One of the most common questions I get from SaaS founders and operators is: “What AI agents are you actually using at SaaStr?”
Everyone’s trying to figure out what actually works in this new era.
So we put together a quick summary of our AI agent stack here: https://saastr.ai/agents
And here’s what shocked even me when I looked at the full list: Only ONE of our 16 core AI agents comes from a legacy vendor.
That vendor? Salesforce, with Agentforce (which we’re rolling out now for AI SDR and BDR).
Think about that for a second.
The Most Open Buying Window in B2B History
I’ve been doing SaaS for 20+ years now. I’ve never seen anything like this.
Never in the history of B2B software have so many companies been in-market at the same time, this open to brand new vendors.
It’s not just us. Talk to any VP of Sales, any CMO, any Head of RevOps right now. They’re all evaluating AI agents. They’re all willing to try tools that didn’t exist 18 months ago. From companies they’ve never heard of.
Why? Because the old playbook doesn’t work for AI agents.
Your incumbent vendors? Most of them are still figuring this out. They’re announcing “AI features” but shipping workflow automation with a chatbot slapped on top.
Meanwhile, AI-native companies are building agents that actually do the work. Even more importantly, outside of Agentforce, we never even looked at “offerings” from legacy vendors.
Our Real AI Agent Stack (And What Each One Does)
Let me break down what we’re actually running:
AI Agents We Built Ourselves on Replit:
We built six of these ourselves. No engineering team. No six-month dev cycles. Just me and the team building on Replit.
- AI Mentor – 24/7 AI assistant trained on 20M+ words of SaaStr content. Get instant answers to B2B SaaS questions from pricing to fundraising. Covers pricing strategies, sales team management, fundraising guidance, and product-market fit.
- AI VC Pitch Deck Analyzer – AI-powered pitch deck analysis with comprehensive scoring, fundability assessment, and actionable recommendations. Includes traction scoring, deck quality analysis, VC matching, and fundability score.
- AI Valuation Calculator – Estimate your startup’s valuation using AI-powered analysis of ARR, growth rate, and market multiples. Features real-time market data, growth scenarios, runway calculations, and benchmark comparisons.
- AI Startup Benchmarking – Upload board packs or investor updates for AI-powered benchmarking against industry leaders using Bessemer, ICONIQ, and Carta data. Provides revenue forecasting, burn rate analysis, growth benchmarks, and 12-month projections.
- AI VC Dealflow – Intelligent VC matching system that connects founders with the right investors based on stage, check size, and company type. Features smart matching, 11+ VC network, stage alignment, and email automation.
- AI Content Review – Automated content quality assessment that evaluates B2B/SaaS relevance, expertise, and practical value for the community. Includes quality scoring, relevance analysis, expertise verification, and auto-approval.
Think about what this means: We built six AI agents in the time it would have taken us to get through a single vendor’s security review process.
Third-Party AI Agents:
For SDR/Outbound:
- Agentforce (Salesforce) – The ONE legacy vendor on our list. Natively integrated into Salesforce to reach out to our SaaStr Community and engage with them. We’re early here but the native integration matters.
- Artisan AI SDR – Handling 15,000+ messages in 100 days with 5-7% response rates. Managing warm outbound for tickets, sponsorships, and VIP reactivation.
For BDR/Inbound:
- Qualified AI BDR – Inbound AI chatbot with full Salesforce/Marketo sync. Pre-books qualified meetings for sales reps automatically. No human handoff needed.
For Sales Ops:
- Delphi (Digital Jason) – This one’s wild. 139,000+ conversations providing SaaStr-style advice 24/7 on hiring, compensation, and scaling challenges. It’s basically me, but available to everyone, all the time.
- Gamma – Auto-generates customized 20-page sponsorship decks from our 100-page master in minutes. Fully branded and prospect-specific.
- Momentum & Attention – RevOps automation that transcribes calls, updates Salesforce, identifies next steps, and flags objections automatically.
For Content/Video:
- Higgsfield.ai – Builds short promo videos quickly. Essential for creating engaging video content at scale.
- Reve – AI-powered image ideation tool for visual content creation and design brainstorming.
- Get Recall – Summarizes all video content automatically. Critical for managing SaaStr’s massive video library.
- Opus Pro – Makes all our video clips and shorts. We literally couldn’t survive without it for content repurposing.
None of these third-party companies existed in their current form 3 years ago. Most didn’t exist 18 months ago.
The Vibe Coding Revolution: Why We’re Building Our Own Agents
Here’s the thing that nobody’s talking about yet: You don’t need to buy every AI agent anymore. You can build them yourself. At least, the ones you really need that you can’t buy elsewhere.
