💸 Bezos: AI bubble? Yeah, it's real

ISSUE #275

OpenAI just launched ChatGPT Pulse – an AI that does overnight research and delivers personalized updates every morning.

So naturally, I'm wondering: can I do the same thing, but for the SaaS industry?

The battle to stay employed at SaaS Weekly continues. Will human curation beat the machines? (Feel free to tell me what you think.)

In this week's roundup:

• Forward-deployed engineers are the fastest-growing role in software → AI products need technical services layers, not just self-serve funnels

• Enterprise security just got owned by phone calls → A billion Salesforce customer records stolen through help desk social engineering

• Bezos admits the AI bubble is real → But says industrial bubbles fund innovation even as most companies fail

Let's dive in.

Ian at SaaS Weekly

THIS WEEK IN SAAS
Insights & trends across the industry

📊 Benchmarks | ICONIQ surveyed 127 software companies on how AI is reshaping GTM
ICONIQ's latest State of Software report benchmarks financial and hiring data across 127 companies (portfolio + select public comps). One trend stood out to me:

Forward-deployed engineers (FDE) are the fastest-growing role in B2B software – job postings jumped 12x YoY (from ~30/month to 375/month by April 2025).

FDEs embed directly with customers to iterate on products based on real-time feedback, handle complex integrations, and drive implementation – roles that sit somewhere between solution engineers and post-sales [ICONIQ].

Why it matters: The AI-native playbook is being reframed from "hire fewer people" to "hire different people – technical talent embedded with customers instead of quota-carrying reps." If you're scaling an AI product without an FDE or solutions engineering function, you're either capping expansion or fighting churn.

🔐 Security | Hacking group claims 1 billion records stolen from Salesforce customers – but the platform itself wasn't breached
A hacking collective launched a dark web extortion site claiming nearly 1 billion customer records stolen from companies using Salesforce cloud databases. Confirmed victims include Allianz Life, Google, Qantas, TransUnion, and Workday.

The hackers used voice phishing – impersonating employees to IT help desks – to trick companies into installing a modified version of Salesforce’s Data Loader. Salesforce confirmed its platform wasn't compromised. [TechCrunch, Indian Express]

Why it matters: Companies might need stricter verification for anyone requesting privileged access over the phone. Doesn't matter how secure your cloud setup is if someone can talk their way past your IT team.

💰 Markets | Bezos confirms the AI bubble is real…but says the wreckage will be worth it
Jeff Bezos joined Sam Altman in admitting we're in an AI bubble, but Amazon's founder argues it's an "industrial bubble" (like 1990s biotech) rather than a financial one (like dot-com or housing). The difference matters: industrial bubbles fund real innovation even as most companies fail spectacularly.

"When the dust settles and you see who are the winners, societies benefit from those investments," Bezos said at Italian Tech Week. He acknowledged that during bubbles "everything gets funded" because investors can't tell good from bad.[Fortune].

Why it matters: A friendly (and obvious) reminder: if you're evaluating an AI investment or job offer, inflated valuations don't mean much – most AI companies won't survive the shakeout...just a hunch.

💸 Funding | Three rounds this week:

• PostHog raised $75M at a $1.4B valuation, giving the open-source product analytics and dev tool company unicorn status. [Economic Times]

• Outreach co-founder Manny Medina's new startup Paid raised $21M seed (led by Lightspeed) to build billing infrastructure for SaaS companies shifting from seat-based to AI agent pricing models. [Yahoo Finance]

• StackGuardian raised $10M Series A (led by TIN Capital) for its AI-driven platform that automates secure, compliant infrastructure provisioning. [PR Newswire]

TOP READS FROM LAST WEEK

1. The launch of SaaS Weekly Archives - a database of all curated articles in the weekly (Archive)

2. Sculpting GTM’s future with six major launches (Clay)

3. HubSpot introduces the Loop - a new playbook for growth in the AI era (HubSpot)