How to Survive AI as a SaaS Company

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Today’s Episode

Companies like Webflow were among the first frontier labs targeted.

ChatGPT has a site builder, and OpenAI is claiming 5 million sites in 3 months! People are building their websites in Claude too. If you run a website builder, that’s about as direct as competition gets.

Bending Spoons just bought Airtable for $1.28 billion, a company once valued at over $11 billion. Then it bought Miro for $1.36 billion, down from $17.5 billion.

Webflow raised $4 billion in that same era.

Webflow’s CEO, Linda Tong, told me about CEOs who vibe-coded their way off Webflow, only to call them back 90 days later.

Watch the full masterclass as she walks through how she’d judge any SaaS company.

10 Key takeaways

1. Most of the work happens after you hit publish - AI can write a site's first version, but most of Webflow's business sits in what comes after, from analytics and experiments to a CMS a whole team can edit. Linda even tells people to start in ChatGPT's site builder and bring the site over.

2. Pick a box the labs aren't building for - Webflow's users had all kinds of titles, but they were using it for marketing. So Webflow went deep on marketing teams with dozens to hundreds of people, a group that probably isn't a frontier lab's priority. Linda called the decision terrifying.

3. Hold context and governance people won't move - Products that store deep domain context become a center of gravity, and roles and permissions are something few people want to vibe code. A product that's only a UI or API layer over other systems is the one customers can leave fast.

4. Run the total cost before you vibe code it - You can build a tool in an afternoon, but software deteriorates and someone has to keep maintaining it. Webflow calls the customers who learned that the hard way boomerangs, and Linda has seen CMOs come back within about 90 days.

5. Low multiples are part math and part fear - A company growing 50% can earn a 10x multiple, while one growing 10% to 20% gets 2x to 3x, so some of the drop is fair. Linda calls the rest "a hangover of the fear" and points to PE buyers, who only buy when they expect a return.

6. Software has to go from MapQuest to Google Maps - Most SaaS still shows everyone the same static screen on top of decades of features. Linda wants products that adapt to what each person is trying to do, with a context engine that learns so a new agent isn't still an intern 60 days in.

7. Valuations from 2021 and 2022 aren't believable - Webflow raised at $4 billion in 2022 and hasn't raised since. Linda says it has plenty of cash and has run close to break even for a while, so she'd only raise for a specific reason, like a big acquisition.

8. PMs start with a PR, on half-pizza teams - Webflow's PMs code the prototype, and designers and engineers swarm on it while it's rough. A funded product area is now two or three engineers with a designer and a PM, which Linda jokes is half a pizza.

9. Track the behavior your AI feature should change - Webflow tracks how many customers use its MCP server, and it also tracks publish rate, how often someone comes in and publishes a change. People publish more once they use MCP, and new customers reach their first publish faster.

10. Webflow hires for how you work with a team - It skipped the AI PM title because every PM has to use AI now. After one-on-ones that score things like AI fluency, a final working session with a group decides it, and the number rejected there has been high.

Go Deeper

n8n's CEO on why n8n isn't dead

How to think about product strategy in the age of AI

How product leaders should use AI, with Rachel Wolan

What an AI-native product team looks like at Salesforce

The PM's guide to agent distribution and MCP servers

Zapier's AI fluency rubric for PMs

Where to find Linda Tong

Where to find Aakash

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