What nobody tells you about building an AI-first team
Our team at SaaStr is now about 60% AI. Some by choice, some by design. Quietly, when any resource has left this year, full time or part time, agency or employee … we’ve quietly replaced them with an AI tool or process. It’s worked. It’s more efficient. It may be the future. And in some cases, we did it out of necessity.
And honestly? It’s also .. a bit lonely.
We’re still small. But here’s the thing that nobody talks about in all those “AI will transform everything” posts: Every time someone has left—full time, part time, contractor, whatever—we’ve replaced them with AI.
Mostly it’s been better. Not always, but mostly. And let’s be real: it was almost out of necessity at this point.
But here’s what I didn’t expect.
The Silence Is Different. Startups Were Always About Human Energy.
It’s quiet with so much AI. Really, really quiet.
Staff meetings are smaller now. Like, dramatically smaller. The drama is way down (which is good), but you know what else is down? The fun times. The celebrations. The energy.
AI doesn’t high five you when you nail a big deal. AI doesn’t pop champagne when you crush the quarter. AI doesn’t crack jokes during the all-hands or complain about the coffee machine being broken again.
The Productivity Paradox
To be clear: AI is better at most of what we’ve replaced. The output is more consistent, and of much higher volume. The availability is 24/7. The cost is a fraction of what we were paying.
- Our content production for example is up 3x — and it’s better.
- Our SaaStr AI has done 100,000+ chats with founders and B2B execs.
- Our AI reviewed 1,000+ speaker submissions on its own for SaaStr Annual and AI Summit
- Our SaaStr AI SDR built up $500,000 in pipeline in just its first few weeks. Better than any human SDR every did for us
The business metrics are crushing it.
But there’s this other metric we don’t track: How does it feel to come to work?
What We’ve Gained (And Lost)
What we’ve gained:
- Efficiency that would have seemed unimaginable even in 2022
- Consistency that human teams can rarely match
- Scalability without the usual growing pains
- Cost structure that’s frankly beautiful
What we’ve lost:
- The messy, wonderful chaos of human creativity
- Spontaneous brainstorming sessions that go sideways in the best way
- Someone to grab drinks with after a particularly brutal week
- The collective groan when a key vendor goes down (now it’s just… me groaning)
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s what I’m wrestling with: AI may be a necessity. In 2025, if you’re not leveraging AI at this level, you’re probably not competitive. The unit economics alone make it almost impossible to justify pure human teams for many functions. And hiring itself is just hard. It’s not that great AEs, great SDRs, great marketing managers, great CSMs aren’t worth it. They are. It’s just so, so hard to find them. Turning on an AI is so much easier. Even including all the training time, and gaps.
AI is the way forward. I believe that. I have to believe that.
But an AI team is a quiet one. And quiet can be productive. Quiet can be efficient. Quiet can be profitable. Quiet can also be lonely.
The Questions We All Need to Be Asking
- How do you maintain company culture when 60% of your “team” doesn’t have a culture?
- What does team building look like when most of your team doesn’t… exist in a traditional sense?
- How do you celebrate wins when half your contributors can’t feel excitement?
- Is this the future we actually want, or just the one we’re being forced into?
There are Negatives, But It’s The Future
I’m not writing this as a negative. The results speak for themselves—we’re more efficient, more profitable, and honestly, better at serving the communitys than we’ve ever been.
But I am writing this because nobody talks about the emotional cost of the AI transformation. Everyone’s focused on the ROI, the efficiency gains, the competitive advantages.
What about the human cost?
Maybe this is just the awkward middle phase. Maybe we’ll figure out how to blend AI efficiency with human energy. Maybe the next generation of founders won’t even miss what we’ve lost because they never had it.
Or maybe we need to be more intentional about preserving the human elements that make work… human.
