Podcasts about GTM

Mastering Ecosystem Growth and AI Transformation Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, Vince Menzione sits down with Rebecca Jones, Chief Growth Officer of Bridge Partners, to deconstruct the “Power of Three” co-selling model and the shift from AI experimentation to scalable business outcomes. They explore the critical importance of customer-centricity, the role of agentic workflows in solving complex B2B problems, and why the most successful leaders prioritize progress over perfection to show momentum within weeks rather than years. From her background in the financial sector to her experience scaling with industry titans like Microsoft, Rebecca provides a masterclass on navigating the current “tectonic shifts” in technology through strategic alignment and executive commitment. Key Takeaways Bridge Partners focuses on connecting strategy to execution, boasting a 90% referral rate driven by deep expertise in product marketing and partner ecosystems. The market is shifting from mere AI “dabbling” to purposeful applications in MVP and scale, specifically through agentic AI that tackles real business problems. Success in today's landscape requires knowing your underlying value and maintaining an unwavering focus on customer-centricity. The “Power of Three” (Hyperscaler, GSI, and ISV) remains the ultimate design for go-to-market scaling, provided there is a clear joint value proposition. To show immediate momentum, new executives should focus on “quick wins” achievable within six to eight weeks rather than long-term three-year plans. Effective co-selling requires removing blockers like compensation misalignment and securing top-down executive sponsorship across all leadership silos. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. https://youtu.be/nClWjCm6S6A At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Rebecca Jones, Bridge Partners, Chief Growth Officer, co-selling, Power of Three, Hyperscaler, GSI, ISV, SAP, Microsoft, agentic AI, AI experimentation, pipeline velocity, pre-sales workshops, account-based marketing, ABM on steroids, GTM strategy, executive sponsorship, partnership ecosystems, B2B growth, tech industry trends 2026, Ultimate Partner, Vince Menzione, orchestration, value proposition. Transcript Rebecca Jones Audio Episode [00:00:00] Rebecca Jones: Because most of the agents I’ve seen drop into um, a lot of the areas where you and I can download are features. [00:00:07] Vince Menzione: Yes, [00:00:08] Rebecca Jones: they’re really feature agents. I love where we are ’cause we’re starting to tackle real business problems. [00:00:17] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Rebecca Jones, the Chief Growth Officer of Bridge Partners for this compelling discussion. Rebecca, welcome to the podcast. [00:00:33] Rebecca Jones: Thank you, Vince. [00:00:34] Vince Menzione: I am so thrilled to have you in Boca in the studio. [00:00:37] Vince Menzione: We’ve been working together now for a couple of years. We [00:00:39] Rebecca Jones: have, [00:00:40] Vince Menzione: and yesterday we were at the Ultimate Partner live executive winter retreat here in Boca. Uh, we’re recording in late February, early March timeframe. And, uh, just it was so thrilling to have everyone in the room yesterday. [00:00:55] Rebecca Jones: Was it? I mean, the energy. [00:00:56] Rebecca Jones: It was amazing. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:00:58] Rebecca Jones: it was amazing. And thank you so much for having me. I mean, Florida’s gorgeous this time of year. It’s nice to get outta Seattle. [00:01:04] Vince Menzione: Well, it’s, it’s always, I, I, we, we love Seattle. Yes, we love, we do love to be in Seattle and especially in the spring, which we’ll be there together. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but, um. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: This is our first time actually having an interview. I mean, we’ve had you on stage. Yes. We’ve had Bridge as a part. Bridge Partners has been a partner. It’s ultimate partner. How’s that? And, uh, you’ve led some workshops. You help organizations to be successful and I thought just like to start out like, tell us more about you. [00:01:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah, bridge Partner and your role at Bridge Partners. And, uh, just to frame, to frame the conversation today. [00:01:40] Rebecca Jones: Okay. Of course. So let me tell you a little bit about my background. Um, I’ve been in the technology industry for a few decades now, and I started within the product and go to market, side of the house. [00:01:54] Nice. [00:01:54] Rebecca Jones: And I’ve navigated across a number of functional areas. From product to partner and sales. [00:02:02] Vince Menzione: So product development, [00:02:04] Rebecca Jones: engineering, [00:02:04] Vince Menzione: product marketing. Product marketing. [00:02:05] Rebecca Jones: Product marketing. [00:02:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:02:07] Rebecca Jones: Yes. And so when you look back on the areas of where I focus my time, it’s really how do you help customers grow and how do you help companies grow? [00:02:17] Rebecca Jones: Um, and a lot of my background is in B2B. [00:02:20] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:02:21] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:02:21] Vince Menzione: And where’d you get your start? [00:02:23] Rebecca Jones: I started actually in the financial sector. [00:02:26] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:02:27] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, [00:02:27] Vince Menzione: very cool. That’s, well, that’s a good grounding and [00:02:30] Rebecca Jones: it’s an excellent grounding. And when you look back, and when I look back at what that provided as a foundation, it’s really the economics of a business and how do you help a business and what are the trend lines behind that by industry and and whatnot. [00:02:45] Rebecca Jones: And so I moved from that over to. More agency view, and so the real market facing view and then back inside to really look at how companies develop their products and bring ’em to market. [00:02:56] Vince Menzione: That’s an exciting, well, I think it’s exciting. I hope our listeners and viewers think it’s exciting and I know Bridge Partners because when I was at Microsoft, we worked with Bridge Partners. [00:03:06] Vince Menzione: But for the listeners and viewers that are with us today, maybe a little bit of background about the company and its, and its structure and go to market. [00:03:13] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, of course. So Bridge Partners is almost 20 years old. [00:03:18] Vince Menzione: Wow. [00:03:19] Rebecca Jones: Wow. [00:03:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:19] Rebecca Jones: Can you believe it? [00:03:20] Vince Menzione: We were newbies when I was working with you. [00:03:22] Rebecca Jones: We, we were newbies and uh, the company was really founded on the principle of how do you connect strategy to execution. [00:03:32] Rebecca Jones: And within that, our first customer was Microsoft. [00:03:36] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:03:37] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and that was an incredible spot to be and an incredible time to be in a company that started to evolve and grow with one of the titans in the industry. And obviously a incredible market leader in the tech industry. [00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Well, and that time 20 years ago, ’cause I was, I was along for that journey. [00:03:59] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:04:00] Vince Menzione: Uh, it was a time of tumultuous change at Microsoft. [00:04:03] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:04:04] Vince Menzione: Uh, in fact, we were talking about the, uh, entrepreneur’s dilemma earlier, uh, today, and Microsoft was going through that period where, you know, we, everyone loves Steve Bomber, but there was a time within the organization that it was stuck. [00:04:18] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm. [00:04:19] Vince Menzione: And it had to transform as an organization. [00:04:22] Rebecca Jones: A hundred percent. And so when you think about companies like Microsoft, it’s not only what they do, but how they bring that to market. Yep. And uh, so when you think about where Bridge Partners started and having the privilege to be in Microsoft of all places to, um, cut your teeth on you look at where we started and where we’ve grown from there. [00:04:44] Rebecca Jones: Uh, within the tech industry, we’ve worked across, um, multiple hyperscalers. We’ve worked across, uh. Really the top tier tech and telco, those top 100. Yep. And all the household names. And then throughout that, across the partner ecosystem, because you and I both know these companies grow and scale their businesses through the partner ecosystem, and so we’ve been privileged to work across. [00:05:08] Rebecca Jones: Multiple depth and breadth partners in that play. [00:05:12] Vince Menzione: And as an agency, are you more known for project management go to market? Uh, what, what are the areas and focus where the outcomes that you achieve? [00:05:21] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, so we’re known for. Being on the growth side of the house. And how I define that is you find us in marketing, but that center of gravity is in product marketing. [00:05:32] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:05:32] Rebecca Jones: And then how you scale that through partner ecosystems and then supporting that field or that sales organization. So when you think about those three pillars within the organization, that’s where you’ll find us. [00:05:43] Vince Menzione: And why would I choose Bridge Partners? [00:05:46] Rebecca Jones: Oh, well, um, based on experience. Um, and then when you think about Bridge Partners, it’s not, um, just what we do, but when you take a look at our engagements and background, we’re over 90% referral. [00:06:01] Vince Menzione: Wow. [00:06:02] Rebecca Jones: And so people take us with them and um, what I look at is have we actually moved the needle or driven the customer outcomes? And when you think about the customers that we’ve worked with and the companies in this industry. It’s quite a roster and I don’t take that lightly because if you’re going to help support these companies and help them grow, it’s a testament to how we were able to accomplish that. [00:06:27] Rebecca Jones: Because all these companies have complex enterprise organizations. Their go to market is nuanced and how they want to, and then, um, get and grow. And so these are just a couple of the different ways that we’ve been able to be successful. [00:06:42] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. You know, you’ve done workshops at our events and talked to our community about how to help them achieve their greatest results. [00:06:50] Vince Menzione: What would you say to them? Now we’re living in this time? I, I I, I said this earlier, I don’t want to use the term tectonic shifts, but I’m running out of words to describe how tumultuous this time feels right now to me. [00:07:03] Rebecca Jones: It’s interesting you say that. I was thinking about that. ’cause both you and I have been in the industry for a bit. [00:07:08] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. And, um, there’s some pattern recognition happening right now for me and how I look at the go to market and these, these points in time and the evolution and. This point in time, it is a tectonic shift. But a lot of companies have other, have had to go through these challenges before. If you think about, um, the migration to the cloud and [00:07:33] Vince Menzione: yes, [00:07:33] Rebecca Jones: all of the unlocks that it has, and at the end of the day it’s, it’s shifting and thinking about new business models and it’s shifting and thinking about go to market, but there is. [00:07:43] Rebecca Jones: There are things that ring true no matter where you are. And one of the things I’ve always taken a look at is, do you know your underlying value and relevance in market? And are you being customer centric? That never goes outta style, right? Do [00:07:58] Vince Menzione: you know your value and are you customer centric? That makes a lot of sense, right? [00:08:02] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And do they, what do you do? And, and do they, how do what, how do they answer to that question? [00:08:07] Rebecca Jones: Well, that’s a, that’s a thinking question. Yes. Right? Yes. It takes a minute to think about that. Um, where is your moment of relevance with a customer? [00:08:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:17] Rebecca Jones: Where is your moment of relevance with a customer? [00:08:19] Rebecca Jones: And when you think about your reason to exist as a business, you have a really defined ICP, an ideal customer profile, and where’s your moment of relevance and. Yes. There’s a lot happening right now, and I think also because of where we sit in the industry and being in the midst of all of these giants with incredible technology to bring to market. [00:08:44] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. We’re, we’re in the front end of this wave or the, the, the tectonic shift that you’re talking about. It’s just, you know, it’s unsettling to a certain degree, but it’s really energetic and it’s. Dynamic and, and there’s so much opportunity out there. So [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: much so, you know, you had me thinking about the $600 billion that’ll be invested this year and just in cloud infrastructure and chips, right? [00:09:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So data centers and chips, and talk about that being like kind of creating this wave, this huge tsunami that’s coming for the beaches and, and everything seems to be. Every week there’s a new announcement, and recently it’s been philanthropic and clawed. And yes, uh, the markets are reacting. They’re, um. [00:09:30] Vince Menzione: They’re almost, uh, imploding in some ca in some cases because they’re trying to react the financial analysts, they’re trying to react to what’s happening right now. [00:09:38] Rebecca Jones: It, the investment is massive and it’s, it’s incredible and it’s massive. And over the last year, you saw a lot of experimentation. Yeah. And you saw a lot of dabbling, a lot of, you know, quite. [00:09:52] Rebecca Jones: Frankly, a little bit of concern about is this gonna pay off? [00:09:56] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:09:57] Rebecca Jones: And when you look at where we are in this chain cycle and this adoption cycle, we’re right at the front end, the early adopters. And so a lot of the work that we’re doing, and where I’m focused on is how do you move from experimentation? To truly having some movement over into MVP and scale. [00:10:18] Rebecca Jones: And so I’ll just harken back to Yeah, [00:10:19] Vince Menzione: please. [00:10:20] Rebecca Jones: That product mindset of when you’re looking at opportunity within the business, there was a lot of, um, there was a lot of pockets of experimentation just for fun. Just for fun. And so when you look across the business, um, and what, what we observed was, um, businesses of all different sizes, experimenting and, and some were just, they’re fun, they’re dabbling, right? [00:10:45] Rebecca Jones: But it, it changed in the second half of last year, people became much more thoughtful, much more purposeful, um, thinking forward about how would this be applied to my business? Yeah, because the question now isn’t. Could we do this? It’s really, should we do this [00:11:03] Vince Menzione: right? And and there was a period of time, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but there was a period of time when we were talking about earlier in in last year, we were talking about halluc hallucinations still. [00:11:13] Vince Menzione: Yes. So there was a lack of confidence on the platform side. Yes. Microsoft had brought out. Uh, it’s copilot solutions early to market. And there was some, uh, pushback from the community saying, we’re not seeing the results of that. Yeah. From the financial community specifically. And then I think what you said is then the second half of the year things started to change. [00:11:35] Vince Menzione: There was greater confidence. The [00:11:36] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, [00:11:37] Vince Menzione: I’d say the models got better. [00:11:38] Rebecca Jones: The models got better. But when you think about innovation, that’s inherent risk, [00:11:43] Vince Menzione: right? [00:11:43] Rebecca Jones: Right. Yes. When, when you’re on an innovation curve, yes, that’s risk. And so you have to look at as any great CFO will tell you diversification innovation. [00:11:56] Rebecca Jones: When you start to look at that market landscape, you’re creating risks. Yes. So they’re investing a lot and they wanna know when the payoff is coming back into the business. Right? Or back into the market. [00:12:08] Vince Menzione: So Rebecca, where is the AI market right now? [00:12:13] Rebecca Jones: Oh, that is a tough and great question, Vince. [00:12:18] Vince Menzione: I mean, we’ve gone through it and I’ll, I’ll kind of frame this for, yes, for, for everyone, at least from my perspective of what’s happened, right? [00:12:24] Vince Menzione: So, uh, September, 2022. Chat, GBT. Yeah. So we get into chat bots or chat bot, chat bot, chat bot, chat bot the first year or so, beginning of last year, 2025. A agentic AI really starts to take hold. It’s, it becomes a new term. In fact, I don’t think we were even using the term agentic AI before the end of 24, beginning of 25. [00:12:47] Vince Menzione: And then agents have really proliferated, um, all of the marketplaces now have agents and people are developing their own agents and so on. And all the tools, like all, all the cloud tools have agent capabilities. And now, um. We’re in 2026 and we’re still in the first quarter. It feels like the agents are starting to rule the world and maybe taking over the world [00:13:10] Rebecca Jones: they might be. [00:13:11] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:13:11] Rebecca Jones: right. There is definitely a proliferation of agents and I’m anticipating a lot of consolidation of that. ’cause most of the agents I’ve seen drop into, um. A lot of the areas where you and I can download are features. [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:13:26] Rebecca Jones: They’re really feature agents and those will get consolidated ’cause the where we are and you ask where we are in the market. [00:13:33] Rebecca Jones: What I love. I love where we are ’cause we’re starting to tackle real business problems. And what I’m observing and what we’re working on is really helping connect back into the business to really start that transformational work. [00:13:48] Vince Menzione: So take us through that. I’d love that. I’d love, give us a scenario or [00:13:51] Rebecca Jones: give us a use case. [00:13:52] Rebecca Jones: Do this. Yeah. I think’s really great scenarios here that I can walk you through. And first and foremost it is, and I’m gonna go back and I talked about specialization in specialty areas. Yes. That’s really important. Um, we talked yesterday during the conference around, um, industry. What industry are you in? [00:14:11] Rebecca Jones: You know, I’m in tech and that’s, that’s, we know that industry, we know those business models really well. That’s extremely important. And then you move within that. And what functions do you know and functions in this, you know, order are the product marketing function, how does that work? [00:14:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:14:30] Rebecca Jones: How does that work in an enterprise organization or a sales function or a. [00:14:36] Rebecca Jones: Partner function. And within that, what are all the workflows? How do these teams operate together? And so that’s where that curiosity comes in of not just how you did the work. How is the work orchestrated? [00:14:49] Vince Menzione: Inter orchestration is a huge topic area. [00:14:51] Rebecca Jones: Orchestration is a huge topic. Let’s, let’s go [00:14:53] Vince Menzione: there. [00:14:54] Rebecca Jones: E Exactly. [00:14:55] Rebecca Jones: And that’s where that curiosity, you know, I was talking about pattern recognition comes in how is the work designed? And that becomes. The blueprint for how you start to think about agentic workflows. And if you don’t have a great workflow, you don’t wanna replicate that in an agent, but Exactly. You definitely need to understand that. [00:15:18] Rebecca Jones: And so why don’t I take something that, um, I think will resonate for anyone listening to this podcast, because everyone is probably looking for growth this year and wanting to accelerate [00:15:28] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:15:29] Rebecca Jones: Sales. Their pre-sales funnel. So if we just take that pre-sales motion and specifically now with where partners might play in that or where, um, technology companies might want to enable their partners better. [00:15:47] Rebecca Jones: When I start to break down a pre-sales function, you have areas within that. Whole workflow that your marketing department might be driving. They might be driving top of the funnel or or demand programs. And then as you move down the funnel, let’s call it mid funnel, that really has opportunities for partner and field sellers to come in and. [00:16:07] Rebecca Jones: You might be seen or observing that your, um, pipeline velocity is not where you want that, right? Mm-hmm. You might be, you know, as they say, stuck. Stuck. [00:16:18] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:16:19] Rebecca Jones: And so when you start to look at what agents could do within that, I’ll use a real use case, um, around pre-sales workshops. You and I are both familiar with that. [00:16:28] Vince Menzione: We, we are, we were just talking about this last night, in fact, at dinner, about pre pre-sales workshops and how this is still such a vital component, how organizations work together. [00:16:37] Rebecca Jones: Such a vital component, um, for multiple reasons, right? You get to engage directly with the customer. You get to spend time with that customer. [00:16:46] Rebecca Jones: You get to ensure you understand what are their most pressing use cases and really help them design and buy into a solution far before you get to a proposal. And quite frankly, if you do this right. You also have an adoption plan, and then think about it from other functional areas in the organization. [00:17:02] Rebecca Jones: You start to pattern match across those presale workshops. You can start to see the use cases that are most valuable in market and start to put that into your messaging. So you think about presale workshop, it’s just not the activity of having a workshop, but if you could build an agent. To really help design around partners, enabling partners to deliver better presale workshops. [00:17:27] Rebecca Jones: Interesting. And how are you ingesting information that goes into the workshop? How are you helping, um, develop materials and first drafts faster for proposals post? How are you. Data is informing this. What are you collecting and what are you providing, and then what are you delivering? If you take that one simple component in a pre-sales process, you can see where I’m going. [00:17:53] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. All of a sudden, an ecosystem starts to show up around how could you connect better back with product marketing? What are they doing? What could you inform them with, with the data that you’re bringing in? [00:18:03] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:18:03] Rebecca Jones: And then what are the. Deterministic pathways outside of that, that you could be informing downstream down to first, first stress faster on proposals. [00:18:13] Rebecca Jones: Are you helping those partners with an adoption plan? The service partners in there. And so that is the designer and the architect of understanding how that workflow comes to life. And then you can really start to think about the outcomes that you wanna drive. And that’s where I love to start the conversations. [00:18:31] Rebecca Jones: That shouldn’t be an afterthought. That should be where you start. [00:18:35] Vince Menzione: So how do you, how do you, how do you start with this? You gave me a great example, but how do you apply this in the business? Like what do you take when you meet with a client to talk about pre-sales workshops as an example? [00:18:47] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:18:47] Vince Menzione: You take a proforma of what a pre-sales workshop would look like. [00:18:51] Vince Menzione: I’m, I’m, I. I might be wrong on this, but you have, like, you, you now have, uh, AI or AI that they go out and pull the data that you would normally ask maybe in some, some, uh, process, uh, information flow process that we grab and, and pull this into the, to the, to the form. The [00:19:10] Rebecca Jones: first question I always ask is, why. [00:19:12] Rebecca Jones: Why is this so important and valuable? I might have an assumption why, based on my experience, but I want the facts, right? I wanna know how they’re measuring it today, so we have a baseline and I wanna understand what their goals are. [00:19:28] Vince Menzione: Okay? [00:19:29] Rebecca Jones: Are they looking to increase revenue? X percentage. Uh, how many deals are they anticipating? [00:19:38] Rebecca Jones: How many presale workshops do they typically deliver through partner a year? Are they looking to scale that? Probably, yes. Are they looking to increase the value that they’re getting into contract post presale workshop? Probably yes. But I want that empirical data. And then I also wanna know where are they storing that? [00:19:57] Rebecca Jones: Where are they sourcing that? And so it, it really. The question and the question set really is understanding the business outcomes and the why. I, I ask a lot of why, and it really helps you frame in what would be the best outcome or the best solution, and then where do you start? Because there’s a lot of appetite for a. [00:20:21] Rebecca Jones: A transformational workflow from A to Z. And that’s a hard place to, [00:20:26] Vince Menzione: it’s hard show momentum. It’s hard. It’s hard, [00:20:27] Rebecca Jones: right? [00:20:27] Vince Menzione: It’s, it’s hard to document your current workflow flows. [00:20:30] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:20:30] Vince Menzione: Let alone come back and do this ally. [00:20:33] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:20:34] Vince Menzione: And create the best outcomes. [00:20:36] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:20:36] Vince Menzione: So I go back to this and I go, well, what, what creates the best outcomes? [00:20:39] Vince Menzione: Where the customer signs at the dotted line, and then how do you work back from that to the pre-sales workshop? Is that how [00:20:46] Rebecca Jones: you do it? A hundred percent. It’s a hundred percent. And then where do you start? How do you show, um, progress, not