Podcasts about Saas

My guest today is John Arnold. John is probably the most famous energy trader of all time and certainly the most successful. One of the things John talks about is cultivating the best seat in your industry – the seat with the best perspective, the most information, the best systems..  John has been closely watching China's convergence in robotics, AI, and EVs, and shares his perspective from his recent trip to the country. We talk about the state of energy markets today – the misaligned goals and incentives, the NIMBYism that prevents building in America, and what he actually thinks about the wave of nuclear energy startups that everyone seems excited about.  John is also one of the most innovative philanthropists working today, applying that same analytical rigor to diagnosing structural failures across America — in healthcare, criminal justice, education, and beyond For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Vanta. Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit vanta.com/invest.  ----- This episode is brought to you by ⁠WorkOS⁠. WorkOS is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit ⁠WorkOS.com⁠ to transform your application into an enterprise-ready solution in minutes, not months. ----- This episode is brought to you by Rogo. Rogo is an AI-powered platform that automates accounts payable workflows, enabling finance teams to process invoices faster and with greater accuracy. Learn more at Rogo.ai/invest. ----- This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ridgeline⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:43) Episode Intro (00:03:43) Learnings from John's Trip to China (00:06:28) The EV Industry in China (00:08:43) How Subsidies Create Intense Competition (00:10:54) US-China Relationship (00:12:42) The Cost of Greatness (00:14:52) Creating the Best Seat in the Market (00:19:30) Baseball Card Arbitrage (00:23:03) Trading Natural Gas Futures (00:24:59) Energy Market Making Explained (00:27:11) Why Energy is Exciting Again (00:31:14) Meeting the Increased Demand for Energy (00:32:53) Why Policy is the Biggest Threat to Progress (00:36:28) Fixing Energy Infrastructure in the US (00:39:29) Advanced Nuclear Technology (00:42:05) The Prospects of Energy Startups (00:43:44) Input Costs in Solar & Batteries (00:47:54) Geothermal Energy: The Most Exciting Sector (00:50:57) Housing Reform in the US (00:53:39) The Role of Philanthropic Foundations (00:57:00) Reforming the Criminal Justice System (01:03:48) Social Outcomes Downstream of Education (01:07:20) Misaligned Incentives in the Healthcare System (01:12:08) Journalism as a Public Good (01:14:17) The Kindest Thing

Dan Nathan interviews veteran tech investor Dan Benton about how tech investing has changed since Benton's 1991 “20 rules” at Goldman Sachs and why he's releasing new “2026 rules,” alongside launching a Substack. Benton contrasts a pre-internet, sell-side, information-advantage era with today's commoditized data, retail tools, and faster markets, arguing investors now differentiate by identifying secular themes and sticking with them. He emphasizes tech as “the market,” the need to respect the Fed, and that momentum in tech is driven by multi-year estimate trajectories, revenue acceleration, and operating leverage, with valuation often secondary until growth decelerates. They discuss stock-based compensation distorting earnings quality, rotations within AI beneficiaries, crowding and risk-off selloffs, and uncertainties around hyperscaler CapEx and OpenAI's private-market marks. The conversation covers SaaS disruption risk, Tesla and SpaceX “selling the future,” China's advantages, and why markets are faster but not smarter. Links Rules For Tech Investing (1999 Edition) Follow Dan's SubStack: substack.com/@danbenton —FOLLOW USYouTube: @RiskReversalMediaInstagram: @riskreversalmediaTwitter: @RiskReversalLinkedIn: RiskReversal Media

What if the biggest bottleneck in your commerce strategy isn't the strategy itself, but the time it takes your team to actually perform the actions to execute it?Agility requires not just having the right insights, but also the operational capacity to act on them at the speed the market demands.Today, we're going to talk about a critical bottleneck many brands face: the delay between data-driven insight and real-world execution. Commerce teams are often drowning in data but struggle with the manual, time-consuming work of implementing changes, whether it's updating product pages or optimizing media spend. This has led to a major shift, where brands are looking beyond traditional agency models and toward a new paradigm of 'agentic AI'—using automated agents to handle execution, freeing up human experts to focus on what they do best: strategy.We are here at eTail Palm Springs, and to help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Himanshu Jain, Co-Founder and Head of Product, and Bill Schneider, VP Product Marketing at CommerceIQ. About Bill Schneider and Himanshu Jain Himanshu Jain is the Cofounder and Head of Product at CommerceIQ, a Series D agentic AI company based in the Bay Area. CommerceIQ is a leader in retail technology, having raised $200M from SoftBank and Insights Partners, and serving 10 of the top 12 CPG brands globally. He builds vertical AI and autonomous agent platforms that help the world's largest consumer brands win across ecommerce and omnichannel retail. Over the past decade, he has repeatedly taken AI products from zero to product–market fit, scaling them into multi-million-dollar businesses across retail media, pricing, supply chain, and digital shelf. With deep roots in machine learning, SaaS and enterprise strategy, he operates at the intersection of advanced AI systems and measurable commercial impact. Himanshu Jain is the Cofounder and Head of Product at CommerceIQ, a Series D agentic AI company based in the Bay Area. CommerceIQ is a leader in retail technology, having raised $200M from SoftBank and Insights Partners, and serving 10 of the top 12 CPG brands globally. He builds vertical AI and autonomous agent platforms that help the world's largest consumer brands win across ecommerce and omnichannel retail. Over the past decade, he has repeatedly taken AI products from zero to product–market fit, scaling them into multi-million-dollar businesses across retail media, pricing, supply chain, and digital shelf. With deep roots in machine learning, SaaS and enterprise strategy, he operates at the intersection of advanced AI systems and measurable commercial impact. Bill Schneider and Himanshu Jain on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-schneider-b32a6a/ Resources CommerceIQ: www.commerceiq.ai The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74 Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

In this episode the hosts break down a one-year-old “digital wellness” SaaS porn-blocking app doing ~$100K in profit from a single YouTube video—and debate whether it's worth $600K or just a $30K rebuild with better marketing.Business Listing – https://flippa.com/12197961-1-porn-blocker-app-ios-windows-b2c-saas-196k-gross-161k-net-604-subs-10k-mrr-0-57-dispute-all-from-a-single-traffic-source-huge-untapped-growthWelcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9Vr

Building software is supposed to take years of coding, endless stress, and a long grind to profitability. Omar wanted to test that belief. After a decade running WebinarNinja, he set out to answer one bold question: can you build a real SaaS product in just 7 days using nothing but AI? In this episode, Omar shares his experiment to create a fully functional, ready‑to‑sell app powered entirely by AI. This is a very special kind of episode. You'll get to follow along as the process unfolded day by day, something that's never been done before on the show. Omar walks through the planning, the tools he used, the testing, and the problems he ran into along the way. You'll hear what worked, what didn't, and why clarity and focus matter more than speed. It's an inside look at an experiment designed to give you both inspiration and practical takeaways. Hit play at the top of the page and experience Omar's 7‑day AI SaaS experiment. The lessons inside could reshape how you think about building your next software idea. MBA2749 Can You Build A Profitable SaaS In 7 Days With Just AI? My Experiment With Proof!See Nicky AI in action - watch the demo on YouTube now! Guest CollaboratorChris Ashby - Telescope.design Founder of Telescope, guiding AI‑driven startups with impactful design and strategy. Tools Mentioned Leap OpenAI Stripe GitHub Cursor Wispr Flow Mux ChatGPT Windsurf Lovable Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, but expanding the audience set to include more folks. This episode is Founder Chats - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.In this episode, we are talking with Max Denevich, Co-founder and CRO of LoyaltyPlant. Max is going to share with us to road he travelled, entering into this industry, his go to market strategies, scaling across geographic region - and much, much more.QuestionsBefore we talk about products and scale, tell us a bit about your path to this point. What experiences shaped the way you think about business and leadership before LoyaltyPlant?At what point did you realise you wanted to work with complex, traditional industries rather than consumer apps or “easy” tech?Why foodtech, and specifically Quick Service Restaurants? What made you believe this industry had deep structural problems worth solving with technology?What made you decide to join LoyaltyPlant, and what potential did you see that others might have missed?You're often referred to as a co-founder today. How did the transition happen from an executive role to shaping the company's future at that level?LoyaltyPlant was close to running out of investment at one point. What were the first decisions that fundamentally changed the company's trajectory?What were the key milestones that turned LoyaltyPlant from a struggling company into a global enterprise business, from the first major client to scaling across 30 countries?You've worked across the US, UK, MENA, Europe, and CIS. What did you learn about scaling the same product across very different markets, and what absolutely doesn't translate?You built new go-to-market strategies that now generate over 90% of new sales. What did you change compared to a classic SaaS sales playbook, and why did it work in enterprise QSR?Margins are shrinking, aggregators dominate, and costs are rising. What's actually happening on the ground right now in QSR and foodtech, and how should companies adapt?Tell us about a decision you got wrong. What did it cost the business, and what did it teach you as a leader?What advice would you give founders building B2B products for traditional industries today, especially around scale, partnerships, and staying relevant?SponsorsUnblockedBraingrid.TECH DomainsMezmoLinkshttps://loyaltyplant.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/denevich/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

February 2026 was the month that AI's transformation stopped being an insider story and cascaded across groups — from developers embracing a new era of autonomous agents to Wall Street panic-selling stocks in AI's crosshairs to Washington's first real power struggle over who controls the technology. This KPMG-sponsored monthly recap puts a fine point on how the rise of agentic AI, the SaaS apocalypse, and the Anthropic-Pentagon conflict all connect as part of one sweeping shift. In the headlines: the latest on Anthropic versus the US government including Claude's reported use in the Iran strikes, and OpenAI's record $110 billion fundraise.Want to build with OpenClaw?LEARN MORE ABOUT CLAW CAMP: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://campclaw.ai/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Or for enterprises, check out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://enterpriseclaw.ai/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brought to you by:KPMG – Agentic AI is powering a potential $3 trillion productivity shift, and KPMG's new paper, Agentic AI Untangled, gives leaders a clear framework to decide whether to build, buy, or borrow—download it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.kpmg.us/Navigate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mercury - Modern banking for business and now personal accounts. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mercury.com/personal-banking⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Rackspace Technology - Build, test and scale intelligent workloads faster with Rackspace AI Launchpad - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://rackspace.com/ailaunchpad⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Blitzy - Want to accelerate enterprise software development velocity by 5x? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://blitzy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Optimizely Agents in Action - Join the virtual event (with me!) free March 4 - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.optimizely.com/insights/agents-in-action/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AssemblyAI - The best way to build Voice AI apps - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.assemblyai.com/brief⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LandfallIP - AI to Navigate the Patent Process - https://landfallip.com/Robots & Pencils - Cloud-native AI solutions that power results ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://robotsandpencils.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Agent Readiness Audit from Superintelligent - Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://besuper.ai/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠to request your company's agent readiness score.The AI Daily Brief helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI. Subscribe to the podcast version of The AI Daily Brief wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://pod.link/1680633614⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Our Newsletter is BACK: ⁠⁠⁠https://aidailybrief.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠Interested in sponsoring the show? sponsors@aidailybrief.ai

Monday has been hit harder than almost any other public SaaS company. With $1.3BN in ARR, the company is valued at just $3.8BN; a more than 60% fall since IPO. Today, Eran Zinman, Monday's CEO joins Harry Stebbings in the hotseat to walkthrough six of the biggest threats to Monday's business; what is real, what is not and what are the unknowns.  AGENDA: 05:47 Six Threats Monday Faces Today  07:04 Threat #1: Vibe Coding: Will Companies Vibe Code Everything 11:24 Threat #2: Will OpenAI and Anthropic Own the Application Layer  13:52 Threat #3: Will Agents Turn Monday and Salesforce into a Database 18:43 Why is Monday Adding 15% Headcount When Everyone is Cutting? 21:40 How Monday is Using AI to be More Efficient 27:49 What Happens to Seat Pricing? What Comes Next? 34:17 What No One Sees About Enterprise AI Adoption 37:13 How Google AI Overview Smashed 10% of our Customer Acquisition 38:49 If Bullish on Monday, Why Has Eran Not Bought More Stock… 40:38 How to Manage Internal Morale When Stock is Down 60% 44:08 Do Private Companies Have Advantages Public Companies Do Not Have 47:28 With $1.5BN in Cash, Why is Eran Not Buying More Companies… 53:30 What is the Most Offensive Bet Eran Would Like to Take? 57:13 Quickfire: Marriage, Biggest Short, Mentors  

Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ The Shift from Attention to Trust In this compelling episode, Ashleigh Vogstad, CEO of Transcends, joins Vince Menzione to discuss the tectonic shifts occurring in the global partner ecosystem. Ashleigh shares her firsthand experiences studying AI at Oxford, the rise of the “Trust Economy,” and the controversial Amazon vs. Perplexity lawsuit. They dive deep into the practicalities of becoming a “Frontier Firm,” the importance of building proprietary AI agents, and the ways Gen Z and AI-driven marketplaces are revolutionizing the buyer journey. Whether you are looking to win Microsoft Partner of the Year or navigate the demise of traditional SaaS, this conversation provides a strategic roadmap for leading through the AI revolution. Key Takeaways The economy is shifting from a focus on human attention to a foundation of verified trust. Future commerce will involve “selling to machines” as AI agents begin making purchasing decisions on behalf of humans. Microsoft is prioritizing “Frontier Firms” that integrate AI into every customer interaction and internal process. Gen Z buyers are prioritizing product value and “dupes” over traditional brand names, with 75% of buyers expected to be Gen Z by 2030. To win Partner of the Year, organizations must publicly celebrate “better together” stories with validated customer wins. Modern leaders should transition from a “growth mindset” to a “frontier mindset” to keep pace with rapid technological change. https://youtu.be/xJmd43NvfnI If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Trust Economy, Selling to Machines, Amazon vs Perplexity Lawsuit, Frontier Firm, AI Agents, Copilot Studio, Anthropic Claude, Microsoft Partner of the Year, B2B Marketplaces, Gen Z Buyer Behavior, Digital Freedom, AI Therapy, Ray Kurzweil Singularity, Substack Growth, Co-selling Partnerships, MCI Funding, Azure Accelerate, Agentic AI, Transcending Tech, Ashleigh Vogstad. Transcript Asleigh Vogstad Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: The attention economy is about selling to human beings. Now, if you look at something like the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit, the whole underlying premise is around the shift of no longer selling to humans directly, but of selling to machines. [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Ashley Waad. The CEO of transcends for this compelling discussion. Ash, welcome back to the podcasts. [00:00:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s so good to be here, Vince. Thank you. Uh, [00:00:37] Vince Menzione: so well, we’re back in Boca again and we were just here yesterday for the Ultimate Partner Executive Winter Retreat in person. [00:00:44] Vince Menzione: What a great event we had together. [00:00:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: It was phenomenal. Thank you so much for having us there and on stage and, and genuinely the community is like a family, so seeing so many familiar faces and spending some quality time was just great. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: It has really, truly become like family. It really, I’m, I’m, I’m having so much fun with this and getting to watch. [00:01:04] Vince Menzione: Not just our business grow and our community grow, but to see all of our friends and, uh, organizations like Transcends that have been with us since the beginning, since the very first ultimate partner acting even before the first ultimate partner. And, uh. We were just talking about. I’d love to catch up with what you’ve been doing. [00:01:22] Vince Menzione: Like you just came, you’ve been on a whirlwind. I mean, you’re always, every time like it’s, where’s Ash? She’s, uh, she’s on a plane again, or she’s on, she’s on the slopes. But tell us where you were just this week. [00:01:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. The week started in a snowstorm, actually transporting myself from Whistler. I didn’t know if I would make it to the airport, but then down to Silicon Valley and [00:01:45] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:01:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: Wow, that place is just inspiring and eyeopening. I mean, seeing the Nvidia campus, a MD, it’s really just other worldly and it had me reflecting on, it’s [00:02:00] Vince Menzione: not Whistler. Yeah, it’s [00:02:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: definitely not Whistler. Definitely not Whistler [00:02:05] Vince Menzione: about, [00:02:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: um, yeah, it just had me reflecting on being down there. I used to spend a lot of time in the Valley around 2017 and. [00:02:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: In this theme of AI and kind of what’s really coming, I was, I was thinking about, I had met this woman, Julia Moss Bridge, who’s a neuroscientist studying ai. She had a project called Loving Ai, and I was down there when they had borrowed Sophia, this humanoid robot from S and Robotics. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: Oh yes. Yes. [00:02:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: Really interesting. [00:02:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Sophia’s actually a citizen of Saudi. Mm-hmm. First, first robot to actually be made citizen of a country. So they had Sophia set up and the part that was just mind boggling at the time was that Sophia was hosting in real life therapy sessions with actual human beings sitting across the table. And what really struck me as. [00:02:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: Kind of just, you know, that was only eight, nine years ago. And that was esoteric. Wacky and [00:03:05] Vince Menzione: eerie. [00:03:05] Ashleigh Vogstad: Weird. [00:03:05] Vince Menzione: Eerie at the time. [00:03:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: Incredibly eerie. Yeah. I mean, a, a human getting, uh, you know, therapy sessions from a robot sitting across the table. Yeah. And it just had me thinking how far we’ve come today. In 2025, Harvard Business Review said that therapy is actually the number one use case for ai. [00:03:26] Vince Menzione: I’ve heard that. That is striking. I go back to COVID. We were having this conversation last night at at the dinner for the Ultimate Partner event, and I think that COVID allowed us to transcend, [00:03:42] Ashleigh Vogstad: mm-hmm. [00:03:42] Vince Menzione: No pun intended there, but actually accelerate where we are today, that the acceptance of AI and the acceleration, or the ability to accept change so quickly. [00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Started with COVID because we were so, so we were forced on whatever it was, March 10th I think, here in the United States to shut down everything and move to this remote life. [00:04:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm-hmm. [00:04:09] Vince Menzione: And I think we’ve been shocked by that. I think our systems have all been shocked by that. And then here comes chat GBT in November of 2022 and we’re like. [00:04:20] Vince Menzione: Shocked in some respects, but like really everyone has embraced it in such a strong way, and now we’re getting. It’s almost daily update. You know, we’re gonna talk, I know we’re gonna talk about Anthropic and some of the things that’s been happening just in this last month that are striking and changing that have a lot of organizations trying to navigate, which is what, you know, you, you help organizations do. [00:04:43] Vince Menzione: But it feels like this is happening so fast and will continue to happen so fast. And as I said yesterday, I don’t know what this world’s gonna look like by 2030. [00:04:53] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, and I think the thing is, is that nobody knows what the world is gonna look like in 2030. I’ve been reading Ray Kurz Well’s, the Singularity is nearer, so the original book, the Singularity is near and he’s known to be a very accurate predictionist on the future. [00:05:11] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. But even with someone like that, you know, there, there nobody really knows what the world is gonna look like. And when you talk about COVID. At transcends, we have a value of digital freedom. So I founded the business in 2018, which was pre COVID. I as a fully remote organization, and at the time that was, you know, more groundbreaking, but then very quickly with CI that, that became the so-called new normal. [00:05:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: But we’re always thinking about. You know, remote first doesn’t mean remote only, and I think in this tide of what you’ve talked about, technological change being more acceptable and the pace of change. One of the interesting things that we see as a go-to-market agency is that in-person events are increasing. [00:05:56] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:05:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: People want and crave the face-to-face. Just like with the ultimate partner series. [00:06:02] Vince Menzione: I felt it. So it was striking yesterday. It, it seems like it’s, again, this was event number nine for us, but to see the, um, uh, receptiveness isn’t the right term, but it was this, uh, people, the, the embracing. Of seeing each other and hugging each other and being in the same room with each other. [00:06:22] Vince Menzione: And even people that didn’t know each other, like by the, the, as the day evolved, this, uh, connection that they all seemed to have with one another during the sessions and participating, everyone actively participated in the sessions. And, um, I said this in the beginning, we’re not a Slack channel and we’re not like some post on LinkedIn. [00:06:43] Vince Menzione: Uh, we’re there, there’s no playbook that’s set today around partnerships or even go to markets and marketing that we could espouse and say, this is the playbook for the next year. Right. It’s, it’s changing so rapidly. [00:06:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: So rapidly, [00:06:57] Vince Menzione: and you’ve embraced it. And I, and what we’re gonna talk about right now, I mean, I, I, you know, you’ve embraced AI in such a strong way. [00:07:04] Vince Menzione: Um, personally and with your business, I want to, I wanna dive in here a little bit. First of all, a couple things For those of those who are listening who don’t know you, I think maybe just a moment about transcends and your role, and then I wanna dive in on how you’re thinking about ai because I know you’re doing some things personally. [00:07:22] Vince Menzione: I want you to share that with, with our listeners and viewers today. [00:07:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, great. And I just wanna comment that it was a cool moment yesterday being up on stage with yourself and Mark Monday from ServiceNow and having the audience so engaged and active and Nina Harding from Microsoft stepping up and entering the conversation. [00:07:40] Vince Menzione: So cool. [00:07:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: It just made for such a collaborative experience, which was a cool moment, but yeah. Um, so. I founded this business, transcends a go-to-market agency after being at Microsoft myself. And really our differentiation is deep strategic partnerships with hyperscalers, whether that’s AWS, Google, Microsoft, and you know, that. [00:08:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: It comes with a challenge to be on the leading edge of technology. [00:08:08] Vince Menzione: Yes, [00:08:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: it, it’s really an imperative for our business and we are an AI first firm. Microsoft talks a lot about Frontier Firm, and I’ll take a, a different kind of angle on it. You know, when I think about Frontier. I now think about it as instead of the growth mindset, I now think about a frontier mindset. [00:08:28] Vince Menzione: Frontier mindset. You have to change my principles. [00:08:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, maybe, like you said, the world is changing so rapidly. Yeah, it’s [00:08:36] Vince Menzione: changing rapidly. [00:08:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: And what a frontier mindset means is that as we’re approaching work for our clients, we are thinking about AI innovation in every single customer. Interaction, customer innovation. [00:08:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: So today we’re building AI agents into much of the work that we’re delivering for clients. And as a business owner and leader, I’ve been challenged to also think critically around how I’m choosing to run the company. And right now we’re going through a huge overhaul of where we have data sitting in silos and different applications. [00:09:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yep. And getting that into one place with one view so we can start layering on more insight. AI innovation. [00:09:17] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And data’s such an critical part, part of this, as we, we talked about yesterday. But you know, even the, what you said, which is, would, would’ve been striking a year ago to say, we’re an AI first, uh, agency isn’t as striking anymore. [00:09:32] Vince Menzione: Uh, we heard Nina when we were having this conversation on stage yesterday, say that it’s an imperative at Microsoft that the agencies that they choose to work with, the third party vendors that they work with have to be an AI first organization. I have to be a frontier firm, and so I’m a, I am sensitive to the word frontier firm. [00:09:53] Vince Menzione: I understand why Microsoft uses it and I understand the value of what we used to call, you know, customer zero or back in the day we used to say eating your own dog food, but essentially being an organization that has leaned in, in a way, and with ai. Even more so, so important to do it. So tell us, I know you’ve done some things personally as well, but tell, tell us what you’ve done with the organization. [00:10:18] Vince Menzione: Uh, you talked about data and making data available and having, having a true data state as opposed to silos of data, but then you also made some personal investments and sacrifices. I would say. [00:10:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. [00:10:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah. In terms of what you’re doing around ai, [00:10:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: so I mean, let’s start on the personal side. I’m the CEO of my organization, and you can read in books or news articles that it is critical for AI transformation to start at the C-suite and specifically in the CEO seat. [00:10:46] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:10:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: And that really. Landed for me and so I’m personally leading in About two weeks ago, I built an agent, just end-to-end on my own, got into copilot studio. Wow. Got comfortable with the interface. You know, I was clunky moving around in there at first, chose my model. You know, I went with one of the anthropic Claude models for this particular project and built up an agent that can deliver executive communications like. [00:11:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Thought leadership blogs, uh, LinkedIn posts, but in a particular human being’s voice by ingesting things like their social profiles, their SharePoint sites, where they live and work. And it has been so surprising doing an ab test between just what a chat GBT or a copilot could produce. [00:11:32] Yeah. [00:11:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: In comparison with the authenticity of the voice coming from the agent. [00:11:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, it was just a really cool experience to roll up the sleeves and get in there. But also I think the, the investment that you’re referring to is, I made a big decision to return to school and uh, got accepted to go to Oxford. [00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Wow. [00:11:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I’m studying artificial intelligence there. [00:11:54] Vince Menzione: That is incredible. That is incredible. [00:11:57] Vince Menzione: Oxford, uh, we’ve heard of that school before here in the United States. [00:12:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, it’s been a really great experience. It’s in person, so I’m traveling there about every 60 to 90 days and living on campus. I mean, really, Oxford isn’t. Formally a campus, it’s sort of a, a city and a university all, all ruled into one and the experience has been really powerful. [00:12:21] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes. One of the things I wanted to get outta the program was a more global perspective, and it’s been fascinating to me that about half the faculty so far, or or professors, guest lecturers that have been coming into the program have been from China or very direct experience working in the Chinese market. [00:12:38] Vince Menzione: That is fascinating. [00:12:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s been a completely different view. Or for example, you know, really digging into some of the legal cases that are driving precedence for how AI is interacting with corporations. [00:12:51] Vince Menzione: Mm. [00:12:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: One of the big ones for me has been looking at Amazon versus p perplexity. This is still a live case that’s happening right now. [00:12:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: And you know, I think it was Forbes magazine that the headline was the End of Commerce for this case because it’s really about. How human beings are being replaced with machines and hearing some of the world’s leading thinkers, leading AI researchers on these topics has just been really expansive. [00:13:19] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. [00:13:20] Vince Menzione: I mean, it’s, this started a couple years ago with, uh, Hollywood, in fact. Suing the industry or suing the technology companies with regards to, uh, employment, right? Mm-hmm. About the, the, uh, copyright infringement and what’s gonna happen in the entertainment industry. And I think that was just a one very small example. [00:13:40] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, voice people think about DeepFakes. Yeah. And they think about video, but actually voice is a big issue. And you look at the, um, you know, the what happened between Scarlett Johansson and her voice in her, and then open AI rolling out a voice that sounded identical. Sounds like her. [00:13:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: To Scarlett Johansen and, and where that went. [00:14:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s, it, this is a new ground for, for everybody that we’re going through right now. [00:14:07] Vince Menzione: It is. We can dive and go in so many different directions, but let’s talk about marketing and advertising since that’s kind of. Transcends core, and a lot of the people that watch and listen to us are in the partnership world. [00:14:22] Vince Menzione: They’re leading organizations, they own organizations, the the chief executives or CVPs of organizations. Let’s talk about advertising and where that’s going. [00:14:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, great. [00:14:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:14:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, uh, I love Marshall McCluen. He’s a Canadian theor, uh, media theorist, and in 1964, he very famously said, the medium is the message. [00:14:43] Ashleigh Vogstad: And what that really means when you peel back the layers is that every type of communication medium has these inherent biases. And I think what we’re experiencing right now is this new medium of artificial intelligence, and I’m really interested in exploring what that means for the media world. So. If I gonna take you back to 1997, there’s this really famous, the Innovator’s Dilemma. [00:15:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes. Kind of a classic business 1 0 1 type book by Clayton Christensen. Yes. And he talks about this theory of disruption where new technologies, emerging technologies start at the low end of the market. They gain this momentum and they eventually displace incumbents. And you know, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere. [00:15:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And Microsoft was a good example of this at that time. [00:15:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: Def, [00:15:32] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:15:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: All the big players. All the big players. I mean, Google go for search as well, right? So that’s one of the classic examples. And so. If we look at storytelling technology, you have things like chat, GBT and Sora entering the scene. And in the beginning, you know, they’re producing a shitty first draft. [00:15:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, you know, it’s things like post-apocalyptic dogs with five finger human beings. Yeah. Things like this. But, you know, and they really lacked emotional resonance. But as we all know. That’s not the case anymore. No, it’s [00:16:05] Vince Menzione: not. [00:16:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: AI is increasingly producing content that is very powerful and is starting to resonate with people. [00:16:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, I’m definitely not a neuroscientist, but if we, we look into the neuroscience, it’s your cortical sal circuit that. Kind of is responsible for pattern recognition and it compares what you’re seeing in the real world with what you expect to see. So when you take this into a space of advertising, you know, if there’s an ad that is AI generated, that is just weird and kind of. [00:16:38] Ashleigh Vogstad: Tweaking for you. [00:16:39] Vince Menzione: Like that robot we were talking about earlier, [00:16:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: like the robot we were Exactly, yeah. Like Sophia, you enter what psychologists call the uncanny valley, so it’s like what you’re looking at isn’t exactly what you’re expecting to see and the Spidey sense is, is tweaking. You know, that’s a low place of emotional resonance. [00:16:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: This world is changing really, really quickly and we’re seeing AI generated media make huge impacts in the market Now, tools like Luma Dream Machine, I mean, it’s incredible what they can achieve today. [00:17:11] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. We see it in, you know, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. That’s sort of the world of our business community, and you can very easily detect when someone is doing a post. [00:17:22] Vince Menzione: Or they’re writing an art, whatever they’re doing. Right. Some type of draft of something. Uh, and you can tell when it’s ai, I mean, it’s so easy to tell, and even people are generating reports and claiming that their research papers or studies or whatever they call them, uh, and it’s AI generated and it’s just the authenticity isn’t there. [00:17:39] Vince Menzione: The, the sense that this is real. That it can be trusted is not there. And I think trust is what we’re talking about here too, as well. [00:17:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, let’s go to authenticity ’cause that’s super important. Yeah. And I know a lot of your listeners, you come from the hyperscaler world of partnerships. You need to have that differentiated, better together story. [00:17:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. It’s really important to have an authentic voice in market. And I think about that also in terms of platforms and channels. We’re seeing a decrease in certain major social media platforms, and yet Substack spiked 48% in monthly active users last month. [00:18:15] Vince Menzione: That’s [00:18:16] fascinating. [00:18:16] Ashleigh Vogstad: Um, you know, and I think that one of the reasons is it’s viewed as a more authentic channel where you’re getting thought leadership from people that you’re, you know, genuinely interested in hearing their, their points of view. [00:18:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I think that’s really an important piece in here. [00:18:31] Vince Menzione: Yeah, you mentioned this yesterday and you had me thinking about it as well because we have used LinkedIn for everything internally, our newsletter, which has been around for six or seven years now. But that Substack is really, and I go to Substack too, to, if I really wanna dig in on a topic. [00:18:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm. [00:18:47] Vince Menzione: And there’s a particular author that I like their point of view, I’ll follow, I’ll follow them on Substack. [00:18:53] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, and this comes, maybe brings us around to who is the buyer and who is the audience, and who do we need to be thinking about when we’re designing sales and marketing programs. And really we’re, we’re shifting into the place of the Gen Z buyer by 20 30, 70 5% of buyers are gonna be Gen Z. [00:19:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re gonna control 12 trillion in. Spend [00:19:16] Vince Menzione: by 2030. ’cause we, we’ve been, we’ve been saying that the millennial is the new buyer the last three years. I think Jay said it right here at this stage. [00:19:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm. [00:19:24] Vince Menzione: Um, so now it’s Gen Z. [00:19:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: And they’re buying online. Yeah, they’re buying in marketplaces. Yeah. So a stat recently was that roughly half of them made purchases on the social platforms of YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok in the last month. [00:19:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, that buyer behavior of being inside. Social type application and directly making a purchase. And I think in the B2B world, we need to take lessons from here and start thinking more front and center than we even have been around marketplaces. I mean, part of my reason for being in Silicon Valley this week was to celebrate a $12 million transaction that happened via Marketplace and two years ago that would’ve been a huge deal. [00:20:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: Huge, [00:20:07] Vince Menzione: huge. [00:20:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: And, and it still is a really big deal, but these things are becoming. More and more common experiences. Very much so. We need to be there and in that conversation. [00:20:16] Vince Menzione: So how are you thinking about it? How are you directing your clients to behave or act around it? What are you, what are you doing exactly that we could take to this community perhaps and share with them. [00:20:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’ll bring it