Podcasts about Saas

Dan Nathan welcomes Current co-founders Stuart Sopp and CTO Trevor Marshall to discuss Current's business momentum, the fintech landscape, and the evolving AI build-out. Sopp announces an $80 million Series E at a $1.5 billion valuation led by Spring Coast, noting Current's profitability, deepened partnerships with Cross River and General Catalyst's customer value fund, and over 70% growth for three consecutive years. Marshall describes Current's compounding product strategy around combining banking and liquidity, and how disciplined infrastructure cost controls shape their AI approach, including customer-facing personalization and potential use of lower-cost or self-hosted models. The group debates token pricing deflation, open-source models, hyperscaler distribution advantages (especially Google/Vertex), SaaS displacement, and macro factors affecting consumers, concluding fintech winners are emerging and public-market interest may return via IPOs or M&A. —FOLLOW USYouTube: @RiskReversalMediaInstagram: @riskreversalmediaTwitter: @RiskReversalLinkedIn: RiskReversal Media The financial opinions expressed in Risk Reversal content are for information purposes only. The opinions expressed by the hosts and participants are not an attempt to influence specific trading behavior, investments, or strategies. Past performance does not necessarily predict future outcomes. No specific results or profits are assured when relying on Risk Reversal. Before making any investment or trade, evaluate its suitability for your circumstances and consider consulting your own financial or investment advisor. The financial products discussed in Risk Reversal carry a high level of risk and may not be appropriate for many investors. If you have uncertainties, it's advisable to seek professional advice. Remember that trading involves a risk to your capital, so only invest money that you can afford to lose. Derivatives are not suitable for all investors and involve the risk of losing more than the amount originally deposited and any profit you might have made. This communication is not a recommendation or offer to buy, sell or retain any specific investment or service.

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Ara Kharazian is the lead economist at Ramp. Kharazian joins Big Technology to discuss how much companies are actually spending on AI and whether that spending is producing real value. Tune in to hear why Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI among businesses, how AI spending varies dramatically from company to company, and whether “tokenmaxing” is really happening. We also cover Anthropic's clash with the White House, the resurgence of DeepSeek, Google's underrated position in AI, and whether the predicted SaaS apocalypse is materializing. Hit play for a data-driven look at which AI narratives are real, which are exaggerated, and where business adoption goes next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sasha Orloff is the CEO and Co-founder of Puzzle, an AI-powered accounting platform helping startups, small businesses, and accounting firms gain real-time financial insights through a smart general ledger. Before Puzzle, he was a serial entrepreneur, serving as Co-founder and CEO of LendUp and Co-founder & Advisor to Mission Lane, with previous ventures collectively raising over $1 billion. Sasha also hosts the "Tech Finance" with Sasha Orloff podcast, where he interviews leaders shaping the future of finance and accounting. In this episode… For many businesses, accounting remains a slow, backward-looking process that delivers insights long after decisions have already been made. As AI reshapes industries across the economy, could financial operations become real-time, accurate, and proactive rather than reactive? What would it take to modernize one of the most critical yet overlooked functions in business? Sasha Orloff, a serial entrepreneur and technology innovator, says the key is to rebuild accounting systems from the ground up, with data integrity and AI at the core. He notes that traditional software lacks real-time intelligence, leading to inefficiencies and delays. By reengineering the general ledger, businesses can access faster, more reliable financial insights and automate complex workflows. AI-powered anomaly detection and reconciliation further improve accuracy while reducing manual effort. The outcome is a more scalable and intelligent financial system for companies of all sizes. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz talks with Sasha Orloff, CEO and Co-founder of Puzzle, about transforming accounting with AI. They cover rebuilding systems for the AI era, using AI for accuracy over speed, why strong accounting drives growth, and strategies for adoption, customer trust, and go-to-market in a conservative industry.

#136Josh and Mike sit down with Ming-Tai Huh, restaurateur, MIT graduate, former Toast and Square executive, and co-founder of Cambridge Street Hospitality Group. Ming shares the unlikely path that took him from management consulting and technology into the restaurant industry, beginning with a spontaneous decision to open a restaurant after becoming deeply involved in his local Cambridge community. He reflects on his early days at Toast, helping to build foundational products such as online ordering, loyalty, APIs, and partnerships, and explains how his experience as both an operator and a technologist shaped the way he thinks about restaurant software.The conversation dives into the future of restaurant technology, AI, SaaS, restaurant operations, and why supply chain management remains one of the industry's biggest unsolved problems. Ming discusses the rise of AI agents, the growing gap between experienced operators and first-time restaurateurs, the realities behind scaling restaurant software, and why he believes marketing attribution and ROI measurement remain major opportunities for innovation. Along the way, he shares stories about getting married inside an unfinished restaurant, building Puritan & Company from scratch, and what operators can learn from both the restaurant and technology worlds.Links and resources

Episode 243 of The Hitstreak, a podcast where we talk about anything and everything!  This week we are joined by the Founder of Recruiting Made Simple & Titans Sports Academy, Chance Beam!Episode in a Glance:In this episode of the Hitstreak, I get to welcome a previous guest, Chance Beam, the founder of Recruiting Made Simple, to discuss the complexities of the college recruiting process for athletes. Chance shares his personal journey, including his recent business acquisition and the transformative experiences that led to the creation of his innovative recruiting platform. Our conversation delves into the importance of understanding fit, key performance indicators, and how technology can simplify the recruiting process for both athletes and parents. Chance emphasizes the need for clarity in a landscape filled with overwhelming options and offers insights into how his platform can guide families through the recruiting maze. In this episode, we delve into the complexities of college baseball recruitment, emphasizing the importance of understanding one's starting point in the recruitment process. Finally, we have our rapid-fire questions section, where we talk insights into common myths and misconceptions surrounding recruitment, ultimately encouraging families to focus on the best version of their young athletes.Key Points:- Recruiting Made Simple is a GPS for the recruiting process.- The importance of clarity in the recruiting journey.- Every athlete's journey is unique, like a fingerprint.- Key performance indicators are crucial for college coaches.- Understanding fit is essential for successful recruiting.- Building relationships with coaches is vital for athletes.- Understanding your current level is crucial for aspiring players.- Specialized recruiting services can save time and effort.- Young athletes should focus on personal development.About our guest: Chance Beam is the founder of Recruiting Made Simple (RMS), a data-driven SaaS platform helping baseball and softball families navigate the college recruiting process with greater clarity and confidence. Drawing from nearly two decades of experience and more than 1,200 athlete placements across JUCO, NAIA, and Division I programs, Chance built RMS to simplify recruiting through tools like the Fit Score™, Ask Chance AI, and a database of more than 3,400 college programs — giving families affordable, data-informed guidance without the high cost of traditional recruiting services. Chance is also the founder of Titans Sports Academy (TSA), a Georgia-based player development organization focused on training, team operations, and athlete growth. In addition, he serves on the Cherokee County School Board and brings a systems-driven, accountability-focused mindset to both business and public service. Known for his direct and practical approach, Chance believes development matters more than exposure and that the right information can change an athlete's future.Follow and contact:Instagram: @recruiting_made_simplerecruitingmadesimple.appSubscribe to Nick's top-rated podcast The Hitstreak on Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/NickHite⁠rFollow and Rate us on Spotify: ⁠https://spotify.com/NickHiter⁠Follow and Rate us on Apple Podcast: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/NickHiter⁠Follow and Rate us on iHeartRadio: ⁠https://www.iheart.com/NickHiter

What if the way your business accepts payments is quietly hurting your cash flow?In this episode of B2B Vault, Alan Kopelman sits down with a payments expert to discuss the hidden costs of B2B payment terms, why many businesses unknowingly act as lenders to their customers, and how smarter payment strategies can improve profitability.Learn how payment automation, virtual cards, ACH, rules-based payment acceptance, and modern invoicing tools are helping businesses get paid faster, reduce processing costs, and improve working capital. Whether you're a business owner, CFO, controller, or finance professional, this conversation offers practical insights you can implement immediately.Tune in to discover how a well-defined payment policy can strengthen cash flow, reduce risk, and create a better payment experience for both buyers and suppliers.#B2BPayments #CashFlowManagement #PaymentAutomation #VirtualCards #BusinessFinance #AccountsReceivable #Fintech #B2BVault #NationwidePaymentSystems #WorkingCapital #BusinessGrowth #PaymentStrategyThanks for watching! Go ahead and like, comment, subscribe, and turn on post notifications!

After spending years building unvalidated products that went nowhere, Tibo Louis-Lucas completely changed how he approached startups. In this episode of the ProductLed Podcast, he shares how those early failures pushed him toward a faster, revenue-first way of building, one that eventually led to the success of Tweet Hunter and Taplio, and now powers a growing portfolio of product-led SaaS businesses. Tibo breaks down why revenue is the only validation that really matters, how Tweet Hunter stood out in a crowded market by going deep on a single platform, and the unusual distribution playbook that helped it take off. That included giving a major profit share to a creator-partner and building a network of “creative investors” who amplified the product from day one. The conversation also dives into why selling a company was far less glamorous than it sounds, and why Tibo now prefers building and holding long term. He shares how he thinks about creating an “indie hacker stack” for a specific persona, how AI has changed his day-to-day workflow, and why he now spends less time coding and more time reviewing, iterating, and building systems. One of the biggest takeaways is his operating style: no calls, fast feedback loops through DMs, and a strong focus on staying close to paying users. For founders building product-led companies, this episode is packed with practical lessons on validation, distribution, focus, and building with speed in the AI era. Key Highlights: 02:21 - Why Two Failed Startups Changed EverythingTibo shares the painful lesson of spending years on unvalidated ideas, and how that pushed him to become relentlessly validation-driven.05:38 - Revenue Is the Only Validation That CountsWhy free users can be misleading, how Tibo evaluates startup ideas today, and what made Tweet Hunter feel different almost immediately.09:47 - How Tweet Hunter Won a Crowded MarketThe strategy behind focusing on one platform deeply, serving creators instead of enterprises, and building something clearly better for a narrower use case.12:11 - The Distribution Deal That Fueled GrowthHow Tibo partnered with influencers using profit share and exit incentives, and why aligning distribution with the product was such a powerful lever.15:25 - The Creative Investors Growth EngineWhy he gave small ownership stakes to 17 creators, how that amplified launches and updates, and what made the model work.19:31 - Why Selling Wasn't the Dream OutcomeTibo opens up about the pressure of earnouts, platform risk, and why the acquisition experience made him want to build and hold instead.23:46 - Building an Indie Hacker Software StackWhy Tibo organizes his portfolio around a specific persona instead of a single vertical, and how he thinks about expanding from five products to more.34:54 - No Calls, More DMs, Better FeedbackA look at his no-meeting policy, why DM-based customer conversations work so well for him, and how staying close to users improves product decisions.37:18 - How AI Changed the Way He BuildsTibo explains how AI emptied his backlog, turned him into a QA-first builder, and created a new challenge: resisting feature creep. Resources:

Our guest today is Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, the video editor that's been AI-native long before “AI-native” was something you put in a pitch deck. Laura's route to the CEO seat started as a customer. She loved the product enough to knock on founder Andrew Mason's door and ask to work on it. She joined to lead product, but only three years later she's succeeded the well-known founder and is running the company. Today, Laura is here to talk about both sides of that journey: finding peers and mentors when you're suddenly the most senior person in any room, and driving AI adoption across an org already known for AI in its product. In this episode, Laura shares: Her "tech acceptance framework" — the 4 stages from outright hostility to "rewired" — and how to figure out where YOUR team actually sits Why telling IC PMs that AI means 2x productivity just sounds like they're doing twice the work — and her “find the dream” reframe that actually gets real buy-in How Laura built Descript's AI philosophy around one principle: "Struggle with your art, not with your tools" and why she doesn't want anyone one-shotting their videos Plus the trap most companies are falling into right now: AI systems that walk out the door when the person who built them leaves, and how to make progress durable across your org Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/burkhauser/ Descript: https://www.descript.com/ Resources What Got You Here Won't Get You There: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-got-you-here-wont-get-you-there-marshall-goldsmith/1112274786 Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:07: Laura's career journey: From fashion startups to finding her path to product 03:26: The "what got you here won't get you there" moment 4:05: Finding peers and mentors when you're the most senior person in the room 12:06: "Struggle with your art, not with your tools" — Descript's AI philosophy 15:04: AI as a derivative technology and the democratization of creativity 17:59: The tech acceptance framework: From hostile to rewired 18:50: Running AI hackathons and reimagining company systems 22:40: Pitfalls of AI adoption: Cost, durability, and automating broken systems 24:42: The two-by-two framework for getting your team AI-pilled 27:49: Conclusion Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a YouTube page! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket's Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.Special Guest: Laura Burkhauser.

Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates in a single professional-grade platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage & protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple. In this episode of Apple @ Work, Dan Jaenicke, Director of B2B Product Strategy at MacPaw, joins the show to talk about Leebry.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey guys. This question comes all the way from New Zealand. Recently discovered your podcast about a month ago, and have been catching up with older episodes on morning walks ever since - you guys are awesome. Anyway - the question: Is it more beneficial to work for a company where the software itself is the product (SaaS etc) or does it no longer matter given the rise of the robots anyway? For context - I've been working for a telco/internet company for just over five year. Initially when I joined there was a huge roadmap of software to develop internally - things like customer facing portals, diagnostic tools, and of course internal tooling. However over the past couple of years, it has just been cost cutting and downsizing. Given that the company is not in the business of selling software, our department has been stripped to skeletal level just to ‘keep the lights on'. So, I've started applying for jobs at SaaS companies on the basis that even with AI, there will at least be a continuous roadmap to work on. Or, is this a case of ‘snakes in the greener grass'… or whatever the idiom is. Keen to hear your thoughts! I'm an EM about 7 months into a role at a larger private software company. When I joined, the explicit expectation was 1 team (~8 direct reports). I'm happy to say my team has crushed it: award-winning product launch, clear monetization path, company IPO positioning. I made some bold headcount decisions, reduced spend, built the team's trust back up, and things are now actually quite great. I'm generally a cynical person and so I don't say that lightly :) Last week my boss told me I'm taking on a second team, bringing me to 16 direct reports. When I asked if this was a promotion track, he said no. Apparently the expectation is now ALL EMs manage 2+ teams. Problem: the internal HR leveling rubric still says 2+ teams is a Sr. EM expectation, which I didn't apply for… precisely because I didn't want it. When I pointed this out, he said “that's out of date, and you're behind your peers because you only have been running one team”. I did the job I was hired to do, did it well, and the goalposts moved without anyone telling me. The kicker: the team I'm absorbing used to be run by a Sr. EM, who now has just one team!! So a Sr. EM is shrinking scope while I'm handed their struggling team and told I'm behind. It wasn't framed as a vote of confidence. It felt like a quiet reassignment. Three questions: Am I being oversensitive to just poor communication (it's possible the senior EM is being managed out and I shouldn't use that as a benchmark)? Should I push for a comp increase since I'm now doing 2x the scope I was hired for? And how hard do I push back? One constraint: I'm a couple months from planned medical leave and can't afford to leave before then, so I have limited leverage.

