Podcasts about Saas

In this episode of the Loan Officer Podcast, host Dustin Owen is joined by Marketing Mike and producer Karina Mojica as they unveil an exciting new SaaS product specifically designed to empower mortgage loan originators in tracking and managing their daily, weekly, and monthly activities with greater efficiency and clarity. The trio dives deep into the "The Loan Officer's Playbook" with its robust suite of features, which include innovative Theme Days to help structure workweeks, a system for tracking meaningful conversations with clients and prospects, a referral account pyramid to strategically grow business relationships, integrated CRM tools for seamless client management, and comprehensive team performance dashboards that provide valuable insights into productivity and goal attainment. Beyond business operations, the Playbook also incorporates elements that encourage personal and professional growth, such as prompts for daily reading, exercise routines, networking opportunities, and content creation strategies to help loan officers build their personal brands and expand their reach. Currently in its beta testing phase, this powerful tool is being offered free of charge to coaching members, while non-members will have the option to access it through a subscription model. Throughout the episode, Dustin, Mike, and Karina share insights into the development process, discuss the feedback received from early adopters, and outline the future vision for the platform, making this a must-listen for anyone looking to elevate their mortgage business. TLOP's Originator Coaching:

Every podcast in our space is telling you AI has killed SaaS, and not one of them can name a client who has actually walked away from their platform. In this episode, I show you why the "AI replaces the platform" story does not hold up right now, and where your attention actually belongs instead. Here is the test I run before I believe any of it: not what a guest or a host predicts, but what a client has actually done. The gap between "AI can build software" and "I will rebuild and maintain the tool I depend on daily" is enormous, and almost nobody's clients have closed it. So before you rip up your ICP over a threat that never shows up, ask what is actually costing you clients today: weak lead flow and conversions, not a version of your business AI might take in three years.Resources and LinksNeed help with your WHO and WHAT decisions? Apply for a FREE Multiplier CallBook a Decision Session herePrevious episode: 697 - Five Verticals Feels Safe. It's the Riskiest Thing You Do.Check out more episodes of the Paul Higgins PodcastSubscribe to our YouTube channel: @PaulHigginsMentoringJoin our newsletterSuggested resources

For episode 760 of the BlockHash Podcast, host Brandon Zemp is joined by Jason Hitchcock, CEO of Greenlane. Mr. Hitchcock is a technology executive with over 15 years of experience building and scaling revenue engines across SaaS, blockchain infrastructure, and decentralized finance. Mr. Hitchcock most recently served as Head of Business Development at thirdweb, a leading open-source Web3 developer tools and infrastructure platform. In that role, he built and led the company's enterprise go-to-market strategy, scaling a program across more than 150 blockchain networks and structuring channel partnerships to drive developer tool adoption among startups building in web3.

Mehtab Bhogal details where AI is actually creating value in his portfolio of ecommerce businesses — org structure, email, marketing, sourcing, product dev and more. Reach out to Karta Ventures at https://kartaventures.com. Follow Mehtab on X at https://x.com/mehtabkarta.FOLLOW UP WITH ANDREWX: https://x.com/andrewjfarisEmail: podcast@ajfgrowth.comWork With AJF Growth: https://ajfgrowth.comINTELLIGEMSIntelligems brings A/B testing to business decisions beyond copy and design. Test your pricing, shipping charges, free shipping thresholds, offers, SaaS tools, and more by clicking here: https://bit.ly/42DcmFl. Get 20% off the first 3 months with code FARIS20.MORE STAFFINGRecruit, onboard, and train incredible virtual professionals in the Philippines with my friends at More Staffing by visiting https://morestaffing.co/af.

In this sponsored interview James Wilson chats with Permiso CTO Ian Ahl about detecting ShinyHunters-style attackers as they move through cloud and SaaS environments. Ian explains how ordinary-looking events such as a password reset, a new MFA device, unusual searches and a first-time AWS role assumption can combine to reveal an intrusion. Permiso's platform connects these signals across identity providers, cloud platforms and SaaS applications. They also discuss how AI is helping attackers move from initial access to extortion in just four hours. Show notes

This week on The Business of Open Source, I talk with Julien Verlaguet, the CEO of Skiplabs. Julien is a programming language guy, and we talked about what it means to maintain an open source programming language. We talked about what it means to monetize a a programming language… or, as Julien says, you do not. So why does maintaining SKIP pay off for the team at Skiplabs? And how exactly do they make money? Skiplabs builds products using SKIP, and they focus on building products that can and do take full advantage of the programming language. But ultimately, do customers care that the products are built by the language maintainers? Probably not. “If your open source project can't be directly monetized with a SaaS,” Julien said. “You have to get a bit more creative.” Indeed, how do you get creative? I have to agree with Julien, that it really depends on what you're working on. When you think about how to monetize, it's important to think about what exactly your customers want. He talked about the importance of doing interviews with your target market. In fact, he recommends doing two or three interviews with people in your target market, and in the first interview you don't even talk about your product ideas, but rather listen to them talk about their problems and how they solve them or would like to solve them. ###By the way, did you know that one of the services I offer is interviewing your customers? Julien talks about how people can overstate how good your product is during interviews… this is true, and having an outside person do the interviews is one of the ways around this. If you'd like someone to interview people in your target market, including users and customers, and to help you use that information to get to product-market fit faster, reach out. 

Nicky Szmala joined PicDrop as CEO after the acquisition — walking into a company built by photographers, for photographers, with a growth engine already running. What he found was a community-led model that's quietly outperforming the shortcuts everyone else is chasing.In this episode:→ How picdrop finds and works with influencers who already use the product→ The two-engine growth model driving international expansion→ What it actually looks like to lead a team post-acquisition (and why openness is everything)→ Why picdrop team bets on events even though it's "100% not scalable" → Nicky's take on AI, photography rights, and community trust in a shifting landscapeThis one's for founders and operators who want real talk on brand building, community-led growth, and what life looks like inside a SaaS acquirer's portfolio.----------- Episode's Chapters -----------0:06 — Meet Nicky: From Asia to PicDrop CEO1:23 — Why Anna Was Skeptical About the Acquisition2:44 — Joining a Company Post-Acquisition: Nicky's Approach7:03 — Nicky's Background: From Berlin to 16 Years in Asia14:27 — What Is PicDrop and Who Uses It25:20 — How saas.group's Central Teams Supercharge Small Brands

Per info: iusondemand.com/siti o sitieassistenza.itRichieste di Sviluppo WebAssicurazione: Consigli per sito semplice e professionale, ricerca sviluppatori o piattaforme.E-commerce (10-15 prodotti): Soluzioni custom o Shopify, SEO, mobile-friendly, gestione ordini.Mock test educativi: Login, dashboard studenti, pagamenti, admin panel, 50+ test per materia.Sito personale per proposta: Aiuto per creazione sito esteticamente gradevole senza competenze tecniche.Offerte di ServiziSviluppo web professionale: Siti business, e-commerce, portfolio, SEO-friendly, da $100.Design & sviluppo SaaS: Esperienza in fintech, banking, SaaS, supporto multilingue (AR/EN/FR).Studio di design custom: Siti su misura per startup, healthcare, consulenti, focus su UX e conversioni.WordPress specialist: Siti business, e-commerce (WooCommerce), landing page, SEO, WhatsApp integration.Manutenzione gestita: Sviluppo + hosting + aggiornamenti mensili, senza costi iniziali alti.Idee e DomandeWebsite inesistenti: Idee per siti che risolvono problemi reali (es. negoziazione abbonamenti, pianificazione viaggi).Feature mancanti: Funzionalità utili non ancora standard (es. miglioramenti per shopping, travel, forum).Automazione SEO: Uso di MERN Stack + n8n per ricerca keywords, content planning, social media.Rebuild vs miglioramento: Quando conviene rifare un sito da zero invece di aggiornarlo.Problemi TecniciLentezza caricamento: Ottimizzazione asset, hosting (Netlify), parallax vs performance.Gestione clienti: Difficoltà a trovare clienti per freelance, strategie di outreach.Vendite e CollaborazioniSito in vendita: "Jeeplanner" (SaaS per esami, 26k visite, 5k utenti in 12 giorni).Feedback gratuiti: Analisi siti esistenti (design, velocità, SEO, UX) per small business.Progetti urgenti: Sviluppo lead page, funnel, automazioni (GHL, Systemeio, WordPress).Strumenti e PiattaformeCostruttori vs custom: Confronto tra Wix, Squarespace, Shopify e soluzioni codificate.Migrazioni: Passaggio da piattaforme chiuse a soluzioni custom più flessibili.CMS: Aggiunta di CMS a siti statici per gestione contenuti senza sviluppatori.AltroTendenze design: Siti "dinamici" con animazioni vs usabilità (es. burger che si assemblano).Risorse per sviluppatori: Idee per portfolio, progetti open-source, nicchie di mercato.Localizzazione: Siti bilingual (AR/EN/FR) o RTL per mercati specifici. Note:Raggruppamento: Categorie basate su intenti (richieste, offerte, idee, problemi tecnici). Chiave-valore: Sintesi diretta delle informazioni, evitando ridondanze. Esclusioni: Omesse discussioni generiche (es. "grazie") e dettagli ripetuti (es. "DM per info").Per info: iusondemand.com/siti o sitieassistenza.it

Shawn O'Malley and Kyle Grieve explore Intuit (ticker: INTU). In this episode, you'll learn what narratives have underpinned the company's more than 60% selloff, as Intuit claims the undesirable title of “worst performer in the S&P 500” this year. But is this a bargain price for a high-quality SaaS business, or a value trap? That's the key question that Shawn & Kyle discuss, plus so much more! IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN: (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:48) How Intuit's accounting software became so popular (00:12:49) What makes QuickBooks such a great business (00:20:54) Why Intuit is the worst performing stock in the S&P 500 this year (00:24:05) How to think about Intuit as either a value trap or bargain (00:38:45) Whether Intuit's TurboTax business is resistant to AI disruptions (01:17:02) Valuation discussion of Intuit (01:18:55) How to model Intuit's intrinsic value (01:20:04) Whether Shawn & Kyle add Intuit to The Intrinsic Value Portfolio Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Mastermind Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Track ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Portfolio⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about how to join us in NYC for our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Intrinsic Value Conference⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Portfolio Review ⁠⁠⁠⁠Submit Tool⁠⁠⁠⁠. See Shawn's ⁠financial model for Intuit⁠. The Finance Corner: "⁠Deep Dive Into Intuit⁠". Business Breakdowns Podcast — ⁠Intuit⁠ (2022). Intuit's 2025 Investor Day ⁠Presentation⁠. Intuit's 2026 latest Investor Day ⁠Presentation⁠. Check out our previous Intrinsic Value breakdowns: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Wix⁠, ⁠Microsoft⁠, ⁠Kelly Partners Group⁠. Follow Kyle on ⁠⁠X⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠. Related ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mentioned in the podcast. Ad-free episodes on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Get smarter about valuing businesses through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Investor's Podcast Starter Packs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best business podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our ⁠⁠sponsors⁠⁠: ⁠⁠Plus500⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Netsuite⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Shopify⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Plaud References to any third-party products, services, or advertisers do not constitute endorsements, and The Investor's Podcast Network is not responsible for any claims made by them. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

He Beat a Monopoly. Then Had to Reinvent Everything.What do you do when the business model that made you billions faces sudden, total obsolescence?Most executive leaders miscalculate technological shifts—they either panic and move too early, or ignore the noise and move too late. In this episode of Lead the Team, host Ben Fanning sits down with Joe Walsh, Chairman and CEO of Thryv, to break down the tactical frameworks required to lead a legacy brand through the absolute chaos of print, digital, SaaS, and now AI revolutions.Joe famously scaled Yellow Book from $38 million to a $2 billion national powerhouse by dismantling an entrenched phone company monopoly. But his greatest leadership test wasn't storming the castle—it was repeatedly reinventing the business when the entire technological landscape shifted underneath him.If you are currently navigating massive industry uncertainty, AI implementation, or market disruption, this conversation serves as your executive blueprint for the new rules of survival.CHAPTERS00:00 – The Real Definition of a CEO: Predicting the Future for Your People04:08 – The Danger of the Bleeding Edge: Why the Second Mouse Gets the Cheese07:16 – Shattering a Monopoly: The Hertz-Avis Strategy That Scaled Yellow Book to $2B11:31 – The Core Principles of Value: Giving Proof and Credibility in Advance14:43 – The NASDAQ Turnaround: Converting a Dying Print Giant into an MRR Machine19:43 – Managing Wall Street & Fighting Legacy Inertia Simultaneously25:36 – Corporate Blindspots: Why Enterprise Missed the Main Street Tech Boom33:38 – The AI Landscape for Local Business: Democratization vs. Tech Debt37:37 – Leading Through the Blur: The Golden Rule of Modern Disruption41:17 – "Stay Calm and Carry On": Overcoming Executive OverwhelmEXECUTIVE RESOURCES & LINKSScale Your B2B Brand With a Podcast: Learn our 5-step framework and schedule a 20-minute operational briefing with Ben's team: BenLeads.com/schedule.Get the Executive Briefing: Get vital insights and tactical frameworks from this episode delivered directly to your inbox: benfanning.com/insight.Connect with Thryv: Discover how Joe and his team help Main Street businesses win with modern software.

