Podcasts about snowflakes

What does a rising cloud bill actually tell you about the value your business is creating? Eight years after our first conversation, I welcome Kunal, co-founder and CEO of Unravel Data, back to Tech Talks Daily. We compare the data infrastructure he was optimizing during the Hadoop era with today's enterprise stacks built around Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, AI pipelines, and autonomous agents. Kunal says Unravel Data has analyzed over 10 billion workloads across hundreds of enterprises. From that work, he argues that data platforms and infrastructure can account for up to 60% of cloud spending at some global businesses, while 30% to 40% of data platform spending may produce no business value. These are company claims, but they frame a problem many technology and finance leaders will recognize. The cloud bill arrives after thousands of individual engineering decisions have already been made. We discuss where cloud waste hides, including oversized clusters, hot storage holding cold data, abandoned pipelines, inefficient queries, duplicate datasets, and development jobs consuming production-level resources. The people creating those workloads seldom see the price attached to their decisions, leaving technology leaders with an aggregated bill that explains what was purchased but not why it was needed. AI adds another complication. Humans create workloads at human speed, while agents can generate queries, launch infrastructure, and consume tokens around the clock. An agent is designed to complete its task, not worry about whether a single query costs $5 or $5,000. Kunal argues that machine-speed consumption cannot be governed through monthly human reviews. We also discuss the difference between cost cutting and cost optimization, why aggressive reductions can damage performance and reliability, and how FinOps must connect cost with business outcomes. Kunal explains why leaders should measure cost per pipeline, model, agent, successful run, customer report, and business result. Finally, we consider the benefits and risks of autonomous data platform optimization. Kunal describes autonomy as a dial, with bounded, reversible, and validated actions earning wider authority as trust develops. Does your cloud bill show healthy growth, or is expensive waste hiding behind the headline number? Share your thoughts with me.

Justin Nielsen and Mike Webster walk through Friday's market action and discuss key stocks to watch in Stock Market Today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Claire Casely joins me to discuss her new book (in two volumes) on West Country Pixies (which includes a foreword from Joshua Cutchin). Claire lives in Devon, right next to Dartmoor and she hosts the heartful, Fairy Whispering Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/2DAOaYOrzMn5eavq0jFExS And Claire's substack is https://substack.com/@clairecasely?utm_source=global-search Claire's books are available on Amazon and she created all the illustration in the books. Volume One: The Heart of Pixieland: West-Country Faeries & Their Haunts: Volume I — Pixie Tradition, Origins, and Landscape https://amzn.eu/d/07vXOw0r Volume Two The Heart of Pixieland: West-Country Faeries & Their Haunts: Volume II — Encounters & Living Traditions https://amzn.eu/d/0fEO7Q09 In this LIVE chat, members of the Patreon were able to ask questions at the end of the interview. Patreon Bonus: Claire will be sharing slides of her paintings with us on the Patreon. Come and join us and support. https://www.patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership Shownotes https://streamyard.com/pal/d/5529366801547264Shownotes:Prisoner of Dartmoor Prison sees wild man eating a bird:https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LG1R7jJG8/Teign and Bovey Eco Warriors and local residents save local river: https://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news_features/2002/teigngrace.shtml The ‘pygmy theory' is mentioned in Evans Wentz's book 'The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries' (1911) based upon David MacRitchie's work 'The Testimony of Tradition' (1890) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34853/34853-h/34853-h.htm ⭐️ JOIN THE MODERN FAIRY SIGHTINGS COMMUNITY ⭐️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you're looking for exclusive bonus material, monthly zoom chats with like-minded folks, access to the Discord chat channels, quiet meditation gatherings and meeting other members, join us at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ S U P P O R T If you'd prefer to support the Modern Fairy Sightings with a one off donation, you can ‘buy me a coffee' and I'd be very grateful

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy explains explain why the next phase of enterprise AI is about economics, not simply using the biggest model available. He breaks down how model routing can cut AI costs, why relying on a single model creates risk, and how AI agents could shift workers from repetitive tasks toward higher-value jobs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Louise Nealon made a remarkable debut with ‘Snowflake,' the award-winning novel that introduced readers to her sharp, funny, and deeply compassionate portrait of contemporary rural Ireland. The County Kildare writer returns with their second novel, ‘Everything That Is Beautiful,' a story that explores the complicated bonds of family, friendship, memory, and forgiveness.

Anthropics Investoren erwarten für Oktober einen Börsengang bei zwei Billionen Dollar, was der größte IPO aller Zeiten wäre. Pip erklärt, warum der Termin geschickt gewählt ist. Für OpenAI sieht er die Lage umgekehrt. Dort kommt der zweite Vertriebschef in einem Jahr. Zusammen mit Cerebras hat OpenAI dafür eine Variante gebaut, die vierzehnmal schneller antwortet. Danach vier Modellstarts in einer Woche, bei denen ausgerechnet DeepSeek die Preise um bis zu das Zwölffache erhöht, und Elon Musk sein neues Grok für objektiv das beste Modell hält. Bei den Finanzierungsrunden geht es um Databricks, Lovable, Legora und Cognition, dazu um die Frage, ob man das Geld gerade nehmen und liegen lassen sollte. Silver Lake holt Workday von der Börse. In der Schmuddelecke erlaubt die Trump-Regierung privaten Firmen offensive Cyberangriffe und beruft sich dabei auf Kaperbriefe aus der Verfassung. Unterstütze unseren Podcast und entdecke die Angebote unserer Werbepartner auf ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠doppelgaenger.io/werbung⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Vielen Dank!  Philipp Glöckler und Philipp Klöckner sprechen heute über: (00:00:00) Aus der Community (00:02:05) OpenAI wechselt den Vertriebschef (00:12:20) Ultrafast mit Cerebras (00:17:16) Anthropic-IPO (00:29:10) Anthropic kauft Decart (00:30:34) Braucht man ein KI-Device? (00:32:36) Gemini 3.7 Flash (00:34:10) DeepSeek V4-Pro (00:34:47) Grok 4.6 (00:37:11) SpaceX (00:38:49) Databricks und Snowflake (00:42:40) Workday geht von der Börse (00:44:11) Lovable (00:49:26) Legora (00:52:28) Cognition (00:55:18) Mistral (00:57:22) Kaperbriefe (01:02:05) Truth API (01:03:28) Chronext (01:06:55) Apple zahlt Verlage Shownotes OpenAI holt den zweiten Vertriebschef in einem Jahr - bloomberg.com GPT-5.6 Sol läuft mit Cerebras bis zu 14-mal schneller - 9to5mac.com Anthropic peilt einen Börsengang bei 2 Billionen Dollar an - ft.com Anthropic verhandelt über Decart für 6 Mrd. - bloomberg.com Google stellt Gemini 3.7 Flash vor - blog.google DeepSeek bringt V4-Pro und erhöht die Preise um bis zu das Zwölffache - theinformation.com Grok 4.6 startet zuerst in Cursor - gizmodo.com SpaceX-Leerverkäufern gehen die Kugeln aus - cnbc.com Databricks sammelt 5 Mrd. bei 190 Mrd. Bewertung ein - cnbc.com Silver Lake verhandelt über eine Übernahme von Workday - reuters.com Lovable verdoppelt die Bewertung auf 13,3 Mrd. - trendingtopics.eu Legora verhandelt bei mindestens 10 Mrd. - ft.com Cognition verhandelt bei 40 Mrd. - bloomberg.com Mistral will bis 2030 ein Gigawatt in Europa bauen - aibusiness.com Trump lässt private Firmen offensive Cyberangriffe fahren - bloomberg.com Kaperbriefe stehen in der Verfassung - xcancel.com KI-Agenten greifen Taiwans Regierungssysteme an - ft.com Presseverbände klagen gegen Trumps Truth API - ft.com Chronext-Kunden warten auf Zahlungen und Lieferungen - wiwo.de Apple verhandelt mit Verlagen über Nachrichten für Siri - techcrunch.com

Recorded on location at Black Hat USA 2026 in Las Vegas at the end of day two, Karthik Kannan, Founder and CEO at Anvilogic, walks through a seven year build that reached its original shape this year. The plan from the start was a full security operations platform covering data, the detection engineering process, triage and investigation, and case management. In the shorthand of the category, SIEM and SOAR combined. It arrived in phases. Detection engineering came first, implemented on top of Splunk for most customers, then the data platform expanded into data lakes including Snowflake, Databricks, and Microsoft Azure. Triage and investigation followed over the last two years. In the last year Anvilogic rolled out agents that carry out the work of specific personas, and this year the company launched Blueprints, an orchestrator agent that brings the discrete agents together to run a whole workflow with humans in the loop. What separates a security graph from a frontier model? It knows the environment. Karthik Kannan describes the enterprise security graph as Anvilogic's own model running inside the network, learning the micro environment, with frontier LLMs called on to fill gaps in the macro environment. His argument is that platforms operating as LLM wrappers miss the last mile, because AI on its own reaches 60, 70, or 80 percent of the way if you are lucky. How does a team keep control when agents run the workflow? Through gates, permissions, and a record of what happened. Workflows can be described in plain English, with human gates inserted as often as the team wants. Access controls sit at the persona, organization, and object levels, and activity is audited and logged, which matters to the GRC teams Anvilogic works with. Screens dedicated to what the company calls a maturity score show which feeds are coming in, what kinds of detections exist, and what coverage looks like against the MITRE ATT&CK framework, in a form available to executives and CISOs. Karthik Kannan also points to version 8.0, introduced the week before the event, which includes an Anvilogic MCP Server for connecting to third party tools. Customers are already building their own Blueprint workflows during proofs of concept, including a large life sciences customer Anvilogic expects to feature in a public case study. Karthik Kannan is careful about the claim being made here. This is not a proclamation of an autonomous SOC. It is automation that makes life in a SOC easier and more efficient, adopted at a crawl, walk, run pace, with every step visible along the way. This is a Brand Briefing. A Brand Briefing is an on-location conversation recorded on site at Black Hat USA 2026, putting a spotlight on the guest and their company and pairing it with the editorial reach of ITSPmagazine. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/performance/#briefing GUEST Karthik Kannan, Founder and CEO at Anvilogic On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthikkannan001/ RESOURCES Black Hat USA 2026 event coverage from ITSPmagazine: https://www.itspmagazine.com/black-hat-usa-2026-cybersecurity-event-coverage-in-las-vegas Learn more about Anvilogic: https://www.anvilogic.com Anvilogic 8.0, from onboarding to investigation: https://www.anvilogic.com/learn/anvilogic-8-0-automate-the-soc Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight ▶︎ Get your own Brand Briefing at an upcoming event: https://www.studioc60.com/buy-brand-briefings KEYWORDS karthik kannan, anvilogic, sean martin, brand briefing, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, black hat usa 2026, agentic secops, ai soc platform, enterprise security graph, detection engineering, triage and investigation, blueprints orchestrator agent, mcp server, mitre att&ck coverage, human in the loop automation, siem and soar, security operations, grc audit logs Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this week's show Patrick Gray and James Wilson are joined by guest co-host Brad Arkin to talk through the week's news, including: The AI-agent-hacks-stuff saga continues. This week we have one booting gymgoers from full classes to nab its owner a spot Somehow OpenAI's legal team allowed the company to spill all the Hugging Face tea at BlackHat and it's hot and delicious More details emerge about Iran's hacking campaign against US water utilities, but Brad is unimpressed It turns out TeamPCP has been around longer than we thought and predates the AI era Some absolute plonker kept the DEFCON party going on a Delta flight home. No word yet on if they made the plane fly sideways Much, much more This week's show is brought to you by cloud security platform Prowler. Founder and CEO Toni de la Fuente chats about what the company is doing with AI and some of the cool ways customers are using it with Prowler. This episode is also available on YouTube Show notes How a simple request for AI to book a gym class exposed a major threat | Social Signals OK, Well, There Are Even More AI Agent Hacking Incidents | wired.com OpenAI BlackHat talk re Hugging Face incident | OpenAI says Daybreak will expand to offer specialized cyber services | CyberScoop Cyberattacks targeting water systems expand to 12 states as South Dakota, Georgia announce incidents | therecord.media Cyberattack on North Carolina Ports ‘contained' as Coast Guard, state officials investigate | therecord.media Local governments in four states dealing with cyberattacks that have shut down services | The Record Follow-Up Report of the December 2025 Energy Sector Incident | CERT Polska Chinese telcos maintain deep US presence despite Salt Typhoon links, House committee says | The Record State Department says Trump raised cyber scam compound issue with Xi | therecord.media Open-source software's archenemy TeamPCP goes back further than anyone thought | CyberScoop A Security Pro Hacked North Korean Hackers. He Found They'd Breached Hundreds of Networks Worldwide | wired.com Srsly Risky Biz: Being a North Korean Hacker Is About to Be Less Fun - Risky Business Media | Chrome adopts what may be the best protection yet against account takeovers | Ars Technica CSS:the bomb inside your inbox | PortSwigger Research Security update available for Metabase - Please upgrade now | Social Signals Canadian man pleads guilty to Snowflake hacks that led to 165 breaches | therecord.media British ‘Com' member who abused more than 100 girls worldwide jailed for two years | therecord.media FBI says cybercriminals are hacking into victims' online accounts to steal their intimate pictures | TechCrunch Security AI is getting better at election facts, but voters shouldn't rely on it | CyberScoop The FTC wants to regulate AI for ideological bias | cyberscoop.com US and South Korea warn of Gunra ransomware targeting govt agencies | BleepingComputer CISA: Microsoft SharePoint flaw now exploited in ransomware attacks | BleepingComputer CISA: SonicWall SMA1000 flaws now exploited by ransomware gangs | BleepingComputer N-able N-central exploitation results in RMM tool deployment | Sophos Delta investigating after someone set up fake Wi-Fi network mid-flight | TechCrunch Security mcp-dashboard-demo/prompt/prowler_dashboard_prompt.md at main · prowler-cloud/mcp-dashboard-demo | GitHub

Wenn Controller auf der Datenplattform rumpfuschen, kriegen Datenarchitekten normalerweise Schnappatmung. Was passiert aber, wenn das Controlling selbst die Machete in die Hand nimmt und die Datenplattform einfach selbst aufbaut?In dieser Folge von UNF#CK YOUR DATA spricht Dr. Christian Krug mit Thomas Brenner, Projektcontroller bei den GROB-Werken (10.000 Mitarbeiter; 1,8 Mrd. € Umsatzerlös). Thomas erzählt ungefiltert, wie sie den Absprung vom veralteten SAP BW geschafft haben, warum Snowflake am Ende zu technisch fürs Business war und wie sie mit Microsoft Fabric & Power BI 250 verbuggte Einzelberichte in ein einziges zentrales "Golden Model" verwandelt haben.In dieser Folge lernst du:

Cobweb, a member of our Patreon group, shares the fascinating story of his interactions with fairy beings at Weardale Valley in County Durham, over a long period of time which ultimately helped to right a wrong. This is a very tender share of an important undertaking. Thanks to Cobweb for sharing his story in such detail together with the locations that these experiences took place. Really enjoyed seeing Cobweb's artwork too. Shownotes Cobweb ⁠https://www.instagram.com/cobwebmehers/ Weardale, County Durhamhttps://northpennines.org.uk/visit-explore/area-guides/weardale/ Pendragon Castle, Cumbriahttps://pendragon-castle.co.uk/ One version of The Weardale Fairies features in The Book of English Folktales by John Lawrence (2016)https://archive.org/details/bookofenglishfol0000mars The Dunvegan Cuphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunvegan_Cup The Luck of Edenhall (cup)https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-luck-of-edenhall-history-and-legend-of-a-14th-century-glass-beaker Laura Jeacock Art https://www.instagram.com/laura.jeacock/ ⭐️ JOIN THE MODERN FAIRY SIGHTINGS COMMUNITY ⭐️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you're looking for exclusive bonus material, monthly zoom chats with like-minded folks, access to the Discord chat channels, quiet meditation gatherings and meeting other members, join us at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ S U P P O R T If you'd prefer to support the Modern Fairy Sightings with a one off donation, you can ‘buy me a coffee' and I'd be very grateful

Talking Basketball Show  Season 3 Episode 16  - What is happening with the WNBA? Tune-in for our next episode of SEASON 3!..what could go wrong! Topics: Sophie Cunningham in the press Will the next WNBA star be French.... Can the WNBA redeem its losing numbers and bad spirit?   We've lots of plans in the pipeline so stay tuned! Show History: Following from all the feedback from you amazing listeners, the show has evolved into all things Basketball! Interviews with players coaches and staff speaking about UK basketball, FIBA and NBA topics. IF you like Basketball want to be on the show, drop us a message on our social pages, we'd love to talk with you! DM US DIRECTLY by following our socials today !!!! Social Pages: Instagram + Threads  @talkingbasketballpodcast

Jaleh Rezaei, Co-founder and CEO of Mutiny, joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman to explain how she deprecated a thriving 8-figure SaaS business in November 2025, shipped a private preview in February, and GA'd an AI-native product in April that is now used by more than 3,500 organizations including Snowflake, Rippling, Uber, and GitLab. Topics include why running a scaled SaaS business and a zero-to-one AI bet at the same time proved impossible, how to price and defend AI credit consumption when a $5,000 design project now costs 50 credits, and the shift from sales-led outbound to product-led growth for enterprise go-to-market. Plus, why brand is one of the few remaining moats in B2B, an AI raccoon launch video that fooled (some of) the panel, and a bulls-versus-bears debate on quota attainment, AI note-takers, and whether salespeople will ever spend 85% of their time selling. Key Takeaways: - Make the hard decisions FAST. As Jaleh Rezaei, CEO and Co-founder of Mutiny, put it: "I definitely would've said the job of the CEO is you have to make the hard calls. But what I learned in that experience is that it's actually about making the hard calls really fast, which means that you're getting there before everybody else on your team is there." Her test for founders weighing a similar bet is a single question: "is there one really hard decision, maybe one that scares the hell out of you that you don't want to do, that you can make that would make 50 subsequent downstream decisions a lot easier for your company?" - AI budgets get cut because vendors let buyers anchor on the credit bill. Instead, they need to help buyers see the value of the work the credits replace. Jaleh Rezaei, CEO and Co-founder of Mutiny, reframed it with her own before-and-after: "I used to have a designer that I paid $5,000 to, and it would take 2 weeks of back and forth, and I paid $5,000 to get to something that I was pretty happy with. But end to end took a month. Now in 6, 7 hours, I can build that in Mutiny, and maybe that does cost me 50 credits. That's really freaking cheap relative to what I used to pay that designer." She argues the vendor has to build the ROI case for the customer, per rep, or budget conversations default to minimizing every AI bill. - Brand is a durable moat in B2B mostly because so few companies are willing to pay for it in risk. According to Jaleh Rezaei, CEO and Co-founder of Mutiny: "great brand comes when you marry deep customer knowledge and a willingness to take risk … a lot of times people that own brand they don't necessarily either have the deep customer knowledge or they don't have the ability to take that kind of risk inside of the company." Her internal standard is blunt: "anything we do on marketing, like, if it's not different, just stop doing it. It's just not going to matter." - Quota attainment is snapping back hard, and the data has not caught up to the narrative. AJ Bruno, CEO of QuotaPath, brought Q2 numbers to the bulls-versus-bears round: "I just looked at Q2 numbers and they're trending wildly back up. We're actually, the average quota attainment for a QuotaPath customer was 76% in Q2." Asad Zaman pushed back that a jump from roughly 40% to 76% in a single quarter reads more like a bubble signal than a sudden improvement in selling, and AJ offered to run a comp study with Pavilion on the data. Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/ Host: AJ Bruno, CEO at QuotaPath - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/ Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at STA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/ Guest: Jaleh Rezaei, CEO & Co-founder at Mutiny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jalehr/ Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack Chapters: 00:00 Introducing Jaleh Rezaei 04:00 Can SaaS Era Companies Go AI Native? 05:01 From Gusto To Founding Mutiny 07:00 When AI Became A Reasoning Engine 11:28 Why Running Two Products Was Impossible 13:32 Shutting Down An 8-Figure Business 16:18 Winning Formula: Speed, No Backup Plan 20:17 The Hard Months After Deprecation 24:47 Acute Pain Versus Chronic Pain 29:17 CEO Has To Be The Bad Guy (Sometimes) 37:17 AI Margins And Credit-Based Pricing 40:10 A $5,000 Deck Versus 50 Credits 47:03 Sales-Led To PLG For Enterprise 50:37 Brand As The Remaining Moat 1:00:34 Bulls and Bears

The Cybercrime Magazine Podcast brings you daily cybercrime news on WCYB Digital Radio, the first and only 7x24x365 internet radio station devoted to cybersecurity. Stay updated on the latest cyberattacks, hacks, data breaches, and more with our host. Don't miss an episode, airing every half-hour on WCYB Digital Radio and daily on our podcast. Listen to today's news at https://soundcloud.com/cybercrimemagazine/sets/cybercrime-daily-news. Brought to you by our Partner, Evolution Equity Partners, an international venture capital investor partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs to develop market leading cyber-security and enterprise software companies. Learn more at https://evolutionequity.com

My guest on the show today is Len Gutkin, editor of The Chronicle Review, which is the ideas and analysis section of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Len, in his freelance life, is a critic whose essays have appeared in Liberties, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.He got his PhD in English from Yale in 2014, spent some time as a postdoc at Harvard, and has spent the years since largely at Chronicle, writing about the intellectual and institutional life of the American university with, from my perspective, an admirable sense of skin in the game; is somebody who cares about this stuff, and you can sense it in his writing.This episode with Len is something of a throwback for the show. A lot of my early episodes were pretty squarely focused on the culture wars — wokeness, anti-wokeness, what was going on in the academy, in journalism, in politics that kind of thing — and I have definitely drifted away from that territory, I think for good reason, in large part because I, like so many other people, kind of ran out of interesting new things to say about it.But I am coming back to it here because Len's recent [paywalled - email Len for access] essay in Liberties, which he titles “Reading for Sins,” is the kind of piece that can probably only be written in retrospect, with a bit of distance from the hullabaloo. Len takes on what he calls at one point, maybe with a hint of apology, “snowflake hermeneutics”: the tendency, particularly acute in the literary humanities over the last decade or so, to read works of art primarily, or at least substantially, for the sins they contain; to fixate on the morally or politically objectionable aspects of books at the expense of everything else about them.He approaches that less to condemn it, though there's no secret as you're reading it that he's not a fan of this approach to literature, than to give it what I think of as a genuine institutional and intellectual history — to understand it as something other than the thing that gives Chris Rufo too many owie feelings.To do that, Len ranges pretty widely. He gets into the sociology of taboo, the history of literary education, and, among other examples, a 2023 controversy over Merve Emre's New Yorker review of John Guillory's book Professing Criticism. Guillory's book argued that literary scholars as a profession had made a rather grievous conceptual error at some point along the way: they came to think that their work as scholars was justified, at least in part, on the basis of its beneficial political impact on society. In some extreme cases, scholars saw themselves explicitly as activists, but in many cases it was somewhat more indirect. They had constructed a paradigm in which the critical, inquisitive, deconstructive work they did served clear political ends.Guillory was critical of that. Emre, reviewing his book for The New Yorker, lexplored his argument and then added some of her own, drawing on her own experience in academia. In doing so, and this is key to how Len gets into it in his essay, she repeatedly used a phrase that Guillory himself had used to characterize what had happened to his field: “professional deformation.” It is the English translation of what was a originally a French expression used to describe actual physical deformations, like the way coal miners might develop a distinctive slump or hunch.That phrase then provided the spark for an explosion of outrage from members of a public Facebook group called Remaking the University, administered by a former president of the Modern Language Association and populated by tenured and tenure-track faculty at high-prestige institutions. They did not like Emre's use of “professional deformation.” Here is how Len, in his Liberties essay, characterizes what he observed in that Facebook group:I paid more than usual attention to the reception of Professing Criticism, because I had written about it several times myself. I was interested to see what the folks at a popular public Facebook page devoted to “Remaking the University,” hosted by a recent president ofthe Modern Language Association, would make of Emre's review. They didn't like it. And several of them — tenured professors of English, not naïve or overeager freshmen — were appalled by Guillory's use of the phrase “deformation,” as well as by Emre's approving use of it throughout her review. The subject is introduced thus, by a distinguished Victorianist: “I just read this and I'm feeling dismayed” by the “flippant, careless, and damaging work, including the unspeakable use of ‘deformation' here, not to mention the Anglocentrism, elitism, etc.” This professor goes on: “It is horrifying that a person can use ‘deformed'/‘deformation' in 2023 in an article in a major magazine and nobody flagged it.” Then another professor — like the first, a well-known scholar in her field — weighs in: “the ableism was stunning.” And the first professor returns to the charge: “I just did a search for ‘deformed' and felt physically ill. She uses it nine times in the article, starting with ‘hideously deformed.' What the hell? How are disabled scholars supposed to feel when they read that? How is it possible that she could think it was cute to use such a derogatory term and that the editors didn't flag it? I don't even see how one can debate the merits of the idea with slurs like that sitting in the prose.”In a less interesting essay than Len's, we would simply be presented with this as blatant evidence of snowflakes doing their snowflake hermeneutics. Len's approach is more interesting. He is somewhat taking for granted that it's absurd, but he's asking: what is actually going on here? What does it mean to say that one feels physically ill from reading the word “deformation” in this context? What feelings or reactions are being submerged, evaded, or sublimated in this kind of discussion? For what ulterior purpose was the accusation of ableism serving as a stalking horse? And why were people so pissed off in the first place?One answer Len gives has to do with the idea of words themselves as magic, as sacred, as having the power to heal or harm or alter the fabric of the universe. He points out that this is not a novel relationship to words — it is in fact ancient, and it connects in a pretty clear way, once he lays it out, to a much longer and then much more modern history of how literature, and the study of literature and other humanities, has functioned in the modern West as a kind of substitute for religion in the aftermath of the collapse of organized Christianity as a taken-for-granted source of meaning, vessel for sacred energies. The close reading of difficult texts was, within that period, understood as a serious spiritual practice.What Len argues — and what I find genuinely compelling and pretty persuasive — is that snowflake hermeneutics is in part a rearguard response to the loss of that function. The prestige that attached to literary study in that earlier period has drained away, and nobody quite knows how to recover from it. Snowflake hermeneutics is, in this reading, an unconscious attempt to restore some of literature's old sacred charge by treating certain words and representations as sacred but in a negative register, because the positive ones can no longer serve. They've been vanquished from the inside by the contemporary academy, and then more thoroughly vanquished by the macro forces we're all buffeted by — neoliberalism, postmodernity, capital, techno-futurism, whatever you want to call them.That is a much more interesting conversation to have than simply “snowflakes bad,” which isn't really a conversation at all. Also interesting is where Len and I end up when we try to take seriously the role of taboo, the idea that certain words are genuinely destabilizing and that we need protection from them. We talk about whether taboos of some kind are necessary to the functioning of any society, whether any culture can really do entirely without taboos, whether everything should truly be on the table in a scholarly or intellectual context.We go deep on those things and others, and I had a lot of fun.One small production note: Len's dog makes a brief but notable appearance early in the conversation. His barking, though loud, does not last long. He is not a bad dog. He is a good dog. But if you hear him and it feels disruptive, it will pass soon.Eminent Americans is produced in collaboration with the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, and is distributed through its publication, Arc Magazine. You can find all of Arc's podcasts, including this one, and much more online at arcmag.org.It was a real pleasure to have Len on for this semi-throwback episode. Peace.0:00 Intro – Dan introduces guest Len Gutkin, editor of The Chronicle Review0:55 Framing the episode as a “throwback” to earlier culture-war coverage1:19 Len's Liberties essay “Reading for Sins” and “snowflake hermeneutics”2:21 Sociology of taboo, literary education, and the Guillory/Emre controversy4:46 The “professional deformation” Facebook group outrage6:39 Len's real question: why do people feel “physically ill” from a word?7:34 Words as sacred/magical — literature as substitute for religion9:19 Snowflake hermeneutics as grief response to lost prestige of humanities10:24 Preview: taboo, necessity of taboos in any culture10:56 Note on a barking dog early in the interview10:56 Danforth Center/Arc Magazine credits10:14 Interview begins — Len's background and title at The Chronicle11:16 Len summarizes “Reading for Sins”13:20 Len's academic background, PhD at Yale (2014)14:23 State of campus politics circa 2003–2014 (”interregnum”)16:02 2014 Yale grad student “atmospheric concerns” moment17:02 Postdoc years at Harvard, sensing the shift building19:20 The complicated student/faculty dynamic behind the culture wars22:46 Case study #1: the “N-word” podcast and classroom taboo rules26:52 The Michael Warner “faggotry” anecdote28:09 Slurs as concentrated sites of language's power29:22 Workplace-norm slippage into classroom/literary norms32:14 The Odyssey, disturbing content, and professional hypocrisy36:14 Dave Hickey/Mapplethorpe/Jesse Helms tangent on art's power to disturb39:17 Double-edged strategy: aggrandizing vs. vitiating one's subject41:15 Right-wing “manosphere” vs. left-wing academic parallels (Barbara Kruger)46:44 Case study #2: Guillory's “professional deformation,” Emre's New Yorker review, and the Facebook backlash50:53 Is public Facebook commentary fair game as evidence?54:24 Faculty fear of students posting to social media57:00 Christian right's historical claim to being the “OG” trigger-warning enforcers60:34 Hypocrisy on both sides of the free-speech/academic-freedom debate64:29 Buckley's “God and Man at Yale” and academic freedom skepticism65:04 Psychoanalyzing the Facebook group's outrage — displacement theory68:57 What was the actual “betrayal” in Guillory's book and Emre's review?70:42 Timing: 2023, the fraying of “woke consensus,” and October 7th73:15 Case study #3: Paul Moses and the 1960s Huckleberry Finn controversy at U Chicago80:29 Should there be any taboos in arts education? Céline as test case88:19 Circling back: blasphemy, sacralization, and STEM's rising prestige93:52 AI as an accelerant of the loss of literary culture95:53 What a “mature” response to loss/grief might look like97:22 Closing thoughts and outro/credits This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

