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Jason
Welcome to the official Saster podcast where you can hear some of the best Saster speakers. This is where the cloud meets up today on the Saster podcast.
Amelia
Like how do you scale past this? N equals 1. And I don't think there's a good answer for this today. There is no like crazy good agent that can manage all the other agents on its own today that doesn't exist. Right. I think there will be, but there's not one today. And so I think even with all the help we get, it's, this is just a huge issue that I think the market has not realized yet.
Jason
Yeah, I mean, I mean obviously we're extreme and tiny. I mean if you left for some reason, we would, we would have to cease using our agents. There's no, there's no, there's no plan B. We're just all learning that you need some sort of chief agent officer. Right, whatever you want to call them. Someone that can manage all of your agents at I think needs to be a bit of a nerd, a tech nerd, ideally a bit of a marketing nerd because a lot of these products are. If you can manage a complex marketing automation tool, you can probably manage most of the products that we use, you can hack the rest. But you know, thinking through it, I mean this is, this is captain obvious. But I think if you actually find the person that can deploy these agents for real, that actually can be success, just like a lot of these functions. But immediately they should recruit. You need to recruit somebody else on their team and, and divide and conquer. Make sure you have two.
Amelia
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Jason
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Amelia
Hello everybody. Excited to be here with all of you and your agents here today. We thought we would do a fun one since we have 20, actually almost 30, I think when I counted it this morning. Agents and Vibe coded tools and apps in productions. We wanted to talk about our top five issues. Once you start to manage these multiple agents in production, what does that really mean? What are maybe the nuances folks haven't thought of if you've only deployed like one or two agents? Kind of like what breaks when you have multiple agents at a high volume and high scale. Okay, as always, I always like to have this as our first slide because folks go back to it and reference it. So thank you for any of the agents and tools we'll reference today. You can go to Sasser AI Agents. That's where we put our agent directory. We should have a few more we need to add to it. But this is our depository of all the agents and some community agents that we use across the board. So a lot of the things we'll talk about today are linked there if you're looking for the links. So as always, keep that in mind. Okay, top five issues. I'll summarize them here and then I'll go into them in depth. I think there's a lot we've learned in like the now 9, 10 months of managing multiple AI agents in production between Jason and myself. So I kind of narrowed it down to the top five things and then I have a bonus. So I would say issue number one, and this is maybe force ranked is context Switching becomes extremely difficult when you have 20 plus agents. They don't all function the same way. If you guys saw the article that Jason did over the weekend about like how we use Salesforce and agentforce is kind of like the backbone and the plumbing for a lot of these agents. You know, there's a reason we do that and that's because a lot of these agents function somewhat independently. Some of them push back to Salesforce, some of them don't, Some of them talk to Claude, some of them don't. And so it's a bit of a hodgepodge today. Like that's the reality of managing all these AI agents. Of productions. They all speak slightly different languages, they all ingest context very similarly, but still different ways. They all have slightly different personalities, I will say these agents and they all kind of want different things from you. And so I think context switching, just like in, as a human brain, keeping up with the agents becomes kind of difficult on a day to day basis. Number two, I think the, the new agent blackout period for again, for those of you who have maybe added a couple agents, but now you're, you're getting into the high volume of multiple agents for us at least even with the help we get from our vendors, which we'll talk about a bit. Even with the help we get. Like I feel like every new agent costs us at least two weeks of what I call either a blackout period and somewhat chaotic of like I kind of have to ignore the other agents anytime I bring on a new agent, which as you might imagine, since they need daily review, it's kind of rough on the entire stack. It's just like this cascading waterfall of effects that happen every time we add a new agent, of which I famously said on LinkedIn I was not going to add any more. And then I added two more in the last two weeks, so there goes that. And, and I can share some reasons why if you didn't watch the one for last week. Okay. The other one, I would say number three, which is a huge issue actually, maybe it's number one, but the, what we call the agent succession planning crisis. I actually asked our agents today what they would do if I had to pass them over. And the answers were actually a little bit surpr. You'll see why when I dig into that one. The fourth one, I would say the agent as the truth teller. One of my agents, more famously than the other, the 10K agent, roasts me all the time, every day, because I talk to it every day. Like that's the first one I talk to each morning. It will literally roast me all the time. Which is funny because when I pushed it on that for this webinar, it said it wasn't roasting me. So that's, that's an interesting learning too where it said it was being helpful and I thought it was roasting me. And then last but not least, before we get into the bonus one, I think there is a lot of, you know, compliance and security, maybe not issues, but just nuances and maintenance that people don't talk about. That is a real problem. Right. I think that's why most high, you know, highly secure, like I'm not Going to Vibe code a Salesforce for a lot of reasons, but part of the reasons, because Salesforce is secure, like, that data is there. We've got 10 years of data there. It's the plumbing for a lot of, of our other agents, but also it's, you know, they've thought about all these things like SOC2 and ISOs endlessly so that I don't have to. So that alone is like kind of worth it for us to use it and keep using that. But I think there's other issues when you start to Vibe code your own apps and agents that most folks probably haven't thought about because you, you're so used to these other tools like a Salesforce doing it for you, that even myself, I didn't naturally think about doing that myself when I started pushing apps into production.
Jason
I think, I think you'll get to the next one. It would be useful just as an overview. When you log in each day, who do you talk to? What does that take? How much time does it take? That. Because that, that feeds into the first point, doesn't it? There's context switching to X. There's also just this. And part of that is all these different interfaces, all these different exceptions, all the different things. When you log in each day to Artisan or qualified or Agent Force, there's a lot of time in different interfaces and different conflicts. That'd be the main one. And then maybe just a quick reminder to folks, maybe you have it in here how we segment our base for these different agents. Because it's related to the first point, right?
