SaaStr

MAY 2, 2025

When asked about reports of 30% headcount reductions in many contact centers within just one year due to AI replacing human headcount, Benioff confirmed he’s exploring similar efficiencies at Salesforce. However, he cautions that large-scale workforce changes take time at many older enterprises and at true enterprise scale.

AI 236

AI Enterprise Scale Airlines 236

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2025

China Is Playing a Different Game Entirely The Models Youve Barely Heard Of: DeepSeek R1: 93% performance of OpenAI’s o3-mini at fraction of training cost Alibaba Qwen 2.5-Max: Headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work.” 80% cheaper than predecessor, costs 0.2%

AI Search 252

AI Search AI CTO Hire ChatGPT 252

BetterCloud

APRIL 24, 2025

Artificial Intelligence (AI): The integration of AI tools is rapidly expanding across numerous organizations, with IT departments at the forefront. Looking to help your IT team without adding headcount? This adoption is driven by the significant potential for increased productivity. Save your seat. Book a demo today.

Cybersecurity 52

Cybersecurity Artificial Intelligence Headcount Government 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2024

“And I think the budget comes from headcount,” Dave explains. As a line of business owner, if I want to do something, I can find the money from headcount.” ” If I want to pay for an AI SDR, I know where to get the money. ” Is Customer Success Dead, Now That it Reports to Sales?

Headcount 269

Headcount SaaS AI Pricing 269

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2025

Shopify : CEO Tobi Lütke just issued an ultimatum to all employees: “Teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more headcount and resources.

AI 274

AI ChatGPT Headcount Software Review 274

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2025

The ones who are glorified account managers can be replaced or just allocated to sales’ budget and headcount. The Productivity Paradox: Engineering Engineering: 0% Headcount Reduction, 20-40% Productivity Boost The Counterintuitive Reality : AI isn’t reducing engineering headcount at top-performing companies.

AI 227

AI Sales Hiring Scale B2B 227

BetterCloud

MARCH 17, 2025

Shadow AI, aka the unsanctioned artificial intelligence based applications that are in your tech stack, is often adopted by individual teams or employees for perceived productivity gains. Allocations can be manual or automatic, depending on the headcount of users.

Technical Review 52

Technical Review Strategy Marketplace as a Service SaaS 52

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 18, 2023

Follow-on prediction : Interest rates will remain high, cheap money will be scarce, and discretionary marketing budgets, headcount, and software investments will continue to be scrutinized heavily in 2024. This was also born out via data from OpenView’s recent SaaS Benchmarks report.

B2B 52

B2B Trends Artificial Intelligence Marketing 52

Sales Hacker

APRIL 4, 2025

Companies are redesigning their operating models around automation, data orchestration, and system-level thinking to unlock efficiency, reduce manual work, and scale without adding headcount. The AI decisioning platform transforms customer interactions with automation and machine learning, now scaling its impact as part of Braze.

AI Search 106

AI Search AI Outsourcing Services Scale 106

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 11, 2025

Um, in the old world, you basically downloaded a list of accounts and those accounts had things like industry, employee, headcount, headquarters, founded date, you would then get a list of contacts. It’s like, we’ll just, you just can pay money for us to bid on. I need B2B SaaS software now. So it’s like, okay, great.

ChatGPT 86

ChatGPT AI Payment Methods Payment Services 86

Sales Hacker

JUNE 3, 2025

Or how do I in a limited resource and limited headcount way, how do I go about choosing the allocation of different headcount? Probably get a sale over the line just with an AI type bot or, um, you know, utilizing some form of machine learning. Should I hire five people for the UK or five people for France?

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 92

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 24, 2025

PDO provides data and insights that power machine learning and AI, at the core of all Meta products. Experience in AI , machine learning, or related fields. Product Manager Salesforce (20172019): Led a redesign of the headcount tracking software, reducing auditing time by 70%.