The EU just fined Google €890M for making it hard to steer users to cheaper web stores — another crack in the 30% wall, and genuinely good news for every developer. That's the lead of a quieter, summer-holiday news week, with Felix flying solo while Matej and Jakub are at ChinaJoy.Felix Braberg walks two stories and a charts tour. First, the European Commission fined Google €890M (split €460M + €430M) under the Digital Markets Act for antitrust practices — preventing developers from freely informing users about cheaper offers and steering them to web stores or third-party channels. Google has 60 days to comply or face periodic penalties of up to 5% of worldwide turnover (~$403B), and it's another blow in the slow unwinding of the 30% app-store tax that companies like FastSpring exist to route around. Second, a Seeking Alpha analysis argues the market keeps underestimating AppLovin: the stock came under pressure in 2026 (swept up in the "SaaS apocalypse" sell-off after the CloudX agentic-buying launch), but the fundamentals are strong, the gaming runway is bigger than assumed, and as the dominant mediation player (AppLovin Max), it holds a structural advantage. Then the US charts: Smash Fest (Flow Games, Turkey) is now #1 in free downloads — beating Roblox — followed by Meow Doku and Vita Mahjong (same studio), with the standout story being that a copycat of Smash Fest (Royal Smash by Cypher Games) has itself cracked the top six out of ~70 clones. Plus Level Devil sold and scaling under new ownership, EA Sports FC still strong post-World Cup, and Turkey vs China duking it out for chart dominance.The through-line of a quiet week: the 30% tax keeps cracking, AppLovin keeps winning, and the copycat economy is faster and more brutal than ever.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Solo news week — Matej and Jakub at ChinaJoy00:40 Google fined €890M under the Digital Markets Act04:00 Why it's another crack in the 30% wall05:00 AppLovin: why the market keeps underestimating it07:30 US charts — Smash Fest beats Roblox08:30 The copycat that cracked the top six10:00 Level Devil sold, EA Sports FC, and Turkey vs China---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me---------------------------------------If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

Markus Waghubinger hat den Sprung vom Private Banker zum Seriengründer geschafft. Nach FundNow und Hello Sophia baut er mit Supercount AI nun an der nächsten Generation von KI-gestützter Buchhaltung für Steuerkanzleien. Inspiriert vom Silicon Valley entwickelt sein Team Lösungen, die repetitive Arbeiten automatisieren und Fachkräfte dort entlasten, wo ihr Know-how wirklich zählt. In dieser Folge erfährst du mehr über die Themen: Wie aus einer Idee eines Bilanzierungs-Agenten eine komplette KI-Buchhaltungsplattform wurde. Warum Markus überzeugt ist, dass KI den Steuerberater nicht ersetzt, sondern stärker macht. Weshalb das klassische SaaS-Modell vor einem grundlegenden Wandel stehen könnte. Welche Learnings er aus eineinhalb Jahren Silicon Valley nach Österreich mitgebracht hat. Im Gespräch mit Johannes Pracher spricht Markus offen über Pivot-Entscheidungen, KI-Agenten, Unternehmertum und die Frage, wie Softwareunternehmen in Zukunft überhaupt noch Geld verdienen werden. Mehr dazu: supercount.ai

Life Is a Game Lior Pozin built AutoDS into a company with more than 200 employees and over $20M ARR before its acquisition by Fiverr. Listening to him, it's hard to shake the feeling that AutoDS was never the destination. It was simply another level in the game. The kid who questioned everything Long before AutoDS, before SaaS, before startups, Lior was already looking at the world differently. His father locked his computer as punishment. He learned how to unlock it. He wanted to buy a phone online. He discovered the exact same phone was being resold for more money. So he sold it himself-without ever owning inventory. At 14, he wasn't asking what he was supposed to do. He was asking: "What's the game?" And then: "Let's just try." Gamifying life One sentence quietly explains almost every decision he makes. "I look at life as a game." It's not a motivational slogan. It's a framework. Games have rules. Rules can be learned. Sometimes they can even be bent. When eBay suspended his account, he didn't see failure. He saw another move - open another account. When people warned him something wouldn't work, he didn't hear a verdict. He heard another hypothesis to test. That mindset dramatically changes the emotional cost of entrepreneurship. Failure becomes feedback. Risk becomes calculated. And trying becomes more important than being right. The question that removes fear Throughout the conversation, Lior comes back to one exercise over and over. "What's the worst case?" Not as positive thinking. As practical thinking. What's the actual downside? Will I lose an account? Waste a year? Need another job? Once he answers that honestly, fear loses much of its power. Because most imagined catastrophes turn out to be survivable. That question became one of his most useful entrepreneurial tools. The investment that compounds the most One of the most interesting moments in the conversation has nothing to do with AutoDS. It's the way Lior treats personal development. Every week he protects time with almost religious discipline. Executive coach. Personal coach. Therapist. Reading. Meditation. Breathwork. Sports. Those hours are non-negotiable. His reasoning is remarkably simple: “If I elevate myself, the business will elevate too”. Many founders invest first in their company. Lior invests first in the founder running it. Building the founder like a product Lior recently created something unusual: A personal brand book. Not because he wants nicer colors or better social media posts. Because he believes founders deserve the same strategic clarity as companies. He wants every piece of content, every interview and eventually even his AI assistant to reflect the same person. Not an optimized version. The real one. What stays after this episode: Lior doesn't describe entrepreneurship as courage. He describes it as a way of looking at the world. A constant habit of questioning assumptions. Of asking "What's the worst that can happen?" Of refusing to believe that someone else gets to build the future simply because they started first. Maybe that's why "life is a game" resonates so strongly throughout the conversation. Not because games are easy. But because games are meant to be played. And the people who keep playing long enough eventually discover that most of the limits they believed in were rules they never had to accept in the first place.

In this episode of Software People Stories, I speak with Saraswathi, a marketing leader with over 15 years of cross-industry experience,  about the role of marketing in technology—especially how product marketers translate technical ideas into stories customers can understand and care about. We talk about digital communication, customer empathy, product adoption, AI in marketing, useful metrics, and practical career advice for anyone curious about moving into marketing. It is a thoughtful conversation on bridging products, people, and business impact.Among the highlights from this conversation are:Marketing fundamentals stay consistent, but customer pain points differ across industries.Digital content must be concise, compelling, and quick to capture attention.Audience niches and personalization help messages resonate better.Product marketers act as the bridge between product, UX, sales, and customers.Training works best when broken into short, accessible, in-product learning moments.Email remains effective when segmented and relevant to the audience.AI helps with competitive research, brainstorming, mockups, and faster first drafts.Brand voice can be protected by giving AI clear style guides, examples, and do's and don'ts.Marketing impact should connect to opportunities, conversions, and revenue—not only vanity metrics.Support tickets offer unfiltered customer insight and can shape better messaging and product decisions.Career switchers can use transferable skills and start by getting closer to customers.Planning, yoga, short walks, and pausing before reacting help Saraswathi stay calm and grounded.Saraswathi Shanth Kumar (Sara) is a marketing leader with over 15 years of cross-industry experience translating complex products into compelling market stories. Her career spans advertising, journalism, SaaS, and Big Tech, leading to her current role at an edtech company in the Bay Area. Sara sees product marketing as the critical translator between product and market — and approaches every challenge with a problem-solver's mindset and a startup's appetite for experimentation. Outside of work, you can find her gardening, practicing yoga, and hiking the many trails in the Bay.My LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/saraskumar

Payments is getting smarter, faster, and more automated and that makes one question feel urgent: where does trust come from when the tech starts acting on our behalf? We sit down with Marielle Mekkaoui, Head of Marketing at Payabli, to talk about why the future of payments is still human, even in an AI-first era.We get into what embedded payments should actually look like inside vertical SaaS platforms, and why “embedded” cannot be a checkbox feature. Marielle breaks down Payabli's view of the full money lifecycle with pay in, payout, and pay ops, and why solving only for payment acceptance leaves platforms stuck with operational mess. We also talk about go-to-market realities in B2B fintech marketing, the return of in-person events, and how education keeps customers confident as products become more complex.Then we zoom out to AI in payments and what's next, including agentic commerce and the difference between bolting on AI versus building intelligence into the foundation. Marielle shares a grounded framework for due diligence: ask how AI is trained, demand transparency, and keep a human in the loop for the moments that matter most, like disputes, fraud, and support.If you care about embedded finance, intelligent payments, and leadership that doesn't lose the human story, you'll find it here.

professorjrod@gmail.comIf “the internet is down” is the sentence that makes your brain freeze, this guide is for you. We take the pressure off by turning networking into a set of simple ideas you can picture and repeat under stress, the same way you'll need to think on the help desk and on the CompTIA A+ exam. I walk through what a network is, why businesses rely on it, and how PAN, LAN, and WAN show up in real life, from Bluetooth devices to the internet itself.From there, we connect the dots across the gear and the settings: what switches do inside a LAN, why routers matter for getting online, how modems talk to your ISP, and what an access point really does for Wi‑Fi. We cover IP addressing with clean examples, the difference between private and public IPs, and how NAT translates between them. Then we hit the “must know” services: DHCP for automatic configuration, DNS for turning names into numbers, and the core ports that show up again and again. I also share a quick help desk story that proves why “never guess, always verify” saves time.The second half expands beyond networking into the wider set of IT support fundamentals: laptop design and upgrade limits, battery safety, modern connectors like USB‑C power delivery, docking stations, mobile tech like NFC and biometrics, and printer troubleshooting that becomes easy once you understand the printer type and the laser process. We wrap with practical explanations of virtualization and cloud computing, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, plus why the smartest solution is often the right service, not more hardware.Subscribe for more CompTIA A+ and IT certification study help, share this with a friend who's studying, and leave a review so more new techs can find the show.Support the showArt By Sarah/DesmondMusic by Joakim KarudLittle chacha ProductionsJuan Rodriguez can be reached atTikTok @ProfessorJrodProfessorJRod@gmail.com@Prof_JRodInstagram ProfessorJRod

Most businesses think YouTube is just for entertainment—but what if it could become one of your biggest lead generation channels?This week on B2B Vault: The Biz To Biz Podcast, Allen Kopelman sits down with Shamoo Kovacs, founder of KS Media, to discuss how B2B companies can leverage YouTube to build authority, attract ideal customers, and generate high-value leads.In this episode, you'll learn:Why YouTube is an untapped opportunity for B2B businessesThe strategy behind videos that actually generate leadsWhy long-form content beats Shorts for B2BCommon mistakes businesses make on YouTubeAI's role in content creation—and where authenticity still winsIf you're looking to grow your business through content marketing, this episode is packed with actionable insights you can use today.

