker Roslin, who helped Crossbeam evolve their pricing & packaging to cross the chasm and whose advice to product managers who've found their way into pricing is to ask the hard questions and deeply understand the perspective of the customer, engineering, sales, CS, and finance. 🔹 Bill Tarr, Brian Rinaldi, and Arnon Shimoni who've written about the importance of entitlements architecturally to enable pricing & packaging agility as SaaS companies evolve their sales motions, their products, and their billing models. 🔹 John Kotowski whose call to action to product leaders is to align their product roadmap with their pricing & packaging roadmap. We're extremely grateful to the folks who've shared their expertise through our podcast, and excited about the conversations to come!

49

15 Comments

How to spot the BEST early-stage opportunities? (Yes, you want to join a very early-stage startup as the first employee... but not just any startup.) 2 weeks ago, I posted on LinkedIn to share how I met Lucas and joined Hyperline. Long before this (lucky) meeting, I had made my "wishlist" for the ideal early-stage project to join - influenced by my short venture into VC. I highly recommend doing this exercise. Why? • To focus your search - there are SO many startups out there!  • To figure out what's important to you, and what's not • To reduce risk exposure - even though the risk is minimal as first employee In my case, I ideally wanted to join... 🥷 A stealth-mode startup, yet to be announced 💻 Building a complex tech product, preferably B2B SaaS 💸 Backed by a top-tier VC fund 💼 Founded by someone who was among the first operators in a successful scaleup OR a repeat founder ready to start a new ambitious project 👾 Led by a founder with a strong tech background (ideally) - to ensure complementarity and be as useful as possible  🌍 With international ambitions from day one 1️⃣ …and of course I wanted to be among the very first employees Beyond these, of course, my #1 criteria was a good personal fit and the promise of an exciting (and fun!) adventure. When I mention these criteria to people, they say I was looking for a needle in a haystack (ou le fameux "mouton à 5 pattes" 🐑 😂). 100% true. I was probably ready to compromise on some of them... but Hyperline ticks all the boxes. (Just because the project meets these criteria doesn't guarantee its long-term success - important to keep this in mind 😉)

53

16 Comments

#Fintech organizations have 3 main NEVERS: NEVER want to see downtime NEVER default on regulations NEVER miss a chance to know their customers But achieving this at scale = Ingesting TBs of data = spending millions of $$$ on SaaS observability tools = sharing financial/PII data with vendors = compliance issues This simple yet straightforward (+ extremely costly) gap This is where Incerto’s Observability solution comes in = Single unified platform, custom-built to your infrastructure = 85+% guaranteed cost savings + 100% control = #OwnYourObservability Still on the fence on making the switch from SaaS observability? You’d surely want to hear from our clients from FYERS, Dhan, and other leading orgs. #observability #financialservices #monitoring

21

Important fact about most startup (and VC) success stories. It is convenient to overlook this, but the best companies and products are not built on any specific timeline. The best people win, and that is the only thing that has consistently and repeatably truly won over the test of time.

39

💎 When I launched my first startup, I was convinced our product was revolutionary. I poured my heart and soul into building the perfect app, certain that users would flock to us once we went live. I had dreams of millions of users, hockey stick growth charts and our servers overloading. Man, was I in for a rude awakening 💔. The most dangerous assumption founders can make is to think that if you “build it, they will come”. Far too many founders believe that creating an amazing product is enough - that users will magically discover and adopt it. The truth? It's far more challenging. Your users don't just appear, you have to fight for every single one. 1️⃣ Building a great product is only the first step. There's a vast graveyard of products that were built but never properly distributed. These were potentially game-changing products that faded away in obscurity, not because they necessarily lacked quality, but because they lacked visibility. 💯 Founders must commit significant time, money, and energy to attracting (and retaining) users. This means leveraging multiple channels: ▪ Email marketing ▪ Content marketing ▪ Social media ▪ Influencer marketing ▪ Events ▪ PR ▪ Partnerships ▪ Community building ▪ Paid ads Each channel requires its own strategy, setup and ongoing optimization. 🔥 So to all the founders out there, don't fall into the trap of neglecting user acquisition. Start planning your growth strategy from day one. Make it as big of a priority as your product. Test different channels and approaches, double down on what works, and be prepared to pivot when needed. Roll up your sleeves and get ready to hustle for growth 🚀. It’s the only way. What hard lessons did you learn while building your startup? How did you acquire your first 100 users? What user acquisition channels worked for you? Share your experiences and insights in the comments below! 👇 #startups #growth #marketing #founders

39

21 Comments

 🔥 "How many engineers does it take to replicate Docusign as a software product in 2026?" Sarah Guo dropped this thought-provoking question at last week’s panel. Answers from the eng/product leaders at top companies were eye-opening: Scott Densmore: 10 engineers Romain Huet: 5 engineers Ainsley Escorce-Jones: Just 1 Lee Robinson: 1-2 engineers Say hi to a future where rewriting major software might be simpler than you think. Reach out to me if you are planning to do that! 🙋🏻‍♂️ PS: Take a look at what Gil Arditi is working on at Morph.ai 💡 #software #sdlc #softwaredevelopment #llm #ai #ml #largelanguagemodel #copilot #gpt4

29

13 Comments

What founders often hear: - Hire solution architects - Rely on cloud engineers - Focus on your core business - Leave the tech to the experts - Trust your team to handle it What savvy founders know: - Understand cloud computing fundamentals - Engage in meaningful conversations with your team - Make informed decisions about your tech stack - Stay ahead of the competition - Lead with knowledge and confidence Cloud computing isn't just for the tech team. It's a critical part of your business strategy. In this guide, I've prepared a comprehensive resource to help you learn AWS cloud fundamentals in a short amount of time. Empower yourself with the knowledge to drive your business forward. Also, if you are serious about learning Cloud Computing, make sure to follow Viktoria Semaan #cloud #cloudcomputing #aws