Meta's AI models join the sandbox escape club. China's telecom footprint in the U.S. may be larger than expected. The White House keeps its AI safety playbook under wraps. AI coding tools introduce new GitHub risks. ENISA expands its CVE role. A critical Paperclip flaw enables code execution. Crypto wallet fears fuel phishing attacks. Researchers uncover a backdoor in Chinese-made routers. The Snowflake hacker pleads guilty. Our guest is Dustin Childs, Head of Threat Awareness of TrendAI's Zero Day Initiative, discussing the new Patch Tuesday era. AI takes your word for it.  Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Today we are joined by Dustin Childs, Head of Threat Awareness of TrendAI's Zero Day Initiative, discussing the new Patch Tuesday era. Be sure to check Dustin out on the AI Security Briefing podcast. Selected Reading Meta AI Hacked External Systems During Cybersecurity Testing (SecurityWeek) Chinese telcos maintain deep US presence despite Salt Typhoon links, House committee says (The Record) Secret White House AI Safety Framework Draws Criticism (BankInfo Security) Few Federal Agencies Trust Their Own AI Agent Security (BankInfo Security) Black Hat USA 2026: One GitHub Issue Could Compromise Major AI Coding Workflows (Hackread) ENISA scales up its role in the CVE Program (enisa) Critical Paperclip Flaw Allowed Admin Access, Code Execution (SecurityWeek) COLDCARD security audit phishing attack installs remote access tool (Bleeping Computer) Chinese-made Zbtlink routers have backdoor, researchers say (Reuters) Canadian Man Pleads Guilty to Hacking U.S. Cloud Storage Provider and Extorting Its Customers for Millions (US Department of Justice) “I'm Allowed”: Hackers Use Simple Claims to Bypass AI Guardrails (Hackread) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry's most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc.

Send us Fan MailThis week's enterprise software developments continued to emphasize AI-driven automation, cloud partnerships, and operational intelligence across the enterprise. HUMAN Security expanded its agentic visibility capabilities for marketing and commerce teams, while Iterable introduced a new AI agent and Xactly launched a dispute management AI agent to automate finance workflows. SAP and Google Cloud announced deeper integrations, Appian unveiled new platform features alongside a partnership with Snowflake, and IBM introduced an AI-first development partner to accelerate enterprise application delivery. Additional announcements included Oracle NetSuite's SuiteCloud Agent Skills offering, the latest release of Precisely EngageOne RapidCX, Treasure AI's rebrand, and Parsec Automation's Connected Worker solution, highlighting continued investment in AI-powered productivity, workflow automation, and digital operations.Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdL8bi0M_kUQuestions for Panelists?

Did you like the episode? Send me a text and let me know!! At 20 years old, Todd Kuhn signed a $100,000-per-year commercial lease with no loans, no outside money, and no formal business experience — just a Pilates-teaching girlfriend, a handful of community hall classes, and a gut feeling that there was a market. What came next was a business built class by class, location by location, all the way to an international product operation now expanding across the United States. In this episode of Undiscovered Entrepreneur: Get Across the Start Line, Todd Kuhn joins Skoob for a grounded, high-energy conversation about calculated risk, market testing before committing, the difference between an operator mindset and a CEO mindset, and why the people least expected to succeed are often the ones who do — because they didn't overcomplicate it. What You'll Learn: How Todd went from a graduate job he hated to 40 Pilates classes a week at age 20 — in six monthsHow testing the market in community halls before signing a lease de-risked a $100,000 commitmentWhy "analysis causes paralysis" is the biggest barrier stopping entrepreneurs from startingWhy naivety and bravery often outperform overthinking and credentialsThe difference between a calculated risk and just jumpingWhy you don't need to quit your 9-to-5 until your side hustle matches or exceeds your salaryThe just-in-time learning model: learn what you need now, not what you might need somedayWhy niching down is more powerful than being a jack of all tradesHow a personal crisis became the catalyst for Todd's shift from operator to CEOThe snowflake-to-snowball-to-snowman model for building business momentumTodd's six-month goal: double income and build a values-aligned team in the USTimestamps: [00:00:00] – Introduction & Welcome[00:01:00] – Todd's Origin Story: Graduate Job, Pilates Classes & Going All In at 20[00:03:00] – The Modern Picture of Success: Why a Degree Doesn't Equal Success Anymore[00:04:30] – YouTube University and Learning Skills Without a Classroom[00:05:00] – Learning is Useless Without Implementation[00:06:00] – Choose Your Own Adventure: Entrepreneurship as a Path, Not a Plan[00:07:00] – Imposter Syndrome and Feedback: Taking Criticism as Data, Not Attack[00:08:00] – Finding Your Tribe — Or Letting It Find You[00:09:00] – Analysis Causes Paralysis: The Mindset That Stops Most Entrepreneurs[00:10:00] – Calculated Risk vs. Blind Jumping: What the Difference Actually Looks Like[00:12:00] – The Trap of a Comfortable Job You Hate[00:13:00] – How Todd Bootstrapped: Testing the Market in Community Halls First[00:14:30] – Just-in-Time Learning: Stop Wasting Brain Calories on What You Don't Need Yet[00:15:00] – Continuous Learning Compounds: You Don't Need to Know It All to Start[00:15:30] – Niche Down or Stay Scattered: Why Focus Wins[00:16:00] – The Pitfall He's Proud Of: From Operator to CEO Mindset[00:18:00] – One Piece of Advice for New Entrepreneurs: Just Get Started[00:19:00] – Don't Quit the 9-to-5 Until the Side Hustle Matches the Salary[00:20:00] – The Snowflake-to-Snowball-to-Snowman Model for Building Momentum[00:21:00] – Todd's Six-Month Goal: Double Income & Build a Values-Aligned US Team[00:23:00] – How to Find Todd & The Core Collab USABook Mentioned:

On this Salcedo Storm Podcast:Amber Duke is Editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller. She's the Author of insightful book, The Snowflakes' Revolt: How Woke Millennials Hijacked American Media.

Palantir reported quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street expectations, according to The Guardian on August 3, 2026, with the quarter described as otherworldly. The company's platforms include Gotham for defense and intelligence, Foundry for commercial operations, and AIP for model orchestration against governed data. Public sector demand spans logistics, cyber defense, and emergency response, while commercial buyers in manufacturing, energy, and healthcare focus on predictive maintenance, outage reduction, and supply chain visibility. Competition includes Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Databricks, Snowflake, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and IBM. Palantir has emphasized GAAP profitability since 2023, and analysts will watch remaining performance obligations, customer additions, and revenue mix. Founders should align with buyer checklists by delivering secure, auditable AI with rapid time-to-value and clear metrics.Learn more on this news by visiting us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 228: In this episode of Inform Performance, host Steve Barrett is joined by Dan Ramsden — Head of Performance for Super League's Hull KR, promoted into the role after eight years as the club's Head Physiotherapist. Dan now leads the club's strength, conditioning, and rehabilitation programmes, bringing together medical and performance functions under one department. Alongside a physiotherapy degree and a PhD focused on concussion, he holds a 5th Dan Black Belt in Aikido, and specialises in injury prevention and building athletic resilience in a collision sport. At the centre of the conversation is Dan's transition from clinician to department lead. He discusses what changes when your remit shifts from treating individual athletes to setting the direction of an entire performance team, the skills that transfer from physiotherapy, and the ones that have to be learned on the job. The discussion also explores the culture required to build and sustain a high-performing staff — how roles are defined, how disciplines are integrated rather than siloed, and how Dan develops the practitioners around him. Dan then unpacks player availability and its relationship with training and match intensity, before moving into his research area: concussion, neck strength, and the role of rate of force development (RFD) as a measure that goes beyond maximal strength testing. — Topics Discussed: Progression from Physio to a Head of Performance role Culture and development of a high performance team Player availability and its link to intensity Concussion and the use of rate of force development (RFD) within neck strength Where you can find Dan: LinkedIn Instagram — Sponsors Axon: Performance teams spend the morning after game day stitching together six systems before the coach gets an answer. Axon Perform fixes that. Every source you already use, Catapult, StatSports, VALD, Opta, OVAL, Wyscout, WHOOP, Garmin and the rest, connects into a dedicated Snowflake warehouse. Ask Axon, the in-platform chat, lets analysts and sports scientists query the lot in plain English. Reports that took hours now take seconds. Used by the Springboks, England RFU, Japan RFU, Sydney Roosters and a growing list of rugby, football & cricket clubs and federations. Your data, reports, measures and AI models stay yours, fully portable. See if your data is ready for AI at axonperform.com BTL: BTL Industries develops advanced rehabilitation and performance technologies, including SIS DUO, Shockwave Therapy, High-Intensity Laser, TR-Therapy, Lymphastim and R-FORCE. BTL systems are designed to support recovery, pain management, functional rehabilitation and return-to-play pathways across clinical and elite sport settings. VALD Performance, makers of the Nordbord, Forceframe, ForeDecks and HumanTrak. VALD Performance systems are built with the high-performance practitioner in mind, translating traditionally lab-based technologies into engaging, quick, easy-to-use tools for daily testing, monitoring and training Hytro: The world's leading Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) wearable, designed to accelerate recovery and maximise athletic potential using Hytro BFR for Professional Sport.  -  Where to Find Us Keep up to date with everything that is going on with the podcast by following Inform Performance on: Instagram Twitter Our Website - Our Team Andy McDonald Ben Ashworth Nicola Graham Steve Barrett  Pete McKnight

In Episode 535, Ryan and Jose are joined by David Blair for another Book Club of Blood episode. This time, we cover Volume 4's "The Inhuman Condition".   This is the Clive Barker Podcast, where long-time fans Ryan and Jose interview guests, bring you the news, and take deep dives into Barker-related stuff.  This episode will be available in Podcast Audio and Youtube Video.  Sponsor : Don Bertram's Celebrate Imagination | Pinterest | ETSY Store Check out his recent painting, "Flamingo" and "Snowflake",  Sponsor : Ed Martinez YouTube Channel Sponsor : The Now Playing Podcast Book Club of Blood Discussion:  Books. Of Blood Vol. 4 | The Inhuman Condition Show Notes Books of Blood V4 Audiobook Weird Al Yankovic – Velvet Elvis Coming Next  Clive's Contemporary Commentaries : 1987 (Angel Heart) Clive's Contemporaries 1988 – Please Vote More News and Interviews Book Club of Blood : Revelations Patreon Members Shout-Out (Become a Patron) David Anderson Erik Van T' Holt Daniel Elven Amanda Stewart Bradley Gartz Markus David Blair Matthew Batten Bennett Jesse Timothy Ramakers Terry Murdock John-John Ichtyandros (new) Sponsor: Don Bertram's Celebrate Imagination Sponsor : The Now Playing Podcast Sponsor: Ed Martinez YouTube Channel Renewed And this podcast, having no beginning will have no end.  web www.clivebarkercast.com Apple Podcasts,  Android,  Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, Libsyn, Tunein, iHeart Radio, Pocket Casts, Radio.com, and YouTube and Facebook: | BarkerCast Listeners Group | Occupy Midian  BlueSky | Reddit | Discord Community Support the show Buy Our Book: The BarkerCast Interviews Occupy Midian  Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle | Apple Become a Patreon Patron | Buy a T-Shirt Music is by Ray Norrish All Links and show notes in their Entirety can be found at https://www.clivebarkercast.com AI Recap AI Recap The Clive Barker Podcast episode 535 was a Book Club of Blood discussion focused on "The Inhuman Condition" from Books of Blood Volume 4. Ryan, Jose, and David analyzed the story's themes, characters, and connections to other Barker works, especially its similarities to Hellraiser. They discussed the narrative of a group of young thugs who steal a magical knotted cord from a transient, leading to the release of three creatures representing evolutionary stages. The trio explored the story's themes of evolution, hidden knowledge, and the transformative power of magic. They also touched on potential adaptations, the evolution of special effects, and the podcast's Patreon supporters. The episode concluded with a preview of upcoming content, including a commentary on Angel Heart and a future discussion on Pinhead sketches by Clive Barker. Book Discussion on Development Stages Jose and Ryan discussed a book they were reading, with Jose mentioning insights about human fetal development stages. Ryan revealed he had studied medieval philosophy rather than evolutionary topics in school, which explained his lack of knowledge about the developmental stages Jose referenced. The conversation ended abruptly as Jose mentioned something from a previous episode. Religious Philosophy and Media Discussion Jose and Ryan discussed the Manichaeans, a religious philosophy that viewed the devil as an equal and opposite force to God. They also talked about beer from a local brewery and the challenges of being on camera for non-native English speakers. The conversation then shifted to the topic of dubbing versus subtitles in foreign films, particularly in Japanese movies, and the role of Laserdiscs in providing region-free and undubbed content. Book Club of Blood Episode The group discussed various topics including vintage movie formats, gaming collectibles, and comic book adaptations before transitioning into a Book Club of Blood episode. Jose shared his recent viewing of "The Return" and "Jason and the Argonauts," while Ryan and wnbla discussed special effects in classic films. The conversation ended with Ryan confirming this was another Book Club of Blood episode focused on a specific volume. Clive Barker's "Inhuman Condition" Analysis The group discussed Clive Barker's "Inhuman Condition" from Volume 4 of the Books of Blood, comparing it to the more famous Hellraiser story. They analyzed the characters and plot, particularly focusing on how the knots found their owner Carney and the creatures released from them. The discussion covered themes of hidden power in seemingly ordinary people and parallel worlds accessible through objects like the knots. The conversation also touched on how Barker often writes about magicians who appear ordinary but possess hidden abilities. Evolution Theme Plot Review Jose discussed the evolution theme in the story, involving reptilian, simian, and human-like creatures. The group reviewed plot details about Carney finding a knot in Red's hand and Brendan's call to the wrecking yard. They described the final confrontation scene where Pope captures Brendan using a knot, and Carney must work to free him while hiding from Pope's attack. Pope Carney Story Adaptation Discussion The group discussed a story involving Pope, Carney, and a magical knot that contains a creature representing Pope's brother. They explored how the story could be adapted into a movie or TV show, noting it would need additional content beyond the original narrative. The discussion revealed key plot points including how Pope's brother was transformed through evolutionary stages captured in knots, and how Carney discovers Pope's spell book at the end. The conversation also touched on how Pope represents the Church's role in hiding knowledge about evolution. Anatomical Challenges and Story Development The group discussed the historical challenges anatomists faced working in secret due to religious opposition, with Jose explaining how anatomical knowledge was considered sinful. Ryan shared a personal experience of feeling uncomfortable during a college health class when learning about the circulatory system, which led to a broader discussion about the human body being "a bag of bones" and "a flesh machine." The conversation then shifted to discussing potential storylines for a character named Carney, including possibilities of him becoming a powerful magician or CEO, and ended with a suggestion about creating an animated series based on Clive Barker's Books of Blood anthology.

For the 600th episode of NL Hafta, the panel – Abhinandan Sekhri and Anand Vardhan – are joined by Hafta alumni Jayashree Arunachalam and Mehraj Lone, who set the usual rules aside for an “unpopular opinions” special.Abhinandan's own unpopular opinion is that the liberal “snowflake” stereotype often holds up in practice, with an inability among some liberals, particularly in journalist and writer circles active on social media, to sit with positions or people they disagree with.Mehraj traces the “snowflake” problem to what he describes as the hyper-individualisation at the heart of modern liberalism, i.e. the elevation of individual grievance and “triggers” above community consensus. He links this to the broader Western backlash against “wokeism” and what some commentators are calling a post-liberal turn.Jayashree closes out the segment on “cancel culture”, arguing it's often just accountability rebranded. Getting arrested for something illegal isn't cancellation, she argues. “Being blacklisted for saying a certain thing isn't being cancelled. It's just facing a consequence.”Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters. Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav .Sound by Anil Kumar . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special CLOC Talk Live from CGI 2026 episode, host Jeremiah Kincannon sits down with Lucy Bassli, founder and CEO of InnoLaw Group and former in-house attorney at Microsoft and Snowflake, to discuss the top priorities for GCs in 2026, with a focus on AI adoption, governance, and the tension between mandating AI use and actually modeling it as a leader. The conversation covers practical strategies for legal ops teams to help GCs navigate AI implementation, change management, and the cultural shift required to treat AI less like a tool and more like a working resource. Tune in for actionable insights on leading AI adoption, driving meaningful change, and preparing your legal team for what's next.

Are AI agents replacing traditional data engineering tasks?I sat down with Matt Glickman, CEO & Co-founder of Genesis Computing and former Snowflake and Goldman Sachs executive, for a conversation about where data engineering is actually heading. Most organizations today are stuck in "demo mode" or using LLMs as expensive code completers, simply writing code faster to feed legacy data architectures. But if you look at the industry from first principles, humans were never meant to be data machinery. In this episode, Matt and I break down how true agentic data systems work, why current enterprise architectures will fail under agent-scale query volumes, and what it really takes to capture institutional knowledge before it leaves the building. We also cover Matt's front-row seat at Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis, his early days turning Snowflake into an enterprise giant, and how AI-native companies will outpace traditional enterprises. If you're building, architecting, or leading teams in the AI and data space, this is a conversation you don't want to miss.The Joe Reis Show is invitation-only. Unsolicited guest pitches and PR outreach are not considered.

Dave, Esmee, Rob and Marcel wrap up an incredible Season 5, reflecting on the biggest technology trends, the most memorable conversations, and the fantastic guests who joined us along the way. From AI and cybersecurity to quantum computing and digital transformation, it's been a season full of insights, innovation, and inspiration.Thank you to all our listeners, guests, and supporters for being part of the Realities Remixed journey. We wish you a fantastic summer and look forward to bringing you even more thought-provoking conversations when we return in September for Season 6!TLDR00:27 – Season 5 reflections and key trends02:38 – Summer observations and random interruptions05:01 – From Cloud Realities to Realities Remixed08:05 – Winning 3 Global Marketing Awards10:50 – Esmee's journey and what's next14:05 – Technology trends revisited15:20 – Cybersecurity and investment challenges18:34 – Scaling AI beyond pilots25:41 – The reality of business transformation 33:35 – AI governance, agents, ethics, and the future of work47:00 – Knowledge retention and collaboration49:20 – Hardware innovation for AI51:17 – Macro trends and standout guests57:45 – Digital sovereignty and resilience1:08:00 – Why systems thinking must change1:12:00 – The Octopus Organisation1:18:24 – Summer plans and what's aheadHostsDave Chapman:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/Esmee van de Giessen:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmeevandegiessen/Rob Kernahan:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kernahan/ ProductionMarcel van der Burg:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-vd-burg/Dave Chapman:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/ SoundBen Corbett:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-corbett-3b6a11135/Louis Corbett:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-corbett-087250264/ 'Realities Remixed' is an original podcast from Capgemini

Hello Beautiful, I'm so grateful you're here with me.

In the spirit of "Christmas in July," we're presenting a special live episode of Kobo in Conversation from the Toronto International Festival of Authors' inaugural Ever After, the romance book festival. This was recorded back in November 2025, and though it deals with some extremely seasonal themes, we don't mind a little Christmas in July and we thought you might be into it as well.  For a session called "Snowflakes and Sparks," Michael Tamblyn spoke with authors Marissa Stapley and Karma Brown writing under their pen names Julia McKay and Kristine Winters, about what Christmas and Christmas Romance means to them, as well as their COVID-era collaborations as Maggie Knox. LIVE from Ever After, with Julia McKay & Kristine Winters Join the Kobo in Conversation reading challenge on StoryGraph

Most companies are not short on data. They are short on the time, cost, and coordination required to turn it into action.Ethan Ding, co founder and CEO of TextQL, joins The Tech Trek to explain how AI agents are changing enterprise analytics. The conversation moves beyond faster dashboards into a larger shift, analysts managing fleets of agents, business teams asking far more questions, and companies finding revenue and cost opportunities that were previously too expensive to pursue.What Technical Teams Can Take From This• Making answers cheaper does not reduce analytics work. It increases the number of questions people ask.• Analysts may spend less time assembling dashboards and more time managing agents, data sources, permissions, quality, and costs.• The clearest ROI comes from decisions with direct financial outcomes, including fraud prevention, upsell opportunities, churn risk, and unused vendor spend.• Faster analysis matters most when teams can act on valuable opportunities they previously could not afford to investigate.• Token costs will force AI companies and buyers to reconsider where software budgets go, especially across BI tools and data platforms.Moments Worth Hearing00:00 Ethan explains how TextQL agents work across messy enterprise systems including Cognos, Teradata, Snowflake, Databricks, Tableau, and Power BI.04:52 Why giving people faster answers does not create free time. It creates even more demand for analytics07:10 How self service analytics quickly moves from asking what a number is to asking whether it matters and what to do next.10:08 The analyst role shifts toward managing fleets of agents and tuning an insight factory for the business.14:38 Why faster access to data can reveal valuable opportunities that were previously too expensive to investigate.19:55 A practical way to measure analytics ROI through fraud prevention, upsell opportunities, and other direct financial outcomes.24:18 How token costs, AI margins, and easier migrations could reshape spending on traditional BI tools.One Line That Stuck“It becomes much more of an operations manager job. It is a factory. It takes in tokens and churns out dashboards, reports, and recommendations.”Follow The Tech Trek on your podcast platform, subscribe for future episodes, and share this conversation with someone rethinking how their team works with data.

What separates a snowflake from a diamond? Pressure — and what you do with it.In this episode of Walk In Victory, NaRon Tillman sits down with Michael Dugan, author and creator of Turning Snowflakes Into Diamonds, to explore what it means to become a super conscious human being in the age of AI.Michael shares his journey from barely graduating high school to mastering emotional regulation, meditating three times a day for 25 years, and developing a framework that helps entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and everyday people turn pressure into power instead of being crushed by it.Together, NaRon and Michael unpack emotional intelligence, meditation, identity, human resilience, and why chaos can become fertile soil for creation when we learn how to govern our inner world.Connect with Michael Dugan and Turning Snowflakes Into Diamonds:Website: https://www.becomingdiamond.com/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@snowflakestodiamondsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/turning__snowflakestodiamondsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Michaeltd22Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61571304911970Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/walk-in-victory--4078479/support.If this conversation connected with you, don't just listen—take the next step.Start with the audiobook: Awakening I AMThis is where clarity begins. https://walkinvictory.me/awakening-i-am/audio-bookPrefer to read? Get the physical copy: https://books.by/naron-tillmanWhen you're ready to apply this in real life: Victory Builders https://walkinvictory.me/victory-builders/Landing-pageSponsored by Cozy Earth Get 40% off with code VICTORY1  

What does a top venture investor think about AI's impact on accounting, and what should finance professionals actually do about it?In this episode of Blood, Sweat & Balance Sheets, FloQast CEO Mike Whitmire sits down with Roy Luo, General Partner at ICONIQ Capital — an investor in Anthropic, Snowflake, Databricks, and Stripe — to break down what the AI wave really means for the accounting profession.They cover:Why accounting is facing a talent shortage that AI is uniquely positioned to solveHow the shift to AI mirrors the Excel revolution — and what that means for your careerThe concept of "token rationing" and why accounting departments may be last in line for AI resourcesWhy founders with product intuition are better positioned to navigate paradigm shiftsWhat it means to be a trusted partner vs. a vendor in the age of AIWhether you're a controller, CFO, or just trying to future-proof your career, this conversation offers a rare outside-in perspective on where the profession is heading.