Meher Patel is a serial entrepreneur with exits across hospitality, healthcare, and digital media — each in a completely different industry, each built from the ground up. He founded Neon Digital, a performance-first advertising agency, and then built what very few agencies ever achieve: a SaaS platform that outgrew the agency itself. Hector AI now processes over $350 million in ad spend across Amazon and marketplace advertising, with 1,000+ users on the platform — and in under 18 months, has earned 3 global recognitions including the Amazon Ads Innovation Award, the Amazon Partner Award, and a Top 20 Global Amazon Ads Advanced Partner ranking. Today, Meher is building what he believes will become the foundational intelligence layer of the agentic ecommerce era — Hector MCP: the most advanced, context-rich, token-optimized model context protocol purpose-built for Amazon advertising, designed so that every serious AI agent, every autonomous workflow, and every future-ready brand that wants to win on Amazon will have no choice but to be powered by it.Highlight Bullets> Here's a glimpse of what you would learn…. The rapid evolution of Amazon's advertising features driven by AI technology.Limitations of current SaaS platforms for Amazon sellers and the potential of MCP (Model Context Protocol) technology.The significance of context in AI-driven advertising optimization.Challenges associated with using raw data without contextual understanding in advertising.Practical strategies for Amazon sellers to optimize their ad campaigns.The importance of documenting ad optimization processes for effective AI integration.The role of custom AI workflows in enhancing advertising strategies.The necessity of continuous refinement and learning in building effective AI agents.The decision-making process for sellers regarding whether to rent AI tools or develop their own solutions.The use of connectors like Make.com and Knit for creating automated workflows with AI integration.In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley speaks with Meher Patel, founder of Neon Digital and Hector AI, about the future of Amazon advertising. Meher explains how AI and MCP (Model Context Protocol) technology are transforming ad optimization by providing crucial context to raw Amazon data. He emphasizes that sellers should document their ad processes, learn to communicate effectively with AI, and decide whether to build custom AI workflows or use existing tools. The key takeaway: success with AI-driven advertising requires continuous refinement and treating AI as a knowledgeable, context-aware team member.Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:Turn your workflow into SOPs Record how you optimize campaigns, explain your decisions, and convert that into SOPs—this becomes the foundation for training AI agents. Never feed AI raw data without context Structure and enrich your Amazon data first (or use MCP-powered tools) so AI can generate accurate, actionable insights. Start small with AI automation, then scale Begin with simple rules (e.g., budget increases for winning campaigns), then gradually build more advanced, custom workflows as you learn.Timestamps:00:00:58 Introduction to the Future of Amazon AdsThe host introduces the topic: autonomous, AI-powered decision-making for Amazon advertising, moving beyond simple optimization.00:01:13 Guest Introduction: Meher PatelThe host introduces Meher Patel, detailing his entrepreneurial background, his agency Neon Digital, and his SaaS platform, Hector AI.00:02:49 The Problem with Early AI Ad ToolsDiscussion on how early AI advertising tools often failed sellers, contrasting with the positive results from newer, more advanced software.00:04:10 Prediction for Amazon AdvertisingMeher predicts Amazon will rapidly release new AI-powered features, but sellers must learn how to properly utilize this infrastructure.00:08:46 The Importance of Context in AIAI is only as good as the context it's given; without it, AI recommendations are generic and potentially harmful.00:10:04 How Smart Sellers Should Prepare for AISellers must learn to ask the right questions and feed AI the right data with the proper context to get valuable results.00:12:07 Why Raw Data Isn't EnoughUploading raw Amazon reports to an AI lacks the necessary context, leading to "garbage out" optimization strategies.00:12:42 The Role of an MCP (Model Context Protocol)An MCP provides the necessary context and data connections, acting as an intelligent layer between raw data and the AI model.00:18:57 Amazon's MCP API LimitationsAmazon's own MCP is just an API, requiring sellers to build their own infrastructure, which is inefficient and token-heavy.00:21:48 Top Strategies: Building Custom AI AgentsThe best strategy is for brands to build their own custom AI agents and workflows based on their unique strategies.00:24:32 Unlocking Custom Workflows with AI AgentsAI agent workflows allow sellers to build bespoke optimization systems, unlike one-size-fits-all SaaS platforms.00:27:10 How to Create an AI Agent WorkflowRecord your optimization process, use an LLM to create an SOP, and then build an AI agent to execute it.00:28:06 The Reality of AI ImplementationBuilding a reliable AI agent is a gradual process of refinement and setting up guardrails, not a weekend project.00:29:21 Automating Agent CreationUsing connectors like Make.com within an LLM allows you to create and schedule automated workflows by simply describing them.00:31:08 The Timeframe for Building an AI SystemBuilding a truly autonomous system is a long-term journey of refinement; the key skill to learn is communicating with AI.00:33:57 Becoming an AI OrchestratorSellers must become orchestrators, designing and managing multiple small, independent AI agents to perform specific, connected tasks.00:35:56 The Future: Loaning vs. Building AI AgentsSellers will choose between "renting" cookie-cutter AI agents or "building" custom ones that act as a competitive moat.00:38:29 Are You a Brand Owner or a SaaS Provider?A warning for sellers: building your own AI tools means you are entering the SaaS business, which requires significant technical resources.00:41:13 The Shift from Prompt to Context EngineeringThe new challenge is context engineering: ensuring the right data and tools are used efficiently to avoid token exhaustion and errors.00:42:55 Three Actionable TakeawaysThe host summarizes three key actions: document processes with video, use an MCP for context, and decide your role (brand/SaaS).00:47:25 Most Influential BookMeher shares that the biography of Steve Jobs has been his most influential book due to its lessons on focus.00:48:25 Favorite AI ToolMeher recommends WhisperFlow for voice-to-text communication with AI, which has eliminated his need to type when using Claude.00:49:23 Most Respected Person in E-commerceMeher names Jeff Cohen as someone he admires for his deep, hands-on knowledge of the Amazon and retail media ecosystem.Resources mentioned in this episode:Josh Hadley on LinkedIneComm Breakthrough ConsultingeComm Breakthrough Podcast

In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with Larry Swanson, creator of the Knowledge Graph Insights Podcast, for their second conversation together. The two cover a wide range of interconnected topics, starting with a correction Larry makes about the true origin of the term "artificial intelligence," tracing it back to the 1956 Dartmouth Conference and its distinction from Norbert Wiener's cybernetics. From there, the conversation moves through the history and structure of knowledge graphs, ontologies, RDF (Resource Description Framework), and the W3C standards process, touching on concepts like the T-box, A-box, and C-box, as well as the 25th anniversary of the Semantic Web paper. Stewart and Larry also dig into the limitations of large language models — particularly around reasoning, confabulation, and what Larry describes as "cognitive surrender" — and why symbolic AI and knowledge engineering may hold answers that the neural network world hasn't fully embraced. The episode also ventures into consciousness, panpsychism, Michael Pollan's ideas, and Stewart's own hands-on experience vibe coding a personal chatbot to replace functionality he feels he's lost with recent changes to Claude. Larry's podcast can be found at kgi.fm.Timestamps00:00 - Stewart introduces Larry Swanson; Larry corrects the record on AI's origin, distinguishing it from Norbert Wiener's cybernetics at the 1956 Dartmouth conference.05:00 - Larry discusses interviewing semantic web paper coauthors on its 25th anniversary; RDF's hidden ubiquity compared to SIM cards powering everything invisibly.10:00 - Knowledge graphs explained through t-box terms, a-box assertions, and Dave McComb's c-box; IKEA's three-layer knowledge graph as a practical example.15:00 - Stewart connects metadata complexity to AI needs; faceted search explained as c-box attributes driving product filtering experiences.20:00 - RDF 1.2 reification standards discussed; W3C's rigorous recommendation process powering governments and enterprises worldwide through collaborative standards.25:00 - Cyc project examined as influential "successful failure"; Pat Hayes bringing description logic into semantic web; LLMs lacking true reasoning capability.30:00 - Epistemological fault lines between human and computer intelligence; cognitive surrender paper reveals no intelligence threshold protects against AI manipulation.35:00 - Stewart's Claude regression problem drives chatbot vibe coding quest; small language models and domain-specific approaches explored as alternatives.40:00 - Consciousness discussion through Michael Pollan's panpsychism lens; language versus cognition disconnect revealing LLMs as pure token-stitching without genuine thought.45:00 - Context graphs as purpose-built knowledge graphs for AI; Stewart's planning agents versus coding agents architecture and ground truth verification problem.50:00 - Docs-as-code versus code-as-docs paradigm shift; knowledge graphs as universal verifiers against validated facts; RDF 1.2 enabling provenance and degrees of certainty.55:00 - Jessica Talisman's Knowledge Graph Academy recommended for onboarding; kgi.fm podcast shared; knowledge representation community needs better abstraction for wider adoption.Key Insights1. The term "artificial intelligence" was not a marketing gimmick but was coined deliberately at the 1956 Dartmouth Conference to distinguish the work of John McCarthy from Norbert Wiener's cybernetics. The two camps represented genuinely different approaches, and the AI label was a form of intentional intellectual branding rather than empty promotion.2. The semantic web, often called the most successful failure in technology history, has quietly embedded itself everywhere despite never achieving its original vision. Technologies like RDF power metadata standards inside every Adobe product and form the invisible backbone of government systems, enterprise data infrastructure, and cultural heritage organizations worldwide.3. Knowledge graphs are best understood as an ontology combined with all the instances that populate it. The distinction between things and strings, popularized by Google in 2012, captures the core idea that knowledge representation is about concepts as distinct from the labels we give them.4. The t-box, a-box, and c-box framework offers a practical model for understanding knowledge architecture. The t-box holds terminology and concepts, the a-box holds assertions about specific instances, and the c-box manages the attributes, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies that sit between them and enable things like faceted search.5. Large language models produce fluent, convincing output but lack genuine reasoning, epistemological grounding, or judgment. Research on cognitive surrender shows that even people who understand how LLMs work are still susceptible to being misled by their fluency, meaning intelligence and awareness offer no reliable protection against being deceived.6. The gap between language and cognition matters deeply when evaluating AI. Evidence from people with aphasia shows that thinking can occur without language, which suggests LLMs, being purely language-based systems, are missing a fundamental layer of cognition that cannot be recovered through more tokens or better training.7. Knowledge graphs and RDF-based representation are well suited to the problem of verification and grounding in AI systems. Rather than relying on vectorized embeddings of language, a knowledge graph can store validated, provenance-tracked facts with degrees of certainty, making it a natural foundation for building trustworthy AI applications.

Every year, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference introduces updates that ripple through the App Store economy for years to come. In this special post-WWDC edition of Sub Club Live, host David Barnard sits down with RevenueCat developer advocate Charlie Chapman and world-renowned growth expert Thomas Petit to cut through the keynote hype. Together, they analyze the technical realities and strategic implications of the biggest announcements coming out of Apple Park.Rather than offering a generic recap of consumer features, the panel focuses entirely on the practical mechanics that impact subscription app growth, retention, and monetization. From the deprecation of SiriKit in favor of mandatory App Intents to the introduction of App Store Creative Assets and new subscription bundling options, this session provides a clear roadmap of what subscription businesses should test immediately, adopt eventually, or safely ignore.More content from the RevenueCat family:

You finished the week proud of the automation, the agent, the tool you finally shipped. Then the quieter thought lands: not one conversation with anyone who could actually buy from you. In this episode I name the trap that catches most SaaS partners who came from corporate or delivery, where building feels like measurable progress and selling feels like exposure. I break down why one more tool never fixes a pipeline problem, it just hides it for another week. I share how one partner went from 60-hour weeks buried in delivery to 35 hours with revenue up 40%, once he stopped being the bottleneck and started selling. If your instinct is always to build it yourself, there's one question to ask before you open the tool again.Resources and LinksNeed help with your WHO and WHAT decisions? Apply for a FREE Multiplier CallBook a Decision Session herePrevious episode: 688 - Your Shop Looks Great. The Footpath Is EmptyCheck out more episodes of the Paul Higgins PodcastSubscribe to our YouTube channel: @PaulHigginsMentoringJoin our newsletterSuggested resources

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Dan Bettes, CFO of SoundCloud, at the New York Stock Exchange. Dan breaks down how SoundCloud operates as a two-sided music marketplace, how he thinks about liquidity between fans and creators, and why great finance leaders need to make forecasting feel owned by the business—SPONSORS:Aleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/runRightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.comRillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cjEY has been part of Silicon Valley since it was just a valley, helping the most successful names in tech go from startup to exit to megacap. With teams across strategy, tax, audit, and transactions, EY helps you get your financials right early, long before your investors start asking for it. You build the next big thing, and EY will help you build it right. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartupsSpendHound cuts your SaaS and AI spend by up to 30% using real pricing benchmarks across 10,000 vendors, so you always know what fair pricing looks like before your next renewal. Rated #1 on G2 in SaaS spend management, it's free forever for teams up to 1,000 employees. Sign up by June 12th and get $500 just for getting started. Go to https://www.spendhound.com/cjBrex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metrics—LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsNGuest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielbettes/Company: https://soundcloud.com/CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com—TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Preview and Intro2:17 First stock: a Vanguard index fund3:13 Most memorable IPO: Groupon4:54 Benefits of going public have changed5:47 SoundCloud and the music industry7:21 Three eras: physical, streaming, creator platform8:49 Streaming unbundled the album10:03 Artists don't need labels anymore11:40 Sponsors — Aleph | RightRev | Rillet15:00 SoundCloud's two-sided business model16:23 Touring replaced the album17:17 First metric every morning: net adds18:31 DAU vs. MAU: it's a funnel19:14 Viral moments and exogenous pops20:10 LTV and the subscription funnel21:38 Sponsors — EY | SpendHound | Brex24:35 Tops-down vs. bottoms-up: reconcile both26:21 Revenue is an output27:45 Handling forecast deviation29:24 How often to reforecast30:23 The final boss: indirect cash flow statement33:09 Cash vs. EBITDA fluency35:04 Plain English and the power of reps36:52 Tailor the message to the audience37:45 Lightning round37:45 Screwed up: miscounted corn at a banquet38:41 Lean into discomfort39:55 Craziest expense: a post-flight massage40:17 Credits

