I don’t claim to be an expert on email deliverability and spam.  But I know a tiny bit. We send well over 1,000,000 emails a week in our SaaStr newsletter. And when I used to run Adobe Sign / EchoSign, I spent a huge amount of time worrying about deliverability. E-signatures, after all, are primarily an e-mail driven exchange  Even the tiniest issues in deliverability, we would hear about it — fast.

And I wonder, and am worried, about the AI SDR.  Because I don’t about you, but I am fine Blocking them. And even sometimes, Reporting to Spam. And I’d almost never do that to a human being.

I don’t claim to be a social media expert, either. But again, we have over 1,000,000 social media followers. And one thing is clear — folks are reluctant to “Block” a human. It crosses lines. It creates ill-will, and folks lash out.  And notice. Folks really notice when they are blocked.

But the AI?

It’s not even a person. They don’t care.

And even more so, I almost never actually asked for an AI SDR email. Most of them seem to be me being dumped into a list I didn’t ask to join.

So if I didn’t even ask for an AI SDR email? The easiest thing to do is Block.

Hey SaaStr Community,

As you're building and scaling a SaaS company, there’s only one place you have to be this year: SaaStr Annual 2025, May 13-15 in the Bay Area.

We’re bringing together 10,000+ SaaS founders, execs, and investors for 3 days of tactical content, hands-on mentorship, and unbeatable networking.

And this year, we’re going all-in on AI.

It's back, the second SaaStr AI Summit — your front-row seat to the future of SaaS.

You’ll learn from the best on how to:

• Build and ship AI-native products
• Leverage AI to scale faster and more efficiently
• Win more deals and drive growth with AI-powered GTM strategies

Scale Smarter with AI—Join SaaStr Annual 2025. Save 20% before prices go up March 31st.

So enterprise Cloud security leader Zscaler has its latest theats report out, and by the sheer nature of its scale in the enterprise, it has a massive dataset on just what apps are being used how in the enterprise.

The big take-aways:

• AI/ML transactions up 36x over past 12 months (!) or 3,464.6% :). (I know those don’t quite tie).
• ChatGPT is 45.2% of all transactions, but also the most blocked
• Grammarly is #2 in the enterprise.  I knew it was popular, but I didn’t know it was that popular.
• The Top 3 categories of AI apps in the enterprise are Productivity (ChatGPT, MSFT Copilot), Writing (Grammarly et al), and Language Translation (DeepL).

Join SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin and Chris Dean from Treasury Prime as they delve into the intricate world of Banking as a Service (BaaS) and FinTech. The discussion spans a host of critical topics, including the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank, the complexities of reconciliation, Synapse and Evolve's banking controversy, and the evolving financial landscape.

They also explore the resurgence of FinTech, the impact of AI on banking operations, and Treasury Prime's upcoming AI-powered operational tools. A must-watch for anyone interested in the future of banking and financial technology. 

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Prismatic

Unlock product growth with a solid integration strategy. Download our guide for info on tools, requirements, priorities and more.

So Carta has its latest data out on VC “Emerging Managers” or folks managing $10m-$100m.

And what is shows is smaller VC funds from 2017-2020 are seeing their returns decline dramatically over the past 24 months.  

New “emerging managers” were a hot category in the boom times of 2020-2021, but a pretty tough one to raise back for the first solo SaaStr Fund in 2016.

The returns show a decline.

Now there is a lot going on in this chart, and likely several root causes.

But net net what’s clealy happening is lots of unicorn and hot rounds happened in 2018-2021 … and those hot deals in many cases aren’t hot anymore.  Leading to no more mark-ups and no more increases in valuation, along with some mark-downs and write-offs.  And a drop in net IRR, i.e. average annualized returns over the life of the fund.

3 top VCs gathered at SaaStr Annual to do a deep dive on AI in B2B today, from what customers really want in the enterprise to what VCs are funding:

Karen Page, General Partner at B Capital

Rudina Seseri, Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures, which focuses on early-stage AI and Frontier Tech investments in Enterprise and cybersecurity markets.

Joselyn Goldfein, Managing Director at Zeta Venture Partners, which invests in AI and data infrastructure-focused startups from inception through seed stage.

And see everyone at 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!!

© SaaStr 2025

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