Daniel Saks // CEO, Landbase
Founder · Operator · AI Builder
Daniel Saks
He sold a unicorn on the idea that software should sell technology. Now he is building software that does the selling itself.
He sold a unicorn on the idea that software should sell technology. Now he is building software that does the selling itself.
A prompt goes in. A campaign comes out - the right audience picked, the messages written and scored, the sequence launched across email and channels while the founder is still drinking coffee. That is the demo Daniel Saks gives, and it is the entire thesis of Landbase, the San Francisco company he co-founded in 2024 and runs as CEO.
Landbase is built around GTM-1 Omni, which Saks calls the first AI action model purpose-built for go-to-market. It does not just chat. It plans, generates, and predicts - stitching planning, generation, and predictive models together on top of data from more than 40 million sales interactions. The pitch to a small business: stop wrestling with a stack of disconnected sales tools, and let the model do the repetitive work.
The distinction Saks keeps drawing is technical and stubborn. Most "AI sales" products are clever prompts wrapped around a general model. Landbase trains its own using what the company calls Reinforcement Learning with Human and Performance Feedback - learning not from what sounds good, but from what actually converts. When a campaign closes deals, the model remembers why.
And the customers are not who you would expect from a frontier-AI startup. Not other tech founders. Insurance brokers. Landscaping companies. The businesses that have a product to sell and no growth team to sell it.
“Users no longer work for their software - rather, our software works for you.”
A domain-specific action model for sales and marketing. Trained on tens of millions of real interactions, it targets an audience, writes the outreach, scores it to dodge the spam folder, and runs the campaign across channels.
As a first-time founder with a brand-new company, you have virtually no chance of running a successful outbound campaign.
Saks Furniture opened in Niagara Falls, Canada, in 1908. Daniel's great-great-grandparents ran it. Generations of the family ran it after them. Then the Great Recession arrived, and the store that had outlasted two world wars did not outlast the credit crunch. It closed.
That ending became a beginning. The lesson Saks took from the shuttered storefront was blunt: good businesses die not because the product is bad, but because they cannot reach the customers who would have saved them. Helping companies survive and grow became the throughline of everything he built next.
He learned the work from the bottom of it. Saks started his career as a sales development rep - sending physical mailers, then chasing them down by phone. He knows the grind he is now trying to automate because he did it himself, envelope by envelope.
In 2009 he co-founded AppDirect with Nicolas Desmarais, and over the next fifteen years grew it from an idea into a unicorn: the subscription-commerce platform that lets companies sell and manage software services at scale. He served as co-CEO. He advised Fortune 500 executives on cloud and software distribution. He kept a board seat at AppDirect even after he left to start again.
Co-founded with Nicolas Desmarais. Grew into a unicorn subscription-commerce platform. Saks served as co-CEO and still holds a board seat.
Saks built Landbase with Emily Zhang, founding head of product at unicorn Oyster HR and an early product leader at Carta.
The Series A came with a story Saks tells with a grin. Sound Ventures - the firm Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary run - led the $30M round alongside Picus Capital, with 8VC, A*, and Firstminute Capital joining. In a meeting, Kutcher floated a fix for the messaging: drop "intelligently automate your go-to-market," and say "find your next customer." It stuck. It is now how the company describes itself.
The momentum was real before the celebrity. After the seed announcement, roughly 130 VCs reached out. Landbase booked 50 meetings with its top-choice investors. The customer count went from 10 paying accounts in December 2024 to more than 100 by June 2025. And when Michael Dell messaged Saks on LinkedIn, the founder's honest first reaction was that it had to be fake.
There is a Canadian thread running through the cap table too. The Desmarais family - connected through AppDirect co-founder Nicolas Desmarais - backed Landbase as angels, with Inovia Capital participating. "Since co-founding AppDirect in 2009," Saks said, "I've been committed to supporting the Canadian tech ecosystem."
Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary co-led the $30M Series A.
Joined by 8VC, A*, and Firstminute Capital.
Canadian backing, with Inovia Capital participating.
Reached out after the seed. 50 meetings booked.
“We are building a go-to-market experience that prioritizes efficiency and results, not manual effort.”
“We went from 10 paid customers at the end of December '24, and we're now over 100 paid customers.”
“Since co-founding AppDirect in 2009, I've been committed to supporting the Canadian tech ecosystem.”
“I thought it was fake.” - on Michael Dell's LinkedIn message
He hosts the Decoding Digital podcast, interviewing operators and investors on venture capital and digital transformation.
He's a McGill University graduate and sits on its Principal's International Advisory Board.
An avid skier and outdoor enthusiast when he's not building.
Goldman Sachs named him one of its most exceptional entrepreneurs; Forbes put him on 30 Under 30.
Landbase deliberately targets non-tech SMBs - insurance brokers, landscapers - not Silicon Valley.
Customers have reported up to a 7x conversion lift versus general models and 70% less time on lead processing.
The grind that closed his family's store is the grind he is trying to delete for everyone else's.