Tell us what you think of the show! Talk about systems and solutions is everywhere across the utility sector, but the biggest challenges the grid is facing are more about coordination than hardware. As utilities, retail suppliers, and operators all compete to manage the same DERs like electric vehicles, solar infrastructure, and smart appliances, the biggest challenges are associated with alignment, timing and expectations on every side. Michael Grasso, CEO and founder of GridRails, has a keen awareness of these challenges. His decades of experience in the industry has exposed him to teams and processes that have become paralyzed by fragmented tech silos and sluggish financial settlement cycles that take anywhere from 30 to 120 days to resolve. That's why his company is working to solve these challenges by introducing an agnostic, software-as-a-service (SaaS) orchestration layer that unifies these fragmented endpoints into a single platform, giving energy suppliers direct control over their network operations.We caught up with him to explore why his platform structures its solution around three core pillars, what it means for consumers to receive instant financial gratification in a digital wallet for adjusting their energy usage in the moment, the importance of shifting the utility paradigm from a penalty-based framework to a real-time incentive model, and much more.Want to make a suggestion for This Week in Cleantech? Nominate the stories that caught your eye each week by emailing  Paul.Gerke@clarionevents.com

News over the weekend that the U.S. and Iran have reached a peace agreement make Kevin Warsh's job "a lot easier" on moving interest rates, says Ted Thacther. He explains how the deal eases inflation fears as stocks move higher into the start of Monday's trading session. Ted also likes Nvidia (NVDA) as forward P/E hovers near a 10-year low. Microsoft (MSFT) is another Mag 7 name he sees having substantial upside after getting beaten down in the SaaS-pocalypse. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe 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

As government agencies increasingly adopt cloud-based technologies, traditional procurement models are evolving. In this episode, NASPO's Director of Legal Education, Megan Smyth explores how SaaS and subscription-based services are changing the way states purchase, manage, and think about technology. From ownership versus access to the hidden risks of click-through agreements, Megan shares practical insights for procurement professionals navigating today's digital landscape.Follow & subscribe to stay up-to-date on NASPO!naspo.org | Pulse Blog | LinkedIn | Youtube | Facebook 

Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/j0TuosYDQe4?si=7mzUwBe4PrQ-eB2E In this insightful session from the Ultimate Partner Live event in Bellevue, Washington, Vince Menzione sits down with Stephen Boyle, Corporate Vice President for Enterprise Partners at Microsoft, to pull back the curtain on the tectonic shifts redefining the tech ecosystem. Boyle details Microsoft's massive organizational pivot into enterprise and SME/channel divisions , explaining how artificial intelligence acts as the foundational thread unifying systems integrators, software vendors, and digital natives. Moving past market noise surrounding competing foundational models , he highlights Microsoft's strategy to become the ultimate “platform of platforms” by prioritizing user choice, security, and trust. Emphasizing a shift away from infrastructure technicalities and toward practical business outcomes , Boyle delivers an urgent mandate for partners to scale technical talent, eliminate traditional operational silos, and brace for the incoming consumption-driven, agent-based future of enterprise computing. Key Takeaways Microsoft has restructured its global sales divisions into distinct Enterprise and SME/Channel organizations to better target its massive total addressable markets. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally altering the partner ecosystem by dismantling traditional software and systems integrator silos to build interconnected, multi-party solutions. Rather than forcing alignment to a singular model, Microsoft aims to be the definitive platform of platforms by offering extensive choice across over 1,100 language models. The enterprise landscape is rapidly moving past experimental AI pilot phases and entering production setups completely focused on transforming core business outcomes. Tomorrow's service organizations are aggressively evolving into software-minded operations that deploy repeatable, highly specialized internal autonomous agents. Managing tokens and monitoring usage metrics represents the emerging operational baseline for balancing efficiency against the scaling expenses of large language models. 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 AI frontier, platform of platforms, enterprise partners, global systems integrators, digital natives, language models, token consumption, agent sprawl, citizen developers, shadow IT, business outcomes, technical enablement, marketplace growth, hyper-scalers, processing fluency, sovereign AI, industry ecosystems, data governance. Transcript [00:00:00] Stephen Boyle: This is the biggest, most transformative, iterative change in technology we’ve ever seen, where, if you wanna call it a paradigm shift or whatever word comes after paradigm shift. [00:00:12] Vince Menzione: We just came back from Ultimate Partner live in Bellevue, Washington, where we hosted incredible leaders for two amazing days. Come join us for this next session where we explore the tectonic shifts we’ve all been seeing. Uh, I am thrilled to invite our next guest up on stage. I’ve known this gentleman for several years back in my days at Microsoft, and, um, we’ve been friends, actually Microsoft, and then we both went and did different things, came he’s come back to Microsoft in a big way. [00:00:46] Vince Menzione: Uh, Steven Boyle, for those of you don’t know, is recently a named the C. We will talk about it in a second, but I, I need to announce you properly. Is the corporate vice president, which by the way in Microsoft is a big deal for enterprise partners. He and Nicole De and I would say are the two Microsoft leaders in the organization. [00:01:06] Vince Menzione: Nicole is the channel chief. Steven has a, a big remit and we’ll talk about that up on stage. But I’m just so delightful for his support and for making the time in a very busy week at Microsoft ’cause this is CEO summit this week to make some time to come with us and be on stage with me. Please welcome my good friend Steven Boyle. [00:01:29] Vince Menzione: Good to see you, sir. To see. So I’m gonna put you on this side. [00:01:33] Stephen Boyle: Okay. [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: The hot seat. So I’m gonna, I, I didn’t do a justice and I, I wanted you to explain your role. I, I think I know, but I think for the, for the people in the room, uh, talk to us what Enterprise Partners means at Microsoft and what that role remit and remit looks like. [00:01:50] Stephen Boyle: Um, CVPs may or may not be important, but one thing they don’t do is get invites to the CEO summit. So I’m super pleased to be here with you guys. No, no, it’s totally cool. It’s totally cool if that phone rings. No, I’m kidding. Doesn’t. So what does it mean? So I’d like quickly, um. January last year, uh, we split the sales organization into enterprise and small to medium enterprise and channel. [00:02:15] Stephen Boyle: You guys probably familiar with that? Nicole is the, uh, chief partner officer lives in the SMA and C world and drives the channel, um, drives our marketplace business and, and a lot of other things. Um, for that 60 billion, um, you know, total addressable market that we have. Down there in SME and C. Um, at the same time, we established enterprise partner as part of Nick Parker’s overall organization. [00:02:40] Stephen Boyle: Um, but for most of 2025 we ran it as global systems integrators and advisories, ISVs and digital natives. So three separate footprints all focused entirely on, on, on enterprise. Um, in December, January, we talked about establishing an enterprise partner leader that would. You know, aggregate all of this stuff. [00:03:00] Stephen Boyle: Um, I was fortunate to come through, um, some frankly, pretty hairy, uh, experiences, I bet with some of our senior leaders. Um, I, I’ve loved to [00:03:08] Vince Menzione: been in the room for that [00:03:09] Stephen Boyle: questions like, why Steven Boyle and things like that, right? And really have to dig deep to, uh, to justify. Anyway, uh, I’m blessed and honored, uh, to run that entire portfolio of partners, uh, for the entirety of the enterprise partner world, which now from a chief revenue officer perspective, belongs to Deb. [00:03:25] Stephen Boyle: Deb Co. So Deb is the enterprise leader for all of our sales that we do into that space. Awesome. Um, I have three regional leaders, Nina Harding here in the United States, Ehab Ra in in Europe, and Heather Gordon in Asia that mirror and replicate and flow down the things that we decide to do from a strategy perspective for the, uh, for the core. [00:03:45] Vince Menzione: And we love Nina. She’s been, she was at our last event, [00:03:47] Stephen Boyle: super, super lady. And, uh, you know, the US is still 50% of our overall business. [00:03:53] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:53] Stephen Boyle: Too big to fabric. Every time I talk to Nina, I’m like, Nina, you’re too big to fail. We can’t cover you anywhere else. So you know, you’ve gotta be successful here in the Americas. [00:04:01] Vince Menzione: So I think just for breaking it up, I, ’cause I do want to like, it’ll lead to the next question, right? So you have the global systems integrators, all these systems integrators. Essentially you have all of the software companies we used to call ISVs, we now call SDCs or software development corporations. [00:04:17] Vince Menzione: And then you also have the AI stack, I’ll call it. Right? So under Jason Grafe. Yeah. Many, many might know. Jason’s been a guest on the podcast and was Satya’s chief of staff at one time, eight years. Eight years. Wow. I didn’t realize there was that many. [00:04:31] Stephen Boyle: Carry carried a lot of bags for Satya over the years. [00:04:34] Vince Menzione: Unbelievable. Well, let’s, I mean, so AI is an important component, right? And you saw Jay’s, Jay talking, just talking about AI and all these things. I would love to start here, right? Because, uh, you’re, you’re, I wanna get your perspective as Microsoft, your perspective as Microsoft on the biggest shifts you’re seeing in defining this we’ll call AI Frontier. [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: We’re seeing right now, how should partners translate that into how they position and go to market externally? How, how do we need to think about this time? [00:05:02] Stephen Boyle: Yeah, that is, uh, that is a huge question and I’m not sure we’ve got enough time to go into the, into all of the detail. Um, so let me sort of up level it a little bit for you. [00:05:10] Stephen Boyle: And I think, look, the move that we meet at made a couple of months ago and pulling together those three aspects. Nicole had already done it in SME and C. Right. One partner organization across the world with a very common set of goals. We were working closely together, Sandy Gupta, on ISV, Jason on ai, and myself on on si. [00:05:29] Stephen Boyle: But we were still working closely together across silos. So the opportunity for me, 60 days into this role is AI just allows you to wire the partner ecosystem together differently. Right? And even if you look at how we’re going to market an AI today, um. You know, with, with, with chat GPT, with Claude, with Anthropic, um, I think there’s something like 1100 different, you know, language models on Microsoft today. [00:05:55] Stephen Boyle: So the way I think about AI is we are absolutely gonna be the ultimate platform of platforms. Yeah, choice is incredibly important. Um. It’s, it’s, you know, turn the clock back 12 months, everybody was chat gpt five point x, you know, and then six months ago it was Gemini and now it seems to be clawed. And honestly I don’t know what it’s gonna be next quarter. [00:06:15] Stephen Boyle: So the only thing I can do is offer you choice. [00:06:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:18] Stephen Boyle: And from a partner perspective, I think that minimizes or reduces the risk that you have betting on the Microsoft platform because you can go in a multitude of different directions. I know we’re not in Europe, but if you were in Europe and you were worried about G-G-D-P-R and Jay mentioned sovereignty, you’d probably be like lining up really closely to Misra. [00:06:37] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. And a bunch of other Europe, European partners. So wherever you are in the globe, I wanna be that platform choice. Um, and we will lead with our own first party solutions. I hope they’re not coming for me. Um. I parked safely in the hotel. It can’t be me. Um, but you weren’t vibe coding in the room. Um, but you know, wherever you are in the world, in whichever industry you are in, um, it is our intent to, to offer that platform of platforms and to give the broadest set of partners the opportunity to engage with us. [00:07:07] Vince Menzione: I think that’s really important because I, I have found, especially in the last month or two, people are, it’s almost like a knee jerk. Don’t you feel like people don’t know what to do? There’s been so much noise in the press and the media and, and the markets around open AI and anthropic especially. Where do I go? [00:07:26] Vince Menzione: Seems to be like when I, when I sit, I watch everybody in the room here. I think they’re, they’ve all been thinking that as well. So you can, [00:07:31] Stephen Boyle: there’s a, a little bit of a deer in the headlights moment. Yes. And even I like, I get that. Yeah. Um, you know, I saw, uh, Jay slides. Jay, love the presentation. Love the slides, man. [00:07:40] Stephen Boyle: I’m gonna steal several of them. Um, we’ll talk about that later. We, we [00:07:43] Vince Menzione: have the deck, [00:07:45] Stephen Boyle: but, but in all seriousness, you know, this, this is like. It’s a new paradigm. I will date myself a little bit. Some of you might heard me say this. I sold many computers in the 1980s. Mini computers. Some of you in the room are going, what’s a mini computer? [00:07:59] Stephen Boyle: Um, I sold client server for Sun Microsystems in the nineties. I sold an awful lot of Oracle databases in the Auts, I think they’re called, and I’ve done two stints with Microsoft. This is the biggest, most transformative. Iterative change in technology we’ve ever seen. What, if you wanna call it a paradigm shift or whatever word comes after paradigm shift. [00:08:18] Stephen Boyle: Um, and we are building intelligent systems at scale faster than we’ve ever seen. Scalable, mission critical solutions being implemented today inside of Microsoft and with our most important customers. So, and we can’t do it without partners, right? There is absolutely nothing we can do in this industry. I will, I will put the, you know, the elephant in the room out there. [00:08:40] Stephen Boyle: Our ISD organization has between five and 7,000 people. Our forward deployed engineering organization is about a thousand people. [00:08:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:48] Stephen Boyle: So when you look at the scale of the total addressable market that Jay just talked about. We are gonna service directly like this much [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: used to be 5%. Was it even, is it even that high? [00:08:58] Stephen Boyle: I doubt it’s, I doubt it’s even that. And the billions of dollars that we spend every year helping our customers transform to what we’re now calling frontier firms is gonna be, have to be driven with every single person in this room in some way, shape, or form. Judson is not asking Marla to significantly increase ISD. [00:09:15] Stephen Boyle: Not asking John to significantly increase FDE, although we probably will hire in that area just because of the, the newness and the, you know, bright shiny object that everybody’s like, oh, FDE, I’ve gotta have those. We’ve got a thousand already today that have been around in John’s organization for 10 plus years doing the things that we are doing today. [00:09:32] Stephen Boyle: But we are gonna build out that muscle. But the real way we’re gonna build out that muscle is with all of you in this room. That’s like categorical. That is my like, probably number one goal for the next one to three years is make sure that, that story that Jay just told about Microsoft not being involved in AstraZeneca. [00:09:48] Stephen Boyle: I probably won’t tell Judson that Jay, but I love the story. Um, like if you could all do that for me, like win, um, that is so, you know, from our worldwide learning, through our skilling enablement through our cloud solution architects that I personally own. We are pivoting aggressively towards making sure that the partners understand our platforms better than any other job, number one for me right now, if you don’t understand what I’m selling, like I’m kind of dead in the water obviously. [00:10:15] Stephen Boyle: Well, [00:10:15] Vince Menzione: I was gonna ask you why now? Why Microsoft? Why now? Right? Because there is a lot of noise. You know, Google just announced, you all announced your results on the same day, which was astounding. That was freaky, wasn’t it? It was. It was the first time. And the, the total commitment, customer commitment is over a trillion dollars now, I think 1.2 trillion is what I counted up. [00:10:33] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. [00:10:34] Vince Menzione: But it’s saying a lot about like, what do I do now, like as these partners in the room. Um, how, I think you kind of already, and you’ve talked about this, about differentiating where Microsoft is, I think J Slide does a lot of justice there. It says how, uh, Microsoft Partners came into the room, surrounded the customer. [00:10:52] Vince Menzione: It feels like Microsoft has always leaned in big time on partners. Uh, more so I would say than any other organization out there. What would [00:10:59] Stephen Boyle: you say Joe Roses, my chief of staff, business manager and so many other things was telling me last night that, you know, we used to say 500,000 partners. [00:11:05] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:11:06] Stephen Boyle: it’s a, it’s a significantly higher number than that as well. [00:11:09] Stephen Boyle: So there’s an element of, you know, back to the deer in the headlights, which partners are, are more important. One of my other phrases that I say on a regular basis, the winners and losers are yet to be decided in this next wave. Like, I want all of us to on the right side of that argument. Right? But, but it’s gonna be a challenge and, and companies are going through shifts. [00:11:28] Stephen Boyle: You know, Accenture, maybe, possibly doesn’t need 750,000 employees in the not too distant future. Maybe TCS at 600,000 doesn’t need 600,000 human employees. So we’re going through this dramatic shift of, you know, what’s the right balance going forward. What I would say about Microsoft is notwithstanding the fact that we’ve figured this out for 51 years, which is a little bit mind blowing, um, that you know, all the way back in the seventies we’ve gone through so many iterative changes. [00:11:56] Stephen Boyle: People have questioned just like they’ve questions. A lot of other technology companies, are you gonna be around for the long haul? I think we’ve proven time and time again, and I love Jay’s story. I’ve used that myself about how many companies disappear on a, on a decade to decade, you know, business. 10 years ago I had the opportunity to listen to Craig Clayton Christensen, who’s sadly no longer with us. [00:12:15] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. But you know, the books that he wrote and the story that he told to Microsoft 2014, we were nowhere in cloud. [00:12:21] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:22] Stephen Boyle: AWS was so far ahead of us, it was crazy. And he came in and he’s like. You know what? You guys need to be successful. You need to figure out how to cross this chasm again, and we’ve done it time and time again. [00:12:32] Stephen Boyle: You can go back. You know, Microsoft used to be known as a fast follower in ai. I don’t think we’re a fast follower. I think we’re right up there. We’re right at the front, but that race is still being run and the winners are losers are yet to be decided. [00:12:44] Vince Menzione: I was in that room with Clayton Christensen with you, by the way. [00:12:46] Vince Menzione: I remember, I remember that. That was at a Prism conference. [00:12:49] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Yeah. [00:12:50] Vince Menzione: You men, you touched on this with the GSIs a little bit. How do you see the roles evolving? You know, we, we, we bucketed all, we’ve always been. Fantastic about bucketing ISVs or SDCs and sis and digital natives. Yeah. How does it, how does that all come together? [00:13:06] Vince Menzione: Does it come together any differently in this new AI platform era, or is it the same? [00:13:11] Stephen Boyle: I look, I, I’ve said this for a long time, like if you go into AstraZeneca, the six plus, you know, frontline partners, there’s probably a whole board of second, third tier that, that we don’t know about doing, you know, things across the AstraZeneca group. [00:13:25] Stephen Boyle: It takes several villages and sometimes a small town, especially in my world, in the enterprise world, strategic five hundreds. Yeah. Um, you know, we, we ran some reports a few years ago and it is shocking how many global systems integrators have a footprint in Shell or Exxon or, you know, bank of America or whatever else. [00:13:44] Stephen Boyle: So I’ve always believed that partner to partner is critical. Yeah. I think it became even more critical in the, in the AI world, and I’ll take my new friends at Anthropic. So I went to the first Anthropic partner Summit. Some of you might have been down there in, in San Diego, um, just a couple of months ago. [00:13:59] Stephen Boyle: Same partners, same people from the same partners. In the room, you know, talking about what they’re gonna do together with Anthropic. Um, and I’m looking out across this audience going, okay, well I know him and I know her and I know those guys, and like, I need to figure out how I’m gonna weave this together. [00:14:14] Stephen Boyle: So it’s not just an Accenture and Anthropic or an NTT data and anthropic, but it’s an NTT data plus anthropic plus Microsoft. Story going forward. And then who’s best at delivering those services capabilities? So it’s it at every juncture that I see in the, in the partner community, and this is the, the reason why I argued vehemently with Nick, that it has to be one organization I’m gonna create maybe given a little bit away. [00:14:40] Stephen Boyle: So if you’re recording, stop now. Um, I’m gonna create an enablement organization that is partner agnostic. I don’t necessarily care. I do care about the digital natives, but I don’t care about how I train them. Right. What I’m more important of is how do I train the digital natives in what the sis are doing, and how do I train the sis and what the ISVs Plus digital Natives are doing. [00:15:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:15:01] Stephen Boyle: That is my, that’s my game plan. If I fail there, then I think we fail to raise the bar and be differentiated in an AI world, and I’m not set up like that today. [00:15:12] Vince Menzione: I wanna, I wanna ask you, uh, uh, because I was looking at Jay’s slide and the, the managed piece is. And we have a lot of managed service providers in this room today. [00:15:20] Vince Menzione: A lot of them, by the way, come from the old school of managed services. The managed piece seems to be like, if I’m doing something today with ai, we’re gonna talk about security next, uh, up on stage here. It seems like there’s a new set of skills or a different approach to the customer, don’t you? Don’t you agree? [00:15:37] Stephen Boyle: I I [00:15:37] Vince Menzione: think you need to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all [00:15:39] Stephen Boyle: times. I think what it boils down to is you can’t do AI unless you do certain other things. [00:15:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:15:44] Stephen Boyle: Right. You could be a modern work specialist and you could make a lot of money being a modern work specialist, or you could be a, a dynamic specialist. [00:15:52] Stephen Boyle: We just held our, uh, inner A in a circle conference last last week, which I was disappointed to miss for the first time in a few years. Those, those days are, are, are fast becoming over. [00:16:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:16:04] Stephen Boyle: Um, why? Because everything that I’ve just said is tied together by ai. Yes. And in order to do good ai, you need good data. [00:16:12] Stephen Boyle: And in order to trust everything that you’re getting, as Judson talks about trust and intelligence, you need to wrap that in a really secure [00:16:19] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:16:19] Stephen Boyle: You know, en en environment. Now we will do our best to provide levels of security into how we deliver ai. But that’s not the end of the game, right? You have to take it all, all the way to the edge. [00:16:30] Stephen Boyle: So that’s why a siloed partner or a singular commercial solution area partner in Microsoft’s terms, has got to transform its business. ’cause if you’re gonna do ai, you’ve gotta do those other things as well. [00:16:41] Vince Menzione: Agreed. I must see the model changing, and in fact, I see like bigger organizations becoming managed service providers in many respects. [00:16:48] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, there’s still, there’s still a role for all the old terminology you mentioned is SV to sdc. Yeah. I’m like, I’m been around long enough. Look, it’s ANB still anv, it’s still an isv. Thank you. Independent software vendor. Um, and it’s, you know, where, where AI is allowing software to be, you know, frankly developed in a number of different places. [00:17:07] Stephen Boyle: We are all citizen developers. Um, you know, I was on a call with our internal leadership yesterday, um, and you guys might have heard this story ’cause I think it came out at Ignite. When we turn the agent 365, around and on ourselves. We found 130,000 agents running across Microsoft that had been developed and deployed internally with, I mean, you could call it shadow it. [00:17:28] Stephen Boyle: I guess that would be one phrase that you would use for it, but the reality is if you, if you haven’t got something to do your job today, you have the tools. To build it really, really fast. Um, and that, you know, that’s, that’s a great opportunity for people to be able to do their work, you know, in a better and in a different way. [00:17:45] Stephen Boyle: But it’s also a huge opportunity to make sure that data governance and security and all the other things that we need to deliver are there out of, out of the gate and out of the platform that we deliver. So security’s absolutely critical. Not saying that managed services won’t grow, um, at, at some level as well, but only if they transform into this multifaceted way. [00:18:04] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Thinking [00:18:05] Vince Menzione: about, well, that’s what I was, I was gonna lead to here with innovating. It’s happening across, I mean, we’re talking about chips, we’re talking about foundational models, LLMs, we’re talking about applications, we’re talking about agents. How should we think about where to play and how to differentiate as partners in this room? [00:18:22] Stephen Boyle: I think. [00:18:25] Stephen Boyle: So look, I mean, one, one of the ways that Judson talks about it is I think silicon’s gonna change over time. Yes. NVIDIA’s definitely the 800 pound gorilla, maybe the 8,000 pound gorilla. Yeah. Uh, but you know, if you read the press, there’s, there’s things happening in, in different places as first party silicon, which we clearly are, are developing, um, in a quantum direction for sure. [00:18:45] Stephen Boyle: Um, there’s lots of different language models that haven’t even been launched on, on, on the marketplace yet, so. You know, Judson’s trying to uplevel our conversations. You’ll hear us talking about conversations more and more as we go into FY 27, um, that obviate all of those layers. Just like even when I was selling Sun Microsystems, it was about the business outcome and the business solution that we were solving for not necessarily the fastest piece of hardware or the best client service solution on, on the market. [00:19:17] Stephen Boyle: So I think what’s gonna happen over the next 12 to 24 months is we’ll have so many different models to choose from. We’ll have more silicon to choose from, but those won’t be the real buying decisions. The real buying decisions of what? How am I trying to transform my finance organization, my HR organization, and my supply chain? [00:19:36] Stephen Boyle: Because the underlying technology, Judson says commodity I, I guess I can go with that. It will be commoditized and we’ll really start to focus back on what the important things are. We’re moving a lot from pilot to production. You guys have probably seen that. The numbers that Jay just showed about how many. [00:19:52] Stephen Boyle: Projects are failing, is getting less and less because we’re getting smarter and smarter about what it takes to actually drive the business outcome. And I need all of us to be talking that same language. Yeah. Having conversations with head of HR about how we’re gonna transform human capital management in the, in the age of agents, if you like, like the underlying platform. [00:20:14] Stephen Boyle: It’s not, don’t worry about it. You wanna be on a secure platform. Don’t get me wrong. But at the same time, I don’t think we, we spent too much time worrying about that. [00:20:21] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We’re not, what you’re saying is we’re not spending enough time on outcomes. On the business outcomes. Right. And that’s where we need to focus. [00:20:27] Vince Menzione: We’re, we’re focusing on, I, I feel like we’re, it’s a signal to, to noise ratio that we’re living through right now. There’s too much noise. [00:20:33] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. [00:20:34] Vince Menzione: And we’re not focusing on the signal. I think that’s what you’re saying. [00:20:36] Stephen Boyle: I, it’s got to be, I mean, to be honest with you, it’s always been, you know, even when I sold what I would perceive, you know, sun in the nineties was a rockman ship to the stars and, you know, kind of sad what happened to that company. [00:20:47] Stephen Boyle: Um, but we, we were, we were fixated on, we had the best client server. But, but nobody was buying, you know, a piece of Sun hardware as a room heater, which is all it did, you know, like for the longest. But if you had SAP, if you had Cybase, if you had Bond, remember Bond, I mean all of those applications that drove the business outcomes, we’ve gotta get back to that kind of mentality. [00:21:09] Stephen Boyle: Yes. And worrying a little bit less about the underlying architecture. Yeah. It needs to be, it needs to be part of the conversation. ’cause it needs to deliver trust and security and intelligence and everything else. Then you need to rapidly move to what are you trying to achieve and how can we ensure the, the, the success of, of your business outcome. [00:21:27] Stephen Boyle: And look, I mean, Palantir pri you know, sort of came out and said, well, the way we do that is through forward deployed engineering. Um, and they stole the show. And, and, you know, they’re, they’re doing very well as a result of doing that. Uh, but if you go and talk to, um, Tom Siebel’s organization at C3 ai. [00:21:43] Stephen Boyle: They’ve had FDS for quite a while. You know, I told you about John Chuchu 10 years ago. John Chu, Chuck’s job was to go and get all the applications that we needed on the Microsoft phone. Remember that? [00:21:54] Vince Menzione: Yes. Um, [00:21:55] Stephen Boyle: you know, so we’ve pivoted John o over the years to doing what he’s doing now, which is to go sometimes in partnership with, with partners into the customer and say, what is it you’re trying to achieve? [00:22:05] Stephen Boyle: Let me show you how I can build that for you in three weeks or three months. That might have taken you three years. We literally just did a hackathon with one partner last, last, last week with, uh, with our ISE organization, the, the, the forward deployed, uh, group that John runs. Um, and one of the big customers said, I’ve just done in three days what would’ve taken me three months. [00:22:26] Stephen Boyle: Now he hasn’t productized it and rolled it out and blah, blah, blah. But the reality is that is how fast things are changing. And this was not a small company. This was a very, very large oil company, and they were like blown away by how much we can achieve. We’ve gotta do that at scale. [00:22:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:22:42] Stephen Boyle: You know, we, we have a commitment to scale our FDE community through partnerships to touch all of the S 500 in a very personalized way. [00:22:51] Stephen Boyle: And then, you know, at a slightly, you know, lower ratios down through the, through the majors and into, into Nicole’s SME and C world as well. [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: Jay talks about the decade of the ecosystem. He coined that term back, back on a podcast way back in nine, in, uh, in 2020. Microsoft has been at the, for, we used to call partner to partner back, back in the day. [00:23:10] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Do you remember those days? How do you think about this ecosystem evolving and what steps are you taking to help bring these organizations together? Because I, I, again, we look at the seven seats or 6.3 seats at the table. The customer has the power now that they didn’t have before. ’cause they have the commitment with like with Microsoft and they can buy off of the marketplace and pull together multiple organizations to go, go do that. [00:23:34] Vince Menzione: How do you think about helping to orchestrate that as the leader of the enterprise partner business? [00:23:39] Stephen Boyle: So I’ll start with a really big example, and I’ll try and sort of scale it down a little bit. But my friends at Accenture, with the Accenture, Microsoft Business Group, we spend an awful lot of time, you know, in, in each other’s pockets, in each other’s deals. [00:23:51] Stephen Boyle: We know everything that’s going on in the Accenture, Microsoft Business Group. And a couple of weeks, or maybe a month or so ago, I was told that the Microsoft Business Group is now larger than the SAP Business group. It probably flip flops. [00:24:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:24:04] Stephen Boyle: it won’t be too long before the Anthropic Business Group is bigger than both of those. [00:24:08] Stephen Boyle: So what I need my Microsoft team to do is to not spend all of their lives in the. A MBG, the Azure, the Accenture, Microsoft Business group, but to go make friends in the Anthropic Accenture Business group and frankly still to make friends in the SAP business group and maybe in the Oracle Business Group and the list goes on. [00:24:27] Stephen Boyle: So at a macro 11, in the very largest accounts where we haven multiple practices, where we haven’t spent time before, I’m gonna. Push my people into uncomfortable zones and I’m gonna push them to go into those other areas and I’m gonna load them up with technical talent and cloud solution architects and ai, you know, forward deployed engineers. [00:24:45] Stephen Boyle: And I’m gonna force different people to talk together that haven’t talked together. So I can do that in TCS. I can do that, Capgemini, I can do that. Um, you know, in Europe with Capgemini and Misra is a classic example. Um, with the, with the Indian sis, Indian based sis, they’re all big enough where I know all the practices exist. [00:25:04] Stephen Boyle: I just need to do a better job of, of talking to them. Now, when you downsize that into, you know, into a, a company that doesn’t have all of that scale, this the same truth still holds. I need to talk to people who aren’t necessarily motivated every single day to do something with Microsoft. I need to talk to people who are motivated to do something with an AI partner or even a traditional SaaS partner. [00:25:27] Stephen Boyle: I noticed yesterday, actually no, this morning I got a notification that we just passed, um, a billion dollars in revenue on the marketplace with ServiceNow. [00:25:35] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:25:36] Stephen Boyle: Um, and I think AWS announced the same thing, by the way this month as well. Um, so thank you to the ServiceNow people. Yeah. Um, you know, that is that there’s a tremendous demonstration of how far we’ve come in marketplace. [00:25:48] Stephen Boyle: ’cause that’s another one where we trailed AWS quite significantly. But with the right partnerships. And driving the right motions, we can, you know, we can definitely catch up and we will continue to pass, uh, some of, some of the other hyperscalers in, in, in that way. So really the bottom line to your question is partner to partner is still real. [00:26:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:26:08] Stephen Boyle: how we do it and what we use to tie things together. And I know that compensation drives behavior and we’re not gonna get into a compensation about like how we get compensated and everything else, but the reality is I’ve gotta break down those barriers and those silos and I’ve gotta deliver real meaningful enablement and practice development so that, so that the people who sit in the Anthropic business group and the people who sit in the Microsoft Business Group are spending as much time together as they are with me. [00:26:34] Stephen Boyle: That makes sense. Simply put, that’s what I, I need to achieve at scale rapidly. [00:26:40] Vince Menzione: So to, we’re getting close to time here, but as you look forward, what would define the most successful partnerships in this ecosystem? Is it, is it what you described, the opening up the aperture or for the, for the leaders in the room here today, what should they go do better and differently? [00:26:58] Stephen Boyle: Um, so obviously we’re closing out this fiscal, we’ve got Microsoft start and Microsoft start for partners coming up in July. Um, I mentioned the fact that we’re, we’re driving. Cu customer engagement through the lens of conversations and how do we achieve business outcomes? I would encourage you to, to gravitate, if you like, above the commercial solution areas where you might have understood, this is how I interact with Microsoft today. [00:27:23] Stephen Boyle: Um, and abstract it up to that AI layer. You know, think about trust, think about intelligence, think about business outcomes, and how do I potentially weave together a story? If I’m in the dynamic space, how do I get better in data? If I’m in the data space, how do I get better in. In that modern work environment, but really use AI as the overlay to, to help tie that together. [00:27:44] Stephen Boyle: That’s one thing. The second thing is if we’re not training you in the right direction, it’s stevenBoyle@microsoft.com. Let me know. Awesome. Um, we’ve got programmatic stuff, um, you know, and we’ve got high touch stuff as well. So I think this is, this is another time where Microsoft is gonna over pivot on all of the training and enablement that we need to do to make sure that you’re, you know, you’re grounded in our platform. [00:28:07] Stephen Boyle: Um, I think there’s a huge opportunity with this agenda future to become more of a software partner. You know, even the deepest services organizations are going to need agents, and the more successful ones will be the ones that can turn on those agents in a repeatable way. So. Our agents, the new SaaS. I’m not exactly saying that, but I think that the agen future is one where even the more services oriented companies will, will have teams of agents that they’re deploying. [00:28:35] Stephen Boyle: In fact, I had a very, very large systems integrator, um, in, in the EBC just about a month ago, three weeks ago. Um, and I was sat next to their head of consulting and he showed me what he called his God dashboard. Uh, and right in the middle of his God dashboard there are like 450 accounts. All of whom I recognized, ’cause they were all in the enterprise, right in the middle of his dashboard was, how many tokens am I spending? [00:29:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:01] Stephen Boyle: Like, not like what’s my daily runway? You know, not am I making a profit on that account or anything else like that is like, how many tokens have I consumed? Yeah. Because there is an awful lot of, that is the new juice, if you like. That’s, that’s driving the success. You can have the smartest people on the planet, but you’ve got to still arm them with all the best tools that are available out there. [00:29:22] Stephen Boyle: So it’s fascinating to listen to him, how he had gone through that thing of, you know, agent sprawl, how many are really working, how many are not working? How can we prove that? You can prove it through, you know, managing your tokens. There’s a new version of. Finops for tokens, for want of a better phrase, that’s gonna be critical for us all to understand. [00:29:40] Stephen Boyle: ’cause they’re not cheap, they’re not free, that’s for sure. And, and they might not be cheap if you’re not, if you’re not managing them and using them effectively. Yeah. So that’s the other thing that I would really get on top of. And, you know, we’re gonna make some announcements in the not too distant future about the consumption driven future. [00:29:56] Stephen Boyle: Um, that, that we will, that we will deliver with our first party and third party platforms going forward. So that’s another. Another critical thing [00:30:03] Vince Menzione: sounds like some exciting announcements. Pretty soon. [00:30:06] Stephen Boyle: Yeah, could look close. Quarter four, help me close. Quarter four. Yes. That’s priority number one, two, and three right now. [00:30:12] Stephen Boyle: Uh, but get ready for some, you know, for some new announcements in July. Um, look, the future is incredibly bright with Microsoft. It’s incredibly bright in the industry as a whole, right? I mean, let, let’s be honest, the, the growth targets that we will have for ne next year are astronomical, and we will not make them without the partner community that we have, without training and enabling the partner community that we need for tomorrow. [00:30:34] Stephen Boyle: So like, stay close, you know, stay engaged. Talk to your partner development managers, talk to the talk to field reps, talk to the accounts that that, that you are in, and stay as close as you possibly can to our emerging strategy. And, um, you know, look, I, I think if I had fivefold or tenfold the people I have today, I still wouldn’t be able to touch everybody that I would like to touch in the partner community. [00:30:58] Stephen Boyle: So I’ll apologize in advance. Um, but we’re gonna have some, you know, some really cool ways of learning. Um, and we’re gonna make sure that they’re available to the widest possible audience. [00:31:07] Vince Menzione: Well, we bring the practitioners and the experts in the room to help with that as well. Right? Yeah. Because you can’t always have a partner development manager tied to everybody in the room. [00:31:14] Stephen Boyle: I, I would do hackathons on AI every week with every partner and every part of the world, but I can’t. [00:31:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah, exactly. Well, so good to have you today. Thank you. So good to see you again. I don’t know what your schedule is like. I, we didn’t, we don’t have enough time for questions. [00:31:28] Stephen Boyle: That’s cool. [00:31:28] Vince Menzione: From the audience. [00:31:29] Stephen Boyle: I’m gonna stay around for a little [00:31:30] Vince Menzione: while this [00:31:30] Stephen Boyle: morning and I’m coming back [00:31:31] Vince Menzione: for cocktails. Alright, terrific. So. Stephen Boyle will be here for cocktail hour. Thank you. Four 30 and uh, I wanna thank you, sir. So good to have you. Thank you. Good to see you. Absolutely. [00:31:42] Stephen Boyle: So much. Absolutely. Hey, thanks everybody. [00:31:43] Stephen Boyle: Thanks for what you do today, and hopefully thank you for what you do tomorrow as well. [00:31:46] Vince Menzione: Thank you. An incredible leader. [00:31:49] Stephen Boyle: Don’t forget, ultimate [00:31:51] Vince Menzione: partner Alive is coming soon, June 18th at our executive breakfast in New York. I hope to see you there.Description The Future of Tech is Here. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ I