perfection. And so in this world, there’s a lot of, um, pressure. To show progress, outcomes, momentum. [00:21:00] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. And these very significant investments that are being made. And so how do you get them to quick wins? And so you know this, for any new executive coming into role, what are your quick wins? Yes. Right? Yes. You need to transform an organization, you need to transform a function. How do you set them up for success? [00:21:19] Rebecca Jones: And that’s always in my mind, that’s always in the mind of. The bridge partners, leaders of how do you set this leader up for success? And it’s that point between strategy and execution. How do you help them show quick wins? And so I broke you down that process. Yep. Of how would you think about in that use case, how to bring that back and help them show quick wins? [00:21:42] Rebecca Jones: Not in six months or a year, but in six weeks to eight weeks. How do you, how do you get them on that journey and then help them build to that next slide. And [00:21:51] Vince Menzione: in fact, that’s how you, you, you’ve made your, your name or your fame in the industry is really coming in and helping some of these executives, especially when they’re newer in role. [00:22:00] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:22:00] Vince Menzione: And those of us who’ve been around the Microsoft ecosystem know this well. Like you get asked day one, what’s your plan? The, while the fire, while the fire hose is blowing in your face at a hundred, a hundred miles an hour? Uh, what’s your plan? [00:22:14] Rebecca Jones: What’s your plan? What’s your [00:22:14] Vince Menzione: plan? [00:22:15] Rebecca Jones: What is your plan? [00:22:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah, yeah. [00:22:16] Vince Menzione: And then you have to show some measurable results fairly quickly. [00:22:19] Rebecca Jones: You have to [00:22:20] Vince Menzione: because you’re asked to get up in front of everyone. Yeah. Very soon. [00:22:23] Rebecca Jones: And that’s a blueprint that we have. We have, it’s a quick win. And when you think about all of these organizations that we’ve worked with, um, speed to market is a value signal. [00:22:36] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:22:36] Rebecca Jones: Right? And that speed and quality. Where are you willing to take the risk? Where are you willing to fail fast? And what outcomes are non-negotiable and what are, and so when you look at that, there’s, there’s conversations that need to be had on. And being able to filter out the noise to get down to what’s really gonna move the needle, um, for our clients and for the executives that we work with. [00:23:06] Rebecca Jones: So they can show momentum and progress quickly. And then we talked a lot about it. We don’t do three year plans, right? We’re gonna help you show progress in months, [00:23:16] Vince Menzione: nice. [00:23:17] Rebecca Jones: And in quarters, right? It’s not, um, 10 years. [00:23:19] Vince Menzione: Can anybody even have a three year plan anymore? [00:23:22] Rebecca Jones: Who’s got one? [00:23:23] Vince Menzione: I’d love to spend some time on co-selling with you. [00:23:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Just because I know this was a topic that came up one of our workshops in the Yeah. We hosted, yes. Last year we hosted a session. With another partner. Bridge Partners. [00:23:34] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:23:35] Vince Menzione: And you talked about the power of three and I know you’ve published some information about the power of three. I thought maybe we’d talk about that. [00:23:41] Vince Menzione: ’cause I think that is fascinating and it seems very relevant even in yesterday’s conversation. Uh, there was a conversation about another partner, uh, that is looking to build an ecosystem that hasn’t really thought about building out an ecosystem before, as an example. And this, this, I think is some of the work that you do really applies against this. [00:24:01] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. This, I mean, it, it’s a hot topic, right? Yeah. Power of three, which fits under the umbrella of co-sell Yes. And co-selling. And everyone has a slightly different definition, so I’ll define where we play. Good in there. Um, and then I’ll talk to you about the power of three, um, because that’s one of. Um, I’ll call it the scenarios under co-selling. [00:24:23] Rebecca Jones: Yes. And it’s a very popular one. It [00:24:24] Vince Menzione: is pop Well, it is for v various reasons too because, and I’ll just set the context for this. We were used to co-selling being a technology organization and a and a hyperscaler, like a Microsoft. [00:24:37] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:24:37] Vince Menzione: Going to do something together and driving direct output or sales. Now we have finally seen where marketplaces, which has become the co-sell engine, have now enabled the channel. [00:24:49] Vince Menzione: Um, the reseller enabled, uh, offers now to now, uh, operate on behalf of, and so at least in that case, that’s three right there. Now, there might be more than just three. We talk about the seven seats of the table, but the power of three is palpable right now. [00:25:04] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Let me tell you about that concept of the power of three. [00:25:07] Rebecca Jones: ’cause when you think about the classic one [00:25:10] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:25:10] Rebecca Jones: it’s a hyperscaler. [00:25:11] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:25:12] Rebecca Jones: A GSI. And then an ISB. [00:25:15] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:25:15] Rebecca Jones: Right? [00:25:16] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:25:16] Rebecca Jones: I mean that’s the, that’s the power, the powerful power, the three three, [00:25:19] Vince Menzione: the three giants in the [00:25:20] Rebecca Jones: room. The three giants. Yeah. And that’s rarefied air. [00:25:24] Vince Menzione: It is [00:25:25] Rebecca Jones: very [00:25:26] Vince Menzione: verified air. It’s, [00:25:26] Rebecca Jones: yeah. Right. And, uh, we do, we have a published article on that, um, and running a power three with SAP, uh, and it is, um, it changes the dynamics. [00:25:41] Rebecca Jones: Of how companies are gonna scale and grow in this market, right? [00:25:46] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:25:46] Rebecca Jones: Because we know, um, that what got you to this point? Is likely not gonna get you to that next stage of growth. And all the conversations around the platform play is the partner ecosystem, right? And I look at the opportunity, not just with the power through, I’m gonna talk to you a little bit more about that story and what we’re doing there and how we’re looking at that. [00:26:12] Rebecca Jones: Um, but it is the ultimate. Design for your go to market. Yeah. When you think about how partners and the various types of partners can help you scale, but you need to know what you need. You absolutely need to know, [00:26:29] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:26:30] Rebecca Jones: What are you trying to achieve in your go to market and what’s missing? [00:26:34] Vince Menzione: What are the gaps? [00:26:34] Vince Menzione: Gaps? [00:26:35] Rebecca Jones: What are the gaps? Are the gaps before you apply? Yes. The power of three, or I’ll talk to you about a couple other use cases within that. So the power of three. Has long been on everybody’s, you know, can, can we get this done right? Can you pattern match the customer set? I’ll often refer to it as a BM on steroids, account-based marketing and on steroids. [00:26:59] Rebecca Jones: Can you pattern match, um, the, the hyperscaler, let’s just use Microsoft in this scenario, the, the. High potential customers of Microsoft Joint with SAP joint, with A GSI. And the more specialized and specific you get in there, it’s not just any, because think about the size of these, you know, companies. Yeah, right. [00:27:24] Rebecca Jones: Then you start to look at, well, let’s get a little bit more specific on these product sets, these industries, these use cases. And then you start to refine that where you can start to identify your greatest opportunity for growth. So that’s the first stage of that. And it is, you know, we, we think about where is that overlap and where is that opportunity, but how do you activate that? [00:27:51] Vince Menzione: And it’s complex because, uh, as you, as you mentioned those three. Organizations, each of them have different go to markets. [00:27:59] Rebecca Jones: They do, [00:27:59] Vince Menzione: they have different, a different mapping of their geographies and their ideal customer profiles. [00:28:05] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm. [00:28:06] Vince Menzione: Um, and they, yeah, and they apply different tactics and selling tactics and channel tactics and so on that you have to layer in or you have to take into account when you build this. [00:28:15] Vince Menzione: And SAP’s a very different go-to market motion than a Microsoft, than a, than a, an EY or any name the GSI percent. Yeah. [00:28:23] Rebecca Jones: And so that is why not only is it, um, complex from a. Sharing and figuring out what data you’re going to share. Yeah. But how do you activate it? How [00:28:35] Vince Menzione: do you activate it? [00:28:36] Rebecca Jones: And uh, and that is what all companies are striving to do. [00:28:41] Rebecca Jones: Who are you gonna go to market with? Yeah. What is your best play in the industry? And so I, you know, while this one. There’s very few companies that are gonna be able to activate directly with the hyperscaler, right? Yes. Uh, Microsoft AWS or Google. Um, but there are ways in which you can apply this strategy no matter the size of your organization. [00:29:05] Rebecca Jones: And so when you think about. The power of three. It could be any combination. You are the designer, you are the decider of who is in your power of three. And when you start to kind of unpack that a little bit, it could be Microsoft, SAPN one ISV, or it could be a combination of complementary I ISVs that unlock a play. [00:29:28] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:29:29] Rebecca Jones: Like migration to the cloud. [00:29:31] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:29:31] Rebecca Jones: Like it, it could be [00:29:33] Vince Menzione: backup and recovery. I could rattle off the different types of solutions. Yeah. [00:29:37] Rebecca Jones: What is, where are you seeing the greatest opportunity to scale and what ISVs could come in to help you do that? So when you extract that from the power of three, the classic power of three of Costone, you brought that down to, you know, how do you think about that in the masses of marketplace? [00:29:56] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Or partners of any size. I like to bring this back to. Where do you believe your greatest opportunity is? Do you have, um, opportunity or weakness in your portfolio, your product set? Could a partner come in and help augment that? Do you have a tech platform and you need a services arm to help extend that? [00:30:19] Rebecca Jones: I I mean the, it it, the world’s your oyster. Yeah. You get to kit this together any way you need and then. The power of bringing these companies together. And you and I both know, and that was much of the conversation yesterday, is, um, the greater goodness of companies coming together Yes. To compliment one another to solve a customer problem. [00:30:39] Vince Menzione: How do you take it from concept to execution? Because to me, that’s. Especially when you’re talking about not just one organization like a micro, you’re working with a Microsoft or an SAP, but you’re layering in three types of organizations and you’re going across different sales motions. How do you get them all? [00:30:58] Vince Menzione: How do you get them all aligned in working together the right way? [00:31:02] Rebecca Jones: Magic. Magic. [00:31:03] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:31:04] Rebecca Jones: I’m kidding. [00:31:04] Vince Menzione: Call bridge, call Rebecca [00:31:07] Rebecca Jones: Magic. [00:31:07] Vince Menzione: Nine nine nine five five five five. [00:31:09] Rebecca Jones: Let, let, let me, uh, let me talk about that because [00:31:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:31:13] Rebecca Jones: it’s one, there’s the good work, there’s the good thought work and the strategy of how to ensure you’re, you’re pointing and you’ve got the team lined up, right? [00:31:22] Rebecca Jones: Right. And the players lined up. But activation of that. Oh, [00:31:28] Vince Menzione: massive work. [00:31:29] Rebecca Jones: It’s massive work. Yeah. And it’s not a set it and forget it. [00:31:33] Vince Menzione: Right, [00:31:34] Rebecca Jones: right, [00:31:34] Vince Menzione: right. [00:31:35] Rebecca Jones: And when you think about the alignment, and you talked about we, we’ve got different fiscal year ends and we’ve got different sales and center plans. I will talk about a few things. [00:31:45] Rebecca Jones: One, executive sponsorship, top down. [00:31:48] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:31:48] Rebecca Jones: Right. Um, ensuring, you know, compensation. You gotta get rid of the blockers and the barriers. [00:31:55] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:31:56] Rebecca Jones: And you have to make it easy and you have to create that space because it’s really, and I’ll talk to you about some of the platforms and technology behind it, but it’s humans working together. [00:32:07] Rebecca Jones: There’s a lot of power in what we’re able to do now with, um, part tech platforms and with agentic solutions. And how do you automate this and how do you bring more power and visibility? Better than ever and, and more than ever. But at the end of the day, we’re activating teams. Across companies. Yep. To work together to bring this together. [00:32:34] Rebecca Jones: And there are playbooks, um, and any, there’s great playbooks out there, but you need to activate that. [00:32:41] Vince Menzione: You need to activate it. And you, you said you gotta get the executive commitment at the top? [00:32:45] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:32:46] Vince Menzione: Not just at the CEO level, but across the leadership team. That’s right. In every silo. Uh, you’ve gotta get, uh, the organization, you have to get compensation taken care of because those, those can be blockers, those could be real blockers from getting the results you want to get. [00:33:00] Vince Menzione: And then you gotta get activation. [00:33:03] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:33:03] Vince Menzione: Right? [00:33:04] Rebecca Jones: You gotta get activation and you have to be really clear on how you’re gonna activate what’s gonna move the needle. And you have to be ready to test, learn, optimize, and you need to put those into sprints. So I’ll give some examples around that. [00:33:20] Vince Menzione: Please do take us through the sprints. [00:33:21] Vince Menzione: ’cause this is, this is getting beyond the theory now. This is what I really wanted to capture with you. Take us through it. [00:33:28] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:33:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:33:29] Rebecca Jones: So let’s just say we’ve got, we’ve got a power of three. [00:33:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:33:32] Rebecca Jones: You know, um, ready to roll and, and we’ve picked our industry and we have our use case. Um, between the three of us, the three players, you’re gonna start by allowing someone, and in this case it’s been Bridge Partners to really ensure we have a joint value prop, um, proposition for that end customer. [00:33:54] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm. And, you know, you gotta take a little ego out of the room. Typically on the power of three, you’ve got the leading companies coming in. But at the end of the day, if you’ve done this right, it’s, it’s customer first. It’s what’s gonna help solve this customer pain point in that language. And then when you think about activation, it’s who’s, who’s in role first? [00:34:20] Rebecca Jones: Right. And who’s taking point in these customer conversations. Right. Okay. And that is really, really, that’s important. Important. That is important. Who has the relationship? Yeah. Who is going to take lead and who’s gonna follow? And it gets all the way down to whose paper. Is this on? And that’s, that’s sometimes hard. [00:34:41] Rebecca Jones: You’ve got three players in the room, but it’s incredibly important to have those conversations and ensure that this is really end state for the customer. Yeah. So really going through roles and responsibilities and how are we gonna architect this for the customer’s success. Yeah. So that is a critical component of the playbook and then understanding. [00:35:02] Rebecca Jones: Where and what programs are we gonna drive, and then who’s taking what actions. And so I, I mentioned a BM on steroids a little before. Yes. There’s amazing things that you can be doing in market, [00:35:14] Vince Menzione: account-based marketing, [00:35:15] Rebecca Jones: m account-based based marketing, you dunno. Um, account-based marketing and there are some amazing things. [00:35:20] Rebecca Jones: Really truly connected sales and marketing, in this case. Connected sales, marketing and partner. Yeah. And how do you activate these partners together? [00:35:27] Vince Menzione: You used the term part tech, which. Not everyone understands partner technologies. Yes. Organizations like Partner Tap, work Span. Yeah. Tackle. [00:35:37] Rebecca Jones: Structured. Yeah. [00:35:38] Vince Menzione: Structured. If you, these are companies that help with co-selling methodologies, marketplace methodologies. [00:35:44] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:35:45] Vince Menzione: Or combining all of those, [00:35:46] Rebecca Jones: if you know, uh, J McBain, uh. Beautiful visual flat map of, um, it looks a little, the 28 moments. Yes. I was just, well, the 28 moments and he’s got the part tech landscape. [00:35:59] Vince Menzione: Oh, [00:35:59] Rebecca Jones: the islands. The islands. [00:36:00] Vince Menzione: Yes. The islands. [00:36:00] Rebecca Jones: Yes, we got it. But there are part tech solutions that support [00:36:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:03] Rebecca Jones: Partner programs, co-sell programs, partner marketing, you know. Yes. And really help to automate a lot of those processes. [00:36:11] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:36:12] Rebecca Jones: Um, and a lot of those programs. [00:36:13] Vince Menzione: So Rebecca is such a great conversation today. [00:36:16] Vince Menzione: I mean, we can go. Thank you so deep on this. [00:36:18] Rebecca Jones: I know. [00:36:18] Vince Menzione: Which means that we’re all gonna have to be back together in Redmond. You live in the Seattle area? I do. And you’ll be with us. Um, we’ll be hosting the Ultimate Partner, live in, uh, may, May 11th to the 13th. If you’re marking your calendar as listeners and friends, uh, and you’ll be there and. [00:36:36] Vince Menzione: Probably driving some more of this conversation in a workshop format, I hope. [00:36:41] Rebecca Jones: I hope so too. Yeah, it was really rewarding last year. I mean, there’s nothing more powerful to be in the room with partners because the partners are frontline to customers. [00:36:51] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:36:51] Rebecca Jones: And understanding what they’re seeing and hearing. [00:36:53] Rebecca Jones: And I always think voice of the customer is your ultimate signal. Yeah. So I can’t wait to be there. [00:36:58] Vince Menzione: Very cool. And I have a favorite question I ask all of my guests now. Uh, it is a favorite of mine. You are hosting a dinner party and you can choose where in the world you wanna host this dinner party, and you can invite only three guests, though from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. [00:37:18] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite Rebecca and why? And why? [00:37:22] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I’d, um, this is such a great question. I think on every single day I’d have a different collection of folks that I’d want at my home. Uh, I’ve had dinner at some amazing places for me. I would love to host this at my home. [00:37:38] Vince Menzione: Very cool, very [00:37:39] Rebecca Jones: cool. Uh, and the people that I would want there for this particular dinner party, I’m gonna pick, um, three iconic women. [00:37:51] Rebecca Jones: Coco Chanel, [00:37:52] Vince Menzione: Coco Chanel very cool [00:37:54] Rebecca Jones: designer. [00:37:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:37:56] Rebecca Jones: Um, really changed how women thought about an identity and wardrobe. Um, I would invite Georgia O’Keefe. Wow. She’s my favorite artist. [00:38:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:38:08] Rebecca Jones: Um, she is one of my favorite artists. Uh, I’m, uh, art and history background. And, uh, [00:38:16] Vince Menzione: that explains, [00:38:17] Rebecca Jones: that, explains that, um, a really interesting perspective. [00:38:22] Rebecca Jones: I love her view on landscapes and. She, [00:38:26] Vince Menzione: that’s why I know her as, you know, landscapes [00:38:28] Rebecca Jones: a landscape artist, um, and much more behind that. And then I would bring one of my favorite authors in, who’s Tony Morrison? [00:38:36] Vince Menzione: Tony [00:38:37] Rebecca Jones: Morrison. [00:38:38] Vince Menzione: I don’t know Tony Morrison. [00:38:39] Rebecca Jones: Oh, um, I would, beloved is her book and Oh, yes. When you think about. [00:38:45] Rebecca Jones: Um, and this is really my passion, my background in art and literature and design, and to have three, three women there, that voice of Tony Morrison, you’ve put that book on your list. Okay. It, it, it changed my life. Uh, and, um, Coco Chanel and, um, Giorgio O’Keefe, I think it would be a really interesting conversation. [00:39:07] Rebecca Jones: I love very cool trailblazers, women who really helped. I don’t know how much they recognize how much they really changed the narrative for other women, um, in their fields and together. But I think it’d be a really fun evening. [00:39:23] Vince Menzione: Very different. Very different. Uh, I was, I know a little bit about Cocoa Chanel ’cause my mom was always in the beauty and fashion industry. [00:39:31] Vince Menzione: So as a kid growing up, I mean her shoe was iconic. [00:39:34] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:39:34] Vince Menzione: Iconic. Chanels an iconic brand was iconic. And, and she was a, wasn’t she a survivor of the. Of, uh, Nazi Germany maybe or something. There’s some, there’s some background or there’s [00:39:44] Rebecca Jones: some background. Flee. Flee [00:39:45] Vince Menzione: Nazi Germany [00:39:46] Rebecca Jones: or something. And what she’s really known for is, um, well many things, but yes, as a designer, really changing the tone and temperature Yes. [00:39:56] Rebecca Jones: Of um. How, you know, fashion and female identity. I think she, um, created the, what everybody knows is the little black dress and really got all that more structured and more modern look and feel of how to, how to wear and just really created a powerful path. [00:40:14] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. [00:40:15] Rebecca Jones: So that’s who I’d have it, this one. [00:40:16] Vince Menzione: That will be a funer. [00:40:17] Rebecca Jones: Next time I’m on your podcast, I’d have a whole new crew. [00:40:21] Vince Menzione: Okay. Well I might. Bring dessert. If you don’t mind, I might bring a little, maybe a little chocolates I think maybe might be very appropriate would for this group and just maybe pop in for a few minutes. [00:40:29] Rebecca Jones: That would be great. [00:40:30] Vince Menzione: Because I don’t wanna inter interrupt the flow my, because this is be a great conversation. Oh my, [00:40:33] no, [00:40:33] Rebecca Jones: you would, I think you’d have a ball. [00:40:34] Vince Menzione: Okay. I, [00:40:35] Rebecca Jones: I mean, I know how close you were to your mother. [00:40:37] Vince Menzione: I am. [00:40:37] Rebecca Jones: And so, yeah. [00:40:39] Vince Menzione: So, um, this isn’t, again, I use this tumultuous term, but we are living in interesting times right now. [00:40:47] Rebecca Jones: We are. [00:40:47] Vince Menzione: And for all of our viewers and listeners. What is your advice to them? What is the one thing you would say? We’re in the first quarter of 2026. Yeah. This ball is moving fast or this puck is moving fast. Yeah. If you were a hockey player, um, what would you say to us now? What, what, what is the one thing you would go do if you’re not doing it now that you should be doing? [00:41:11] Rebecca Jones: Take a moment. Take a moment. As leaders. Your company and your organizations are looking for clarity. They’re looking for a path forward, and there’s a lot of energy out there, which is very exciting, but it can be also very distracting. [00:41:30] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:41:31] Rebecca Jones: So hold some confidence and clarity for your organization and figure out where you need to be and where you’re going. [00:41:39] Rebecca Jones: That’ll help set your strategy, and this will all come into view. And so what I look to is how do we help enable the organization to grow? And by doing that, you ha you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself. Yeah. Take a moment. [00:41:53] Vince Menzione: Pause. [00:41:55] Rebecca Jones: Pause. Reflect, reflect. I told you I walked down to the beach this morning. [00:41:59] Rebecca Jones: It’s a great moment. Take a moment for yourself. It’s not passing you by. We’re just getting started. [00:42:06] Vince Menzione: Did you hear that? My friends and listeners? Take a moment. And so great to have you here in the room. Yeah. [00:42:13] Rebecca Jones: Thank you so [00:42:14] Vince Menzione: much. Thank you. And I want to thank our listeners, our viewers, for following along, ultimate Guide to Partnering and our YouTube channel Ultimate Partner. [00:42:23] Vince Menzione: And please, please, please come join us. We have an incredible year ahead. This was our event, number one of five. And Ultimate partner Live will be in Bellevue on the 11th through the 13th of May. [00:42:36] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, I’ll [00:42:36] Vince Menzione: see. You’ll see you there. Rebecca will be there. It’s [00:42:38] Rebecca Jones: in my backyard. [00:42:39] Vince Menzione: It’s in your backyard. And we are gonna have incredible leaders in the room. [00:42:42] Vince Menzione: So thank you for watching. Thank you for listening to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. [00:42:47] Rebecca Jones: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming [00:42:50] Vince Menzione: soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.s I, as I wrap up here, I just wanna make sure that what, where

