Is Agentic AI The End of ARR? ft. Brett Queener (Bonfire Ventures) & Chuck Ganapathi (Gainsight)

[Un]Churned – The No. 1 Podcast for Customer Retention

"How Agentic AI Is Replacing Subscription Revenue"

Chuck Ganapathi, the CEO of Gainsight & Brett Queener, Managing Director at Bonfire Ventures, who previously ran product at Salesforce and helped destroy Siebel, the company where he and Chuck first met. Together, they've witnessed every major shift in enterprise software over three decades, and they believe the biggest one is happening right now.

In this conversation, Brett unveils his forthcoming thesis on "the end of ARR," arguing that agentic AI will fundamentally break subscription business models. When products finally achieve what he calls "product purity", actually doing the job they promise without requiring armies of CSMs, endless onboarding, and quarterly business reviews, the entire economic foundation of SaaS collapses. Chuck and Brett discuss whether this is an existential threat or the evolution the industry has been waiting for.

What you'll learn:

- Why the "friction gap" between product and value created the entire CS industry

- What "product purity" means and why it threatens traditional SaaS economics

- How agentic AI fundamentally changes the unit economics of software

- Why usage-based pricing is inevitable once products actually work

- The product marketing playbook that still matters in an AI-first world

Check out the Key Takeaways & Transcripts: https://www.gainsight.com/presents/series/unchurned/

Where to Find the Guest

Brett's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettqueener/

Chuck's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckganapathi/

Where to Find Josh:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/

In this episode, we cover:

0:00 - Preview & Introduction

1:18 - Meet Chuck & Brett

3:30 - How Brett and Chuck met at Siebel

9:28 - Transition to Salesforce: destruction of Siebel as a goal

14:11 - Changing Nature of Product Marketing in the AI Era

18:00 - Systems of Record vs. Systems of Action

21:13 - Databases as “lossy” representations of reality

29:00 - Brett's thesis: "The End of ARR (And I Feel Fine)"

34:28 - How should agentic applications be priced?

43:43 - Future Outlook: Market paying premium for top agents

47:17 - 10x CSMs enabled by AI agents

References:

- Brett Queener's blog: https://queener.substack.com/