WGMaTW: Agent-Led Growth, Joy-Sparking SaaS, and B2C’s Great Comeback
What Got My Attention This Week, as a product leader
Here’s what got my attention this week — a short, curated list of things I read and listened to that felt genuinely worth pausing on, as a product leader.
1/ Welcome to the Era of Agent-Led Growth ⚡️
On TBPN, John Coogan and Jordi Hays spoke with Sequoia Partner Sonya Huang, who argues that after moving from sales-led growth to product-led growth, we’re now entering an era of ‘agent-led growth.’
She pointed out that tools like Claude Code already exert real influence over tech stacks and infrastructure decisions. LLMs — through ‘vibe coding’ workflows — are actively selecting or recommending services like Supabase and Vercel.
She predicts this dynamic won’t stop with software tooling:
“I think this is going to happen with the entire economy. Your ChatGPT is going to tell you ‘Hey, this is the travel you should be booking…’ Your agent has infinite time so it can read all the documentation, all the user comments, and figure you what you need for your use case.”
If this plays out, distribution, differentiation, and brands will increasingly be mediated by agents. Hold on to your seats.
2/ Does your SaaS Make You Smile?
There was a reality show on Netflix a few years ago that made Marie Kondo a household name, built around one simple question: Does it spark joy?
That question came rushing back as I read a SaaStr post by founder and CEO Jason Lemkin. SaaS is under pressure from multiple directions right now, but his framing was clear: you can still fight back.
The under-appreciated weapon? Making customers smile.
‘Surprise and delight’ feels like a capability the industry quietly deprioritized for nearly a decade — but that feels like a mistake now. AI-native experiences like ChatGPT, Lovable, Suno, and Cursor feel automagical in a way we haven’t seen since the early days of Uber, Spotify, Waze, and Airbnb.
I continue to believe B2B has to borrow far more from the consumer playbook.
Your SaaS users are humans first — and consumers and prosumers of beautifully designed apps that relentlessly compete for their attention.
Slack internalized this earlier than almost anyone. Tomorrow’s best SaaS products may need to find their inner Slack — even if that instinct isn’t already in their DNA.
Jason’s post also covered other important pressures in SaaS today: Shrinking seat counts, AI-driven budget reallocation, painfully slow teams, TAM traps, and more.
“When users can build functional apps in minutes (Lovable), or get meaningful output in seconds (Claude), the bar for what constitutes a ‘great product’ has permanently shifted.”
3/ Consumer is Making a Comeback
I somehow missed this conversation when it first dropped, but once I found it, I couldn’t stop listening.
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan spoke with Michael Mignano — co-founder of Anchor (acquired by Spotify) and now a partner at Lightspeed.
They covered the resurgence of consumer apps, creative tools, distribution dynamics, and what AI unlocks — including Oboe, a particularly interesting take on AI-powered learning and self-help.
“We have AI now, and we have all these new opportunities — things we can create that we previously couldn’t… Increasingly, we find ourselves betting on people who are just great at building products.”
That last line stuck with me. Tools change. Distribution changes. But great builders still matter most.
Bonus: Great free products = Growth engine
On the theme of education, Duolingo Founder & CEO (and fellow Guatemalan) Luis von Ahn shared a refreshingly clear post on LinkedIn about this focus this year.
“Making the free version of Duolingo the best it’s ever been. This is how we grow. A great free product drives word of mouth and, ultimately, subscriptions.”
It’s a simple reminder — and an increasingly rare one — that generosity in product design can still be an strong differentiation and growth strategy.
The concept of agent-led growth, especially how LLMs like Claude Code are already selecting tech stacks, really stood out. If this extends to our travel, what does it mean for consumer autonamy? Your analysis is incredibly insightful; you always distill these complex shifts so effectively.
Sharp curation here. The agent-led growth framing is fascinating when you think about how distribution power is quietly shifting from brand teams to LLM recommendation layers. I remeber when PLG felt like the big shift, but this feels way more structural. If agents really do become default purchasing assistants, the entire notion of competetive moats gets rewritten.