Technical Advisors 52

Technical Advisors Data Management Scale 52

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2020

The technology is based on leveraging AI (Artificial Intelligence) models and algorithms. Last year, the company doubled its headcount, tripled revenue and landed on G2’s Top 100 Global Software list. . And some of the marquee customers include MongoDB, Gitlab and Qualtrics. .

Scale 359

Scale Artificial Intelligence Payments Payment Services 359

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 17, 2023

Like the Devops movement, the Dataops movement aims to scale the use of data within companies without increasing the headcount of the data team. Business logic : the data engineering team build the ETL pipelines while the data science team researches & implements machine learning algorithms for MLDS driven data products.

Data 264

Data Government Headcount Scale 264

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

As the kickoff to our first fully digital SaaStr AI Day, Jennifer Tejada , the CEO of PagerDuty, chatted with Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO and Founder, about navigating the shift to Generative AI and what Artificial Intelligence in SaaS might look like in the next 6 months, as well as years to come.

Generative AI 299

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 299

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2025

Perhaps even more significantly, revenue growth has become decoupled from headcount growth: Microsoft is projecting 14%+ revenue growth this year, with up to 10% fewer employees: The Numbers Tell the Story Microsoft’s 2025 workforce reductions have been extensive and systematic. These aren’t random cuts across the organization.

Technical Review 198

Technical Review AI VP of Engineering Azure 198

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

But it may also suggest that many resellers with large sales teams looking to sustain their transactional businesses are able to drive additional software bookings. The channel accounted for about 13% of revenue this quarter, which is the highest it’s ever been.

Cloud 242

Cloud Azure Headcount Software Review 242

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

The tech involves cameras and devices that detect evidence, decode it with machine learning and deliver it into the right hands. Reevaluate your assumptions and mess with the model as needed. Also, pivot from Garrett’s initial idea and focus on revenue targets, not a specific headcount. #2

Sales Recruiting 249

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 249

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

LLM’s powerful content generation abilities will soon automate many emails we send. will the delta between those rates justify more artisanal emails or will the economies of scale of the machine overwhelm the economics with volume? will quotas for SDRs & BDRs increase but headcount remain the same?

Scale 152

Scale Artificial Intelligence Headcount Scaling 152

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 1, 2021

Over the past year, many support teams have struggled with budget cuts, reduced headcount, and less bandwidth – while the volume and complexity of customer queries has only risen. So how can you manage a larger volume of queries without needing to add headcount? Challenge #1: Limited team bandwidth, resources, and budget.

Underperforming Technical Team 232

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Scale Headcount 232

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2023

Ai made it possible to engage with students, teachers, and others within the platform, save on customer service headcount, and scale the company. The challenge was connecting the dots between 60k signups and multiple schools. Key Takeaways AI presents an unprecedented opportunity.

AI 299

AI Technology Scale Startup 299

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 24, 2018

Our belief in a modern support model will never change, but we’ve spent a lot of time iterating on how best to scale our support. Here’s a look at how we have managed it and how you can too. Three options when scaling customer support.

Scale 178

Scale Customer Support Scaling Strategy 178

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

It can also guide your hiring process if increasing headcount is required to guarantee 24/7 coverage for customers. A disconnect between your tickets opened and tickets completed may indicate a need for better training of support reps, increased headcount, or the introduction of automation to help reduce the strain on your team.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

SaaStr

MAY 7, 2024

Before you open up a headcount and add more people, think about what you can automate. Make it a strategic priority for the company. Make it clear that it’s a priority across every function before you hire a person. Automate before hiring. Run AI hackathons with the whole team. Every role is becoming a prompt engineering role.

Engineering 275

Engineering AI Sales Hiring ChatGPT 275

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 21, 2024

On a much smaller scale, we’ve also started to see some leaders deploying their genAI budget against headcount savings, particularly in customer service. One company cited saving ~$6 for each call served by their LLM-powered customer service—for a total of ~90% cost savings—as a reason to increase their investment in genAI eightfold.