Between the ages of 7 and 9, Mark watched as an ancient swarthy green hand reached around his bedroom door. We discuss the strange connection with The Green Children of Woolpit and how he has recently begun to view the experience from a different perspective. See my conversation with medievalist Jeremy Harte incl. Green Children of Woolpit - https://open.spotify.com/episode/1pEeQ1aQ8Ye5kDFPWczsxw?si=f6ad57f003ab45e2 In the same bedroom, a creature would appear in his patterned curtains. It had a ghoulish face and terrified him. It's name was ‘You'. After a time, ‘You' told Mark it was going away and that he mustn't tell anyone about it. Mark never did talk about it until now. In the full length bonus episode, over on Patreon Mark shares some other experiences which took place on the same piece of land which had belonged to several generations of his family. Numerous family members had seen phantom visions of loved ones who had either died or were in another location when the vision took place. It was a real privilege to chat with Mark and hear his stories. He's a much beloved member of our Patreon group and has treated us to a few of his own songs over the months. We end with one of his latest songs - ‘Summer Solstice' - it really moves me. What a talent! ⭐️ JOIN THE MODERN FAIRY SIGHTINGS COMMUNITY ⭐️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you're looking for exclusive bonus material, monthly zoom chats with like-minded folks, access to the Discord chat channels, quiet meditation gatherings and meeting other members, join us at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.patreon.com/c/themodernfairysightingspodcast/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ S U P P O R T If you'd prefer to support the Modern Fairy Sightings with a one off donation, you can ‘buy me a coffee' and I'd be very grateful

In Episode 534, Jose and Ryan are joined by David Blair go over some Hellraiser related news, in particular we talk about the English translation of the old Hellraiser Manga.   This is the Clive Barker Podcast, where long-time fans Ryan and Jose interview guests, bring you the news, and take deep dives into Barker-related stuff.  This episode will be available in Podcast Audio and Youtube Video. Sponsor : Don Bertram's Celebrate Imagination | Pinterest | ETSY Store Check out his recent painting, "Snowflake",  "Pork Rinds", and "A little Something Fishy II" 2001: The Future's Not What it Used to Be Sponsor : The Now Playing Podcast Chat: New Barker-Related Aquisitions From The Reef Hellraiser Announcement Video - Halloween Horror Nights 2026. Doug Bradley recorded Pinhead lines for it! ASHLEY LAURENCE is coming to OKC HORROR CON July 17-19th Official Con website here! Simon Bamford posts casting call for The Black-Ey3d Children film, where he plays "John" Peter Atkins featured in the latest Hellraiser Discord YouTube channel videos Barbie Wilde interviewed in The London Horror Movie Club Paul T Taylor talked to Hellraiser Discord about auditioning for Hellraiser: Judgement Paul Kane will be present at a Hellbound Screening and Q&A in Wales BOOM! Studios releasing fac-simile edition of the Harrowers #1 Hellraiser Manga has been translated to English   Show Notes Night of the Zoopocalypse Blu-Ray on Amazon Buy our Book on Amazon Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle | Apple  Black Eyed Children on Tubi Coming Next Book Club of Blood : The Inhuman Condition Clive's Contemporaries 1987 – Angel Heart Clive's Contemporaries 1988 – Please Vote More News and Interviews Patreon Members Shout Out David Anderson Erik Van T' Holt Daniel Elven Amanda Stewart Bradley Gartz Markus David Blair Matthew Batten Bennett Jesse Timothy Ramakers Terry Murdock John-John Sponsor: Don Bertram's Celebrate Imagination Sponsor : The Now Playing Podcast And this podcast, having no beginning will have no end.   web www.clivebarkercast.com Apple Podcasts,  Android,  Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, Libsyn, Tunein, iHeart Radio, Pocket Casts, Radio.com, and YouTube and Facebook: | BarkerCast Listeners Group | Occupy Midian  BlueSky | Reddit | Discord Community   Support the show Buy Our Book: The BarkerCast Interviews Occupy Midian  Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle | Apple Become a Patreon Patron | Buy a T-Shirt   Music is by Ray Norrish   All Links and show notes in their Entirety can be found at https://www.clivebarkercast.com     AI Summary   This was episode 534 of the Clive Barker podcast, where Ryan, Jose, and David discussed extensive Hellraiser-related news and updates. The team covered several major developments including Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights 2026 featuring a Hellraiser-themed attraction with Doug Bradley as Pinhead, Ashley Lawrence's upcoming appearance at Oklahoma City HorrorCon, and Simon Bamford's casting call for the Black Eyed Children film series. They reviewed a new interview with Peter Atkins by the Hellraiser Discord community and discussed Barbie Wilde's interview with the London Horror Movie Club. Jose shared his discovery of an English translation of the rare Hellraiser manga adaptation by Naruho Amino, which is now available for free online. The group also discussed upcoming Hellraiser game releases, convention appearances by various actors, and plans for their next book club discussion of "The Inhuman Condition" and 1988 Clive Barker works.   Hellraiser Revival Attractions Discussion The group discussed the Hellraiser Revival game and upcoming Hellraiser-themed attractions. They learned about a new Hellraiser ride at Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights, which will feature Doug Bradley as Pinhead. The discussion also covered an upcoming Oklahoma City HorrorCon where Ashley Lawrence and potentially other Cenobite actors are expected to appear. Additionally, they mentioned Simon Bamford's involvement in the third installment of The Black Eyed Children series, though details about where to watch the first two films were not fully confirmed.   Hellraiser Content and Updates The group discussed several Hellraiser-related topics including a new movie "The Black Eyed Children" available on Tubi, a Hellraiser Discord YouTube video featuring Peter Atkins addressing questions about the series, and an interview with Barbie Wilde by the London Horror Movie Club. They also covered Paul T. Taylor's interview about the Hellraiser Judgment audition process and mentioned an upcoming Hellraiser screening with Q&A in Wales featuring Paul T. Taylor. The discussion concluded with information about a Boom Studios re-release of the first issue of the Harrowers comic and the discovery of an English translation of a Japanese Hellraiser manga adaptation from 1988.   Hellraiser Manga Adaptation Discussion Jose and Ryan discussed a recently published manga adaptation of Hellraiser by the Caterpillar Group, noting that while it simplified the story, it captured key elements from both the movie and novella. They identified some character differences and translation issues, particularly regarding family relationships and honorifics in Japanese. The discussion concluded with Jose expressing interest in finding more manga adaptations by Naruho Amino, including "In the Hills of the Cities" and "Gathering of Cenobites," while Ryan mentioned their website had experienced technical issues with Bluehost.   Book Club Content Planning The group discussed upcoming book club content, including plans for "The Inhuman Condition" and commentary on "Angel Heart." They announced a vote for the 1988 commentary topic from a list including "Hellbound," "Hellraiser 2," "Child's Play," "Night of the Demons," and other films, with voting to remain open for a month. The discussion included conversations about various movies including "Monkey Shines," directed by George Romero and based on a Stephen King story, and the poorly received 1994 "Fantastic Four" film that was made to retain movie rights.   Movie Discussion and Updates The group discussed various movies, including the Fantastic Four film series and horror movies like Angel Heart and Hellraiser. They talked about voting for favorite movies in an upcoming podcast episode and mentioned updates to their website. David shared information about collecting Dracula comics, and the team discussed updating their "About Us" page to reflect current information and remove outdated details.  

The fastest way to break trust between sales and marketing is to let each team bring its own scoreboard.  Marketing can point to MQLs. Sales can point to missed revenue. Everyone can be technically right, and the business still loses. No wonder Denise Persson and Chris Degnan have little patience for functional victory laps. At Snowflake, the question was never, "Did marketing look good?" It was, "Are reps productive, is new business moving, and are we working from the same plan?"  In this episode, Drew sits down with Denise and Chris, co-authors of Make It Snow, whose sales-marketing partnership shaped much of Snowflake's climb from startup to billions in revenue. They get past the usual alignment talk and into the operating discipline behind it. For the pair, trust showed up in honest feedback, fast action, rep-level visibility, and a shared refusal to declare victory unless the go-to-market motion was actually working.  In this episode:  Denise shares how she earned sales trust by listening to SDRs, AEs, and managers, then building marketing around what each territory needed  Chris explains why sales leaders need marketing partners who roll up their sleeves, take feedback fast, and care more about the shared number than looking right  Together, they show how a CMO-CRO partnership can hold through CEO changes, board pressure, hiring misses, and the politics of a winning company  Plus:  How to push sales-marketing alignment beyond the C-suite  Why "no rep left behind" became a practical GTM rallying cry  What it took to move Snowflake from "data warehouse for the cloud" to "the data cloud"  Where AI fits into Snowflake's marketing team today, from change-makers to workflow automation  Listen in as Denise and Chris share what their Snowflake run taught them about CMO-CRO alignment, sales-marketing trust, and building one revenue-focused go-to-market team.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Quantum materials discovery shows how quantum computing can create real value in industry by working alongside AI, advanced computing, and experiments to better understand materials, improve decision-making, and accelerate innovation at scale, ultimately helping deliver practical, measurable progress for the energy transition.This week, Dave, Esmee, and Rob are joined by co-host and quantum expert Phalgun Lolur, together with Jonathan Owens, Senior Scientist in Computational Materials Physics at GE Vernova to explore how quantum computing could reshape materials discovery and why that matters for the future of energy.  TLDR00:00 – Introduction01:50 – Hang out: The wet-bulb thermometer03:20 – Dig in: Technology Convergence and the Link to Quantum11:30 – Conversation with Jonathan Owens44:26 – Exciting to see how the quantum landscape matures and the magic wand for magnetismGuestJonathan Owens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-r-owens-phd/ HostsDave Chapman:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/Esmee van de Giessen:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmeevandegiessen/Rob Kernahan:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kernahan/Co-host Phalgun Lolur:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/phalgun-lolur/ ProductionMarcel van der Burg:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-vd-burg/Dave Chapman:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/ SoundBen Corbett:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-corbett-3b6a11135/Louis Corbett:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-corbett-087250264/ 'Realities Remixed' is an original podcast from Capgemini

Join us as John Mark Troyer and Rakesh Gupta break down what AI observability actually means once agents leave the demo and hit production - and why the old playbook for monitoring doesn't cut it anymore. John Mark and Rakesh walk through why errors and latency are just the starting point for agents, how quality became a much harder thing to measure once bots went from answering questions to taking autonomous action, and why token-based costs are creating a confusing new economics problem for engineering teams. You'll learn the difference between online and offline evals, why a new engineering role has emerged just to build testing harnesses for agents, how trace data works differently when every prompt is its own trace, and what teams are doing to catch prompt injection and other AI-specific failure modes before they become expensive mistakes. Timestamps 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 3:20 Full Disclosure - Observe, Snowflake, and How This Conversation Started 7:07 From Developer Concerns to Boss's Boss's Boss - Spending Out of Control 8:29 What Actually Gets Measured - Errors, Latency, Quality, and Cost 10:30 The Casino Chip Problem - Confusing Token Pricing Models 13:47 Defining Quality When the Task Itself Is Nebulous 18:41 The New Role - Engineers Who Just Build Testing Harnesses 22:00 Non-Determinism and Why Testing Agents Is Expensive 32:10 Trace Data, Tool Calls, and What Observability Tools Actually See 55:08 Prompt Injection, Zero-Width Characters, and Real World Failures How to find John Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmarktroyer/ How to find Rakesh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rg0/ Links from the show:

Don’t let the AI wave crush you. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Dive into the seismic shifts happening within the AWS Marketplace and discover how AI, self-service product-led growth (PLG), and advanced co-selling strategies are redefining partner success. Matt Yanchyshyn, VP of Marketplace at AWS breaks down the recent announcements from the summit, illustrating how agility and adaptation are crucial to surviving the new agentic future. From lowering professional services fees to the explosion of business applications like ServiceNow, this conversation reveals the hidden mechanics of modern cloud procurement and how you can position your organization to capture massive enterprise opportunities before your competitors do. https://youtu.be/gaWxU1kgCLk Key Takeaways Adapting to the new agentic future requires agility rather than fighting the influx of AI tools. Lowering the listing fee for professional services from 2.5% to 0.5% drastically improves partner economics. Organizations without a self-service or PLG motion on the marketplace are literally leaving money on the table. Millennial buyers increasingly initiate complex enterprise procurements through self-service and AI-driven research. New AI-powered opportunity scoring empowers partners to prove their value internally and to AWS. Marketplace success hinges on optimizing metadata for AI agents, not just traditional SEO. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: AWS Marketplace, agentic workflow, med pick scoring, phoenix.ai, Cara Cloud, branded storefronts, product-led growth strategy, intrinsic value boost, SaaS evolution, self-service motion, Databricks credit model, Trend Micro companion app, MCP servers, opportunity score tracking, PPA drawdown, concurrent agreements, AAMI structural debt, CXML procurement Transcript: Matt Y Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Matt Y: The ability to adapt with change and kind of roll with punches. ’cause a lot of people are saying like, agents are gonna destroy everything. And, and the opposite has been true. [00:00:08] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host. And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:42] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. [00:00:46] Matt Y: Let’s start. [00:00:50] Vince Menzione: And now on to the really important stuff. So, Matt, I don’t wanna butcher it ’cause I, a couple people have told me how to pronounce your last name and they said use the word magician and you’ll get close to it. But I’m just gonna introduce you as Matt Wy and I’m gonna ask you to pronounce your name on stage, but I want to have you join us. [00:01:08] Vince Menzione: So excited to have Matt wy. After a super busy day and night last night, come over from Brooklyn and join us today. Matt, so great to have you. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Alright, so pronounce your name for us. [00:01:23] Matt Y: Anyone wanna guess? Ian’s? It’s like magician. [00:01:27] Vince Menzione: It’s not that hard, [00:01:28] Matt Y: it’s not that [00:01:28] bad, [00:01:28] Vince Menzione: but I don’t wanna butcher. [00:01:29] Vince Menzione: I wanted to let you do it. Good. [00:01:30] Matt Y: What calls me Matt White. [00:01:31] Vince Menzione: That’s great. [00:01:32] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:01:32] Vince Menzione: So 13 years. [00:01:34] Matt Y: Four coming up on 14 next month. Yeah. [00:01:36] Vince Menzione: Wow. Congratulations. Yeah. So you’ve been there, you’ve been there since the early days. And we, we had a conversation. I had some Microsoft, former Microsoft colleagues. Uh, Theresa Carlson, for those of you who knew the public sector business. [00:01:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Who started, I mean, Andy came out, it was so funny because I was there and she was hosting Andy for a dinner and with all the CIOs of the federal government. [00:01:57] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:01:58] Vince Menzione: And she was still at Microsoft and it was actually kind of an interesting time. And she came over and did a lot of great things for a number of years. [00:02:04] Matt Y: Yeah. She [00:02:05] Vince Menzione: and a lot of great [00:02:05] Matt Y: business. [00:02:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. She really like, it went from employee number one to 7,000. [00:02:09] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:02:09] Vince Menzione: And you, you were, you’ve been there all that whole time. Pretty much. [00:02:12] Matt Y: Yeah, I guess when I started in New York, just down the road, we were, uh, in a Regis facility. There were like 11 of us in, uh, just sitting around a table and we had to speak quietly sometimes because there was a, um. [00:02:21] Matt Y: Some type of a financial services organization down the hall and they’d listen to try and get stock tips on Amazon. Yeah, [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: I love it. [00:02:29] Matt Y: Never leaked. That’s [00:02:29] Vince Menzione: good. I love it. [00:02:30] Matt Y: Yeah, [00:02:30] Vince Menzione: you probably got some great stories and, um, we won’t have time for today ’cause I wanna leave some room for conversations on marketplace end questions. [00:02:38] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:02:38] Vince Menzione: But I would love to invite you back for a real, like, in-depth podcast and I would love to get the whole genesis story. [00:02:44] Matt Y: Let’s do it. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: We’ll do it. Okay, so let’s talk about, let’s talk about yesterday for you. Uh, some, some really big announcements as well. I thought maybe you could recap a little bit of what’s been going on in the marketplace business and it’s an, it’s been an exciting time. [00:02:58] Matt Y: Yeah. Yeah. You know what’s, I think what was really nice yesterday is it was sort of the combination of bringing, uh, our partner services like Partner Central and all those other services together closer to marketplace. We’ve been doing that over, over several years. So Marketplace has some of its own. [00:03:12] Matt Y: Big announcements, like, uh, we have a, we formalized our list and sell initiative. For example. We have a new, so it we essentially reducing the cost, uh, to list on marketplace through a partner program. [00:03:22] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:03:22] Matt Y: And incentives associated with that. We have a new AI powered listing experience, which I think is particularly important ’cause I think many of you are like me and watching your SEO numbers go down and watching your agent traffic go up. [00:03:33] Matt Y: And so having, uh, an AI assistance in marketplace to optimize your listings for not just to, you know, retain what you can of your SEO, but prepare for the newent future and improve your GEO as we’re calling it. So that, [00:03:45] Vince Menzione: so it’s GEO now? [00:03:46] Matt Y: Yeah. You know, there’s a little debate right now in the acronym Moral A A EO versus GO I’m going, I’m on the G team, so, yeah. [00:03:52] Vince Menzione: Alright. GEO [00:03:54] Matt Y: It’s like the, the, yeah, they’re gonna win. They’re like the Knicks, but the, um, [00:03:57] Vince Menzione: yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:03:57] Matt Y: But yeah, so AI assisted, uh, I mean, making. The most of, like, essentially marketplace is an excellent conversion engine. And so using AI to help improve that conversion engine in the form of your PDPs for both humans and agents. [00:04:08] Matt Y: So that was an exciting launch. Um, I got the most applause when I announced that. We lowered, we made the economics better for, uh, consulting offers professional services, nice to marketplace. We lowered the listing fee from 2.5 to, to 0.5% and wow, it goes even lower in certain circumstances. So just improving the economics. [00:04:24] Matt Y: I’m really excited to. Really partner with a lot of you to reinvent services through, through the marketplace like we did with SAS and other areas. Uh, and we’re doing with agents right now. So that was a big one. And then a whole series of announcements around, um, how we’re making it easier and more cost effective and more efficient to partner with AWS. [00:04:41] Matt Y: So using AI to, uh, using med pick scoring to automatically progress opportunities so you don’t have to kind of wait on a human. To, to click and progress, you know, that that can take days. And, uh, if you, if you wanna have an opportunity and have that be cos sold with AWS, that can be through a mix of agents for the long tail and with humans in the, in the sort of top end and more complex. [00:05:00] Matt Y: And allowing AI to help all the partners improve their opportunity quality so that we can better co-sell together. So. Yeah, I said AI a lot intentionally. Um, [00:05:09] Audience Guest: yeah, [00:05:10] Matt Y: AI sort of in the whole cycle for buyers, for sellers, uh, for operational efficiency, cost of sales. So a lot of announcements. I think I hit the big ones, so yeah. [00:05:18] Matt Y: I’m Might have missed something there. There we go. [00:05:21] Vince Menzione: George. [00:05:21] Matt Y: Oh, and storefront. Yeah. Thanks George. See, I look at George to see what I missed. Uh, we, we acquired a great company called phoenix.ai late last year. Okay. And you, you actually were said Caresoft and Yeah. Be down. Uh, [00:05:30] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:05:30] Matt Y: So if you’re familiar with Cara Cloud, they have a procurement portal. [00:05:33] Matt Y: It’s heavy use by the US government, and they, um. Uh, we, we acquired them, uh, the really great growth company. They have over 70 logos now, and they help you build a branded storefront on marketplace, which obviously is important in the government space. If you’re procuring on a certain contract with a certain reseller, um, you know, there’s a certain set of products you’re allowed to buy. [00:05:51] Matt Y: But what we’re finding is even down on Wall Street, you hear, um, enterprises are, are using storefronts for internal procurement and they wanna have a curated collection of, of partner products and, and your own ecosystems internally. So we’re selling to both customers. And also to channel partners to build custom storefronts, branded storefronts for, and [00:06:07] Vince Menzione: it makes total sense, right? [00:06:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah, because you wanna li you wanna limit the, the viewing and, uh, and get, because I mean, how many different listings do we have? Like over 30,000? [00:06:16] Matt Y: Yeah. Yeah. There’s, I think the official numbers over th we have over 36,000. I was checking from over 6,000 vendors. Um, it’s a lot. And, and that’s gonna explode with the AI powered, uh, listing, uh, experience that we launched. [00:06:26] Matt Y: We’re gonna make it easier. And I guess what I’ve been telling partners is. You know, customers aren’t clicking through categories anymore. They’re using AI to search. And so it doesn’t matter how big our catalog is, what matters is being found. And what matters is converting that buyer. So if you have a. [00:06:39] Matt Y: If you’re running a demand gen campaign for say, like, you know, life sciences in, in Jersey and there’s a specific buyer at j and j, you wanna capture, that person doesn’t wanna be just dropped onto a generic marketplace, 30,000 listings. They wanna be dropped in a very specific place where they’re seeing like life sciences offers from Accenture, for example, coupled with a life sciences power thing with Elastic, you know, like, but a solution. [00:07:00] Matt Y: And that they want to land in a curated place where that highly intention buyer can be converted effectively. So that, that’s what we’re doing with all this. [00:07:06] Vince Menzione: And that’s where the GEO comes in because [00:07:09] Matt Y: Yeah. ’cause that buyer might be an agent That’s right. With, and that agent has is even more fickle, honestly. [00:07:14] Matt Y: And you know, what used to be milliseconds for the human before they kind of click away is, is now perhaps microseconds. Yeah. And so, uh, you know, having the right metadata and, and the right positioning, uh, the right story that an agent or a human can pick up to ultimately. Uh, complete their product research and choose your product is, is critical. [00:07:30] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Very cool. So before I, I, I’ve been asked to ask you this because I, I’ve had this con, people have brought come to me and said, you gotta ask Matt about music. He’s a big music guy. And, uh, so what are your favorite bands? [00:07:49] Matt Y: So, I mean, the, the real answer is, uh. I, I go to about a show about every week. [00:07:54] Matt Y: As, as Mike Trill knows, uh, we heard a show last night. Um, we were, uh, just a few hours ago, really? And, uh, um, favorite band, uh, well, I’ll tell, I’ll tell a story. I, I had a side hustle with MTV for years. Um, I used to run a music website. Um, oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know that. It got, it got kind of popular. It got sponsored by, if, if anyone’s into like early hip hop. [00:08:16] Matt Y: It got sponsored by a group called Jurassic Five. ’cause he, one of them reached out to me and said, nice. Hey, uh, you know, I’ve been, I like your website. And he ended up paying for a web, hosting a Dream host, if you remember, of cost back then. [00:08:26] Vince Menzione: Oh, Jesus. [00:08:26] Matt Y: Because I was broke and couldn’t afford it. And then, uh, and then this band sent me like a, a single and said, Hey, you know, trying to get the word out about our little band, can you help us out? [00:08:35] Matt Y: And I put their, uh, I put their, you know, single up on my, on my website and it blew up. And that band is Vampire Weekend. So they’re kind of big now. Wow. Yeah. Um, and uh, that got picked up by like Vanity Fair and all these other guys. And then I got sponsored by MTV to essentially write. Music reviews for years on the side. [00:08:51] Matt Y: So I was working for the Associated Press, laying cable in sports and war and, and, uh, yeah. So Vampire Weekend was good to me that, that they, they kind of paved a way to go to a lot of free shows over the years and a lot of bands and see a lot of great music. But yeah. [00:09:03] Vince Menzione: That is very cool. And that, and how did that get your day? [00:09:05] Vince Menzione: WS It was just a, it was just the technology path that was like, [00:09:09] Matt Y: I mean, it’s a, it’s a, I guess it’s a bit of a long story, but, um, the. There’s many versions of this story. I’ll tell the, tell the one quickly. I was living for free in a Fulbright scholarship house in West Africa. You, we can talk about how that happened another time. [00:09:23] Matt Y: And, uh, a guy had sort of fallen down on the floor ’cause he’d had too much to drink. And I, I sort of lay down beside and be like, Hey man, are you all right? And, um, he, uh. He worked, he, he worked for the Associated Press and next day I had the job, um, being West Africa, head of technology for West Africa. [00:09:37] Matt Y: And because of that, um, and as I learned years later, the AP didn’t have dr they had no disaster recovery. Yeah. And I, I can tell you that now ’cause um, you know, 16 years since I worked there, but they, uh, I put the DR in, um, on AWS and we’re talking like, yeah, 16, 17 years ago. This is early. It was early days. [00:09:56] Matt Y: And I, I swear to God, I paid for. Uh, our AWS bill using, um, taxi receipts, fake taxi receipts that I bought in on Nigerian market, um, because there was no budget and so, you know, it was like 30 bucks. [00:10:08] Vince Menzione: I was gonna say swipe a credit card, but they didn’t [00:10:09] Matt Y: knew that this is the entire press this before. [00:10:11] Vince Menzione: This is before, yeah. [00:10:12] Matt Y: Yeah, like the entire ap. Um, and, uh, so AWS called me like, who are you? Like, why, why are you paying on like this like low limit credit card for like the ap? Like, who are you? And, uh. Next day I had the job. Well, a week later I had the job with aw WS. That so cool. So that’s the story’s [00:10:29] Vince Menzione: cool thing. [00:10:29] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:10:30] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:10:31] Vince Menzione: Uh, sports teams. So Knicks fan. [00:10:34] Matt Y: Yeah, I mean, I like the Knicks. Um, they’re h hockey, I’m not allowed to say anything different. No. I appreciate them. Uh, I’m a Raptors fan. I grew up in Toronto mostly. Yeah, yeah. Uh, so, and you know, when they won, uh, that was very exciting as well. So no, Nicks are great. I like the Knicks. [00:10:49] Matt Y: Nothing against the Knicks. Um. They’re fine. Yeah. [00:10:54] Vince Menzione: Hockey, hockey fan. Favorite hockey teams? [00:10:56] Matt Y: Oh yeah. Itron. Maple leaf. Maple leaf. Yeah. They’re gonna, they’re gonna win. Of course. Of course. Yeah. Um, like every year they’re actually, we [00:11:02] Vince Menzione: have some Canadians laughing in the sand. [00:11:03] Matt Y: Well, the leaf are, are, are the Knicks of hockey? [00:11:05] Matt Y: Like Yes, they are. You know, it’s 67 years out, coming up on 68 since they won, so That’s crazy. 53 is nothing. I know. Pain. So. Yeah, definitely the least. Yeah. [00:11:15] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. It’s so cool. Yeah. So what was the, uh, what was the, what was the last concert you went to? [00:11:22] Matt Y: Well, literally last night. Oh, it was last, [00:11:23] Vince Menzione: oh, that [00:11:24] Matt Y: was actually concert were my favorite bar in the world. [00:11:26] Matt Y: This place called Sunny’s. Uh, it’s, you know, I, I took Mike and, and Matt from, from Texas and from TGS down there to sort of see my neighborhood and they’re like, where are we? And I’m like, yeah, I live here. Uh, sort of an industrial part of Brooklyn. And, and we went to see, um, I dunno what you would call it, like. [00:11:40] Matt Y: I guess it’d be like roots music. There was a woman with an accordion and a guy with a big cowboy hat. Yeah, it was, it was fun. Yeah. [00:11:47] Vince Menzione: That is so funny. Alright, we’re gonna shift back years. Um, important time right now for partners. What, what should partners be looking out for the most? What would you say to them in terms of what’s the, what’s their real headline for them? [00:11:59] Matt Y: Well, I, I, you know, to borrow from you actually, you know, I liked, uh, the, the principles you had up there and, and with agility, um, you know, there’s a lot of fud flying around right now. You know, people. People were like, oh, it’s the demise of sis with the arrival of ai, you know, everyone’s gonna be using agents. [00:12:13] Matt Y: And then it turns out it’s been a huge boon for most, uh, you know, system integrators and consulting companies that I work with. They all have, you know, the, the good ones especially have vibrant consulting practices now, and everyone is deploying fds, uh, you know, um, the new, the new cool acronym. But it’s, it’s essentially created a huge opportunity for the consulting space. [00:12:31] Matt Y: Uh, and similarly, uh, you know, there there’s this narrative around the sa sa apocalypse, which I really hate, you know, ’cause it was, uh, premature and kind of a trigger reaction from the stock market. And, you know, just look, look what Snowflake did. And, you know, they did what a lot of SaaS companies are doing, but they, they added a nice sort of glaze of positioning and, and, you know, their stock popped and they did pretty well. [00:12:50] Matt Y: And so I think the ability to adapt with change and kind of roll with the punches. ’cause a lot of people are saying like, agents are gonna destroy everything. And, and the opposite has been true. For the more successful consulting companies and software companies who have become agentic. But SaaS hasn’t gone away, you know? [00:13:05] Matt Y: No. Look at our own marketplace. We have this agent marketplace, but people aren’t buying atomic agents at scale. They’re buying ified SaaS solutions with sort of agent sidecars, which has created new opportunities for candidly additional licenses, [00:13:16] Vince Menzione: right? [00:13:16] Matt Y: Um, as customers sort of want to consume more AI services on top of their. [00:13:20] Matt Y: On top of their SaaS solutions. So I think being agile, you know, you see like ServiceNow as part of our billionaires club. Yes. They’re not going anywhere. They’re, yeah. They’re gentrifying. You know, Salesforce has pivoted to this headless model, um, along with Asian Force and using sort of Slack as the operating system. [00:13:34] Matt Y: And, you know, you said like a lot of companies from the seventies aren’t around anymore. They’re gonna be winners and losers. Yeah. Um, but the winners are gonna win even more. And so I, I think what’s so important right now for partners is to not, not bite too hard at the, the latest trend. You know, models are changing and everyone’s like, oh, you know, philanthropics really in the world and they’re wonderful, great to work with, amazing technology. [00:13:55] Matt Y: That’s what people are saying about open AI six months ago. That’s right. And before that, you know, and it, I, I was with Fireworks AI yesterday, a great company and they have some really cool stuff with sort of, um, they believe in more cost effective, uh, open source models essentially, that you can find tune. [00:14:08] Matt Y: Maybe that’s gonna win. I don’t know. Um, is it gonna be sort of domain specific models? Is it gonna be highly capable LLMs? Are LLMs gonna level off as soon as Fable and Mythos are allowed to launch? Maybe. I, I don’t think anyone can predict the future right now. So you have to be agile and you have to kind of seize the opportunities and take a couple punches. [00:14:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:14:26] Matt Y: You know, and marketplace too, like we’re, you have to be unafraid to experiment right now. Um, you know, that’s hard if your stock’s taking a beating. Um, but this is, it’s a, it is a disruptive time, uh, but it’s creating actually enormous opportunities for growth for partners and, and we really see that, you know, in marketplace specifically within AWS. [00:14:45] Vince Menzione: It, it, it does still feel like the deer in the headlights moment. Right. Would you agree? Like you’re probably taking a lot of meetings and, and calls from ISVs specifically? [00:14:54] Matt Y: Well, [00:14:54] Vince Menzione: that are still trying to figure it out. [00:14:56] Matt Y: Yeah. But it’s everyone. Yeah. I think what’s really interesting, I had a meeting [00:14:58] Vince Menzione: with, it’s not just one. [00:14:59] Matt Y: Yeah. I, well, I had a meeting with one of the leading AI companies, like one of the biggest ones. And they, uh, they demonstrated how they work and they were really proud. They were like, you know, look at our agentic workflow. And I came out at me. I’m like, that’s it. Ours is way better. Like really like, you know, ’cause we we’re, we’re using quick desktop with MCP servers and connectors and all this, and you know, we, we have our own sort of ecosystem of partners, a mix of homegrown software and third party. [00:15:20] Matt Y: And I kinda walked out there and, and looked at, you know, my phone, which has been populated by agents this morning with all the, and I was like, I have a way better agent workflow than this world’s leading supposedly AI company. And I think, um, that really, so during, I, I would, during the headlights, you can call it deer in the headlights, I call it chaos. [00:15:36] Matt Y: And in times of chaos there are people who create. Opportunity again. And so, yeah, there are some people who are stuck and who don’t know what to do, who are over worried about token costs, um, who are not experimenting. But there are a lot of companies, uh, taking this opportunity to kind of pivot their business. [00:15:53] Matt Y: Um, I think, I think we’re in a moment and, uh, yeah, I, I candidly I see more of the latter. I see more experimenting. [00:15:59] Vince Menzione: You mentioned ServiceNow. Any other great examples of that? Organizations that really embraced it? [00:16:04] Matt Y: Uh, yeah. Well, you know, ServiceNow is part of this business applications category, as we call it, in marketplace. [00:16:09] Matt Y: That outside of AI, I think is the fastest growing category in marketplace, which is wild when you think about it. ’cause we’ve historically been an infrastructure partner marketplace with security and data and analytics and, you know, security with channel partners, et cetera. But Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Adobe, you know, I could go on. [00:16:23] Matt Y: They, they are actually. You know, our fastest growing category and yeah, ServiceNow, obviously reinventing itself for ai, Salesforce, but Workday, you know, the workday’s done some, who knows if it’s gonna work, but they, they’re experimenting with essentially like a Databricks, uh, credit style model for like, units of work, uh, which I think is fascinating. [00:16:41] Matt Y: Like everyone’s talking about value-based, outcome-based pricing and meter. And, and you have companies that are ERP companies, you know, like traditional business applications, experimenting with effectively like a metered pay as you go, value based credit model. Again, like who knows if it’s gonna work. [00:16:54] Matt Y: But I think that’s really amazing to see and we need more ISVs experimenting. I, I was talking about trend ai and I know they’re, they’re, they’re one of the sponsors yesterday. You know, many of you know them as Trend Micro back in the day. They’ve successfully reinvented themselves. They built that companion app. [00:17:10] Matt Y: Um, you know, that I think we’re seeing. Just a ton of experimentation in the market across categories. Uh, I could go on and on about partners. Um, yeah, there, I I wouldn’t pick a winner right now. Yeah. [00:17:24] Vince Menzione: You, you, we’ve talked about ai. We’ve talked, talk more about the buying journey and how that’s changing, because again, it feels, it feels like that’s also [00:17:33] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:17:33] Matt Y: So, you know, one of, one of the core, uh, strategic objectives, or we’ll say like the philosophy marketplace is that. Um, financial incentives are important, you know, EDP or PPA drawdown, uh, credits. Like we need to act as an efficient and effective vehicle for allowing buyers to exercise their discounts for, and, and sort of partners to exercise their credits, et cetera. [00:17:55] Matt Y: That, that’s actually important. But what, what a lot of people over rotate on that, and we’re really, one of the things we say a lot inside at Amazon or at AWS marketplace is we want to continue to boost the intrinsic value of marketplace beyond the financial incentives. And well over a quarter of all private offers, private pricing, private, uh, custom terms, et cetera. [00:18:14] Matt Y: Um, begin with a self-service or PLG motion. And partners who don’t have a PLG or self-service motion are literally leaving money on the table. Like if you look at like a Databricks for example, and they did a good job integrating buy with a WS within their SaaS application. They have free trials, they have really strong pego and, and, uh, and PLG motion. [00:18:33] Matt Y: They’re making, I can’t share their numbers obviously, but they’re making a ton of money. On purely self-service motions. And importantly, they’re acquiring new business, new logos that they nurture, you know, really like not just leads but closed opportunities, right? That they lead, they’re growing, uh, at a reasonable conversion rate or or success rate into the next big logos. [00:18:50] Matt Y: And these are over multi-year horizons. They’re patient, you know, they bring in these new logos with PLG, and they’re also bringing banking, a lot of large enterprises. Through self-service. I, I was with data Mask. There’s this great little startup from New Zealand. They’re a New Zealand based company. Um, super nice guy. [00:19:06] Matt Y: And, and, uh, they, they got huge logos. I think they got, what was it? A DP and some huge American logos. Okay. And this like logo in, I think it was Chile, or no, it was Peru. They’ve never been to Peru. They don’t have sales in Peru. Um, and they. Buyers were discovering them self-service and they, they, I think they got something like 13 logos entirely through a self-service motion. [00:19:26] Matt Y: One password will tell you the same thing. I was just with them in Toronto and companies big and small startups and the largest are getting enterprise wins in addition to net new small logos through that PLG. Buyer motion. And that’s because you have a whole generation of CFOs, CTOs, CROs, whatever. The C is [00:19:43] Vince Menzione: millennial [00:19:43] Matt Y: who grew up on their phones. [00:19:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:19:45] Matt Y: And, and it sounds like, you know, hyperbole, but it’s true. They, they want immediate apps, immediate access. And that actually, you’re like, oh, that never translates to business applications. Turns out it does. It does. And they might not be buying on their phone, but what they are doing is researching and we see the numbers, the amount of customers who are doing their research, and then eventually landing on the page from chat, GPT. [00:20:06] Matt Y: From major financial, like Fortune 500 companies is extremely high. Yeah. Uh, you have procurement team, sourcing team, uh, developers who are starting the research increasingly, like in clawed in chat, GPT, and then, you know, building a proposal and then handing it to their enterprise procurement team. Yeah. [00:20:22] Matt Y: Which is still largely unchanged. So buyer behavior is on the front end, on the research side is really changing. So the [00:20:29] Vince Menzione: discovery is happening through PLG. [00:20:32] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:20:32] Vince Menzione: And then the backend work on private offers and things like that sometimes still happens the old way. [00:20:36] Matt Y: Yeah. Well, and so, you know, it’s [00:20:37] Vince Menzione: fax machine, [00:20:38] Matt Y: some people Yeah, sure. [00:20:39] Matt Y: They’re bringing the deal directly to Marketplace last minute. But even if that deal goes direct, sometimes they’re still beginning their research journey and increasingly using Marketplace as a research vehicle, which is why we launched Agent Mode, um, to help you sort of help you and agents do research. [00:20:51] Matt Y: But that I think if, if I have one piece of device for any partner consulting or ISV is. Don’t leave those leads and that money on the table by not having a PLG self-service strategy like you’re fooling yourself. Uh, and it’s, it’s a huge, it’s a huge, huge business for us. The, the majority of all customers by far on marketplace don’t even have a PPA, uh, and a huge percentage of even those with PPA spend beyond the p. [00:21:17] Matt Y: And so if you’re just think if you’re just using marketplaces as like BPA retirement, you are literally losing money. [00:21:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:21:22] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:21:23] Vince Menzione: We have a session with Vinod. We’re gonna talk a little bit about that right after. Great. So good. Um, so I, yeah, I think, um. We talked about, we talked about agents, we’ve talked about the millennial buyer, the change in buying behavior. [00:21:40] Vince Menzione: What other, what other areas of aspect I, I, I, I do wanna think about like opening it up though for a second. I think that maybe with maybe nine minutes left. Sure. I just want to get a read from the people in the room. People have questions for Matt that we weren’t able to ask them. Yeah, I think, I think we probably have a few of those. [00:21:57] Vince Menzione: I think that would probably be great. [00:21:58] Matt Y: I can sense the hardball coming. [00:22:00] Vince Menzione: You’ve known each other [00:22:00] Matt Y: a long time. [00:22:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. No, no. Hardball. We have a mic back here. Okay. I’ll just, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll get you a mic as we are recording. So good. Thank you. [00:22:11] Audience Guest: Uh, Boris Geller with a, a Click PLG is near and dear to my heart. [00:22:17] Audience Guest: We’ve been doing a lot of business in marketplace and I’m still struggling to sell my vision internally on, on, uh, on PLG. Uh, I think. Ag Agent AI is gonna be one of the drivers, and we are already on, uh, agent Marketplace, but I would appreciate guidance on, uh, best practices. How do we kind of, uh, operationalize it? [00:22:41] Audience Guest: It’s, it’s on us, not on you. [00:22:43] Matt Y: Well, no, I think it’s on both of us. You know, we, uh. One thing that we’re trying to do is give you more data to, to sell to your internal stakeholders in your executive suite. The value of co-sell with AWS all up, like finally with what we launched at, uh, the summit yesterday, you now get an opportunity score. [00:23:02] Matt Y: You, you get a number. People have been asking for this for years, so, so you can say when we do this and we, when we give AWS this information. The score goes up and we have a higher propensity to be cos sold by humans or agents before you had to kind of, it was like this mystery you had to guess. And similarly with marketplace, um, we, we have new dashboards that you can use to sort of, you used to have to sit down with us and go through spreadsheets to trace sort of lead to trace the funnel to sort of a close opportunity. [00:23:28] Matt Y: And we’re gonna continue to launch more there. But you now have more data that you can show. You can be like, listen, these are our inbound leads, this how’s converting, and now we have PRM, the partner revenue measurement where we can say like, this is what it’s translating into in terms of. AWS service revenue driven by our product. [00:23:41] Matt Y: And so that being able to tie from that inbound lead from your demand gen campaign through to a converted opportunity to what you actually drive from an AWS impact perspective, so you can, and then what your opportunity score is that data you can use to sell. Not only internally, but to us as well. Yeah, to a skeptical sales team or whatever who’s not maybe, you know, hype on partners in the, in the US West. [00:24:03] Matt Y: You can be like, listen, I don’t care what you think about my business. This is what I’m gonna drive for you with your quarter retirement from an AWS perspective, and this is how the shape of your customer accounts are gonna change. And this is why you should pay attention to my opportunities. ’cause my opportunity score is, is crazy high and I’m giving you insights into business that AWS would not otherwise have. [00:24:19] Vince Menzione: That’s your brand story we’re talking about. [00:24:21] Matt Y: Yeah. [00:24:22] Vince Menzione: Building your story up with within [00:24:25] Matt Y: So it’s, it’s about the data, I guess. And, and you should, you know, you should all actually be [00:24:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:24:29] Matt Y: Asking me for more data, so, you know, and tell me like, what do you need to sell to your internal stakeholders? ’cause if I can draw a clear line. [00:24:35] Matt Y: From your demand chain campaign that lands on a marketplace, which I know is a conversion machine, it has way better than industry levels of, of conversion rates. And then you can show, hey, if we have a PLG strategy and we land those leads on marketplace, we will convert them with high efficiency, low cost of sales and, and, and have sort of a bifurcated where we can close some through self service, some through express private offers and some through private offers, depending on deal size. [00:24:57] Matt Y: Like you tell A CFO that, and they’re my number one customer now and they love it ’cause they see cost of sales going down, cost of operations going down and business going up. Um, so I think we have more data than we used to use that data. And let me know what other data do you need to make that pitch and make that pitch to the CFO go around the head of sales, all those other people. [00:25:15] Matt Y: Honestly, the CFO is where we get the best leverage. [00:25:18] Vince Menzione: Awesome. Great question. [00:25:23] Matt Y: Gonna bring your mic. [00:25:23] Vince Menzione: We’re, we’re gonna get your mic here. There you go. Oh, [00:25:25] Audience Guest: thank you. So my name’s Jody Cheval and I’m a consultant now, but I was at Workday during when they adopted AWS and it, a sales organization needs propensity to buy data. [00:25:34] Audience Guest: To really drive the sales team to realize the opportunity kind of makes them visualize it. We didn’t struggle, but it was challenging to get that data because at that time we’re getting spreadsheets. So does AWS have a vision of making that API based data that our client, my clients, can get at and bring into a tool to start building account hypothesis based on that data? [00:25:57] Audience Guest: ’cause it really is important to an enterprise sales guy to have the sense that OAWS can help me close this deal. [00:26:03] Matt Y: Yeah. I mean. Part of that. So we, we launched, we’ve been launching part of that in stages and we’re not done. There’s, there’s more coming. Um, part of that is embedded really within the new, uh, partner agent workflows. [00:26:13] Matt Y: We are giving sort of more, uh, information back to you, not just about like what funding programs you’re eligible for, but like, you know, and when, when we will co-sell this deal with you, which is effectively a signal like we, we see this as a high value opportunity, that you have a likelihood of winning internally. [00:26:28] Matt Y: We, we have this solution matching engine that we’re using and we announced. That, that that ties you the partner to a customer specific opportunity that you have a high propensity or the partner has a high propensity to assist with and ultimately win. And now we’ve tied that to our express private offers, which we announced this week. [00:26:44] Matt Y: So it’s an indirect answer to what you’re asking, but a rep can essentially say. Send a private priced offer to the customer on behalf of the partner without having to ring up the partner because they have a high propensity to win this deal with the customer. So we’re progressively launching features like that. [00:26:59] Matt Y: In addition to the propensity to buy data that we do now share. It used to be kind of, again, manual magic depending on who you knew we could share. Now we do share that programmatically, and there’s more to come specifically in that space. Uh, I’d say watch that space. In the next few months, there’s gonna be more data coming away, but we do have the APIs, we have the agent. [00:27:16] Matt Y: We have things like express private office solution matching, and we have been sort of in that space progressively launching features over the last six to 12 months. And, and you should expect to see some more there soon, not just from us or from our partners. [00:27:27] Vince Menzione: Nice. Any announcement dates? [00:27:30] Matt Y: I can’t commit to a date or else my engineers will get mad at me. [00:27:33] Vince Menzione: It looks like we Another question number. Is the mic still back there? Okay. There’s a gentleman over here [00:27:40] Audience Guest: first Go leaves. Um, it’s awesome. I’m right next to. I was right next. [00:27:46] Vince Menzione: We’ve got a lot of great plants here, so, [00:27:49] Audience Guest: um, so this may be a little bit myopic or, or a challenge that we run into, but I love a lot of the innovation that’s looking forward and all the future things that we’re doing. [00:28:00] Audience Guest: One of the things that we’re struggling with is a little bit of almost like tech or structural debt. How do you think about bringing flexibility to the core pieces that underpin all of the innovation, which is. We are self-hosted. So one of our listings is an a MI. You can’t amend an a MI, you have to cancel and start over. [00:28:18] Audience Guest: So a lot of the building blocks, when you think about PLG, if somebody wants to add to that in an a MI listing, it’s, it’s sort of broken. So how are you thinking about taking all of the, the rapidly changing buyer behavior and then looking back at the structural foundation that underpins all of those things, like offers and, and amendments and changes and all of that? [00:28:39] Matt Y: Yeah. I, I promise I didn’t seed that question, but that, that’s a great one. Um, so not to get too in the weeds, but fundamentally, marketplace was built up, um, a bit like AWS like a set, a series of services somewhat independently. And each product type was effectively its own service, SaaS, server images, ais. [00:28:59] Matt Y: Um, what we’ve done recently is now we, we have, we got rid of product types basically on the backend. You, you don’t see it, but what that means, for example, like another thing AAMIs don’t support today, future data agreements. Um, or concurrent agreements, uh, they will all be supported by amis before the end of the year. [00:29:14] Matt Y: ’cause what we’re doing, this fundamental thing that you won’t even see called product offer decoupling. Uh, and it’s a fundamental piece of things that we need to unwind. ’cause we built up, we were moving very quickly over the years. We had a distributed engineering model and we built each product type independently. [00:29:28] Matt Y: And so yeah, if you’re a seller and you’re selling containers, agents, SaaS, amies, um, we’re breaking down the silos between those so that each of them will get the same benefits. And, and by the way, we’re taking the same approach to international. Hopefully you’ve noticed now that. It’s not like a feature launches in the US only and then takes five years to launch in either public sector or another country. [00:29:48] Matt Y: We, we’ve taken a global approach to feature launch and increasingly a product type neutral approach to feature launches. Uh, that’ll be largely resolved before the year’s out. We’re working on it right now. So again, it’s, it should be transparent to you, like you shouldn’t actually see any difference in the, in the experience. [00:30:05] Matt Y: Except that all of those features will be available. So, so that is, uh, actively under work. And that’s actually something if you’d like to try, um, you’re, you’re welcome to. So, yeah, [00:30:17] Vince Menzione: we have time for maybe one more question and we we’re actually gonna have you up here with a couple partners. [00:30:24] Matt Y: Sounds [00:30:24] Vince Menzione: good. Kind of fun. [00:30:32] Audience Guest: Hey, Matt, uh, met Natasha from Dondo. Uh, quick. So great announcements. And you know, you talked about the million, multi-billion dollar, uh, club, and, uh, that’s all great. Uh, in terms of the. Propensity data. I think that’s coming at the center of a lot of things, right? You know, for enterprises, oh, there’s an investment and you tap into that investment. [00:30:53] Audience Guest: But also there’s the other side of the procurement where a lot of customers, sometimes we work with, they’re like, they still wanna go direct for whatever reason, right? So I think there’s an education piece there, but also trying to understand like how we can work together to, you know, get some of that side of the things sorted out as well. [00:31:11] Audience Guest: You know? ’cause a lot of times it’s not about. Just, you know, retiring the, uh, the, the spend comets, but also like, Hey, I’m used, I’m already used that for something else. So maybe that’s not an, uh, something that applies here. And in also in tying that the PLG motion, uh, you know, for the customers you said, you talked about, you know, if there is. [00:31:34] Audience Guest: Leads on the TA table, like where the, it’s not the enterprise, but you know, the others. Um, I feel like it’s more to do, changing the business model at some times. Like with the enterprises, you have the revenue stream coming through, say large deals, right? And all of a sudden you tap into this, you know, PayGo. [00:31:51] Audience Guest: Where it flips the whole equation with, you know, the financing and the, and the, and the revenue measurement. So I think there’s two aspects of how do you kind of cons reconcile those things in terms of, you know, the revenue measurements going forward. [00:32:05] Matt Y: Yeah. So, so two things real quick on the procurement. [00:32:07] Matt Y: Um, yeah, like, yeah, I sort of alluded to this earlier, but, uh. Procurement is a bit late to the AI ag agentic transformation. They’re trying, and there’s a lot of great new incumbents in this space. And the big leaders like, you know, Coupa and Ariba and Oracle are, are, are evolving their products, albeit a bit slowly. [00:32:26] Matt Y: Um, but the, I think, uh, it’s still the long pole in the tent. You know this. And so like, there are two reasons why deals tend to go direct, because it kind of hits a wall of. Legal, uh, you know, procurement, governance, like all that kind of after the selection’s been made, et cetera, or, or they’re, you know, we can’t change. [00:32:44] Matt Y: People are gonna optimize for, for finance, you know, they’re, they’re going to, if they’re getting big discounts. I mean, that is life. I always say it’s like sellers at the most agented company are still gonna chase quota no matter how, you know, crazy. Uh, your, your company is, and it’s the same with, um, with the chief, uh, financial officer and chief procurement officer. [00:33:01] Matt Y: They are going to, they’re literally. Paid to find discounts. And so we’re not, we’re not gonna get rid of financial engineering. That’s a, that’s a thing. What we can do is reduce the friction for procurement. So we launched, for example, like mandatory purchase orders. That was a big thing. We, we have buyer notifications, now we’re making other procure to pay enhancements. [00:33:17] Matt Y: I mean, procurement systems still use like CXML. It’s like, that was, that was cool when I worked for the ap. And like I, I have teenagers that are old, like older than, so they, I, I think, um. Procurement needs to evolve and we’re gonna help it evolve. We’re gonna push it forward and, and we need to make it more seamless for procurement teams so that we remove those objections. [00:33:38] Matt Y: Uh, I can’t remove the financial engineering objection, like, you know, that’s just life. Um, but I can make it irresponsible not to use marketplace ’cause it’s so easy to use. And, uh, that, that’s kind of the approach we’re taking on, on the front end. Uh, you, you know, I think you, you, again, I didn’t see this question. [00:33:52] Matt Y: You, you stepped into a trap. Un unwittingly, um, PLG is not just is for enterprise. And, and PLG doesn’t necessarily mean pego or self-service. Uh, doesn’t necessarily like, uh, most of our self-service efforts are actually focused on private offers. And not necessarily for pego. Uh, when, when I say self-service and, and PLG, uh, it, it can mean all kinds of things like it. [00:34:14] Matt Y: We have requested private offer, requested demo call to actions, buttons that you can put on your listing. For example, you don’t necessarily need a free trial or a metered pay as you go listing to take advantage of those inbound self-service leads. So, and those inbound self-service leads are often massive enterprise deals, like I mentioned specifically, uh, the data mask. [00:34:31] Matt Y: Those giant enterprise deals that they launched came from an enterprise like Fortune 1000 Enterprise in the US that organically discovered their solution on the marketplace using our AI search. And that was a massive enterprise. And so I, I think yes, there is the long tail, you wanna capture a new logo acquisition, but you should think of your product like growth in your self-service strategy as a way to, um, acquire all kinds of leads, including large enterprise. [00:34:54] Matt Y: And so when I say leave money on the table, I’m not just talking about things that are gonna mature over two years or tiny little deals. These could be massive deals. Uh, and, and you’ll accelerate those deals by accelerating their discovery and, and research so that I think that, so, and my advice is don’t, you don’t have to go all in if you don’t have, if you don’t have metering, if you don’t have PayGo, that’s cool. [00:35:13] Matt Y: Start with something simple. Start with a public listing, with a request to private offer like that. That is a, a huge step. That doesn’t take much, and, and it kind of blows my mind still that a lot of companies aren’t doing that yet. [00:35:25] Vince Menzione: Great answer. Well, it’s now time we’re gonna bring, we’re gonna bring, it’s time. [00:35:29] Vince Menzione: We, we’ve got some great partners coming up here, Nvidia Elastic, Accenture gonna all join us for a conversation. Great. And I’m glad that you’re gonna stay with us. And let’s, let’s, well, let’s thank Matt, by the way, for that session. [00:35:41] Matt Y: Thanks. [00:35:42] Vince Menzione: And [00:35:42] Matt Y: thanks for listening to the Ultimate [00:35:44] Vince Menzione: Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:35:51] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen. And head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.