back to the authenticity piece because you need to have a product that delivers value first and foremost. There is, there is no substitution for that. Yeah, and what I would say is. One of my professors at Oxford, Eric Zow, he has this theory that I’m really digging into and finding very fascinating, which is that for the last several decades we’ve been in the attention economy, and that’s shifting to the trust economy. [00:20:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: Now the attention economy is about selling to human beings. Yeah. It’s about the, the business model is essentially that you need human being eyeballs on lists of recommendation links. Yeah. Whether that’s from Google or from, you know, searching, shopping on Amazon, you get this list of recommendation links and the economic engine that drives that business model is advertising. [00:21:19] Ashleigh Vogstad: Now, if you look at something like the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit, the whole underlying premise is around the shift of no longer selling to humans directly, but of selling to machines, or in other words, agents who are making purchases, s on behalf on your behalf. And an agent isn’t going to be razzle dazzled by some inauthentic story. [00:21:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:21:44] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re gonna be looking for third party validation on Exactly. You know, they need to be sure that they’re making the right decision. [00:21:51] Vince Menzione: They’re gonna look at surveys, they’re gonna look at customer comments. Like if I went through my Amazon site and I was looking to see what people said about the purchase or the product and specifically Exactly. [00:22:01] Vince Menzione: The agent’s gonna do this on my behalf, is what you’re saying. [00:22:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: This is what I’m saying. Yeah. And, and. I believe that to layer on top of, you know, Eric Z’s philosophy, I’ve been thinking about this in terms of the hyperscaler world, and I think that this is the time to lean into co-selling partnerships. [00:22:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, because being third party validated by somebody like AWS Microsoft and having all that co-sell data, what are your recent wins? Yes, that’s really high integrity, trusted data source for an agent to make a purchasing decision, and marketplaces are a key part of that. [00:22:35] Vince Menzione: So we’ll move from AI will take a, a more active role in the marketplace. [00:22:40] Ashleigh Vogstad: I definitely believe so. [00:22:42] Vince Menzione: Which makes total sense. I, you know, we’ve been doing this for nine or 10 years now, and when I was at Microsoft, we started co-selling. In fact, it was, uh, Aaron Feiger was up on stage yesterday talking about it. Right? January of 2016, co-selling began. [00:22:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm. [00:22:56] Vince Menzione: And there were only a few companies doing it. [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: Right. So she worked with one of the very first ones that were doing it. Uh, the challenge we have today is there are tens of thousands of partner organizations in the marketplace that are all trying to get the attention of the Microsoft sellers. Hmm. As, or the Google sellers or the AWS sellers and tell their story. [00:23:19] Vince Menzione: And a seller only has so many minutes in a day, they have a quota that they have to hit. These quotas are tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars of annual quota of cloud consumption. And I wanna sell my $50,000 widget, whatever it is. Yeah. Right. And I, I don’t understand why I’m not getting a callback. [00:23:38] Vince Menzione: And this, this is the dilemma we’ve faced because of, because of this, uh, scarcity of time and this over overwhelming of tech, you know. Tech, tech buyers trying to make this all happen, so now the AI can come in and help me solve for it as a seller, right? [00:23:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: The AI is definitely acting as an interface to make recommendations to field sellers in different organizations and. [00:24:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: To, to kind of take this on a, a tangent. Dupes. So a dupe. I know people of my generation, we’d think about this like a knockoff Right. You know, a knockoff handbag. [00:24:15] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:24:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Dupes have exploded. [00:24:16] Vince Menzione: Fake. Fake Rolexes. [00:24:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: Exactly. The fake Rolex for sure. And I think it was in December, P WC rolled out a survey. 81% of Gen Z were planning to purchase a dupe this holiday season. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: That’s wild. [00:24:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: Dupes can be, you know, we gave luxury, good examples, but Louis [00:24:34] Vince Menzione: Vuitton and yeah. So, [00:24:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: but furniture, these sorts of things. And the important takeaway here for tech is the same principle will land, is that people are looking for value out of a product, not necessarily a name brand. AI is accelerating this whole process, and agents are gonna be looking at the same thing. [00:24:56] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re looking for that authenticity in terms of the actual product value. So, you know, beware there’s lots of disruption happening in the market right now with this dupe mentality, which is actually a cultural shift talking about I appreciate value over a superficial. Brand name. In some cases, there’s also a, a small contrary trend where certain luxury goods are rising because yes, things are never that simple. [00:25:22] Vince Menzione: So you work with a lot of these tech companies, a lot of SaaS companies, is we, we call them ISVs, we also call them, uh, software development companies. Now we keep changing these acronyms around. Uh, there’s been a lot of, uh, consternation in that segment, I would say, around ai. Right, because a lot of them are getting told that they’ll be outta business in a few years. [00:25:43] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. I think Satya Nadella famously said this last year that SAS will go away. Right? He’s predicting the demise. How do you help some of these organizations to differentiate? And there’s some of these are huge value organizations. We have have them in the room with us, ServiceNow and Veeam and Adobe. [00:26:01] Vince Menzione: Um, how do you help them achieve their results? ’cause that’s what you, you know, your organization is really helping these organizations to achieve their pinnacle as a partner. What do you, what do you say to them now and how do you help them through this time? [00:26:16] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’m on the side of the fence that I really can’t see an organization ripping out something like Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow. [00:26:24] Vince Menzione: Agreed. [00:26:24] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean that the amount of change management and. The extent to which these, these platforms are embedded, actually running and operating organizations. I personally, if, if we’re calling those companies, SaaS companies, I don’t agree that that layer is gonna go away. I mean, we’re seeing these organizations lean into AI in a huge way to borrow Microsofts. [00:26:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: Term, you know, they’re all becoming frontier firms. [00:26:54] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:26:54] Ashleigh Vogstad: So where I would go to, to answer that question, we do work with many, you know, organizations on that caliber, on things like their marketplace strategy on how to light up the fields of different hyperscalers. It really does come down to things like having a strong drumbeat with the Microsoft field, celebrating your win stories. [00:27:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Maybe that’s where I’ll land as Please do the marketer, because it sounds so simple, and I don’t know why we kind of continue to come back to this, but we’re talking about that third party validation and really, um, in order to have that, like what the hyperscalers want is you jointly celebrating success. [00:27:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: Here’s the kicker. Publicly. [00:27:38] Vince Menzione: Publicly, [00:27:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: you know, you need a customer story on your website, a press release that contains a quote from your customer. Ideally, also a quote from an executive at one of the hyperscalers. Like, actually lean in to live the value of your better together story. And when you do that, when you, when it comes around to partner of the year time, and we talk to you about, okay, what client stories are we gonna feature? [00:28:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: We’re even gonna know because when we Google you, we can see the public press of the joint wins that you’ve been celebrating. And I can tell you that that is a huge indicator on whether or not you’re well-placed to be in the 4% of partners who actually win Partner of the Year award’s. [00:28:20] Vince Menzione: Fascinating to me. [00:28:21] Vince Menzione: ’cause to me it would feel like table stakes maybe ’cause where we sit is ultimate partner and where this room sits with all the top partners that I just assume that everybody follows that. That, that guidance. [00:28:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm. [00:28:34] Vince Menzione: And so this is really impactful and I want to get here because I know you spent a lot of time here and we’ve talked about it before, but I think the partner of the year awards, when we first met many years ago, that was a you, you’ve expanded the business, but that’s still a core mission and and value that you bring to the community and to the partner ecosystem is helping them through this process. [00:28:55] Vince Menzione: So I know that that’s gonna be coming up soon, so I thought maybe we’d spend a couple moments on that. [00:29:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: Partner of the Year awards, regardless of which partner, I mean, Salesforce has their own awards there. There’s more and more award programs coming out, and they’re a great way to celebrate the incredible work that your organization has done. [00:29:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: Jay McBain is brilliant on this. He’ll talk a lot about the increase in valuation. Yeah. The, the increase in stock valuation or the likelihood that if you’re looking to be acquired, that you’re acquired within 12 months of a partner of the year win it. It’s really impressive. There is strong business value there. [00:29:33] Vince Menzione: He like, he likes, he likes to tell the story of that when the award is handed to them and they go back into the audience, that the private equity people are all over them right then and there and making offers. I mean, that’s the visual that you get [00:29:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: and it’s very powerful. Yeah. Very powerful. It’s very powerful and it, it can make it worthwhile to invest in the process, but don’t invest in the process if you haven’t been investing in the process for the 12 months. [00:29:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: Prior, [00:29:58] Vince Menzione: exactly. [00:29:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: The Microsoft field or you we’re talking about Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. They need to know about your win that that needs to be top of mind for them. Yeah. How much Azure revenue is it driving? Was it a huge marketplace? Build sales and. You know, one of the questions I get asked a ton, everybody wants to know how do we get money out of the hyperscalers? [00:30:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: How do I get access to marketing development funds or all these different programs? Yeah. You know, at Microsoft, some of these programs are like EI and customer investment funds or Azure Accelerate, you know, and there’s millions and millions and millions of dollars in these, these buckets of funds, but. [00:30:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: An interesting point of view is that it’s actually a scorecard metric for many people at Microsoft who have partnership roles for you to be drawing down those funds. [00:30:45] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:30:45] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, your interests are actually aligned here, and so again, when it comes to Partner of the Year awards, how much money have you pulled down? [00:30:54] Ashleigh Vogstad: How much have you been an activating partner of key Microsoft programs that they’re pushing? What are you doing with marketplace rewards? How are you resing? Those into your business. These are the types of things that you really wanna be thinking about. Sitting it. You know, this time of year we probably will get the awards were likely be due in July. [00:31:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: They haven’t officially announced timelines, but you’ve got a few months to start moving these pieces into place. [00:31:18] Vince Menzione: And there are quite a few of them. And to your point, Nina, when she was up on stage here yesterday, there were at least 10 or 12 award. Uh. Funding categories that were on her, that were on her slide. [00:31:31] Vince Menzione: Her partner, her partner slide. So, [00:31:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: and what great looks like for a partner is that you understand your end-to-end funnel as it is mapped to Microsoft’s SEM model, the Microsoft customer Engagement model. Mm-hmm. The first stage there, inspire and design. That’s really the marketing space of lead generation. [00:31:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: So how are you generating leads with webinars, in-person, event activations, digital campaigns, and then at the very end, in the fifth column, you have the Microsoft outcomes that you’re driving. Yes. Whether that’s Azure consumed revenue, marketplace build sales, co-pilot, monthly active usage, these sorts of things. [00:32:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: And in each of those SEM swim lanes. There’s Microsoft funding associated to it. And that’s one of the things that Nina Harding was showing yesterday. When and where does it make sense to make requests for EA funds versus Azure accelerate the MCI funding? There’s different workshop proof of concept funding, and those all fall at specific stages in that EM model. [00:32:33] Vince Menzione: And what you’re also pointing out in this conversation is that the co the partners need to understand that mm, they need to understand MM. We talked about it years ago. I’ve had, haven’t had anybody on stage recently talk about m You could probably take us through that if we wanted to devote some time here, uh, and then understand all of those categories and how to access those funds. [00:32:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, it’s critical and. The number one place we point partners, if you want a quick overview of what that looks like is to Microsoft’s FY 26 solution playbooks. Nice. They’re available on the web for download. There’s, well, there used to be three, but they’ve added a few agen being, being one. So, so there’s a handful of, they had [00:33:11] Vince Menzione: simplified it, now they’re, now they’re expanding it back again. [00:33:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, exactly. I think there’s now a breakout for security as well. Yes. So take a look at those playbooks. It will map programs and incentives very specifically to each solution area and to each sales play that are gonna be available to you. And then we’re always happy to guide people through the details [00:33:32] Vince Menzione: as well. [00:33:32] Vince Menzione: I love that. I love that. And reach out to the. Ashley is just amazing at this process. I’ve, I’ve watched her for years now, work with some of the top, what have become the pinnacle partners of Microsoft and with the award season coming up. So we wanna make sure we have a plug there. But I also wanna talk about like, podcasts with you. [00:33:50] Vince Menzione: Um, you’ve been on this podcast multiple times, been in the studio before doing this, and I understand you have your own podcast now. So tell us about that. [00:33:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, Vince, I just wanna say. As a friend and a mentor. You’ve been so inspiring. Thank you. And I think from years ago when we met, there was this seed in my brain of, you know, I, I should really get out there. [00:34:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: And you talk a lot about growth mindset and fear setting is, is one of Tim Ferriss’s terms? Yes. And models. [00:34:21] Vince Menzione: I love Tim Ferris. I’ve been, been a fan of his for 10 years now. So that’s settled. We all got started with this. Sorry. Sorry, I [00:34:26] Ashleigh Vogstad: interrupt. No, no, not at all. [00:34:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:34:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: And. I think it’s just been, it’s been back there. [00:34:31] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. That I’m really passionate around having voice is how I think about it. And as a marketing agency, we’re really amplifying the voice, um, or helping companies to find their voice, particularly in hyperscaler partnerships. And what better way to assist, you know, authentically the amazing people in our network, in our community and our clients than with our own channel where we can celebrate their stories and success? [00:35:00] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:35:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: So the podcast is called Transcending Tech. It’s about [00:35:06] Vince Menzione: very cool transcending tech. Just so you don’t [00:35:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: transcending tech. [00:35:08] Vince Menzione: It’s out there now. [00:35:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: It, we just released our first episode. Okay. I think two days ago. [00:35:13] Vince Menzione: So by the time we’re live, yes. We’ll, we’ll be able to access it. Good. [00:35:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: You will be able to access it. [00:35:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: The first episode is with Alyssa Fit. Patrick from Elastic. [00:35:21] Vince Menzione: Oh my goodness. [00:35:22] Ashleigh Vogstad: And the concept of the podcast, it’s long form and it’s really about getting to the people behind the platforms. [00:35:29] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:35:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: And to the stories that transcend technology. So we’re here to get to know the human beings behind. Agents. [00:35:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:35:38] Ashleigh Vogstad: And taking the time to, to go in deep and really explore that. [00:35:43] Vince Menzione: So I am excited to see all the developments here with the, with the podcast. And you’re gonna be joining us again. You were just here, you in Boca. But you’ll be joining us again in Bellevue. Not too far a little bit. Closer ride or travel, uh, for you to come to Bellevue. [00:35:57] Vince Menzione: We’re gonna be hosting the first ultimate partner live, which is our larger events in this beautiful facility, this new Intercontinental hotel, which is fabulous. And, uh, you’re gonna be taking a more active role. Your leadership around AI is. Palpable and we’re gonna love to have you on stage and talking through some of the changes. [00:36:17] Vince Menzione: I, I suspect by the time we get to Bellevue we’ll have a lot more to talk about. That hasn’t even happened yet. [00:36:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, I’m really excited. I’ll have been through my next cohort at at Oxford, kind of coming out hot from there back to the Pacific Northwest, and really excited to just share the learnings and Awesome. [00:36:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: Genuinely. It’s also helping me in my own research, really formulate particularly around the role of ag agentic AI in hyperscaler partnerships. [00:36:43] Vince Menzione: That’s so cool. And then what I’ll say is this, and I don’t know, we on the space perspective, and I’ll, the team will probably hang me for this because we haven’t done it yet, but if you wanna bring the podcast along with you, there might be, we’ll see if we can find an extra room for you to set up. [00:36:58] Vince Menzione: If you wanna do some interviews while you’re. In, at the event. So [00:37:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: you’re so generous, Vince. [00:37:03] Vince Menzione: That’s [00:37:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: amazing. [00:37:04] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Again, I can’t say for certainty yet, but, uh, let’s see, let’s see what happens with that. So, uh, let, let’s, uh, you know, I always, we, we have known each other for years and I just assume everybody knows this amazing Ashley sda. [00:37:19] Vince Menzione: But, um, we always, I like to ask this question because it helps us kind of dig in a little bit about you personally. And it’s my favorite question. I ask all my guests this question now, and it’s, um, you’re hosting a dinner party, Ashley, you are, pick a pace, place, you wanna have this dinner. We could talk about parts of the world. [00:37:36] Vince Menzione: You’ve traveled all extensively. Uh, and you can invite any three people, guests from the present. Or the past to this amazing dinner party you’re throwing. Whom would you invite and why? [00:37:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s a beautiful question, Vince and. Instantly I go to a place in terms of the location, since you asked that part, which was surprising. [00:38:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: I, I like that is my home. I, I love where I live up in Whistler, Canada and [00:38:08] Vince Menzione: I hear it’s beautiful. I haven’t been yet, [00:38:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: it’s so gorgeous and it’s, it’s my own sanctuary. You know, I live on a plane 75% of the time and coming back to that place is really grounding for me. Yes. So, so I would love to have it at, at my home and to invite. [00:38:24] Ashleigh Vogstad: Pippa Malrin would be one. She, Pippa [00:38:26] Vince Menzione: Malrin. [00:38:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. She’s sure. I get an advisor to the White House for many administrations. Okay. She’s an economist and she just has really interesting perspective on geopolitics. Uh, I follow her on Substack ’cause she’s a big substack. Okay, now [00:38:41] Vince Menzione: I need to look. This is awesome. [00:38:42] Vince Menzione: The [00:38:43] Ashleigh Vogstad: mal, she’s fantastic. I would say Dr. Lisa Sue, the CEO, Dr. Lisa of a md. [00:38:49] Vince Menzione: Okay. Yes, yes. I know a little bit about her. [00:38:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: So she was one of Time Mag, I think she was the only woman in Time Magazine’s, group of people of the year, which was basically this AI cohort in including, you know, the Elon Musks of the world. [00:39:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, it’s just so impressive what she’s doing with leadership in a MD. I don’t think it’s as public as. Anybody else who is on the cover of that magazine, but it’s incredibly powerful. [00:39:14] Vince Menzione: Yeah, they’ve made a com uh, turnaround’s probably not the right word, but it seems like they’ve made a tremendous, uh, gains turnaround probably in the last few years. [00:39:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: I would say that many would say turnaround. And then lastly is Dr. Fefe Lee, who. For those in the AI space, particularly AI research space. I mean, she’s arguably number one. Um, she’s leading at Stanford currently. [00:39:37] Vince Menzione: Wow. This is gonna be a heady conversation, but you know, I love conversations. So if you don’t mind, maybe I’ll bring dessert and come, come in for a few moments, maybe do some podcast interviews there. [00:39:48] Vince Menzione: How’s that? [00:39:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: That sounds absolutely perfect, Vince, [00:39:50] Vince Menzione: so, so good. So good to have you here today. So great. Good to have you in the studio again, and, uh, excited for transcends and all the great work you’re doing. Um. This time with ai. I think you, uh, we talked about this a little bit last night. I think you’ve made some really wise, personal and professional decisions about how to lead and how to take this forward and not kind of rest on your laurels, which you see so many organizations do People fear change [00:40:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: Hmm. [00:40:18] Vince Menzione: And you embrace it, which is just, it’s astounding to me that you do that and, um. I look forward to working with you in the future and for years and years to come. So I will ask you one more question though, because we are still at the precipice of these tectonic shifts and we’re still early in 2026. And so for our listeners and our viewers today, what would be the one thing you would tell them that they need to go do now that possibly they haven’t done yet as they prepare for 2026 and beyond? [00:40:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: The generic phrase would be, be curious, but if we want an action, it would be go build an agent. [00:40:59] Vince Menzione: Go build an agent [00:41:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: if, if you haven’t already. Yeah. And, and I’m, yeah. Speaking hopefully to like a business audience, you know, to, to anyone. Yeah. Really, um, find something that is interesting that you’re passionate about. [00:41:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: A, a use case that it doesn’t have to be some big thing. It could be quite mundane, but just something that’s gonna help you in your role. It’s, you know, what is creativity is an interesting question, and I can tell you that sitting down and hands-on keys and actually creating something is, is a beautiful, powerful experience. [00:41:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Awesome. All right. We’re all gonna go create agents this weekend, so thank you for listening. Thank you for viewing the Ultimate Guide to partnering on our YouTube channel, ultimate Partner, and on each end of your platforms at the Ultimate Guide to partnering. Thank you for being with us and supporting us all these years. [00:41:50] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

