{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"NC Tweener Talks","title":"Jesse Lipson, CEO & Founder of Levitate: Building AI Features Won't Save You but Here's What Will","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1537,"description":"Jess Lipson, founder and CEO of Levitate, joins host Scot Wingo for a focused, framework-driven conversation on how SaaS founders should think about their businesses in the age of AI. Jess has been building SaaS since before the category had a name. His first company, ShareFile, sold to Citrix and eventually became a billion-dollar business. At Citrix, he ran the company's entire SaaS portfolio. Now at Levitate, a relationship marketing platform serving nearly 9,000 small businesses,  he's spent the last year working out a clear-eyed answer to one of the most common questions Scot hears from Triangle founders: what do you actually do about the SaaSpocalypse? In this episode, Jess introduces two tests every SaaS founder should run: the Removal Test (if you strip AI out of your product, does it still function?) and the Growth Re-acceleration Test (is your growth rate going up or down, and what does that signal to investors?). Scot adds a third indicator from what he's seeing across the Tweener Fund portfolio: churn driven by customers who are now vibe-coding their own replacements. Together, they walk through how the buy-vs.-build equation has shifted 10 to 100 times, why having AI features is now table stakes rather than a competitive advantage, and what it looks like to build a business where new frontier model releases feel like tailwinds instead of threats.Timestamps00:00 Cold Open & Welcome00:29 Sponsors: Robinson Bradshaw & Bank of America01:24 Scot's Intro: The SaaSpocalypse02:31 The February Tweener Times Piece03:05 Why This Episode Exists04:08 Welcome Jess Lipson04:37 How Scot & Jess Know Each Other05:10 Jess's SaaS Pedigree: ShareFile to Citrix05:49 SaaS Multiples Have Collapsed07:00 Salesforce, HubSpot & Workday Are Down Too08:13 AI Features Are Table Stakes09:50 Is This the Lowest SaaS Multiples Ever?11:28 Investment Landscape: Subscale SaaS Is Struggling12:23 Framework #1: The Removal Test14:22 Framework #2: Growth Re-Acceleration15:23 Scot's Third...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/UEzoK7N1siD9YRaSVBWfZ8B3suSS2aonEIZ5NwBH1Gs/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80NjBh/YWVhZTA4ZTUyY2Fl/MDdhNzQwZWFhNDI4/MDc3Zi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}