We hear how symbolist artist Sean Jefferson, was called into painting via an Enochian magic ritual and the unfolding of his innate Spiritualist Mediumship which eventually led to his connection with the Ruralist movement (The Brotherhood of Ruralists). We take a look at some of Sean's paintings and discuss his relationship with the characters in these images, how the paintings themselves come into form via automatic painting and the range of visceral responses to the images. Sean shares some personal experiences including a childhood malevolent tree presence, a ‘fetch' encounter and his ancestral spirit guide, 'Michael Foy' who has inspired his forthcoming book 'The Alchymical Garden of Michael Foy' ⚡️ On the 2 hour, F U L L L E N G T H E P I S O D E for full members on TMFSP Patreon, Sean describes: Open circle mediumship and how he works with trance states How he makes space for the work to flow through him His relationship with the paintings during and after their creation.  A UFO experience and we discuss what it may have been linked to The painting he had to destroy What happened when a spirit guide became more intrusive Shownotes Sean's work is available to view at Messums who also stock his beautiful catalogues: https://www.messums.com/artists/view/1218/Sean_Jefferson Sean's Insta: https://www.instagram.com/seanjeffersonart/ Austin Osmand Spare The Book of Pleasurehttps://whatmagicisthis.com/2021/01/07/austin-osman-spare/ The Enochian Magic of Dr John Deehttps://archive.org/details/theenochianmagickofdr.johndee.themostpowerfulsystemofmagickinitsoriginalunexpurg/page/n7/mode/2up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abramelin Sean is giving a free talk on the visionary art of nineteenth century painter, Richard Dadd at Messums Gallery, St James London on Wednesday 29th July: "Jefferson will reflect on the role of imagination, myth, and inner vision in artistic creation, offering insights into how artists translate intangible experiences into visual form.  Sean will also draw on his own practice, using works-in-progress images to consider how visionary imagery is conceived, built, and brought into being. Through close looking and thoughtful discussion, the talk will open up the intricate details of Dadd's work, inviting audiences to consider their layered meanings and enduring fascination. This promises to be a rich and engaging evening for anyone interested in art, symbolism, and the creative process." Wednesday 29 July 20266:00–8:00 pm6:00 pm Refreshments6:30 pm Talk begins7:15 pm Questions7:30 pm Talk ends Places are strictly limited to 25 guests and attendance is by RSVP only. To reserve a place, please contact cheska.hill-wood@messums.com Come and support the Show and meet like-minded others

Charles is joined by Valtrion CEO Rob Luna to discuss how big tech companies like Meta are spending money now to make massive profits later, why popular tech tools like Micron, CrowdStrike, and Snowflake are still great long-term buys, and how to find hidden gems in small healthcare stocks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Building a great sales organization has always been difficult, and the pace of AI has only raised the stakes. Chad Peets and Chris Degnan join John McMahon and John Kaplan to share what they're seeing as founders race to build go-to-market teams in one of the fastest-moving markets in software. They discuss why companies overhire, how leaders should evaluate revenue quality, what separates "patriots" from "mercenaries" in the hiring process, and the operating principles that produce durable sales organizations. Chad Peets is the Managing Partner of RPT Partners and has spent more than 25 years helping software companies build world-class go-to-market organizations. Previously Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures, he helped hire more than 7,500 software sales executives, including more than 500 who joined Snowflake during its growth. Connect with Chad: LinkedIn Chris Degnan is a Partner at RPT Partners and the former Chief Revenue Officer of Snowflake, where he helped build the company's go-to-market organization from its earliest stages to more than $4 billion in revenue. He is the co-author of Make It Snow: From Zero to Billions: How Snowflake Scaled its Go-to-Market Organization. Connect with Chris: LinkedIn "Make It Snow" by Denise Persson and Chris Degnan Connect with RPT Partners: Website info@rptpartners.com More from Revenue Builders: Hiring to Ensure Success featuring Chad Peets What It Really Takes to Build a Billion-Dollar Revenue Engine featuring Chris Degnan Key takeaways from this episode: 00:00 – Why the best sales careers are built through mastery, not compensation. 10:48 – Why hiring for tomorrow's org chart often creates today's leadership problem. 12:12 – Why many AI companies are overstating revenue quality, and what leaders should look for instead. 25:58 – What leaders often overlook when separating long-term builders from short-term opportunists in the hiring process. 35:17 – A practical framework for evaluating whether a company is worth joining before you sign the offer. 41:37 – Why great technology and great sales organizations create a competitive advantage together. 45:14 – What the next generation of elite sellers will need to master to stay relevant as buying evolves. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results. This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale. Connect with Us: LinkedInYouTubeForce Management

Life sciences are at a turning point, where scientific innovation, regulatory pressure, and patient expectations collide with unprecedented advances in data, AI, and digital platforms. IT is no longer a supporting function but a critical driver of how therapies are discovered, developed, scaled, and delivered safely and at speed.This week, Dave and Rob wrap up our State of Life Sciences mini-series with Thorsten Rall, Global Industry Lead for Life Sciences at Capgemini and together, they connect the dots across the series, exploring how AI, data and innovation are accelerating drug discovery, transforming med tech, modernising manufacturing and improving patient outcomes, all built on a strong digital foundation. TLDR00:27 – Introduction and conclusion of the Life Sciences mini-series 02:16 – Key insights and lessons from the previous episodes on the Life Sciences landscape 21:18 – Building resilient, efficient and future-ready operations 34:35 – Creating integrated, patient-centric healthcare experiences 43:15 – Why the Digital Core is the foundation for transformation and innovation 53:21 – Final reflections: the future of Life Sciences and the key takeaways 54:53 – Weekend BBQs, Thorsten's daughter's theatre performance, and the role of R&D HostsDave Chapman:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/Esmee van de Giessen:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmeevandegiessen/Rob Kernahan:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kernahan/with co-host Thorsten Rall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thorsten-alexander-rall-b232185/ ProductionMarcel van der Burg:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-vd-burg/Dave Chapman:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/ SoundBen Corbett:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-corbett-3b6a11135/Louis Corbett:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-corbett-087250264/ 'Realities Remixed' is an original podcast from Capgemini

For most data leaders, governance feels like the thing standing between them and progress. Bharathi Rajan, Vice President of Digital, AI, and Data at Swire Coca-Cola, joins Cindi Howson to share how she built the data foundation powering a $3 billion supply chain operation. She breaks down how to turn data quality into a business accelerator, get ahead of demand signals, and build the foundation every AI initiative actually depends on. Key Moments: Building a Data Foundation Across a $3B Supply Chain (06:39): The starting point wasn't strategy. It was figuring out where the data was, who had it, and how to get it into the hands of actual decision-makers. Reframing Data Governance (10:22): Governance is the foundation that makes better decisions possible. Bharathi shares how education and relationship-building drove the mindset shift at Swire Coca-Cola. AI as an Enablement Factor (11:50): Bharathi reframes AI as a tool for operational efficiency and more impactful work, not a headcount threat. Building the Plant of the Future (14:41): A new $475 million Colorado facility gives Swire Coca-Cola a rare chance to design data and AI infrastructure from scratch. The Skills That Will Matter Most in an AI World (17:58): Bharathi breaks down what she tells young people and aspiring data leaders about building a career that AI can't replace. Key Quotes: “Governance is not red tape. It is important. If you want to make decisions with the right data, you need to have governance. You have to have that quality data flowing in.” - Bharathi Rajan “If you're passionate about something and then you know how to use technology to enable that, that makes the difference.” - Bharathi Rajan “AI, it's an enablement factor for us internally as to how can I help the enterprise really grow, create operational efficiencies, but also have people do more impactful work.” - Bharathi Rajan Mentions Swire Coca-Cola to Build $475 Million Bottling Plant in Colorado Springs, CO DataIQ100:  The most influential people in data and AI 2025 AI Women Power List Honorees The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins Guest Bio Bharathi Rajan is a results-driven and experienced Chief Data Officer and AI strategist.  In her current role as Vice President Digital, AI & Data at Swire Coca-Cola, USA, Bharathi has saved multi-millions by adopting new tech stack and bringing in capabilities critical for Enterprise growth and performance. While consistently leading innovation and enabling AI & data literacy, Bharathi consecutively drives data and systems architecture confluence across the enterprise. Prior to joining Swire Coca-Cola, USA, Bharathi operated as a Senior Director of Operations in Data and Infrastructre for three years, focusing on Enterprise Reporting and Analysis (ERA), where she was specifically hired for her distinctive capabilities in data strategy, cloud migration, and creative efficiencies.  Bharathi is currently ranked #3 DataIQ100 North America for 2026. She has attended several panel discussions, in Emory University, Women in Tech, AI & Manufacturing and DataIQ. In 2026, Bharathi delivered a keynote on Data Leader as the Transformation Architect at the DataIQ summit. Additionally, Bharathi has spoken at various summits like Microsoft Ignite, Databricks, AI&Data summit and Snowflake summit over the years. Bharathi is also a mentor with WLDA Ventures and Women Tech Council. Hear more from Cindi Howson here. Sponsored by ThoughtSpot.