Nabeel Azeez runs a Dubai-based email marketing agency with clients in ecommerce, SaaS, and more. He emphasizes engagement-based segmentation and high frequency, sending for one client eight emails per day, each to a unique segment.In this episode, he shares his methods for driving revenue from ecommerce emails, including unorthodox views such as the open rate is a vanity metric and never unsubscribe dormant recipients. For an edited and condensed transcript with embedded audio, see: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/email-pro-open-rate-is-a-vanity-metricFor all condensed transcripts with audio, see: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/tag/podcasts*****Practical Ecommerce helps online merchants improve with expert articles, podcasts, and webinars. Founded in 2005, we're an independent publisher, unaffiliated with any ecommerce platform or provider. https://www.practicalecommerce.com 

Pour l'épisode de cette semaine, je reçois Thibault Louis-Lucas, plus connu sous le nom de Tibo Maker.Thibault est un habitué du podcast. Après avoir créé puis revendu Tweet Hunter et Taplio, il développe aujourd'hui un véritable studio de SaaS autour de cinq produits : Revid, Outrank, SuperX, PostSyncer et Feather.Son modèle : s'associer avec un profil technique sur chaque projet, prendre en charge la distribution et multiplier les expérimentations pour identifier rapidement celles qui méritent d'être poursuivies.Au cours de cet épisode, nous sommes revenus sur l'évolution de ce modèle, ses succès, ses nombreux échecs et les limites qu'il rencontre désormais avec cinq produits, plusieurs associés et une équipe d'une dizaine de personnes.Nous avons également parlé de la transformation du marché avec l'IA. Créer un SaaS n'a jamais été aussi simple, mais se différencier et acquérir des utilisateurs n'a jamais été aussi difficile. Pour Thibault, la solution consiste à aller là où le travail reste compliqué, à maîtriser un ou deux canaux d'acquisition et à privilégier les approches qualitatives plutôt que le volume automatisé.Enfin, Thibault nous partage son organisation très particulière, sans réunions, son utilisation intensive des agents IA et les workflows qu'il met en place pour développer ses produits, produire du contenu ou encore traiter automatiquement les demandes de support.Vous pouvez suivre Thibault sur X et retrouver sa newsletter sur tmaker.io.Bonne écoute !Mentionnés pendant l'épisode :RevidOutrankSuperXPostSyncerFeatherPostizResendAgentMailOpenClawMission ControlTheo – t3.ggAI ExplainedPour soutenir SaaS Connection en 1 minute⏱ (et 2 secondes) :Abonnez-vous à SaaS Connection sur votre plateforme préférée pour ne rater aucun épisode

About James HaydenI've generated over $1B in revenue across SaaS, marketplaces, and enterprise services — and built first revenues for companies from zero across 140+ engagements.Book a Free 30-Min GTM Diagnostic →I build go-to-market engines for B2B companies that drive lasting revenue. Over 38 years, I've transformed sales teams, opened new markets, and created new revenue streams for more than 140 companies. I serve as a multi-company advisor to US enterprises, the government of New Zealand, and several Central American governments.My client and employer roster spans enterprise technology, SaaS, hospitality, automotive, and government sectors across four continents:Enterprise & Technology: Microsoft, Oracle, Cendant, TravelClick (acquired by Amadeus), Zipwhip (acquired by Twilio for $850M), Zumobi, Uniken, RESAAS, LodgIQ, FingermarkAutomotive: Ford, GM, Stellantis, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Lexus, KiaMedia & Partnerships: MSNBC, StarbucksGovernment & Trade: New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), Government of Costa Rica, Government of GuatemalaStartups & Ventures: Hotelscan (successful exit), Ortega Expansion Consulting, Hayden Marketing Inc., Dignity For DivasWhen I took over TravelClick's lowest-performing division, it ranked last out of four. Within a year, I turned it into the company's top-performing unit — a turnaround that directly contributed to the company's successful exit. If your sales org needs a reset, this is the kind of result I deliver.I was a founding member of Hotelscan, where I built over 140 partnerships from scratch. That groundwork drove the company to a successful exit in 2019. I know what it takes to build revenue from zero — because I've done it repeatedly.I learned to sell young — door-to-door as a kid — and never stopped refining the craft. My methodology is built on decades of real-world results, not theory. I wrote Adapt or DIE to share the approach that has driven my results, available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.Don't forget to check our Expert Content Society LinkedIn Content Community here:https://www.thetimetogrow.com/expert-content-society

Richard Luna grew up in New York, never living more than 35 from where he grew up. He is a self proclaimed super nerd, and has been one since he was 13 - at which point, he started coding on an HP calculator. He's always been fascinated to know how things work, and how patterns repeat - which he has observed in the industry throughout the years. Outside of tech, he has 2 kids, one of which is in the business with him. He's an avid cyclist, traveling on average, 120 miles a week.Richard has been a life long technologist, doing everything from desktops, to coding, to hosting. When he and his team saw the limits of what hosting can do, they dove into developer operations (DevOps), and found where they could add the most value - through SaaS infrastructure.This is the creation story of Protected Harbor.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://protectedharbor.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardluna/Timestamps0:01 Teaser on solving complex database report bottlenecks beyond standard SQL servers0:47 Show intro and setting the stage for application-aware infrastructure1:32 Host intro: How Richard Luna established application-aware infrastructure1:49 Guest introduction: Richard Luna's background, coding at age 13, and cycling 120 miles a week2:21 The career path from desktops, coding, and traditional web hosting to DevOps and SaaS infrastructure2:41 Origin story: The creation of Protected Harbor2:48 Defining application-aware infrastructure and why traditional hosting reaches a hard ceiling4:10 Why "infinite compute" fails when underlying database architecture and queries are broken6:05 Moving beyond basic server ping tests to deep application transaction monitoring8:30 The case for "boring" IT: Prioritizing stability, predictability, and uptime over hype11:15 Strategic trade-offs in hybrid cloud setup and managing hardware accountability14:00 Aligning MSP incentives with client business outcomes and application performance17:30 Common pitfalls in legacy system cloud migrations21:00 The role of operational discipline in modern cybersecurity and IT governance27:00 Where managed infrastructure services are heading and closing thoughtsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anirudh (Rudy) Ganesh is the Co-founder and CEO of Hotelzify, an AI-powered hospitality technology company that helps hotels increase direct bookings, streamline operations, and grow revenue. He leads the company's strategy and product vision, developing tools that combine booking technology, digital marketing, and AI-enabled guest engagement. Before founding Hotelzify, Rudy held software and product roles at JPMorgan Chase, Perpule, and Amazon. A National Institute of Technology Karnataka alumnus, he brings deep technical, product, and commercial experience to meaningful hospitality innovation worldwide. In this episode… Hotels lose revenue when potential guests encounter slow websites, missed calls, poor pricing, or complicated booking experiences. AI can address these gaps while allowing hotel teams to focus on delivering better stays — but what does an effective AI revenue engine actually look like? According to Rudy Ganesh, a software developer turned product leader, an effective AI revenue engine combines direct-booking technology, automated marketing, intelligent pricing, and personalized guest communication. He highlights how AI agents can manage campaigns, recover abandoned bookings, answer calls and chats, and adjust room rates based on demand and competitor activity. Together, these tools help hotels attract more guests, convert more inquiries, and improve profitability without proportionally expanding their teams. Rudy also applies e-commerce lessons from Amazon, such as reducing checkout friction, offering relevant payment options, and re-engaging interested customers. By automating digital tasks, hotels can dedicate more attention to on-site operations and memorable guest experiences. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Rudy Ganesh, Co-founder and CEO of Hotelzify, to discuss building an AI revenue engine for hotels. They explore direct-booking conversion, automated marketing and pricing, and AI concierge tools. Rudy also shares how customer feedback shapes product development and profitable growth.

Every founder I know is asking the same question: "How should we actually implement AI across our company?"The reality is that every playbook will require customization, but there are clear patterns beginning to emerge.In this episode, Chetan Narain, Cofounder of Pepper, joins me and my colleague, Interplay Senior Partner Kevin Tung, to share how Pepper is integrating AI across its products and organization - and the lessons they've learned along the way.We discuss:• Where vertical SaaS ends and vertical AI begins• AI agents and guardrails• Organizational redesign• How to move fast without creating chaosIf you're building a company and thinking beyond AI features toward AI transformation, I think you'll enjoy this conversation.⏱️ Chapter Markers:00:00 — Intro — Implementing AI across your company and why it matters now01:23 — Where vertical SaaS ends and vertical AI begins: dashboards → autonomous agents03:36 — Pepper 101: the $1T food distribution opportunity05:37 — Pricing agents: moving from recommendations to action08:42 — Trust, autonomy, and guardrails for mission-critical workflows09:33 — ROI you can prove: GP lift and attribution clarity11:25 — Experiments that broke: letting non-tech teams ship code14:21 — Pepper's "product build system": AI-reviewed PRDs and prototypes19:22 — Organizational design: single-threaded ownership vs. diffusion23:03 — Speed traps: building 4 prototypes ≠ faster outcomes24:22 — Kevin Tung on logging mistakes and compounding intelligence26:10 — A/B testing as a sandboxed guardrail27:02 — Chetan's path: Google PM to first PM of Uber Eats29:37 — COVID pivot: Pepper Pantry hits $10M run rate in a week32:57 — Distributor-first model: white-labeled apps and trust34:33 — If king for a day: accelerating tech adoption in food36:31 — Early adopters and tailwinds across 20k+ distributors38:11 — Wrap and takeawaysLinks:• Chetan Narain: LinkedIn• Pepper: Website, LinkedIn• Interplay: Website, LinkedIn, X• MPD: LinkedIn, X

Ben Reed walks through his full journey as the first (and for a while, only) marketer at FieldPulse — a construction/trades field service software startup competing against Service Titan, Jobber, and Housecall Pro — through 300%+ revenue growth and a team of 12, and into his first 60 days as VP Marketing at Ressio.In this roundtable, Ben covers:Finding a $5–10K ACV market gap between larger and smaller competitorsWhy he hired a videographer as his second marketing hireHow FieldPulse's YouTube content started outranking Google search resultsTurning field events from badge-scanning into 100+ qualified meetings per showHis Meta Ads playbook, campaign objective strategy, and the Andromeda algorithm shiftScaling a marketing team from 1 to 12 people, tied to revenue targetsWhat he's doing differently in his first 60 days at Resio: product marketing, positioning, SEO, and customer ambassadorsA tactical breakdown for B2B marketing leaders on go-to-market strategy, ICP positioning, demand generation, paid social, field events, and team scaling in a competitive vertical SaaS market.#B2BMarketing #DemandGeneration #GTMStrategy #MarketingLeadership #PaidSocial #FieldMarketing #ProductMarketing #SaaSMarketing #MetaAds #ICP

Send us Fan Mail“Secure AI agents” is a comforting phrase, and it's also one of the most abused. We sit down with Zach Korman, a builder and security researcher known for stress-testing AI agent frameworks, to talk about what actually breaks when you connect LLM agents to tools, plugins, skills marketplaces, and live production systems. The punchline is not a single bug or a clever jailbreak, it's a bigger design problem: agents can be influenced by untrusted content while holding real authority through API keys, SaaS access, and automation hooks.We dig into why “enterprise-grade security” claims often collapse under basic testing, how disclosure changes when a product launches with bold marketing, and why skills are a supply chain risk hiding in plain sight. Zack explains how malicious skills can smuggle commands in places humans never read, how automated scanners can be bypassed, and why “safe OpenClaw” may only be achievable by stripping away the very access that makes agents useful. We also cover MCP security concerns, including dynamic tool definitions, model capability mismatches, and the uncomfortable reality that some protocols effectively enable instruction injection by design.Then we get practical: how to vet tools if you're not an InfoSec specialist, how to reduce third-party exposure, and what foundations matter most inside a company (visibility, least privilege, authorization, and governance). If your team is moving from chatbots to agentic automation, this conversation helps you spot security theater before it ships to customers. Subscribe, share this with someone deploying agents at work, and leave a review with the AI security question you want us to tackle next.Connect with our guest:https://x.com/ZackKormanCheck out the Monthly Cloud Networking Newshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.comFollow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2cloudsMerch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

