Alex Bass (efficient.app)

You search Google or ChatGPT for the "best software"

and get back what looks like a recommendation.

But those recommendations are shaped by incentives you never see.

Here's how it actually works:

What were you doing at 25?

At 25 I was 7 years into building my business ($66K in revenue), broke off my business partnership with my step father 3 years prior (at $15K in revenue), while in my final year of college getting a useless triple major.

I had completely lost faith in ever having a business partner.

I was 4 years away from meeting my now wife, @AndraVomir in SF after buying a one-way plane ticket.

5 years away from making my first angel investment with Andra.

6 years away from pivoting that same 2010 business into what it is today (@efficientapp), and finally having a cofounder again (Andra).

The day we met, after 15 hours of conversations, I knew she'd be my partner in life and business.

I often reflect how thankful and lucky I am to be living the life I am, with my best friend by my side, investing in startups and building our own startup together.

Looking back, it was always the most difficult one-way-door decisions that actually mattered in the end.

So if there's one thing that I've learned, it's to take that feeling of fear and discomfort, and to just run toward it.

That feeling, and the decisions that you make in that state, is what actually defines who you become, who you meet, and what you get out of life.

We partner with 100+ B2B SaaS companies
We see their CAC, LTV, retention, and growth rate
Here are 12 trends that we're seeing:

1. AI has absolutely destroyed some software categories. What was popular pre-AI is not anymore. Those teams are downsizing and just trying to stay afloat.

2. Many legacy tools will continue to exist just to serve existing customers, but their growth is basically non-existent (growth rate = rate of churn).

3. There's a new wave of AI-first tools that are truly providing 10x value to their customers. Most launched late–2025/2026 (with the exception of a few). Everyone else is trying to position themselves as AI-first, when they're not. Potential buyers are sensing this.

4. The legacy B2B software brands still own the most influence when it comes to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) due to many years of traditional SEO and marketing. That said, people are becoming more savvy and looking for alternative information sources that they can trust (real people, not ads). People don't trust Reddit like they once did (marketers and AI bots ruined it).

5. You can have the best product, but if the problem you're solving is a nice-to-have, you're never going to experience exponential growth, and it'll always feel like you have limited resources to invest in marketing. If you're VC-backed, this is a massive problem.

6. Your audience is fatigued right now. They don't want to evaluate a new tool. They want invisible design (one where it just shows up and works when they need it). 0 friction to start, and the time to value needs to be instant (minutes, not days). If that's not happening, you should re-evaluate what you're building.

7. Last click attribution is dying. The companies that still are *only* trying to measure success this way are driving into a wall.

8. The smartest growth marketers are looking at AEO right now. They aren't stuck in "what can be measured perfectly", they are running towards it and building their understanding as they go.

9. In 2026, we saw a huge uptick in SaaS companies hiring dedicated AEO roles, OR their head of growth has added AEO as a core focus to their role. Teams that aren't focusing on AEO are massively behind.

10. Brands only using Peec/Profound to track arbitrary prompts don't have a true or complete AEO strategy. Sample data is only one data point, not the entire picture. The best growth marketers understand this instantly after trying one of these tools and are constantly looking for better ways to get real data.

11. The best teams are not afraid to consistently change their mind. A true measure of success is being able to adapt your thinking with new information (daily). What you believed last week might no longer be true.

12. Deeper, more meaningful partnerships > spraying and praying across 1,000s of influencers. The best growth marketers have already learned this lesson and focus on quality > quantity. Look at who's driving meaningful results and double down with them.

Packed EOY for tech movies:
Oct 9: The Social Reckoning (Facebook)
Oct 9: Musk (Elon Musk doc)
Oct 16: You Can See Everything (Elizabeth Holmes doc by Nathan Fielder)
Nov 19: The Altruists (SBF series)
Dec 25: Artificial (Sam Altman/OpenAI drama)

I think this very well might be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about the business we've built over the past decade 🥹 😭