Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending March 6, 2026

​1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: Here is a highly bookmarkable Guide to SaaS Metrics from equals.com that covers all the greatest hits and more (ARPA, LTV:CAC, Burn Multiples, etc).


2. OPENAI: Wow - has it been a crappy week for mainstream AI companies - especially for OpenAI. Benedict Evans (even before this week's accelerated demise) argues that OpenAI has no durable moat: 800-900M users, but only 5% paying; 80% sent fewer than 1,000 messages in all of 2025; and every mainstream model is now roughly equivalent. That platform flywheel Sam Altman describes doesn't actually show a flywheel.


3. AI 1: This is also a Benedict Evans Part 2 - A couple of times each year, Benedict Evans goes on an absolute blinder in PowerPoint exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry, and his latest version is just an updated deck of both of last year's versions (they are all called "AI eats the world").


4. AI 2: Hear me out, cynics: Agentic AI isn't a feature add - it's a wedge into existing B2B SaaS - it's certainly something I'm leaning into. This piece argues vertical software vendors can embed agents that execute workflows, not just surface insights, turning systems of record into systems of action and expanding ARPU without adding seats.


5. SALES: Checkmate SaaS Companies that are using AI for sales, AI Companies are hiring human SDRs, 39% of top AI companies with open GTM roles are hiring SDRs.


6. DEATH OF SAAS: Jason Lemkin argues that SaaS ain't dead - but the old playbook is wobbly. Growth is way harder to get, NRR is under pressure, AI-native products are killing seat models, and buyers expect more features for less. For example - PagerDuty at $500M ARR trades at 2x revenue with a customer count flat for four years. Bit of a Canary? Janelle Wade reviews past SaaSacres.


7. CAPITAL: Mo' money doesn't fix weak fundamentals. This breakdown shows how oversized early rounds distort hiring, inflate burn, delay product-market fit discipline, and lock founders into growth expectations the business can't support when the market gets tight (74% of high-growth internet startups fail due to premature scaling, and 93% of those that scale early never break $100K MRR).


8. ENGINEERINGIFICATION: Great term for something we're all already probably living on the daily: GTM engineers, design engineers, sales engineers - every role is picking up engineering identity as LLMs lower the barrier. The line is moving from "who is allowed to build" to "who has the ideas and dedication to actually build." If your job title still has zero overlap with engineering, it probably will soon.


9. LAYOFFS: It's back in the news with the huge layoffs at Block last week casually laying off the biggest percent of a Fortune 500 company ever (40%). Tomasz Tunguz asks the bigger question: Could you operate your company with half the people?


10. CASE STUDY: Brex famously made bus stop advertising cool again, but they actually 3x'd signups by reworking their packaging and pricing - simplifying plans, personalizing everything they could, clarifying value by segment, and removing friction in the self-serve flow.


POD OF THE WEEK: Adding onto #3 and #4 above, (and another Benedict Evans thing) - AI and SaaS - What does AI do to software?