Le sujet :L'IA va changer le monde du business. Ce n'est plus une prophétie mais une certitude. La question est de savoir déceler les gagnants des perdants.Face à l'explosion du nombre de SaaS créés avec l'IA, l'évolution des process avec l'agentique et l'émergence de licornes spécialisées, comment reconnaître les bons des mauvais élèves ?L'invité du jour :Paul-Antoine Tual accompagne les PME et ETI dans leur transformation IA. Au micro de Matthieu Stefani, il analyse comment les entreprises ont pris le virage de l'intelligence artificielle pour identifier les futurs gagnants et les secteurs menacés par une bulle imminente.Les références :Junyr, l'ERP européen avec son usine à agents : www.junyr.appArticle avec l'étude complète de la maturité IA du Top 10 du CAC 40 et du Nasdaq (les palmarès détaillés et la méthodologie) : paulantoinetual.fr/blog/cac-40-vs-nasdaq-top-10https://deathbyclawd.com/Chapitres :00:00:00 : La transition est en cours00:06:12 : Les modèles d'IA deviennent des commodités00:09:12 : Les IA peuvent être interdites : on entre en eaux troubles00:11:29 : L'avènement de l'agentique : quels secteurs seront ravagés ?00:21:39 : La grille de lecture pour un investisseur : comprendre quelles entreprises vont survivre00:28:38 : Les questions à se poser impérativement avant d'investir dans une entreprise en 202600:33:32 : Les menaces existentielles sur les grandes entreprises de l'IA00:41:11 : Ce qui va changer dans 2 ans00:44:44 : Les Big Tech sont-elles survalorisées ?00:49:34 : Pourquoi l'intégration de l'IA est une condition de survie pour les entreprises00:57:51 : Quelles entreprises sont à l'abri en cas d'éclatement de la bulle ?Merci à notre partenaire Fundora de soutenir la Martingale.Allez sur fundora.fr et prenez le contrôle de vos investissements.Fundora est une plateforme d'investissement. La valeur de vos placements peut augmenter ou diminuer. Votre capital est assujetti à un risque.La libre antenne de votre podcast préféré, Allo La Martingale, a désormais son propre flux ! Abonnez-vous sur Spotify, Apple Podcasts ou votre plafeforme audio favorite pour ne manquer aucun nouvel épisode. Pour s'abonner à la newsletter, c'est ici : https://lamartingale.io/ La Martingale, c'est aussi un assistant IA qui vous apporte des réponses éclairées issues des interventions des experts passés au micro du podcast. Pour tester, direction https://beta.lamartingale.ioLa Martingale est un média d'Orso Media. Vous souhaitez entrer en contact avec a rédaction ? Ou nous soumettre une collaboration ? Ecrivez-nous ici : https://orsomedia.io/contactHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

John Vecchi is the CMO at Mitiga. In this episode of Mitiga Mic, he joins host Brian Contos to discuss Anthropic's cyber verification program and the end of the patch window. This series is brought to you by Mitiga, the leader in Agentic Runtime Security for cloud, SaaS, and AI, delivering Zero-Impact Breach Prevention. To learn more about our sponsor, visit https://www.mitiga.ai.

Claire has spent nearly a decade writing emails, fixing onboarding flows, and tightening messaging for enterprise AI security, LiDAR tech, and competitive SaaS products — where a bad first impression costs everything. In this conversation, she pulls back the curtain on lifecycle marketing, the micro aha moment, the IKEA effect in onboarding, and why your offboarding experience is either a hidden growth lever or a slow revenue leak.If you're spending money to acquire customers and watching them quietly disappear, this episode will tell you exactly why — and what to fix first.Key Takeaways5:07 — Activation is the real growth lever. Most SaaS companies obsess over acquisition. Claire explains why a 5% lift in retention has more revenue impact than almost any ad spend — and why lifecycle marketing starts the moment someone clicks "sign up."6:23 — What lifecycle marketing actually means. It's not just a drip campaign. Claire breaks down the full journey: onboarding → value realization → feature expansion → offboarding — and why each phase is a marketing opportunity.8:29 — Predatory offboarding vs. strategic offboarding. Using Audible as the ultimate cautionary tale, Claire explains the difference between trapping customers and creating a graceful exit that keeps them in your world — and willing to come back.13:13 — The biggest onboarding mistake: empty states. Launching users into a blank dashboard is the fastest way to lose them. Claire explains what to do instead, and why collecting just 2–3 behavioral data points at signup changes everything downstream.15:02 — The IKEA effect in SaaS. A little friction is a good thing. Claire explains why making signup too easy actually reduces commitment — and how the cake mix that bombed (until they added eggs back in) is the perfect metaphor for onboarding design.16:33 — Stop collecting demographic data. Collect jobs-to-be-done. Knowing someone is a "senior manager at a 10,000-person enterprise" helps no one. Claire's framework: problem → motivation → outcome. That's the only data that moves the needle.19:53 — How to run customer interviews that actually work. The cardinal rule: ask "what" not "why." What was going on in your day? What led you to sign up? Inviting a story gets you gold. Asking for a justification gets you a polite non-answer.24:51 — Micro aha moments: the framework behind great onboarding. Don't make users complete a checklist before they see value. Map the big aha moments first, then reverse-engineer what tiny wins need to happen along the way.27:07 — Your pricing page is a micro aha moment. No pricing on your site? ChatGPT already knows. Claire's story of convincing a CEO to ask AI what their product costs — and the result — is a must-hear reality check.32:03 — Behavior-triggered emails beat time-triggered emails every time. Don't email users based on how many days have passed. Email them based on what they've done (or haven't done) in your product. Claire explains activation vs. adoption — and Slack's famous 1,000-message benchmark.35:54 — Why deals stall at no decision — and how to fight it. It's not usually the competitor. It's spreadsheets, internal politics, and the fear of being burned again. Claire's advice: empower the champion inside the company who's trying to get your tool approved.42:20 — The 30-day activation sprint. Claire's step-by-step playbook: optimize the sign-up page → add social proof → send a high-converting welcome email (60% open rate is achievable) → limit in-app prompts to three → A/B test subject lines before content.Tweetable Quotes"Your acquisition budget can't cover what a broken onboarding experience costs you." — Claire Heginbotham"It's not a churn problem. It's an activation problem." — Jeff Mains"Personality is your brand's moat. The more everything sounds the same, the more being human becomes a competitive advantage." — Claire Heginbotham"Don't discount friction. A little skin in the game increases commitment — that's the IKEA effect." — Claire Heginbotham"Ask 'what led you here' instead of 'why did you sign up.' One invites a story. The other asks for a justification." — Claire Heginbotham"Your real competition isn't another app. It's laziness and spreadsheets." — Claire Heginbotham"The company that empowers the internal champion best is the one they're going to fight for." — Claire Heginbotham"Stop asking 'why did you sign up?' Start asking 'what was going on in your life that made you go looking?' The story is where the real answer lives." — Jeff Mains"Assumptions are the mother of all f-ups." — Claire Heginbotham (quoting her first boss)"People don't leave a bad solution for a better one. They leave when they find someone who finally understands what they were actually dealing with." — Futureproof Founder closing thoughtSaaS Leadership Lessons1. The first 10 minutes determine everything. You can out-market every competitor and still lose the customer in the first session. If users don't reach a moment where your product means something to them quickly, they're gone — and no re-engagement campaign will save you. Treat the first 10 minutes like the most important sales conversation you'll ever have.2. Collect behavioral data at signup, not demographic data. Job titles and company sizes are noise. What matters is why someone showed up. Build 2–3 onboarding questions around jobs-to-be-done: the problem they're fleeing, the outcome they're imagining, and the motivation in between. That data powers every email, feature tour, and win-back you'll ever send.3. Design for micro aha moments, not checklist completion. Checklists train users to feel like they're working for your product instead of with it. Map your biggest value moments backward — what tiny realizations have to click first? Deliver those early and often. Every small "oh, I get it" moment is a deposit in the retention bank.4. Offboarding is a growth lever, not a white flag. How a customer leaves determines whether they come back. A graceful downgrade-to-free path, an honest exit survey, and a well-timed win-back sequence turn churned users into future buyers. Predatory offboarding (à la Audible) may retain users in the short term but destroys trust permanently.5. Your internal champion needs ammunition. In B2B, the person who signs the contract isn't always the person who found you. Someone inside that company is fighting to get your tool approved. Transparent pricing, clear ROI framing, and proof of support quality are weapons you hand them — and the company that arms them best wins the deal.6. Test assumptions with data, not debates. Most internal arguments about pricing, onboarding flows, and messaging are based on fear of edge cases that never happen. Before you sink time into back-and-forths about what might go wrong, ask: has it ever gone wrong? If the answer is never, ship it and measure. Assumptions are the mother of all f-ups.Guest Resourcesclaire@copyisland.comcopyisland.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/claireheginbotham/https://www.instagram.com/p/DE44XkOM6Jm/Episode SponsorThe Futureproof Series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkXKUPZ5xuOqMPR7_gzGybncTtavyR1NThe Captain's KeysSmall Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel'Champion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/https://jeffmains.com/books/SaaS Fuel ResourcesWebsite - https://championleadership.com/Jeff Mains on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/Twitter - https://twitter.com/jeffkmainsFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/thesaasguy/Instagram - https://instagram.com/jeffkmains

Benedicte shares her takeaways from the plumbing course. Benedikt goes on a few AWS adventures.Benedicte had so much fun and learned a lot from her plumbing course, even sharing a mindblowing tip of using a balloon to help clear out water from the tap mechanisms during winter. On the work front, their system at Whee! is now live syncing prospects and customers to their email list. Benedicte's also figuring out how to fix the data inconsistency between the bike availability on their website versus the actual availability of bikes at the workshop.The Userlist team reworked their entire data model for themes to support the new stuff. Benedikt also set up a proper CDN for user uploaded assets so there's client side caching. He also took some time to set up Userlist on AWS but is quite unsure if they should move over for good because of the complexity and the unknowns.

On this episode, Ian Ross, Partner at Concentric Equity Partners, discusses how being a family backed private investment firm changes the economics of lower middle market investing. Learn why fund-cycle pressure pushes firms to sell their best companies early, and how removing that pressure supports a feed-the-winners strategy that keeps reinvesting in businesses as they grow, using growth, multiple arbitrage and leverage to build enterprise value along the way.Hear how portfolio companies can weigh short-term EBITDA dips against long-term payoff, why customer acquisition cost and lifetime value apply just as much to services businesses as SaaS, and how leadership teams can navigate AI-driven shifts in marketing and go-to-market strategy by building the trust needed to try new approaches with management.The information contained in this podcast is not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as, investment advice.

AI adoption feels chaotic right now. Saumyo Mukherjee calls it "good chaos."He's VP of Business Systems at Braze. 24-person team. Supports 2,000 employees. Sits between every GTM function using AI.This episode covers vibe coding sprawl. Duplicate automations. And a handoff automation that replaced 1.5 days of manual work.Plus his take on in-app intelligence, token budget and why tool-switching kills CSM productivity.Real tactics from inside a fast-scaling SaaS company.---Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.---What you'll learn- Why "good chaos" beats no chaos- How Braze runs quarterly AI hackathons- The sales-to-services handoff fix that saved days- Why token costs are the new budget battle- Why in-app intelligence beats tool-switching--- Timestamps0:00 - Preview & Introduction1:30 - Meet Saumyo Mukherjee, VP of Business Systems at Braze3:52 - Vibe coding sprawl problem7:53 - The AI idea box & Sales-to-services handoff fix11:52 - Balancing freedom and guardrails (Quarterly AI hackathons)14:32 - Anthropic, token costs, and budget strategy18:30 - Why in-app intelligence wins19:45 - Braze's return to Gainsight---Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com---Where to Find the GuestSaumyo Mukherjee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saumyo/---Where to Find Josh:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/

$0 -> $100M ARR. How Gamma Scaled Quickly without a Sales Team 100 million in ARR. A team of 50. Zero sales reps. Grant Lee, Co-founder and CEO of Gamma, shares the exact playbook behind one of the most capital-efficient growth stories in SaaS - from pitching investors out of a London kitchenette to going viral with a single tweet that got Paul Graham throwing shade. In this session, Grant breaks down four lessons: 1. Product-market fit isn't a checkbox. After winning Product of the Day on Product Hunt and watching signups plateau, Gamma went back to the drawing board. They gave themselves three months to make the first 30 seconds of the product feel magical - and word of mouth did the rest (5K signups/day, then 10K, then 50K, zero marketing spend). 2. Creator marketing only works if you've done it yourself. Grant went through "Cringe Valley" to understand what creators actually need - then used that to manually onboard every creator partner and build something that felt authentic, not transactional. 3. Community-led growth is literal. At 50M users, Gamma flew power users to SF, visited customers in Seoul, London, and São Paulo, and created a Gambassador Slack where early feedback shapes the product roadmap. Your users are not a faceless entity. 4. Dogfooding the future builds conviction. How Gamma killed their virtual office idea after six months and went all-in on presentations - and why testing your own product is the fastest path to knowing what to build next. If you're building a product-led company and wondering whether to invest in marketing or go back to the product - watch this first.

