Brett Queener is Partner at Bonfire Ventures, a $1B AUM seed-stage fund writing $3-4M checks into application software companies. He was employee #70 at Salesforce.com, where he built go-to-market, launched the AppExchange, and helped scale the company from its earliest days. Previously, he worked at Siebel Systems (the fastest-growing software company of its era) and ran a B2B startup (SmartRecruiters) from pre-revenue to $100M ARR. He writes about the changing software industry in real-time at his Substack.
He came to SaaStr Annual + AI Summit for a deep dive on AI and Product.
Brett’s Top 5 Take-Aways
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Your product has to deliver immediate, “What The Frack” Value Now in the Age of AI. It has to immediately do a job you couldn’t do before.
- Start small, expand fast. Forget the big enterprise land. Demo with their data, put it in their hands immediately, let them feel the “holy shit” moment with an agentic assistant—then expand. The McGillaguer-Guerrilla deal is over.
- Your product must teach itself. When you’re shipping every 30 days, quarterly release webinars are dead. Build agentic assistants that tell users: “Hey, you know I can also do this? Want to try it?” The product needs a relationship with the user.
- Rethink annual contracts. If agents behave like $200K employees (paid monthly, can be fired), why are we doing annual upfront payments? The renewal decision isn’t “does our software need to keep running”—it’s “is this assistant still the best person for this job?”
- Fire customers who don’t get it. Some enterprise buyers want 12-month Accenture rollouts starting in Ulaanbaatar. They’re treating your agentic solution like it’s PeopleSoft in 2003. Walk away. They’ll slow you down until you die.
What happens when product innovation accelerates 10x? Everything you know about building SaaS is about to change.
I’ve been in enterprise software since the green screen days. Built CRM systems on Access and Visual Basic. Was employee 70 at Salesforce when we spent 60 cents of every dollar on our own data centers. Ran a startup that hit $100 million ARR (through a lot of tears, I’ll admit). Now I’m a partner at Bonfire Ventures, writing $3-4 million seed checks into application software companies doing $500K-$1M in revenue.
And I’m anxious. Not the normal founder anxiety. A different kind. The kind that comes from watching the fundamental rules of software change in real-time.
The Old Playbook is Dead
When SaaStr started, the model was simple: build a SaaS version of an on-premise category winner. Ship a big product release once a year at Dreamforce or your equivalent user conference. Run the company full-throttle across the entire organization based on that annual cadence.
Every blog post, every playbook, every piece of advice you’ve read about scaling SaaS? It’s all predicated on a world where your product changes once a year.
But what happens when your product has to change every 30 days?
Because if you’re a founder in this room right now, that’s your new reality.
We’ve Never Seen This Pace Before
I’m 55 years old. I was the first person at my company to buy a PC. I built CRM systems by carving regional manager data off IDEO drives and FedExing hard drives around the country. There was no email.
I’ve watched the internet emerge. Watched SaaS kill on-premise. Watched mobile kill desktop. Watched cloud infrastructure commoditize.
And I’m telling you: we have never, ever seen this pace of change in technology.
Not even close.
The Agentic Revolution Changes Everything
Here’s what’s different about AI agents versus every other technology shift:
When you give someone an agentic assistant that actually helps them do their job for the first time, their reaction is: “Holy shit.”
Not “this is interesting.” Not “I’ll think about it.”
Holy shit.
That’s a different buying motion. That’s a different renewal decision. That’s a different everything.
The Three Fundamental Shifts You Need to Understand
1. The Job-to-be-Done Framework Just Got Complicated
Think about pricing for agents. Here’s my framework:
- If AI helps the existing user do their current job better: Include it in the base price. Don’t charge extra.
- If AI solves an additional job for the same user: Consider charging for it.
- If AI does a brand new job for a new user in the org: You can charge for it.
I haven’t fully wrestled this through. Nobody has. Manny (who just left Outreach) is building a CPQ platform specifically for agent pricing. That’s how nascent this is.