Steve Cox, CEO of Clari + Salesloft, joins Sam Jacobs and Asad Zaman to argue that SaaS is far from dead. Steve took the CEO role in December 2025 to merge two of the biggest brands in go-to-market tech into what he calls the world's first predictive revenue system. Topics include the narrative war pushing investors to bet against SaaS-era companies, his one non-negotiable hiring trait, and how to merge two former rivals without one culture eating the other. Plus, a Quiz Pro Quo on go-to-market headcount across US tech and a Bulls and Bears round to close. Key Takeaways: - The AI-native startup boom is already hitting a retention wall, and Steve is watching it arrive deal by deal. As Steve Cox, CEO of Clari plus Salesloft, put it: "the amount of AI native companies that come across my desk now that... are up for sale, you know, they've run out of funding... they grew to 2, 3, 4 million of ARR pretty quickly and then struggled with retention." His read is that everyone knows AI exists now, so driving real adoption "has become more important than ever." - Steve reframes the AI hype cycle as the next layer of infrastructure the industry will absorb, the way it absorbed cloud and big data. As he points out, "how many of us are gonna be talking about AI 3 years from now, 4 years from now?... when was the last time someone mentioned the cloud or Internet of Things or big data?" He expects AI to "layer into everything that we do," which is why he is embedding it into existing revenue workflows rather than fundamentally rebranding the company around it. - The one non-negotiable trait Steve screens for in every executive hire is low ego, because he believes "high ego kills innovation and kills speed." He pairs that with blunt clarity for a merged workforce, telling his first all-hands "It's okay to not to want to be here," so the people who do not buy into the combined company can find the exit fast instead of dragging it down. - Sam Jacobs, CEO of Pavilion, argues a profitable SaaS business with strong retention should ignore where the market trades today. "In the short term, markets are voting machines. In the long term, markets are weighing machines," he said, adding that if you are profitable with good retention, "your customers are voting for you on behalf of the market." The job, in his framing, is to be right long enough that you never have to tap the capital markets at the wrong moment. Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/ Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at Sales Talent Agency - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/ Guest: Steve Cox, CEO at Clari + Salesloft - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-cox-588a2024/ Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack Chapters: 00:00 Introducing Steve Cox 02:07 From Bananas to Enterprise Tech 03:05 Can SaaS Beat AI Startups? 04:33 AI Hype and the 95% Problem 06:57 The CEO Integration Playbook 10:27 Hiring for Low Ego 15:30 AI Startups Landing on His Desk 21:10 The SaaS vs AI Narrative War 26:23 Is Patience a Moat? 33:43 The Predictive Revenue System 38:21 Quiz Pro Quo 44:10 Merging Two Rivals 49:40 Culture After a Merger 59:03 Founder Mode vs Operators 1:02:48 Bulls and Bears

In this today's segment, Dan Sperring, founder and CEO of Align ICP, breaks down a mistake most revenue leaders make when defining their ideal customer profile. The instinct is to chase the highest lifetime value customers, but those segments are often the hardest to win, the slowest to close, and the first to break when the market shifts. This clip focuses on how to balance three critical factors inside your ICP: lifetime value, ease of acquisition, and market health. Dan explains why ignoring any one of these creates pipeline risk, and how leaders can avoid over-rotating into segments that look great on paper but fail in execution. For leaders responsible for predictable growth, this is about making smarter tradeoffs, not just better targeting. Dan Sperring is the founder and CEO of AlignICP, a company focused on helping revenue teams align around high-value customer segments to drive predictable growth. He brings experience across customer success, revenue leadership, and scaling SaaS businesses through product-market and go-to-market alignment. Connect with Dan: AlignICP LinkedIn Books mentioned: The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen The Innovator's Solution by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and ​​Marylou Tyler  Amp It Up by Frank Slootman Tools and podcasts mentioned: clay.com zoominfo.com The Science of Scaling Podcast Listen to the full episode: Aligning Pipeline to Ideal Customer Profile with Dan Sperring Get the Force Management framework for aligning your ICP, sales motion, and customer lifecycle around high-value use cases and measurable business outcomes: The Predictable Revenue Framework: Guide for Leaders Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

This episode is a compilation of answers to YOUR questions that were asked directly from my listeners who attend my weekly business education YouTube live webcast. I'll be covering the topic on: The #1 Founder Mistake, SpaceX IPO & Will AI Replace Your Job?  and more. Refer to chapter marks below for a complete list of topics covered and to jump to a specific section. Get mentored by Chris: Book a Zoom call to discuss joining my Business Academy, Finance Bootcamp (to get a job in finance) or MBA Degree Programs or for investing/business/personal development coaching: https://haroun.short.gy/1on1CallYTWDownload my free "Networking eBook": www.harouneducation.comAttend my weekly YouTube Live every Thursday's 8am-11am PT. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to receive notifications. Learn more about my MBA Degree ProgramChapter Marks: 0:25 Founder Mistakes & Startup Framework15:49 Product Built Before Validation? What to Do Next19:17 Client Success Stories & Results22:20 Customer Conversations & Entrepreneur Traits26:09 Seed Funding & Marketing an Agency32:25 Debt, OpenAI, Anthropic & Market Efficiency37:11 Starting a Quant Fund38:43 IPOs, AI, SaaS & When to Quit43:08 Ukraine Real Estate, Meta & Valuing SpaceX47:12 Career Transitions, Inflation & Mars52:50 AI, Mortgage Originators & SpaceX IPO58:16 Breaking Into Finance & Wealth Management1:03:30 Defense Contracting Risks1:07:52 Q&A Access & Program Overview Connect with me: Schedule a 1:1 call with Chris: https://haroun.short.gy/1on1CallYTWYouTube: ChrisHarounVenturesCompleteBusinessEducationInstagram @chrisharounLinkedIn: Chris HarounTwitter: @chris_harounFacebook: Haroun Education Ventures  TikTok: @chrisharoun

Dan Newman heads FP&A at RingCentral, a $2.5B public SaaS company (a platform for business phone, SMS, contact center, workforce engagement management, video collaboration, and messaging) , where he has overseen a  period of 10X growth. Discussing a career comprising consulting, being a financial analyst at Salesforce, private-equity-backed startups, Dan discusses building financial models towards a sale, navigating the shift from 30% growth to efficiency, and AI processes. In this episode Building the FP&A team at SchoolMessenger and pivoting to a sale  Joining RingCentral at a $250m run rate and a six-person FP&A team towards $2.5billion Why revenue is rarely as simple as it looks  Business partnering in an age of efficiency in SaaS