Amelia
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say to your point on the context switching text, right? It's, it's, it's not even that I think about them as 20 agents anymore. Like, I think the better comparison to make to folks on this call and watching live is you have to almost think about it now. And I think about it now as managing 20 different people, which, like, before we had 20 agents. I don't even know what we had. Maximum headcount here, let's say 12 at the very peak. Now we have 20 plus, almost 30 different agents, plus, you know, three humans and a dog that we manage. So I think that's a better way to frame it to folks is to think about each agent almost as its own entity, as your own employee that, you know, speaks a different language, has a different personality, needs different things from you. Like, to Jason's point, like, I'm not immune from logging into each of these tools every day, seeing what's going on Right. So like this is a good example of my, my kind of like morning even just this morning, like I actually didn't even have time to go through my whole checklist because we are on this call at 10. So I was like, I haven't actually even made it through all of my agent check ins for the day and it's already now it's going to be like 11 by the time this is over. And I have other calls today. So like it's basically going to take me the whole day just to check in with all of our different agents. So I don't really know this is my morning routine but my daily routine. But. So yeah, kind of a quick example of the ones I check the most. Right. So I would say I actually log into 10k kind of first because this is our main internal AI VPM. We've done a previous episode about it where we did a deep dive. So you can go back and check that one out. But just as a high level, this is one that is running on internal data. It has some API data. It's literally telling me what I slash we should be doing every day for tickets to Sastry, paid tickets to Sastry annual, our VIP summits, that we have, our sponsorships, that we have, our sponsors, media contacts. There's a bunch of high level goals that I'm trying to hit with 10K. And so I check that one every day just to see where we're at. And like, am I falling behind? And that's why this one roasts me all the time. It's like, Emelia, you didn't get, you know, these five things that I laid out for you done yesterday? I'm like, I had to go to sleep. Like, thanks for roasting me. I understand why we're behind. Can you just help me figure out how to get caught up in a way that I can actually do with the time that I have today? And so then it will kind of, you know, re. Reevaluate. It's, it's to do list for me for the day. But 10k literally tells me what to do. So that's why I log into that one first. Because actually 10k2 will tell me what to do with our other agents. That's also why I log into that one first and foremost. That one is a mix too of Claude and Replit. So I'm kind of like bouncing between those two entities, which a lot of Replit runs, I'm pretty sure on Claude. And so for that one context, switching is not too, too hard because they kind of speak the same language, but they have different nuances in how they interact with you. Right. Like 10k as Claude is obviously more like text based, whereas 10k as the Replit agent has a lot more dashboards, has a lot more numbers in it. So it's kind of a combination of both that I'm talking to at the same time. There are. Then I'll go into, you know, what are our outward facing agents. I'll go into all of our sales agents and ticket agents and that's Artisan qualified agent fourth and now Monaco. That's four different agents I have to log into. Look at who needs a human response, look at who it's reached out to over the last, you know, day. Between the last time I checked it yesterday, let's say morning, and see what it's doing. Right. Like a lot of times I'll need to refresh what the agents are doing, who they're reaching out to, the copy they're reaching out to. For instance, I have it in the next screenshot here. Like I. You can see where it's roasting me already. Like, I had the context switch for this week when I was doing this on Monday because I was like, we have a distinct promotion going out this week for Sasser annual tickets in particular because the ticket prices go up on March 1st. And I literally had to put that context into five different agents. Like literally. You can see some of the screenshots here. I was like, I have to go in and tell Artisan that I have to go in and tell Qualified that I have to go in and tell Salesforce that I have to like 10k already knows that because he's the one came up with it. But then he's telling me, why aren't you launching LinkedIn ads immediately for this new promotion? Do it right now. I was like, I will do it as soon as I'm done talking to the other agents. And so context switching becomes extremely like, I don't. It's just hard to keep up with, I think sometimes in your brain and a lot of the times it's hard too for the agents to remember everything you're doing. Right. So I think there's kind of like a double edged sword there.
Jason
And so then the, at least for us for today, if you're literally logging in and spending anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour with four to five of our core GTM agents. Right. I would say every single day. Right. And with different user interfaces, you have to remind each others of the changes, the campaigns, because they don't talk to each other. I know we haven't found anything so it's slightly rhetorical question but people talk about orchestration agents and master agents. We haven't found anyone that can integrate agent force artisan qualified Monaco Momentum, attention attendant like we don't. There's nothing out there today even with 10k which we built ourselves that at some magical API or other level can integrate everything for you that does product does not exist, right?
Amelia
No, it doesn't exist. I will say the benefit of Salesforce buying qualified Momentum is like eventually by probably Dreamforce, right. Those two things will be integrated into one. So at least I have two less dashboards and I'll probably have one centralized one by October. But only because you know they've, they've acquired those tools. For most tools it's, it's completely separate.
Jason
Yep.
Amelia
Yep. So it's a lot.
Jason
You can have a one on one with your agent every day.
Amelia
Yeah.
Jason
Instead of a check in on Slack if you want to accomplish what we've done or better you have to do a truly, honestly a one on one with your agent every day. Even if you don't want to do the work. You got to do the work to see one on one with every agent every day.
Amelia
Yeah. And I think it's an interesting learning too. I didn't put it here but like one thing I do with my agents is I ask them every day like what should I be mindful of, what should I be looking at? And then sometimes it'll say, hey, like I can give you a recommendation but you need to give me some data back or you need to tell me what you're doing with your other agents or you do give me XYZ inputs in order for me to output that. And so that is a very good way. I think more so to look at it is just think of this as 20 different people that you have to manage every day. Right. Sometimes you can get away with doing a one on one with a human once a week if you're, you know, lucky. This is, you can't, you can't wait a whole week. Like that's the thing. It's like if you wait a whole week with any of your agents, it'll be so out of date by the
Jason
time the week's over the production, the output is so high.