Alex Grant  

In this news-style episode, Simon and Dan break down Citrini Research’s The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis—a “note from the future” dated June 30, 2028 that frames the most bullish AI adoption path as a surprisingly bearish outcome for the real economy. They walk through the core feedback loop: companies deploy AI to boost productivity and margins, layoffs rise (especially in white-collar roles), consumer spending weakens, and the cycle reinforces itself—creating what the piece calls “ghost GDP,” where productivity climbs but wages and demand don’t keep up. From there, the duo digs into the sectors Citrini argues get hit first and hardest: SaaS (seat contraction + customers using AI as renewal leverage), the intermediation layer (agents shopping travel, subscriptions, insurance, delivery, and more), and even payment rails as AI agents chase lower-cost settlement via stablecoins. They also connect the dots to private credit and insurance flywheels—where mark-to-model portfolios can look stable until forced selling and capital needs expose stress—and what rising unemployment could mean for housing in once “prime” white-collar markets. Tickers discussed: V, MA, AXP, DFS, PYPL, AMZN, WMT, EXPE, UBER, DASH, SHOP, GOOGL, PLTR, TRI, OWL, APO, BN, KKR, CRM, ADBE, AIG Citrini research report Subscribe to our Our New Youtube Channel! Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Our New Youtube Channel! Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is SaaS dead — or just getting repriced? We break down the viral “SaaS apocalypse” thesis, the 2028 AI doom scenario, and Block's 40% layoffs. Are AI agents about to replace CRMs, workflows, and entire jobs?Join the premium Skippy and Doogles fan club. You can also get more details about the show at skippydoogles.com, show notes on our Substack, and send comments or questions to skippydoogles@gmail.com.

Is the stock market topping — or just catching its breath? This week, equity markets face a triple threat: an Iranian strike rattling geopolitical risk assets, an Anthropic AI capability announcement that hammered IBM, CrowdStrike, financials, and SaaS stocks, and a technical picture showing the S&P 500 slipping below both its 20- and 50-day moving averages. Lance Roberts breaks down the bull and bear case in full. Hosted by RIA Advisors Chief Investment Strategist, Lance Roberts, CIO Produced by Brent Clanton, Executive Producer Rate us on Google: https://bit.ly/4b9JtEo 0:00 - INTRO 1:05 - Market Over Reaction to Iran Hits? 6:54 - The Potential for Building a Market Topping 13:27 - Impact of Oil Prices on Inflation 18:11 - The Energy Stocks Heat Map 20:40 - The Iran Situation 23:03 - Gauging the Risk 24:56 - The Bearish Scenario 29:23 - The Bullish Scenario 37:04 - What We're Doing Now 39:08 - Be Cautious With Positioning 42:12 - Coming Attractions ------- Watch Today's Full Video on our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/live/m3M6saceH5g?feature=share ------- Watch our previous show, "Cut Your Medicare Bill in 2026 | IRMAA Appeal Secrets" here: https://youtube.com/live/dO3QPhf0rEs?feature=share -------- The latest installment of our new feature, Before the Bell, "Will Markets Hold 100-DMA?" is here: https://youtu.be/h0iV2DpbEq4 ------- Download Lance's Latest e-book, "Laws of Money & Wealth:"https://realinvestmentadvice.com/ria-e-guide-library/ -------- SUBSCRIBE to The Real Investment Show here: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheRealInvestmentShow -------- Visit our Site: https://www.realinvestmentadvice.com Contact Us: 1-855-RIA-PLAN -------- Subscribe to SimpleVisor: https://www.simplevisor.com/register-new -------- Connect with us on social: https://twitter.com/RealInvAdvice https://twitter.com/LanceRoberts https://www.facebook.com/RealInvestmentAdvice/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/realinvestmentadvice/ #PreMarket #StockMarketToday #MarketAnalysis #CrudeOil #BondMarket #StockMarket2026 #MarketTop #SP500Analysis #IranGeopolitics #AIStocks

In this episode, Ben and Jay discuss a whirlwind week of announcements in the tech industry, focusing on AMD's partnership with Meta, NVIDIA's impressive quarterly performance, and OpenAI's significant funding round. They explore the implications of these developments for the semiconductor market, the rise of AI agents, and the future of SaaS. The conversation highlights the importance of profitability, strategic partnerships, and the evolving competitive landscape in the tech sector.

In this episode, Jack Forehand and Kai Wu break down the viral “AI doom loop” article that sparked debate across Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and even the Federal Reserve. They walk through the core thesis that artificial intelligence could trigger a non-cyclical economic disruption, separating signal from noise and exploring what it could mean for software stocks, labor markets, productivity, wealth inequality, and long-term investing. Rather than reacting emotionally, they analyze the mechanics step by step, asking whether AI is more likely to replace workers or amplify them, how fast adoption can realistically happen, and what investors should be watching right now.Main topics covered:The core thesis behind the AI doom loop scenario and why it went viralIs AI a substitute for human labor or a productivity multiplierPeople times productivity as a framework for understanding economic growthWhy we are not yet seeing major AI disruption in labor or productivity dataSoftware stocks, margin compression, and the risk to SaaS business modelsThe Jevons Paradox and whether lower costs could expand demand instead of destroy itWhy incumbents with strong intangible moats may survive AI disruptionThe difference between technological capability and real world adoption speedCompute, energy, and token costs as natural limits on AI expansionThe feedback loop argument and whether AI could cause a demand shockCreative destruction and the difficulty of forecasting new job creationAI, high income knowledge workers, and the risk to consumer spendingWealth inequality, capital versus labor, and policy responses like UBIWhy investors can be bullish on AI technology but cautious on marketsHow to think about short term disruption versus long term abundanceTimestamps:00:00 Introduction and the AI doom loop thesis02:15 Why the article triggered a market reaction06:00 People times productivity and economic growth09:00 AI and disruption in software stocks15:00 Jevons Paradox and expanding total demand19:00 AI agents, frictionless commerce, and price competition26:00 Adoption speed versus technology speed28:00 Compute constraints and natural governors on AI growth31:00 The non cyclical disruption feedback loop33:00 Creative destruction and new job formation38:00 General purpose technology and broad economic exposure44:00 Replacement versus augmentation of workers48:00 Token costs, enterprise AI spending, and labor tradeoffs51:00 High income job risk and inequality concerns

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

(0:00) Bestie intros (1:22) Claude's hit list, SaaS crash, and Citrini's AI letter (30:39) Why Doomer narratives are more popular, valuable new AI jobs (40:19) Understanding the Rate Payer Protection Pledge, what's behind datacenter opposition? (52:13) State of the Union reactions (1:03:58) Science Corner: Cure for blindness via Yamanaka Factors? (1:10:17) SCOTUS strikes down tariffs, Trump pivots Apply for Liquidity: https://allinliquidity.com Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/wolters-kluwer-relx-shares-slip-after-anthropic-unveils-aienhanced-legal-tool-4481124 https://www.barrons.com/articles/ibm-stock-had-worst-day-in-25-years-ai-disruption-fears-5f632d6c https://www.forbes.com/sites/daniellechemtob/2026/02/24/forbes-daily-ibm-suffers-its-worst-day-since-the-dot-com-bubble https://x.com/chamath/status/2027077786503164260 https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic https://thedefiant.io/news/tradfi-and-fintech/credit-card-stocks-fall-after-citrini-ai-report https://x.com/TurnerNovak/status/2026332990914101699 https://x.com/anistotle_/status/2026306126674108788 https://www.notyourtypicalfinancebro.com/p/vibe-laundering-pt-2-citrini-the https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/457097-nobody-knows-anything-not-one-person-in-the-entire-motion https://www.derekthompson.org/p/nobody-knows-anything https://x.com/kalshi/status/2027040345419129166 https://x.com/StockMarketNerd/status/2019837212515528730 https://www.citadelsecurities.com/news-and-insights/2026-global-intelligence-crisis/ https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2027087693327237251 https://x.com/levie/status/2026885050411745491 https://x.com/typesfast/status/2026998028222013679 https://x.com/cboyack/status/2021647373571862952 https://x.com/chamath/status/2025369318696124859 https://x.com/pat_hedger/status/2026742424471560636 https://x.com/SemiAnalysis_/status/2026719180284666046 https://x.com/WesternLensman/status/2024661247296172486 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-02-20/supreme-court-s-tariffs-ruling-finally-holds-trump-accountable https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-court-force-trump-to-refund-tariffs-2026-06-30 https://polymarket.com/event/will-congress-pass-any-tariffs-by-march-31

Jordi Visser is a veteran macro investor with 30+ years of experience and the author of the VisserLabs Substack. In this episode, we break down the viral Citrini paper and whether AI disruption is being overstated or simply repriced by markets. We also discuss compressed software valuations, NVIDIA, shifting credit conditions, and why crypto and bitcoin could benefit in a world that increasingly needs speed, verification, and secure financial rails.=======================Bitget (https://bitget.com/promotion/futures-tradfi?channelCode=regd&vipCode=nkew) is the world's largest Universal Exchange (UEX) (https://bitget.com/promotion/futures-tradfi?channelCode=regd&vipCode=nkew), serving over 125 million users with access to over 2M+ crypto tokens, and TradFi markets such as 100+ tokenized stocks, ETFs, commodities, FX and precious metal like Gold. At launch, users can trade 79 instruments with USDT directly with the App. Users can also enjoy high liquidity and low slippage, while trading these assets with up to 500x leverage. For more information on Bitget TradFi, visit this article (https://bitget.com/support/articles/12560603846859). For more information, visit: Website (https://bitget.com/) | Twitter (https://x.com/bitget) | Telegram (https://t.me/BitgetENOfficial) | LinkedIn (https://linkedin.com/company/bitget-global/) | Discord (https://discord.com/invite/bitget)For media inquiries, please contact: media@bitget.com=======================BitcoinIRA: Buy, sell, and swap 80+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Take 3 minutes to open your account & get connected to a team of IRA specialists that will guide you through every step of the process. Go to https://bitcoinira.com/pomp/ to earn up to $1,000 in rewards.=======================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates the buying and selling of your preferred crypto strategies. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch. No hidden fees. Just smarter trading.=======================0:00 – Intro0:57 – The Citrini AI Paper debate4:55 – Why software stocks are getting repriced10:39 - Can AI replace SaaS companies?15:53 – NVIDIA earnings & market regime shift21:05 – Why crypto wins in the next cycle29:37 – AI, government & autonomous weapons36:39 – Deepfakes, spam & the need for crypto41:29 – Survive vs Thrive: positioning for what's next

In this week's episode of The Wrap, Chris Whalen breaks down the unraveling of private credit and why retail investors were never suitable for these investments in the first place. He explains how private credit shops have quietly gained access to Federal Home Loan Bank funding through insurance company acquisitions — a taxpayer-subsidized arrangement he finds extraordinary and plans to investigate further. On markets, Chris argues liquidity will be the defining theme of 2026, with money rotating out of speculative and private assets back into public markets. He also flags early warning signs in consumer credit, names the specific companies to watch for deterioration, and explains why the mortgage market needs rates to fall further before any real pickup in activity. On precious metals, Chris details a seismic secular shift underway as India joins China in moving away from COMEX pricing toward Asian markets — and warns that if COMEX cannot deliver physical metal against futures contracts, it could be forced out of the business entirely.Use the code TheWrap2026 for 25% off your first year of The Institutional Risk Analyst https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/plans-pricingLinks:    The Institutional Risk Analyst: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/  Inflated book (2nd edition): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/inflated-r-christopher-whalen/1146303673Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/rcwhalen    Website: https://www.rcwhalen.com/   Timestamps:0:00 Intro and welcome to The Wrap with Chris Whalen0:49 Private credit is unraveling — are retail investors about to run like Silicon Valley Bank3:51 The insurance company play5:20 Does the insurance and private credit connection create contagion risk6:05 Nvidia beats but the market sells it — is the AI trade structurally broken8:07 Why has the broader market held up despite the tech and SaaS selloff9:00 Liquidity is the theme of 2026 10:12 Banks discussion 14:49 Mortgage market — 30 year rates dip below 6%, does it last16:42 Will we see more rate cuts — Chris's expectations for Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair18:37 What it would take to unlock the housing market20:34 Tariffs21:50 The most important things for markets to focus on right now22:36 Silver — COMEX and London are losing their role as price setters26:36 Chris's portfolio — gold, silver, junior miners and why productive capacity matters27:18 Viewer question — Basel III, central banks, and gold as a tier one asset29:44 What Chris is watching and writing about next week31:12 Where to find Chris and The Institutional Risk Analyst — 25% off for viewers