Sam Jacobs (CEO, Pavilion), AJ Bruno (CEO, QuotaPath), and Asad Zaman (CEO, Sales Talent Agency) debate exactly how to handle team members resisting AI adoption. When to leave them, when to nudge them, and when to fire them. The discussion highlights real-world data, including how leading companies reach the top decile of AI adoption and the mechanics of running a 24-hour, four-squad AI hackathon to force experimentation. We also cover a critical performance heuristic from the past CPO of LaunchDarkly: if your team cannot execute simple tasks in a single day, you are falling behind. The conversation covers change management for revenue leaders, how to integrate AI into your daily enterprise pipeline generation, and why optimizing your GTM strategy means making hard decisions about personnel who refuse to adapt. Key Takeaways: >Driving AI adoption requires clear communication and rewarding good behavior, but AJ Bruno warns that leaders will ultimately have to "leave behind a handful of folks that are just not going to get on the bus, that aren't getting on board." >When implementing new AI tools across your teams, Asad Zaman notes that expectations must scale with seniority, stating "I have more tolerance as I move lower in the org and less tolerance at the higher levels." >AI should be treated as a creative partner for deeper analysis rather than a shortcut for unedited output, a reality Sam Jacobs emphasizes by warning "If you are just the pass through, you will be fired." Connect with the Hosts Host: Sam Jacobs - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/  Host: AJ Bruno - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/  Host: Asad Zaman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/   Topline is more than a YouTube Channel:  Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-newsletter  Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast  Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:35 The Question: Employees resisting AI 01:39 Convert them or fire them? 02:07 Running internal AI hackathons 03:54 How CEOs drive adoption 05:08 Mapping tasks to AI agents 06:27 The "Robot Layer" in emails 07:40 Claire Vo's anti-dinosaur framework 08:07 The One-Day Execution Heuristic 12:52 Why you should be scared 14:30 Elevating junior AI talent 16:35 Reducing 3 hours of work to 45 mins 18:54 Summary: How to uplevel the org 21:09 The tension between speed and depth 21:52 Pass-through? Fired! FIRED!!!  