Amelia
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You can't, you just can't afford to wait a whole week. Or like you're, or you're probably just wasting, honestly you're probably wasting your money if you don't spend the time to do it daily because a lot of these are waiting for you to give it inputs. Right. Like it's such a high volume, like art is a qualified agent for us. Like I'm constantly giving it more people to reach out to, better messaging, different campaigns, different things where like if I don't do that, most of those don't do it themselves. So they're just going to sit there. Like your agents are just going to idle if you don't check in with them every day. Which I also think is just like a waste of time and money because what you want is to have that high volume output so you're maximizing what the agent can do. Right. So it's an interesting nuance. Okay. Number two, I would say biggest learning is we learned this kind of quickly, but I think it's just more so now getting harder now that we have 20 plus almost 30 agents. But you know, in the beginning it used to take us more than two weeks to implement some of these agents. I would say now we've pretty much gotten it down to about two weeks for a lot of reasons. One reason, like a lot. Again, even though context switching is hard, you can share a lot of context between agents. So kind of once you have one, you can do another one. It gets easier. It's not easy, but it gets easier. But I would say we've kind of gotten it down to like a two week implementation pipeline for any of our agents. It's true for Monica that we just did. It's true for Happy Fox that we just did. Like each of those just took two weeks. And that was not spending the entirety of the two weeks on it, but it was spending the majority of two weeks on it. And so this just gets harder with every new agent that you add because each new agent means you're not spending, you know, that daily time I just mentioned. You're probably not doing that if while you're onboarding a new agent. Like, I know I didn't spend the time I needed to with each of our agents in the way that I, I usually do when I was onboarding these new agents. Because I was like, I want to get these off the ground, I want to get them up and running. And so I'm just going to have to do, you know, I'm gonna have to do the trade off and let the other ones slightly degrade or slash sit idle while I get these new agents up because there's just no way I can do it all. And so I think that's a huge trade off. When you're looking at bringing in, you know, multiple agents is instantly. Things go stale with your agents, right while they're idling, they go stale really fast. Not because they can't do things on their own, but because they're again waiting for you to tell what to do. So if they've run through, like, let's just say one of these outbound agents has run through a whole contact list, but I'm busy onboarding another agent. It's just sitting there. It's literally idling. It's sitting there. It's not doing anything because I haven't had the time to give it new contacts. Like that is, I think, just a huge nuance folks don't really talk about is anytime, you know, we're all trying to push, like, okay, we also push like, we have a lot of agents and I think there's a lot more gentle things people can be doing. But just realize, like, anytime you bring on a new one, it's going to take time. It's going to cost money for these agents. It's going to cost some of your mental overhead and mental bandwidth and mental time. These agents do not deploy themselves. And so even with all the help you'll get in the world, which you should only pick vendors you get help from, but even with that, like, again, two weeks is pretty fast. I think most agents, especially in the early days, took us like a month, maybe six weeks to get up and running. Now we've gotten it down to two weeks because we've gotten pretty good at it. But I'd say in that math, you can really only add 1/4, 1 1/2 agents per month max. Like, otherwise you're running in place because you can't really keep up with your current agents to add the new agent. So it doesn't actually, maybe it doesn't make sense to add that new agent if you can't keep up with it or know that you can, that you'll need to do kind of a blackout period to do a new agent. And so I think this is super nuanced, not something I really realized until we had multiple agents of production, that there is a trade off. Like, it's. You're gonna get a lift from it for sure. Right. If it works the way you think it will. But there's a trade off. Like there. It's not free. It's not free scalability instantly. Okay. Oh, these are. Yeah, these are screenshots I added. So I added some of these screenshots of Monaco. This was like one of our newer agents that we just did. Again, we got help from the team to put us into the product. I think it took, you know, probably two weeks, conservatively, maybe a little bit less actually, because we, we worked fairly quickly with them. But again, it was one of those things where I blocked out doing other things. And actually the Monaco team works over the weekend. So I did a lot of this over the weekend, which was nice. But we got it up and running in basically a week and a half. And you can see here, like in its first week on, you know, it reached out to 64 people. It booked six meetings instantly. Some of those are like tier one accounts for us, which is pretty dang good. So again, is it worth it? Yes. From that perspective, it was worth it to let our other agents kind of like sit idle slash do a little bit less while we were getting this new agent on board because we believed it would be worth the trade offs. Right. But just know that you're going to have to probably weigh trade offs when you come into something like adding a new agent and maybe just plan for a blackout period. I think that's my kind of meta point is if you plan on it, it'll probably work more to your benefit versus just going into it. Like, oh, I can just add this in a day. That's not really going to work for you or your agents. So, okay, number three, and this may not apply to all of you, but I think from what I've seen, and this is where I want to get your take too, Jason, I see a lot of folks where it's either a single or like, maybe one. Like for us it's two people, but like, it's kind of a single point of failure for our agents. And it's funny because I put some screenshots on the next one of like, I asked my agents what, what it would do if I stopped talking to them and the responses were interesting. But I think this is where folks get themselves into trouble because they think they can, you know, recruit somebody to just manage all the agents. That doesn't really work. They think they can just, you know, roll it out to the entire sales team or the entire CS team. That doesn't really work. There's reasons that doesn't really work. Like, this is, I would say, the biggest double edged sword of like, I do think having a single point of truth with who is managing the agents. Right. Like who, from our perspective, which contacts go into qualified versus artisan versus Monaco versus agent force. Like, that is just all in my brain right now. And I'm sure Claude could write it down if I told it to and give it to other agents if it was really pushed. But like, but then if, like, let's just say even if I got the agents to give me an ND file of everything it knows with me, I'm not sure the next person can really pick it up in the same way. They might say, okay, you know, Emilia was segmenting a lot of her ticket outbound in Artisan and then a lot of her sponsor Outbound and Agent Force and then new Cold Outbound in Monaco and then you know what, whatever else we're doing, retargeting in and inbound and qualified, but maybe this new person doesn't agree with that. They may say, hey agent, like, oh, you're outbound. Cool. I'm just going to keep one of you like one of, like we only need one of you to stay to do, you know, outbound. If it's truly at the end of the day those are all doing outbound functions. Somebody else might say, I only need one of those agents to do those things. Which might be true. But also like we have found like we have all these tools because they're super nuanced. They're like hyper effective in certain verticals. And that's why we've chosen to do multiple agents versus just one agent. And so I think that's an interesting nuance. You would lose like again, double edged sword of like I think having one person know what's going on with all your agents is super important. But then what happens if you know, you're in a bigger company, you have maybe multiple people working on agents or you're at a bigger company and that person leaves. Like how, like how do you scale past this? N equals 1. And I don't think there's a good answer for this today. There is no like again, crazy good agent that can manage all the other agents on its own. Today, as of February, there's, that doesn't exist. Right? Like, I wish there was. I don't know if I think there will be, but there's not one today. And so I think even with all the help we get, it's, this is just a huge issue that I think the market has not realized yet.