23

Building a startup is a race against time and uncertainty. As we began building Olto, we started with the hardest/riskiest problem first. We boldly (and somewhat naively) attempted to quickly transform thousands of data elements in live enterprise apps with just one click, by applying LLMs to HTML. And after months of relentless iterations (including several false starts), we built a simple one-click experience that our customers love. Achieving simplicity on the surface often belies the complexity beneath. When Amazon first introduced 1-Click checkout, it was so simple to use that its simplicity masked the complexity in building it. The same was true for Alexa. My friend and co-founder jean-baptiste chaput explains what makes building Olto so hard in this video. We’ll keep sharing more as our story unfolds… #ProductDesign #ProductManagement #Startup #AIProduct

27

4 Comments

Sidewalk Labs (Part of Google), another showcase of Canadian politicians bending over for a big US corp, with ZERO tangible results 💩 Roxana and I attended a "private investor demo" session in 2019. A block of wood was passed among the audience, supposedly the NEXT BIG BREAKTHROUGH in urban development! Demo concluded, by observing a piece of wood! Building blocks of future skyscrapers! The promise? With this, Google will build a "Smart City" for us, the peasants of Toronto, in Queens Quay 🏖️🏢 Sidewalk Labs' website now points to a newer Google scam, it reads: "Build Sustainably with Google Earth"! Bait and switch, but let enough time pass so no one remembers 🤢 https://lnkd.in/gd3B-a6m Guess now the investors and Ontario Government | Gouvernement de l’Ontario have shit loads of these wooden blocks, ready to shove up somewhere, to find a use for! All because the name "Bloomberg" sounds authoritative enough to our ears? Surely that's capital well spent, instead of investing in local talent! 🤔 Will Canada's tech ecosystem ever crawl out of Silicon Valley's shadow, and stand on its own? ⌚👀⛔

46

2 Comments

I had a blast chatting with David Barnard over at RevenueCat about building sustainable apps and what realistic outcomes look like for app developers. We dug into everything from finding the perfect (even if smaller) market to resisting the urge to pile on features and how best to tee yourself up for an exit. If you’re looking to grow your app business with a long-term perspective, I hope you give this episode a listen! Got questions or thinking about taking your own growth strategy to the next level? Let’s talk about how The App Shop can help. Check out the full episode here:

63

⌛ 44 minutes. That's how long it took Proofs to build a Shopify Hydrogen store and integrate it with Contentful. Here's what our Proofs AI Agents have worked through in that time: 🏗️ Preparing dev environment - Bootstrapped current version of the Shopify Hydrogen - Connected to Shopify store - Verified local dev server responds correctly 📰 Researched the IKEA brand - Extracted the logotype - Obtained brand colors and language - Researched products and categories 🎨 Made storefront more relevant - Applied logotype and brand colors to frontend code - Generated relevant products, categories and images - Installed new product catalog in Shopify platform 🖼️ Contentful integration - Installed dependencies - Created relevant content model - Generated and uploaded images and marketing copy conforming to the schema and relevant for IKEA - Made frontend code pull additional pages and their content from Contentful Building something interesting on Shopify Hydrogen? We'd love to run a proof of concept with you. Drop a 🛠️ below or DM me if you want to geek out about the technical architecture.

77

6 Comments

SaaS leaders: Put yourself in the buyer's shoes... If you had several options with similar prices, features, etc., yet one of them boasts a cancel-anytime offer while the others don't, which tool would you try first? 🤔 Be THAT company.

10

1 Comment

Inspired by a recent post by Kevin Jurovich: Top acquired companies with small teams. How much did the acquirer value each employee? Twitch: 100 employees @ $970M acquisition → $9.7M / employee Waze: 100 employees @ $1.1B acquisition → $11M / employee YouTube: 65 employees @ $1.65B acquisition → $25.4M / employee Oculus VR: 75 employees @ $2B acquisition → $26.7M / employee Minecraft: 40 employees @ $2.5B acquisition → $62.5M / employee Instagram: 13 employees @ $1B acquisition → $76.9M / employee WhatsApp: 50 employees @ $19B acquisition → $380M / employee!! For reference, historically, the median valuation per employee for tech M&A deals is closer to $0.7M / employee. Goes to show, it's better to have a few gems than a pile of stones. 💎

16

3 Comments

I’ve never read a book written by a friend, until now. Fin Heureuse is only available in French for now. In it, Derek Morin reverse-engineers his startup exit in just 24 months. And he does it with flawless execution. Knowing the person behind the words you're reading is a feeling I might not get to experience often, but I loved every page of this book. Here are 3 things that stood out to me: → The ugly > the bad > the good Derek doesn’t hold back. He even shares how he planned to push some people out right before executing his exit plan. → The recipe + the ingredients + the cooked meal From revenue numbers to growth metrics and the accounting books, he shares it all. You’ll also see how he course-corrected in real-time. → From decision made to the finish line, step by step He lays out the 24 months in chronological order, event by event, sharing what he learned along the way. It was a short, fun, and informative read. Reading Derek’s book encouraged me to do two things: → Be more surgical about our growth and direction, even without an exit in mind. → Start planning my own book, a dream I aim to achieve one day. Now while I work on convincing Derek to write the English version, I highly recommend it to my French-speaking founder friends. -- That’s Derek Morin, a successful founder, author, and friend. Follow him to learn how to build a no-BS startup.

11

5 Comments