Most SMBs believe they need expensive tools, massive teams, and enterprise playbooks to build a real go-to-market engine. Launa Rich disagrees—and she explains why the best strategies often start with far less.In this episode of Content to Close, (our bonus Content Amplified Friday episodes!) Launa shares how smaller companies can drive real revenue with a clear brand, authentic partnerships, and systems that work long before expensive tools enter the picture. From “baby leads” to signal-based outreach, she breaks down the practical moves that actually move pipeline for SMBs trying to compete with bigger players.  If you're building GTM with limited budget, limited headcount, and a lot of pressure to deliver results—this conversation is for you.What you'll learn in this episode:Why brand clarity should come before any GTM tool or tech stackThe warning signs that your sales and marketing tools are creating noise instead of revenueHow SMBs can generate pipeline through partnership ecosystems and community relationshipsWhat Launa calls “baby leads” and why they matter more than traditional lead generationHow small teams can break down silos between sales and marketingWhy SMBs should test processes manually before investing in enterprise toolsThe right way to use AI for credibility and signals—not noiseGuest BioLauna Rich is a sales enablement and go-to-market strategist with more than 18 years of experience in technology services sales. She has worked across evolving sales environments since the early 2000s and has seen firsthand how modern GTM strategies have shifted toward credibility, trust, and signal-based outreach.  Launa recently launched Secure Quota, where she provides fractional sales enablement and go-to-market guidance for companies navigating complex enterprise-style sales motions—without enterprise-level budgets. Her work focuses on helping organizations build practical systems that connect brand, marketing, and sales into a revenue-generating engine.Connect with Launa:LinkedInText us what you think about this episode!

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Market Logic Software sits at the intersection of market intelligence and enterprise AI — helping companies like Procter & Gamble and Unilever move from gut-feel decision-making to insights-driven operations. When Dirk Wolf stepped in as CEO five years ago, the business had impressive logos but a fundamental scaling problem: every customer had been co-built with, deeply customized, and operationally entangled. High retention masked an unsustainable model. In this episode of BUILDERS, Dirk breaks down how he restructured the GTM motion, made the deliberate choice to walk away from revenue that couldn't repeat, launched an AI product in Q2 2023 before most companies had a roadmap, and is now repositioning Market Logic as an agentic intelligence hub embedded inside enterprise infrastructure.Topics Discussed:The co-development trap: why deep enterprise relationships can become a scaling ceilingMaking the call to cut a government ARR contract to protect repeatabilityImplementing SaaS KPIs and customer segmentation from scratch inside an existing businessHow the marketing motion evolved — from executive roundtables to measured digital channelsBuilding a productive marketing-CFO relationship through outcomes and milestonesLaunching an AI product in Q2 2023 and tracking enterprise sentiment shift in real timeWhy the downstream ICP experiment failed and how they course-corrected fastThe vision for Market Logic as a proactive agentic system inside enterprise tech stacksGTM Lessons For B2B Founders:The co-development trap is a silent growth killer. Market Logic had strong retention and marquee customers — but had co-built so many bespoke solutions that the business couldn't replicate itself. No repeatable sales motion. No scalable delivery. When Dirk came in, he recognized that what looked like customer success was actually a ceiling. If your top accounts each required their own version of your product, you don't have a business yet — you have a services firm with SaaS ambitions. The fix starts with ruthless product scope decisions before you touch GTM.Cutting revenue is sometimes the GTM move. Dirk walked away from a US government contract — real ARR, on-prem, fully customized, no path to replication. The decision wasn't financial modeling, it was strategic clarity: you cannot build a repeatable motion while simultaneously maintaining one-off revenue that pulls engineering, CS, and leadership attention in a different direction. Most founders know this intellectually. Few actually do it. The willingness to let that revenue walk is what creates the conditions for scale.Segment by growth potential, not by decibel level. One of Dirk's first structural changes was introducing proper SaaS KPIs and customer segmentation — because without them, resources defaulted to whoever was loudest. That's almost always the smallest, most difficult accounts, not the ones with the most strategic upside. The discipline isn't just about where sales focuses. It cascades into product prioritization, CS allocation, and where leadership time actually goes. ICP isn't a marketing exercise — it's an operating model decision.// Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

3V Infrastructure finances EV charging infrastructure for multifamily real estate owners, removing upfront cost as the blocker to deployment. Ben Kanner breaks down how they built a channel-first GTM, why they deliberately stripped sustainability from their pitch, and how they're reworking their funnel after deals started stalling mid-stage.Topics Discussed:Why multifamily EV charging is uniquely hard to finance and deploy at scaleStripping sustainability from the pitch and leading with NOI and amenity valueFinding the right internal champion: ancillary revenue over sustainability titlesBuilding a channel partner program as a lean team without eroding partner marginGoing enterprise from day one and the deal-size math behind that decisionDiagnosing a mid-funnel stall and revamping talk tracks in real timeRunning a small SDR function alongside channel for targeted key account outreachKey GTM Insights:Lead with NOI, not sustainability. 3V made a deliberate decision from day one to never pitch climate or sustainability. The frame is strictly financial: EV charging as an amenity that brings residents in, supports rent growth, and drives NOI. In real estate, NOI plus a cap rate equals property value, and that math is what moves the deal. "Whether you're red or you're blue or you're purple or you're pink, it is really not about politics, it is not about climate, it is not about sustainability. For us, this is an amenity."Map the org before you pick your entry point. Inside large commercial real estate organizations, the decision maker and the champion are almost never the same person. Ben identified a role he didn't know existed before entering the space: the ancillary revenue director. These stakeholders own incremental property revenue and are directly aligned with what 3V sells. "Some of my best counterparts and my best partners are in the ancillary revenue departments because they do care about the things that we can help them with — which is generating more revenue for their properties."Channel economics only work if partners want to sell you. 3V's GTM is built around EPC contractors, hardware providers, and software companies who already have trust with commercial real estate owners. The structural risk: if 3V squeezes partner economics, those partners route deals direct. Ben's rule is straightforward. "We can't just beat them down on price because then they're less likely to sell to us... you kind of got to leave some meat on the bone for everybody." The target this year is 75% of leads from partners, 25% self-originated through outbound and conferences.Enterprise from day one because the math demands it. Ben's framing on deal selection is direct: "It's just as much work to sell a hundred thousand dollar contract as to sell a million dollar contract." Given 3V will never be a large headcount business, he made an early call to go upmarket and stay there. He started with a Rolodex from his prior EV charging OEM role and expanded from there.When deals stall mid-funnel, change the message, not the motion. 3V built a stage-by-stage funnel view and found the problem: deals were entering but not converting. Ben's read is that declining multifamily rents have shifted what property owners care about, and the old pitch needs to adapt. "What was working for us last year doesn't seem to be working for us right now." The new hypothesis: shift from profit-share upside to operational relief. "We want to lean into, hey, we're the easy button."// Sponsors: Front Lines — Silicon Valley's leading Podcast Production Studio. We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. Mention you are a listener and get a 10% discount. www.FrontLines.io/Podcast-as-a-Service

PlantSwitch CEO Dillon Baxter won a 25-million-unit Walmart contract before his company had a production facility. He flew to China, stood up a 300,000 square foot vertically integrated factory in 45 days, and delivered 100 million forks in the first year. This episode covers what he learned about vertical integration, GTM sequencing, and why selling materials to legacy manufacturers is a trap most founders fall into too late.Winning a Walmart contract with no factory and executing a 45-day China buildoutThe failure mode of selling raw materials to legacy manufacturers — and the vertical integration pivot that unlocked PMFCompeting against greenwashing in the "industrial compostable" categoryHow tariffs and trade war disruption killed national procurement cycles and forced a distribution pivotBuilding a full product catalog as the precondition for distribution network leverageLive Nation partnership and the shift to mid-market B2B distributionPricing strategy against plastic alternatives, not commodity plasticSelling materials to legacy manufacturers is a distribution trap PlantSwitch originally raised on the premise of creating the raw material and letting large manufacturers take it to market. It looked clean on a pitch deck. In practice, a legacy plastics manufacturer has no urgency to sell a new sustainable material — it's a rounding error on their P&L. For PlantSwitch, it was survival. The insight isn't just operational; it's about sales intensity asymmetry. Whoever has the most to lose will always outsell the partner who doesn't. "If you sell a new material to a manufacturer, they still have to go sell that to the customer. Who is going to be better at selling that material to the customer — is it going to be the legacy manufacturer who's been selling plastic for 50 years, or is it going to be the young, innovative startup where that's our livelihood?"Distribution network before product catalog — then invert When trade war uncertainty froze national procurement cycles, PlantSwitch pivoted away from chasing large direct accounts and spent 2024 building a distribution network. The sequencing was deliberate: no distributor wants a single SKU. PlantSwitch had to build straws, cutlery, cups, and variations across all of them to have a compelling catalog. Now that the network exists, every new product launch has immediate reach. "Now that we've built out that distribution network, it's a lot easier to just get penetration for those products and sell them to our existing customers."Your biggest contract shouldn't require a factory you don't have — but it might be your best outcome anyway The conventional wisdom is to ramp into enterprise. PlantSwitch skipped it entirely, went straight to Walmart, and had to build a 300,000 square foot factory in 45 days to deliver. The compressed execution forced operational rigor that a slow ramp never would have. The cost was pressure. The benefit was capability consolidation. "Trial by fire at its finest."Compete against the greenwashing tier, not commodity pricing PlantSwitch's customers have already ruled out plastic. The real competitive set is the "industrial compostable" category — products labeled sustainable that require special high-heat facilities to compost, and which still create microplastics if they end up in the environment. Customers in that category are paying a premium for a sustainability story that doesn't hold. PlantSwitch competes on being genuinely home compostable, at competitive pricing, with higher performance. "Companies are paying double for this sustainable messaging and it's not solving any sort of sustainable problem."// Sponsors: Front Lines — Silicon Valley's leading Podcast Production Studio. We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. Mention you are a listener and get a 10% discount. www.FrontLines.io/Podcast-as-a-Service