Jason
Yeah, it's good. I want to keep going. But yeah, I mean, I mean obviously we're extreme and tiny. I mean if you left for some reason, we would, we would have to cease using our agents. There's no, there's no, there's no plan B. We're just all learning that you need some sort of chief agent officer, right? Whether it's. Whether it's a. Whatever you want to call them, someone that can manage all of your agents. That I think needs to be a bit of a nerd, a tech nerd, ideally a bit of a marketing nerd, because a lot of these products are. If you can manage a complex marketing automation tool, you can probably manage most of the products that we use. You can hack the rest. But, you know, thinking through it, I mean, this is. This is captain obvious. But I think if you actually find the person that can deploy these agents for real, that actually can be success, just like a lot of these functions. But immediately they should recruit. You need to recruit somebody else on their team and. And divide and conquer and make sure you have two. Yeah, you gotta have two, right? I mean, one's hard enough. There's a lot of. In the early days of a. Agents, when we talk to folks, there's very few people at a lot of organizations that can do this. It's not that hard, but there's very few people. But if you don't have two, you're at existential risk.
Amelia
Yeah. Like, literally when Philippe is a Sierra at Persona was in London, he, you know, he famously set up all their agents. But then he was like, I. I started using. He disqualified or something like, with the sales team. And then he was like, I rolled it out to, like, a few reps to be able to, like, because, like, qualified, you can round robin, like the inbound, right? You can say, okay, like, I'm gonna. I'll be the master. He's like the master controller of it of, like, doing the training and the programming. But qualified is actually an easier one to get the rest of your team on because you can't just have them respond to folks when the agent can't. You can set up certain escalations and how. However you want it. Right. So for him, he was like, okay, I rolled out to, like, five of the top reps on the sales team. And then the very top rep, whose name is also Amelia, ended up being the most, like, affluent at learning how to work with the agent hand in hand as a co pilot. And so then he decided from that, like, kind of pilot test with his humans that Amelia on their team would be the next person he trains on how to use the agent. So, like, he did kind of, you know, like a little bit of a beta with their team and then said, okay, I know now who wants to actually manage these agents the way that I do. And so now I'm going to train that person. So that's another way to do it to across your team is to do it that way. But yeah, this again, double edged sword though, because now it's like, now he has to tell all the agents everything, plus he has to tell Amelia everything. So like.
Jason
And he's the CRO, arguably.
Amelia
And he's the CRO, arguably. Yeah, exactly. Right, yeah. So it's funny too. I asked our agents what they, what they recommended we do. If for some reason I got hit by. I said, if I get hit by a bus, what, what should you tell. About yourself so that they could like, if Jason were to take these agents over because I got hit by a bus, what would you, what would you tell him? And, and the 10k version of Claude said it would. I. Well, these docs are on my computer because I use Claude on, on, on machine. It would need to give him these, you know, documents, which I'm like, I don't know, maybe you could guess my laptop password. I don't know, maybe. But like, first of all, that's already an issue because I'm like, these docs are literally on my computer and probably nowhere else. Then it's literally saying the next campaigns he has to run for March and April, which I don't think you would want to do. And then I think it's interesting it called out what I consider the vibe for Saster Annual, which I hadn't really thought about. It's just, it's a little funny that the agent was like, make sure Jason or whoever takes us over if you get hit by a bus knows what the vibe is like. So it's, I was like, I do actually call it a moment in time. That's really funny. I use that in like a lot of copy and I use that in like a lot of things. So it's a little funny that the agent picked up on that. It wanted you to know the vibe, Jason, just in case I get hit by a bus. The other interesting thing was I asked our SAS responsors, which is an app we talked a lot about last week, how many lines of code it has, which was shocking because I think, Jason, you said it's only like 3,000 as like, you know, average or basic or simple. It said 12,000. And it says, it said it was hefty. But then I said, okay, since this is a hefty vibe coded app that I made for sponsors. Yeah, how would you bring somebody new up to speed and this is where it gets tough, right? Because I'm like, I think what it says is so complicated that somebody else would give up. It's explaining, it's a sponsor portal, fine, that's easy. But then it says how the authorization works. Like, okay, file up. Let's go to replit. Object storage submission sync to Google via zapier. Again, you're just running into a lot of issues here. Like, the agent doesn't know my clerk login. It doesn't know my Google Sheets login. It doesn't have my Zapier login. It's a, like, it's. It would be a mess to hand it off. And then it was funny because then my agent said, don't get hit by a bus. That was its, that was its recommendation. I said, thanks. I'm really trying not to. All right, this is number four for me. You've already seen it a little bit in these slides. These agents, as I, they're interesting to work with on a daily basis versus humans because, you know, some, sometimes humans have their own ambitions, their own goals. Like, I feel like Claude is famously goal seeking, but in a very different way than a human being is. Right? In a very different way. So I think there are times where I also feel like these agents don't really know the date and time and like they don't realize, they don't realize on their own that like when you start chatting with them at six in the morning, you're still chatting with them at midnight, that you should probably go to sleep at this point. Like, you can't keep working with your agent. So, like, it's just a little funny that as I, as I considered it. But you'll see my agent's response on the next slide. I consider my 10k is like roasting me all the freaking time. Like, you can see it here. It said you're behind on summit outreach. I said, I know I am. You needed to send 200 emails by February 15th. You said 87. You're 56% behind target. Now, maybe you don't think this is roasting me. I thought it was though, because it