There's a problem that's bugged the database industry since the 1980s: you run an expensive query over millions of rows, cache the result, and then a single new row arrives. Logically that's one small update, but most engines throw the cached answer away and recompute everything from scratch. Some will handle changes incrementally, but only for "simple" queries - and the rules for what counts as simple are arbitrary and brittle. So can you incrementally maintain *any* SQL query, no matter how complex? For decades the answer was no. Then an award-winning paper called DBSP proved that the answer is yes - all queries are simple enough.Joining me to explain how that works is Lalith Suresh, CEO of Feldera, the company built on top of DBSP. We start with the problem itself, then trace how a group of VMware researchers arrived at it from the unlikely direction of Kubernetes and network control planes. Lalith walks through Z-sets, the weighted data structure that turns database changes into something you can add and subtract, and the four DBSP operators - including one borrowed straight from digital signal processing - that let you compile any SQL program into an incremental version deterministically. Along the way we get into which operations need state and which don't, how the delta join falls out for free, building a standalone query engine with its own storage layer and Calcite front-end, backfills as the real Achilles heel, and how this all differs from stream processors like Kafka Streams and Flink.If you've ever fought with materialized views that won't refresh, watched a nightly batch job recompute three years of data to capture last night's changes, or you're just curious how one elegant bit of maths unifies batch and stream processing, Lalith has some genuinely satisfying answers. There's an MIT-licensed open source edition and a sandbox at try.feldera.com if you want to play along.---Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoicesSupport Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DeveloperVoices/joinFeldera: https://www.feldera.com/Feldera Sandbox (try it online): https://try.feldera.com/Feldera on GitHub (open source): https://github.com/feldera/felderaDBSP Rust crate: https://crates.io/crates/dbspDBSP Paper - "Automatic Incremental View Maintenance for Rich Query Languages" (VLDB 2023 Best Paper): https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.16684Mihai Budiu - "Streaming Queries Without Compromise" (Current 2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn1Yaxwl6x8Mihai Budiu - DBSP talk at CMU Database Group: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/events/dbsp-incremental-computation-on-streams-and-its-applications-to-databases/Differential Dataflow: https://github.com/TimelyDataflow/differential-dataflowApache Calcite (Feldera's SQL front-end): https://calcite.apache.org/Kafka Streams: https://kafka.apache.org/documentation/streams/Apache Flink: https://flink.apache.org/ksqlDB: https://ksqldb.io/Apache Spark: https://spark.apache.org/Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/Kris on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.socialKris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkinsKris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Vivek Raghunathan, SVP of Engineering @ Snowflake, joins the Engineering Leadership Community Podcast to discuss all things AI – most importantly, how Snowflake is utilizing AI internally to iterate faster with smaller, focused teams. Vivek shares how AI and lower coding costs ultimately help Snowflake implement tighter feedback loops between customer & eng teams to speed up product development rollout and how Snowflake empowers their orgs to upskill when it comes to AI. Jerry & Vivek also break down what quality leadership looks like across the board and the role of AI in shaping today's eng leaders.   ABOUT VIVEK RAGHUNATHAN Vivek Raghunathan is Snowflake's SVP of Engineering. Before joining Snowflake, Vivek co-founded Neeva, one of the first AI-native search engines for consumers, which was acquired by Snowflake in 2023. Prior to that, he spent more than a decade at Google, where he led YouTube monetization and helped launch Google Now.   ABOUT SNOWFLAKE Snowflake is the data and AI platform that many of the world's largest organizations rely on to power their most critical operations. Whether a bank is approving a loan, a retailer is optimizing its supply chain, or a hospital is bringing together patient data, Snowflake helps organizations unify data, apply AI, and make faster, more informed decisions. Today, over 13,900 companies rely on Snowflake to turn their data into business value, with enterprise-grade security, governance, and scale built-in.   SHOW NOTES: Where Snowflake is on their AI adoption journey (0:57) Using AI to help eng orgs meet maximum velocity (3:04) Defining traits of engineers who successfully leverage agentic tools (5:55) The benefit of cross collaborative skillsets for eng leaders (8:53) How AI is helping orgs test infrastructure rewrites effectively & less expensively (10:09) Discovering AI patterns @ Snowflake (11:44) Why Snowflake gives teams a week off to learn the necessary AI tools (16:37) Compressing the product dev cycle with the help of AI (18:28) Simplify eng teams / encourage fluidity of roles (19:49) Vivek's perspective on leveraging AI to best support customer needs (22:45) Building control planes to support enterprises (24:30) Methods for consolidating data / making it accessible to the entire org (27:18) How AI shapes what a quality leader looks like (30:39) The role of empathy in leadership (33:49) Rapid fire questions (35:08)   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week on CMO Confidential, we are revisiting one of our favorite conversations with Rob Ward from January of 2026.A CMO Confidential Interview with Rob Ward, co-founder and General Partner of Meritech Capital, a top Silicon Valley venture firm. Rob shares his take on what he calls a "super terrifying and exciting time" and provides perspective on AI receiving the most capital of any technology in history, the "durability of revenue" and how quickly start-ups are now reaching $100 million in revenue. Key topics include: why VC's focus on growth vs. profitability; the risks associated with massive long-term capital investment; why marketers should pick a "trusted advisor" as their AI partner; and why your data strategy needs "context. Tune in to hear how Astronomer handled the "Coldplay Concert Incident" which immediately became a PR classic and the "VC Foie Gras Effect."What happens when a top venture capitalist pulls back the curtain on AI, valuations, hype cycles, and what's actually working?In this episode of CMO Confidential, host Mike Linton sits down with Rob Ward, Co-Founder and General Partner at Metech Capital, to unpack the realities behind the AI boom. Rob has spent more than 26 years investing in category-defining companies like Facebook (Meta), Snowflake, NetSuite, Zipcar, and Cloudera — and he brings a rare, grounded perspective to today's AI frenzy.Together, they explore: • Why AI adoption is still early — despite explosive growth • The real risks behind inflated valuations and “AI-washing” • How VC decision-making changes during platform shifts • What marketers and executives should actually look for when choosing AI partners • Why data strategy, change management, and trust matter more than tools • What layoffs, productivity, and the future of work really look like beneath the headlines • A masterclass in crisis communications, featuring Ryan Reynolds, Gwyneth Paltrow, and ColdplayIf you're a CMO, CEO, board member, founder, or agency leader trying to make sense of AI without getting swept up in the hype — this is a must-listen conversation.⸻Chapter Markers00:00 – Welcome to CMO Confidential00:19 – Introducing Rob Ward and today's AI conversation01:13 – Where we really are in AI adoption02:26 – Explosive AI growth: what's real vs hype03:35 – Why enterprise AI adoption is still a slog04:37 – Vendor spend, hyperscalers, and the trillion-dollar buildout06:12 – Is this an AI bubble? Public vs private market realities07:20 – Accelerating investment rounds and lack of diligence08:12 – AI-washing and durability of AI businesses09:46 – Proof-of-concepts, switching costs, and fragile loyalty10:55 – Big Tech vs startups: why this cycle is different11:40 – Why VCs chase platform shifts despite the risks13:05 – How AI is changing profitability and headcount math16:11 – “FOGRA” investing and capital distortion17:00 – Circular investing and data-center risk18:23 – Data centers, GPUs, and betting on the wrong future19:38 – Credit default swaps and financial warning signs21:45 – How executives should choose AI vendors22:58 – Change management and why culture matters most24:09 – Why data strategy is the real AI strategy26:36 – “Frequently wrong, never in doubt” and AI hallucinations27:01 – Practical AI use cases for marketers30:00 – Layoffs, productivity, and what's really happening to jobs33:05 – The best questions to spot real AI fluency35:00 – AI safety, geopolitics, and long-term risks36:38 – Crisis management masterclass: Astronomer, Coldplay & Ryan Reynolds39:58 – Final advice and closing thoughts⸻Subscribe for weekly episodes featuring world-class marketing leaders, board members, and C-Suite executives.#CMOConfidential, #MarketingLeadership, #BrandStrategy, #CorporateActivism, #MarketingStrategy, #CMO, #AIinMarketing, #ExecutiveLeadership, #BrandReputation, #ConsumerTrust, #DigitalMarketing, #MarketingInsights, #ThoughtLeadership, #BusinessStrategy, #CustomerCentricSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Unlocking billions in cloud marketplace revenue. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ This powerful panel discussion featuring leaders from Google, Tackle, and dbt Labs dives deep into the explosive growth of cloud marketplaces and the radical shift toward AI-driven go-to-market strategies. With hyperscaler backlogs nearing half a trillion dollars, the conversation unpacks how top-tier organizations are transforming their compensation models, aligning executive buy-in, and navigating the complexities of co-selling to capture committed customer budgets. From the rise of AI agents acting as metered SaaS to the essential operational investments required to scale marketplace revenue from 10% to over 50%, this session provides an actionable roadmap for software companies ready to dominate the 2026 partner ecosystem. https://youtu.be/LSj49f5FEII Key Takeaways Hyperscaler backlog commitments represent a massive, nearly half-trillion-dollar addressable market that completely changes the budgeting conversation. Successful marketplace selling requires complete executive alignment, right down to the CFO, and strategic adjustments like spiffing sales teams for marketplace transactions. The AI category is experiencing staggering 18x year-over-year growth, forcing companies to pivot toward an “agent-first” go-to-market model. Shifting from traditional channels to cloud go-to-market demands a multi-year, intentional investment in operations, people, and technology. System integrators are evolving into software companies as they build orchestration agents to manage fragmented, end-to-end workflows. Leveraging cloud commitments bypasses standard 12-15 month budget cycles, allowing for significantly faster deal closures and larger initial lands. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Google Cloud Marketplace, hyperscaler backlog, cloud commitments, co-selling strategies, AI agents, metered SaaS, product-led growth, rev ops, B2B sales transformation, ecosystem shift, channel strategy, system integrators, Deal registration, private offer APIs, digital transformation, software procurement. Transcript: Insight to Revenue- The State of Cloud GTM [00:00:00] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that first five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through Marketplace. [00:00:09] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology. Partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes [00:00:46] John Janke: everything. Let’s start. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: And we have an incredible session. The way that we wanted today to, to, to start the day up was like, let’s talk about what’s happening right now and let’s get three leaders in this space to come up and talk about the world and how it’s a rapidly evolving. So I want to invite to the stage dvu from Google is a great friend of Ultimate Partner. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: Are you guys ready? Are you guys micd up already? Okay, good. Good. John Yanke, the CEO and Founder of Tackle, and Sean Todo, who is an incredible leader with DBT, but also an old friend of mine. We worked together on Microsoft Days. Good to see you gentlemen. Thanks Sean. Great to have you with us. [00:01:37] John Janke: They stuck me on the side ’cause they said I’d block the screen if I sat in the middle. [00:01:41] Shawn Toldo: You still block it a little bit. [00:01:42] John Janke: And that picture’s from like 1985. I, I, we do have to get that. I had way darker hair. It was, uh, 10 year, 10 years at a startup. Makes you turn white. [00:01:52] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s the exact same right now. So it’s all good. [00:01:55] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s AI generated. Yeah. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: Well, you know, guys, I just took it all off at that point, you know, it’s like good. Yeah, but you lose enough of it. You pull it out over the years. Yeah. So, uh, some really exciting times. Uh, you, we gotta spend some time at you at our breakfast. That’s right. A couple weeks ago. [00:02:13] Dai Vu: A lot of folks here, too. [00:02:14] Vince Menzione: A lot of folks that are here were at that breakfast, and I thought we’d spend a few moments with you talking about all the exciting things that have been happening at, at Google. I mean the, yeah, the businesses just to, first of all, the numbers were house. Outstanding. Congratulations. [00:02:28] Dai Vu: That’s right. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Really, some really great numbers. Commitments are off the charts. [00:02:32] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: Crazy off the charts. [00:02:33] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:34] Vince Menzione: Yes. Uh, and then there’s a lot happening in this little world called ai, which makes a ton of sense. Yep. I was critical about Google in the beginning because you had all the assets, but Microsoft leaned in first. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: Uh, but now it’s like things have evolved, uh, quite a bit since those first days. Absolutely. In, in November of 2022. So, uh, take us through a little bit. Let’s, let’s go through [00:02:56] Dai Vu: it. Yeah. I could talk for quite a bit of time because obviously we came out next, yeah. At the end of April, and then we had our earnings announced, but shortly thereafter. [00:03:03] Dai Vu: But, but real quick on next, uh, for folks who attended, uh, you know, the way they framed, uh, the discussion was they showed this AI integrated stack, and that’s how they frame the keynote because we position ourselves as being the only vendor that provides this. Fully integrated stack from custom silicon all the way to the apps and agents. [00:03:23] Dai Vu: And a lot of the announcements were, were focused in those areas. Um, uh, I won’t go through the, the long list, but I think the big ones coming out of next were, uh, certainly the eighth generation TPU we announced, so we actually split this into two specialized chips for training and inference. Uh, so that’s, uh, that was a big piece. [00:03:41] Dai Vu: Uh, but the big one that we announced was this, uh, Gemini Enterprise. Uh, agent platform. So think of it as the comprehensive platform for companies to basically build scale, govern and optimize their agents. And of course, once they have that, they can bring that into, uh, what we call a Gen Gemini enterprise app, which is really the front door for AI for. [00:04:03] Dai Vu: All customers and all employees to manage a mix of agents, um, as part of their daily workflow. And, uh, and a big part of it is, you know, certainly they’ll have some custom agents, but we think a lot of the agents will come from the ecosystem. And obviously there was a big announcement around what we’re doing there. [00:04:21] Dai Vu: Um, and in fact, one of the things that’s interesting is this shows the evolution of, of marketplace in our, in our partnership, which is we’ve taken a lot of the marketplace experience. And brought it into Gemini exp uh, Gemini Enterprise app, right? So search, discovery, uh, the ability to invoke agents, uh, in context. [00:04:39] Dai Vu: I think that’s gonna be very powerful as we think about the evolution, uh, of, of go to market. And then the last thing maybe I’ll highlight is this, um, is. 750 million, uh, investment fund that we’re gonna drive with the broad partnership. So this cuts across all partner types, global system integrators, uh, uh, you know, AI, pure plays, uh, ISVs, uh, the big management consultants as well, uh, because we recognize that partners are gonna be critical to drive business transformation with our end customers. [00:05:08] Dai Vu: So we’re investing around things like. Technical enablement, access to our product teams, access to our FDE for deployment engineers, and then a lot of incentives to drive usage and deployment. So, um, so a lot of, a lot of activity and obviously the ecosystem’s gonna be very critical for us to drive that impact’s. [00:05:25] Dai Vu: Fine. And the last thing, I know we’ve going on and on fine, but the last thing I’ll just mention is just on the earnings announcement, uh, Vince touched on the backlog, so people have been tracking Yeah. Two quarters ago. We were 155 billion on the backlog, and then a quarter later we were 240 billion. And then in the last quarter, just recently, 462 billion. [00:05:46] Dai Vu: So obviously that’s a, a massive signal of customer intent, but more importantly, it’s a, it’s, it’s a addressable market for this ecosystem to go after as well. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Almost a half a trillion dollars. Yes. In commitment. So a lot, a lot of reason why we should be on the marketplace. [00:06:01] Dai Vu: Absolutely. Absolutely. [00:06:02] Vince Menzione: Um, each of these gentlemen have some things to talk about as well, about their companies and the exciting things that have been happening. [00:06:08] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna start, John, I’m gonna start with you because Tackle has, has transformed quite a bit since the last time you were on stage with us. I thought maybe introduce the company. Take us through the transformation and then we’re gonna do the same thing with Sean with his organization. [00:06:21] John Janke: Yeah. Thanks. Uh, thanks Vince. [00:06:23] John Janke: Great to see everybody. Uh, John Yanke, GM of Tackle at App Direct. So the big news there is Tackle was acquired in Q4 by a company called App Direct, and I think the why behind this app, direct Powers, marketplaces, they run 400 marketplaces around the world for telcos, for ISVs, for system integrators, channel partners. [00:06:42] John Janke: And we were talk like, when you build a marketplace and diagnose this, stocking the shelves is actually really hard. Uh, and we were talking to them about how could we connect the dots between the hyperscaler marketplaces, the iscs we support, and these additional routes to market. Uh, and that became more strategic and we ended up joining forces in December. [00:07:00] John Janke: And since then, the other part that’s really hard when you build a marketplace is how do you generate demand? Uh, so four weeks ago we acquired a company called Partner Stack. And Partner Stack does affiliate content. They have an affiliate content platform that allows you to connect with 150,000 content providers to be able to start to tell your story to drive leads to. [00:07:23] John Janke: Marketplace. So we think there is a tremendous opportunity to continue. We’re in the earliest days. I think the, you know, Jay, I was with Jay at Channel Partners a few weeks ago and he is like, we under called it, he didn’t say this on stage yesterday, but he is like, uh, the 82% growth. He’s like, we totally under called it. [00:07:40] John Janke: Uh, and I think just listening to dies commit level increase mm-hmm. Reinforces the fact that we’ve under called it. But I also think we’re at this tipping point in the market where all of the new capabilities coming out, we have to all rethink our better together stories. So I think the challenge to all partner leaders, it’s like, how do we. [00:07:58] John Janke: Figure that out. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a fun time. As we transform the way we worked. We wrote the first helping people kind of list, launch and sell through the marketplaces. And now to be able to take that to the next level to hopefully unlock the next a hundred billion of marketplace throughput. [00:08:13] Vince Menzione: And are we at a hundred billion? [00:08:15] Vince Menzione: ’cause that was the number, right? [00:08:16] John Janke: I mean that’s, that’s, that’s the number that’s talked about. I mean, we’re seeing the data signals we see, I mean, we will process 20 billion plus this year. Uh, and that number’s growing faster than Jay’s stated number. So I think we’re excited to see where this year lands. [00:08:30] Vince Menzione: We’ve come a long way from three years ago and we all got on stage and talked about marketplaces together. Right. It’s been, it’s been amazing. And then Sean, let’s talk about DBT. You’ve had some excitement. I know some things maybe we can’t even talk about yet on stage. [00:08:43] Shawn Toldo: Uh, yeah, go ahead. [00:08:44] Vince Menzione: No, I was saying I, I could, I’ll pre-announce things, but No, I’m just, uh, tell, tell us about DBT for those who don’t know in the room, sure. [00:08:49] Vince Menzione: Mean Yeah, that might help. [00:08:51] Shawn Toldo: So, uh, Sean Todo, I lead the partner business at DBT. I’ve been here about 18 months. Um, DBT really started as an open source tool. That help data engineers be successful in SQL transformation with cloud data warehouses? Right. And so back even to the Redshift days now into what I would call more the BigQuery, snowflake, Databricks fabric led days, um, DBT is the tool of choice amongst the data engineering community in terms of how they wanna drive SQL transformation. [00:09:21] Shawn Toldo: And so more recently, we kind of jumped into this kind of paid world. Which is why we needed to bring in additional experience leadership around go to market product, sales, et cetera. And so when I walked in the door, one of the things I noticed really quickly was we were running on AWS, which was great. [00:09:40] Shawn Toldo: We were doing some AWS marketplace stuff. We were running on Azure in Europe only. And one of my first strategies was we have to be everywhere, right customer. We have to meet customers where they are. And so we, uh, made some major investments to be on Google Cloud platform to then be able to really take advantage of marketplace, to then really be able to take advantage of the co-sell opportunities that exist in the field from a day, day-to-day AI perspective with Google. [00:10:07] Shawn Toldo: And it has been a hell of a ride. We launched on, uh, Google Marketplace in July of last year. We went to Google next and we were Google Partner of the Year. Wow. For data and analytics in a very rapid way. We’re now in three, uh, data centers around the, the world. So we’re here in the us, we’re in Frankfurt, we’re in uh, uh, UK as well. [00:10:30] Shawn Toldo: And so it’s been a pleasure to work with D and the broader team. Because the enablement we’ve had and the support we’ve had from that group has really helped our growth be up and to the right. The data point I would give is that when I walked in the door, we were 10% of our business from an A RR perspective was transacting through marketplace. [00:10:48] Shawn Toldo: Last quarter we cracked 40%. Whoa. We will be at north of 50, uh, next quarter. [00:10:53] Dai Vu: Wow. [00:10:54] Shawn Toldo: The other piece that Vince was talking about is we’re getting ready to merge with a company called Five Tran. And so there will be a new company name at some point down the road. Uh, pay attention on June 1st for a public announcement around that merger. [00:11:06] Shawn Toldo: Uh, but we’re really looking forward to what we’re gonna be able to do with folks like DI and the Google team as well as others in the ecosystem. Um, ’cause I think in this data world that we’ve played for so long. This trusted foundational element of data and what it’s gonna mean to context in the AI world. [00:11:23] Shawn Toldo: We’re in a very interesting place to really continue our growth rate at a high level. [00:11:28] John Janke: Yeah, that maybe just a comment something there. Start there. I think we, we used to hear people say we wanted to be strategic with cloud, go to market and get to say 10 or 20% of revenue. I think this like 40, 50%. Yeah. Th that’s where people are setting the bar these days. [00:11:43] John Janke: Yeah. So the numbers are getting really crazy. Yeah. Uh, and people are showing up and being like, I have to go big. Mm-hmm. So a huge change over the last few years. [00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Yep. What’s the experience you’re seeing as well? I mean, it, it was a huge amount of buzz at next. [00:11:57] Dai Vu: Yeah. I mean, so interestingly, um, you know, typically when, when people get started on the, on the marketplace in Cosal journey, I always try to caution them and say, this is, uh, this is like a multi-year. [00:12:07] Dai Vu: Yeah. Uh, process. You have to be very intentional. You have to invest. It’s not gonna be a thing where you just list and, and, and, and, and, and sort of this channel opens up. So in some ways, Sean is describing an acceleration that is not common, right? Uh, so they’ve done, we’ve done some amazing things together and we hope to keep that acceleration going. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: What does that require, by the way? Is it engineering resource? I mean, there’s, I talk about executive commitment and maniacal focus. Yeah. But it’s all those things, right? [00:12:29] Shawn Toldo: Well, all of it. But we went to a QBR in Austin, and I put up a slide and I said, we have to do this. And everybody in our ETE agreed. So when you have a chief financial officer that’s bought into the partner business. [00:12:43] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. And I guess qualifying coming into this role at this company, I qualified the C-level staff. Uh, like are they really serious about partner or not? And it’s one of the reasons I took the role. So I think executive commitment was one thing. I think the second thing is we were really well supported, um, by the Google team across the board, right? [00:13:02] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. So folks, Indy’s team that we would work with regularly on, these are the things you need to do to have an effective marketplace offering. Here’s what you need to do operationally with folks like John and team and others that are in the market, right? That helped us a ton to be able to scale. And then the other thing that we did is we changed comp. [00:13:20] Shawn Toldo: So from our VP of sales levels down, we have a 5% kicker for everything that goes through marketplace. [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: Hear [00:13:26] Shawn Toldo: that everyone. So as soon as we incented the sales team, I love that, right? We, we created the foundation on the partner side, but then from top down on the sales side, they were all in. And as a result of that, the question would become, okay, which marketplace stage two sales cycle are we gonna go use? [00:13:42] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:43] Shawn Toldo: Who’s the right partner to go partner with? And then my team is reaching out to make sure that co-sell connection happens. [00:13:48] Vince Menzione: That is such a best practice, Sean, to, because there is, as a seller out in the field and we talk about, you talk to John, talks about rev ops all the time. But getting rev ops eng getting the field engaged in the right way. [00:14:01] Vince Menzione: ’cause it feels like it’s more work for them. ’cause they have to think, they have to have more conversations with their customer about their cloud commitments and things like that. Mm-hmm. And then getting them incentive to do the right things. The right behavior. [00:14:12] John Janke: Yeah. It’s a strategy process. People, technology problem. [00:14:17] John Janke: Yeah. It’s not just some flip API automation, go list something if you don’t like that top down view. I think the other thing. Like there’s a, there’s a theme in startups where VCs fund second time founders. I think Sean and team have done this before and they took a lot of learnings over the years and reapplied them, which I think helps them go faster. [00:14:36] John Janke: It’s like that second time. Yeah. Second time cloud go to market Founder theme. [00:14:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we could talk about the platform and all the changes there on the. The, the commitments and everything. Mm-hmm. Uh, what separates ISPs generating real incremental revenue on your, in your marketplace? What, what do you see? [00:14:58] Dai Vu: Yeah, so I mean, I, I think there are a couple things. Number one is, uh, the, the foundation has to be, uh, this better together story, uh, with Google Cloud. Um, so this idea that what, you know, what do you bring, what does the Google platform bring and how does that drive impact with customers? And I think this is the reason why Sean and DBT Labs has been very effective. [00:15:16] Dai Vu: ’cause our field recognized they, they can recognize that better together story and communicate it to their customers. So I think that’s the foundation. For everything. Right. And I think as you get started, uh, you know, we do tell partners that they probably need to lean in a little bit, uh, in terms of focus, uh, you know, pick a vertical, a customer segment, um, you know, a geography where they’re particularly strong and, you know, get that momentum going. [00:15:39] Dai Vu: And once you do that, the field knows about it and starts to pull you into deals. Um, so I think that’s the other big opportunity. And then the other thing I just mentioned. Which, uh, the panel already touched on, which is be very intentional around all the things you need to do to invest. Whether it’s like, uh, you know, the business functional alignment, uh, the policies around like, uh, pricing and, and comp, uh, making sure you have the operational capabilities. [00:16:02] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that. First five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through marketplace. And not to, not to top you Sean, but our very top partners are driving 80 to 90% of their business on marketplace. And in fact, some of these partners are actually only marketplace first, uh, uh, because they started out that way. [00:16:21] Dai Vu: Obviously it’s the bigger challenge if you have an existing channel, you’re trying to shift that. But, uh, the aspiration to be more marketplace focus, uh, is up there. [00:16:28] Shawn Toldo: So I just set a new goal for the business plan for me. So that’s exciting. I love it. Looking forward to seeing you in six months on that. [00:16:35] Shawn Toldo: It’s good. [00:16:36] Vince Menzione: I love [00:16:37] Dai Vu: it. Work together on that. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: Well, di I’m just gonna add, add this because I, I got to see operationally with some of the things you do. Mm-hmm. You, you have an overlay organization. [00:16:45] Dai Vu: Yes. Yes. [00:16:46] Vince Menzione: And so you put accelerants in place within your own organization Yeah. To drive the ISVs into the, into the lines of business. [00:16:54] Vince Menzione: Right. You have, you, you do some of that to accelerate. [00:16:57] Dai Vu: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think this is somewhat unique. I don’t, I don’t wanna speak to the other [00:17:00] Shawn Toldo: hyperscalers, [00:17:01] Dai Vu: but we do have, um, uh, you gotta know the field roles, right? [00:17:04] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. So [00:17:04] Dai Vu: obviously at Google Cloud in the regions, we have, uh, ISV sales specialists who are effectively quoted on marketplace revenue, right? [00:17:12] Dai Vu: So they’re a hundred percent focused on that. And, uh, in addition to that, uh, we also have these, uh, co-sell teams, partner teams where, you know, opportunistically if there’s an opportunity, uh, in a, in a, in a particular area. This team is responsible for connecting the regional sales leadership, uh, the regional, uh, sales teams with, with the partner on the opportunity. [00:17:32] Dai Vu: So there’s a lot of things we’re doing to sort of accelerate that. And of course, the foundation for all this is, you know, our, our, you know, registering deals. And as you definitely get started on that, it’s very important to be very mindful around when you register deals. Uh, be very clear around what the ask and the engagement is with the field reps. [00:17:51] Dai Vu: But once you have that going and get the right rhythm, it becomes sort of a natural way to sort of register all your deals and get that engagement. And then, um, and then maybe the last thing I would say is it isn’t always the sales specialists. It’s, you know, the FSR, our field sales rep as well as our customer engineers are also very motivated. [00:18:08] Dai Vu: To work, uh, with, uh, with our partners because they know that this, you know, whether it be solution completeness or it’s part of a bigger workload or helps unlock greenfield opportunity, they really are motivated to engage with the partners. [00:18:21] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:18:22] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. I’ll just add, I’ll just add to that statement too. I think, um, it’s one thing to have a story as it relates to. [00:18:30] Shawn Toldo: Google Cloud and what you do with marketplace. It’s another thing to have a story in terms of how you impact data and analytics in our world. And there’s a set of specialist sellers inside of Google mm-hmm. That really care about us because we drive a lot faster consumption of big query. And our ability to tell that story across the world effectively has really created a pull now. [00:18:54] Shawn Toldo: And so I, I would say it’s almost, you know, back to, you know, being 12 years at Microsoft and watching kind of that. Phase and how that went. As we went to the cloud and we picked specialty areas, um, Google is doing that as well and they’re doing it extremely fast in a very, very productive way with partners. [00:19:12] Shawn Toldo: And so, you know, I’ll get comments from like Levi who runs west in north region for us, and he’s a, he was at Google next and he was like, I, I gotta, I, I just gotta go to bed. I’m tired. Like we wore him out over two days with their sales team and gave him a host of follow ups and actions related to specific sales areas as well as specific accounts. [00:19:34] Shawn Toldo: And I think that’s the other thing that, um, Google’s done a good job of, but we’ve pushed and we’ve had to work really hard to earn that seat at the table. To help make those people successful from a comp perspective inside of Google as well. [00:19:45] John Janke: Yeah, and this is a huge failure zone for partners with the clouds because they think enablement’s a one and done thing. [00:19:51] John Janke: Like I did a training for the field and I told them the better together story. That doesn’t work. Like you have to literally. Have consistency around this message every day. Oftentimes you need experts who can partner with your reps to give them the confidence. ’cause they may be able to ask the first line question, but someone asks a follow up and they fold up ’cause they know your product. [00:20:11] John Janke: That’s right. They don’s don’t understand all of the nuances of Google and the clouds and the questions that may come back. But if you do that well, it is a huge unlock. [00:20:20] Vince Menzione: Talk about the coaching you provided on the tackle side of that as well and kind of helping. Through this maturity model? [00:20:26] John Janke: Yeah. I mean we, we, over the years, I mean we started as a pure SaaS company and over the years our customers would consistently ask us for more help and we would struggle to figure out how to do that, and we had to invest in services and we actually acquired a company. [00:20:42] John Janke: Five years ago now, that was the foundation. Aaron Feiger, who’s in the room. The core consulting was the foundation of our services business. And that continues to evolve with us. And you know, we see customers at scale saying, I wanna operate my cloud, go-to market really consistently, and I want you to do all the backend operations so my teams can be outselling our products, selling the better together value with Google and others, and not have to figure out how to run the machinery. [00:21:09] John Janke: So we’ve invested a lot there. We have services around strategy, like how to help people think about their business strategy and translate it into a better together story and able to get executive buy-in. And then we have coaching, which is really a phone, a friend, because I think these things get complicated. [00:21:24] John Janke: And I had a customer who was doing the largest deal in their company history. It was the end of the quarter and it was Friday, and they’re like, this is going to be the most complex transaction we’ve ever done and we have no idea how to do it. Our team gets on the phone with them, they work through, what are you selling? [00:21:40] John Janke: How are you selling it? Is your listing set up the right way? Can we actually create all the offers? In a way you have confidence to execute. ’cause those are failure modes. You try to build a cloud, go to market business, and you mess up the largest deal in the company. On the last day of the quarter, uh, that’s something you can’t recover from. [00:21:55] John Janke: So we try to really wrap support around our customers to help them have the confidence to grow. [00:22:02] Vince Menzione: Di you’ve seen tremendous growth in marketplace. Mm-hmm. We don’t publish the numbers specifically. Yeah. We kind of try to figure it out on the back end, but [00:22:09] Dai Vu: Yep. [00:22:09] Vince Menzione: I know you’re accelerated. Your, your marketplace numbers are astounding. [00:22:13] Dai Vu: Yes. I can share some numbers, if that’s [00:22:15] Vince Menzione: okay. Please. Yeah, let’s go. [00:22:18] Dai Vu: So, um. I would say that for a few years now, we’ve been talking about growth. So we’ve been consistently, uh, you know, north of a hundred percent year over year growth. Uh, for the last few years we’ve been processing, uh, what I say, uh, billions of dollars, uh, annually and, uh, uh, millions of transactions. [00:22:36] Dai Vu: And again, that’s for a few years now. Now for 24 to 25, that full year we also doubled. Wow. Uh, which is, uh, which is amazing when you think about the scale in which we operate. But more importantly, if you look at specific category areas, right? So, you know, historically, marketplace has always cater to, uh, those solution pillars that are tied to cloud migrations, like, uh, like security and data and analytics. [00:22:59] Dai Vu: And those continue to be very strong areas for us. But the biggest growth area is, uh, is in the areas of business app. So obviously, you know, the, the ServiceNow workday, uh, Salesforce of the world, as well as the AI category. So one number that we threw out next was 18 x. Year over year growth for the AI category. [00:23:17] Dai Vu: Wow. So in one year now, a lot of it is models, right? So foundational models with our, with our ecosystem. But a lot of that is around agents. So this whole agent go to market model is gonna be, continue to grow and it’s gonna be a huge focus area for, for the coming years. [00:23:32] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic growth. [00:23:34] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, and, and I’ll add, Diane and I talked about this at Google next. This is a. Very complex thing for DBT, where today we sell seats. [00:23:42] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:23:43] Shawn Toldo: To data engineers. [00:23:44] Yeah. [00:23:44] Shawn Toldo: And now we have all these agentic things that are hitting our engine. And di and I are talking and we’re like, okay, so how does this work in an ag agentic marketplace? [00:23:54] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. Kind of a scenario. And what should we build? Where should we play it? ’cause we’re gonna spin the meter in a different way, so to speak. [00:24:01] Dai Vu: Yep. [00:24:01] Shawn Toldo: And so candidly, we got stuff to figure out related to that. Um, I think what’s been fascinating for DBT is our partner ecosystem changed overnight. So now it’s like I talked to x.ai on Monday. [00:24:15] Shawn Toldo: Mm-hmm. We got time with open AI on Thursday and we have a call with Anthropic and our, uh, CEO and co-founder and uh, chief Product Officer next week. [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Mm. [00:24:27] Shawn Toldo: We don’t have anybody managing those partners. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:24:30] Shawn Toldo: Today our focus is on managing the large, uh, hyperscalers plus Snowflake and, uh, Databricks. [00:24:36] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:24:36] Shawn Toldo: And then the SI ecosystem and some tech partners. So we’re having to like, to your point on Agile yesterday. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Like we’re having to change our strategy, operating model and organizational model to support that. And candidly, we don’t have all the answers yet, so we have a lot of things to figure out fast, which is a little bit scary. [00:24:54] Shawn Toldo: And challenging, but it’s also a huge opportunity we have to kind of embrace and get into. Yeah. [00:24:59] Vince Menzione: And they’re figuring out as well. ’cause they’re, they’re new to partnering as well. Yeah. As organizations [00:25:03] John Janke: and these AI agents. I think to demystify for a lot of people, and what Sean said is totally right. [00:25:08] John Janke: They’re disrupting everyone’s business model. But in reality from a marketplace standpoint, they’re metered SaaS. This is a thing that’s existed for a long time. Yeah. They look like product-led growth products. There is a lot of patterns around how product-led growth products work in marketplace. Mm-hmm. [00:25:24] John Janke: But you have to bring your business strategy, your product and pricing strategy to those two categories. Metered SaaS and product-led growth. Put that all together to get cross-functional alignment. So we are seeing like. A lot of people get tripped up here and it really does go back to more of the company strategy, product strategy questions, and a lot of partner leaders are not in the room for those conversations. [00:25:48] John Janke: So I think at, at this point in time, as you see big pivots with the partners to go all in on agents, you have to go elevate. Those discussions to be like, what is our plan here? ’cause I, I mean, pricing and packaging will be the thing that trips almost everyone up. [00:26:02] Dai Vu: If I could, if I just build on what John John mentioned, um, so I do agree. [00:26:06] Dai Vu: P it looks a lot like POG, but, uh, but the difference I think is POG has. More historically been in like the data and developer space, now it’s like the general business user, right? So this idea that you want a business user to be able to search and discover, um, agents that could actually be part of their like everyday workflow is going to be very critical. [00:26:26] Dai Vu: And uh, you know, I do think that when we think about the ecosystem building agents. Uh, you know, a lot of the ISV partners aren’t necessarily gonna own end-to-end workflows, right? They’ll, they’ll have a very specific, uh, domain and scope area, but you have to enable yourself to be orchestrated and managed by, you know, orchestration agents or, or, or meta agents that are gonna span end, end workflows. [00:26:49] Dai Vu: And sometimes that includes system integrators and, and others who can stitch that, that automation. So I think, I think that’s, that’s one piece of it. But the other area that I think is gonna be different is, um. There’s going to be a lot of agents. I mean, literally you’re gonna have a very fragmented set of, uh, uh, of players, right? [00:27:07] Dai Vu: It’s not just gonna be the incumbents, it’s gonna be a lot of disruptors and, and, and, and startups. And so the, uh, for the incumbents in the room, it is a mandate that you need to, to innovate because if you do not identify and go to like an agent first, go to market model. Uh, you’re gonna be, you know, disintermediated. [00:27:25] Dai Vu: Somebody’s gonna go build an agent that’s going to leverage you as a dumb database. Um, and they’re gonna own the workflow. So you have to, you have to push the, the, the, the limits here. And I think it’s creates a big opportunity for everyone in this room. [00:27:39] John Janke: I’m going off script. I’m curious. Let’s do it. I’m curious on your take on the system integrators. [00:27:44] John Janke: ’cause I think this, this puts like they’re all, a lot of them are creating agents for people and I think that’s turning them almost more into software companies than they’ve ever been. [00:27:53] Dai Vu: They are, and I think they’re, you know, obviously they’re being, uh, impacted from like, you know, typical like, you know, SOW you know, time and materials type type business models. [00:28:02] Dai Vu: But I do think they play a big role because a lot of the system integrators are bringing, um, you know, vertical and business process expertise. And, um, like I said, I said before, a lot of the ISVs are not gonna necessarily have big enough scope in their area to own end-to-end workflows. And that’s really the promise of agents, right? [00:28:20] Dai Vu: You really need. This cognitive, you know, reasoning, planning, executing across end to end workflows. And I think, you know, the system integrators are gonna bring that capability either, either through, you know, these custom, uh, orchestration or meta agents or if they’re able to productize that and bring that to a model, they can also sort of go through the marketplace model as well. [00:28:41] Dai Vu: So who knows is how it’s gonna evolve. But you know, we’ve always been talking about. Marketplace being a broader opportunity for all partner business models. And I think that will extend to not only, uh, you know, traditional sort of, uh, sell and services partners, but also some of these system integrators as well. [00:28:58] Shawn Toldo: If I could comment on that, please. Yeah. I, I was in London two weeks ago and we did an SI partner day. Mm-hmm. We had 25 sis in a room, probably about 50 people. We had no, um, hyperscalers or cloud data warehouse providers. And when we started talking about open data infrastructure. The role that they can play. [00:29:17] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:29:18] Shawn Toldo: Cross platform in a cost efficient manner for customers and the advisory orientation of that. They all leaned in and we, we stopped talking and they started talking. [00:29:28] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:29:28] Shawn Toldo: So they’re all facing this kind of same problem, which is actually causing a little bit of a shift, I think, in how they think about, I’m a Databricks partner. [00:29:38] Shawn Toldo: Uh, you sure you wanna do that? [00:29:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:40] Shawn Toldo: So this, this whole thing that’s kind of evolved in the last six to 12 months, when you kind of pick one horse to ride, I, I would tell you be cautious about what that means. You may pick a horse to lead with mm-hmm. But you’re gonna have to flank yourself a bit in terms of other providers that can help you be successful with that, that that partner you’re gonna roll with. [00:30:00] Vince Menzione: So you’re suggesting data vendor agnostic. [00:30:04] Shawn Toldo: I’m suggesting you really have to think about your strategy. Yeah. Because I think the AI, AI disruption is gonna make you think about that strategy. [00:30:13] John Janke: Yeah, I mean there’s, someone mentioned anthropics First Partner Summit. I was not there, but I’ve heard from a bunch of people were there. [00:30:20] John Janke: You know, they had a hundred partners in the room. 95 of them were system integrators. Five were technology companies, the three Clouds, Databricks and Snowflake. Like if you just think about the, the one of the major disruptors in ai, ISVs, were not in the mix. So I, I think, are they trying to disrupt all of us? [00:30:40] John Janke: Uh, do they need us? And they haven’t figured out how to work with us. I, I think. It’s, it’s, [00:30:44] Vince Menzione: and I’ve heard they only have five people in their partner organization, so I just, it’s, [00:30:49] Shawn Toldo: it’s 11 now, but it’s 11, [00:30:51] Vince Menzione: so it was five [00:30:51] Shawn Toldo: last growing fast in the, in the new company I have 50. So like, to put it in perspective, they have to make some pretty big priority. [00:30:59] John Janke: Yeah. And everyone’s been there a hot second, [00:31:00] Vince Menzione: like, right, exactly. Yeah, they, well, we will talk about the learnings we’ve had over the years, getting to where they need to get to. It’s exciting times. We got a lot to talk about here. Um, I, you know, we have about 15 minutes. I I, I want to kind of gauge, ’cause we could talk, we, we have a few things we could talk about, I could ask about, but I want to see if there’s an, like, an interest in opening up to the room for questions. [00:31:25] Vince Menzione: ’cause I feel like we’ve got a very interesting group here. [00:31:28] Shawn Toldo: You got a hand here? [00:31:29] Vince Menzione: Uh, are there hands that wanna Yeah, there’s some people that wanna ask some questions. So Yeah. We have a mic? Yeah, [00:31:37] Dai Vu: we have [00:31:37] Shawn Toldo: a mic. We, [00:31:37] Vince Menzione: we [00:31:38] Shawn Toldo: got one here. [00:31:38] Vince Menzione: We got one here. One here. Thank you. Sorry we went off script, but [00:31:44] Shawn Toldo: that’s fine. [00:31:45] Vince Menzione: It’s fine. [00:31:45] Dai Vu: Off [00:31:45] Vince Menzione: script. Better is good. [00:31:46] Shawn Toldo: I’m sure you planted the questions outta anyway. It’s okay. We [00:31:48] Vince Menzione: did, we did. [00:31:55] Audience Guest: Okay. All Eva, Sean Lightner, quick question to your, uh, increase on the marketplace, and you said you spiff the salespeople by fifth percent. 5%. Mm-hmm. So, and that obviously drives a very large adoption of, uh, marketplace transactions. How are you accounting for the margin you’re losing on, uh, you know, going through the marketplace? [00:32:14] Audience Guest: And also have you done analysis? I’m sure you have, how much is, uh, shape shifting or shifting from existing versus incremental? [00:32:22] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, um, lemme make three points. Number one, the backlog statement makes the margin statement not matter. So do you wanna play in that space where a customer’s already bought or not? [00:32:36] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. Or do you wanna force a budget conversation that you have to drive on your own in a direct model? That to me, I think it was 484 4 62 [00:32:43] Dai Vu: 4 6 [00:32:44] Shawn Toldo: 2. [00:32:44] Vince Menzione: That’s new Tam available to you? [00:32:46] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. That, that’s just with one. Right. And we are, we are, uh, running on four marketplaces. So that just increases our tam and makes our, our sellers lives easier. [00:32:55] Shawn Toldo: So on that piece, yes, there’s an expense, but we believe it’s right for growth. So there’s a balance there. Um, I think the, and then the second part of your question again. Sorry, [00:33:05] Vince Menzione: shapeshift. [00:33:05] Shawn Toldo: Oh, shift. We, we actually don’t think we would’ve won the business. So if I go back to our Q4 and I can probably point to three or four deals that went, um, Google Marketplace, we would not have won those deals because we couldn’t have created the budget cycle and that quarter. [00:33:23] Shawn Toldo: To make it happen. Generally a budget cycle is gonna take anywhere from 12 to 15 months. Bingo. Because of the spend that was available to us, we were able to close it in that quarter, and we had the largest Q4 in company history. [00:33:35] Vince Menzione: That is such an important point. I’m sorry. [00:33:37] Dai Vu: Okay. [00:33:38] Vince Menzione: But I, I just wanna, that is such an important point of the budget cycle. [00:33:42] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:33:43] Vince Menzione: Being a year to a year and a half versus being able to tap into a commitment that’s already been made. Yeah, so I just emphasize that [00:33:51] Dai Vu: I was, I was just gonna add real quick, even, even when we see sort of a, uh, a channel shift renewal, which is, you know, it’s on partner paper and it moves to marketplace as part of the renewals, we do consistently see that the, uh, renewal rates on marketplace and the incremental a CB on the expansion and new opportunities tend to be better when it’s on the platform marketplace than than offline. [00:34:12] Dai Vu: And that’s why partners choose to continue to drive renewals on marketplace at a reduced to rev share. But uh, because they see that that growth, [00:34:20] John Janke: we, we, sorry. [00:34:22] Shawn Toldo: We see that as well. Yeah. And I would also make the statement on our land business, when we go through marketplace, we are two x higher across marketplaces. [00:34:30] Shawn Toldo: We’re three x higher with them. [00:34:32] John Janke: Yeah, I think separate new from renewals and then instrument deeply. [00:34:37] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, [00:34:38] John Janke: go proactively talk to your CFO and your head of rev ops to understand their mindset. Because I was with a billion dollar seller a couple weeks ago, their CFO still creates friction in the process, even though they’re selling a billion dollars through these channels. [00:34:52] John Janke: But when they broke it down, their deals are three times bigger. They do them faster. They use more components of the product, which I thought was a really cool one. So customers who buy this platform, many component platforms through a marketplace, end up using six components of the product. Versus a normal land customer who uses two increases gross in net retention. [00:35:12] John Janke: So you have to get to the point where you have the data and you can tell that story real really clearly to your finance team to get support ’cause that they will trip you up if you don’t get them on board. [00:35:23] Vince Menzione: And you’re saying there’s friction in that company. I’m just kind of curious ’cause a billion dollar company. [00:35:27] John Janke: There’s a billion dollar marketplace seller [00:35:29] Vince Menzione: market marketplace company. That’s what I meant. Yeah. But, but the fact that this, their CFO friction, like, is it, is it because they’re not doing a good enough job or? [00:35:37] John Janke: Uh, in, of educating, I, the root of the question is from this person is, would they win without it? [00:35:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:35:45] Shawn Toldo: Oh, and is it worth the three points? [00:35:46] John Janke: Right. It’s, it is And, and I think some pe like to me, it’s the cheapest channel in the world. Yeah. Like with committed budget and people to support you winning. Like the, that formula, the math is so simple. [00:35:57] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. For, for a company of our size to go to like the classic resell ecosystem, I gotta walk in with 30 points. [00:36:02] John Janke: Yeah. [00:36:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:03] Shawn Toldo: It, it’s an illogical conversation. Outside of public sector and growth, you know, geos around the world. And so I, I’ve been lucky to have a CFO that I haven’t had that challenge with, at least at DBTI should say. [00:36:19] Vince Menzione: Really great insights. I think we have, we have another hand up here. [00:36:28] Audience Guest: Yeah. Thanks Susan. The question is for Dai. Uh, my name is Latif Hamani. I’m the founder of Partner System ai. Um, so what we’ve done is we’ve built a, a co-sell AI agent mm-hmm. That your partners can use to Yeah. Reduce all the friction in the co-sell with you. Uh, the questions that I have is, I guess I should back up, so XAWS Madison with a very large alliances, and then I worked, went on the other side. [00:36:55] Audience Guest: For software companies, and even though I had an operational team, I was spending two to three hours on on the keyboard, right? Mm-hmm. Deal registration, emails that can’t be automated, et cetera. So the question that I have for you is, I’d love for you to validate that. You know, unless you are one of the big companies, one of the big enterprises, if you go to the lower end of the enterprise or the mid market, uh, would you validate that there is a challenge? [00:37:20] Audience Guest: There’s a lot of friction for a smaller company. Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause these marketplaces are complex. Yeah. The cosell is complex. Uh, that there’s an opportunity to really break down that friction with some automation and ai. [00:37:33] Dai Vu: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we have already been, uh, part of the journey to remove some of the, uh, the friction as part of that selling and purchasing journey. [00:37:43] Dai Vu: Uh. We’re not quite there yet. But, uh, we’ve done things like we have, uh, you know, private offer APIs. We, uh, we have co-sell, uh, registration automation. Um, you know, we have tools like, uh, propensity to buy, tooling to help, uh, partners do, uh, more targeted efforts. Um, but the a i piece is still coming. Um, so I think, uh, the idea here is that we have launched a number of agents as part of our, um. [00:38:08] Dai Vu: Uh, part of our, uh, Google Cloud Partner network, partner hub. Uh, so these are, uh, agents that are gonna do a bunch of things to help partners as part of their workflow, but we’re gonna extend this to the marketplace and ISV area as well. Uh, so I think there’s a lot of opportunity. So, uh, I know there’s probably a lot of feedback in friction, uh, in, in certain parts. [00:38:29] Dai Vu: So we can, we can go tackle together. [00:38:32] Vince Menzione: Hey. There you go. There was a little [00:38:34] Dai Vu: plug [00:38:34] Shawn Toldo: there for tackle. Exactly. [00:38:37] Dai Vu: Uh, and I wanted, and just to be clear, I want to take a look at it from the end to end, uh, uh, flow, right? It shouldn’t just be just marketplace. It should be all the way from like, you know, top of the funnel, demand generation, all the way to like post transaction follow up. [00:38:51] Dai Vu: So we really need to take a look at, at the, the end, end flows and figure out a way we can remove some of that friction [00:38:56] Vince Menzione: three sense. [00:38:57] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:38:59] Vince Menzione: Any more questions [00:39:00] Audience Guest: back here? Hey. Hey guys. This, this is a really good discussion. Uh, di this question’s primarily, uh, from, I’m interested in the hyperscaler response. [00:39:09] Audience Guest: Yep. Uh, but all of you, uh, can you talk about the patterns or say more about the patterns between. Um, the consumption of just platform capabilities versus industry workflows. Mm-hmm. And how industry where I, I mean, I, I, my sense is that industry workflows are becoming more [00:39:27] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:39:28] Audience Guest: Uh, the easier thing for enterprises and SMBs to buy. [00:39:33] Audience Guest: Yeah. Especially SMBs, I think. Um, but say more about those patterns that you’re seeing develop and kind of what is. Uh, who are, where, where are those kind of, where is the demand being driven? Is it, is it, yeah. The search and discover in the marketplace, or is it being led by field sales of mm-hmm. Either GCP or partners? [00:39:55] Dai Vu: Yeah, so let me, I’ll mention a couple, a couple areas where, where it’s growing. So I think number one I mentioned before about some of these large horizontal business apps that we’re partnering with, right? Um, and, uh, and of course the fact that we’re, we’re, we’re transacting them through marketplace is, is a huge. [00:40:14] Dai Vu: Evolution from a few years ago. So who would’ve thought you would be buying like, you know, a hundred million dollars a CB deals, uh, through, through marketplace with like a Salesforce or a ServiceNow workday. But it’s happening now. And to be clear, all these. Horizontal business app. They’re not doing this in a very, you know, opportunistic, transactional way. [00:40:32] Dai Vu: They basically see marketplace and cloud go to market as a strategic growth lever for them. So that’s one big area. So from just a pure large deal perspective. Okay. Then you mentioned before around sort of corporate and SMB. Well, we find that a lot of the big opportunities are mostly around as they scale their business, uh, they’re not necessarily looking for things in the traditional sort of infrastructure space, but they’re looking for, you know, full SaaS applications to help scale their business, right? [00:40:58] Dai Vu: So it would be CRM, finance, hr, these types of solutions to become very attractive for some of this, uh, downstream market. And then lastly, as I mentioned before, which is, uh, when we think about this gentrification and owning, um. Uh, driving, uh, this business process and vertical, the ISVs become very important along with the services partners who bring that domain expertise to drive the end to end workflow. [00:41:25] Dai Vu: So I think that’s gonna be increasingly important. So those are three areas I think we need to watch out for. We. Okay. [00:41:30] John Janke: Maybe one thing, like as the cloud commit grows inside of companies, it’s shifted from being an engineering department, IT department budget line item to a corporate finance budget line item. [00:41:40] John Janke: Typically one of the top five to 10 expenses in a company. So that has shifted. Who is thinking about optimizing? The cloud commit with marketplace contracts. And that opens, that’s really opened up the avenue in addition to like these biz apps, vertical apps players. Yeah. Like having success. So I, I do think even inside your own company, evaluating where your cloud commits are, who owns them and are they thinking about the intersection of marketplace? [00:42:06] John Janke: ’cause I, I think it’s smaller companies, they’re still figuring it out. I run into engineering leaders who still own the commits, uh, but in medium to large companies. Very different. [00:42:16] Vince Menzione: Really good point. Because it, you know this, the optics change dramatically, right? This large commitment is now at the board level, [00:42:23] John Janke: right? [00:42:23] John Janke: And then you do have to teach your sellers as a vertical or business application player how to ask that question. ’cause the first resistance everybody says is, oh my, my person, my stakeholder, we. Manufacturing vertical application provider talking at an event last week, and they’re like, the shop floor manufacturing owner doesn’t know anything about the cloud commit. [00:42:43] John Janke: But if they ask the question, be like, Hey, do you guys have a strategic relationship with Google? Would it be easier to buy our product on the bill? Eight out of 10 times they get a yes. So [00:42:52] Vince Menzione: which is why the 5% comes in And that really accelerates the conversation happening. Yeah. We’ve got three more minutes. [00:43:01] Vince Menzione: Um, if we don’t have any other questions, I ha I have one for each of you really about the maturity model and partners are in the room that are not committed yet, right? We’ve talked about some very significant DBTs doing some incredible things, right? So we, there’s maybe a sense that like we, you, you are working with the be the biggest and the best out there, but what about everyone else that’s in the room that maybe isn’t committed yet? [00:43:23] Vince Menzione: And maybe they’re in motion, but they need some help and advice on what to go do next. What? What would you say die first? [00:43:30] Dai Vu: So they’re early stage, [00:43:31] Vince Menzione: early, early stage or not, they’re not on board yet. They’re not, yeah. They’re not with you yet. [00:43:35] Dai Vu: Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll go back to my earlier comment, which is that as you go into the journey, just be very intentional about what you need to do from an operational, investment people, uh, technology perspective. [00:43:47] Dai Vu: Uh, because it could be, it could be a multi-year journey. Um, uh, so I’d say go into it with the right expectations as opposed to thinking it’s going to be some accelerated six month thing that Sean has been driving here. It’s, he’s the outlier. [00:43:59] Shawn Toldo: But, but the reason for the outlier, [00:44:00] Dai Vu: yeah. [00:44:01] Shawn Toldo: And just to add to the intentional point Yeah. [00:44:02] Shawn Toldo: Is, you know, hire the right people. Right. So, somebody told me a long time ago, uh, hire slow, fire fast. That’s a really, really, really good principle that I take. Mm-hmm. I don’t like the fire part, obviously, but just for context, I, I am very lucky to have a great set of leaders that we were able to add people in. [00:44:24] Shawn Toldo: When I walked in the door, we had a person that was leading the Snowflake and AWS partnership. I had nobody on GCPI had nobody on Microsoft. I had nobody on Databricks. And then we made prioritization decisions on where we’re gonna go next. And so we hired people that had the experience and could drive the outcome in the right way. [00:44:43] Shawn Toldo: But we were very thoughtful about when we made those decisions on a quarterly basis, not a daily basis. So who you’re gonna bet on and then who you’re gonna put in the seat to make that bet come to life, I think is a really important thing as well. [00:44:58] John Janke: Yeah. [00:44:58] Vince Menzione: John, you worked with the be biggest and the best out there, so Yeah, sorry. [00:45:01] John Janke: Well, I think there’s the, like there’s the bottoms up and the tops down. Like seven years ago, this was all bottoms up. It was a partner leader who thought launching a marketplace would be good and they would go figure out how to do some deals and then sell their way up. Today there’s a lot more top down where people get it. [00:45:17] John Janke: But you can evaluate top down pretty fast. ’cause if you go talk to your CEO, you talk to your head of product, you talk to your CFO, and they have an allergic reaction to these concepts. You know, you have to go bottoms up. But there also are success story examples in every single ISV category that exists. [00:45:33] John Janke: Like this is not just security and data and DevOp like the, I think the ServiceNow. Salesforce workday. Examples are really great, like the marketing tech examples, more and more business of vertical apps every day. So I do think you can look at those people who’ve been successful. Maybe they’re your competitors, maybe they’re people you aspire to be and reference them as you’re trying to figure out how to do top down. [00:45:55] John Janke: But like you need both. You can’t win long term unless you get top down and bottom up aligned. [00:46:01] Shawn Toldo: And, and when I, when I would go ask for resourcing, I would always get the question, do, could you go faster with more? And I’d say, no. Gimme the one or two humans here, let me go prove it out and I’ll come back. [00:46:13] Shawn Toldo: So there’s a little bit of a strategy in doing that, that you’re gonna get more over time when you’re, you know, very measured in how you go ask for investment and resource. And so I would just add that point also. [00:46:27] Vince Menzione: Was, was hiring a significant component of your executive commitment, Sean? I mean, [00:46:33] Shawn Toldo: yes. So when I walked in the door at DBT, we had eight people in the partner organization. [00:46:38] Shawn Toldo: Today we have 25, and that was 18 months ago. But that did not happen. I didn’t go in and ask for, you know, that 16 people. Right. I asked over time in a very measured way with, you know, the programs and strategy team, like, what can we also support? You don’t want to bring somebody in to go do something and you don’t have the programs and operations side to support it ’cause they’ll fail. [00:47:01] Shawn Toldo: So we’ve been very thoughtful about how we’ve done that as well. [00:47:04] Vince Menzione: Die from you. I know you had something. [00:47:06] Dai Vu: No, no, no. I, I was good. [00:47:08] Vince Menzione: What is the one thing that people in this room need to go better and differently? Is there one, is there one specific thing other than what we’ve already discussed, did we miss anything? [00:47:16] Dai Vu: No, I would just, the whole identification. So obviously, uh, identifying this is not just like slapping a chat bot, but more around thinking all the things we talked about, product commercials, but also go to market where it’s agent first, where you can surface your agent in a workflow like Gemini Enterprise app. [00:47:34] Dai Vu: That’s gonna drive high alignment with how we work and go to market with Google. [00:47:38] Vince Menzione: Awesome. [00:47:38] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:47:40] Vince Menzione: Wow. Good stuff. Yeah. Very good session. [00:47:44] Dai Vu: Thank [00:47:44] Vince Menzione: you guys. What do you think? Everyone? Thank you very much. [00:47:47] Shawn Toldo: Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. [00:47:50] Vince Menzione: If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:47:55] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, [00:48:11] John Janke: October 26th through October 28th. [00:48:14] Vince Menzione: Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything [00:48:22] I.