Six months ago, building an AI agent meant:
- Hiring engineers
- 3-6 month development cycles
- Complex infrastructure
- Ongoing maintenance costs
- Hope you got the requirements right
Today, with platforms like Replit, building an AI agent means:
- Opening a browser
- Describing what you want
- Iterating in real-time
- Deploying in hours, not months
- Fixing issues yourself in minutes
We built our AI Mentor on 20M+ words of SaaStr content faster than it took us to complete a security questionnaire for a vendor.
We built our AI VC Pitch Deck Analyzer in a weekend. It’s now analyzed hundreds of decks and provided feedback that founders tell us is better than what they got from their advisors.
Our AI Valuation Calculator? Built it because no one did it right. Now it’s using real-time market data to give founders accurate valuations based on current market conditions.
Why Legacy Vendors Are Struggling (And Why That Creates Opportunity)
Here’s the thing about building real AI agents: it requires a completely different architecture than traditional SaaS.
Legacy vendors have:
- Massive technical debt
- Quarterly revenue targets that don’t allow for R&D pivots
- Sales teams trained to sell features, not outcomes
- Customer bases expecting backward compatibility
- Pricing models built for seats, not AI consumption
AI-native startups have:
- Clean architecture designed for LLMs from day one
- Founder-led selling that focuses on ROI
- Pricing that aligns with usage and value
- Nothing to protect, everything to prove
Companies building their own agents with vibe coding have:
- Zero vendor lock-in
- Complete control over features and roadmap
- No procurement process
- Instant iteration cycles
- Perfect customization for their use case
The result? For the first time in decades, startups can compete head-to-head with incumbents on distribution, not just innovation. And for the first time ever, companies can build solutions than they can’t buy — without a team of developers. At least for simpler use cases.
What This Means For Founders
If you’re building in AI right now, understand this moment:
The enterprise buying window is wide open.
Companies that normally take 18 months to evaluate new vendors? They’re signing with 2-month-old AI startups.
Buyers that normally require 3 references in their industry? They’re becoming your first customer in their vertical.
IT teams that normally require SOC 2 Type II before talking to you? They’re willing to start trials while you’re going through certification.
Why? Because waiting means falling behind. And everyone knows it.
But here’s the deeper shift: Some of those buyers aren’t buying at all. They’re building.
When your potential customer can build a better solution themselves in a weekend, your $50K/year SaaS product needs to be 10x better, not 2x better.
But This Window Won’t Stay Open Forever
Here’s my prediction: This hyper-open buying window lasts 18-24 months, maybe through 2026.
Then what happens?
- Consolidation – Companies will hit “AI agent fatigue” and consolidate to 2-3 core platforms
- Legacy vendors will catch up – They’re investing billions in AI. Eventually some will ship real agents (Salesforce might be first)
- Build vs. Buy becomes a real decision – Companies will have built internal capabilities and will evaluate build vs. buy for every new agent
- New procurement requirements – Once the experimentation phase ends, security, compliance, and integration requirements will tighten back up
- The Winners Will Have Distribution – The AI-native companies that survive will be the ones who built real go-to-market while the window was open
The Real Lesson From Our AI Agent Stack
When I look at our https://saastr.ai/agents page, here’s what I see:
It’s not just a vendor list. It’s proof that everything is in play.
The vendor relationships we spent 10+ years building? Only one matters for our AI agent stack.
The “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” playbook? Dead for AI agents.
The assumption that startups can’t get enterprise deals? Completely obsolete.
The assumption that you need vendors for software? Shakier than before. We built six mission-critical AI agents ourselves.
For founders building AI agents: This is your moment. Enterprise is open for business in a way I’ve never seen. But understand that your buyers might become your competitors. If they can build it themselves, you better be 10x better.
For operators buying AI: Don’t wait for your incumbent vendors to “add AI.” The best solutions are coming from companies you’ve never heard of. Or from your own team on platforms like Replit.
For everyone: Document what you’re learning. Because 5 years from now, we’ll all look back at 2024-2025 as the moment everything changed.
P.S. – Want to see the full list with descriptions of what each agent does? Check out https://saastr.ai/agents
P.P.S. – Want to try our AI agents? They’re all live and free to use. Go play with them and let me know what you think.
P.P.P.S. – If you’re building AI agents and want to learn how to sell them, we’ve got 2,500+ SaaS leaders coming to SaaStr AI London Dec 1-2, 2025. Register here