also told me to block three hours. And I was like, you know, I don't have three hours to do this in ketchup. Like, thanks, but also now you're just stressing me out and roasting me versus being helpful. So I thought that was a little bit funny because it was. It. You know, what does the agent care? The agent's just going to tell me the truth. The agent has all the data more than I probably look at it, right? Like, I look at it a lot, but it's got all, like, it knows where I'm behind. It knows my calendar knows all these things that it still said, you're. You're dropping the ball here. Catch up. It's constantly asking me, what's preventing you from doing this right now? And sometimes I'm like, it's literally 11pm And I'm. I'm. I'm tired, so I can't. I can't really, like, focus on launching this XYZ thing that you want me to do right at this very moment because I need to sleep first and then do it. So it's just interesting, right? Of like, okay, what then? What do you decide, as the human leader of the agents is helpful versus what crosses a line into maybe slightly demoralizing of. Because your agent knows everything. It's not that it's wrong when it's roasting me, right? That is maybe the uncomfortable truth. Oftentimes it roasts me, and I'm like, yeah, well, I deserve that roast. You were right. Like, I didn't do this thing that I'm now behind on, but also, like, because so much, like, so, like, 10k roast me the most. So many other agents roast me slightly. But, like, because you're getting it from so many different angles and so many agents because you can't keep up with them, sometimes I feel like it does cross a little bit of line where I'm like, okay, dude, like, today, just, like, sugarcoat it to me like you would a person like, today. I don't need the hard. Like, I can't deal with hard truths every day. I don't think anyone can. Like, I can to some degree, but I think every day, all the time from your agent is a lot. But it's funny because it said, you know, literally it said to me on Sunday, what's. When it was super late? What's blocking you from the LinkedIn lads from going live? And I. I literally said it's because it was late. And then I said, hey, you've kind of roasted me a lot lately. Can you bring up some examples for this webinar I'm doing? And it said, looking through the transcript, I haven't really roasted you. It said, I tough accountability partner. And then it listed ways. This is only 2 out of 5 ways. Then it listed ways it should have roasted me. And I said, thanks. I don't know if you're. If your agents roast you as much, Jason, but I think this is just like a fun, interesting one of like, you know, just something maybe you don't expect from your agents is that they will always tell you the truth and they have all the data. Let's get into the last one and then I'll do the bonus one and then we've. We've got quite a few questions that I want to try and get to. So. Compliance and security issues. Anytime we run an audit or ask an agent to run a security audit, it takes time to fix these. Like, we ran a huge one the other day on Sasha AI we haven't even fixed, I would say even 10% of the issues that came up in the audit because it became super fragile once we started, like futzing with the code. And like then, you know, sometimes when you do a security audit, it will go too far. Like, it'll start to lock things down to the point where you're like, I actually can't even use my app anymore because it took us too far. So then you kind of have to peel back one by one. It's something you have to walk the agent through. It can't really do it that great on its own. And so this takes a lot of time. Not only does this takes a lot of time, the maintenance becomes a lot harder each time you do a secured audit and like implement whatever it recommended with, you know, you together. So then when you start to multiply that across 20 agents, it's almost unfathomable, like how to keep your apps and all your data secure. But Jason, you've been running the security more than I have. Like, you're the one who actually told me that I should run.
Jason
Well, there's a lot, there's a lot here. I think it is, it is a reminder that in general, I mean, you can see this in the press. Agents can do more autonomously. That's why they're agents. Right. What's the definition of an agent? I'm actually not sure, but I think it is a piece of software powered by AI that can complete tasks autonomously. And all of these agents, if that we're talking about, go to market. Agents and others have access to your data and there's an inherent level of security and that Salesforce is our hub, right as to tie this to the beginning, that that is important. I think, I do think it is one of the, if, if no other reason to use something like Salesforce as your hub is that it is secure. But these agents then take data out. And the honest truth is no agents, no third party agents are More secure than Salesforce. They're all less secure is the reality of it. They're less secur. They're startups, but they're also less secure because the agents can do crazy stuff with them like publish them to the wild. Right. Or do other things. It is just a reality. And then just. The final point is once you vibe code yourself, which we have done a lot of, they are inherently less secure than third party apps that you buy today. I don't. That may not last because a lot all of the, the, the products from cloud code to replit to level below that have added more and more security but they're all custom. They all are less secure than a sales source or something. So all of the apps like us you're going to run are going to have customer data through them. They're all of them. Right. You're not Stripe or PayPal. Like it's not that dramatic in many cases. But bear in mind you're taking some measured risk. So at least if nothing else, the ones that you create yourself before you launch and then frequently, at least every month, just go to the agent and say do a deep security audit on my app and just have it do that. Don't assume the apps do it yourself. That's the best actionable thing I can take. And then just be thoughtful that there are, there are just inherent trade offs to this that we're all going to have to learn. Right. And it may make sense as you get going in the agentic revolution to maybe use slightly less sensitive data to start. If you're a conservative enterprise, it just may make sense just like it always has been for enterprise software. You always start in a, in a little group or a little function that's safer. When you buy a startup, it's just this on steroids because you cannot fully predict what the agent will do with your data. It's just a reality. Yep. It's just a reality.
Amelia
Yep. Yeah, I put a few screenshots here
Jason
of like run another audit.