This week, Melty and Emerald cover the latest Snezhnaya trailer and discuss all the new character reveals! From fairies and fae, to harbingers and the Tsaritsa herself, there's something for everyone! Let us know who your favorites are! Thanks for listening!Discord: discord.gg/theresonanceWebsite: https://shows.acast.com/theresonanceSupport Us on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/theresonanceRedBubble Shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/TheResonance/shop?asc=uMusic Used:A Sweet Smile Groove [Instrumental] by MilohHeizou Theme Epic Version Cover/Remix by brittle bearOriginal Music by HOYO-MiX Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Half of 2026 is behind us. We went back through the first six months and split the big commerce and AI stories into two groups, the bold moves and the cold ones.Start with Anthropic. While the attention stayed on OpenAI, it kept its head down and aimed at one customer, the enterprise buyer. The Snowflake deal landed. Opus shipped over the holidays and picked up real developer momentum. Claude Code gave those developers somewhere to work that wasn't a browser tab. That's a company that knew what it was ignoring.The Watson Weekly Weekend episode is sponsored by Avalara. Its Agentic Tax and Compliance automates behind-the-scenes work for ecommerce brands, enabling accurate checkout tax calculation, clearer tariff and duty visibility, and fewer customer surprises. Avalara integrates with platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. Learn more at avalara.watsonweekly.comThen Ryan Cohen. He aimed GameStop at eBay, took the board's rejection on the chin, raised his stake to 7.8%, and told anyone listening he wants to own it. Gutsy. The follow-through has been weaker than the opening move.The cold list is shorter and sadder. eBay's roughly $1.2 billion deal to buy Depop from Etsy is still sitting in regulatory review, and Depop sellers are already watching boost fees jump to 12% and wondering what the integration does to the rest. eBay does not have a great record of making acquisitions work. OpenAI, for its part, backed away from checkout. Commerce has a way of humbling anyone who thinks returns, fraud, and merchant-of-record rules are somebody else's problem.