Feb 16, 2026: Why Infrastructure is the Real Winner in the Age of AIWarren Buffett is widely credited with characterizing competitive advantages as moats that companies will aggressively build and will vigorously defend to protect themselves from attacks by others.The software industry has been a popular sector for investors in recent years due to its outsized growth rates and its ability to quickly iterate.Yet the barriers to entry are low here, and it's been difficult for software companies to build sustainable moats.That's perhaps one of the key reasons for the recent "SaaS-pocalypse", where many software stocks have sold off due to the emerging threat of AI and technological disruption.So where do we go from here? Are software stocks with lower prices now a compelling buying opportunity? Or are these falling knives with even more downside risk ahead?On Monday's livestream show, Bastion Fiduciary portfolio manager John Rotonti and I describe the status quo of the software industry. But we also discuss how infrastructure providers are emerging as the real winners in the age of AI.Power, cooling, networking, and other supporting functions are supply-constrained and are doing their best to meet the $3 trillion of AI infrastructure spending that will take place within the next five years. We discuss the turnaround taking place in manufacturing and why Amphenol, TE Connectivity, and Trane Technologies could be lucrative investment opportunities.Timestamps:00:00 – Welcome & Mardi Gras check-in02:30 – The SaaS reckoning: low moats, high competition08:00 – Valuations then vs. now (52x PE → 20x)12:00 – The stock-based compensation problem15:00 – Is it finally time to invest in SaaS?20:00 – Constellation Software: the acquisition machine28:00 – Nvidia & the AI infrastructure buildout38:00 – Hardware + software integration as a moat40:00 – Why Alphabet is the widest-moat AI company43:00 – Power, liquid cooling & the data center arms race47:00 – Labor shortages & re-industrialization50:00 – Audience Q&ALearn more about long-term investing at 7investing.com — get your first 7 days free at 7investing.com/subscribe#7investing #AIStocks #SaaS #Nvidia #Alphabet #JohnRotonti #StockMarket #Investing #AIInfrastructure #IndustrialStocks #ConstellationSoftware #LongTermInvesting

Identity, AI Agents, and the Session Token Time Bomb | Carey Frey (CSO, TELUS) on Cybersecurity Today In this Cybersecurity Today weekend edition, David Shipley interviews Carey Frey, Chief Security Officer at TELUS, about the evolution of identity security and why it's a growing risk in the age of generative and agentic AI. Frey recounts his career from Canada's Communications Security Establishment to leading TELUS's internal security and managed cybersecurity services, then explains how convenience-driven identity decisions led from PKI's unrealized promise to passwords, bearer/session tokens, and today's widespread session cookie theft. He describes lessons from TELUS's deployment of FIDO2 phishing-resistant tokens, the dangers of long-lived SSO tokens across SaaS ecosystems, and how agentic "auto-browse" could amplify harm via the "lethal trifecta" and ephemeral agents with poor auditability. Frey highlights the Syne/SignNet CISO Identity Handbook and calls for stronger cryptographic roots of trust, proof-based tokens, re-authentication across trust domains, and fine-grained delegation guardrails. Cybersecurity Today  would like to thank Meter for their support in bringing you this podcast. Meter delivers a complete networking stack, wired, wireless and cellular in one integrated solution that's built for performance and scale.  You can find them at Meter.com/cst 00:00 Sponsor Message 00:24 Weekend Edition Intro 00:32 Meet Carey Frey 02:07 Carey's Cyber Origin Story 03:47 Telus Security Two Hats 06:22 Identity's Broken Legacy 08:43 Why PKI Didn't Win 11:25 Passkeys Missed Moment 14:10 SSO Tokens Surprise 19:50 Session Theft Reality 23:18 Agentic AI Stakes 24:17 Building Identity Playbook 25:24 Identity Maturity Model 25:49 Fixing OAuth and SAML 27:00 Industry Call to Action 27:37 Where to Find the Handbook 28:06 Not a Vendor Pitch 30:13 Agentic AI Identity Gaps 31:30 Auto Browse Threat Scenario 33:12 Lethal Trifecta Explained 34:31 Ephemeral Agents and Forensics 37:08 Supply Chain Agent Malware 38:20 Crypto Roots of Trust 39:35 Proof Tokens and Reauth 40:17 Delegation Guardrails 42:34 Regulation or Market Forces 44:25 Practical Risk Decisions 46:20 Wrap Up and Next Resources 48:00 Sponsor and Closing Credits

We chart how AI leapt from chat to code, why product is now the leverage point, and how startups can market to algorithms without losing trust. David Yakobovitch shares hard-won views on moats, data, defense tech, and the immigrant energy powering American dynamism.• leaders and market share across Google, OpenAI, Anthropic• vibe coding benefits, code quality risks, review loops• prompt libraries, agent swarms, PRD automation• weekly shipping pace and the SaaS squeeze• marketing to algorithms, buyer agents, bot traffic control• pilot to production gap, rise of forward-deployed engineers• moats beyond models via domain, workflow, and proprietary data• China's progress, open source, and on-device AI bets• defense tech, swarms, and physical AI opportunities• endurance mindset, yoga discipline, and founder stamina• personal workflows across Gemini, Claude, and OpenAI• investing across seed and growth with outcome focusThe model wars aren't theoretical anymore—they're shaping how software gets built, shipped, and sold. We sit down with David Yakobovitch, GP at Data Power Capital and former global product lead at Google, to map where AI is actually working in 2026: vibe coding that shrinks teams, agent swarms that harden quality, and product-led moats that outlast model churn. David pulls back the curtain on how Claude, OpenAI, and Google now compete neck and neck on code and content, why prompt engineering as a job vanished while prompts became more valuable, and how forward-deployed engineers bridge the stubborn pilot-to-production gap that has haunted data projects for a decade.We explore go-to-market in a world where buyer agents screen your pitch before a human blinks. That means structuring materials for machines, tuning sites for humans and crawlers, and building demos that agents can evaluate safely. We also go into what happens as models commoditize: the moat shifts to domain depth, proprietary offline data, secure connectors, and measurable workflow outcomes. From small language models running on CPUs in air‑gapped containers to Apple's on-device bet, the edge is back—especially for Europe's sovereignty demands and public sector buyers.Then we widen the lens. Defense and “physical AI” blend hardware and autonomy: swarms, hypersonics, and resilient edge compute that must perform in the real world. David shares why he's backing both the silicon and the software, and how American dynamism—powered by immigrants and impatient builders—remains a durable advantage. Along the way, we trade notes on multi-model workflows, open source momentum, China's narrowed gap, and the endurance mindset that carries teams through the disappointment dip after the first shiny demo.David Yakoboitch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidyakobovitch/David Yakobovitch is a General Partner and Managing Director of DataPower Capital, a New York City-based venture capital firm investing across Applied AI, Inference Infrastructure, and DeepTech.  With a portfolio of over 36 companies, David is an investor in the most defining frontier technology firms of our era, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Neuralink, DataBricks, Groq, Cruesoe, Anduril and SpaceX. David is a leading voice as the host of HumAIn, a podcast focused on Applied and Responsible AI.  Previously, David served as a Global Product Lead aWebsite: https://www.position2.com/podcast/Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/Email us with any feedback for the show: sparkofages.podcast@position2.com

In this episode the hosts evaluate a $2.1M virtual reality forklift training business generating $600K+ in annual profit and debate whether it's a durable industrial SaaS opportunity—or a niche hardware rental play facing automation headwinds.Business Listing – https://flippa.com/12243476-8-y-o-virtual-reality-training-and-workplace-development-platformWelcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9Vr

Is the "SaaS-pocalypse" finally here? Andy recently attended an AI networking event in Barcelona with a group of tech expats and locals to see how real entrepreneurs are using these tools in 2026. From building custom agents to the "Wild West" feel of the current market, Andy breaks down why the most powerful AI strategy isn't found in a search engine—it's found in a 10-minute side conversation with a friend.I hope you enjoy it! As always you can learn more and connect with me on my website (andystorch.com) or LinkedIn. And you can find my books - Own Your Career Own Your Life and Own Your Brand, Own Your Career - on Amazon.

On the podcast: the tailwinds driving a boom in non-game app revenue, how vibe coding and AI workflows are fueling growth in categories that have nothing to do with AI, and why people predicting the "death of apps" have never been more wrong.This conversation is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps report. Each episode in this series will explore one crucial topic and share actionable insights from top subscription app operators.Top Takeaways: 

Is AI just another tech bubble or the defining platform shift of this era? Duncan Davidson, Co-Founder and General Partner at Bullpen Capital, argues that the answer lies in one critical distinction: Is the technology being used for its core purpose? In this episode of Technoventure, Duncan draws on his experience across the PC boom, dot-com era, mobile, and now AI to explain why real adoption signals durability. He also explores why CIOs can't afford to sit out a boom, how AI agents may disrupt the SaaS model, and why history suggests productivity revolutions create more opportunity than they destroy. For technology leaders navigating board-level AI pressure, this conversation reframes the question from timing the bubble to strategically participating in the inflection. Key insights include: Why core-use adoption determines whether AI is hype or a true platform shift Why leaders must participate in tech booms rather than try to time the peak How to distinguish defensible AI innovation from fragile “wrapper” plays What historical signals indicate when a technology boom is nearing exhaustion

Starting with a mini celebration: Dave defends his ski racing crown, before Sam declares software dead and capitalism broken. Even among GPs at Upfront Summit, the mood is uncertain: nobody knows whether to invest in software anymore, and many are quietly struggling to raise.The debate heats up over whether AI will democratize software creation or just accelerate capitalism's race to zero margins. Sam argues that when intelligence becomes abundant, it becomes worthless, making the entire AI industry, and by extension Silicon Valley, "pretty bad business." Dave counters that we're about to see a Cambrian explosion of software creators, finally giving billions of people agency over their digital lives.Plus: whether Stripe should buy PayPal during this opportunistic Trump-administration window, Gen Z panic-buying original iPods, Sam's shitposting-to-funding pipeline, and whether OnlyFans has the best KYC in fintechChapters:We're also on ↓X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessYouTube: https://youtu.be/Ff4-vkt5rYQConnect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

Trump's latest State of the Union was packed with headlines. Most people heard the headlines and moved on. But operators paid attention.Buried inside Trump's latest State of the Union were policy shifts that could directly impact your costs, pricing, margins, and platform fees.If you import products, rely on Amazon, Shopify, or SaaS tools, or operate on tight margins, this matters.In this episode of the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, Neil breaks down what the latest tariff changes, inflation signals, and AI infrastructure policies actually mean for ecommerce operators and how to translate headlines into decisions instead of reacting to them.

Less Annoying CRM is soft launching two major features we've been working on for months. This episode dives into that and a bunch of other stuff.

Guest: Deric Keller - Certified Business Coach with Exit Momentum, former $10M business ownerEpisode Overview: Financial advisor David Chudyk interviews business coach Deric Keller about strategies that make businesses more profitable, sellable, and sustainable while improving owner wellbeing.Key Topics Discussed:1. Common Hiring MistakesFounders often hire to "fill a seat" rather than designing the role firstThis creates "Frankenstein roles" that are hard to replace and measureBest practice: Use the "elevate and delegate" model - categorize tasks by what you love/hate and are good/bad at, then delegate the bottom tier2. The Hustle TrapBusiness owners often wear burnout as a "badge of honor"Example: Owner doing parts runs while $60K in bids pile up (70-80% close rate)Key insight: Are you busy with the right things that generate revenue?Delegate tasks you hate/aren't good at to focus on high-value activities3. Tracking the Wrong MetricsMost founders track profit incorrectly by hiding expenses to avoid taxesThis hurts: credit applications, equipment financing, home purchases, and business valuationClean books = higher business value4. What Drives Business Valuation Factors that LOWER value:Over-reliance on one customer (lack of diversification)Weak human capital (high turnover, inexperienced staff)Missing systems/processes/intellectual propertyPoor financial predictabilitySingle vendor dependencyFactors that INCREASE value:Customer diversificationStrong, experienced teamDocumented systems and processesRecurring revenue (3-6 point multiple increase)Clean financial records5. Understanding Business MultiplesMost businesses sell for a multiple of EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, Amortization) or net profitTypical multiples: 1-3x (weak business) to 6-15x (strong business with recurring revenue, great systems)SaaS companies often valued on revenue multiples (though AI is currently driving these down)Who buys you affects the multiple (strategic buyer vs. PE firm)6. When Hustle Stops WorkingHard work creates bottlenecks when you're the decision-maker for everythingLeads to: burnout, key person dependency, slowed growthSolution: Decentralized command (like military model) - give teams the mission, let them executeBalance: You can't give equal TIME to business/family/health, but you can give equal INTENTION7. The 3D Diagnostic ModelDirection: Where is the company going? What are the goals?Design: What's the structure, systems, processes, financial model?Dynamic: What's the human element? Who might be holding you back?8. Leadership DevelopmentLeadership is a learned skill, not innate talentRequires repetition and practice ("reps")Best professionals in every field have coaches9. Work-Life Integration StrategiesBe strategic with focus and intentionWhen with family: phone down, fully presentGym time: have a plan, execute, leave energizedDaily practices: journaling, meditation, prayer, gratitudeLearn-teach-implement cycle: consume content, teach it to someone, apply it10. Definition of Wealth Deric's answer: Legacy - Making an impact that outlasts you, influencing people you'll never meet through the business owners and teams you coachCall to Action: Visit ExitMomentum.com to:Take a free business assessmentBook a 3D diagnostic call (no cost)Access free tools and insightsSchedule an in-person leadership labKey Takeaway: A sellable business is a good business, even if you never sell it. Building systems, diversifying revenue, and developing your team creates value regardless of your exit timeline.Links referenced in this episode:www.weeklywealthpodcast.com/endgameexitmomentum.com

Rob Fraser is the founder and CEO of Outway Socks. Follow him on X at https://x.com/robbfraser and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbfraser. Visit Outway Socks at https://outway.com/.Read Rob's "What 10 Years of Building Taught Me That Nobody Else Would" Article: https://rbfwriting.substack.com/p/what-10-years-of-building-taughtFOLLOW UP WITH ANDREW X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/andrewjfaris⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠podcast@ajfgrowth.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Work with Andrew: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ajfgrowth.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INTELLIGEMSIntelligems brings A/B testing to business decisions beyond copy and design. Test your pricing, shipping charges, free shipping thresholds, offers, SaaS tools, and more by clicking here: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/42DcmFl⁠⁠. Get 20% off the first 3 months with code FARIS20.MORE STAFFINGRecruit, onboard, and train incredible virtual professionals in the Philippines with my friends at More Staffing by visiting ⁠https://morestaffing.co/af⁠.

In this episode of The Ross Simmonds Show, Ross breaks down the so-called “SaaSpocalypse” after $1 trillion in SaaS market cap vanished in a single week. While headlines scream that “AI will replace SaaS,” Ross argues the reality is far more nuanced. He introduces a three-part framework ; Exposed, Embedded, Evolved , and outlines the strategic shifts founders and marketers must make to survive and compound in the age of AI agents. Key Takeaways and Insights: 1. The $1 Trillion Wake-Up Call -SaaS stocks were crushed in early 2026, triggering fear across markets. -AI agents, LLM advancements, and disappointing earnings accelerated the correction. -The dominant narrative says AI will replace SaaS , but the situation is more complex. -Market fear is loud. Structural change is quieter, but very real. 2.AI Agents, Vibe Coding & the Death of Per-Seat Pricing? -AI agents interacting directly with APIs challenge traditional SaaS interfaces. -“Vibe coding” demonstrates how quickly software can now be replicated. -Per-seat pricing models are under pressure as automation scales output. -The interface is shifting from dashboards to conversations. 3.The Data Reality Most People Ignore -Global SaaS spending is projected to grow from $318B (2025) to $500B+ (2028). -Enterprise contracts and deep dependencies don't disappear overnight. -Pricing models may change. Market leaders may change. -Software demand isn't vanishing, it's evolving. 4.The Extinction Stack: Exposed, Embedded, Evolved -SaaS companies fall into three survival tiers. -Not all SaaS companies face equal risk. -Your future depends on depth of integration and data moat. -Operators must identify where they sit, now. 5.Type 1: The Exposed -Horizontal point solutions with weak moats and low switching costs. -Easily replicated with AI tools in days or weeks. -Rely on habit rather than proprietary advantage. -Most vulnerable to margin compression and churn. 6.Type 2: The Embedded -Deeply integrated systems of record inside enterprises. -Painful and complex to replace due to migration risk. -The risk isn't extinction ,it's interface disruption. -Must become AI-first before agents abstract them away. 7. Type 3: The Evolved -AI-native or aggressively AI-integrated platforms. -Built on proprietary data, regulatory moats, and deep user memory. -AI increases the value of their data advantage. -Positioned not just to survive, but accelerate. 8.Distribution Is the New Defensive Moat -AI can replicate features. It cannot replicate trust. -Brand equity, audience relationships, and distribution compound. -As product development gets cheaper, distribution becomes the advantage. -This is the moment to double down on quality and amplification. 9.From Time-Based to Outcome-Based Thinking -Per-seat and time-based pricing models face structural pressure. -The future favors outcome-driven pricing and accountability. -Buyers will demand measurable impact, not access. -Service businesses must shift from hours sold to results delivered. 10. Intentional AI vs Fear-Based AI -Two types of teams are emerging: intentional adopters and reactive adopters. -AI without process creates noise, not leverage. -10,000 mediocre AI assets won't move the needle. -10 strategic, AI-enabled assets can change a business trajectory. —

