A few months ago, we got a rough email from a PR agency representing one of the hottest AI startups out there.
The message was blunt: never reach out to their client again. Ever. One of their executives had “a terrible experience with SaaStr”, and no one at the company wanted to work with us again.
It stung. Amelia and I scratched our head what we could have done wrong here. We thought it had gone extremely well. Could it have been an agency we used to work with? We work incredibly hard to take care of our speakers. We’re genuinely grateful to every founder and executive who gives their time to the SaaStr community. So when someone says they had a bad experience, you have to take it seriously. You have to learn from it and do better.
So we did.
Then, a few weeks later, something unexpected happened. That same executive reached out to us directly.
We asked him what had gone wrong. He had no idea what we were talking about. He said he had a great experience with SaaStr, and that he’d love to do even more with us. He had no idea what his own PR firm had sent on his behalf.
Turns out, the PR firm had been fired.
We still don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe there was a miscommunication inside the agency. Maybe someone made a judgment call they weren’t authorized to make. Maybe they were managing relationships in a way that served their own interests more than their client’s. Most likely the latter.
It doesn’t really matter. What matters is this: that PR firm was speaking on behalf of their client, and their client had no idea what they were saying — or the relationships they were burning in the process.
This happens more than people realize. And it’s about to happen a lot more.
Most of us are deploying agents now, both AI and human, to handle outreach, follow-ups, scheduling, partner communications. These agents are sending emails, making calls, and representing your brand at scale, often without real-time oversight.
Your AI SDR is reaching out to prospects. Your human PR firm is talking to media and partners. Your BDR team is running sequences. Your AI agents are responding to inbound leads.
Do you know exactly what they’re saying?
Not the template. Not the script you approved six months ago. What they’re actually saying, right now, today?
We’ve seen it firsthand, on both sides. One of our own AI SDRs sent a prospect an email inviting them to meet “next week” at SaaStr. SaaStr was happening that week. Another vendor’s AI agent pitched us their product. We were already a paying customer. In both cases, a human would have caught it in thirty seconds. No human was watching.
Because every one of those interactions is your brand. A bad email from an AI agent is a bad email from your company. A rogue move from a PR firm is a rogue move from your company. The person on the other end doesn’t distinguish.
The rule is simple: if they’re speaking for you, you’re responsible for what they say.
Audit your agents, AI and human. Read the actual emails going out. Listen to the calls. Check the sequences. And if a human or AI is representing you in a way you can’t see or verify, that’s a problem worth solving before it costs you a relationship you actually wanted to keep.
We got lucky. The executive came back to us directly. Most of the time, they don’t.