2. Your Sales Motion Must Be “Start Small”
I have a three-time successful founder in my portfolio right now. Tried to sell a full enterprise solution into a vertical with legacy, non-cloud systems. The buyer came back and said Accenture would do a 12-month rollout, starting in Ulaanbaatar before tier-one countries.
I told him: “Go tell the customer they’re fucking stupid. Tell them they don’t get it. We’re not doing 12-month rollouts.”
The new motion:
- Demo with sample data
- Demo with their data
- Put it in their hands immediately
Whether that’s self-serve, paid trial, or assisted doesn’t matter. What matters is they start using it and feel that “holy shit” moment.
Then you expand.
3. The Product Must Teach Itself
When you’re shipping major updates every 30 days, the old “quarterly release webinar” model is dead.
The future? Your agentic assistant says: “Hey Brett, you’re using me for X, Y, and Z. You know I can also do A? Would you like to try it?”
The product has to have a relationship with the user that helps them discover new capabilities as they ship.
What This Means for Your Company Structure
If you’re shipping quarterly in 2025, you’re already behind.
But here’s what nobody’s talking about: when you move to continuous shipping, your entire go-to-market org has to change with it.
I used to invest in SaaS companies that said “we ship daily.” I’d tell them: “I promise you’ll move to quarterly releases. Once you build a sales team, success team, and customer team, you’ll need coordination.”
That’s still true. But the coordination has to happen at 10x speed.
The challenge: How do you ensure your customer-facing teams know about new capabilities fast enough to drive adoption before the next release ships?
Most companies will fail at this. Their product will race ahead while their GTM team sells last quarter’s product.
The Renewal Decision is Fundamentally Different
When I hire a $200K assistant, do I pay them $200K upfront? No. I pay them monthly. Can I fire them? Yes (with some severance).
So why are we still doing annual upfront payments for agentic solutions that behave like employees, not software?
The renewal decision for an agent isn’t: “Does our Salesforce org need to keep running?”
It’s: “Is this assistant still the best person for this job compared to other assistants I could hire?”
That changes everything about retention.
Your customers need to understand all your capabilities in a way they can consume. Not once a quarter. Not through a CS quarterly business review. Continuously. In the product.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Enterprise Buyers
Some enterprise buyers just suck.
They don’t understand this shift. They’re still thinking in 12-month implementation cycles. They’re routing everything through Accenture.
And here’s what I’m telling my founders: You might need to fire those customers.
Not literally (usually). But you need to be willing to walk away from buyers who want to treat your agentic solution like it’s PeopleSoft in 2003.
Because if you let them slow you down to their pace, you’ll die. Some competitor who’s shipping every 30 days will eat your lunch.
What To Do Right Now
If you’re a founder reading this, here’s your checklist:
Immediate (This Week):
- Audit your product release cycle. If it’s longer than 30 days, you have a problem.
- Look at your last 5 deals. How long from demo to “hands on keyboard”? If it’s more than 2 weeks, you have a problem.
- Check your pricing. Are you charging for AI capabilities that make the core job better? Stop.
This Quarter:
- Build the mechanism for your product to teach users about new capabilities
- Restructure your sales comp to reward “start small, expand fast” not “land the biggest deal possible”
- Identify which enterprise buyers “get it” and which don’t. Plan accordingly.
This Year:
- Question everything about annual contracts and upfront payments
- Build the muscle to ship major capabilities monthly, not quarterly
- Accept that your GTM playbook from 2019 is dead
The Bottom Line
We’re in the change economy now. The rules that governed SaaS for the last 20 years are being rewritten in real-time.
Product innovation is 10x faster. Buyer expectations are fundamentally different. The very nature of what “software” means is shifting from tools to teammates.
Most companies won’t make the transition. They’ll keep running the old playbook, shipping quarterly, doing 12-month enterprise rollouts, charging annual upfront.
And they’ll die.
The companies that survive will be the ones who embrace this pace of change. Who ship every 30 days. Who start small and expand fast. Who let their product teach itself to users.
It’s uncomfortable. It’s anxiety-inducing. We’ve never seen anything like this before.
But that’s exactly why it’s the biggest opportunity in software since the shift from on-premise to cloud.
Are you moving fast enough?