Your AI bill just stopped behaving like a software bill. For twenty years, IT leaders got very good at counting seats: buy a hundred, pay for a hundred. Then AI swapped the seat for a meter, and the number stopped holding still.This episode follows the burn from three vantage points: a financial analyst rationing a $250-a-month token budget he tore through in two days; the tech executive who watched enterprise AI bills climb 7x, 10x, 20x; and the IT leader at a 300-person company who refused to solve it with a usage dashboard. Along the way: Meta's leaked internal token leaderboard, Uber blowing its entire annual AI budget by April, and the uncomfortable question of who profits when everyone's told to use more.In this episode:Why token-based pricing breaks the budgeting playbook IT has relied on for two decadesWhat happens to the people using the tool when the meter starts running — and why rationing has a hidden costWhy measuring usage is the wrong scoreboard, and who benefits when you keep score anywayThe mid-market move that beats policing: measure centrally, push the judgment to managers, and get clear on what you're optimizing forFeaturing Brian Elliott, CEO of Work Forward; Daryl Dore, Senior Director of IT & Information Security at Higher Logic; and Benjamin, a financial analyst who spoke with us on condition of anonymity.Support our sponsor:This episode is brought to you by Sophos MDR. Running Microsoft security tools and drowning in alerts? Sophos MDR's 24/7 experts investigate and stop the real threats. >>> Learn more at: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/solutions/use-cases/microsoft#ITLeadership  #AICostManagement  #SaaSManagement  #FinOps  #EnterpriseAI  #TokenBurn  #ITAMShow Notes & ResourcesReferenced in this episodeMeta's internal AI token leaderboard (Fortune) — 85,000 employees ranked by token consumption; shut down days after it leaked.Uber burns its 2026 AI budget in four months (Forbes; TechCrunch) — adoption jumps 32% to 84% in a month; spend later capped.Jensen Huang on token consumption as a productivity signal (Tom's Hardware).Gartner: worldwide AI spending forecast to grow 47% in 2026 (Gartner).Zylo 2026 SaaS Management Index — the scale of wasted SaaS spend (Zylo).Brian Elliott's newsletter, Work Forward.Guest: Daryl Dore — Higher Logic.This episode's sponsor: Sophos MDR, in partnership with Softchoice — 24/7 managed detection and response for Microsoft environments. https://www.sophos.com/en-us/solutions/use-cases/microsoft The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

This week on Swimming with Allocators, returning guest Chris Schelling of Aksia joins Earnest Sweat and Alexa Binns to unpack how AI, private markets, and the wealth channel are evolving. They discuss where AI may already be in bubble territory, how it's reshaping SaaS, services, and investment processes (including AI “agents” on investment committees), and why some SaaS and low-value information services are most at risk. Chris explains Aksia research-driven approach across private equity, private credit, real assets, and hedge funds, and shares why he's skeptical of layered SPV “sandwiches” and headline-driven fear around private credit. The conversation explores the democratization of alternatives for wealthy clients, the role of content as a strategic edge for allocators, challenges in structuring venture access products, and why early-stage technical venture and quantum computing are compelling. Chris closes with advice for newer professionals: in a world of AI tools, differentiated relationships, networks, and deep domain expertise matter more than ever. Also, Nick Cassin explains how Sidley's secondary practice spans multiple asset classes and deal types, highlights the growing role of secondaries in venture (including GP‑leds and LP trades), and shares how Sidley's breadth, commercial mindset, and experience help clients navigate complex liquidity and continuation vehicle structures. Highlights from this week's conversation include: Chris Schelling Returns & Aksia Career Move (0:13) Why To Be Skeptical of AI Valuations & Bubbles (2:26) How AI Is Reshaping SaaS, Services, and Credit (6:48) Using AI for Diligence, Memos, and Investment Committees (11:29) Behavioral Coaching and Training Analysts With AI (15:06) SPVs, SPV “Sandwiches,” and 2008-Style Layering Risk (19:58) Checklist Ideas for Evaluating SPVs and Access Claims (29:24) How Mega RIAs Are Building Private Markets Platforms (36:38) Strategic vs Tactical Allocations Across Private Markets (41:38) Product Diversity Needed Across RIAs and Client Segments (44:08) Segmenting Venture: Seed, Growth, and Late Stage Dynamics (47:52) Crystal Ball on Venture, Deep Tech, and Quantum Computing (49:39) Skills for Young Investors: Networks, Relationships, and Domain Expertise (54:22) Where To Read Chris's Research and Writing (55:13) Aksia is a global private markets investment advisory and research platform with deep expertise across private equity, private credit, real assets, and hedge funds. The firm advises institutional investors globally and also manages discretionary capital through customized funds-of-one, co-investment vehicles, fund-of-funds, and wealth-oriented private markets solutions. Aksia is known for its open architecture model, broad GP relationships, and rigorous diligence culture across alternative assets. Sidley Austin LLP is a premier global law firm with a dedicated Venture Funds practice, advising top venture capital firms, institutional investors, and private equity sponsors on fund formation, investment structuring, and regulatory compliance. With deep expertise across private markets, Sidley provides strategic legal counsel to help funds scale effectively. Learn more at sidley.com. Swimming with Allocators is a podcast that dives into the intriguing world of Venture Capital from an LP (Limited Partner) perspective. Hosts Alexa Binns and Earnest Sweat are seasoned professionals who have donned various hats in the VC ecosystem. Each episode, we explore where the future opportunities lie in the VC landscape with insights from top LPs on their investment strategies and industry experts shedding light on emerging trends and technologies.  The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this podcast are for general informational purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the next step in your career came from simply showing up, helping someone else and being willing to say yes? In this episode of the Mums on Cloud Nine podcast, I'm joined by Salesforce Golden Hoodie recipient Karmel James, whose career took her from studying chemistry to becoming a self-taught Salesforce professional, consultant and passionate member of the Salesforce community. From Chemistry to Salesforce Karmel never planned a career in Salesforce. After graduating with a chemistry degree, she joined a nonprofit and found herself helping with a Salesforce implementation when her manager left the organization. With the consultants gone and a platform she barely knew suddenly becoming her responsibility, Karmel turned to Trailhead and her scientific background. She knew how to research a problem, test possible solutions and keep learning until things made sense. Salesforce soon became something she wanted to pursue as a career. Why Showing Up Can Change Your Career Karmel began attending Salesforce Saturdays, user groups, developer meetups and community events, including sessions where she initially felt outside her comfort zone. Those rooms created opportunities she could never have planned. During one Salesforce Saturday, Karmel helped another attendee work through a business problem on a whiteboard. Someone from a consulting company happened to be watching and later asked whether she had considered becoming a consultant. Three interviews later, Karmel had a new job. Her experience offers a useful lesson for anyone building or relaunching a career. People get to see how you think, communicate and help others when you participate in communities. Sometimes your next opportunity starts before you even know somebody is watching. Creating Spaces Where People Feel They Belong Karmel also shares the story behind receiving her Salesforce Golden Hoodie in Washington, DC, in December 2022. At community events, she made a habit of spotting people sitting alone or looking uncomfortable. She would introduce herself, invite them to sit beside her and help them feel part of the group. Her philosophy is wonderfully simple: if somebody has made the effort to enter the room, they deserve to feel they belong there. That approach eventually caught the attention of Salesforce's Gilda Hilaire, who saw how consistently Karmel supported people across the community. Karmel was eventually invited to speak at World Tour DC, unaware that Salesforce had another surprise waiting for her. After telling her story on stage, she was called back up and presented with a Golden Hoodie. Becoming a "General Surgeon" of Salesforce Rather than defining herself through one industry, Karmel describes herself as a "general surgeon of Salesforce." Her career has taken her through nonprofits, SaaS, associations, private equity, healthcare and financial services. Her confidence comes from understanding the Salesforce platform and developing strong business analysis skills, then learning the business behind each new role. For women worried that they lack experience in a particular sector, her story shows why transferable skills, curiosity and the ability to understand business problems can open unexpected doors. Why Mums Already Have Transferable Skills Towards the end of our conversation, Karmel makes a powerful observation about mums returning to work. She sees mums as CEOs of their families. Managing budgets, solving problems, negotiating with children, organizing competing priorities and making decisions are genuine transferable skills. Karmel argues that women returning to work should recognize the experience they already possess rather than discounting it because it happened outside a traditional workplace. We also discuss AI, why Karmel prefers to understand how something works before relying on technology to provide an answer, and why human judgment remains important as AI becomes part of everyday work. Mums on Cloud Nine is your go-to destination for inspiring content that empowers women to build a life and career they love. Each week, we share expert advice, personal stories, and practical tips across a range of topics, from health and mindset to money and career growth. Check out our website at www.mumsoncloudnine.co.uk and subscribe for weekly tips to elevate your mindset. What skills from your own life could become the starting point for your next career opportunity? Share your thoughts with us.

Faith Forster has spent 15 years in product leadership. She was VP of product at Dex, acquired for approximately $600 million, and went on to serve as CPO at Legal, a payments and compliance platform. She now runs discovery.com, an AI-native platform that helps product leaders and teams make faster, better product decisions by connecting to their tools and synthesising competitor, customer and growth intelligence. She is also the driving force behind the Makers Manifesto — a cross-disciplinary set of values and principles for building great products in the age of AI, developed with 45 contributors from across product, engineering, design, and business leadership.We discuss:The manifesto emerged from 96 conversations with product leaders whose grasp of AI ranged from fully automated pipelines to treating it as a faster way to write PRDs — a gap that revealed an industry in urgent need of a shared reference point.Four values anchor the manifesto: purpose over possibility, value created over effort spent, learning loops over launch plans, and human accountability over full automation."Maker" was chosen over "builder" to signal that designers, engineers, salespeople, customer support staff, and founders all share equal ownership of the creation process — regardless of job title.Feature parity is no longer a defensible moat: when any competitor can replicate a capability within days, durable advantage must come from data, relationships, distribution, and business model.Product market fit can no longer be treated as a static milestone — in a market where products, competitors, and customer expectations shift simultaneously, fit must become a continuous, living part of decision-making."Done" now means adopted, not shipped. AI removes every excuse for clunky, one-size-fits-all experiences, and teams that still equate production deployment with completion are measuring the wrong thing.Making context explicit — codifying strategy in a form that agents and humans can both act on daily — is the principle teams consistently identify as their most urgent, immediate priority.Chapters00:00 Introduction 01:12 Faith's background 02:28 Origins of the Makers Manifesto 06:18 Makers Manifesto vs the Agile Manifesto 07:23 Why "maker" not "builder" 11:42 Four values and 16 principles 15:01 Purpose over possibility 19:10 Learning loops over launch plans 22:36 Who gets to be a maker 28:55 Durable advantage in the AI era 33:22 Staying close to customers 36:04 What's next for the manifesto 43:59 Wrap-upReferencedMakers Manifesto — https://makersmanifesto.orgdiscovery.com — Faith's AI-native product decision platformOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In the age of AI-driven attacks, your identity infrastructure is likely your weakest link. Yossi Barishev, CEO of Way Security and former incident responder for nation-state threats, joins the Risk Management Show to explain why identity has become the only perimeter left. Discover why traditional security tools are failing and how to prepare your organization for the era of autonomous AI agents. In this episode, we dive deep into the reality of modern cybersecurity, where 99.9% of attacks still exploit basic hygiene failures rather than exotic zero-day vulnerabilities. Yosi shares his experience from the front lines of military intelligence and elite incident response firms, highlighting the massive coverage gaps in current Identity and Access Management (IAM) implementations. We discuss the transition from legacy systems to SaaS and why the lack of uniformity in IT infrastructure is creating a crisis for global enterprises. You will learn about the essential pillars of identity security: maintaining a clean inventory, enforcing the principle of least privilege, and ensuring your security solutions actually cover your entire environment. Whether you are a CIO, CISO, or risk leader, this conversation provides a roadmap for moving away from manual, expensive processes toward automated, resilient identity foundations that can withstand the speed of AI