Steve Reynolds didn't start TripBam to disrupt the global hotel industry—he simply noticed that corporations weren't getting the discounts they negotiated, and no one was checking. After 30 years in travel technology, he saw a broken system hiding in plain sight. What began in 2013 as a consumer hotel re-shopping tool quickly revealed a much bigger enterprise opportunity. When a corporate client offered to pay a subscription fee, Steve pivoted from B2C to B2B—and never looked back. TripBam went on to serve 250 of the world's largest companies, saving clients 5–10% on existing hotel bookings and up to 30% when switching properties.  TripBam grew to $8–10M in revenue, with 50 employees across the U.S. and Europe, and operated as a Rule-of-60 SaaS business. Then COVID hit, transactions dropped 95% in two weeks, and the company had to prove its resilience before ultimately selling in 2023 to Emburse. In this episode, Steve shares why pricing for 8x ROI made sales easy, how profitability and subscription revenue protected the business during crisis, what it's like selling into private equity, and why founders should think carefully before raising multiple VC rounds. Key Takeaways Disrupt Carefully – TripBam aligned with corporate buyers while disrupting hotels and agencies. Price for Stickiness – Targeting ~8x ROI made approvals simple and customers loyal. Profit Is Protection – Strong margins helped survive a 95% revenue collapse during COVID. Avoid Over-Dilution – Limited funding preserved founder ownership at exit. Deep Expertise Wins – 30 years in travel tech created a defensible moat. Quote from Steve Reynolds, CEO and Founder of TripBam "Fortunately for me, since I didn't take additional funding, I wasn't diluted multiple times. I've met so many founders and they go through rounds A, B, C, D, E, F, and next thing you know, they end up with 5%, 10 % of the company. And it just doesn't work.  "You might actually get to a rare big exit, but it's really not going to be all that meaningful for the founders, at the end of the day. I've never kind of fallen into that trap of just getting out in front of your skis. I tend to follow the cashflow and look guys, you know, we got to make it happen on the revenue that we're generating.  "We're not going to go out and bet the farm and borrow a bunch of money and create these crazy expectations, right?  Once you start taking outside money, you get someone else starting to make those decisions for you, whether you like them or not." Links Steve Raynolds on LinkedIn TripBam (now Emburse) on LinkedIn TripBam (now Emburse) website Podcast Sponsor – Designli This podcast is sponsored by Designli, a digital product studio that helps entrepreneurs and startups turn their software ideas into reality. From strategy and design to full-scale development, Designli guides you through every step of building custom web and mobile apps. Learn more at designli.co/practical. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding.  A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Ed O'Gorman addresses concerns around private credit, especially in the wake of the SaaS-pocalypse. “It's very much an opaque market,” he notes, but it has become “a very significant piece of the overall capital structure out there.” However, he does see a buying opportunity in some of the beaten down tech names.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Options involve risks and are not suitable for all investors. Before trading, read the Options Disclosure Document. http://bit.ly/2v9tH6DSubscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Send a textAI is changing how buyers discover, evaluate, and choose new homes, and it's happening faster than most teams realize. In this month's AI Brief: Homebuilding Edition, Anya Chrisanthon and Anewgo CEO John Lee break down what's shifting right now: ads inside AI chat experiences, agentic commerce (discovery → checkout), personal AI “intelligence,” and how all of it will reshape portals, CRMs, and SaaS pricing.We cover:What “AI ads” will look like inside chat-based interfacesWhy agentic commerce is the next “smart grid” for buyingPersonal AI: convenience vs. privacy (and what it means for builders)The difference between AI assistants vs. AI agentsWhat happens when AI buyers negotiate and shop at scaleWhy CRM can't stay at the end of the journey anymore, and what changes nextSubscribe for monthly AI updates built specifically for homebuilders, sales leaders, and marketing teams.

Dive deep into the world of global finance, fintech, and payment strategy with Viktoria Soltesz — a visionary leader reshaping how modern businesses think about money. As the founder and CEO of PSP Angels, Viktoria brings 20+ years of real-world experience in banking, payments, taxation, and financial strategy to every conversation.In each episode, Viktoria unpacks complex financial topics — from international payment flows and risk mitigation to banking psychology and ethical industry practices — and translates them into practical insights businesses can use today. Whether you're scaling a startup, navigating cross-border banking, or just trying to understand where your money really goes, she breaks down the barriers between institutions and individuals with clarity and candor.Expect behind-the-scenes stories from her work with global companies, deep dives into trends shaping the future of money, and expert guidance on how to build financial systems that are secure, efficient, and strategically sound. With bestselling books, international speaking experience, and award-winning leadership, Viktoria's mission is clear: to educate and empower you to master the mechanics of money — and never be in the dark about your finances again.Thanks for watching! Go ahead and like, comment, subscribe and turn on post notifications!

Most business owners and creators are unknowingly walking into a $7,500 AI bill — and Drew Thompson is here to show you how to avoid it with his revolutionary zero dollar framework for using software tools effectively. If you're tired of wasting thousands on costly AI-driven software tools and want to leverage them without breaking the bank, this episode is your blueprint to thinking smarter, cheaper, and faster.Drew runs Signal and Scale, an AI transition enablement firm, and he's on a mission to help you harness AI's disruptive power through innovative software tools without overspending. From mind-blowing stories about AI writing keynote outlines in hours to analysis of the $7,500 API bill that sent shockwaves through his community, Drew exposes the truth behind the hype. He reveals how you can integrate cutting-edge software tools into your workflow at practically zero cost — just by thinking through the machine, not against it.You'll discover:- How to implement the $0 framework to avoid hefty AI bills and maximize output with minimal software investment- The dangers of falling into the SaaS race to the bottom and how AI is drastically reducing costs for giants like HubSpot- Why the 996 work culture is unsustainable in an AI-driven economy and what smarter hustling really looks like- The unprecedented ways AI will transform mental health, faith, and societal structures — and how entrepreneurs can navigate these changes- Drew's insights on AI-powered software tools that may replace therapists or replicate human-like brain functions, and why this represents both huge opportunity and ethical dilemmasThis episode is essential listening if you're an entrepreneur, creator, or business leader who wants to stay ahead of the AI curve without getting burned by hidden costs or outdated thinking. Drew's practical frameworks, infused with real-world examples, will help you think of AI and software tools as assets, not expenses.Drew Thompson is the founder of Signal and Scale, an AI expert transforming how businesses adapt to technological disruption. His innovative approach has helped countless entrepreneurs reduce costs and unlock new opportunities by thinking differently about AI and software tools.Ready to stop overpaying and start thinking smarter? Tune in to learn the secrets of the zero dollar framework and future-proof your career in the age of AI. This is your chance to turn AI from a mystery into your most powerful business and software tool.

Is the "SaaS-pocalypse" finally here? Andy recently attended an AI networking event in Barcelona with a group of tech expats and locals to see how real entrepreneurs are using these tools in 2026. From building custom agents to the "Wild West" feel of the current market, Andy breaks down why the most powerful AI strategy isn't found in a search engine—it's found in a 10-minute side conversation with a friend.I hope you enjoy it! As always you can learn more and connect with me on my website (andystorch.com) or LinkedIn. And you can find my books - Own Your Career Own Your Life and Own Your Brand, Own Your Career - on Amazon.

Nano Banana 2 is here already. Nvidia tries to assure everybody there IS no bubble. Marc Benioff tries to assure everybody there IS not SaaS-pocalypse. Did Google just do exactly what Apple has been unable to do? And how do you put an old AI model out to pasture? You give it a Substack. Google's Nano Banana 2 brings advanced AI image tools to free users (The Verge) Nvidia Shares Slide After Sales Forecast Underwhelms Investors (Bloomberg) Salesforce chief dismisses ‘SaaS-pocalypse' fears of AI overtaking business software (FT) New York sues video game developer Valve, says its 'loot boxes' are gambling (Reuters) Google and Samsung just launched the AI features Apple couldn't with Siri (The Verge) Cloudflare experiment ports most of Next.js API 'in one week' with AI (The Register) Anthropic gives its retired Claude AI a Substack (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Week In Startups is made possible by:Lemon IO - https://Lemon.io/twistEvery.io - https://every.io Sentry.io- https://sentry.io/twistToday's show:We're going behind the curtain today — it's a packed show!We found Tyler Yust, OpenClaw's third EVER contributor to share his insights from within foundation! We've got Deedy Das, of Menlo Ventures, on the show to discuss whether SaaS is cooked! Next we met the creator of an OpenClaw instance that fits in your pocket! We've also got the founder of OpenBrowse showing us how he automatically detects and generates OpenClaw skills!Timestamps:00:00 Intro - Deedy Das Joins the Show!04:54 Anthropic's revenue growth and valuation06:07 OpenClaw Contributor Tyler Yuts joins the show09:24 iMessage integration and Apple's proprietary systems00:10:07 Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist14:31 Anthropic vs. the Pentagon00:20:02 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io.00:30:08 Sentry - New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST00:35:46 The Infamous Citrini article00:32:47 Come to LAUNCH fest! https://fest.launch.co00:36:28 Why Deedy thinks the Cetrini article is a work of science fiction00:44:51 The illusion of privacy in corporate America00:41:18 Deedy thinks Enterprise SaaS apps aren't going to be vibe coded00:49:20 Jason's Reddit Bot00:52:01 Jason's obsession with Singapore's food00:55:22 How Unbrowse pulls any backend API!01:02:07 Sebastian shows off the smallest OpenClaw form factor!01:12:04 The Prolo ring — for people who doomscroll01:20:21 Deedy's Podcast Player App!Thank you to our partners:(10:07) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist(20:02) Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit every.io.(30:08) Sentry - New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to sentry.io/twist and use the code TWISTSubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/lonsFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com

Carl Quintanilla, Jim Cramer and David Faber delved into Nvidia's blowout quarter and upbeat guidance fueled by the AI boom — plus why the stock swung into negative territory at the opening bell. It was a different story for Salesforce, which posted better-than-expected Q4 results and erased its pre-market losses at the open. The CEOs of both companies spoke to CNBC: Nvidia's Jensen Huang on what the market got "wrong" — and Salesforce's Marc Benioff on the "SaaS-pocalypse" that has sent shares of the company and its software rivals tumbling. Also in focus: Snowflake heats up, the earnings chapter in the battle for Warner Bros. Discovery, the automaker that posted its first-ever annual loss, robots in China. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is AI killing software stocks — or creating the buying opportunity of the decade? Lance Roberts & Michael Lebowitz review: Since peaking in September 2025, the software ETF (IGV) has crashed 30% while semiconductors (SMH) surged 30% and broad tech stayed flat. The market is pricing in a "SaaSpocalypse" — the idea that generative AI will make traditional SaaS companies obsolete. But is that narrative right? Hosted by RIA Advisors Chief Investment Strategist, Lance Roberts, CIO, w Senior Investment Advisor, Danny Ratliff, CFP Produced by Brent Clanton, Executive Producer Rate us on Google: https://bit.ly/4b9JtEo 0:00 - INTRO 0:49 - National Chili Day & Demise of Whataburger 3:04 - Nvidia & SalesForce Report 7:25 - Markets Are "Stable" 12:17 - Blizzards & Chili 13:21 - The Incredible Nvidia Numbers 15:37 - The Lack of Market Reaction to Nvidia Report 17:02 - Where Will the Capital Come From? 23:22 - Why the Market Isn't Enthusiastic (about Nvidia) 24:30 - SalesForce & The Software Apocalypse 30:15 - Who Will Survive? 33:13 - Will AI Create a New Spreadsheet 36:19 - Tariffs: Old vs New: Markets Are Calm 40:49 - Betting on Tariff Refunds? ------- Watch Today's Full Video on our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/live/6DavZVDY7OQ ------- Articles Mentioned in Today's Show: "Software Stocks: Navigating The SaaSpocalypse" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/software-stocks-navigating-the-saaspocalypse/ ------- Watch our previous show, "Q & A Wednesday: Straight Talk About Your Money" here: https://youtube.com/live/oW7OkyOvYC4 -------- The latest installment of our new feature, Before the Bell, "100-DMA Support at Risk," is here: https://youtu.be/tiE6S1qaBn0 ------- Download Lance's Latest e-book, "Laws of Money & Wealth:"https://realinvestmentadvice.com/ria-e-guide-library/ -------- SUBSCRIBE to The Real Investment Show here: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheRealInvestmentShow -------- Visit our Site: https://www.realinvestmentadvice.com Contact Us: 1-855-RIA-PLAN -------- Subscribe to SimpleVisor: https://www.simplevisor.com/register-new -------- Connect with us on social: https://twitter.com/RealInvAdvice https://twitter.com/LanceRoberts https://www.facebook.com/RealInvestmentAdvice/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/realinvestmentadvice/ #StockMarket #SP500 #MarketOutlook #TechnicalAnalysis #RiskManagement #PersonalFinance #RetirementPlanning #InvestingBasics #FinancialPlanning #AskUsAnything

Send a textStablecoin yield doesn't have to mean complexity, counterparty mystery, or a leap of faith. We sit down with Jeff Handler, co‑founder and CCO of OpenTrade, to unpack how enterprise‑grade infrastructure turns on‑chain dollars into real returns, why tokenization only matters when it solves a user's problem, and how crypto‑native strategies like delta neutral Solana staking can deliver yield without riding the market's mood swings.Jeff walks us through his journey from early Bitcoin wallets to USDC's formative years, then into building a platform that looks more like SaaS than a protocol. We dig into the operations hiding behind clean APIs: bank‑grade asset management, reporting, and legal structures that meet treasury standards. If you've wondered how fintechs, exchanges, and neobanks can keep funds on chain while accessing money market exposure or hedged staking strategies, this is the blueprint.We also get practical about adoption. Trust is earned through credible investors and counterparties, but it's cemented with enforceable contracts, account controls, and bankruptcy‑aware structures. For product teams, the takeaway is clear: avoid vanity metrics, pursue product‑market fit, and accept that real usage trails real utility. On regulation, Jeff advocates a proven path—operate responsibly under existing laws, engage policymakers, and keep shipping rather than waiting for a perfect rulebook.To close, we explore how embedded yield becomes a retention and growth engine. With configurable terms, rates, and minimums, teams can shape offerings to reduce churn or boost balances while keeping a “stablecoins in, stablecoins out” experience. If you're building in fintech or web3 and need a clear, compliant, and scalable way to deliver yield, this conversation will sharpen your roadmap. Enjoy the episode, then subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a quick review so others can find it too.This episode was recorded through a Descript call on January 30, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/stablecoin-yield-without-the-headache..........................................................................

In this bonus episode of Count Me In, recorded live at Oracle NetSuite's SuiteConnect NYC, Adam Larson sits down with Sue Vestri, CFO at CRIO and a finance leader with a wealth of experience in startups, public companies, and private equity-backed businesses. Listen in as Sue shares real stories from her career, everything from wrangling accounting platforms for rapidly scaling teams to building a finance culture that embraces AI and continuous learning. Whether you're curious about growing a finance team from scratch, navigating the complexities of SaaS billing, or keeping your organization future-ready, Sue's practical perspectives and candid advice are sure to inspire. Perfect for finance professionals and anyone interested in how a modern CFO drives growth and innovation while building trust across the business. ___________________________________________________________BILL is a leading financial operations platform for startups to established brands. Headquartered in San Jose, California, we're a trusted partner of leading US financial institutions, accounting firms, and accounting software providers. We empower business owners, CFOs, controllers, and accountants to save time and take control of their payables, receivables, spend, and expense management. For more information, visit bill.com.