If your top reps are stuck training new hires instead of closing deals, this AI sales enablement playbook will help. Enterprise seller Vernon Ross joins Mike Allton to show how to scale your best performers' knowledge without stealing their selling time, and why that "teaching jail" is quietly costing you around $30K a month per rep. Vernon has carried quota, closed enterprise deals, and built the AI training tools that make other sellers faster. Inside, he shares the one diagnostic question that finds your highest-ROI automation, why AI pilots die the moment they add friction instead of removing it, and how he uses NotebookLM, private podcasts, and voice cloning to cut top-rep onboarding from 30 hours down to 10. He and Mike also get tactical on where AI belongs inside a MEDDPICC deal, how to tie content consumption to real revenue, and the one automation any team can build this quarter without a six-figure budget. Vernon Ross drove 75 to 85% increases in new client acquisition at a 32% conversion rate, closed deals with Procter & Gamble, GE, and AT&T, and has generated over $500,000 in enterprise SaaS sales. As president of Vernon Ross Consulting and an enterprise podcaster, he now advises Fortune 1000 companies on AI-driven learning. The hard truth: you cannot clone your top performers. So you stay stuck in an endless loop of manual knowledge transfer while your competitors build AI-powered learning engines that run around the clock. This episode is how you break the loop. Still letting shadow AI run unmanaged on your sales floor? Download the free Executive Guide to Shadow AI at theaihat.com/shadow-ai. Chapters: 00:00 Top Rep Pain Points 00:59 Podcast Theme Intro 02:08 Show Mission Setup 03:15 Guest Vernon Ross 05:11 Sales Enablement Gap 07:34 AI Adoption That Sticks 10:58 AI Hosted Training Podcasts 13:46 NotebookLM And Voice Clones 16:28 MEDDPICC With AI 18:52 Onboarding Without Teaching Jail 21:25 Shadow AI Sponsor Break 22:33 Measuring Podcast ROI 28:38 Fast Time To Value 30:37 Compliance And Risk 33:48 First Automation To Build 36:34 Where To Find Vernon 37:18 Final Wrap Up Resources: Vernon Ross: linkedin.com/in/vernonross | vernonross.com | enterprisepodcaster.com | aiplanner.com Mentioned in this episode: Wondercraft.ai, Google NotebookLM, Wispr Flow, ZoomInfo, Apollo, HubSpot, Otter.ai, Claude Code, Gemini, Supporting Cast, MEDDPICC Connect with Mike Allton: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton | Newsletter theaihat.com/newsletter | Podcast theaihat.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2026 is the year of the mega-IPO. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are working their way through the pipeline as anticipation builds for their blockbuster debuts. Elon Musk's conglomerate is leading the shift from private to public markets. Demand is appearing to skyrocket to buy the companies the moment their stocks are publicly available. But is that the right move if you're investing for the long term? Or are there better opportunities among stocks that are down on fears of AI competition, such as software as a service, or SaaS, stocks? These big private firms' public arrivals will also affect index funds and 401(k)s.    So what should you make of all this? Paul Condra is the global head of private markets research for PitchBook, a Morningstar company. He and his colleagues are presenting this topic at the upcoming Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago.   Why We Think the SpaceX IPO Is Overvalued   On this episode: 00:00:00 Welcome 00:01:46 Why SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI Are Going Public Now 00:03:10 Why Morningstar Values SpaceX at Half the IPO Price 00:04:34 How Retail Investors Should Approach Buying SpaceX Stock 00:05:56Anthropic's IPO and Its Trillion-Dollar Valuation 00:07:12 OpenAI's Broken Economics and IPO Prospects 00:08:47 New Index Rules and What They Mean for Your 401(k)   Watch more from Morningstar: The Portfolio That Has Been Beating the Classic 60/40, and Why It Matters for You https://www.morningstar.com/portfolios/portfolio-that-has-been-beating-classic-6040-why-it-matters-you The Best Opportunities for Fund Investors Today https://www.morningstar.com/funds/best-opportunities-fund-investors-today Will Vacation Inflation Affect Your Summer Travel? Here's What to Know https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/will-vacation-inflation-affect-your-summer-travel-heres-what-know   Follow Morningstar on social: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MorningstarInc/ X https://x.com/MorningstarInc Instagram https://www.instagram.com/morningstarinc/?hl=en LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/morningstar/posts/?feedView=all Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with client strategist Amadeus Huff to cover a wide range of topics that wind their way from the nuts and bolts of recruiting and payment models to the rapidly shifting landscape of AI adoption in business. The two dig into how AI tools are reshaping client success roles, the murky territory of recording laws and privacy in a globalized world, the geopolitical implications of oil supply chains, sanctions, and the rise of domestic tech ecosystems in countries like Russia and Argentina, and what all of this means for the future of human connection and the nation-state. Amadeus closes on an optimistic note, arguing that as AI takes over bureaucratic busywork and erodes trust online, people will increasingly hunger for genuine human relationships and third spaces. You can connect with Amadeus Huff on LinkedIn.Timestamps00:00 - Stewart introduces Amadeus Huff, diving into recruiting as building connections between job seekers and employers with minimal variance.05:00 - Amadeus discusses AI adoption pitfalls, comparing aggressive growth strategies to Amazon's early model, questioning whether tools deliver promised results.10:00 - Conversation shifts to AI notetaking versus human perception, exploring probabilistic interpretation differences between humans and machines.15:00 - Recording consent laws debated across states, touching on Waymo surveillance, Uber data collection, and public versus private space definitions.20:00 - Global privacy landscape examined, covering Swiss banking secrecy erosion, ProtonMail's departure, and RISC-V semiconductor development escaping US jurisdiction.25:00 - Sanctions creating domestic innovation ecosystems discussed through Russia's example, paralleling Argentina's emerging commerce evolution.29:00 - Closing reflections on AI replacing bureaucracy while preserving human purpose, optimism about meaningful work and deeper personal connections emerging.Key Insights1. Recruiting is fundamentally about reducing variance between what job seekers want and what employers offer. The most ethical payment models in recruiting are tied to proven success, such as waiting three months to confirm a hire is working out, rather than collecting fees the moment a contract is signed.2. Business thinking has shifted from shareholder value to stakeholder value, meaning companies now consider the wellbeing of employees, families, and communities, not just stock price. This shift is accelerating due to AI overpromising and underdelivering, making value-based measurement more important.3. AI is most useful when it handles administrative tasks that provide no direct value to customers, such as transcribing meetings and populating CRM systems. This frees up workers to focus on meaningful relationship-building and intellectual work rather than bureaucratic busywork.4. There is an important distinction between recorded and unrecorded conversation in professional settings. Building trust through informal off-the-record dialogue before switching on a transcription tool creates clearer boundaries and stronger relationships with clients.5. Sanctions tend to follow a bell curve of effectiveness. Over time they force sanctioned countries to build domestic alternatives, which gain adoption and loyalty, ultimately reducing the influence of the original foreign companies once sanctions lift.6. AI is degrading trust in online information to the point where people will increasingly crave authentic human connection, physical gathering spaces, live experiences, and real relationships rather than algorithmically generated content.7. AI is quietly improving intergenerational relationships by removing codependency. When elderly parents learn to use AI for technical help, their calls to family members shift from problem-solving to genuine connection, which strengthens the relationship.

At Infosecurity Europe 2026 in London, Bill Peterson, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Sumo Logic, joins us to unpack a tension every regulated security team knows well. When an incident hits, the business has to keep running. At the same time, regulators expect sensitive data to stay in region. For a long time, those two demands have pulled in opposite directions. Sumo Logic has spent 15 years as a SaaS platform on AWS, processing roughly four exabytes of data a day for around 2,000 customers. The core promise is speed, driving mean time to resolve as low as possible. Peterson frames it in business terms, because the person signing the check wants to know the return, not the bits and bytes. The news from the show is Sumo Logic availability on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. EU organizations can keep their data in region, handled by EU staff, while still running the full platform for incident response. That turns a painful either/or into a checklist a regulated buyer can complete. Genesys is the first customer live in the sovereign cloud, with payment processor OpenPay preparing to follow. How does this play out for highly regulated industries? Sumo Logic is focused on finance, healthcare, telco, and government, the verticals feeling the most pressure. The path Peterson describes is simple: let Sumo Logic handle incident management, let AWS move and grow the data in region, and check the sovereignty box without giving up operational readiness. Underneath sits a full-featured SIEM and Dojo AI, the agentic approach Sumo Logic launched earlier this year. The goal is not to replace analysts but to keep a human in the loop while handing proven, repetitive work to an agent. Fix one server, confirm the solution, then let an agent patch the other 599 under oversight. A SOC Analyst Agent reaches general availability at Black Hat later this year, alongside an MCP server. On observability, the differentiator is reading both structured and unstructured data without normalizing it first. A zip code is structured; a cryptic web hook error is not. Sumo Logic reads both, which feeds directly into faster time to identify and faster time to resolve. For any leader weighing sovereignty against uptime, Bill Peterson makes a clear case that they can finally live in the same plan. This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight GUEST Bill Peterson, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Sumo Logic LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williampetersonjr/ RESOURCES Learn more about Sumo Logic: https://www.sumologic.com/ Sumo Logic on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (announced at Infosecurity Europe 2026): https://www.sumologic.com/newsroom Infosecurity Europe 2026 event coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/infosecurity-europe-2026-infosec-london-cybersecurity-event-coverage Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight ▶︎ Get your own Brand Briefing at an upcoming event: https://www.studioc60.com/buy-brand-briefings KEYWORDS Bill Peterson, Sumo Logic, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, AWS European Sovereign Cloud, data sovereignty, incident response, mean time to resolve, SIEM, security operations, Dojo AI, agentic AI, SOC analyst agent, observability, log analytics, Infosecurity Europe 2026 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

TJ Joosten is the co-founder of RevFixr, a pricing and monetization consultancy that helps SaaS companies improve pricing, packaging, and revenue growth. Before starting RevFixr, TJ spent a decade building and selling software, helping early-stage companies find customers, refine product-market fit, and navigate pricing decisions from small startup deals to multi-million-dollar enterprise contracts. Today, he works with SaaS founders, private equity firms, and software companies ranging from $1M ARR to $20M+ in revenues. TJ and his team have worked with more than 100 software companies, helping them identify monetization gaps, redesign packaging, move upmarket, and capture more of the value they create without necessarily building new products. In our practical conversation, TJ explains why most founders systematically underprice their software, why private equity firms often see pricing opportunities founders miss. We also discuss what's changing (and not changing) in pricing and packaging with AI and agents this year. He shares savvy advice on usage-based pricing, hybrid pricing models, AI agents, and why founders should continuously test pricing rather than treating it as a fixed decision. Key Takeaways Monetization Gap - Most SaaS companies create more value every year but fail to capture it through pricing and packaging. Pricing Courage - Founders procrastinate price increases while private equity buyers immediately look for pricing opportunities. Hybrid Pricing - Combining fixed fees with usage pricing often increases expansion revenue while reducing buyer risk. Founder Ownership - Pricing works best when one person owns it while sales, product, and finance actively contribute. Constant Testing - Pricing is not fixed; every new quote is an opportunity to validate a better monetization strategy. Quote from TJ Joosten, Co-founder of RevFixr "If you rarely get friction on pricing, it's rarely a barrier to entry and closing sales, then you have a pricing opportunity. If at least 20% of your deals in the negotiating stage don't push back on pricing then you're probably charging way too little. "If let's say 40 % keeps giving you pushback then of course you might want to go down. At that stage they have already invested time so they'll always also be honest about are you simply too expensive and therefore I'm not buying your solution?  "Or is there a different reason? You can just straight up ask someone like why didn't you buy? And if they don't give the reason of price, then you probably don't have a pricing problem." Links Tjitte (TJ) Joosten on LinkedIn RevFixr on LinkedIn RevFixr website Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. 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.

In this episode of TECHtonic, host Thomas Lah, EVP and Executive Director of TSIA, sits down with Agam Vasani, former SVP of Customer Experience at LeanData, to explore what it actually takes to build an AI-driven post-sale organization. Agam shares how his team was drowning in over 40 fragmented customer health signals, leaving CSMs spending more time assembling data than acting on it. He then reveals how they used AI to consolidate those signals into a single, coherent view that reps could actually use.He also breaks down the SIGNAL framework, a six-part filter he developed to cut through a crowded AI vendor market and evaluate tools on source of truth, intelligence quality, go-to action, workflow fit, team-wide adoption, and continuous learning.Discover how peer-driven "AI jams" drove grassroots adoption where top-down mandates failed, and why most AI tools fall short because they're sold like SaaS when AI behaves nothing like it. Don't miss this candid conversation on what separates AI deployments that move the needle from ones that just add another tool to the stack.

Introduction Most distribution management tools were built in the nineties and haven't changed much since. Carriers and MGAs are onboarding agents manually, tracking licenses in spreadsheets, and managing compliance through email threads. Ido Deutsch spent nine years solving that problem from the inside - before realizing the solution was worth selling to the rest of the market. Deutsch is the co-founder of ProducerFlow, a distribution management platform that started as an internal tool at Agentero, the digital insurance network he helped build from a single client and barely a product in 2016 to a scaled distribution business. When carriers kept asking how Agentero was handling agent onboarding so efficiently, Deutsch knew the tool had a market of its own. ProducerFlow launched as a standalone product in March 2024. In this conversation, Josh Hollander and Deutsch dig into what carriers and MGAs consistently get wrong about distribution infrastructure, why the market no longer accepts SaaS-only tools, and why fixing your data before layering in AI is the only move that matters. Guest Bio Ido Deutsch is the Co-Founder of ProducerFlow and Head of Go-to-Market at Agentero, a digital insurance network connecting carriers, MGAs, and independent agencies. A serial entrepreneur who grew up in Israel and built three companies before moving to the US in 2014, he joined Agentero's founder Luis Pino while still at Berkeley's MBA program and spent the next nine years building the company's distribution network and technology from scratch. ProducerFlow, launched in 2024, automates agent onboarding, licensing, compliance, and distribution management for carriers and MGAs. Key Topics • Built from necessity, not theory - ProducerFlow wasn't designed in a whiteboard session. It was built because Agentero was onboarding hundreds of agencies a month and couldn't keep up manually. The existing market solutions were either too old, too rigid, or too expensive. So they built their own, and carriers started asking to use it. • The best clients are switching from something - Deutsch's most successful clients aren't building from scratch. They've already tried one of the legacy tools, overpaid, been underdelivered, and are ready for something that actually integrates with their existing stack. That frustration is the clearest buying signal. • SaaS-only is no longer enough - The market has shifted. Carriers don't want a tool; they want an outcome. ProducerFlow offers a full managed service for clients who want to outsource compliance entirely, or infrastructure-only for those who want to run it themselves. The key insight: whoever wins in distribution tech has to be willing to do the work, not just sell the platform. • Fix the data before you touch the AI - Deutsch's consistent message across the conversation: AI is only as good as the data it runs on. He's seen top-five carriers and major brokers with years of data that's disorganized, siloed, and hard to query. Layering AI on top of bad infrastructure gives confident wrong answers. Fix the foundation first. • Speed to onboard is the core metric - The time from meeting a new agency to the moment they can quote and bind is ProducerFlow's north star. Faster onboarding means better agent experience, higher retention, and more written premium. Everything else is secondary. • The CIO is gaining ground - Deutsch has watched the power dynamics inside carrier organizations shift. Head of AI titles are proliferating, but the real influence is moving toward CIOs and information security leaders as data privacy, AI governance, and "where does my data go" questions dominate every sales cycle. Notable Quotes "We couldn't find anything that worked for us. So we built our own. And then carriers started asking, how do you do that?" "Our best clients typically tried the solution already. They overpaid, were underdelivered, and then they see how ours works. We try not to over promise, but we definitely over deliver." "The market doesn't really accept SaaS-only tools anymore. They want you to solve an outcome, replace a whole function, and do the work." "Fix your data and fix how you look at things. Everything is going to be based on that. AI is only as good as your infrastructure. If the data isn't right, it will just give you very confident answers that are wrong." Resources Guest: • ProducerFlow: https://www.producerflow.com • Ido Deutsch on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ido-deutsch/ Host & Organization: • Joshua R. Hollander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarhollander/ • Horton International (USA): https://www.horton-usa.com/ • Insurtech Leadership Podcast (LinkedIn Showcase): https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/insurtech-leadership-show Subscribe & Review If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your favorite platform and leave a review. The Insurtech Leadership Podcast is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