Haroon Inam is the CEO of DG Matrix, which just closed a $60M raise backed by ABB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to scale behind-the-meter power architecture for AI data centers. In this episode, he breaks down how a pre-scale startup wins deals measured in hundreds of megawatts, why channel partners became a balance sheet solution rather than just a distribution play, and the exact sequence he uses to move a nine-figure enterprise deal from disbelief to signed contract.Topics Discussed:Pivoting from fleet electrification to AI data center infrastructure after an inbound call from a major GPU manufacturerWhy utilities cannot solve AI data center power density and what "behind the meter" actually means for operatorsGo-to-market structure: direct enterprise, EPC partnerships, and large conglomerate channel dealsThe anatomy of a $50M to few-hundred-million dollar infrastructure dealUsing objection documentation as a structured closing motionBankability and insurability as enterprise sales blockers — and the white-label strategy to solve themManaging 24/7 operations across shifts without burning the core teamKey GTM Insights:Objection documentation is a closing system, not a soft skill. Most enterprise sales teams treat objection handling as something that happens in the room. Haroon runs it as a structured process: capture every objection, leave without reacting, return with methodical solutions. The deal follows the solved objections. This is particularly relevant when selling unproven technology into risk-averse infrastructure buyers who need to justify the decision internally. "My way of closing deals, Brett, is very simple. I close deals by objection handling. So when you listen to the objections from the customers, just note them down, don't freak out and come back and methodically solve those things in a solid fashion. And if there's a need, you'll get the order."The most common enterprise objection isn't price — it's scale proof. When buyers see the product, the reaction is positive. The blocker is deployment history. Buyers want to know if a startup can reliably deliver at gigawatt scale when it has only deployed at megawatt scale. DG Matrix's answer is pedigree transfer: aerospace-grade power electronics for Boeing aircraft and military programs. When you lack field scale, you redirect to adjacent evidence of engineering rigor in equally high-stakes environments. "We might have deployed a couple of megawatts, but we're not there yet. So then the objection is how do we know you'll be able to scale? ...We have to show them the pedigree of our screening that we do in the supply chain."Channel partners solve a balance sheet problem, not just a reach problem. The original GTM thesis was standard: go direct for enterprise, use channel for SMB. What surfaced in practice was that large buyers will not place nine-figure orders with a startup whose balance sheet can't absorb them — regardless of product quality. ABB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are now investors, and the strategic value is that they can carry orders on their books while providing global deployment and service infrastructure. "A lot of large customers have large orders to give and we won't have a balance sheet that'll allow us to take an order like that, not in their eyes. So we then have to adjust where we find channel partners to carry the orders on their books."// Sponsors: Front Lines — Silicon Valley's leading Podcast Production Studio. We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. Mention you are a listener and get a 10% discount. www.FrontLines.io/Podcast-as-a-ServiceTopics DiscussedKey GTM Insights

On this episode of Practical Pivots, host Steve Pockross rewinds the sharpest go-to-market lessons from the show's most insightful guests to help founders navigate a world where software is cheap, AI is everywhere, and attention is scarce. Drawing on 12 hard-won insights from operators, VCs, and AI leaders, Steve breaks down why being more human is the real competitive edge, why distribution now beats product, how to define product-market fit in plain English, and why clarity and focus will outlast every stunt and channel hack. If you're stuck on plateaus, over-investing in tactics, or wondering where AI truly belongs in your GTM motion, this highlight reel gives you a crisp playbook for building trust, proving demand, and scaling what actually works in 2026.

SaaStr 845: How SaaStr Built a $5 million Pipeline Machine with 1.5 Humans and 20 AI Agents with SaaStr's Chief AI Officer and Momentum from Salesforce's VP of GTM Amelia LeRutte, SaaStr's Chief AI Officer (and the person Jason Lemkin calls "the AI Agent Whisperer"), breaks down exactly how she went from managing a 10-person team to running 20 AI agents that generated $4.8M in additional pipeline — and closed half of it. In this episode, Amelia walks Jonathan Kvarfordt, Momentum from Salesforce's VP of GTM through: — Her journey from social media manager to Chief AI Officer, including the three-month deep dive where she locked herself in a room to figure out AI agents — The full breakdown of SaaStr's 20-agent stack, including how they split work between tools like Salesforce AgentForce, Artisan, Qualified, Clay, Momentum, Gamma, and Zapier — A live demo of their multi-agent workflow: how a single form submission triggers a chain of agents that enrich data, build personalized Gamma decks, and draft follow-up emails, automatically — Real results: deal volume doubled, win rate doubled, and $2.4M closed from AI-sourced pipeline in just 8 months — The "90/10 rule" for deciding when to buy an agent vs. build one with vibe coding on Replit — Live demos of Digital Jason (Delphi), Amelia AI (Qualified), and a sponsor portal being vibe-coded in real time Whether you're running a lean startup or scaling a go-to-market team, this is one of the most tactical breakdowns of an AI agent stack you'll find.

In this episode of the Revenue Leaders Podcast, we break down how to build a client acquisition system that helps businesses generate predictable revenue and consistently win new clients.Many companies struggle with sales not because their product is weak, but because they lack a structured client acquisition strategy. Without a clear system, teams rely on guesswork instead of a repeatable process for attracting and converting the right customers.In this episode, we discuss:• Why most businesses struggle with client acquisition• How defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) changes your sales outcomes• The key components of a client acquisition system• How to align your sales process with the buyer journey• Why trying to sell to everyone damages your pipeline• How to build a sales system that creates predictable growthThis episode kicks off our 6-part Client Acquisition Series, where we break down the frameworks sales leaders and founders can use to design a scalable client acquisition engine.If you're a founder, sales leader, or revenue operator looking to get more clients consistently, this episode will help you rethink how your sales system should work.Subscribe to the Revenue Leaders Podcast for more insights on B2B sales strategy, revenue leadership, and building predictable growth systems.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Few founders have seen Silicon Valley from every seat at the table.After co-creating Google Maps at Google, serving as CTO at Facebook, and later as co-CEO of Salesforce, Bret Taylor is now building AI agents at Sierra to redefine customer experience.On Grit, he explains why “competitive intensity” is a core value at their fast-growing company and why he believes AI won't lead to a world where people stop working.Guest: Bret Taylor, co-founder of SierraConnect with Bret XLinkedInConnect with JoubinXLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.comFollow GritLinkedInX​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins:https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreHow will AI change the way SaaS companies grow?But according to Adam Robinson, founder and CEO of Retention.com, AI is not the answer most founders think it is.Adam has built multiple SaaS companies and scaled Retention.com from $0 to $22M ARR in four years without funding. In this episode of Move the Needle, he explains why the companies that scale – and the ones that stall – are separated by one thing:Product-market fit.Listen to the episode to learn why AI won't fix your SaaS company, but product-market fit might.

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!Many Marketing Ops professionals eventually hit a ceiling. The work is important, the systems are running, but the influence over the broader go-to-market strategy remains limited.In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann speaks with Jackson Fisher about what it takes to move beyond execution and step into a more strategic role inside the business. Jackson recently completed ten years at the American Hospital Association, where he began in Marketing Operations and later moved into Product Development. As an early member of the MarketingOps.com community and part of the Founding 100, Jackson shares how his operations background helped him transition into a role focused on pipeline structure, revenue performance, and product strategy.The conversation explores how operators can translate their skills into business impact by connecting marketing activity to pipeline, pricing, and financial outcomes. Jackson also explains what it looks like to introduce pipeline discipline in organizations that lack a clear revenue structure and how Marketing Ops professionals can learn to communicate in the language of finance and revenue leadership.Topics covered include: • Recognizing when you have hit the Marketing Ops ceiling • Translating Marketing Ops skills into broader business impact • Building pipeline discipline in organizations without clear revenue structures • Connecting marketing activity to pricing, Salesforce data, and revenue outcomes • Creating strategic impact with a lean tech stack • Moving from order-taker to trusted GTM partner • Preparing for leadership roles in Revenue Operations and GTM strategyIf you are a Marketing Ops professional thinking about the next phase of your career, this episode offers practical insight into how operators can expand their influence beyond campaign execution.Be sure to subscribe, like, and share Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show

Ryan was a successful lawyer with a massive problem. He couldn't find a task management tool that worked for his firm, so he built one himself. He thought he'd solved the problem, but for 8 agonizing months, he couldn't sell a single subscription.In this episode, Ryan breaks down the gritty reality of bootstrapping Filevine into a $3B legal tech startup doing over $200M in revenue. He shares how a random Instagram ad campaign ended his sales drought, how he fought off a Tiger Global-backed competitor built on Salesforce, and how he's completely rewriting his company's architecture to win the AI legal tech war against the likes of Harvey and Legora.Why You Should ListenHow 8 months of zero sales almost broke him.Why building customizability into your core product is the ultimate defense.How to recruit top engineers when you have zero funding.Why SMBs often have "beer money but champagne tastes."How to pivot from SaaS to AI.Keywordsstartup podcast, startup podcast for founders, legaltech, product market fit, bootstrapping, B2B SaaS, enterprise sales, AI startup, founder story, finding pmf00:00:00 Intro00:07:20 Recruiting an Amazon Engineer with No Funding00:11:52 The First Conference and the "Terrible" MVP00:15:23 The Dark Months: Zero Sales from Cold Calling00:19:28 The GTM that Saved the Company00:27:36 Why In-Person Events Beat Cold Calling00:36:19 Moving Upmarket to Avoid Demanding SMBs00:37:32 Beating a $50M Salesforce-Backed Competitor00:46:45 Rewriting Filevine for the AI EraSend me a message to let me know what you think!

How does Google Consent Mode affect ePrivacy compliance, opt-in signals, traffic sampling, marketing performance, and CIPA claims? What are the most common technical mistakes in the configuration of Tag Managers, tracking rules, and consent banners? Where is “do not train” (LLMs) going? Does agentic traffic ruin analytics or the premises of consent?We have gone through all of this with a true Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and website auditing expert.Phil Pearce is founder of MeasureMinds and creator of ConsentModeMonitor. He started in paid search for CreditCards.com managing a multi-million dollar PPC account, before shifting to Privacy & Analytics about 8 years ago, when he did a series of talks about Black Hat Analytics. More recently, he has been helping brands with technical defence against CIPA & ePrivacy/PECR and GDPR claims. Prior to building his business, Phil worked for ConversionWorks, Jellyfish & Sitemakers as a Google Analytics and Search Specialist. He is a top authority in Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager and is the author of the GTM developer guide as well as host of the GA4ward, GTM4ward and Privacy4Marketers conferences.References:* Phil Pearce on LinkedIn* Consent Mode Monitor (Masters of Privacy Toolbox), free website scans for three months* Compliance Briefs (Masters of Privacy Toolbox), $500 discount for our listeners* Lineberry v. AddShopper, Inc. (3:23-cv-01996), May 29, 2025* MCP Manager by Usercentrics* Introducing DPO Central: AI-powered privacy program management* Sealmetrics: cookieless, consentless analytics This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mastersofprivacy.com/subscribe

This week, Simon Daniels, now Principal Consultant, B2B Customer Growth at Accenture Song, is in the studio to share 5 f'in' tips for getting your Revenue Operations rocking, which include: Making the business case Aligning with business goals, outcomes, and stakeholders Customer focus Building on 4 key foundations Proving value and scaling what works Ian then joins Robert Rose in the virtual bar, The Rose & Rockstar, for a classic cocktail and a chat, and Robert unveils his new Audience Trust Index research that he is publsihing on the Content Marketing Institute blog.  If you have any comments or thoughts on this topic, we would love to hear them! Enjoy! — The Links The people: Ian Truscott on LinkedIn  Simon Daniels on LinkedIn  Robert Rose on LinkedIn Mentioned this week: What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It (podcast) B2B Customer Growth | Accenture Song Measuring Content Marketing in the AI Age, Part 1: The Audience Trust Index Robert's newsletter: Lens, his websites, robertrose.net and seventhbear.com Rockstar CMO: The Beat Newsletter that we send every Monday Rockstar CMO on the web and LinkedIn Previous episodes and all the show notes: Rockstar CMO FM. Track List: We'll be right back by Stienski & Mass Media on YouTube Let It Grow - Eric Claptoon Piano Music is by Johnny Easton, shared under a Creative Commons license You can listen to this on all good podcast platforms, like Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send a textHow to turn founder instincts into a repeatable pipeline engine. Guest: Javier Lozano, Fractional CMO & GTM Leader  --  Founder-led sales is often the fastest way to get an early-stage SaaS company off the ground. But at some point, the very thing that helped you close your first customers becomes the bottleneck preventing your company from scaling.In this episode of SaaS Backwards, Ken Lempit sits down with fractional CMO and GTM leader Javier Lozano of Bolder Media to break down why founder-led sales eventually stop working—and how SaaS leaders can turn founder instincts into a repeatable revenue engine.They discuss how to extract the winning patterns inside a founder's head, transform those insights into positioning and messaging, and build a predictable pipeline that sales teams can execute at scale.You'll also learn why hiring sales leaders too early often backfires, how to create a “blue ocean” positioning that separates your SaaS product from crowded markets, and what investors really look for when evaluating early-stage SaaS growth.If you're a SaaS founder, CRO, or GTM leader trying to move beyond founder-led growth, this episode provides a practical framework for building a scalable go-to-market engine.Key Topics CoveredWhy founder-led sales works early but breaks at scaleTurning founder knowledge into a repeatable SaaS GTM playbookHow positioning and messaging create predictable pipelineWhy hiring a CRO too early can stall growthBuilding a scalable revenue engine before raising capital---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch.

Amanda Kahlow joins Revenue Builders to unpack what happens when AI stops assisting go-to-market teams and starts replacing entire functions. Drawing on her experience founding SixthSense and now leading 1mind, she explains how technology originally built for Alzheimer's caregivers evolved into AI “superhumans” capable of running demos, qualifying buyers, building business cases, and onboarding customers. The conversation gets real about some of the uncomfortable questions facing sales today: what happens to SDRs, how the AE role changes, why traditional handoffs between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success break down, and what “the final mile” of human selling really looks like. For revenue leaders, the bigger question isn't whether AI will impact go-to-market… it's how quickly org design, skill sets, and accountability models need to adapt. Amanda Kahlow is the Founder and CEO of 1mind and the Founder of Sixth Sense. She is a multi time enterprise founder building AI systems designed to transform the full go-to-market lifecycle. Connect with Amanda: LinkedIn 1mind Get the Force Management guide to adapting your go-to-market execution for the AI age: The Predictable Revenue Framework: Guide for Leaders Key takeaways from this episode:  00:00 – How tech built for Alzheimer's caregivers evolved into AI that can qualify buyers, run demos, and move deals forward. 05:09 – What Amanda really means by a “superhuman”, and why it's far beyond an AI SDR bolted onto your website. 06:27 – Why buyers are increasingly more comfortable with AI than humans in early-stage conversations, and what that does to traditional sales handoffs. 16:48 – How automated knowledge ingestion and system integrations are collapsing AI onboarding timelines from ~4 months to ~4 weeks. 30:23 – The GTM shakeup: SDRs disappear, AEs become strategic operators, and humans remain for one thing only… the “final mile.” 46:36 – The ultimate question: can AI replace high-cost revenue roles profitably? And what happens to trust, security, and data ownership in regulated industries? Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

Enterprise sales today demands customer-centric selling. SAP Global GTM leader Laz Uriza explains why modern enterprise deals depend on ecosystem collaboration, consultative selling, and stakeholder management across complex organizations. On the B2B Sales Trends Podcast, Harry sits down with Laz Uriza, Global GTM Leader for SAP Business Technology Platform, to explore how enterprise selling is evolving in a world of ecosystems, AI, and recurring customer success models. Rather than pushing individual solutions, modern sellers must coordinate across partners, platforms, and stakeholders to deliver real customer outcomes. As Laz explains, the future of enterprise sales is collaborative, customer-centric, and deeply human.

