The Old SaaS Playbook Is Dead Says Jason Lemkin

Jason Lemkin argues that enterprise software spend is actually accelerating in 2026 at the highest absolute rate ever, but the playbook that worked for fifteen years – hire 200 AEs, grind to $100M ARR, coast on net revenue retention – is finished. The shift is structural: AI agents don’t just help humans organize work, they replace the work itself. Customers who used to expand automatically at 130% NRR are now asking why they’d buy another seat from a vendor that hasn’t shipped real innovation in two years. Klarna rebuilt most of its enterprise SaaS functionality internally with AI engineers. Atlassian is posting 26% cloud growth and 44% RPO growth in the middle of what everyone else calls a SaaS apocalypse. The gap between AI-native vendors like Clay, Sierra, and Harvey and legacy incumbents is widening quarterly, and budget reallocation is already underway