What if the way your business accepts payments is quietly hurting your cash flow?In this episode of B2B Vault, Alan Kopelman sits down with a payments expert to discuss the hidden costs of B2B payment terms, why many businesses unknowingly act as lenders to their customers, and how smarter payment strategies can improve profitability.Learn how payment automation, virtual cards, ACH, rules-based payment acceptance, and modern invoicing tools are helping businesses get paid faster, reduce processing costs, and improve working capital. Whether you're a business owner, CFO, controller, or finance professional, this conversation offers practical insights you can implement immediately.Tune in to discover how a well-defined payment policy can strengthen cash flow, reduce risk, and create a better payment experience for both buyers and suppliers.#B2BPayments #CashFlowManagement #PaymentAutomation #VirtualCards #BusinessFinance #AccountsReceivable #Fintech #B2BVault #NationwidePaymentSystems #WorkingCapital #BusinessGrowth #PaymentStrategy

In their spare time, John, Xandon, and Jacob have been creating personal web apps. John is creating a healthcare referral portal that easily and efficiently collects and processes referral submissions. Xandon is prepping for his kid's college days by having all the info they need, like planning, admissions, and athletic recruiting in one space. Jacob is making a homeschool learning platform for his daughter that helps him design personalized education plans for special-needs students.They share the ups and downs of their processes and lessons they've learned about full-stack development, SaaS products, subscriptions, AI-assisted coding, and turning personal challenges into practical software solutions.

„Jeden MacBook był wtedy wart 1/3 kapitału całej naszej firmy”. Co się dzieje, gdy zamiast ignorować żmudne problemy operacyjne, rzucasz bezpieczny etat w jednym z najszybciej rosnących fintechów świata i postanawiasz zautomatyzować globalną logistykę IT?

Janina Jay from QRA Corp joins Pathmonk Presents to explain how the company helps regulated engineering teams improve the quality, clarity, and governance of requirements. She breaks down how QRA Corp combines AI-assisted generation, deterministic review, and embedded expert knowledge to reduce ambiguity and prevent costly downstream errors in complex systems. The episode also explores how layered B2B marketing, thought leadership, newsletters, humor, and evolving website messaging help the company connect with hard-to-reach decision-makers. For marketers, SaaS leaders, and technical founders, this conversation offers valuable perspective on educating niche audiences, adapting to changing search behavior, and building a human brand in a highly specialized category.

Is memory truly cyclical, or has the AI data center boom changed the rules? In Part 2 of the How CSI Invests series, Nick and Kasey tackle one of the most debated questions among semiconductor investors by walking through the investment thesis checklist step that asks: what kind of business cycle does this company actually have?Rather than labeling companies simply cyclical or non-cyclical, the framework breaks businesses into short cycle, long cycle, and non-cyclical categories based on how closely revenue tracks changes in GDP growth. A short cycle business sees revenue move quickly with the economy, while a long cycle or non-cyclical business continues growing steadily regardless of macro conditions. The traditional eleven sectors of the economy do not map cleanly onto this framework, and Nick and Kasey explain why semiconductors, SaaS, telecom carriers, and ad-driven internet platforms can all fall in very different places even within the same official sector.The episode applies this framework to six real companies. Micron is examined as a short cycle business currently in year two of a strong memory upcycle, with historical precedent for these cycles to run several years. Intuitive Surgical is discussed as a long cycle healthcare hardware business tied to product generation launches. Vertex Pharmaceuticals is presented as a genuinely non-cyclical pharmaceutical company with steady growth. NextEra Energy represents the utilities sector and one of the longest cycles of all. Credo Technologies, a newer public company, is evaluated as likely short cycle, with a look at its fiscal 2027 guidance calling for eighty percent revenue growth and fifty percent adjusted profit margins. Finally, Palo Alto Networks is broken down as a cyclical business once acquisitions like CyberArk and Chronosphere are stripped out, with commentary on CEO Nikesh Arora's view that cybersecurity is constantly chasing the next emerging risk.The episode closes with the revenue analysis questions CSI uses for every company: who the primary customers are, whether revenue is concentrated, what is actually being monetized, why customers choose to spend money with that company over alternatives, and what risks could disrupt the business. Understanding these fundamentals is what allows an investor to tune out noisy debates about whether a cycle has "changed forever" and instead build real conviction in a business.For in-depth stock research and the Semiconductor Insider membership,visit chipstockinvestor.com.

Morgan Mizrahi is the Co-founder and COO of Rebillia, a subscription management platform that helps e-commerce, SaaS, and recurring revenue businesses automate billing, reduce churn, and grow revenue. An experienced e-commerce and retail leader, she brings hands-on insight into the challenges merchants face when scaling subscriptions. Morgan helped build Rebillia to provide flexible billing infrastructure, lifecycle management, and customer-centered workflows. She is also a podcast guest and industry voice on subscription commerce and long-term customer growth. In this episode… Traditional subscription models often lock customers into rigid plans. As expectations shift in the AI era, merchants need billing systems that adapt to customer behavior, changing preferences, and new revenue opportunities. What does a modern subscription model look like when it is built around choice instead of churn? For Morgan Mizrahi, a subscription commerce and e-commerce technology leader, the answer is flexibility. She explains how Rebillia challenges the old subscription playbook by helping merchants offer adjustable plans that customers can update throughout the subscription lifecycle. Instead of forcing buyers into one-size-fits-all recurring plans, this approach gives customers more control while helping businesses improve retention and increase lifetime value. Morgan also shares how flexible subscription infrastructure can support e-commerce, SaaS, AI-powered applications, and partnership-driven revenue models. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Morgan Mizrahi, Co-founder and COO of Rebillia, to discuss the anti-subscription model for modern commerce. Morgan explains flexible billing, reducing churn through customer choice, and how AI agents and vibe coders are reshaping monetization. She also shares how partnerships create new revenue opportunities.

How does a modern CEO lead a global, hybrid workforce while staying connected to every employee? I recently sat down with Kevin Akeroyd, CEO of Sovos, a tax and compliance specialist for Fortune 500 companies. Kevin shared practical, clear insights on leadership, growth, and retention. Here are five that stood out:

What happens when two cloud economists leave AWS  behind and spend six days hiking 60 miles on the Appalachian Trail? Corey Quinn sits down with Caleb Hurd to share stories from the trail, including exploding sleeping pads, heroic shuttle drivers, lost phones, and the unique community that makes long-distance hiking special. Along the way, they draw surprising parallels between backpacking and cloud economics, discussing everything from serverless architecture and cloud cost optimization to the hidden challenges of on-prem infrastructure. It's a conversation about technology, adventure, perspective, and why sometimes the best way to solve complex problems is to step away from them entirely.Show highlights:(00:00) Why Hiking Hooks You(00:15) Meet Caleb on the Trail(01:31) Trail Miles and Ultralight Parallels(05:24) The Sleeping Pad Blowout(07:46) Shepherd Saves the Day(09:43) Trail Community and Cloud Community(11:07) Post Trail Perspective and Inside Jokes(15:35) Back to Work On Prem vs Cloud Pain(25:47) Server-less Spend and Lambda Sprawl(32:29) Wrap Up Where to Find CalebAbout Caleb: Caleb Hurd is a Cloud Economist at Duckbill, where he helps enterprises make sense of their cloud spend. Before moving to the cost side of the house, Caleb spent years in the trenches building and operating large-scale cloud environments and leading the engineering teams behind them across companies ranging from healthcare tech to enterprise Saas. He also founded CostOps.cloud, an AWS cost consulting practice, and is a vocal advocate for engineering-led FinOps — arguing that the people closest to the architecture should be the ones driving cost strategy, not spreadsheet jockeys in finance. Caleb holds a degree from Georgia Tech and made an unconventional journey into tech from a background in carpentry, which may explain his preference for building things over just talking about them. He's based in Atlanta.Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebrhurd/Sponsored by: duckbillhq.com

Consumption pricing and AI adoption are forcing revenue teams to prove value faster, with less room to hide behind contracts, pilots, or broad technical promises. Seong Park, Senior Vice President of Customer Support and Services at Cursor, joins John Kaplan and John McMahon to examine how customer success has become a consultative, technical, and commercial function in modern go-to-market. The conversation explores why post-sale execution is now central to retention, how teams need to embed into customer workflows, what finance scrutiny means for consumption models, and why the fundamentals of pain, champions, outcomes, and evidence still matter in a market moving at unusual speed. Seong Park is the Senior Vice President of Customer Support and Services at Cursor. His background spans pre-sales, customer success, and go-to-market leadership across companies including MongoDB, ThoughtSpot, and now Cursor. Connect with Seong: LinkedIn Key takeaways from this episode:  00:00 – Seong Park's perspective on how pre-sales, open source SaaS, and customer success shaped his view of enterprise go-to-market. 02:26 – Why consumption models force revenue teams to re-earn the customer's business through usage and realized value. 08:00 – The value realization test every revenue leader should care about: what happens if the solution gets unplugged. 11:04 – Why workflow depth quietly becomes a moat in enterprise accounts. 18:04 – Why the real selling often starts after the customer signs. 23:50 – A look inside where Cursor is finding technical go-to-market talent, and what it takes to build that talent into customer-facing operators. 34:38 – Why finance scrutiny quietly changes the standard of proof for AI investments. 52:00 – The three things post-sale teams need to understand before value delivery can begin. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

Cem Atik is the co-founder and CMO of Harucon Ventures, a firm that acquires minority and majority equity stakes in e-commerce and SaaS businesses doing between one and ten million in annual revenue. Rather than operating as an agency or consultancy, Cem and his team get in with capital, take operational control of marketing and finance, and work to make the businesses they partner with structurally profitable.Most e-commerce brands that come to Harucon Ventures have the same underlying problem: they are optimizing for the wrong things. Revenue looks healthy. ROAS looks acceptable. But unit economics are broken, overhead is bloated, and the margin structure makes scaling impossible.In this conversation, Cem walks through exactly how his team diagnoses and fixes that. From cutting ad spend by 1.7 million euros in a single month to replacing a fulfillment provider that was silently overcharging a brand shipping 25,000 packages a day, the fixes are rarely glamorous but consistently high-impact. The conversation also covers his four-engine growth framework: acquisition, retention, conversion, and profit-first optimization, and why founders who lead with ROAS are measuring the wrong thing entirely.Cem also breaks down channel mix strategy, including why Pinterest and Bing Ads are consistently underused, why TikTok affiliate is one of the highest-leverage growth levers available right now, and why the real money in e-commerce is almost always made in retention, not acquisition.Founders who are scaling but not compounding, or growing revenue while watching margins compress, will find this episode unusually direct and useful.Website: https://www.vimmi.net Email us: info@vimmi.net Podcast website: https://vimmi.net/commerce-untold/ Eitan Koter's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eitankoter/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VimmiVideoCommerce/featured Guest: Cem Atik, Co-Founder & CMO, Harucon Ventures Cem Atik's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cem-atikHarucon-Ventures: https://harucon-ventures.com/Key Takeaways: • If a founder cannot state their customer acquisition cost in under 15 seconds, the business does not have a real financial foundation yet. • ROAS tells you how much revenue you generated per dollar spent. It tells you nothing about whether that dollar was profitable. Optimizing for profit on ad spend (POAS) gives you actual control. • Gross margin under 65% makes scaling structurally difficult in the US and UK markets. The margin problem cannot be fixed with better ads. • Agencies are typically three times cheaper than hiring in-house at early stages. Outsource acquisition first, learn from the partner, then bring it in-house once systems are proven. • TikTok affiliate is one of the most capital-efficient acquisition channels available: commission-based, creator-generated content, and scalable without a large internal team. • Pinterest is consistently overlooked despite an audience skewing 25 to 45 years old with average household incomes above $100K, and ROAS between four and six even at modest spend levels.Chapters:[00:00] Introduction: Cem Atik and the Harucon Ventures Model[01:27] The Founders Harucon Typically Partners With[03:45] The Post-Acquisition Audit: First 72 Hours[07:45] Cutting 1.7M Euros in Ad Spend: A Case Study[09:16] Why Gross Margin Under 65% Makes Scaling Nearly Impossible[13:51] The KPIs That Actually Matter: CAC, CLV, MER, EBITDA[18:35] The Four Engines: Acquisition, Retention, Conversion, Profit[24:00] Why ROAS Misleads and POAS Gives Real Control[25:41] Channel Mix: TikTok, Pinterest, Bing, and What Gets Overlooked

Website: https://www.aiaiholdings.com/ NASDAQ: AIAI

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ breaks down Bending Spoons' F-1 filing and the acquisition machine behind AOL, Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and more. He unpacks the company's playbook: buy under-optimized digital businesses, transform operations, raise prices, reinvest earnings, and repeat — while asking the core question: how much was built, and how much was bought?—SPONSORS:RightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.comRillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cjEY has been part of Silicon Valley since it was just a valley, helping the most successful names in tech go from startup to exit to megacap. With teams across strategy, tax, audit, and transactions, EY helps you get your financials right early, long before your investors start asking for it. You build the next big thing, and EY will help you build it right. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartupsSpendHound cuts your SaaS and AI spend by up to 30% using real pricing benchmarks across 10,000 vendors, so you always know what fair pricing looks like before your next renewal. Rated #1 on G2 in SaaS spend management, it's free forever for teams up to 1,000 employees. Sign up by June 12th and get $500 just for getting started. Go to https://www.spendhound.com/cjBrex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metricsAleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/run—LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsNCJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com—TIMESTAMPS:0:00 What is Bending Spoons?1:03 The Internet's attic: the portfolio3:11 The metrics rundown5:44 Revenue: $1.3B, 95% growth6:04 82% of growth was bought, not built6:29 Gross margin: 66%6:50 Subscription mix and NRR7:33 Net income: basically zero8:00 Cash: $741M, debt: $4.4B8:35 Revenue per employee: $2.57M9:39 Sponsors — RightRev | Rillet | EY12:42 Organic growth is mostly price hikes13:50 A house of adjustments14:54 Add-backs bigger than the profit15:22 The reorganization line: cost of firing19:21 Sponsors — SpendHound | Brex | Aleph22:51 Does the playbook actually work?23:07 Evernote: the proof point23:45 Romini: the growth proof point24:10 AI in three directions at once25:45 The debt engine27:50 Red flag 1: material accounting weaknesses28:38 Red flag 2: pro forma numbers come with a confession29:00 Red flag 3: App Store dependency29:11 Red flag 4: no long-term contracts29:30 Red flag 5: foreign private issuer29:52 Red flag 6: they've never sold anything30:19 Cap table and board31:07 Valuation: 14–18x33:00 Bull vs. bear case33:55 Miscellaneous: the S1 is already stale35:25 Credits