Sales is full of advice — but most teams only learn the real lessons the hard way.In this special episode of Revenue Leaders, we break down 5 brutal sales lessons most teams learn too late — from cold calling myths to sales conversations, proposals, and building systems that actually win clients.You'll hear practical insights on:• Why cold calling isn't actually dead• How organizations start winning more clients consistently• Why most sales conversations fail before they begin• How teams leave money on the table after winning an account• What separates average proposals from winning dealsIf you work in B2B sales, SaaS, professional services, or revenue leadership, this episode will challenge common sales assumptions and help you build a more effective sales process.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

S5;E217 David interviews the founders of 2  Life Science portfolio companies that have been around for a while and have made significant progress in their GTM strategies. Both have been previously profiled in detail, Redbud Labs for E138 in Sep24 and Adovate for E184 in Aug25. Thus today's interviews are updates on the progress they've made against their GTM strategies. (recorded 2.18.26)Follow David on X at https://x.com/DGRollingSouth Connect On LinkedIn with David at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgrisell/ Follow Paul on X at https://x.com/PalmettoAngel Connect On LinkedIn with Paul at https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulclarkprivateequity/ We invite your feedback and suggestions at www.ventureinthesouth.com or email david@ventureinthesouth.com.

Podero builds software that enables European utilities to trade device flexibility—EVs, heat pumps, and batteries—on energy markets, generating trading revenues while reducing consumer bills by 20-30%. The company navigates a uniquely complex B2B motion: they must sell utilities, secure API access from device OEMs, and ensure utilities successfully roll out consumer-facing products—all simultaneously. In this episode of BUILDERS, Chris Bernkopf, Co-Founder and CEO of Podero, breaks down how they escaped pilot purgatory with innovation departments, built a "10x better than doing nothing" business case that reaches commercial stakeholders, and why their 2026 strategy centers on radical simplification through deletion.Topics DiscussedOrigin story: from Raspberry Pi heat pump experiment to YC-backed utility infrastructure softwareThe "three miracle problem" go-to-market challenge and how they de-risked all three dimensions in parallelSales cycle mechanics: 6-12 month closes, avoiding innovation department traps, and multi-stakeholder orchestrationMarket structure: 2,000 addressable utilities in Europe, 120 customers required for unicorn trajectoryChannel strategy evolution: cold outreach to re-engagement focus in a contained prospect universe2026 GTM thesis: simplifying value propositions by deleting products and messagingHow YC learnings posted on bathroom doors maintain organizational disciplineThe grid capacity fork in the road: expensive scarcity vs. cheap abundant renewable energy

Ian sits down with Trinity Nguyen, CMO at UserGems, to unpack how modern B2B teams balance AI-powered demand capture with measurable brand building. Trinity shares how signal-based ABM drives pipeline, why SDRs report to marketing, how owned events outperform conference booths, and what it really takes to move fast without losing alignment in an AI-driven go-to-market world. Key Takeaways:  Signal-based outbound wins. Prioritizing who to target, when to engage, and why drives higher conversion than volume alone. · Brand can't stay a black box. Marketing leaders must map awareness to buying stages and find breadcrumbs to revenue. · AI should scale capacity, not replace thinking. Used well, it gives teams air cover when resources are tight. · Owned events create real lift. Even registration alone can significantly increase downstream win rates. · Prospecting is one of the hardest jobs in GTM. SDR roles build resilience — but closing requires a different muscle. · Alignment matters more than speed alone. Moving fast is powerful, but only if marketing and sales stay in lockstep. Episode Timestamps:(02:23) Trust Tree: Demand capture and building brand (18:48) The Playbook: When you depend on your own product Sponsor: Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more. Links: · Connect with Ian on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison/   · Connect with Trinity on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/trinitynguyen/   · Learn more about UserGems:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/trinitynguyen/   · Learn more about Caspian Studios:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/caspian-studios/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, I sit down with Doug Bell — Fractional CMO, former leader at Automation Anywhere, LeanData, and Searchmetrics, top‑40 Substack writer, and co-host of Cannonball GTM — to unpack why modern go‑to‑market playbooks are breaking… and what the next generation of GTM looks like in an AI‑driven world.We go deep into the new patterns shaping high‑growth companies — and the uncomfortable truths most teams don't want to face.

This one's a little different. No guest, no agenda. Just Carolyn and Passetto co-founder Amber, recording live from Pompano Beach after four days at the Above the Fold conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They unpacked everything they took away from the event: the conversations that stuck, the moments that shifted how they think about Passetto, and the stuff that made them want to flip a table.What we cover:Why showing up in person hits completely different and how four days in Florida generated more strategic clarity than months of Zoom callsThe AI use cases that actually impressed them (and why most AI content is a race to the bottom)What Gaetano DiNardi and Jess Cook taught them about content, programmatic SEO, and why volume without expertise is killing small companiesThe Mojo PMM demo that made them rethink product marketing enablement entirelyWhy attribution is still the default answer to "how do you measure marketing" and why that's a problemThe ex-Amazon CMO who said marketing doesn't need to do more, it needs to stop leaking revenue (and what that means in practice)The light bulb moment about what Passetto customers actually need help with (hint: it's not just the analytics)Their live appearance on the Notorious B2B show and some light beef that turned into a fun conversationRaw, unfiltered, and recorded before Carolyn had to catch her flight.

I sit down with Cody Schneider, growth engineer and co-founder of Graph, for a live, hands-on crash course in GTM (go-to-market) engineering powered by Claude Code. Cody walks through how he runs multiple AI agents simultaneously to handle everything from bulk Facebook ad creation and LinkedIn outreach to cold email campaigns and live data analysis — tasks that used to require a team of dozens. By the end of the episode, you'll have a full understanding of how to set up your own agent workflow, the specific tools involved, and why domain expertise paired with AI is the real competitive advantage right now. Cody's GTM Toolkit: AI/Agent Tools: Claude Code, Perplexity API, OpenAI Codex Marketing & Outreach: Instantly AI (cold email), Phantom Buster (LinkedIn scraping/automation), Apollo API (data enrichment), Million Verifier (email verification), Raphonic (podcast host scraping): Advertising: Facebook Ads API, Facebook Ads Library (competitor research), Nano Banana Pro (AI image generation), Kai AI (bulk image generation), HeyGen API (UGC/video generation) Infrastructure & Deployment: Railway.com (servers, on-the-fly databases/Postgres), Vercel (deployment) Data & Analytics: Graphed / Graphed MCP (data warehouse, live data feeds), Google Analytics 4 CRM & Communication: Salesforce (mentioned as comparison), Intercom, SendGrid API, Slack, Cal.com API Productivity & Design: Notion, Super Whisper (voice transcription), Claude Code front-end design skill, HTML to Canvas (for converting React components to PNGs) Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:02 – What Is GTM Engineering? 05:12 – Setting Up Your Agent Workspace & Environment File 07:54 – Live Demo: LinkedIn Auto-Responder 09:56 – Live Demo: Bulk Facebook Ad Generator 12:31 – Live Demo: Cold Email Campaign Automation (Raphonic + Instantly) 14:47 – Live Demo: Creating Notion Documents via Claude Code 16:46 – Live Demo: Bulk Ad Creative Generator 26:05 – Live Demo: LinkedIn Engagement Scraper to Cold Email Pipeline 28:16 – Context Switching Across Tasks 29:19 – Live Demo: Bulk Ad Generator 31:41 – Live Demo: Data Analysis: Turning Off Low-Performing Ads 35:28 – Summary of GTM Engineering Workflow 37:48 – Deploying Agents and On-the-Fly Databases with Railway for Data Analysis 41:28 – The Dream of Autonomous Marketing 48:50 – Building API-First Products and Agent-Native Infrastructure Key Points GTM engineering has evolved from Clay-style data enrichment workflows into full-stack agent orchestration — where one person running multiple Claude Code agents can replace the output of a large team. The practical setup starts with a single folder containing your environment file (API keys for every tool in your stack), transcription software like Super Whisper, and Claude Code. Cody demonstrates running seven or more agents simultaneously across LinkedIn outreach, Facebook ad creation, cold email campaigns, Notion document generation, and live data dashboards. Code-generated ad creative (React components exported as PNGs) costs nearly nothing to produce at scale and allows rapid testing of messaging variations before investing in polished visuals. Deploying proven workflows to Railway turns one-off agent tasks into always-on, autonomous processes that run 24/7. Domain expertise is the real multiplier — the vocabulary you bring from your field determines the quality of output you can extract from these tools. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND CODY ON SOCIAL: Cody's startup: https://www.graphed.com/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/codyschneiderxx Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@codyschneiderx

In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James sit down with Micah Joel, GTM leader and demo engineering pioneer, to explore what it means to build a dedicated demo engineering function from scratch. Micah shares his journey from theater kid to SE to leading Salesforce's legendary Q Branch, and unpacks why demo engineering might be the most underutilized lever in presales today. They cover the difference between deal-focused and infrastructure-focused demo engineers, how to structure the team, why blended teams fail, and how a mature demo engineering org can swim upstream into product strategy to reduce time-to-revenue. This is part one of two. Part two will focus on measuring and proving the value of a demo engineering team. Follow Us Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/ Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/ Connect with Micah Joel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micahjoel/  Links and Resources Mentioned Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack SoulCon 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026  Presales Collective Podcast: https://www.presalescollective.com/podcast Key Topics Covered Micah's Background: From Theater to SE to Demo Engineering What Is Demo Engineering and How Is It Different from Being an SE? When Does an Organization Need a Demo Engineering Team? The Two Sides of Demo Engineering: Deal Support vs. Infrastructure/Scale How to Hire and Structure the Team Demo Engineering as a Talent Pipeline and Retention Strategy Swimming Upstream: Demo Engineering's Role in Go-to-Market Strategy Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Timestamps 00:00 Welcome 02:48 Intro Micah Joel 05:42 Demo engineering definition 08:33 When do you need a DE team? 11:13 Deal side vs. infrastructure/scale side 15:48 Demo engineering as SE retention 23:55 Swimming upstream 27:11 Final advice

S5:E216 David details The Weekly Update in Venture and previews Wednesday's E216 interviews with 2 portfolio companies executing on their GTM strategies. (recorded 3.1.26)Follow David on X at https://x.com/DGRollingSouth Connect On LinkedIn with David at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgrisell/ Follow Paul on X at https://x.com/PalmettoAngel Connect On LinkedIn with Paul at https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulclarkprivateequity/ We invite your feedback and suggestions at www.ventureinthesouth.com or email david@ventureinthesouth.com.

In this episode, the Metrics Brothers, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike dive deep into the ICONIQ State of AI: Bi-Annual Snapshot Report. Published in January 2026, this 44-page report summarizes insights from ~300 software executives on the front lines of building and scaling AI products.Ray and Dave explore a market transition from experimental model races to the challenge of building durable, economically sound products. Key discussions in this episode include:Differentiation Beyond the Model: Why 69% of builders are focusing on vertical AI applications and why 49% cite the application layer (UX and workflows) as their primary competitive edge over the underlying model.The Gross Margin "U-Curve": A look at the shifting economics of AI, where aggregated gross margins are projected to climb to 52% by 2026, even as inference and infrastructure costs remain significant hurdles.Pricing Evolution: The rise of outcome and usage-based pricing, with only 23% of companies still relying on seat-based models as customer demand shifts toward value-aligned monetization.AI as an Internal Force Multiplier: How R&D teams are leading internal adoption, with 83% of companies now measuring success through productivity gains and 59% through direct cost savings.Whether you are a CEO or CFO navigating AI product gross margin concerns or a GTM leader rethinking your proof-of-concept strategy, this episode provides the benchmarks you need to understand the "new phase of maturity" in the AI market.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Host: Annik Sobing Guest: Kenneth G. Peters Published: February 2026 Length: ~20 minutes Presented by: Global Training Center GTM Software Prep: Don't Install Until You've Done These 3 Things First In this Simply Trade Roundup, Annik talks with Kenneth G. Peters, President at MIC US and Director of Commercial Operations in North America, about Global Trade Management (GTM) software—specifically, what trade teams must do before implementation to avoid creating “digital chaos.” Ken shares real talk from his ATCC presentation on data cleanup, process mapping, and testing, plus why “cleaning your data like you're hosting the in-laws” is now his signature advice. Shoutout to Alison for the killer slides.​ What You'll Learn in This Episode Ken's new grandpa status (the little guy is 7 months old—congrats!) and why it's the “next step in life” that keeps him energized for trade tech.​ The #1 mistake companies make with GTM software Data cleanup first: Don't dump junk into GTM. Scrub inactive vendors, obsolete parts, invalid HS codes (like 111111 or all zeros). Clean it like you're hosting the in-laws—no mess allowed. Why: GTM amplifies what you give it. Bad data in = faster mistakes out.​ Avoid the “Big Bang” implementation trap Don't try to do everything at once (denied party screening + classification + FTA rules + solicitation). Start small: Classification (builds the foundation—parts, HS codes, values). Denied party screening (uses your vendor/part data). FTA analysis (relies on classification/HS from step 1). Why: Master data dependencies mean you build once and reuse everywhere.​ Processes over pixels GTM won't fix broken workflows. Map your processes before going live. If your current setup is emailing Excel files between systems, you're not automating—you're digitizing chaos. True automation: ERP ↔ GTM via SFTP, APIs, XML—no human hands on keyboards. Reduces errors, speeds everything up.​ Who owns what after go‑live MIC US (GTM provider): Manages the software backend—reg updates, HS databases, platform maintenance. Your team: Owns the process (classification, entry creation, decision‑making). Someone still reviews outputs for accuracy. No “managed services” from MIC—GTM is a tool, not a full‑service outsource.​ Testing: where most implementations fail Allocate real time and resources to testing—don't rush it. Test end‑to‑end: data flow, workflows, edge cases. Why: Skipped or rushed testing = live problems that cost more to fix later.​ “If your systems are emailing Excel files to each other, you're not automating” Ken's golden rule: Hands‑off data flow (ERP → GTM) eliminates errors. Excel handoffs = manual errors waiting to happen.​ Key Takeaways Clean data first: Active parts, valid HS, no ghosts—GTM makes good data shine and bad data explode.​ Start small, build smart: Classification → screening → FTA, not “big bang everything.”​ Fix processes before pixels: GTM won't save broken workflows; it speeds them up.​ Testing = non‑negotiable: Rushed testing = expensive live fixes.​ GTM is a force multiplier—if your foundation is solid.​ Credits Host: Annik Sobing Guest: Kenneth G. Peters, President, MIC US Producer: Annik Sobing  Listen & Subscribe Simply Trade main page: https://simplytrade.podbean.com​ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/simply-trade/id1640329690​ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/09m199JO6fuNumbcrHTkGq​ Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8de7d7fa-38e0-41b2-bad3-b8a3c5dc4cda/simply-trade​ Connect with Simply Trade Podcast page: https://www.globaltrainingcenter.com/simply-trade-podcast​ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/simply-trade-podcast​ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SimplyTradePod​ Join the Trade Geeks Community Trade Geeks (by Global Training Center): https://globaltrainingcenter.com/trade-geeks/  

Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!The traditional B2B marketing playbook is becoming irrelevant. At the same time, AI is fundamentally transforming how buyers research, evaluate, and purchase.In this episode of Ops Cast, Michael Hartmann is joined by Naomi Liu and Mike Rizzo for a wide-ranging conversation with Jon Miller. Jon co-founded Marketo, helped define modern Marketing Operations, later co-founded Engagio, and is now the Co-Founder and CEO of a stealth AI startup focused on the future of buying behavior and revenue systems.This conversation challenges long-held assumptions about campaigns, MQLs, attribution, and the systems Marketing Ops teams have relied on for over a decade. Jon explains why rules-based automation is not sufficient now, how AI changes what marketing platforms must do, and what it means to move from campaigns to AI-orchestrated experiences.The panel also explores buying groups, lifecycle orchestration across anonymous and known buyers, and how Marketing Ops can operationalize trust, brand, and customer experience in a world where AI filters much of what buyers see.The topics that we covered include: • Why the traditional B2B playbook is no longer working • How AI shifts marketing from campaigns to orchestration • What it really takes to operationalize buying groups • Why MQLs and last-touch attribution are losing relevance • How Marketing Ops can build infrastructure for modern buying behavior • The evolving role of Marketing Ops in 2026 and beyond • Where AI is genuinely useful today versus oversoldIf you work in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or revenue leadership, this episode will push you to rethink the systems you are building and how artificial intelligence can transform them.Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to Ops Cast, and join the conversation at MarketingOps.com.Episode Brought to You By MO Pros The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals We're an official media partner of B2BMX 2026 — the B2B Marketing Exchange — happening March 9-11 at the Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, CA. It's practitioner-focused with 50+ breakout sessions, keynotes, and hands-on workshops covering AI in B2B, GTM strategy, and advanced ABM. Real networking, real takeaways. And because we're a media partner, you get 20% off an All-Access Pass with code B2BMAOP at checkout. Head to b2bmarketing.exchange to grab your spot. MarketingOps.com is curating the GTM Ops Track at Demand & Expand (May 19-20, San Francisco) - the premier B2B marketing event featuring 600+ practitioners sharing real solutions to real problems. Use code MOPS20 for 20% off tickets, or get 35-50% off as a MarketingOps.com member. Learn more at demandandexpand.com.Support the show

Citrini Research claims AI agents will replace white-collar jobs by 2028, triggering a massive economic crash (and repricing of SaaS stocks). Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman analyze the validity of this thesis and the immediate impact on enterprise valuation multiples. The discussion moves to the practical realities of the innovator's dilemma, specifically how legacy software companies must cannibalize their own revenue to survive. They cover strategies for GTM transformation, the loss of pricing power in traditional SaaS, and why Gong's pivot to "Chief Revenue Architect" signals a deeper identity crisis in the market. Key Takeaways: * The hardest part of adapting to AI is destroying your current margins. Sam Jacobs argues that leaders get emotionally attached to ARR, noting that "the hardest part of the innovator's dilemma is price... the only way to get out of it is to... go towards a worse business" in the short term. * Pivoting sounds great on paper, but is far harder in practice. Asad Zaman highlights the operational difficulty of telling investors about the actual steps involved; e.g. "I'm going to do a reorg and I'm then going to change my strategy that's actually going to increase churn... That's a war at the board level." * Title changes don't fix structural issues. Asad Zaman and Sam Jacobs advise revenue leaders against accepting Gong's new "Chief Revenue Architect" title because "it's going to hurt your career moving forward... This sounds like you were demoted to rev ops to me." Your Hosts: Host: Sam Jacobs Host: AJ Bruno  Host: Asad Zaman Topline is more than a Podcast! Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-newsletter Watch on the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TOPLINE-Media Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:04 The Citrini Report Examined 07:05 Startups vs. Innovator's Dilemma 12:35 SaaS Valuation Repricing 15:29 Losing Pricing Leverage to AI 21:29 Is White Collar Work Dead? 25:10 Margin Compression Strategy 31:17 Restructuring Engineering Teams 35:09 Microsoft's Product Pivot 39:54 How AI Improves CEO Workflow 44:50 Gong's Chief Revenue Architect 51:17 Why the CRO Title Matters 55:14 AI Predictions Looking Ahead

Join the Delphi team for an inside look at their Montenegro retreat as Anil Lulla, José Maria Macedo, Yan Liberman, Tommy Shaughnessy, and Kevin Kelly discuss the evolution of Delphi's three main companies. From consulting and applied research to venture investments and AI acceleration, the team shares their strategic vision, recent wins, and how they're building competitive advantages across crypto and AI.

Aleksandr Yampolskiy was doing everything right. He had the tools, the budget, the processes - the full security stack humming along at the e-commerce company where he served as CISO. Then one routine vendor integration blew the whole thing open. Unencrypted credit card data from other customers, just sitting there, inside a platform that had been rubber-stamped by a Big Four firm. In that moment, he realized something most security leaders spend their careers trying not to think about: you can do everything right and still lose your job because someone else didn't.That scar became SecurityScorecard.But here's where the story gets interesting. When Aleksandr, or AY - as he introduced himself when joining me in my studio, started telling people in 2013 that he wanted to quantify cyber risk the same way credit scores quantify financial risk, nobody was excited. The reactions ranged from "that's impossible" to a polite shrug. Most founders would have taken that as a signal to pivot. Alex took it as proof he was early enough to matter.In this episode, we go deep. We talk about why the status quo, not a named competitor, is the most dangerous thing your sales team will ever face. AY tells the story of twenty buyers who all said "I love it, I'll buy it" and then every single one of them disappeared when he came back with the finished product. (Oh, how I resonate deeply with this pain.)He explains how a pediatrician named Dr. Virginia Apgar, who saved tens of thousands of newborns with a simple scoring system, became the intellectual blueprint for how Security Scorecard thinks about risk. And he gets honest about hiring decisions that went wrong because he ignored a gut feeling he couldn't quite articulate at the time.We also get into territory that most cybersecurity podcasts don't touch. AY talks about boards adopting AI to impress Wall Street while CISOs scramble to secure shadow deployments nobody authorized. He walks through why 150 companies control ninety percent of the global attack surface and what that means for everyone else. He makes the case that quantum computing will be a Y2K-scale migration problem much sooner than the industry wants to admit. And he shares a question from his company advisor that I think every GTM leader needs to sit with: Who do you want your customers to become?This is a conversation about how a scientist thinks about risk, why the language gap between the SOC and the boardroom is an actual vulnerability, and what it really takes to build something that changes how an industry operates.Listen in and enjoy.A special thanks to our friends at SecurityScorecard for partnering with us to tell this story. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit audience1st.substack.com

Turn your idea into a launched, profitable MVP in 2-6 months: https://www.saasmastery.com/?video=67MX3_N4LfoOr prefer a one-off advisory call? Here's my calendar: https://www.saasmastery.com/call?video=67MX3_N4Lfo--- Most founders struggle to get their first 100 customers for their SaaS, not because their product is bad, but because their GTM is.Today, I sit down with Margo, who has been helping B2B SaaS founders with marketing and customer acquisition for the last 8 years.If you're in the process of building a SaaS, then this video will give you a working Go-To-Market strategy that works in 2025 and beyond.Timestamps 0:00 - Intro 0:48 - 3 big mistakes to avoid 3:22 - How to get the first 10 customers 4:45 - 5-step Go-to-market strategy (First 100 customers) 11:36 - Scaling beyond the first 100 customers 13:26 - Ending-------------------- Resources: Enhance decision-making in software development and product management with the right leadership - https://saasmastery.com/call ▸▸ SaaS Mastery website - https://www.saasmastery.com/ Get in touch with us, and let's talk about your project! https://saasmastery.com/call #SaaS #MVP #SaaSMastery Chapters (00:00:00) - How to Find Your First 100 Customers(00:00:42) - 3 Mistakes SaaS Startups Make to Get Their First(00:03:22) - How do we get our first 10 customers?(00:04:54) - How to Find and Convert Early Adopters: My Core Go(00:07:19) - 3 Creative Outreach Strategies for Early Adopters(00:10:10) - 4 Steps to Your Landing Page(00:11:22) - 5 Steps to Scaling Beyond The First 100 Customers(00:13:26) - How to Win Your First 100 SaaS Customers Fast

AI is reshaping every part of sales, marketing, and revenue operations—and few leaders understand that transformation better than Amy Cook, Co‑Founder and CMO of Fullcast. In this conversation, Amy breaks down how AI is redefining go‑to‑market strategy, why authenticity matters more than ever, and what modern revenue teams must do to stay competitive. From her journey as a single mom rebuilding her career, to leading multiple companies through acquisition, to now architecting AI‑powered GTM systems, Amy brings a rare blend of heart, experience, and strategic clarity. We dive into the future of commissions, territory planning, deal intelligence, lead quality, and the new rules of sales + marketing alignment.  

Chris Degnan was the first sales hire at Snowflake and spent 11 years scaling the company from zero to $3.5 billion in revenue as its CRO, working alongside four different CEOs and learning from each one. In this episode, Chris breaks down what it actually takes to scale an enterprise sales organization, why MEDDIC is the methodology every founder should know, and what working under Frank Slootman taught him about firing fast, taking feedback and finding the fakers in your team. In today's episode, we discuss: What the CRO job looks like at $10M vs. $1B+ Why sales leaders must know how to sell the product themselves The MEDDIC methodology and why it's a founder's best insurance policy How to find the fakers, manage-uppers and passengers in your org What Frank Slootman got right — and wrong — about scaling Snowflake Why most AI companies will face a go-to-market reckoning References: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ Bob Muglia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-muglia-714ba592/ Carl Eschenbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-eschenbach-980543/ Christian Kleinerman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-kleinerman-a973102/ Denise Persson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisepersson/ Dell: https://www.dell.com/ Frank Slootman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankslootman/ John McMahon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmcmahon1/ Michael Scarpelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-scarpelli-1b289b9/ Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/ Sridhar Ramaswamy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sridhar-ramaswamy/ Stanford Graduate School of Business: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/ Where to find Chris: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-degnan/ Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: 00:00 What is the job of a CRO? 01:12 What excellence looks like at different revenue stages 02:59 Sales leaders need to know how to sell the product 04:52 The hardest skill leaders have to learn 08:17 You need to stay open to feedback - at all levels 14:01 Sales, segmentation, and international expansion 16:17 Why MEDDIC is the foundation for every sales org 20:32 The metrics that actually matter 22:56 A week in the life of a CRO at scale 28:32 Navigating compensation at a GTM organization 31:45 What technical CEOs get wrong about GTM 36:01 The role of hunger in great sales leaders 40:35 What makes an exceptional IC sales rep 46:41 Dysfunctional vs. high-performing executive teams 48:01 Chris' most impactful decisions at Snowflake 49:53 "When there's doubt, there's no doubt" 54:49 Learning from world-class leaders

hema.to is building AI-powered diagnostic infrastructure for cytometry—a specialized area of laboratory medicine analyzing immune system data to detect blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma. Unlike radiology or pathology where AI solutions are abundant, cytometry has remained largely untouched by the AI wave, creating both opportunity and isolation for the Munich-based company. In a recent episode of BUILDERS, we sat down with Karsten Miermans, CEO at hema.to GmbH, to discuss why they're deliberately keeping sales founder-led despite having paying customers, how South America became an unexpected beachhead market, and what it actually means to build infrastructure versus point solutions in healthcare. Topics Discussed:  From consulting project to venture-backed company: recognizing scalability in hindsight  The workflow integration problem killing healthcare AI implementations  Infrastructure versus technology: why healthcare AI isn't just about the algorithm  Learning ideal customer profile after 18 months of being "all over the place"  Why South America's governance structure enables faster adoption than the US  Resisting the urge to hire sales before achieving true repeatability  The 10-year vision: shifting from "watch and wait" to "predict and prevent" in immune disease GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Pattern matching fails when you're an outsider—budget 18+ months to find your beachhead: Karsten assumed every application of their diagnostic method was the same and spent a year and a half "blue eyed" (naively optimistic) before identifying their true ICP. The outsider advantage lets you reimagine workflows insiders can't, but you'll incorrectly assume transferability across use cases. Don't expect repeatability in year one when entering regulated, workflow-dependent markets. Infrastructure requires multi-stakeholder orchestration—resource for enterprise complexity from day one: Karsten distinguishes technology (point solutions, single users) from infrastructure (shared resources requiring data exchange and workflow integration). In healthcare, this means integration into hospital systems, databases, and electronic health records across multiple stakeholders. "Every sale becomes enterprise sales" even for individual labs because of this infrastructure requirement. Founders building horizontal platforms should model sales cycles and resource requirements as enterprise from the start, regardless of deal size. Your ICP is cognitively overloaded—they won't understand your category innovation: Doctors are "under so much pressure that they just don't have any cognitive capacity left" to philosophically evaluate why AI might be difficult to implement or how infrastructure differs from technology. They need problems solved within their existing mental models. Skip the category education. Frame everything as workflow enhancement, not innovation. Let sophistication emerge through implementation, not pitch decks. Revenue doesn't equal repeatability—know when you're still in discovery mode: Despite having paying customers, Karsten explicitly states "we're not at product-market fit yet" because they're "discovering and learning things with every new laboratory hospital" around data privacy, integration, and AI deployment. The PMF signal isn't customer count or revenue—it's when the process becomes predictable, customers refer others, and you stop discovering new requirements. Hiring sales before this point scales complexity, not revenue. Regulatory friction determines market sequencing, not just market size: US governance complexity turns every deal into heavy enterprise sales with "many stakeholders," while South America proved "much more willing to move with fewer processes," making them "just much faster to adopt innovative technology." This wasn't strategy—Karsten's CTO speaks Spanish through a personal connection. But the lesson transfers: for infrastructure plays in regulated markets, test adoption velocity in lower-governance environments first to build proof points, even if TAM looks smaller on paper. In healthcare, marketing is clinical evidence—customer success creates your GTM flywheel: Karsten spends minimal time on marketing because beyond the first 5-10 users, doctors "want to see clinical evidence, they want to see papers, they want to see maybe that a friend of theirs is using it." Marketing in healthcare isn't content or demand gen—it's peer validation and published proof. Founders should structure early customer engagements to generate this evidence, not just revenue. The "marketing sales flywheel really does kick in much more once you have product market fit" because PMF enables the evidence generation required for credibility. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