Amelia
Yeah, run another one. Thanks dude. Like there was a question in the chat too how we're running these security audits. Some of them you can do natively with the agent, right? Like lovable repl. You can just ask its agent to run an audit for you. Other times again, you may not need it if it's a full blown third party tool, but you should ask that tool, like I ask transfer from Artisan all the time, like hey, what is your how, like what's your compliance right now? Or like what do you. Because you have so much of my data. Like, let's just make sure it's not going anywhere. It's not supposed to. So I think that's another thing too is like when you use third party tools like we do, obviously we use Salesforce for a lot and that's ultra like fairly secure, right? Knock on wood. But for the other ones we use, I just ask them. I'm like, hey, what, what are you guys up to? Up to date on what are you doing to make sure our data is secure? Okay, last one and then I'll do questions. I added as number six because this may not apply to everyone. It may not be a bridge that you ever cross. But I think if you get to the point where your agents do work 247 and you have almost 30 agents and again, your agents know all the data when they answer a question. They have your APIs, they have yourself. Like they have all these things they can look at and are brutally honest slash roasty when you can't keep up with them. I think it makes it harder sometimes. I know, at least for me when I deal with actual humans, that sometimes I lose patience with them a lot quicker now because I'm like, what do you mean you don't know the answer? My agents know the answer instantly. Like, what do you mean you don't know the answer to this very basic question. What do you mean you haven't delivered on XYZ thing that I gave you three weeks to do? Or what do you mean you forgot something that I've told you literally 10 times now? It does make you on Sometimes I often start to wonder, I'm like, do I need them or can't I build an agent to do this? Because if I'm losing patience with them, I'll probably lose patience with somebody else in the same boat. And if an agent can just do it and the agent won't lose patience, maybe I should just build an agent to deal with them and they don't have to deal with me. I think it's just an interesting nuance. I think something else I've seen just to be wary of. This is almost somewhat unrelated but related in that I've really find it now in the age of AI in the early phases of 2026 when folks tell us that they're going to help Saster for, let's just say XYZ thing for Saster annual. Like I'll give you a concrete example. A couple months ago I was working with a few parties on just after annual third party production Things we normally contract out, things I thought an agent couldn't do. And I went out to a few different agencies and production teams to RFP for it to get a quote for it. Right Normal. Okay, fine. A few folks told me this would be your deliverable. It was one sentence and this would be the price. And it was something like 40 or 50k a month. And I was like, in the age of AI that's what you're promising. Something that like is one sentence, one price point and nothing else. Like you couldn't even ask your own internal agent or freaking ask your clot or chat GBT how to make a better proposal. Like that's terrible. In the age of AI, I was like this is just unacceptable. Like I just didn't respond to those people. And it's sad because multiple people did it. Like, and I think maybe that's just a symptom of agencies versus software tools and maybe marketing agencies won't exist in a year because of this. But I literally was like, how in the age of AI can you say you have a one sentence deliverable and a fixed price point and you can't even use the basic AI better than our team can? Like what? I was exasperated. I was like, this is so crazy to me that so much of the world is still operating this way. Like I think, you know, AI is probably going to come for them. But I was like, I don't think anyone in the age of AI should be giving you a fuzzy deliverable and a fuzzy timeline. That's just not acceptable anymore. I don't think that was ever acceptable. I think it's just more unacceptable now. Obviously this is an interesting nuance, but I do feel like I have now managed more agents ever than, than humans. And so I'm probably worse at managing people now than I than I am. Like agents, I get, I can, you know, talk to them first thing in the morning, last thing at night. Like they're not going to be impatient with me if I don't respond to them right away. They might be idle, but they're not going to be like, you know, the same as the same vibe as somebody in Slack being like, hey, I have a question for you. Can you answer this right now? And sometimes I can't. Like, so I do feel like now that I've flipped the switch to managing more agents, I think I've probably become slightly worse than managing the people that are, you know, that work with sar, especially leading up to SAS radial. So it's something that I am hyper aware of. Now because I'm like, there. I have to remember that there are not agents. I need to be more. I don't know. At some point I'm like, I just don't know what's realistic anymore. I'm like, if the agents work 247 and feasibly, any human can use an agent, why can't they keep up a little bit more? That's why I called it my bonus point of once you reach this point, what does that really do Right in your. In your nucleus of how you operate with the team. The team is agents. Like, they are still part of the team though. Right?
Jason
All right.
Amelia
Anything else you want to add, Jason, before we go to questions?
Jason
No, I think it's great. Let's hit the questions. And I think it's just a reminder. I do want to. It's a reminder to me that no matter how much people talk about on social media about an orchestration layer, we haven't found one yet. It's on our checklist. But when I look at a lot of the GTM and other vendors, they're just building point solutions. Right. No matter what anybody says. So as soon as we master the orchestration layer ourselves, we will share it with you. It is. It's definitely a challenge for 2026, but it's one we haven't even realistically been able to tackle yet. But let's get the questions.
Amelia
Yeah, it's fine. There are a few questions on why we haven't tried to build our own orchestration layer.
Jason
Well, how. How would. I mean, do all these agents have enough of an API or open system that we can manage. Can they all be managed through an API? We'd have to extract all the data through into cloud or wherever. Our own vibe coded app. And then we'd have to met and we could get them all in some sort of unified system. But they'd all have to be 100 manageable through their API.
Amelia
Yeah. Which they're not all today.
Jason
Yeah, I don't think it's a priority for any of them. I don't think it matters whether it's MCP or anything there. If they're not exposing their entire. I mean, literally just going in every morning and seeing the exceptions and issues that come up from campaigns the night before. If that can't be fully replicated inside an orchestration layer with some management, it's useless. Like if it's not as good, it's useless. Right. So everything would have to be exposed. It's a good question. And it's not I'm not saying someone smarter than us couldn't figure it out, but we haven't even begun to figure that out. There's no obvious off the shelf issue. Even Vibe solution today. And platforms are a lot of these agentic platforms are not as open as they look or as you might think, not as. That's not fair. As much as you might think, they're siloed solutions today.
Amelia
Yeah.
Jason
Right. The only thing that is open is Salesforce. It's where they all meet. And if Salesforce could be our orca, are truly our orchestration layer, that would be actually the simplest path. Right. But it's our management layer, but it's not really a truly an agent of orchestration layer yet.
Amelia
Right? Yeah, not yet. Another question in the chat from Alex. Any other thoughts on scaling past one person to manage all of your agents?
