Merge fosters a company-wide AI culture by not just encouraging tool usage, but making it a component of performance. They feature AI-forward employees from all departments (R&D, accounting, marketing) and provide training to ensure adoption is universal, not just siloed in engineering.
Unlike traditional SaaS sales where buyers are experts, AI customers are often new to the space and unsure of their needs. The sales process becomes more consultative, guiding them on best practices. However, deal cycles are much faster due to intense competitive pressure in the AI market.
An intelligent AI agent is harmless in isolation. The danger emerges the moment it's connected to external tools, creating pathways for data exfiltration and unauthorized actions. Security must focus on creating hard guardrails and blocks for these connections, rather than trying to control the non-deterministic agent itself.
Previously, teams needed specialists ('ammunition') to execute tasks. With AI copilots, a single, high-agency individual ('barrel') can now build entire products. This changes hiring strategy to prioritize resourceful generalists who can leverage AI to knock down doors and get things done independently.
When a massive deal that consumed 90% of resources was unexpectedly paused for a month, Merge used the downtime to innovate. This 'forced' break allowed leadership to aggressively adopt AI for coding and finalize their next AI-native product, fundamentally altering the company's trajectory for the better.
As AI agents increasingly perform tasks on behalf of humans, they will interact with software via APIs, not UIs. To stay relevant, SaaS platforms must adopt a 'headless' (API-first) architecture that allows agents to programmatically sign up, configure, and use their services without human intervention.
Enterprise sales for SaaS companies are becoming harder because AI has dramatically lowered the cost and time required for customers to build solutions in-house. This gives customers a credible alternative during renewal negotiations, eroding the vendor's pricing power and leverage.
AI levels the playing field for cyber attackers globally. It provides them with perfect English for social engineering, expert-level coding abilities for finding vulnerabilities, and effectively 'unlimited manpower' through automation. This combination leads to a significant increase in the volume and sophistication of attacks.
In the AI space, the sales cycle is inverted. Motivated prospects often build a proof-of-concept integrating a vendor's product *before* speaking to a sales team. The first call is no longer for discovery but for validating the work they've already done and discussing specific deployment or security needs.
A company's biggest security threat isn't a hacker scanning for open ports, but a compromised internal account or a malicious insider. This shifts the security focus to rigorous hiring practices, including background checks and reference calls, to prevent bad actors from gaining access from within.
Merge's co-founders are inspired by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's philosophy of maintaining a 'beginner's mind.' They constantly ask, 'If we started the company today, what would it look like?' This mindset drove their successful and proactive pivot into the AI space, preventing complacency with their existing product line.