Join RevUP Academy: https://bit.ly/4wRZDuYNeil Sparkes, AVP of Customer Excellence at ServiceNow UK&I, has a global mandate to move agentic AI out of the experiment phase and into live production inside heavily regulated enterprises. In this episode he breaks down why efficiency gains no longer land with a CFO, how ServiceNow benchmarks real cost savings before and after agents, and where to draw the line between what an agent executes on its own and what still needs a human. We also get into the AI divide that is separating fast adopters from everyone else, why token bills are landing on finance desks with no ROI attached, and whether the SaaS model actually survives all this. Neil also shares why he brought in external training on value conversations for his team, and what he thinks CS will be held accountable for next year.Chapters:00:00 Intro03:19 Meet Neil "Sparky" Sparks of ServiceNow16:50 Getting regulated enterprises to adopt agentic AI22:05 Why efficiency gains no longer convince a CFO25:00 Treat an AI agent like a new employee31:10 Start here: low risk, zero human touch workflows35:06 Separating your personal AI from your work AI39:30 The AI divide and token bills with no ROI42:13 Ripping out your tech stack: is SaaS dead?49:41 What AI is doing to renewals and upsellsConnect with Neil Sparkes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-sparkes/Connect with Anika Zubair: Website: https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikazubair/RevUP Academy™: https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/revupBook Anika as a speaker at your next team event: https://www.thecustomersuccesspro.com/team-eventWant to be my next podcast guest apply here: https://www.thecustomersuccesspro.com/podcast-guestDownload my freebies:https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/resources

Welcome to The SaaS CFO Podcast! In this episode, Ben welcomes back Jim Williams, Managing Director at GLC Advisors, for his fourth appearance to provide an up-to-date look at the software M&A landscape. This conversation dives deep into how the rise of AI is reshaping the market, the evolving benchmarks for software company valuations, and what's currently defining high-quality SaaS businesses. Jim Williams shares insights on the barbell effect in multiples, tougher diligence on revenue quality, new questions investors are asking about AI strategy and margins, and how founders can position themselves for the best possible outcomes—whether they're aiming for a solid exit or shooting for that elusive 10x valuation. Whether you're a SaaS founder, CFO, or investor, this episode is packed with practical guidance and timely market intelligence you won't want to miss. Show Notes: 00:00 AI's impact on market trends 04:06 Impact of AI on business multiples 08:30 AI's impact on SaaS businesses 12:21 Evaluating AI's real impact 15:35 Discussing AI's impact on business fundamentals 17:10 Discussing software company valuations 22:46 Preparing Financials for Buyers 24:27 Focusing on business fundamentals 27:47 Customer segmentation and retention insights 31:19 Discussing growth rates and AI strategy 34:08 Strategizing AI model selection 38:56 Discussing AI adoption challenges 41:17 Discussing market trends and fluctuations 44:57 Contact and Reports Information Links: Jim Williams LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-williams-5754953/ To learn more about Ben check out the links below: Subscribe to Ben's daily metrics newsletter: https://saasmetricsschool.beehiiv.com/subscribe Subscribe to Ben's SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page SaaS Metrics courses here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ Join Ben's SaaS community here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrmurray

Closing the doors to a membership is supposed to hurt signups. But one of Tom's clients did exactly that — closed it, added an application, doubled the price, then reopened. His next launch sold out in 4 minutes. Same community. Same people. Just different mechanics. My guest this week is Tom Ross, the founder of Learn.Community, where he helps community builders design learning experiences that actually stick. His clients have reached millions of people and generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Tom has been building online communities for 20 years, and he's been a member of The Lab since 2022. In this episode, we talk about: Why an application process might be the most underused retention lever in the membership world The “bacon medicine” framework for making your membership both sellable and sticky long-term Tom's “delight, direct, connect” onboarding philosophy — and what almost every community gets wrong How he rebuilt his course into learning pathways, drove completion from 20% to 50%, and turned a siloed module into the main engine of community engagement By the end of this episode, you will understand exactly why most membership churn is decided before someone joins, and what to actually do about it. Learn.Community Tom's Website The Lab Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) “People inherently don't know what they don't know” (00:29) Tom's background: 20 years building communities, what we're covering (04:06) Most retention problems start before someone joins — the targeting failure (07:51) Application process as the biggest membership lever — and how to handle rejections kindly (10:09) Closing doors creates demand: one client's launch sold out in 4 minutes (14:43) The “bacon medicine” approach to membership positioning (24:28) Tom's “delight, direct, connect” onboarding framework (29:01) Responsive vs. linear onboarding — why static sequences break (33:01) Learning pathways: reinventing the traditional course (36:47) AI agents, deep worksheets, and vibe-coded SaaS tools inside the pathways (40:02) Turning off course comments and routing engagement back into the community (50:49) Real results: completion up from 20% to 50%, churn down, engagement way up *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE #260: Detailed Breakdown: Our First Offline Event (And What We'll Do Differently Next Time) *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY

Melissa Kwan is the CEO and Co-founder of eWebinar, an on-demand video platform that turns prerecorded videos into interactive experiences with chat for demos, onboarding, and training. Before eWebinar, she founded Spacio, a real estate technology platform acquired by HomeSpotter in 2019. A three-time bootstrapped founder with more than 15 years of startup experience, Melissa specializes in B2B sales, business development, and building profitable companies with limited resources. She is also the host of the ProfitLed Podcast and the author behind the Your Founder Next Door newsletter. In this episode… Scaling a SaaS business often means finding ways to grow without sacrificing your time, energy, or values. But what happens when the message that inspired you to build your product no longer resonates with customers? How do you break through a growth plateau while staying true to the business you want to build? According to Melissa Kwan, a bootstrapped SaaS entrepreneur and experienced founder, sustainable growth starts with understanding what customers truly value — not what founders assume they value. She explains how shifting eWebinar's messaging from saving time to driving business growth unlocked new opportunities, while customer conversations uncovered unexpected use cases like recruiting and onboarding. Melissa highlights why creating delightful user experiences, maintaining integrity in product design, and building a lean, remote team have been key to long-term success. She also shares how AI has accelerated her marketing and operations and why defining personal non-negotiables helped shape both her company culture and leadership approach. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Melissa Kwan, CEO and Co-founder of eWebinar, to discuss building a scalable, customer-centric SaaS business. They explore refining product messaging for growth, creating software customers genuinely love, and building a high-performing remote team. Melissa also shares how changing her self-talk transformed her confidence as a founder and marketer.