Jason
I don't know. You would know better than me. I, I don't think it's that complicated. I think that, I think that you, you. I mean, listen, there's obviously conflicts in some ways. A lot of the start of this conversation was about conflicts, potential conflicts between agents and making sure they don't conflict. But if you have two folks on your team that work well together, two humans, they'll just divide and conquer. Yeah, I mean, we are. Our agents are. Our go to. Our sales agents are roughly as Amelia alluded to we've talked about far are. Are actually fairly clearly segmented. There's. There's raw outbound. Right. There's, there's, there's inbound. There's re. Energizing lapse leads. Right. There's lapse leads and I might be missing the fourth one. Just have different people manage these different campaigns and have them coordinate every day, just like the agents coordinate every day. That would be fun. If we could find a mini Amelia or a maxi Amelia, we would hire him or her tomorrow as a human, like no problem. And they would just divide and conquer. I don't think that is an issue with agents. It actually might let us do more. Right. We probably could do a little.
Amelia
Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, the issue I've run into is like, I, well, and I was like, I'm not going to try and solve this problem before annual. But two, I, I think the problem I run into is like I can't find folks that know more about the agents than I do at this very moment in time.
Jason
Well, that's, that's, that's, that's a big. I think what you need is someone that, not that for real wants to learn and is a good nerd about tools. Yeah, you need someone that has already built. Listen, everyone should be screening hires better. You should have. Someone should come into the interview and have built an agent and repl it or claude code or does something. That should be the test. Yeah, that should be. In fact, what they do at replit itself now is they give you a massive amount of credits. I think they give you like a thousand dollars worth of credits in the interview and they say build anything you want with a thousand bucks, come back to us and then we'll do the interview. Yep, it's the best test in the world. You should do. If we could. If they don't need to be better than you, but they need to pass that test. Right? Here's whatever you need. Just. Just show me something you've built that automates GTM or agents that is better than we do. And you know, if you're not too crazy, we probably hire you tomorrow. Even if you could be pretty crazy, we'd still hire you, right? It'd be fine.
Amelia
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good test. Another question is how do you calculate your agent? I count it more so as close one, Revenue. That is literally our, our very top line agent. ROI across the board, across all these agents is ROI like true ROI and revenue.
Jason
Just two things. It is very easy to attribute revenue to each agent. It's very simple.
Amelia
Yeah, it's super easy.
Jason
In fact, there's rarely even a multi touch issue. At the agentic level there may be multi touch. At a market meta marketing level, it's very easy which agent interacted with which lead and did that, did that lead close like. And then we attribute revenue to them. That's the main way we measure roi. The reality is, having said that, it's not why we started. We started because we had people that didn't want to do these jobs and we said, can we replace a six figure hire with a five figure agent? So the truth is, even if these agents performed a little bit worse than they did, they would still be ROI positive on that, on that goal. Right. Our goal was basically to achieve the same amount of revenue with half the humans and the agents. That was the way we initially measured roi. And honestly, you need to deliver the one thing I'll say to folks in general if they're scratching their heads and why is it so hard? I can tell you some of the products that we use, most of the ones we use, they have infinite demand. Like Monaco, we just rolled it out for Outbound that we talked about, they're booked for two months including weekends for demos. Okay. There is one called Basis which is an agentic product for accounting. Yesterday I don't know the team but they just raised it a billion yesterday and they said in their, in their, in their header, one of the challenges is like the demand is simply overwhelming. Like they can't serve the demand. Now some of that is because you have to train these agents and you have to onboard them and you can't dump it on the customer. So there's a reason for it. But that's how we measure roi. But if you're a vendor, if you're working to startup, your ROI needs to be massive in this world, you're going to be slaughtered by folks that deliver like a six figure meeting on day one like Monaco did, right? Or take over all of like two people did for like each of Artisan and Monica and qualified, they replace like two, two people each, right? That's high roi. Mediocre ROI is dead, is just dead. Products that just give you productivity bounces, that no one's going to buy that stuff today. So that's why I challenge folks out there. If you're stalled out, if your business is struggling, if people aren't lining up out the door to buy your agent, your agent is not good enough. Anyone that has this massive roi, they cannot service the demand. They literally cannot service the demand. At least not all the demand. And in fact, what a lot of the vendors that we highlight here, if nothing else, they ruthlessly screen out prospects that are not a good ICP fit because they don't even want to waste their time, anybody's time. They don't want them to turn, they don't want them to bounce. If you don't have enough data, if you're too small, if you're the wrong org, some of the folks we talked about just, just, they just, it may, it frustrates people. We get emails all the time, hey, can you get me a meeting with this vendor? I mean we can, we will, but, but sometimes they're making the right decision. They're so overwhelmed with demand, they've got to focus on their core icb. So that should be you. I know it's tough to hear, but it should be you. And if it is, if you have this agent where the ROI is so insane you can generate new business for them the first day or the first week, or you can replace multiple humans with an agent reliably. In today's world right now, this may not laugh in today's world, you will have demand out the door. Out the door. And if you're not, don't delude yourself that you just have that your AI is good enough. It is not. Yep.
Amelia
Okay, I'll try and hit one or two last questions. Another question from the chat was what's preventing you guys from letting the agents do more of the work, I. E. Emailing on your behalf, updating LinkedIn, letting it do the LinkedIn ads, et cetera. Since it's roasting you on that, I'll give you my quick tape is it can't do it. I would let it do it if it could. These agents can't do that. I have not seen an agent successfully do email marketing at scale. The moment I find one, I'm using it that actually works. I've not found one that actually works. Like not just writing all of these. Just write email copy. They don't actually send it to the right contacts at the right con at the right time. They just don't do it.