By the time you submit a proposal, you've already invested significant time and resources.So why do so many proposals still fail?In this episode of Revenue Leaders, we break down what makes a winning proposal — from clearly articulating the problem statement to mapping current state, future state, and enabling buyers to move forward confidently.You'll learn:Why proposals often stall at the final stageHow to structure a proposal that winsThe importance of personalizationHow to reduce friction in the buying processWhy buyer enablement increases win ratesIf you work in B2B sales, SaaS, professional services, or revenue leadership, this episode will help you close more deals with better proposals.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Marc Mandell shares his lifelong passion for cars, tracing it back to a childhood experience seeing a classic Corvette for the first time, which sparked his journey into car restoration and customization. He discusses memorable projects, including working on a '63 Corvette split-window and building a GTM supercar from scratch, and emphasizes the satisfaction of rebuilding something from the ground up. Marc highlights how his appreciation for process and order with cars led him to a career in construction, where similar skills apply. He reflects on how people often see cars as just a mode of transportation, while he still finds each vehicle has its own personality and story. Marc also talks about the importance of embracing and sharing your personal passions, encouraging listeners to enjoy what makes them unique. He reminds us that "long days, short years" is a reality, so it's important to be true to what you love and let it show. Episode Highlights · Marc encourages people to enjoy what they're about and not to hide their passions, even if they don't directly relate to their job. He believes we should embrace our interests and bring them into our lives. · Whether it's working on cars or working in construction, Marc values the structured process of building and creating, from breaking things down to putting them back together. The sequence and satisfaction of the work is as important as the end result. · He talks about the importance of leading with empathy, meeting people where they're at, and holding space to understand others' perspectives. For Marc, these qualities help foster better communication and connection in both work and life. · Marc notes that many people put off their passions or hobbies until retirement, which can lead to regret. He urges listeners not to wait because life moves quickly, and it's important to spend time on what makes you happy now. · He makes the point that while family and work matter, they aren't the only defining elements of who you are. Everyone has many facets, including hobbies, passions, and interests, that make up their full identity.

ClickUp scaled to $300M ARR in one of the most competitive SaaS categories in the world.In this episode, Reggie and Vitaly sit down with Chris Cunningham, Head of Social at ClickUp, to break down the SaaS growth strategy behind ClickUp's rise — from living in a startup house to becoming a category leader in the project management space.They unpack what it really takes to scale a B2B SaaS company in a saturated market: scrappy go-to-market tactics, early product-market fit lessons, unconventional hiring strategies, aggressive product development, and building content as a long-term competitive moat.You'll learn:• How ClickUp attacked a crowded SaaS market dominated by incumbents• The scrappy growth tactics that generated early enterprise deals• Startup scaling lessons from hiring, product launches, and GTM mistakes• Why modern B2B marketing strategy must include a dedicated content creator• How AI SaaS features (including ClickUp 4.0 and Super Agents) are reshaping productivity software• The balance between shipping fast and shipping polished in high-growth startupsThis conversation dives deep into SaaS startup scaling, founder-led growth, B2B content marketing, AI integration in SaaS products, and how to build a durable brand in a competitive industry.If you're a SaaS founder, B2B marketer, product leader, or growth operator trying to win in a crowded market, this episode is packed with practical lessons.Subscribe for more founder-led conversations on SaaS growth, AI in marketing, startup strategy, and building scalable marketing systems. Try Vista Social for FREE today Book a Demo Follow us on Instagram Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on Youtube

In this episode of GTM Live, Carolyn sits down with Matthew Sciannella, VP of Innovation at Refine Labs, for a candid conversation about the flaws of B2B marketing measurement and why so many teams keep fighting the same losing battles.They dig into why attribution has made a generation of marketing leaders worse at their jobs, what great demand generation actually requires (hint: it starts way upstream with product marketing), and why slapping AI onto a broken system just makes the noise louder.Episode highlights:Why attribution doesn't tell you what's actually driving pipeline and how to move toward incrementality testing insteadThe real reason win rates are so low at most companies (and why more pipeline isn't the answer)Why great product marketing is the single biggest common denominator across every high-performing demand program Matt has seenHow AI is disrupting outbound and why scaling a broken motion with AI just makes it worse fasterWhy companies with messy data are the ones struggling most to make AI work for themThe case for measuring brand spend against contribution margin instead of source or attributionWhy fundamentals (e.g. in-person, intentional outreach, real buyer research) are making a comeback in the age of AI noiseIf your pipeline dashboards aren't giving you straight answers, this episode is a good gut check on where to look first.

Why are buyers more skeptical, and what can marketers do to win them back? This episode of StrategyCast shares actionable ways to build trust, prove real value, and use AI wisely, so your brand shines even in the toughest markets! Rethink your Go-To-Market playbook and grow with confidence!And don't forget! You can crush your marketing strategy with just a few minutes a week by signing up for the StrategyCast Newsletter. You'll receive weekly bursts of marketing tips, clips, resources, and a whole lot more. Visit https://strategycast.com/ for more details.==Let's Break It Down==05:51 AI Evolution: GenAI to Autonomy07:32 "Trust Challenges in AI and GTM"12:04 "Invest Today to Scale Tomorrow"13:57 Integrated Approach for Market Succes18:10 Strategic Frameworks Drive Creativity21:13 "AI Writing: Pitfalls and Lessons"23:15 "AI as a Creative Tool"29:09 "Turn Up Marketing During Crises"31:31 "Strategy Over Budget Success"==Where You Can Find Us==Website: https://strategycast.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strategy_cast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strategycast==Leave a Review==Hey there, StrategyCast fans!If you've found our tips and tricks on marketing strategies helpful in growing your business, we'd be thrilled if you could take a moment to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback not only supports us but also helps others discover how they can elevate their business game!

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreScaling a company doesn't break because of a lack of ideas, but because instinct doesn't scale.In this episode of Move the Needle, Chris Savage (CEO & Co-Founder of Wistia) walks through the evolution from founder-driven decision-making to building a real operating system for scale.From choosing a single ICP when growth was already strong…- To installing a tri-annual planning cadence- To distributing ownership across teams- To using AI to compress execution cyclesThis is a masterclass in turning momentum into predictable growth. If you're a SaaS founder or GTM leader trying to scale without chaos, this episode is for you.

Building powerful AI workflows and teammates doesn't require a dev team or a PhD in prompt engineering — but it does require knowing where to start and how to connect the pieces.In this hands-on session, we'll show you how to go from a blank screen to a fully functional AI system using real tools, real prompts, and real business use cases. You'll get a demo of how to generate workflow and AI teammate ideas — and learn how to customize them to fit your team's exact needs.We'll also walk through how to create connected GPTs with smart prompt structures, use ⁠ @mentions ⁠ for chaining them, and show real examples.Joining us is Liza Adams, an enterprise strategy leader and former VP of Marketing with deep experience in GTM, AI transformation, and scaling AI initiatives inside global organizations. She'll share how business leaders can adopt these systems, spark innovation across teams, and lead with clarity in an AI-driven future.Resources Mentioned: AI Teammates Reference GuideHuman+AI Workflows Reference GuideThe End of Hand-offs: How AI Teammates Work TogetherInteractive Human+AI Workflow AppCase Study with Cross-functional Workflows & ResultsCase Study of Human+AI Org TransformationTemplate to create AI teammate instructionsAbout Leveraging AI The Ultimate AI Course for Business People: https://multiplai.ai/ai-course/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Multiplai_AI/ Connect with Isar Meitis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isarmeitis/ Join our Live Sessions, AI Hangouts and newsletter: https://services.multiplai.ai/events If you've enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

This Drive Thru News episode tears through a disappointing slate of Super Bowl car commercials before shifting into a broader roundup of automotive chaos - from Stellantis' $26B EV implosion and Tesla axing the Model S and X, to StopTech and Raybestos abruptly shutting down and Honda's new Prelude landing with a thud. The hosts riff on design misfires, EV fatigue, and shifting EPA rules while weaving in motorsports talk, including the dull Rolex 24, Bathurst's massive crash, and WRC scouting U.S. rally sites. They wrap with GTM project updates, track‑season safety reminders, and a grab‑bag of Florida‑man absurdity and parking‑lot disasters, all delivered with their usual humor and gearhead banter. ===== (Oo---x---oO) ===== 00:00:00 Drive-Through News #65 Kickoff 00:01:27 Olympics Banter: Speed Skating, Biathlon & Curling Controversy 00:02:47 Super Bowl Ads: Were There Any Car Commercials? 00:11:57 Best Super Bowl Car Ads of the Last 20 Years (Top 5 Countdown) 00:14:36 Stellantis' $26B EV Struggle: Charger EV, 4xe Hybrids & What Went Wrong 00:18:01 EPA Rule Swings: Stop-Start, Emissions, and the Return of Big Engines? 00:20:04 Aftermarket Shock: StopTech Stops Making Brakes (and what's next) 00:22:35 Cars on the Chopping Block: Honda Prelude Hate & Tesla S/X Discontinued 00:24:50 The Grand Tour ‘Returns': Throttle House Rumors & Why You Can't Replace the Trio 00:30:19 Legends Lost: Ed Iskenderian Tribute & Robert Duvall Remembered 00:32:35 Porsche ‘Not Dead Yet': EV Cayman/Boxster and the Toyota MR2 Clickbait 00:38:11 Thank God It's Dead: Audi's ‘Pickup Truck' Concept 00:40:50 Audi's ‘Concept C' Design Language: The Ugly EV That Won't Die 00:42:05 BMW's Electric M3 Rumors + The Infamous ‘Special Screw' Repair Nightmare 00:44:47 Season Wrap & Pop Culture Detour! 00:51:04 Ferrari's First EV ‘Luce': Toy-Like Interior, Not-Quite-Ferrari Looks 00:54:52 Are You Faster Than an Interceptor? 01:01:49 Behind the Pit Wall: IndyCar in DC, Daytona 500, and a Boring Rolex 24 01:05:54 Sim Racing Update (Assetto Corsa Evo 0.5) 01:12:00 Bathurst Crash, WRC America Rumors, and the GTM Trackside Lemons Project Update 01:14:52 Safety Gear PSA & Season Finale Thanks, Patreon, and Sponsor Shoutouts ==================== The Motoring Podcast Network : Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information. #everyonehasastory #gtmbreakfix - motoringpodcast.net More Information: Visit Our Website Become a VIP at: Patreon Online Magazine: Gran Touring Follow us on Social: Instagram

What began as a 14 year old fixing infected computers became Malwarebytes, an 800 person cybersecurity company trusted by millions of customers.On Grit, Marcin Kleczynski joins Joubin Mirzadegan to explore AI driven cyber threats, strategic reinvention, and the discipline of evolving before the market forces you to.“We've exceeded. Now, what do we do to protect individuals against the next wave of threats, which are plentiful?”Guest: Marcin Kleczynski, CEO at MalwarebytesConnect with Marcin KleczynskiX: https://x.com/mkleczynskiLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinkleczynski/Connect with JoubinX: https://x.com/JoubinmirLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joubin-mirzadegan-66186854/Email: grit@kleinerperkins.comFollow on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/kpgritFollow on X:https://x.com/KPGrit​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/

Over the course of a few days, $300 billion in market cap was wiped out from public SaaS companies. Looking at the ten most notable US publicly traded SaaS companies over the last six months, they have lost upwards of $600 billion. The public markets are signaling that the classic VC-funded SaaS model is under massive pressure to show rapid AI integration and tangible revenue growth. This episode examines the fallout of the SaaS market correction and what it means for go-to-market operators. We discuss the shift away from legacy system of record platforms toward agile, AI-native solutions that eat labor budgets. The conversation covers how to adjust your GTM strategy if you are not growing at AI rates, why cash flow is now king over growth at all costs, and how to build a resilient enterprise pipeline generation engine. Finally, we share predictions on which SaaS stocks might bounce back from the dip. Key Takeaways Companies failing to match AI-driven growth expectations are facing severe valuation resets from public markets, as AJ Bruno explains that "The argument you're hearing is AI will replace SaaS... that's the lazy argument... What AI is doing is it's compressing the time value of money." Software businesses unable to achieve hypergrowth must pivot to strict operational efficiency, with Sam Jacobs noting, "If you're generating $50 million growing 25% and you're just breaking even, I need you to either grow faster or be more profitable." Go-to-market professionals at legacy software companies have a limited opportunity to pivot their careers toward emerging technology, as Asad Zaman advises, "Right now the window is open... That window will get smaller and smaller as time grows by. So if you are not confident in your company, this is the time to make a shift and enter the new world." Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs  Host: AJ Bruno Host: Asad Zaman Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter. Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech. Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast!   Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to the SaaS Collapse 07:12 Billions Wiped From SaaS Market Caps 10:44 Compressing the Time Value of Money 14:27 Why Revenue Growth Trumps All 20:56 The Threat of AI Inference Costs 25:17 Shifting Careers to the AI World 28:21 Entering the Slow Growth Movement 35:27 Building Long Term Craft Businesses 38:29 Winning the Long Brand Game 42:03 Founder Burnout and Pivot Challenges 48:24 Managing Investor Board Expectations 52:02 Reengineering for a Platform Shift 60:57 Public SaaS Stock Rebound Picks  

In this episode, Brett Jansen, GTM and AI Advisor at brettjansen.ai, shares how leaders can move beyond treating AI as a bolt on tool and instead embed it as core infrastructure across sales, marketing, and operations. Link to upcoming March Cohort Link to 1:1 AI coaching for executives