https://youtu.be/KUPg9BuYSaM David B. Jones, CEO and Partner of Mercer Assessments, is helping organizations attract the right A-Players by making labor markets more efficient through defensible human capital insights. By combining psychometric science, workforce analytics, and AI-enabled technology, David helps employers identify, develop, and retain the right talent while empowering people to discover careers where they can thrive and make meaningful contributions.  In this conversation, David introduces The R.E.A.P.E.R. Framework—Review the Situation, Explore Alternatives, Agree a Course of Action, Execute the Plan, and Refine the Approach. He explains why organizations should begin every challenge with a thorough situation review, how collaborative decision-making creates alignment before execution, and why continuous refinement drives long-term organizational success. David also discusses how AI is reshaping talent management, why organizations need real-time workforce insights instead of static reports, and how Mercer Assessments leverages technology while preserving the integrity and defensibility of human capital assessments. — Attract the Right A-Players with David B. Jones  Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. Today, my guest is David Jones, the CEO and partner of Mercer Assessments, focused on providing defensible human capital insights and foresight in the fields of talent acquisition, leadership development, and organizational productivity. David, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. Great to be here.  Well, I’m excited to have you here, especially because you are the first guest—maybe not completely from the Middle East because we had a couple of guests from Israel—but definitely from Dubai, where you are. Maybe that is also impacting the answer that you’re going to give to my question. So here is my first question. What’s your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business, Mercer Assessments?  Yeah. Well, I mean, I think obviously a lot of skills around resilience and being able to think about how you maintain your own personal well-being, but also the well-being of the workforce, is something which has come to the fore in the last couple of weeks, for sure, living in Dubai. But I think very much of my North Star—by educational background, I’m a labor market economist. Although I’ve worked in HR and talent management for pretty much all of my career, I think I’m always thinking about how to make markets more efficient.  I think the labor market, in some ways, and what it takes to become efficient, is very similar to a fish market, a stock market, or any other market that you can think of. What you need to be able to make the best decisions is really good data, really good up-to-date information, both on the supply side and on the demand side.Share on X I think a lot of what we do at Mercer Assessments, and a lot of what we do in talent management more generally, is really about trying to do that. Trying to help individuals understand what their strengths are.  Trying to match them to specific careers that will be more fulfilling for them in the long term and also help them be more productive for their employers. As well as helping employers understand what the important skills are for today and tomorrow, and how they can predict how people will perform in certain environments. So really trying to bring the supply side and demand side together. I think, notoriously, labor markets have very bad information.  Typically, most people get their career guidance from their parents or their grandparents, which can be great for aspiration but doesn’t always necessarily keep them up-to-date in terms of what’s happening in today’s workplace. So I think this is really my anchor, if you like, where a lot of what we do in our innovation, our technology, or our engagements with clients typically comes back to this point. Fundamentally, how do we make labor markets more efficient and more functional for all of the stakeholders?  Yeah, that’s fascinating. So would you say that if you are doing this well, then more people will feel fulfilled in the roles that they work in?  I mean, I think that’s definitely the aspiration, right? That’s definitely what you would hope to do. I think, as individuals, I’m sure we can all think of those really, really great days where you think that you nailed it at work, and you think that this is something where you can make a really specific contribution. It just feels good, and all those people around you have the benefit of that. It becomes something which is infectious for those around you.  I think it’s important for the economy on a macro level, right? I think if we are able to provide opportunities, provide career paths, and help people understand what their unique strengths are, then this is something which helps to promote productivity and positivity more generally, right? At the individual, team, family, and societal level, it affects all sorts of dimensions.  So maybe this is kind of a side question, but I’m really wondering, is this AI revolution, as we’re going through it, influencing your work, and is it changing the requirements of employers?  Yeah. I think we’re in a very interesting time. I mean, I’m not a futurologist. I’m not a prophet. I’m not somebody who makes these sorts of big predictions about the future. But I think the case for AI, to some extent, is still unproven in terms of what it’s actually delivered to date. I mean, I think there’s obviously a lot of investment. There’s a big impact on the environment. But I don’t think we’ve had something really groundbreaking discovered by AI at this point that’s new.  It seems to be quite backward-looking in many ways, based on ingesting data from all the novels that you have on your shelf and that I have on my shelf. Maybe they’re going to ingest this podcast in the future. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem that there’s been a unique breakthrough that humanity has not been able to, or would not be able to, achieve by itself. And yet, I think the promise and the anticipation of what AI can do is quite compelling, right?  I think the way that it is impacting the labor market especially… Ironically, it’s impacting probably software developers the most today. It’s interesting that a lot of people in white-collar fields, professionals maybe, are also feeling like it’s changing the way they’re working. So there’s a big debate, I think, about whether it’s going to be an augmentation or whether it’s going to be a replacement of some sorts of tasks. I think one thing you can say with certainty is that the concept of a job is definitely going to change. If you look at the roots of the word—the etymological roots of the word “job” in the English language—it literally means “a task” rather than a role as such. Yeah. So I think we’re going to get this greater atomization of people’s roles. What used to be bundled together as one job is now going to be much more atomized into specific skills, specific tasks.  The opportunity there is that we all get to do more of the things that we find more fulfilling and less of the repetitive, dangerous, or dull types of things that we have to do in our jobs sometimes.Share on X But I think it has some second-order impacts in terms of how people develop their careers and the competence and confidence that people, particularly when they’re junior in their jobs, need time to build—the ability to operate at a higher level. So I think we’re all going to have to be leaders in lots of ways, even leaders in our own work.  Yeah, I agree with you. That’s fascinating. So, David, let’s talk about the framework. What would be a framework? Think of something that allows you to be more effective in your job—something maybe that you personally discovered or that you and your colleagues developed. Something that helps you be more effective in creating those labor market matches, finding the right candidates, and assessing them. Something that you can describe in three, four, or five steps, or maybe three or four ways of looking at things. Anything that comes to mind?  So there are a few things. I did miss a few things because I think—I don’t know if you’ve heard the news. We’re recording this, and I think the British prime minister has just resigned today. This is, I think, our seventh prime minister in 10 years. I’m sure each one of those prime ministers had their own framework in terms of what they wanted from their political leadership and how they were going to operate in government.  So I think we’re definitely operating in a much more VUCA world, right? This mnemonic is about being volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. I think, to some extent, that means that having a framework has to be something that is constantly being amended, reviewed, and updated in many ways. A lot of what we do in assessment—we have very clear statistical frameworks where we look at particular behaviors or particular characteristics, and we try to make sure we measure them. But I thought maybe that was too detailed and too comprehensive.  So one of the things we do when engaging with our clients is that we have a sort of consulting approach. It’s like a cycle. We start by reviewing the situation, so it’s like a situation appraisal, if you like. We use this internally as well in Mercer Assessments. So we try to understand what’s happening, what’s going well, and what we’re concerned about—just trying to get any data or information that we can.  Then it's important, particularly with a team or with a client, to explore what the priorities are, what's important, and what is causing them the most thought or requiring the most energy to address.Share on X So reviewing, exploring, and then agreeing on a course of action. Making sure that there’s consensus or, if you’re in an organization, making sure you’ve got the budget and the endorsement from headquarters or senior management. Then I think you can go into a planning stage. Making sure you’ve got a focus on execution and that you know what has to happen and when.  Then I think you can go into the ability to have that as a cycle and review or evaluate the plan itself. Is it on track? Is it on time? Is it on budget? Is it achieving its objectives? You can continue on this sort of reflexive cycle. So if you were to do that, it becomes quite sinister. The mnemonic becomes R.E.A.P.E.R., like the Grim Reaper or like “reap what you sow,” because you review, explore, agree, plan, execute, and then review again.Share on X So it can become, hopefully, a virtuous cycle, but it can also become an ongoing process.  I love it. So Yeah. So if you refine, maybe the last one is refined, and then you avoid repeat— Yes. Yeah.  Yeah. Oh, great.  That’s good. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, love it. So basically, what you’re looking for is helping your customers with an initial problem and then helping them generally improve their organization by continuing to refine and add to it, making it better over time.  Yes, correct. Yeah.  So it turns into a recurring engagement.  Yes, that’s the hope. Well, yeah. I mean, hopefully, if you have that relationship with the client and also with your team, you have this ability to recognize what you’ve achieved together, but you can also plan what you want to do differently next time.  So you’re the CEO of Mercer Assessments, which is the Dubai operation. Is this just a geographic branch of the Mercer Group, or is it a separate business that operates in multiple geographies?  Yeah. So actually, it’s a new venture for Mercer globally. My background is that I was one of the founders of a company called The Talent Enterprise, which was acquired by Mercer just over two years ago. It had also made an acquisition of another company before that called Mettl. So we were more of a talent assessment type of company.  We would do talent acquisition, talent development, leadership development, things like high-potential identification, succession planning, and these types of applications. Employee engagement as well, things like employee well-being assessments and stuff like this. The psychometric assessment field. So if you or your listeners are good at Greek, you would know that “psychometric” means “measurement of the mind.”  Yeah, right. So this is really what we’re trying to do. We’re accredited by the British Psychological Society to say that the tools we have, use, or develop have validity, reliability, and are statistically stable within the sorts of bounds that you would expect when measuring human beings.  It can never be perfect, but it’s considered to be predictive. Mettl was more focused on skills assessment. That was one of their big areas of focus, along with educational assessment. So coming together as Mercer Assessments, we’re now part of this big global organization. Although we’re based in the Middle East, we’re now working in Asia, Europe, North America—we’re just starting to do more work in North America—and Australasia. So this is the sort of big, hairy, audacious plan that we have.  That must be pretty intense if you’re working around the clock, essentially working around the globe. Then Mercer is… It can be.  Yeah, it can be. Even working in the Middle East, you have different working weeks. Some of our clients work on Sundays. But we have a good team. We have a big team. We have great technology. So we have scalable ways of doing it.  So what drives growth in this business?  I think it is changing. If you were to ask me that question even two years ago, I would say it’s to do with the change, the transformation, or the aspiration of the client, of the organization. If they’ve got a new operation, or they’re expanding, or they need to develop new skills, or they need to make sure their productivity and positivity are enabling them to keep up with their competitors, then these things would often trigger the sorts of interventions that we help our clients with.  That’s still true to a large extent, but what's changing a lot is what you were talking about earlier—to do with AI and expectations from technology. So I think what we're doing a lot more of now is real-time decision support.Share on X It used to be that our deliverables would look like a PDF report. They would say, “Okay, this is Steve. We’ve assessed Steve. These are Steve’s strengths. These are his areas for development. This is the sort of team or the certain type of colleague that he would thrive working with.  These are the people or the situations that he might struggle with.” That type of static report. Then either we or the client—sometimes if you’re looking at large numbers of people—you’d have to do a lot of spreadsheet work or a lot of PowerPoint work and say, “Okay, now we need to match that with your strategic objectives.” So I think what’s happening now is we’re focusing a lot more on the data.  Our technology is providing much more of a dashboard report, so Steve can access his results straight away because that’s actually when Steve is most interested in them and they’re most relevant—not two weeks later when you schedule a coach or someone to give him feedback. You’re interested as soon as you finish the last question. You want to know, “Okay, what does this say about me?” We can add lots of AI layers to that to help you implement it or understand it. Then for the organization, we now provide much more of a dynamic dashboard-type report.  So if, I don’t know, the CFO leaves this afternoon and the CEO calls the CHRO and says, “Okay, who are the internal candidates for this role?” You can come up with an answer. It doesn’t have to be something where you say, “Let me check my filing cabinet,” or, “Let me put a PowerPoint together for you and get back to you later this week or next week.” You can actually do that type of matching within the platform that we have. We have our own platform called Lighthouse, and it really helps you match individuals or teams to certain tasks or to certain ventures or aspirations that the organization might have.Share on X  Yeah. So instead of providing individual reports for individuals, you now operate this platform for your clients, and then they can look up the people involved in changes. So how is it different to scale the business with this type of approach? What makes it more complex?  Yeah. So on the one hand, it can help us a lot as our own organization because we can be much more pervasive 24 hours a day across the different time zones that we operate in. If you’re our client, you don’t always have to rely on having a meeting or a call with us in person. You can go and find that answer yourself. It’s quite an intuitive process and platform. You can access it and get value from your own data. I think that’s the key thing that I’m trying to emphasize that’s changed.  Clients are now impatient with SaaS platforms in particular when they’re not able to access their own data directly. So there’s a little bit of disintermediation going on in the enterprise software business as a whole. That’s the key trend that I’m trying to highlight here. But it also helps us to be more scalable. Just to take a step back to the previous discussion about AI, I think when it comes to using AI in your business, the key strategic choice is what you’re not going to use AI for.  For us, we made the choice actually three or four years ago that we’re not going to use AI in the assessments themselves. Not today. Maybe in five years’ time or ten years’ time we might change our mind, and we’re constantly reviewing that. But we need these defensible assessments. We need to be able to say, “This is fair and objective, and we’re coming with an external point of view that is transparent and defensible in every sense of that word.”  Yeah. You don’t want to hallucinate assessments for clients or even run the risk of that happening, right?  Yeah, absolutely. And there are some companies that have done that, right? I mean, there are lots of cases you can find where companies have said, “Hey, we just need a five-minute video, and I can tell you everything you need to know about this person, and you can make decisions about their career and all sorts of stuff,” right? I’m not saying we won’t get there in the future, but I just don’t think that’s good enough at the moment.  And I think with a lot of things that you do with chatbots now, if you’re judicious about it, you might be able to say, “Well, actually, that’s interesting, but it’s not good enough,” right? It’s not a finished product. It’s not something that I can execute on. What we can do is add a lot of value around the assessment. So we can do things like AI-based development planning, right?  When someone wants to see their results—and people normally want to see their results almost immediately after they’ve finished their assessments—you can start to say, in the flow of work, in the client’s environment, whatever their learning partners or learning architecture may be, “Okay, here’s a development plan for you,” customized and curated within that environment for your strengths, how to emphasize them, and also for any development areas or new learnings that you want to address.  We can also do things like AI-based proctoring, right? We can give the client a risk report on an application and say, you know, how genuine is this? What other software does Steve have open on his laptop? Is there a shadow in the room? Where are his eyes going? Is he looking at someone else? Is he getting help from someone else? Is this really Steve? All these sorts of things, right? We can do that. We can also develop customized case studies for the organization around its specific tasks and challenges that the organization has.  So you can come up with very specific, job-related assessments. AI can add a lot of value to all of these things. It can provide greater scale and a greater ability to sustain our growth. But with the core of what we do today, we’re saying, “Look, you need to be able to trust us.” And we want to be able to show you the answer. If you have a question about any of our assessments, we can check. There’s an audit trail, and we can show you the answer. It’s not just, “The computer came up with this idea. We don’t know.” But that’s intellectual property, and you know that it works, and you’re sticking with it. You don’t allow AI to bastardize it, basically, yeah, which makes sort of sense. So, David, what is one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business right now? That’s a great question. I mean, there’s lots of things. I think a lot of them come around, you know, what is this threshold between what we do as humans and what we use AI or other technology to help us do? And I think that threshold is constantly being reviewed. A lot of it is to do with how do you make growth sustainable. We have had massive growth in the last five or six years, and that’s a great thing.  But I think it means you have to make sure the foundations of your organization are strong so that you can move from one to another. I mentioned earlier that we’re just starting to focus on North America as one of our new markets, and I was very keen that we didn’t do that until this point or even next year because we’re not the organizational equivalent of The Beatles, right? Like, we can’t just expect to turn up in a big, sophisticated, very strong, highly cultured market and be able to expect that we’re going to do things like we’ve done them everywhere else, or that we don’t need to think about how we communicate with those prospects and those clients.  So that’s a really big step for us. And how we manage data, I think, is probably the key thing. Fundamentally, if I was to come back to answer your question, I think it’s how we manage data because I think clients are becoming much more sophisticated, much more impatient with people who curate their data. They say, “Look, you know, we know we’re generating lots of data inside the organization,” right? Which is typically what we do, right? It’s people data.  Normally in most work environments, you can tell when somebody opens their laptop, or you can tell when they walk in the office door, or you can tell sometimes even what they’re doing inside the working space, right? Their ID has got an RFID in it or something like that. So there’s lots of data that’s constantly being generated inside the organization, and clients want to get value from that data. And having a sort of third-party proxy come in and say, “Hey, we can do your payroll for you,” or “We can send a questionnaire to people once a year, and that can let you know whether they understand health and safety or they’re engaged in their workplace,” it’s not really satisfactory anymore, right?  The clients are saying, “Okay. I want to be able to get value from my data, and I want to be able to see that. I want the analytics. I want to ask questions that are not able to be prescribed at the beginning.” “And I want to be able to do these queries in real time.”  So essentially, would that require you to get integrated with your clients to some degree so that you can process the data in real time as it emerges? It’s really interesting because I think what I’m hearing from my clients is they’re actually frustrated with that. In the sort of classic SaaS world, which we’ve had in organizations now for 20, 30, maybe even 40 years, you integrate the big internal ERP systems or CRM systems, and you integrate them, and then you have to sort of work within their framework, right? And you might see a report that’s already pre-programmed, but you don’t necessarily see the data, right? If you wanted to say, “Okay, what’s the trend today over the 24-hour clock?” or “How is it changing in June compared to May?” or “How does it relate to the temperature?” or whatever, right?  You can come up with all these questions that you might not be able to predict and then plan and have a sort of pull-down standard report. So to do that, you need access to the data. And I think clients are saying, “This is our data.” This data belongs to us. We want to be able to see that directly, and we want to be able to use that as a decision-support tool, and not necessarily just have a report.”  Yeah. So they’d rather own the data and apply your tools to their data without you necessarily having access to the data or something like that?  Yeah. It’s also a source of differentiation for them, right? Because they know that if… I’m not going to mention these companies. I’m sure you and all your viewers know the big brands. It’s interesting what’s happening with their share prices recently, right? They’re all maybe suffering a little bit from a decline in their share prices, on average. It’s basically a standardized way of doing things, right?  There’s pretty much the same way that any corporation in any part of the world is going to do it because that’s the way you get efficiency through that software. But if an organization says, “Actually, we’ve got an insight into something that we think is unique and differentiated, and we want to make decisions in a slightly different way, or make them faster,” that’s a point of competitive advantage.  Does that mean they wouldn’t want you to apply their idea to other customers because it’s their unique property? They’d just want your tools to help them process their data. They don’t want to share it with you.  Yeah. There are clients like that. We do deal with very sensitive industries, and sometimes government departments, where we have to be able to certify that type of approach. I think that’s likely to become more common in the future as people become more sensitive and more aware of the value, the opportunity, and the threat of what can happen with their data.  Yeah. I mean, some people say that information is now ubiquitous. It’s the questions that are really important because that’s how you communicate with AI. Maybe the question itself can be proprietary know-how—knowing how to ask the right kind of question. They don’t want…  No. I mean… Yeah, I agree. Completely. Yeah. You’re absolutely right. Again, to go back to assessments, we’ve recently released a whole bunch of assessments that measure skills in AI as a domain. We’ve got all sorts of technical and non-technical AI assessments. Obviously, one of the skills that we look at is prompt engineering. If you’ve used some of the generative AI platforms, you’ll always get an answer.  They’re pre-programmed to give you an answer, and most of them are also pretty polite. They fluff up your ego a little bit and say, “Hey, great question.” “That was really interesting.” Then they’ll give you an answer. You need to be aware of that. You need to probe and make sure you’ve not just got an answer—you’ve got the answer. Or at least the best answer that makes sense for you. Then you’ve quality-checked it.  You’ve taken it from one platform, put it into another platform, and then into a third platform. Whatever you’ve done, you need to have that awareness and those specific skills to get the most value out of it. It’s very dangerous, and I think we can all see it. I’m sure your inbox is like my inbox. You get emails from people and think, “Okay, well, that’s not an email from a person.” It’s a bulleted email. It’s not personal. It’s not directed at you. Sometimes it’s hard to understand what it even means.  Yeah. You’re right. So David, who is the ideal customer for you that can most benefit from your solution?  That’s a good question. Personally and professionally, I like clients who challenge us. I like clients who ask questions that make us think in a different way, so we can hopefully give them value and really answer those questions. I think that’s important for us to develop. Clients who are looking for new insights or different foresights that help them in their business—those are the kinds of clients we’re looking for. Definitely the ones who are pushing the envelope and helping take us forward in terms of quality.  So if those types of people are listening to this show and would like to learn more about what you do and how you might be able to help them, where should they go? Where can they find out more?  Yeah, absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m David B. Jones on LinkedIn. There are a lot of David Joneses. I think David Jones is the most common name for a British man—even more common than John Smith—so there are a lot of us around. But you’ll be able to find me as David B. Jones. You can also find Mercer Assessments. You can find out more about us through those channels. I’ll be happy to answer any questions or provide more information.  Is there a website people should check out? Do you have a separate website for Mercer Assessments?  We do. Mercer Assessments is part of the mercer.com website. That’s where you’ll find more information. There are also a number of books we’ve published on particular subjects to do with assessment, talent, and leadership development more generally. Those are all available on Amazon as well.  Okay. So if you’re out there and you’re looking to have a more sophisticated view of your people and their aspirations and how they fit the type of work that you want them to do, and you’d like to understand more deeply, then check out Mercer Assessments, David B. Jones. Actually, it’s easy to just put in “David Jones Mercer,” and David will pop up that way.  Check out the books that David and his colleagues have published. And if you enjoyed this conversation, then make sure you follow us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. And David, thanks for coming to the show and sharing your experience and insights. I mean, it seems to me that you have a much more nuanced approach than most talent assessment or performance assessment organizations, and you have a lot more tools at your disposal. It’s a combination of technology and professional expertise. So that’s fascinating. Thanks for coming on the show. And if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you follow us because we come out every week with exciting entrepreneurs like David. I will. I will. Thank you, Steve. Important Links: Davidi's LinkedIn David's  website

