Top exits, deals, news, and blog posts of the week
I break down when to raise venture capital, how much to take, from whom, and on what terms, plus how to protect your control and spend the money wisely once it lands.
The SaasRise Mastermind meeting on October 13, 2026 featured discussions among SaaS CEOs and founders on these topics.
October 13, 2026
This week's SaasRise discussions covered how SaaS leaders are adopting AI without sacrificing security, predictability, or customer trust. The conversations focused on agents and automation, enterprise data governance, new acquisition channels, and whether to build or buy the tools that run the business.
A new generation of CRMs reads your email, listens to your calls, and updates itself. Here is what one founder learned after switching, what it costs, and why another founder barely opens his CRM anymore.
SaaS is not dying, but the way software gets built, sold, and priced is changing fast. Here are the three moves that keep an established software company ahead, and the margin trap that catches AI-only businesses.
How to diagnose the "value valley" behind high activation and retention but low trial-to-paid conversion. It covers whether pure PLG even fits your product, how to find the exact step where willing users stall, matching onboarding to the buyer's emotional state, and getting insight from behavior when users won't talk, plus when a pilot or product-led sales motion beats hands-off self-serve.
Real cost data on the ~8x gap between LinkedIn and Meta for B2B, and why "moving" channels is the wrong frame. The playbook: let Meta carry volume for your average customer, reserve LinkedIn for a curated enterprise list where deal sizes justify $50 clicks. Includes Meta list-enrichment tips, when to expand vs. lock audiences, and how multi-channel presence lifts your Google search volume.
A hard look at why cold email rarely pays off below ~$2,000 ACV, even with AI. It breaks down the response-rate math (roughly $100 per qualified lead after bots and low reply rates), why cheaper AI assets don't rescue the economics, and lean tactics if you test anyway: ask-first before sending, generate-on-click, and bot filtering. Plus the higher-return alternatives, an enterprise tier and doubling down on organic.
Should you run a launch offer, and if so, discount or extra credits? This post makes the case for getting real usage before you lock in pricing: free trials first, feedback second, price third. It covers why "founders pricing" with a clear expiration beats a flat discount, when a deep annual discount makes sense, and how to protect your price integrity on the pricing page.
Evaluating whether to build AI-powered SaaS products and agentic workflows on top of proprietary models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, or on open-weight alternatives like DeepSeek, GLM, Qwen, Kimi, Llama, and Mistral
The SaasRise Mastermind meetings on July 8, 2026 featured discussions among SaaS CEOs and founders on these topics.
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