As brands invest billions in AI to personalize the customer experience, are they inadvertently creating a more transactional, less human relationship with their most valuable customers?Agility requires not just the rapid adoption of AI-based solutions, but the wisdom to know when and how to apply them to enhance—without replacing—the human element of the customer relationship.Today, we're going to talk about:- The growing disconnect between what AI-powered loyalty programs deliver and what discerning consumers actually value.- Practical strategies for using AI to understand non-transactional signals and create more meaningful customer interactions.- How to evolve measurement beyond simple engagement metrics to quantify the strength of genuine brand affinity.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Jaclyn Wands, VP of Product & AI at Phaedon. About Jaclyn Wands Jaclyn Wands is an AI Practicalist and VP of Product & AI at Phaedon, a loyalty enterprise SaaS and strategic services company. A product leader at the intersection of human-centered AI and customer experience, Jaclyn brings technical fluency in machine learning, NLP, and data operations to a discipline that's fundamentally about people. She has built and launched products across large enterprise SaaS platforms and founded her own human-centered AI application. All experience that shapes her belief that the most powerful technology disappears and make room for the human moment.At Phaedon, Jaclyn leads the product and AI strategy behind loyalty programs that go beyond points and discounts to build genuine emotional connection between brands and their customers. Her work bridges the gap between what AI can do and what customers actually want. A balance she explores through Phaedon's Humanizing Loyalty research and its practical implications for how brands design, measure, and evolve their loyalty strategies. Jaclyn Wands on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaclyn-wands-bb507a24/ ---------- Resources ---------- Phaedon: https://www.phaedon.com This episode is brought to by CRMC. 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://www.thecrmc.com We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fDon't miss We Make Future - the International Festival of Innovation in AI, Tech, and Digital Marketing, June 24-26 in Bologna. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c80991afff416bb2The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us Fan MailWhat separates a strong operator from a true leader—and how do you scale success across multiple companies?In this episode of Joey Pinz Conversations, Joey Pinz sits down with seasoned tech executive Jim Lippie to break down decades of experience across MSPs, SaaS companies, and multiple successful exits. From early days in the MSP space to leading SaaS growth and navigating acquisitions, Jim shares practical insights on leadership, metrics that matter, and what most operators overlook.

If you've ever worked hard to create multiple different social and event-driven opportunities for your clients to come together outside the gym, one of the problems you may have also run into is ensuring that communication is seamless and not overbearing amongst all the other communication that members receive on a regular basis.David Refuse Owns Blended Athletics, a group fitness gym in Nova Scotia, and he is also the founder of Train With Us, an app designed to create seamless communication within your membership.  We sat down to have a conversation around gym ownership, SaaS products, startups, and innovation, and how he thinks about creating concise, clear messaging from the top down within gyms.—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I solve problems in your business and make you more money.  Guaranteed. For over a decade, I've been working with gym owners (via one-on-one consulting) to help create tailored solutions to solve their business problems, engineer the game plan,n and empower them to execute the strategy.Stop wishing your business problems are going to magically go away.  Invest in your business and let me solve your problems and optimize your business fast and efficiently. We'll work together daily/weekly, with a monthly call until the problem is solved and then I want you to fire me.  Because this is YOUR business, I'm just here to solve a specific problem and then get out of your way.⁠Learn more about what it's like for us to work together.⁠—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Want to increase your business IQ by 100x for only $50? Get enrolled in Microgym University - the only online business school that teaches you the best practices and business frameworks from some of the most successful brands in our industry, and then lets you decide which ones to install in your business.New courses are added every month. ⁠⁠www.microgymuniversity.com⁠⁠ —-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Need help leasing or buying a building?I created the Gym Real Estate Company so that gym owners had someone who could go beyond the duties of a typical real estate broker and actually advise them on business aspects as they relate to site selection, market location fit, operational capacity, facility layout, pre-sell marketing, and more.If you're looking for help with your next lease or if you want us to help you along the journey of buying a building -⁠ ⁠⁠⁠head over to www.gymrealestate.co and book a Discovery Call.⁠—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Apple announced, what they buried in sessions, and what it means for your MRR.This Friday, June 12th at 9 AM Pacific / 18:00 CET, join David Barnard and Charlie Chapman (Developer Advocate) as they cut through the keynote hype.We don't do generic recaps of what you already saw in the keynote. Expect the nuts and bolts of how WWDC 2026 will impact your growth, retention, and product roadmap.

What if the secret to a business that actually sets you free has nothing to do with your idea, your hustle, or your vision, and everything to do with a number most entrepreneurs never pay close enough attention to? In this episode of The Happy Hustle Podcast, I sit down with Omar Zenhom, co-founder of the legendary $100 MBA Show podcast and the man behind Webinar Ninja, a SaaS company he built from zero to over 30,000 users and eventually sold in 2024. Omar is an educator turned entrepreneur, the kind of guy who left a decade of teaching to go all in on business, built something real over ten years, and came out the other side financially free and still hungry for the next chapter. His podcast has racked up over 300 million downloads and consistently ranks among the top business shows in more than 30 countries. He's not flashy about it. He's just sharp, honest, and genuinely good at what he does. This episode matters because Omar is one of those rare entrepreneurs who's actually done it. He built, he scaled, he burned the candle, he sold, and now he talks about all of it, including the parts that surprised him. If you're a business owner trying to build something that gives you more freedom, not less, this conversation is going to hit. Here are the biggest lessons from this one. Margins aren't the most important thing in business. They're the only thing. Omar opened with something he says constantly on his own show, and it bears repeating here. If your margins aren't healthy, you can't hire great people, you can't delegate, you can't step back, and you definitely can't build a business that serves your life. He says sixty percent is the floor, and anything below that puts you on life support. Software, digital products, service businesses built on systems, these are the models that get you there. Get the margins right first, then build everything else on top. Stop trying to find a diamond in the rough when it comes to hiring. Omar went looking for the most expensive engineer he could find on Upwork, a former engineering exec at Yahoo, because his software needed someone elite. That one person did in ten hours a week what five cheaper engineers couldn't. You pay for it upfront or you pay for it later in messes, rewrites, and wasted time. The same goes for editors, videographers, anyone whose taste and skill directly affects the quality of what you're putting into the world. One great hire changes everything. Validate before you build. Before Webinar Ninja was a real product, Omar and Nicole pre-sold it. One hundred and fifty spots in 48 hours, just on the promise of a solution four months out. That told them everything. People don't just say they want something when they put actual money down. If you're sitting on a business idea right now and haven't tested whether anyone will pay for it yet, that's the only thing that matters next. Embrace the struggle as part of the deal. Omar grew up watching his Egyptian immigrant parents rebuild their lives from scratch in America. That foundation gave him something money can't buy, a high tolerance for discomfort and a genuinely low floor for what counts as failure. He says his fondest memories from ten years at Webinar Ninja are the hard moments, the fires, the pivots, the times he had no idea how he'd get out of something. That mindset isn't just feel-good advice. It's a practical edge. When you stop treating struggle as a sign something's wrong and start treating it as the job, you get a lot harder to shake. AI is not optional anymore, and using it to figure out how to use it better is the move. Omar is building new software on weekends using Claude and Windsurf, no code, no development team. He's using Claude to write his prompts before he even opens the builder. What used to take years now takes a few weekends. He's clear that the people who are thriving right now aren't just using AI, they're building the habit of reaching for it first, staying curious about its limits, and using it to multiply everything they already do well. If you're still on the fence, he'd tell you that fence is expensive. We also get into what it's actually like to sell a business, the 16 months it took, the emotional whiplash of feeling relief and then feeling lost, the NDA that keeps him from saying the number but also the fact that he blinked twice. Omar and Nicole's story of co-founding a company as husband and wife while staying married is one for the books too, and his 70/10/10/5/5 money formula is the kind of simple framework you'll want to write down. The closing of this episode is one of the most grounding things I've heard in a long time. Omar's billboard isn't a quote. It's a mirror. Because every time he was stuck, every time he hit a wall, the common denominator was him. Not the market, not the economy, not bad timing. Him. And once he stopped running from that and started taking full ownership, everything shifted. That's the energy Omar brings, direct, honest, and genuinely fired up about the game of business and the life you can build through it. If you want more of that, go listen to the full episode at https://caryjack.com/podcastin/ It just might be the reset you didn't know you needed. Connect with Omarhttps://www.facebook.com/ozenhomhttps://www.instagram.com/omarzenhom/https://www.youtube.com/@100mba/videoshttps://x.com/TheOmarZenhomhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/omarzenhom/ Find Omar on this website: https://100mba.net/ Connect with Cary!https://www.instagram.com/caryjack/https://www.facebook.com/SirCaryJackhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cary-jack-kendzior/https://twitter.com/thehappyhustlehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFDNsD59tLxv2JfEuSsNMOQ/featured Get a copy of his new book, https://www.thehappyhustle.com/book Sign up for The Journey: 10 Days To Become a Happy Hustler Online Course @ https://thehappyhustle.com/thejourney/ Apply to the Montana Mastermind Epic Camping Adventure @ https://thehappyhustle.com/mastermind/ “It's time to Happy Hustle, a blissfully balanced life you love, full of passion, purpose, and positive impact!” Episode Sponsors: If you're feeling stressed, not sleeping great, or your energy's been kinda meh lately—let me put you on to something that's been a total game-changer for me: Magnesium Breakthrough by BiOptimizers. This ain't your average magnesium—it's got all 7 essential forms that your body needs to chill out, sleep deeper, and feel more balanced. I take it every night and legit notice the difference the next day. No more waking up groggy or tossing and turning all night If you're ready to sleep like a baby, calm your nervous system, and optimize your recovery, go grab yours now at https://www.bioptimizers.com/happy and use code HAPPY10 for 10% OFF. =================================================================== My Green Mattress If you've been waking up with back pain, feeling stiff, or just not getting that deep, quality sleep. This might be what you're missing: My Green Mattress. It's made with clean, non-toxic, and eco-friendly materials, so you're not just sleeping better, you're sleeping healthier too. The comfort and support are on another level, and you can really feel the difference night after night. If you're ready to invest in better sleep and better recovery, check it out at https://thehappyhustle.com/mygreenmattress =================================================================== Ozlo Sleep If you've been struggling to fall asleep, stay asleep, or just wake up feeling actually rested, let me put you on to something that's been a total game-changer: Ozlo Sleep. These aren't your typical sleep buds. They're designed to block out noise and help your brain fully relax, so you can drift off faster and stay in deep, uninterrupted sleep. Perfect if you're a light sleeper or just want that next-level rest. If you're ready to upgrade your sleep and wake up feeling recharged, check out https://ozlosleep.com and save $80 OFF using code HAPPY.

Axel sits down with Pat Carino — a multifamily developer, acquisitions professional at NRP Group, and co-founder of DealNav — for a wide-ranging conversation that spans institutional development, deal sourcing at the highest level, and the origin story of a software tool that Aligned Real Estate Partners actually uses in their own business.Pat breaks down the three-bucket deal sourcing framework he uses at the institutional level — brokers, referral network (architects, engineers, attorneys), and true off-market sourcing. The second half of the conversation dives into DealNav — what it is, why Pat built it, and why a purpose-built deal tracking CRM with a map beats bloated all-in-one platforms for acquisitions-focused operators. This episode is essential listening for any investor who wants to understand how deal sourcing is done at the institutional level — and how the same principles apply whether you're buying a 10-unit or a 300-unit ground-up development.Join us as we dive into:The three-phase development contract lifecycle: due diligence, entitlement approvals (6 months to 1+ year), and closing — and how it differs from a traditional value-add acquisitionThe three-bucket deal sourcing framework: broker deals, referral network (architects, engineers, land use attorneys, economic development offices), and true off-market direct-to-ownerThe story of a vacant 30,000 sq ft retail building: a two-year follow-up campaign, tracking down the decision-maker through her daughter's Instagram DM, and closing the deal after years of patient persistenceWhy having a CRM with clean notes, timestamped follow-up reminders, and a linked map is the only way to manage a multi-year, multi-contact off-market pipeline at scaleThe origin story of DealNav: from colored pins on a Jersey City poster board to an Excel/Google My Maps hybrid to a purpose-built SaaS product — and why 15 demos of competing CRMs came up shortThe three boxes DealNav was built to check: simplicity (prospecting only, no bloat), a map-first interface, and single-user affordable pricingHow DealNav became a deal source for Pat's institutional acquisitions work — and why building a real estate community and a real estate software company often leads to the same peopleWhat makes a good development site: rent comps that justify new construction, favorable taxes (or abatements), manageable affordability requirements, and the right construction typeSign up for the DealNav CRM HEREConnect with Pat Carino:Follow him on Twitter/XConnect with him on LinkedinLearn more about DealNavAre you looking to invest in real estate, but don't want to deal with the hassle of finding great deals, signing on debt, and managing tenants? Aligned Real Estate Partners provides investment opportunities to passive investors looking for the returns, stability, and tax benefits multifamily real estate offers, but without the work - join our investor club to be notified of future investment opportunities.Connect with Axel:Follow him on InstagramConnect with him on LinkedinSubscribe to our YouTube channelLearn more about Aligned Real Estate Partners

(0:00) Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora joins the Besties! (0:47) Claude Mythos found years of vulnerabilities in Palo Alto's code in weeks (5:15) Are cyber defenders losing the race against AI attackers? (6:50) Analytical SaaS is dead, so what survives the AI wave? (14:06) If models become a utility, where will the money be made? (20:35) Armchair CEO: Nikesh rates Waymo, Google, and OpenAI (28:22) Palo Alto's M&A playbook and the path to $1 trillion Thanks to our partners for making this possible! EY - AI ambition isn't enough. EY.ai Value Blueprints move organizations beyond pilots embedding measurable business value by design. https://www.ey.com/en_us/services/ai/value-blueprints?WT.mc_id=3501320&AA.tsrc=sponsorship NYSE - Thank you to our partner, the New York Stock Exchange - a modern marketplace and exchange for building the future. It all happens at the NYSE. https://www.nyse.com Plaud - Never miss a moment. Plaud, our official wearable AI note-taking partner at All-In Liquidity Summit, captured every insight. https://www.plaud.ai Follow Nikesh: https://x.com/nikesharora 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