Send us Fan MailCan AI answer your customers without pushing them away? David Karandish has automated support for 20,000 companies, and he says deflection should make the experience better, not worse.David Karandish, founder and CEO of Capacity, joins Yanique Grant to unpack how to bring AI into customer support the right way. After selling Answers Corp for $960 million, David built Capacity into an omni-channel support automation platform serving roughly 20,000 customers. In this episode he shares the design principles that keep automation human, why your first AI project should be a small, provable win, and how AI agents are now running entire companies from finance to marketing.In this episode:- The design principles that make AI deflection improve the customer experience instead of frustrating people, from great escalation paths to leading with empathy - Why human behavior is largely universal across regions, and where support questions actually differ - What the $960M Answers.com journey taught David about people who are truly stuck and have nowhere to turn - The single most practical first step for any support leader: go get your small win, then iterate - How builder agents let a complete novice spin up workflows, integrations, and CSAT surveys just by askingFeatured resources:Book: Principles by Ray Dalio — a first-principles breakdown of how Dalio built one of the most successful investment firms of all time. Foundational AI models — Google Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic's Claude, used across the business. Jira — for tracking development tickets; David uses LLMs to analyze time-in-stage when off-the-shelf plugins fall short. Capacity — an AI-powered support automation platform that deflects emails, calls, and tickets across voice, SMS, WhatsApp, web, and email. ~20,000 customers, 250+ app integrations.Connect with the guest: Website: capacity.com Email: david@capacity.comFollow the show: X @NavigatingCX and join our private Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Community. Hosted by Yanique Grant.

AI makes it easier than ever to find and act on information—especially now that teams can connect to and search across all the apps they use for work. So how do you ensure that only the right people and the right tools can access your team's most sensitive content? In this episode, we talk with Jess Jimenez, the head of security at Dropbox, about what security looks like in the age of AI at Dropbox-scale—from building AI products securely to building trust with the people who use them. Jess talks about the importance of access control lists, defending against the latest AI threats, and how Dropbox Protect helps teams securely share content with both humans and AI so they can collaborate more safely. ~ ~ ~  Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox. Find, organize, and share your work—all in one place—with context-aware AI from Dropbox. You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Ben Montoya, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to our illustrator Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck.  Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart.  Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

→ Wanna use SEO to generate revenue? : Book a call here  https://www.breakingb2b.com/book-a-call Episode #494 and this week Sam presents the full AI SEO system he uses to rank SaaS businesses in ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. There's a huge amount here for you and Sam really gets into the detail with this one! - Ready to learn how to get AI SEO to work for your B2B?, then hit play now!   Sam give you:   

Ryan Fenn is a founder and entrepreneur who started with $500 repairing windshields, built $2M in course sales, then scaled a SaaS business to ~$1.2M MRR using systems, automation, and partnerships. Top 3 Value Bombs 1. Hustle can create momentum, but systems create sustainable growth and freedom. The businesses that scale are built on repeatable processes, not constant grinding. 2. Automation should only happen after you understand and master the process manually. Learn it first, then automate the redundant parts. 3. Revenue growth often comes from fixing small leaks in the customer journey. Faster response times, better follow-up, and stronger messaging can dramatically increase conversions. Check out Ryan's website and join his entrepreneur community. Learn how to generate leads from cold Facebook and Instagram traffic - Ryan Fenn Website Sponsors HighLevel - The ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies. Learn more at HighLevelFire.com. Nexus Install - Have a high-ticket offer? Nexus Install builds you a custom LinkedIn prospect booking system designed to generate more quality sales calls. Email JLD at John@EOFire.com to learn more.

In this episode, Jason and John Eitel from Orum, talk about why top sales teams admit they haven't cracked AI, how to centralize AI through RevOps without hurting rep productivity, why skill still beats tool stack, and the pipegen mix by segment that holds up from high velocity to enterprise. Check out more free content and get help with outbound at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://outboundsquad.com.⁠

How do you beat the industry leader when everyone says you don't belong?In this episode of Lead The Team, Ben Fanning sits down with Alessio Artuffo, CEO of Docebo, who helped transform a small Italian startup into a global SaaS leader, scaling the business from roughly $1 million to more than $200 million in ARR.Alessio shares the pivotal moments that shaped both the company and his leadership—from being underestimated because of his accent, to winning an enterprise customer that was ten times larger than Docebo's annual revenue by competing against the industry's biggest player.He also explains why authenticity beats polish, how clarity becomes a competitive advantage as organizations grow, and why the best leaders inspire rather than control.In this episode, you'll learn:How underdogs can outperform industry leadersWhy proving people wrong became Alessio's greatest source of motivationThe leadership principles behind scaling from startup to global SaaS companyHow to build teams that thrive through trust, clarity, and accountabilityWhy AI is transforming workplace learning—and what leaders need to do differentlyWhether you're building a startup, leading a growing organization, or competing against companies much larger than your own, this conversation offers practical lessons on leadership, resilience, and scaling with purpose.Chapters:00:00 – How an underdog startup challenged the market leader02:18 – Why Alessio joined a 15-person company06:39 – The challenges of expanding into North America09:22 – The customer who criticized his accent13:35 – Winning an enterprise deal against the industry's biggest competitor20:19 – Scaling a culture built on clarity and trust24:28 – How AI is reshaping workplace learning33:10 – Why great leaders choose grace over force-----Connect with the Host, #1 bestselling author Ben FanningSpeaking and Training inquiresSubscribe to my Youtube channelLinkedInInstagramTwitter

The decision that scares you most is the one keeping you stuck, and the fear talking you out of it has a name: eggs in one basket. In this episode, I break down why that fear is a lie for SaaS partners spread thin across five verticals, and the two tests that kill it in under a week. I share how one client I work with crossed $100,000 a month for the first time with zero dollars spent on marketing, after finally committing to the one vertical he had avoided for years. You will hear why counting the real size of a market beats trusting the nerves, and why a niche you can reverse in 90 days is a test, not a bet. If you are tired of rewriting your pitch for every call and being shallow in five places while AI eats shallow for breakfast, this one is for you.Resources and LinksNeed help with your WHO and WHAT decisions? Apply for a FREE Multiplier CallBook a Decision Session herePrevious episode: 696 - Wrong ProblemCheck out more episodes of the Paul Higgins PodcastSubscribe to our YouTube channel: @PaulHigginsMentoringJoin our newsletterSuggested resources