Is AI killing software stocks — or creating the buying opportunity of the decade? Lance Roberts & Michael Lebowitz review: Since peaking in September 2025, the software ETF (IGV) has crashed 30% while semiconductors (SMH) surged 30% and broad tech stayed flat. The market is pricing in a "SaaSpocalypse" — the idea that generative AI will make traditional SaaS companies obsolete. But is that narrative right? Hosted by RIA Advisors Chief Investment Strategist, Lance Roberts, CIO, w Senior Investment Advisor, Danny Ratliff, CFP Produced by Brent Clanton, Executive Producer Rate us on Google: https://bit.ly/4b9JtEo 0:00 - INTRO 0:49 - National Chili Day & Demise of Whataburger 3:04 - Nvidia & SalesForce Report 7:25 - Markets Are "Stable" 12:17 - Blizzards & Chili 13:21 - The Incredible Nvidia Numbers 15:37 - The Lack of Market Reaction to Nvidia Report 17:02 - Where Will the Capital Come From? 23:22 - Why the Market Isn't Enthusiastic (about Nvidia) 24:30 - SalesForce & The Software Apocalypse 30:15 - Who Will Survive? 33:13 - Will AI Create a New Spreadsheet 36:19 - Tariffs: Old vs New: Markets Are Calm 40:49 - Betting on Tariff Refunds? ------- Watch Today's Full Video on our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/live/6DavZVDY7OQ ------- Articles Mentioned in Today's Show: "Software Stocks: Navigating The SaaSpocalypse" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/software-stocks-navigating-the-saaspocalypse/ ------- Watch our previous show, "Q & A Wednesday: Straight Talk About Your Money" here: https://youtube.com/live/oW7OkyOvYC4 -------- The latest installment of our new feature, Before the Bell, "100-DMA Support at Risk," is here: https://youtu.be/tiE6S1qaBn0 ------- Download Lance's Latest e-book, "Laws of Money & Wealth:"https://realinvestmentadvice.com/ria-e-guide-library/ -------- SUBSCRIBE to The Real Investment Show here: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheRealInvestmentShow -------- Visit our Site: https://www.realinvestmentadvice.com Contact Us: 1-855-RIA-PLAN -------- Subscribe to SimpleVisor: https://www.simplevisor.com/register-new -------- Connect with us on social: https://twitter.com/RealInvAdvice https://twitter.com/LanceRoberts https://www.facebook.com/RealInvestmentAdvice/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/realinvestmentadvice/ #StockMarket #SP500 #MarketOutlook #TechnicalAnalysis #RiskManagement #PersonalFinance #RetirementPlanning #InvestingBasics #FinancialPlanning #AskUsAnything

“There’s a massive link between the way that we talk to ourselves and the results that we get in the world.” In this episode, Nick dives into the significance of our inner dialogue and its profound impact on our external experiences. He emphasizes the importance of shaping our inner dialogue to navigate life’s challenges and the ups and downs we experience each day. Nick explores the mechanics of self-talk, the role of awareness in recognizing negative patterns, and the necessity of self-reflection in personal growth. What to listen for: Our inner dialogue directly influences our external experiences We often allow ourselves to be negative without realizing it Transforming our inner dialogue requires conscious effort and practice Self-reflection is key to understanding our internal narratives Building a healthier inner dialogue takes time and commitment “If we understand our internal dialogue, we can then make different decisions.” Words do matter, and we're saying the most words to ourselves every day Recognizing the way we speak to ourselves is a critical first step to changing our inner dialogue By addressing and changing the way we speak to ourselves, we'll naturally be in a better position to understand the world around us “When we have the inner dialogue that isn’t actually healed, it’s not helpful for us; then it makes the rest of our lives more and more difficult.” The perspective of our inner dialogue colors our view of the world and instantly sets us at a disadvantage in life Think of the negative inner dialogue as a human and see how you really feel about its communication style and comments on your life When we process and heal from trauma and limiting beliefs, our inner dialogue needs to be healed as well; this can be a lifelong process About Nick McGowan I'm Nick McGowan, an entrepreneur, podcaster, and mental health advocate, and I’ve been on a 20+ year journey of personal development, learning to master my mindset, emotions, and the art of living with purpose. As a Mindset and Self-Mastery Mentor, I work with ambitious men and women who want to live their most authentic and joyous lives by helping them master their mindset, emotional awareness, and authentic communication. My mission is to empower people to lead lives that feel aligned, grounded, and truly their own. Throughout my career, I've built teams, streamlined systems, and improved client experiences across SaaS, media, marketing, and personal development spaces. Whether I'm leading cross-functional projects, optimizing SEO, Podcasting, designing strategies, or guiding clients through transformation, I bring a hands-on, solution-focused approach to everything I do. I'm also the host of The Mindset and Self-Mastery Show, where my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, challenge us, and ultimately guide us back to who we are at our core. On this show, we uncover the secret gems others have discovered through trial and error and breakthroughs, so you can fast-track your growth and master your mindset in your pursuit of self-mastery. Check out the latest episode here. With years of podcasting and two decades of marketing experience, I've mastered the storytelling, interview flow, strategy, and technical production that elevate a podcast from “just content” to something truly impactful. Whether you’re a leader looking to amplify your message, a seasoned speaker and podcast host looking to sharpen your edge, or even a beginner who is wondering how to share their message, I mentor thought leaders through every step of having the conversation they’re here to have on this planet. So, what message are you here to share?! Resources: Check out other episodes about our inner dialogue and managing negative self-talk. Battling Negative Self Talk And The Story From Being Adopted To Becoming An Attorney With Mike Bassett It’s Time We Start Talking About Our Mental Health With Nick McGowan Interested in starting your own podcast or need help with one you already have? https://themindsetandselfmasteryshow.com/podcasting-services/ Thank you for listening! Please subscribe on iTunes and give us a 5-Star review! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mindset-and-self-mastery-show/id1604262089 Listen to other episodes here: https://themindsetandselfmasteryshow.com/ Watch Clips and highlights: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk1tCM7KTe3hrq_-UAa6GHA Guest Inquiries right here: podcasts@themindsetandselfmasteryshow.com Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show” Click Here To View The Episode Transcript Nick McGowan (00:00.302)Hello and welcome to the mindset and self mastery show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. Today on the show, I want to talk about shaping our inner dialogue to get better external results. And on the show, I like to get really macro with things because I think that’s where change actually happens. It’s in those moments where we work on the stuff now before the situation happens that we’ll be better equipped to handle whatever situation comes up. I’ve learned this the hard way. Sometimes I think I’m really prepared. I’m good to go. Then I get into a situation and something happens. It’s like, my God, I didn’t expect that to happen. I didn’t know how to handle it or whatever it was. And those moments can literally make or break us because sometimes when we’re going through a situation that we’re maybe a little uncomfortable with or not as confident about, we can start to falter on the things like our principles. or the things that we know to be true and are really consistent within ourselves. So when I think about having an internal dialogue, that’s more of a positive mindset dialogue. This isn’t something to just bypass the stuff that you’ve been through. This is about being able to understand that the moment you’re in right then and there is the only moment that you actually have. So when you’re in that moment, whatever the situation is, If your inner dialogue is in a negative place, let’s say, then that moment’s probably going to turn out not as good as you want it to be, just straight up. But if your inner dialogue is more on a positive note, and I’m using these as black and whites in a sense, then you’re bound to have a better overall experience because of the inner dialogue. So think about it this way. If you wake up in the morning and you instantly think, Today’s gonna be such a shitty day. I hate all these things. I don’t even wanna get out of bed. don’t wanna ever. You probably argue with your partner. You yell at your kids or your animals or whatever. You get on the road, you drive to your office and you’re shitty with everybody else on the road. Nick McGowan (02:37.462)if you woke up a little differently and had a overall mindset and experience from waking up, you probably, even if something happened with your spouse, your partner or your animals or the dude driving past you, you’re probably going to handle that situation differently, at least slightly differently. Now, if you wake up in the morning and you hate yourself and you hate everything that’s going on, there’s work there. be done. It may also be part of your design. I’ve learned about myself that I will wake up in two different states. Super excited, or grumpy as fuck to put it nicely, because in those states, when I wake up and I am unsure of what I want to do or whatever it is that really determines what happens next. I’ve learned about myself that I’m in one of those two states for some reason that has happened the day before. I’ll give you a prime example. I’ve been busy for the past few months and haven’t been able to play music as much. And I’m actively working on an album. And for me, playing music and even just working through concepts of riffs and just even drum parts for like three hours does magical things for me that helps me at a bass level feel like I’m doing something for myself. Not just doing things for clients or for other people or even things for my business that are still for myself, but just, you know, they’re not me playing music and scratching that itch. Being able to spend a little bit of time with that has become really, really, really important to me because I understand that the more aware I am of that, the more that it’ll affect the next day. It’s not a magical pill. It’s not like, you know, I play guitar for two hours one night and then the next day it’s the best fucking day in the entire world. It’s not how this works. But I do understand that that is a part of how I relate to the rest of the world. And I can be aware of that and do something with it. So let’s break down what inner dialogue is. You know what it is. It’s the talking to yourself. If we look at a shitty internal dialogue, you know exactly what that is as well, because I’m pretty sure you do it pretty often. We all do. Nick McGowan (04:59.702)Even the people that say, no, I’m constantly positive. I’m constantly this, constantly that. You don’t really know what those conversations are internally. We just don’t. And I think the people that are bypassing and toxic positivity in a sense, they’re hurting themselves. And I know that because I’ve done that before too. Haven’t you? We’ve all done something like that where we’ve said, this is how I want to be. So I’m just going to do it and not do the work with it. When we have the inner dialogue that isn’t actually healed and it’s not helpful for us, then it makes the rest of our lives more and more difficult. I don’t want to take this down the path of saying this is the only thing that’ll fix everything because I have heard at times where people say you can’t just mindset your way through things. I know that is not what this is about. This is about setting yourself up from a better perspective. and also being able to look at the thing and say, you know, I’m feeling real shitty right now. Why is that? If we can understand where that has come from, even just to know this is the thing, this is what happened, or this is what made me feel this way, or the reason why I feel this way, or the reason why I’m being negative, or even the reason why I’m being super positive, we can at least understand why that is to then do something with it from there. I think sometimes we as people, just allow ourselves to be shitty, just straight up. And I get it. I am shitty at times. The people that know me the best absolutely know this. And sometimes I’ve thought that it was part of my process. That’s how I go through things. And that’s not always the case because there’s being curious, there’s being judgmental, and some of that can like overlap. But then there’s also just being really shitty about things because I don’t feel good about a situation. or feel good in my body or didn’t sleep well enough or whatever it was. But the internal dialogue that says today’s gonna be shitty or this is gonna happen, it’s gonna be bad, whatever. Sometimes those aren’t actually even words. It’s just a feeling. So if we take apart our inner dialogue just over the course of one day and catch the moments where we’re being really, really shitty, I don’t mean to just keep using that, but that’s kinda how it is. Nick McGowan (07:23.778)We’re shitty, we’re being grumpy, we’re being negative about a situation and not actually working through the situation. I’m not talking about sitting there for two hours and processing a thing, but at least understanding that right now I’m feeling this way. So what can I do now to be able to get through your work day or the situation you’re in or what have you? And it can be a mechanical sort of approach of saying, well, I’m going to choose to have a better mindset with this right now. Again, I don’t want you to think of this as bypassing. We are never bypassing. If you need to do work on these things, do the work. But that doesn’t always mean you can do it right then and there. It’s not about just saying, all right, world, time out. I need to process through a thing. Now granted, there are some people that can do that. And for business owners, sometimes it’s easier for us to do that. Sometimes it’s straight up not because there’s just a lot going on. There are many things happening, lots of questions. And as the owner of a company, we, you know, we’re the ones. so the buck stops with us. So we need to be able to answer those things or be on or what have you. But understanding where our internal dialogue is will ultimately shape how the rest of the outcomes are. And it took me a long time to really understand that. And it took me even longer to start to put it into action. And it’s taken me even longer for it to become part of who I am. I joke now about certain things that should have I thought should have taken me a lot faster to get through, but that’s not how it works. So understanding why we have the inner dialogue that we do is almost as important as what we do with that inner dialogue from there. So the ongoing beliefs, the ongoing thoughts that we have, the self-talk that just running through us day in and day out, that’s our inner dialogue. But what’s the inner dialogue like? Nick McGowan (09:27.988)I heard somebody say to me years ago, if you had a friend that talked to you the way that you talk to yourself, you’d probably want to kick his ass. If not, take them off the planet. They’re totally right. I think about the stuff that you say to yourself. Think about it. Think about the stuff you probably said to yourself a fucking hour. Just let that sink in. If some other human said that to you, you’d potentially have a restraining order. You would not want them to be part of your life. Now you may actually have people that are part of your life that do that. You don’t have to do that to yourself. I want to make that clear. You don’t have to do that to yourself. It’s not a penance or anything, depending on what you had done in the past. It’s being able to actually take the dialogue that you have right now and say, well, today’s this day. This is what I have going on today. And if I don’t like those things or I want to change those things, great. Can I do it right now? Can I instantly change it, pivot to something else or what have you? And if you can, wonderful. If you can’t, then that’s what it is. You need to work through that and you need to be in that moment to do it. I think about it in the sense of people going to jobs that they hate. I can think back to different experiences I’ve had at different jobs. I remember sitting there watching the clock. Being like, fucking hate this. I can’t be here anymore. This is nonsense. Part of it was that I knew there was a greater calling for myself. Another part of it was me just being shitty about the situation that I was in and beating myself up because I put myself in that situation. Haven’t you done that? Think about the different times that you’ve done that. Think about the amount of times maybe even today that you’ve done that. And if we just pause that and say, I understand. And yeah, I don’t want to be in this spot right now. But I also understand that I’m just not able to snap my fingers and make a change instantly, and that things will take a little bit of time. That’s where you actually get to mechanically change your mindset and say, this is what I’m going to do. This is how I’m going to put my mind into motion in this specific situation. So if we think about inner dialogue and we think about the external results from that. Nick McGowan (11:44.63)you can start to look back at different situations where you say, you know, I experienced this differently than I had in the past because of the way that I thought about it going into the situation or because of the way that my way of being is now or whatever it was. If we break it down to a very black and white level, there was probably some positive or negative emotions and thoughts and feelings tied to whatever you were doing. And Even if it was subconscious where your subconscious was like, you know what? We’ve done this before, we can do it again. And you didn’t have to really think about it. It just kind of came out. That’s fine. That’s almost like it’s how you’ve healed from it. At least to some extent. Subconscious isn’t there to make us feel better. It’s there to keep us alive and safe. So you’ve probably experienced the opposite side of that more often than not. of I don’t really know what do in this situation. So I feel uncomfortable. I feel weird. I feel this. I feel that that’s normal. We all go through that stuff. I’ll give you an example with myself. I’ve had something recently local networking where I’ve gone out and met with different people. And whenever I get called up to the front to talk about my business, talk about myself, et cetera, there’s always a little bit underneath that’s like, Oh, do you look weird? Do you sound weird? Are you saying the right things? All of that. That’s our subconscious trying to just keep us safe. It’s abnormal. And if it’s not something you do every single day, or even if it’s something you’ve done for a long, long, long time, that can still be there. It’s trying to keep you safe and trying to keep you comfortable. But I know in those situations, I can look at that and go, I’m just going to go out and do what I do. And I’m going to rest on me being authentic. And worst case scenario, somebody says, You said something weird or you looked weird or you did whatever and think about it. Honestly, in most situations like that, if somebody says, I don’t like your shirt, fuck you. Who the fuck cares? Go away. It doesn’t matter. It’s all in our own heads and we’re the ones beating ourselves up about it. And for the most part, everybody else, when they’re having their own problems or thinking of you about, don’t like your shirt or they don’t like whatever it is. That’s a them problem. That has nothing to do with you. We can take that. Nick McGowan (14:05.112)And we can say, I can do something with it or next time I’ll wear a Hawaiian shirt because fuck you, whatever you want, you know? But being able to understand your own inner dialogue can be affected by other people, other situations, other things, but it’s really up to you to do something with your inner dialogue to then turn it into something external. Now I’m not saying that this is a hustle or grind sort of situation. Like you need to have better mindset so you can go out and make millions of dollars because everybody needs 50 fucking homes. That’s not the case at all. What I’m talking about is being able to actually work through your own inner dialogue to feel confident in yourself to do the thing you’re actively doing. But this happens in a nanosecond, which is again why I like to break down these macro pieces because we can work on it right now. where down the road when you get into that situation, you don’t just instantly flounder because you’re falling back on the negative mindset. You’re falling back into the mindset of, I don’t know what to do here, so I’m just gonna shit a little bit. And like, what the fuck? What do I say? What do I do? How do I act? You wanna be able to work on this stuff before you get into those situations so you don’t actually have to think about it while you’re in those situations. Getting back to my example of speaking in front of a room. I speak all the time. I talk to people all the time. I also really love being by myself. When working on my music or going through my sports cards or reading or whatever it is, just by myself, everybody leave me alone. But I know in those moments when I’m in front of people, I have to be on in a way that is truthful to me. Now past me, years and years and years ago, I would have turned on to become somebody else. Almost like the persona, the mamba mentality in a sense. Like I would just become somebody different. And there was always a bit of authenticity to it, but there was also tying into my winning strategy of how I could be loved and how it could be admired and how I could win and all of that. If we understand those components and those pieces, because those make up our internal dialogue, we can then make different decisions. But it’s understanding why our internal dialogue is the way that it is. Some of that may be trauma. Nick McGowan (16:28.3)Some of that may be somebody said something to you as a five-year-old that led you to believe a thing either about yourself, good or bad, or about other people, good or bad. And then that affected the way that you handled things from that point on. That changed the story that you lived from that point on. What I’m talking about is being able to understand why the components make up your internal dialogue and that your subconscious mind is just there to keep you safe. doesn’t really give a shit how you feel or how confident you are in a situation. It’s just there to keep you safe. If you can understand those things and you can understand how you’re acclimated toward things, then you can do something with that. So when you’re in a situation where you have to be in front of people or pick anything that makes you uncomfortable or it’s a little outside of the norm of what you’re used to, you’ll be in a better spot at that point to be able to not only handle that situation, handle yourself because you’ve extracted what the internal dialogue is. Now with me, like I said, I’ll wake up and I’ll either feel great or bad. That’s really black and white. And I’ve asked myself, I’ve started to ask myself each morning, how am I feeling right now? Am I feeling great? Am I feeling bad? And being honest with myself. There’s sometimes I wake up in the morning and I’m like, how are you feeling right now? I’m feeling great, feeling bad. I feel like shit. And I can understand it’s because maybe I ate something too late the night before, or I didn’t sleep well, or there’s something nagging in the back of my mind about some project or something that’s going on or something around the house or whatever it is. But if I can look at that and say, it’s that thing. It’s being able look at that thing and go, cool, well, I see you. And deciding, do I get to do something with it now? Do I need to? Do I not? Whatever it is. being able look at it and just see what it is has given me a lot of confidence to go, okay, cool. Well, now I know what it is. So I’m just going to move along instead of the fear of the unknown in a sense. Now about maybe, I don’t know, 15 years ago or so I was in a a rock band in Philadelphia and we had a song called white bear because of a concept that I learned where somebody said, if I asked you to not think about a white bear, Nick McGowan (18:54.146)Whatever you do, just don’t think about a white bear. So get the white bear out of your mind. It’s whatever you do, don’t think about a white bear. How many times did a white bear pop in your head? Pretty much every time I said it, right? So if we’re focusing on, be shitty, don’t be negative, guess what you’re gonna be? More than likely, probably shitty, probably negative. And the same goes for being positive. Say be really positive be this and be that and be external and do all these things The the thought of that can spur that on But it’s the act that happens within it and what happens after it that is the most important Because even if I said don’t think about a white bear You’re probably gonna think about it because I put it near the foreground here you think about a white bear and then from there you get a choice to be able to think do I want to build out what that white bear looks like. Do I want to think of that as a Coca-Cola bears or do I want to think about it as a bear that I saw when I was younger or whatever and you will start to kind of go through that path. But if you look at the negative and positive internal dialogue that we have, if you try to force yourself to push past something and bypass it, it might work for you right then and there, but it’s going to come back to bite you. So with all of this, your internal dialogue, if you start to understand why do you typically think about X while you’re in this sort of situation, or why do you feel this sort of way when you’re in X situation and think about that now before that situation happens again, I guarantee you will at least be in a better spot to be able to handle that. I can’t guarantee that it won’t look the way that it did before, but it will start to shift a little bit. had an experience a couple of years ago where I was doing a lot of internal work and folding inside out and it was fucking messy. And I remember having a conversation with my partner and I could feel myself welling up and there was a reaction that was about to come out. There was literally a part of me that told myself, Nick, shut the fuck up and leave the house. And guess what I did? I kept fucking talking and I didn’t leave the house and I was aware of it. Nick McGowan (21:19.242)And it was maddening because I thought, you know, I thought about this. I can just do this and like grab myself and leave. No, there was still trauma that needed to be worked through. There were things that were part of my subconscious that I needed to extract. I needed to reframe and needed to look through. And it took me a long time. And there’s still moments where that happens. Not exactly how it did before, but moments where I’ll start to come up and I go, I see you, you fuck. I’m not going to go down that path again. because I was able to do that work in those moments, but I also did work after those moments to say, all right, what happened? What do I do differently? How do I do this differently? It’s sort of like in sports where they watch game tape. They’ll go back and they’re not watching it to say, you fucked up here, you did this wrong. They’re saying, what could we do differently in these situations? And there’s a reason why those people do that. In a black and white way with sports, it can be easy to say you’re tape and film from a previous game or whatever. us. If you had a really shitty day and there was a lot of negative self-talk going through and then by the time you go home all you want to do is just watch TV and veg and look I get it. Especially somebody who’s found out that he’s more of an introvert than he ever thought he was. I really enjoy being able to spend that veg time of relaxing and just being away from people. I’ve also understood in those moments there are certain times where I’m really escaping. We’re trying to escape from something. I may be a little different than you. You may be a little different than me. We’re all different than each other, but we are also very similar and we go through the same sort of things. This is why I have the podcast for us to be able to talk about this stuff and actually call this stuff out because I can almost guarantee that you’ve had some sort of shitty conversation with yourself today. Even like, why did I do that? Or why the fuck didn’t I wash this thing? Or why didn’t this thing happen? Or what about this? and maybe you don’t call yourself an idiot anymore. Nick McGowan (23:22.958)the sentiment is still there at times, right? You know, like there are different things that come up where you’re like, man, what a dumb bastard, I shouldn’t have done that, blah, blah, blah. Again, if you had a friend or somebody else that was like that, you’d call the cops on them or you’d have a restraining order or something. So if you think about your inner dialogue and the stuff that you go through every single day and how it relates to not only the dialogues, either. Positive or negative influence on you But how the long-term effects actually relate to you because you’ll keep doing that over and over and over And sometimes it can be so ingrained that it’s really difficult to get ourselves out of it So one of the things that I really like to do and that I find to be the easiest thing to do in those situations Yep, oftentimes it’s kind of difficult when you’re really charged. So just be aware of it. Just straight up see it and go, man, I’m being shitty again. But catch it and don’t be an asshole to yourself. Don’t be like you’re being shitty, you dumb fuck. Don’t, be nice to yourself about it. You also want to, in some ways, of parent yourself with that. Like, yeah, don’t do that anymore. Let’s look at what’s going on. Let’s actually talk through it. Let’s work through it. So if you have that simple awareness practice of just saying, I see these things. Maybe for you, it’s taking notes of it and saying, I saw this today, I saw this today, this happened, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe it’s just mental notes. Maybe it’s things that you’ve seen over and over and over and you actually don’t want to touch them. Oftentimes that’s because there’s a fear of the unknown or some blocker that’s blocking you from that. And that’s where professionals come into play. People that can help as therapists or different modalities or mentors or… anybody that can kind of work with you on those things that have been through some of that. But at least you can be aware of those things. And I think there’s such power in awareness. The more aware you are, the more aware you are. Like you can’t not see a thing after you’ve seen it. Sometimes it’ll take seeing it 10, 15, 20 times or even more. But you know that you probably have bad dialogue with yourself at times, but you know, I’m better off than I was before. Nick McGowan (25:41.826)or whatever excuse you add in. And that’s fine, because it’s your life, you get to do whatever you want. The question is really, how long do you want to sit in that shit for? And that can be, it can be a dumb question to certain people. They’re like, of course I don’t want to sit in that shit, but yet you’re still sitting in that shit. And look, I do this as well. Every day there are things that happen. And I ask myself, do I want to be shitty about this? No, but you’re gonna fucking damn it, blah, blah, blah. like, all right, Nick. get through it, and now let’s have the conversation. Sometimes you need to let that energy out. Sometimes you also need to go through it a bit to then understand, it’s really in these situations when this happens because I feel this way, or I think this thing. And all that inner dialogue really shapes the way that our external worlds are because we’re setting ourselves up for either success or failure when it comes to that. So I wanna reinforce. that there’s a massive link between the way that we talk to ourselves and the results that we get in the world. And that there isn’t anything to do with hustle or grind culture or going out and making bunches of money or even the total opposite of that and like saving all the homeless people from the entire world. Talking about being able to actually incorporate this into your daily life in every aspect of life. but it takes breaking down how are you having those conversations in your head and what’s coming out of those conversations every single time. And do you want to change that? Do you not want to change that? I want you to think about two things. Think about two situations where, and I’m super confident and comfortable in this sort of situation. Some people might be public speaking. Some people might be playing music. It might be whatever the thing is. And then I want you to also think of what are the situations? One or two situations that make me super uncomfortable. And I’m not telling you have to go share this with the world or talk to other people about it, but to yourself. Like there might be things that you go, I really feel uncomfortable about this, but this is a major part of my job or whatever it is. Great. Look at that. And then start to write out what comes up when I think about this. What comes up in those exact situations. Nick McGowan (28:05.838)because we can all recall a situation and we can put ourselves back in that spot. That’s a fun little playground. It’s like a simulation in the sense to be able to go through and say, I remember being in this spot and maybe feel this way and whatever. But in reality, if you’re able to actually understand why you do the things you do because of the conversations you’re having in your head, you’re able to change the way that you move through the world and therefore able to change the way that you impact the world. And that’s what this is all about. I don’t believe that purpose is just for us as selfish human beings. I believe that purpose actually incorporates the rest of the world and even just our small little corner of the web of life. But if we can change the way that we look at things internally, we can then change the way that we act around and toward other people and ultimately change the way that we live life. You also need to do the work of the things that are coming up that are blocking you or stopping you. So if you have questions about this, you wanna understand what has worked for me or what you could potentially do different than what you’re doing now, please feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear from you. And if there are certain topics like this that you want more discussions on, you want me to unpack more of, I’d love to hear from you. So thank you so much for being with me today. I hope this is helpful and I hope you do something with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5nAkIFbQII

