Your Team Should Be AI Obsessed Right Now. If They Aren’t, It’s a Flag

So there are categories in SaaS and B2B that AI has already utterly changed, forever.

The contact center and software coding and development are probably the top 2.  Forever changed, already.  The explosive growth of Codeium and Cursor are just 2 examples:

But in other categories, it’s still early days:

• Many categories in vertical SaaS are early to AI
• Many API-focused businesses have little AI
• Many fintechs and regulated products have limited AI
• The CFO’s office is often very concerned about AI, while also curious

And that’s OK and makes sense.  What probably is more a worried in the latter group is if your product team isn’t taking AI seriously.

The start-ups, scale-ups and bigger tech cos I’m most worried about: the ones that aren’t truly AI Obsessed at the product level.  Obsessed.

What do I mean?

• I mean their teams aren’t constantly talking about what cool things they can do now, this week, to improve their product with AI. Constantly.
• There is too much AI lip service in B2B
• Too much talk, not enough action among incumbents, especially in industries where AI isn’t incredibly disruptive at moment (e.g., much of vertical SaaS, fintech, etc)

AI is not a feature, or an edition, or a box to check.

It should be something your product and engineering teams just can’t stop talking about in B2B.

Almost to the point where you can’t take it anymore.

I love this SaaStr deep dive with Tooey Courtemanche, CEO of Procore, the #1 SaaS for construction, worth $11B+:

• Has AI disrupted construction yet? No
• Is Tooey himself coding again to go deep in AI? Yes
• Do they have a product vision to use AI in a very disruptive way, to address lack of labor and more?

Yes If you don’t truly see this on your team, in. yourself — I’m worried.

More here from the CEOs and Founders of HubSpot, Procore and Monday:

And a great CRO Confidential deep dive here on how Codeium scaled its sales team from 2 to almost 100, and what they learned: