Jason Lemkin, known to some as the Godfather of SaaS, says people who want to work in tech face a stark choice in the current environment.
“You don’t get to make 10 million for working 18 hours a week. You get a watch. You get an Omega,” Lemkin said during a recent episode of the 20VC podcast. “You want an Omega, or you want to be rich? Make your choice, boys.”
Lemkin said that while some people can make remote work functional, he saw on his own team “it involved a lot of distractions.” He said in “the narrow universe” of companies, he’s interested in those that aren’t hiring workers who want a more relaxed schedule.
“They’re not hiring folks that want to work 20 hours a week from home,” he said.
Lemkin, who founded SaaStr, a community of business to business founders, agreed with Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen’s view that remote work is “white-collar fraud” because of the distractions employees must navigate.
“I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old. The idea that I could do any work at my house is like a total fantasy,” Petersen said on a previous “20VC” episode. “And, like, I have a bigger house than most employees do. Like, I actually do have a private office I can close the door on. It doesn’t matter — there’s no work getting done at that house when the kids are around.”
Lemkin said that, if anything, Petersen’s view is “dated” because the companies aiming for the top and the investors who want to fund them already understand that remote work isn’t tenable.
“I want small, high paid teams that work in the office over six days a week,” Lemkin said. “I’m not interested in investing in anything else. I’m just not interested. And it’s not because I don’t have empathy, it’s because they’re going to fail.”
Older companies and cultures like Flexport, Lemkin said, may be struggling to get their employees to adjust to a world of “a series of endless sprints” that require the type of grind Lemkin said the industry now demands.
“I thought Ryan’s running an old company, right? It’s old. Flexport is old,” Lemkin said. “And I think, he is struggling with trying to modernize his team and being competitive with the way startups are today. He’s struggling with the fact you can’t change out your entire team. What do you do with the folks that are unwilling to change at these big companies?”
Petersen founded Flexport, a global freight forwarding and customs brokerage company, in 2013 alongside his brother, David.
Lemkin’s push for smaller teams echoes what is quickly becoming gospel across Silicon Valley as enterprises move to cut down on bureaucracy to pivot quickly in a world that continues to be reshaped by AI.
In this age, Lemkin said, there simply is “nothing in the middle.”
“Do you want to make money from your equity or do you want to make $180,000 a year?” he said. “This is going to be your choice in tech.”