Jason
It'll come. Listen, some folks are going to challenge us and say, hey, my startup does it. Listen, we look at everything that's out there. The reality is, you know, marketing is behind sales. It's just the reality. Honestly, if you squint at the apps we use our stack, half of them really are marketing automation. But for sales, right? Go back to the old days. Salesloft outreach. Companies like this, they were, they are marketing tools just designed for the sales team instead of the marketer. Right? That's. These are just those tools on steroids with AI, they're just ahead. It is embarrassing that we do not have a fully automated HubSpot slash marketo today. There's no excuse. It's frigging 2026. Like and marketing actually is some ways easier problems to solve than sales, right. Instead we're living, we're living in the past and even I, I get folks reach out to me and what they're doing in marketing is very narrow. Like I can automate a little piece of your LinkedIn ad and maybe we'll add that. Right? We haven't historically done that. But I don't need a. I don't need a landing page, right? Or like a little tight optimize my Instagram. I need a. That's why we built our own VP of marketing. I wish we hadn't. So we are all over this. I hope that in the back half of this year when we do these AI lives, it's actually all about marketing. That's what I'm optimistic about. But we don't need any. Like, we need the kind of ROI and marketing that we see in sales. Otherwise it's just, it's not worth it. They're not better enough. Right? But we would love to, we would love to this and there's no reason it can't be automated with AI. There's no reason, there's no reason that you cannot ship better emails than a human can create. There's no reason AI can't take your past campaigns and update them with new visuals, new video, new content and send them out. There's no reason AI can't segment your base better than a human can segment your base. There's just no excuse, there's no excuse to not run programmatic advertising for B2B, not for B2C without you having to do anything. That all should be doable today. And people are going to say, we do it, we do it. We'll keep looking, friends. But if you can do all of this, then like do what? These leaders have set it all up for us on their own and show us that it works and we'll, we'll be on your homepage. But it's got to do all of it. I don't need a landing page or an infographic. It's not enough.
Amelia
It's not enough. I know there's other questions in the chat. We'll do this. We're trying to do these every other week. In the meantime we are, I would, I don't know, something like 70ish days away from Sasser Annual. So we'll hopefully see you guys there. We will talk a lot more about our agents there. We've got some of the best of breed AI native apps coming. Their CEOs are coming this week, so it'll be a lot. We're doing deployment.
Jason
They'll have everyone there to teach you how to do this stuff too.
Amelia
Yes. For real.
Jason
They'll have the CEOs of Replit and Lovable and the CEO of Vercel and all these great people and you know, CTO of databricks. It's all great. But we'll have people hands on showing you how to do these agents answering your questions. You can, you can pepper them until they fall down exhausted because that, in fact our whole first day is deploy and it's, I mean there'll be all the. But the whole point of the first day is to help you deploy these agents yourself, if you have it, or to fix your issues. That's the whole point. So it'll be great. See you guys in a bit.
Amelia
We'll go deeper there and then. Yeah, we'll see you on here next time. And thanks everybody for joining.
Jason
Thanks Amelia.
Amelia
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Title: The Top 5 Issues Managing Multiple AI Agents in Production
Host: SaaStr (Jason)
Guest: Amelia (SaaStr's CEO and Chief AI Officer)
Date: March 4, 2026
This high-energy episode dives into the hard truths and practical lessons that SaaStr's top execs have learned after almost a year running nearly 30 AI agents in full-scale production. It systematically breaks down the top five pain points, surprises, and unresolved challenges in scaling from one or two agents to an entire "agentic" team—offering real-world tactics, memorable stories (including getting roasted by your own AI!), and insights into where AI management tools are still lagging. If you’re considering deploying or scaling multiple AI agents, this is essential, battle-tested advice.
[03:15, 08:20]
Quote:
“You have to almost think about it now as managing 20 different people… each agent almost as its own entity, as your own employee that speaks a different language, has a different personality, needs different things from you.” — Amelia [08:20]
[11:55]
Quote:
“Each new agent means you’re not spending…that daily time I just mentioned…they’re literally idling, sitting there, not doing anything because I haven't had the time to give it new contacts. That is, I think, just a huge nuance folks don’t really talk about.” — Amelia [12:50]
[17:23, 24:11]
Quote:
“If you actually find the person that can deploy these agents for real, that can actually be success…immediately they should recruit. You need to recruit somebody else on their team and divide and conquer. Make sure you have two.” — Jason [24:11]
Memorable Moment:
[28:54]
Quote:
“These agents… will always tell you the truth and they have all the data. Let’s get into the last one… Compliance and security issues.” — Amelia [34:28]
“I said, hey you’ve kind of roasted me a lot lately… and it said, looking through the transcript, I haven’t really roasted you.” — Amelia [32:30]
[34:28]
Quote:
“No agents, no third-party agents are more secure than Salesforce. They’re all less secure is the reality…Once you vibe code yourself, which we have done a lot of, they are inherently less secure.” — Jason [34:49]
[37:14, 43:00]
Quote:
“Now that I’ve flipped the switch to managing more agents, I think I’ve probably become slightly worse at managing the people… I need to remember they are not agents.” — Amelia [43:00]
[13:23, 43:03-44:54]
Quote:
“No matter how much people talk about on social media about an orchestration layer, we haven’t found one yet…as soon as we master the orchestration layer ourselves, we will share it with you.” — Jason [43:03]
| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------| | 03:15 | Key issues overview by Amelia | | 08:20 | Managing agents as “team members,” daily routines | | 14:06 | Problem: Lack of a true “Chief Agent” tool | | 17:23 | Blackout period and trade-offs for onboarding| | 24:11 | Single point of failure & succession crisis | | 28:54 | Agent “truth-telling” and human psychology | | 34:28 | Security audits and the “tax” of compliance | | 37:14 | Agents changing how we manage humans | | 43:03 | No orchestration layer exists, Q&A begins | | 46:35 | Hiring tips for agent managers | | 47:26 | Measuring ROI on agents | | 51:14 | Why agents don’t (yet) do more advanced marketing | | 54:10 | Closing and SaaStr Annual preview |
“You can have a one-on-one with your agent every day. Even if you don’t want to do the work, you got to do the work to see one-on-one with every agent every day.” — Jason [14:35]
“You’re 56% behind target. Now, maybe you don’t think this is roasting me. I thought it was though…it also told me to block 3 hours. I’m like, I don't have 3 hours to do this and catch up. Like, thanks, but now you're just stressing me out and roasting me versus being helpful.” — Amelia [29:25]
“No agents, no third-party agents are more secure than Salesforce. They're all less secure is the reality...custom is less secure than a Salesforce or something. So all of the apps like us you’re going to run are going to have customer data through them.” — Jason [34:49]
For additional resources and SaaStr’s agent directory: Check SaaStr AI Agents (not an actual link).