Arnon Shimoni

Who is Arnon Shimoni?

Arnon Shimoni is a co-founder of Paid, a company building what it describes as the world's first business engine for AI agents. His focus sits at the intersection of two of the most consequential shifts in software today: the rise of autonomous AI agents and the unresolved question of how those agents will actually be packaged, sold, and paid for. Where most of the conversation around AI has centered on models and capabilities, Shimoni's work points at the commercial plumbing underneath — the engine that turns an agent from a demo into a business.

On stage at SaaStock Europe 2025, Shimoni brought a notably grounded, skeptical perspective to the agentic hype. Rather than amplify the breathless narrative around AI agents, he walked the conference floor and pressure-tested it directly, talking to companies showcasing agents in their booths. His takeaway was blunt: not every team claiming to ship AI could clearly explain what their agents actually do, or even what AI meant inside their product. For Shimoni, that gap between marketing and substance is the single most telling signal about where the market really is.

His view is that the hype cycle has crested and that a correction is coming — a healthy thinning-out where vague "AI-powered" claims give way to products that deliver measurable value. That stance, paired with his hands-on role building monetization infrastructure for agents at Paid, makes him a useful voice for founders trying to separate durable opportunity from noise. This page collects Arnon Shimoni's recorded SaaStock talks along with transcripts.

About Paid

Paid positions itself as the world's first business engine for AI agents. As autonomous agents move from experimental side projects into real products that take actions on a user's behalf, a new category of problems emerges: how do you price an agent that works continuously, how do you bill for outcomes rather than seats, and how do you build a sustainable business around software that increasingly runs itself? Paid is built to answer those questions, providing the commercial backbone that lets companies turn AI agents into actual revenue.

The company's framing reflects a broader thesis that Shimoni articulated at SaaStock: AI agents are transforming SaaS, but the transformation is as much about business models as it is about technology. Traditional SaaS pricing assumes human users logging in and consuming features. Agents break that assumption — they don't behave like seats, and the value they create is tied to work done rather than logins. Paid's role is to make that new economic reality operable for the companies building on top of it.

Because the agentic software market is still young and noisy, Paid's pitch is implicitly a bet on the post-hype phase Shimoni describes — the moment when buyers stop rewarding the word "AI" and start demanding agents that demonstrably do something worth paying for. The themes from his talk, delivered alongside perspectives from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), reinforce that infrastructure for monetizing agents becomes essential precisely as the market matures and the weaker claims get filtered out.

Key lessons from Arnon Shimoni's talks

The agentic hype cycle may already be past its peak. Shimoni argues that the market is over the hump and heading toward a correction. Founders should plan for a phase where loud "AI agent" positioning stops working on its own and scrutiny of real capability rises sharply.

If you can't explain what your agent does, that's a warning sign. Walking the SaaStock floor, Shimoni found companies that couldn't articulate what their agents actually do or what AI meant in their product. The lesson for builders: clarity of function is the new bar, and vagueness reads as a lack of substance.

Business models matter as much as the technology. Paid exists because agents break the assumptions of seat-based SaaS pricing. Founders building agentic products should treat monetization and packaging as first-class problems, not afterthoughts bolted on once the model works.

Survive the correction by delivering measurable value. The teams that come through the thinning-out are the ones whose agents do something demonstrably worth paying for. Shimoni's posture is a reminder to optimize for substance and outcomes over narrative when the cycle turns.