Generative AI 145

Generative AI Enterprise AI Artificial Intelligence 145

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 21, 2020

And now we’re covering everything on the operation side of things, reporting on individual metrics, team metrics, headcount, planning, forecasting – all that fun stuff. Right now, we have a team of people around the world. It’s been a hell of a run, and I’m very excited to still be here and excited to talk to you today.

Scale 221

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Support Headcount 221

ChurnZero

JANUARY 13, 2023

First, digital CS will become a way of life due to flat or reduced headcount. 2023 will be a breakout year for digital Customer Success, customer intelligence, and AI-fueled outcomes at SaaS companies. 2023 will be a big year gaining market traction in new customer intelligence platforms. A few common themes emerged.

Trends 98

Trends Customer Success Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence 98

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

JUNE 26, 2018

Leveraging automation is not only interesting, but important - after all, if a SaaS company’s headcount growth exceeds revenue growth, it impacts its ability to invest in product, and if that happens, things can start to go awry. Like many people I’ve been intrigued by the potential utility of bots for a long, long time.

Sales Enablement 100

Sales Enablement Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 100

FastSpring

JANUARY 31, 2023

You’ll be able to manage all aspects of the payment lifecycle from your FastSpring dashboard without adding extra software or headcount. Sift uses machine learning and AI to: Increase accuracy in fraud decisions. Most companies need additional headcount to manage this.

Payment Services 147

Payment Services Payment Methods Merchant Services Software Review 147

InsightSquared

JULY 8, 2020

But despite all the variables, AI and machine learning are helping sales leaders improve accuracy—and go beyond the actual number to also improve execution. . It enables your company to set a budget, make headcount decisions, fund marketing and product investments, determine expansion timelines and much more.

Forecasting 62

Forecasting AI Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning 62

Unbounce

MAY 16, 2023

Artificial intelligence can help you handle many tasks quickly, easily, and in bulk. In the simplest terms, social media AI refers to tools that can simulate human intelligence to automate and optimize aspects of social media marketing. Reels to film. Cats to meme. The list goes on and on. What is AI for social media?

Social Media 52

Social Media Artificial Intelligence AI Headcount 52

Sales Hacker

JULY 8, 2020

Leveraging the next generation of artificial intelligence, the platform allows sales reps to deliver consistent, relevant, and responsible communication for each prospect every time, enabling personalization at scale that was previously unthinkable. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, but that allows us to move faster.

Scale 122

Scale Scaling VP of Engineering Technical Review 122

Sales Hacker

JUNE 16, 2021

Your GTM teams are made up of people, and people are resistant to change how they learn and sell. Startup hurdle: headcount. SetSail has a revenue execution platform which uses machine learning and AI to identify buying signals reps need to win deals. The types of obstacles will vary based on the size of your company.

Sales Enablement 120

Sales Enablement Scale Sales Hiring Technical Review 120

ChurnZero

JANUARY 4, 2024

On the other hand, economic headwinds continue to constrain CS budgets and headcounts. ” Companies will continue to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to better understand, manage and monitor the ever-changing success path of customers, writes Kia Puhm of DesiredPath.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Trends Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence 52

InsightSquared

MAY 25, 2021

From market expansion to headcount, technology and product roadmap decisions, businesses simply do not have the line-of-sight needed to plan. The reality on the ground is that many revenue leaders are moving forward without a clear and precise view of how the decisions they make impact the future of the business.

Forecasting 62

Forecasting Benchmarks Sales Headcount 62

FastSpring

MARCH 3, 2023

If your company sells physical products and/or services, you’ll need additional software and headcount to manage sales tax and transaction liability. They use machine learning and AI to analyze millions of global transactions each month to identify risky transactions with higher accuracy.(

Payment Services 78

Payment Services Payment Methods Payments Merchant Services 78

SmartKarrot

DECEMBER 18, 2020

With the advanced AI and machine learning capabilities, the frequent queries of the customers can be handled quite effectively. But instead of spending money on increased headcount, companies are planning to spend heavily on technology. Not only that, they are also helpful in reducing the manpower required for the customer care.

Marketplace as a Service 10

Marketplace as a Service Trends Customer Lifetime Value Headcount 10