What if the biggest barrier to your AI-powered future isn't the algorithm, but the state of your data from five years ago? Agility requires more than just fast decision-making; it demands a foundational trust in the data that fuels those decisions. It's about having the right information, accessible and reliable, to pivot not just your campaigns, but your entire strategy. Today, we're going to talk about the often-overlooked foundation of marketing agility and AI innovation: the data infrastructure itself. We'll explore how the role of the CMO is shifting from a master of messaging to a master of data strategy, and what it takes to lead a marketing organization when the quality of your data directly determines the success of your most ambitious technology investments. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Jim Kruger, CMO at Informatica. About Jim Kruger Jim currently serves as the Executive Vice President/Chief Marketing Officer at Informatica. He has 20+ years of B2B and B2C marketing experience in the areas of cloud, SaaS, services, and hardware solutions. Jim is a results-oriented, high-integrity leader with strong business acumen and an inclusive team-building vision. His top focus as a leader is to drive accountability and make every team member feel valued for their contribution.At Informatica, he leads the global marketing organization with the charter to accelerate cloud growth, expand into new markets and industry verticals, and lead the company's brand momentum. Jim Kruger on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimkruger1/ Resources Informatica: https://www.informatica.com Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code AGILE at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c43e68ce5cfb321e The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74 Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Just last week, we asked about Phil Spencer and why he's been so quiet lately. Now we know why! Also, OneDrive for the Mac is finally going to look like it belongs on the Mac. And Google Chrome finally picks up a split view like the rest of the planet, plus a few other new features. PHIL SPENCER OUT AT XBOX Phil Spencer has retired from Microsoft and his heir-apparent, Sarah Bond, left Microsoft as well Report details the Xbox reorg Ex-Xbox executive issues an old guy shouting at sky assessment New Microsoft Gaming CEO discusses "return to Xbox" Hot-take: This person seems unqualified to run Xbox/MS Gaming, but let's give her a chance Alternative hot-take: She is literally here to wind down this business, which makes no sense... unless there's a spin-off Windows WSJ report sheds some light, and adds a lot of confusion, to Nvidia's Windows PC plans Week D arrived on time this month Preview of March Patch Tuesday updates Network speed test, pan and tilt in Camera settings, sysmon, RSAT improvements, Quick Machine Recovery improvements, WEBP background image support, Emoji 16.0 And you thought the Canary channel was weird already -New builds for Canary, Dev, and Beta. Canary gets features we already saw elsewhere, Dev and Beta get context menu, settings, and Taskbar improvements Paul has published (an incomplete version of) De-Enshittify Windows 11 De-enshittifying Copilot and AI is doable but not yet automated What about the alternatives? Next step: Security and Apps chapters HP revenues up 6.9 percent to $14.4 billion but RAM warning is more dire than expected Apple to add multitouch to MacBook Pro lineup in late 2026. Oh the irony AI Xbox February update brings 1440p streaming to Xbox consoles, updates for Xbox ROG Ally, more Xbox app is delivering post-game recaps on Windows 11 for Insiders EA had the most game downloads on PC and console in 2025, thanks to having the three most popular AAA games of the year (BF6, EA Sports FC 25, and EA Sports FC 26). Microsoft was number two, followed by Take-Two, Ubisoft, and Sony. Fortnite is somehow still the biggest game overall on console, and Counter-Strike 2 (!!!!) is the biggest on PC. 20 million Fortnite players on PS, 15 million on Xbox Tips and picks Tip of the week: OneDrive for the Mac App pick of the week: Google Chrome RunAs Radio this week: SaaS on Multiple Clouds with Steve Buchanan Brown liquor pick of the week: Sons of Vancouver Wheated Rye Whisky Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit zscaler.com/security

William and Eyvonne tackle the biggest AI stories of early 2026. They dissect Matt Schumer’s viral “Something Big is Happening” essay – agreeing professionals need to skill up now while pushing back on the doomsday framing with real-world examples from engineering disciplines. The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Eyvonne draws a parallel between AI-assisted... Read more »

My guest today is Dan Sundheim. Dan is the founder and CIO of D1 Capital Partners. He thinks about markets and businesses constantly, and has built a career entirely around that obsession. He manages over $30B across both public and private markets, with investments in SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, and a public portfolio of names you may never have heard of. Dan shares the story of the short case he wrote on Orthodontic Centers of America and posted on Value Investors Club, which crashed the stock, and helped him land his first job. He shares why he backed Anthropic at a moment when many people told him it was the Lyft to OpenAI's Uber, what reading Dario Amodei's essays reminded him of Jeff Bezos, and how he thinks about LLM business models through the lens of Netflix and Spotify. We spend time on the extraordinarily stressful moment in early 2021 when GameStop hit the firm, and what Dan believes is the single biggest tail risk facing the global economy right now. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp's⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.  ----- ⁠WorkOS⁠ is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit⁠⁠ ⁠WorkOS.com⁠⁠⁠ to transform your application into an enterprise-ready solution in minutes, not months. ----- ⁠Rogo⁠ is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:02:43) Intro: Dan Sundheim (00:03:58) The State of Public & Private Investing (00:07:32) Investing in OpenAI and Anthropic (00:10:22) LLMs Business Model (00:14:13) How LLMs are like Netflix and Spotify (00:17:08) Focus v. Scope (00:22:43) The Bear Case for Hyperscalers (00:26:36) The Software Sell-Off (00:31:08) If Scaling Laws Stopped (00:32:18) Advice to a 12-Year-Old Investor (00:33:54) GameStop: D1's Darkest Hour (00:37:14) The Pivotal Dinner with LPs (00:40:56) Staying Calm and Confident (00:42:08) Economic Optimism vs. Societal Uncertainty (00:44:26) Investing on SpaceX and Rivian (00:48:09) Why Dan Loves Shorting (00:48:51) Sources of Inefficiency in Today's Markets (00:51:45) The Importance of Loyalty (00:53:11) Dan's Group Chat for Founders (00:55:39) What Motivates Dan (00:57:28) Posting on Value Investors Club (01:01:46) What Dan Learned at Viking (01:04:22) The Beauty of Art (01:06:49) Under-appreciated Parts of the Global Economy (01:08:00) The US-China-Taiwan Collision Course (01:12:10) Good Leaders vs. Good Businesses (01:13:15) The Kindest Thing