Master the new Microsoft Marketplace ecosystem. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Discover the tectonic shifts happening within the Microsoft ecosystem as Cyril Belikoff and Jon Yoo dive deep into the unification of the Microsoft Marketplace and the explosive rise of AI-driven commerce. This comprehensive discussion explores how the marketplace is transitioning from an incubation island to the mainland of Microsoft’s go-to-market strategy, allowing partners to tap into massive Azure consumption commitments. Learn how product-led growth, AI agents, and optimized digital flows are replacing traditional sales motions, making cloud marketplaces the default engine for scaling revenue in 2026 and beyond. https://youtu.be/cAeSIEXbnNo Key Takeaways Microsoft unified its various marketplaces into a single digital flywheel for customers to discover, try, and buy applications. Applications, such as Copilot certified agents, are contextually surfaced directly within Microsoft products to meet users in their flow of work. Customers are making massive Azure commitments, and purchasing full software stacks through the marketplace retires those commitments entirely. Cloud marketplaces have evolved from a secondary channel into the default go-to-market engine with triple-digit revenue growth. Partners must shift from deal-led transactions to product-led growth by optimizing their digital marketplace listings for AI and search engines. The future of software procurement will increasingly involve AI agents acting on behalf of organizations to seamlessly integrate multiple smaller applications. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Microsoft Marketplace, Azure commitments, AI agents, Frontier transformation, M365 Copilot, Foundry, digital flywheel, co-selling, product-led growth, ecosystem shift, SaaS distribution, REO, resale enabled offer, listing optimization, search engine optimization, agentic commerce, cloud go-to-market, revenue recognition, multi-party private offers, Hyperscalers Transcript: Cyril Belikoff and Jon Yoo Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Cyril Belikoff: Why do you have to outsource this or create this vi? Just edit the video right there yourself. Like why do you have to just go do the, as a marketer you want to create a beautiful piece of content, just go and create it. ’cause it can create it for you. Now [00:00:13] Jon Yoo: you can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering. [00:00:19] Jon Yoo: How AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:25] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Manzione, your host. [00:00:30] Jon Yoo: We just wrapped up two days in Bellevue with some of the sharpest partner leaders in the business, and what we heard wasn’t incremental, it was tectonic. In this series, we’re going deeper into these conversations, the insights, the frameworks, the real movement we’re seeing in this market right now, because being in the room changes everything and we’re bringing that room to you. [00:00:55] Vince Menzione: And I am thrilled actually for this next one. Uh, I’ve had this opportunity to spend a little bit of time with this gentleman before, and welcoming him back is a pleasure and an honor. Cyril Beov, the vice president. I’m gonna botch up your title ’cause I always say marketplaces, but it’s much more than that. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: So come on up, zero. And we’re gonna have a conversation and Cyril is amongst other things at Microsoft. Good to see you, sir. Yeah, [00:01:24] Cyril Belikoff: you too, [00:01:25] Vince Menzione: uh, is responsible for the, the Microsoft marketplace. [00:01:29] Cyril Belikoff: Are these your notes here? [00:01:30] Vince Menzione: These are, um, what is that? Yeah, these is gonna be our, our questions, so we, yeah, I, I need help sometimes so prompting, but, uh, so great to have you. [00:01:38] Vince Menzione: So just for purposes of title and context, ’cause your role is much bigger than just marketplace. Yeah. And we’re, we’re gonna sit down and John, is this me? Yes. And then John’s gonna join us. [00:01:47] Cyril Belikoff: Okay. Great. [00:01:48] Joe, [00:01:48] Vince Menzione: well, we’re gonna get started and start having a conversation. And we’ve, we’ve done some of these things before. [00:01:53] Vince Menzione: I’ve, I’ve had, you had me on your stage Yes. In your event at Alyssa Taylor’s event. [00:01:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:01:58] Vince Menzione: And then, uh, we’ve, we’ve done some nice things together on stage, both at, at our event in Redmond last year. Yes. Then at our big, uh, ignite breakfast back [00:02:07] Cyril Belikoff: and forth, we had Vince come to our wider org and sort of, uh, I got to do the reverse. [00:02:13] Cyril Belikoff: And so interview him in front of a bunch of, uh, 500 marketers on what do we have to think about for partners. And so he gave us sort of the what’s going on in the partner ecosystem, how to think about it as we think about it, our marketing. [00:02:26] Vince Menzione: And I tried to be candid and represent this group. [00:02:28] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, that’s great. [00:02:29] Yeah. [00:02:30] Vince Menzione: Was wonderful. Thank you for doing that. [00:02:31] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: You, you work, you work in an amazing organization. Um, I’ve known Alyssa for many years as well, and you’re an incredible leader. And I just, I wanna frame this maybe with a conversation about, ’cause we’re gonna talk about what’s changed, but, but I think it’s still important for everybody in the room to understand what you did and what your team orchestrated around market. [00:02:52] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, [00:02:52] Vince Menzione: because it was fragmented, it was in different organizations, it felt very dis disorganized, I guess. Yeah. For lack of a better word. [00:02:59] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Thank you. Um, essentially we took it from incubation Island to the mainland Microsoft. I love it. Uh, GTM [00:03:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:07] Cyril Belikoff: Is the simplest way to think about it. Um, and, uh, come September last year now, uh, we unified the, the, the, the many marketplaces. [00:03:19] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, whether it was an Azure marketplace or AppSource and others, and we created the new Microsoft marketplace. Yeah. So one single place for customers to come, discover, try, buy, and for partners, software companies and other NSIs to put their wares up. And, uh, it was the first step in a vision for us to create this digital flywheel for us to bring our customers and our partners together in a more, you know, automated way. [00:03:47] Vince Menzione: Which it, it sounds crazy when you think about it, right? Microsoft has always been like the partnership leader, the leader in the technology, and to have fragmented marketplaces before, right? Yeah. And so what clarity to bring that all together. [00:04:00] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. It was a big, it was a big step for us and I think what we realized is that customers and partners were saying, Hey, uh, it’s all one place. [00:04:07] Cyril Belikoff: If I’m looking for a SaaS application or an agent or, and plug into teams or whatever it is. I just want to get it all in one spot. Uh, and, uh, and then we need you to connect us to your channel. [00:04:21] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:04:21] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, and your partners and, uh, can you build out, you know, partner capabilities for that Connects channel to software companies, to, to customers in a digital flywheel way. [00:04:30] Cyril Belikoff: Um, one of the things we actually also announced at that time was this concept of what we call. The marketplace framework. So it’s not just the fact that we have this digital experience or web experience, but that, um, applications that go into the marketplace, depending on the type of applications they get contextually surfaced within Microsoft products. [00:04:53] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:04:53] Cyril Belikoff: And so if you’re, [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: explain that for this Yeah. For me and for this crap. [00:04:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. So if you are a, um, if you’re a co-pilot certified agent. M 365 copilot agent, you’ll be in the marketplace, but you’ll also be automatically surfaced inside the M 365 copilot, um, product. [00:05:11] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:05:12] Cyril Belikoff: Same for, uh, large language models in foundry, add-ins in teams, those sort of things. [00:05:18] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause it’s one thing to be where people go to discover Tribu, but users also go into these stores, whether it’s a developer user or an end user. They go in the flow of their work and they want to move quickly. Yes. And so, uh, so they have access. We think that’s very attractive. And the feedback was, Hey, that’s quite differentiated. [00:05:35] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause we have, uh, hundreds of millions of customers in these products every day. [00:05:39] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:05:39] Cyril Belikoff: And so giving our customers access, our partners access to it and improving their customer experience, um, has worked out well. [00:05:47] Vince Menzione: And something else you did too, because at one point, you know, we were talking about co-selling and single-threaded. [00:05:53] Vince Menzione: And Microsoft has this incredible ecosystem and channel. [00:05:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:05:58] Vince Menzione: And it, it was totally disconnected from the whole marketplace strategy, right? Yes. Yeah. [00:06:03] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. So we, uh, um, we launched, I think in, uh, sorry. At that time in September, we launched five of our largest distributors who were also federating the Microsoft marketplace into their marketplaces. [00:06:16] Cyril Belikoff: And then in the November timeframe at Microsoft Ignite, we launched resale enabled offer [00:06:23] Vince Menzione: RO, [00:06:23] Cyril Belikoff: which is REO, which is a new capability that is proven extremely popular, that connects the software company and the reseller, you know, um, to go and do more deals at scale faster. So [00:06:36] Vince Menzione: we have, we have four of the Es in the room, [00:06:38] Cyril Belikoff: right? [00:06:38] Vince Menzione: Some of the four at the top. Five or six. And then also one of your largest resellers software, one is here as well. [00:06:45] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Great. [00:06:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:47] Cyril Belikoff: Great. So it’s, uh, we’ve been busy. [00:06:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:49] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Like I said, um, uh, much more work to do. But we are moving from like this incubation project to mainland get it integrated into our core customer, go to market, uh, so that our, uh, software companies and partners have access to those customers. [00:07:03] Cyril Belikoff: And then integration, uh, with the channel. So [00:07:06] Vince Menzione: it’s been a lot happening these last 12 months. Uh. Then Frontier, let’s talk about Frontier. That’s another piece of this. [00:07:14] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. I’m sure Steven touched on, uh, frontier Transformational or becoming Frontier or Frontier Firm. So probably not helpful to me rehash that. [00:07:23] Cyril Belikoff: I think in general. If you go to a Microsoft discussion or session and you don’t hear about frontier or Frontier transformation, please like, raise your hand and give feedback because that is, um, [00:07:34] Vince Menzione: I kept away from the word frontier with Steve. We were talking about it, but we weren’t using the term frontier. [00:07:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. ’cause I feel like it gets overused. It’s, [00:07:40] Cyril Belikoff: yeah, it does. It’s, it’s sort of, um, what we try to do with it is articulate it in a way that it’s not just about AI for AI’s sake. [00:07:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:07:48] Cyril Belikoff: But it’s AI based on what the customer outcome is trying to, what the customer is trying to achieve on their outcome. Um, and so as part of that, of course, you know, agents, AI applications is a big part of what’s driving customers’ capability of, uh, to become frontier. [00:08:05] Cyril Belikoff: And, uh, the marketplace is part of that. ’cause they can either custom build that. Uh, or they can, you know, buy off the shelf, right? Uh, or, and actually in Combin they do mostly they do both, right? And so, um, in order to accelerate their ability to become more frontier, we have these, uh, partners that build, uh, third party solutions through a marketplace. [00:08:27] Cyril Belikoff: And then, uh, uh, those same partners or others that build bespoke solutions around that. So, um, a lot of momentum around, uh, AI apps and agencies, as you can imagine. Um, we have, I think, 5,000 plus AI apps and agents. [00:08:43] Vince Menzione: I was gonna ask you what you’re focused on now, but you, I think you’re tying into this now already. [00:08:47] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, so of course that’s important. [00:08:50] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:50] Cyril Belikoff: But really for us it’s about doubling down on driving customer, customer demand. How do we merchandise the right things that customers are looking for? How do we, uh, accelerate any of our flows? Like we will spend hours just looking at like the flow of one scenario. [00:09:07] Cyril Belikoff: Where is it getting stuck? How do we improve it? Um, and then how do we connect it to the channel? And, and what, what more things can we do like EO or multi-party private offers and the like, and we have. Probably an announcement a month in the next three or four months. [00:09:24] Vince Menzione: Oh, come on. Let’s, [00:09:24] Cyril Belikoff: that will, [00:09:25] Vince Menzione: I know, I know it’s early. [00:09:26] Vince Menzione: I know it’s early, but you, you’ve got some, I know you’ve got some things. Think [00:09:29] Cyril Belikoff: about the customer experience. Think about the channel integration and dream about [00:09:33] Vince Menzione: what maybe more of a global scale with some of the offerings, maybe, maybe. Um, so, you know, I, so I, the earnings, we talked about the earnings with Steven, but I thought that there was a very compelling number around the commitment number. [00:09:46] Vince Menzione: Yes. You and you run your Azure as part of your remit. We didn’t go through your entire remit. [00:09:50] Cyril Belikoff: Yep. [00:09:51] Vince Menzione: It’s not just marketplace. You also, you also own the Azure number. [00:09:53] Cyril Belikoff: Yep. [00:09:54] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about that. [00:09:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um. You know, it’s, it’s exciting times for customers. They want to do things not only with us, but with everyone in the room. [00:10:04] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and they are making very large commitments, huge commitments over the next two to three years to spend on Azure. Um, and so it’s now our joint jobs to go and help them identify the right business outcome and go and, you know, consume that commitment. It is just a commitment. It’s not actual. Consumption. [00:10:27] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. And so it’s all of our jobs to take advantage of that. The, the customers are saying, Hey, we have line of sight to the types of things we want to go do over the next two to three years. Uh, probably not everything is, you know, i’s dotted and t’s across, but they have line of sight to most of it. Um, and how do we go help them drive that? [00:10:46] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and so from an Azure perspective, obviously that’s very encouraging for us. It, it allows us to. Invest in more data centers and more capacity that we are doing as fast as we can. Um, and then, um, and then of course on marketplace, the marketplace can retire. [00:11:04] Vince Menzione: That’s [00:11:04] Cyril Belikoff: that Azure commitment. That’s, [00:11:05] Vince Menzione: I wanted to make sure [00:11:06] Cyril Belikoff: people understand that the, in fact, not only the Azure component from the marketplace, but the full software stack from the partner, uh, the software company retires the Azure commitment. [00:11:17] Cyril Belikoff: So if it’s. Uh, I’ll make it up if it’s, uh, a hundred bucks and it’s 50 50, it’s not 50 50, but, um, I won’t disclose any percentages, but let’s say it’s 50 50, it’s much more for the software company, by the way. Um, if it’s 50 50, it’s not just like the $50 for Azure that gets retired. It’s the entire a hundred dollars that gets retired on the customer commitment, commitment, which is great for the software company. [00:11:39] Cyril Belikoff: It’s also great for the customer that they can, you know. Bring that through, uh, to, uh, to their Azure commitment. And we do the same thing with our sellers. So the marketplace sales retire our sellers compensation. So we’re like checking every box so that there’s no friction in the system. So that, so the partner, the customer, our sellers, they’re all juiced to go and. [00:12:03] Cyril Belikoff: Deals with marketplace. [00:12:04] Vince Menzione: I, I hope everybody un understand. I mean, I understand this. I hope everybody else understand this too. ’cause I, I was, watch, you know, I, I, I watched LinkedIn and I see people post things and somebody made a comment about how difficult it was to use Microsoft Portal. And I was thinking to myself, do you realize that there’s, I’ll say 150 billion, but it’s probably a bigger number than that. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: That’s a total addressable market available to you if you’re a Microsoft partner. You can access these customer commitments. [00:12:30] Cyril Belikoff: Oh yes. [00:12:30] Vince Menzione: If you bring your product on Mark over 400 now [00:12:32] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:33] Vince Menzione: You bring your product into the marketplace, you have access and the customer can retire that commitment. [00:12:38] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:39] Vince Menzione: Without having to justify a new cost justification. [00:12:41] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. They don’t have to go to procurement. They don’t have to. Yeah. [00:12:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I mean, it’s a huge opportunity. [00:12:46] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:46] Vince Menzione: So, um, so you’ve been focused on quite a bit. We wanted to invite John on stage. [00:12:53] Cyril Belikoff: Great. [00:12:53] Vince Menzione: John, you from Sugar is here. Where’s John? Is John in the house? Where’s John? [00:12:57] Cyril Belikoff: There he is. [00:12:58] Vince Menzione: Who’s also an expert in Marketplace. [00:13:00] Vince Menzione: A great friend of Ultimate Partner. Great. Hey, how’s it going? He’s a great partner of Ultimate Partner. Great to see you, sir. All the way from San Fran. Oh, actually we’re on your side of the coast, so, uh, it’s long. He looks [00:13:12] Jon Yoo: cooler than us [00:13:12] Vince Menzione: though. He, he always looks cool. I said that about time. [00:13:15] Jon Yoo: You know, I gotta be comfortable. [00:13:16] Jon Yoo: I gotta be comfortable. [00:13:18] Vince Menzione: So John, good to, good to have you. You’re thanks for having us. You guys are like, every time I see a post from you, you’re moving into a new office space ’cause you’ve outgrown your office space. [00:13:26] Jon Yoo: Yeah, we’re, we’re really excited about the new office. We have hvac, which is a, a big, big, uh, it’s a big thing. [00:13:31] Jon Yoo: Improvements, high ceilings, you know, the whole works h help [00:13:36] Cyril Belikoff: sometimes. Yeah, [00:13:37] Jon Yoo: yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we have our, uh, office opening party if anyone’s an SF on Ally first. [00:13:41] Vince Menzione: Nice. Nice. Yeah. May, may, May 21st. May 21st. That’s right. Well, so, so you’ve been, you’ve had like a front row seat to all of this. I would love to get your perspective on what you’re seeing across partners and what’s changed over the last 12 months. [00:13:55] Jon Yoo: Yeah, so, uh, for those that don’t know, um, sugar is a, uh, a revenue platform for cloud marketplaces and co-selling. Um, so we partner very closely with Microsoft as well as either hyperscalers and other marketplaces like Snowflake, Alibaba, et cetera. And what we, what, what I’m seeing is a couple things. One marketplace is becoming a default to go to market engine. [00:14:17] Jon Yoo: So, you know, I think a lot of people see the stats about how the, the GMV, so, you know, the, the throughput through these marketplaces have been doubling. We’re seeing that in our data as well. So we’re seeing triple digit revenue growth from marketplaces. We’re seeing companies who, you know, maybe the earlier end of marketplaces were infra platform layer of software that used to really adopt it. [00:14:37] Jon Yoo: Now you’re seeing. You know, explosion in a business application layer of companies as well. And so that’s super exciting. I’d say the second piece is channel players are getting more and more involved. Um, I think, you know, I’m the Silicon Valley SaaS bubble, uh, or the AI bubble, so to speak. And I didn’t know as much about the channel world and even these big AI companies. [00:14:59] Jon Yoo: I mean, you’re seeing unprecedented, unprecedented demand, uh, for these, you know, LMS or these AI biz apps. And despite that, they are really working with a partner ecosystem because you’re realizing that most of the world do not really know how to adopt ai. Yeah. And they’re really leaning on expertise. [00:15:18] Jon Yoo: And these AI companies, AI native companies, are looking to channel partners who have these. You know, relationships with their end buyers on how to deliver change managements, how to deliver enablement, not just a system integration site. [00:15:32] Vince Menzione: And they’re also looking to the platform or platforms in the case, Microsoft here also. [00:15:36] Vince Menzione: Right. Which, because like what, where am I gonna do just go out and buy philanthropic or Claude or whatever? I need that to be integrated into my enterprise as well. Right, exactly. [00:15:46] Jon Yoo: So we’re definitely seeing like more adoption of Microsoft Foundry, for example, as people think about security and governance and whatnot. [00:15:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Very cool. Any comments on, on? [00:15:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, that makes absolute sense. It’s, uh, um, you know, lots of layers to AI from data. The a, the AI layer itself, the application layer, uh, and innovations happening at all of those pieces of the stack. Um, and so when a software company is trying to, you know, uh, modernize their thought process or build new. [00:16:19] Cyril Belikoff: They ha they have to think about all of those components. Foundry obviously is the AI layer and it provides them with capability to be agile and move quickly and do compliance and, and snap into an organization’s, um, architecture. But it’s the same applies to data, like how it’s fine to have AI but doesn’t, doesn’t do anything without data. [00:16:40] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:16:40] Cyril Belikoff: And so then how do they get data in the cloud? Um, uh, [00:16:44] Vince Menzione: and then how do you security [00:16:45] Cyril Belikoff: govern and govern, right? And how you secure govern, you know, all those sort of things. So obviously we have first party experiences, but they have partners with, um, their own solutions. They’re built on top of, [00:16:53] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:16:53] Cyril Belikoff: Those Microsoft layers. And, uh, you know, like John says, lots of momentum. [00:16:58] Vince Menzione: So let’s talk about the maturity curve. Like walk us through it. Where do you see partners in this room sitting today? And what does it take to move for them to move to the next stage? Like, what would be your guidance for, for this group? [00:17:11] Jon Yoo: So, you know, we, we work across the entire spectrum of companies. You know, we work with the, the largest enterprises who’ve done billions through these marketplaces like Snowflake, workday, to leading AI companies like Glean or OpenAI, uh, to earlier stage startups who are completely new to marketplaces and really look for, for guidance around what do I do in my first 90 days? [00:17:33] Jon Yoo: How do I get the attention of Microsoft sellers, or how do I. Optimize my marketplace operations so that we can be discovered, uh, really easily on Microsoft Marketplace and others. And the, the way that I think about it is companies first come on, because it is buyer driven oftentimes. So, I mean, that’s just the truth of the nature of you have these big enterprises that want to, you know, burn down their Mac agreements, for example, and that’s how they get started. [00:17:59] Jon Yoo: And or a, a as like this whole space maturing, you’re seeing. A new CRO come in and they’ve done this at X, Y, Z companies and they want to bring that playbook over. But then as they start to do a couple deals through these marketplaces, they think, and this is start of the the flywheel, right? Hey, what do I need for co-selling? [00:18:19] Jon Yoo: And there are systems, you know, integrations and playbooks that need to be done well. Once you do have co-selling figured out, how do I now know which opportunities to co-sell? So we have things like intense signals to be able to. Help them, you know, help overlay a cloud, go to market lens over your existing pipeline. [00:18:36] Jon Yoo: And then now it becomes less of a partnership initiative and actually elevates up to the CRO initiative. And across each of those, um, layers, uh, you have different automation needs because once you actually start to get the flywheel going, it becomes. Holy crap. Now I’m doing 10, 20, 30, 50% of my revenue through these market, you know, through, through marketplace. [00:18:58] Jon Yoo: And it’s creating different data pipelines of work to be done. And now I have to figure out my finance angle of how do I do revenue recognition through these indirect channels. And so that, that, that is kind of the maturity covers. I think about it when you try to retrofit like, uh, all the automation up front, it doesn’t go as well. [00:19:16] Jon Yoo: You have to do a crawl, walk, run approach so that you can also build and bring the rest of the organization with you. So if I look at ’em to the, you know, there’s some familiar faces, some folks that probably are wondering some new faces [00:19:28] Vince Menzione: as well. [00:19:29] Jon Yoo: Yeah. What, what Microsoft marketplace or what marketplace even is. [00:19:33] Jon Yoo: I’d probably say people are in that transformation bucket of, Hey, I’ve done a couple of deals, we’re in this early stages of co-selling. Now I, now I gotta figure out how to supercharge it because this is kind of the future, you know, we can talk more about agenta commerce and whatnot, but, um, I think a lot of people are figuring it out than looking for. [00:19:51] Jon Yoo: For guidance here, [00:19:53] Vince Menzione: zero. [00:19:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. You know, I would say, um, I’ll get what I call tactical yet strategic. [00:20:01] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:20:01] Cyril Belikoff: Which just think about product-led growth. Yeah. Just think about, uh, similar to the consumer world, if you wanna sell something, you need search engine optimization. If you are thinking about these marketplaces and Microsoft marketplace being one, how are you optimizing your listing so that when a user goes into like the search bar, it’s optimized to bring back the results that make sense to you? [00:20:29] Cyril Belikoff: I think historically we’ve had scenarios where some partners have used the marketplace primarily as like a transaction thing. They’ve done the deal, but then they’re transacted on the marketplace ’cause they wanna retire the the Azure commitment. And that is changing to be sort of product led and marketplace led, uh, versus deal led. [00:20:49] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, but you cannot have a generic one line sentence in your listing. You will not be surfaced unless the customer literally knows your name and will search for you. You’ll not be surfaced if they search for a particular category healthcare app that does something right. And if that’s your thing, you should have the right keywords, you have the right images, have the right videos, and we believed in it so much. [00:21:14] Cyril Belikoff: We actually built a listing optimization AI tool that will auto look at your listing. And based on our best practices, and we know what our search engine is doing, we will make recommendations to you on how to improve. Listing. And so it’s not like a read a document as a best practice. It actually will be an ai, uh, customized tool for your particular listing. [00:21:37] Cyril Belikoff: So lean into those types of things, you know, to, as John says, says, think about the digital flow. This over time will become much more of your, of your business. So make sure you’re thinking about, you know, if someone’s on the marketplace and they decide to trial something for you, how, how are you following up? [00:21:56] Cyril Belikoff: Like, how do you take the next steps? Um, maybe you, maybe you working with a reseller and you don’t have your own sellers, but how do you wiring that into your resellers so your resellers are following up? Or if you have your own sellers, you know, your own sellers are doing it. So you have to sort of digitize your thinking on sales and marketing in this new market, commercial marketplace world, versus in the same way we would’ve done in like the consumer marketplace on Amazon or, you know, um, as you search something on Google. [00:22:26] Cyril Belikoff: Maybe bing. Um, so, um, yeah, yeah. This [00:22:29] Vince Menzione: size. B Come on, come on. [00:22:31] Cyril Belikoff: I [00:22:31] Vince Menzione: had bing. [00:22:32] Cyril Belikoff: Um, [00:22:33] Jon Yoo: I do wanna double click on that, which is when, when we, you know, I talk about like, hey, a lot of it’s buyer driven. A lot of people think about private offers, but then the marketplace offers. But the reality actually, when we look at the data is that there’s a lot more self-service [00:22:46] Vince Menzione: correct [00:22:47] Jon Yoo: offers than there are what they call private offers. [00:22:50] Jon Yoo: So where there’s deal led and that, that, that, that shift. It’s super exciting to see where now these marketplaces are becoming where buyers or users go to discover new products. Let alone, you know, in the future where let’s say there’s an AI agent that has some reward seeking function, and in order to do its job, it needs to go purchase a tool marketplace might be the channel where this happens, which is all the reason why that your listing does need to be optimized. [00:23:16] Jon Yoo: So that one, the agent knows exactly what your tool does and it can match against. Reward. And then second, you have to win the a EO race, right? Yeah. Of, of how you show up in these AI engines. So just wanted to double click on how important that is. Yeah. [00:23:31] Cyril Belikoff: Makes, makes total sense. And we’re, we’re seeing that shift from private office to having a public listed price and a, a public offer as well. [00:23:39] Cyril Belikoff: And so we’re, we’re ourselves investing in our own marketing demand generation. Just in the last three to four months because we’ve seen that taking off and as soon as we saw the signal, we’re like, oh, we should pour fuel on that fire. Because if, if we see organically customers don’t do it, we should, you know, we should go after that and help them understand that we’re here. [00:23:58] Cyril Belikoff: And, uh, if it’s working for some that are doing it by themselves, it’ll work for others and we’re seeing really, really good results. Um, so yeah, get your listing optimized. Think about your digital flows. As John says, the flows of the future are probably agentic wise, maybe not even a human coming to the Microsoft marketplace. [00:24:17] Cyril Belikoff: So you gotta be thinking, not now, it’s okay. You have time. Um, but in the future, you know, six months from now, that quite easily is a scenario. So you really have to start thinking about those, uh, those, uh, digital flows. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. It’s so insightful. Well, it’s what you call product led growth, basically. Yes. And agent led growth. [00:24:35] Vince Menzione: Yes. Right. In some respects. So this is where like we need to think about that. The future model where the agent comes in and actually does the purchasing. We’re not there yet, are we? [00:24:45] Jon Yoo: No. With some products, you know, um, especially, especially if it’s like developer tools. We’re starting to see some of that, but, uh, no one’s gonna buy a cybersecurity solution. [00:24:55] Jon Yoo: Um, that’s seven figures or an agent’s not gonna do that. Right. But the eng the, the search functions are a little bit changing. [00:25:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So a lot of ai, you know, we had Steven Boyle on earlier, we were talking about ai, AI natives, you know, that’s Jason Grey’s organization does a lot of work in that area. How do these organizations need to think and act and how do they leverage the cloud marketplaces? [00:25:17] Vince Menzione: Or how do le how do marketplaces fit into the equation? ’cause most of them are coming from a different like paradigm or mindset. [00:25:24] Jon Yoo: I mean, uh, it’s like the number one question, you know, I’ll give a little personal story of like, I get a lot of parking tickets, uh, and I don’t know how to pay off my late fees. [00:25:34] Jon Yoo: So we set up a little open claw that will actually go and ask me questions, and it actually pays off my parking tickets on my behalf. Um, so, so, so, you know, on the other hand, like there, there’s layers to it, right? It could be like layer one, I ask ai, Hey, how do I pay off my parking tickets? Layer two could be. [00:25:52] Jon Yoo: Hey, you know, what’s the best way for me to structure my cadence to pay off the parking tickets? And then layer three is like, Hey, AI, proactively check if I have parking tickets and go pay it on my behalf. Here’s my credit card information, you know, stored in a secure vault. So, uh, what, what I mean by a native as a company bring that analogy is, uh, bringing it at its core. [00:26:12] Jon Yoo: So like a little for, for sugar. We’ve spent the past six months optimizing around our entire, like company brain where we are storing all the context. To a singular, singular place that is queryable, that there’s no coordination tax between teams. Our entire product development process actually is automated where we have multiple agents debating one another, PRDs to code generation, code review, uh, you know, security, qa, et cetera, et cetera. [00:26:40] Jon Yoo: And then there’s humans in the loop across the process. So I would actually think about when we, when we fit that into, into marketplaces, it’s not just thinking about who’s going to send the offers or who’s gonna do the co-sell, or who’s gonna X, Y, Z, but how do you bring all that together so that your sales reps and your partnership person and Microsoft all has to share context in a given deal and it’s done automatically without, you know, back office folks having to update what partner led or partner influence means and reporting things in a, in an old way. [00:27:11] Jon Yoo: So it’s almost re-imagining. Entire workflow, given everyone should have open context of what’s going on in a given deal. So let’s say maybe a hand wavy way of answering that question. Yeah. But it does mean that we should be re-imagining, uh, what the job to be done is, uh, very fundamentally [00:27:28] Vince Menzione: cy, how are you thinking about it since you’re building the, the, the toolkit at Microsoft? [00:27:32] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, John says absolutely is right, particularly around marketplace and how that sort of flow and ecosystem will work. Um, in addition to that, it’s. Not only about how marketplace or about developers ’cause the developer, uh, scenario or persona was the first globally to see the value of AI and agents in the flow of their work. [00:27:55] Cyril Belikoff: It was the first to like, oh, one developer can now do much more. I can be empowered, I can build agents to work on my behalf. I can, uh, I can be an architect instead of a hands-on coder. Right. It’s changed the profile of what developers do exactly what. Uh, John mentioned what he’s doing himself. That’s just one profile of a user. [00:28:17] Cyril Belikoff: Th there are many other profiles. A sales person, a marketer, a uh, CFO team, hr. Each of these are literally going through the same transformation. They’re one beat behind developers because developers, you know, was really tech enabled and tech stack driven, and the, and the opportunity was, was obvious quite quickly. [00:28:39] Cyril Belikoff: These are coming really quickly. This is not like the internet adoption cycle that took many multiple years. This is like, we’re talking months. So, and even inside Microsoft, we have our own, what we call, uh, frontier Marketing Internal Initiative to re, um, rewire marketers and how they go about their daily job and stop doing it this way and do it this way. [00:29:04] Cyril Belikoff: Just pick up M 365 copilot with. Coworking Claude, uh, embedded and just go do the work. Why do you have to outsource this or create this? Just edit the video right there yourself. Like, why do you have to just go do the, as a marketer you want to create a beautiful piece of content, just go and create it. [00:29:21] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause it can create it for you now. [00:29:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:29:23] Cyril Belikoff: three months ago, literally three months ago, it couldn’t do that. And so what is it gonna be in two months for a marketer or a salesperson or finance person? I mean, just co-pilot in Excel. What that is doing to the financial business is in, like if you, any financial person will tell you they live and breathe through in Excel, like it’s just, it’s their equivalent of, it runs [00:29:44] Vince Menzione: most businesses [00:29:44] Cyril Belikoff: their dev tool, right? [00:29:45] Cyril Belikoff: It’s their thing. It’s really [00:29:46] Vince Menzione: is. [00:29:47] Cyril Belikoff: So this is happening over and over again. Again, if you can package those things up and package a package, that piece of IP on a marketplace is, is not only gonna be a big system, it could be a very, very small piece of. Functionality in a flow for a marketer or a salesperson that is so valuable that can be solved many times on a marketplace. [00:30:08] Cyril Belikoff: And in many cases, everyone’s a software company at this point. Everybody can go and package something up. And so I would be stunned if we don’t see cross pollination from system integrators to channel partners, all just publishing on marketplaces based on, oh, I’ve done this thing four times. I cannot do it 400 times. [00:30:26] Cyril Belikoff: Let me just package it up and put it on a marketplace. So. Yeah, I’m sure you know, John alluded to that. It’s, there’s a lot of exciting times. [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: No, the future [00:30:33] Jon Yoo: is [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: great. What do you [00:30:34] Jon Yoo: totally, I mean, it’s, it’s a case of like, how do, what does being marketplace native also mean? [00:30:38] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:30:38] Jon Yoo: You know, and not, I feel like I’ve seen so many people just use it as a, Hey, we’re opportunistically there and if we get some leads out of it, great. [00:30:45] Jon Yoo: Or if there’s some deals, great, but they’re not really leaning in and being marketplace native the way, you know, and right now there’s, this might be uncomfortable, but there’s no excuses. You know, like creating a partner marketing content with your brand guidelines. It should not take so many time. Or it’s a 10 minute exercise. [00:31:02] Jon Yoo: Exactly. Exactly. Three [00:31:03] Cyril Belikoff: prompts. [00:31:05] Vince Menzione: It used to be that ops used to get involved because, oh, we, we know that they have a commitment. Let’s go run it through the marketplace. Right now, what you both have been suggesting here is it becomes a discoverable process. It becomes part of your normal go to market strategy, and you’re, you’re driving pr, product led growth and SEO and all the things you need to do running a a corporation and modern corporation today. [00:31:26] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, [00:31:26] Vince Menzione: exactly. So, what’s the future like? Where, where do we go in 12 months with this? What do you think? What do you predict? We, we get out a Ouija board or a crystal ball here. What, what, what do we think? [00:31:38] Cyril Belikoff: I think more broadly in the industry, you’re gonna, some of the scenarios that John alluded to, agent to agent interactions, uh, many agents acting on behalf of humans and on behalf of organizations, uh, and doing. [00:31:55] Cyril Belikoff: Simple things and quite complex things. Uh, and those need to be, uh, managed carefully, uh, with, uh, the right, uh, engagements and built carefully. And in, in many cases, customers will look to partners that are quote unquote certified on, uh, uh, HyperCloud platform. Uh, as a way to get going quickly, but also get the, the quality that they need. [00:32:21] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and I think instead of buying this monolithic, massive application, I think we will see lots more of smaller applications being built that have cleaner open, uh, you know, MC, you know, MCP type agent interfaces that can just work together, uh, without, you know. More complicated integration work, [00:32:42] Vince Menzione: cobbled together your own solutions as opposed to big [00:32:45] Cyril Belikoff: monolithic [00:32:45] Vince Menzione: applications. [00:32:46] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, there’ll be a much more agile, [00:32:48] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:32:48] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, personalization. I mean, a lot of people saying SaaS is dead. It’s not quite dead. But I think that SaaS will get significantly more agile, more custom and more personal, uh, for, uh, for customers. [00:33:03] Jon Yoo: I, I would agree with that. Um, I mean, I’m biased, but I think marketplace are gonna be even more relevant than ever. [00:33:08] Jon Yoo: I mean, it’s already highly relevant, but, uh, as you, you know, I think in the past the, the narrative was, well, there’s a new generation of buyers and they’re millennials. They, they wanted, you know, uh, I always talk about consumer experience to B2B sales, you know, and, and now it’s like agents that’s that on steroids. [00:33:24] Jon Yoo: Um, but what I, you know, beyond that, I think, uh, there, there’s a lot of talk of like SAS apocalypse or software companies getting. Destroyed by, you know, the, the, the AI labs or SaaS is dead or whatever. I think SaaS is gonna, I mean, there’s gonna be way more software companies because the cost to build is a lot easier. [00:33:46] Jon Yoo: That means that competition will be. Even more fierce than ever. And you have all these AI native companies that are coming out with a quicker time to market, quicker time to value, and they have some recursive loops that makes the product even that much better. Um, so what that means for everyone is like, one, you gotta go back to the, the core differentiations. [00:34:06] Jon Yoo: Or like in the past, maybe the, the time to build was the differentiation, but today it’s, or you know, there’s some other, obviously the core elements, but then there’s. Distribution. Yeah. So how do you partner with Microsoft, for example? How do you have your own self-improving like distribution model? That makes sense. [00:34:22] Jon Yoo: Marketplace being a huge component of that. Two is obviously there, there’s a piece of like network and data. That’s what we think about of hey, what makes our product better as more, more people use it. Um, because yeah, competition is crazy fierce and it finally goes into times deployment. That’s why you see these companies like. [00:34:41] Jon Yoo: Open AI anthropic that are competing for their enterprise, uh, pie. And instead of doing it themselves, they’re, I mean, I think OpenAI just did a joint venture of like $4.1 billion into the deployment company. Anthropics doing the same, they’re surrounding themselves with the ecosystem and channel is going to be more relevant than than ever, as long as you know how to enable AI services and know how to deliver on this technology to the, to the broader world. [00:35:07] Jon Yoo: And so. Channel awesome. Marketplace, awesome. You know, competition’s gonna be fierce. Success is not going anywhere. [00:35:16] Vince Menzione: Good conversation, gentlemen. [00:35:18] Jon Yoo: Awesome. [00:35:18] Vince Menzione: I’ve been told we’re over time. I wanted to open it up to questions. Um, but I do feel like we, yeah, I’ll get, I’ll get yelled at. But this was incredible. Um, some great, I mean, the, the pa it, it’s terrific to see. [00:35:36] Vince Menzione: How far we’ve come in, so shorter period of time, and it’s only gonna continue to get better. I think the one question I’ll have is like, what, what would hold any of these companies back at this point? It feels like it’s such a compelling reason we need to move forward. Is there, is there anything, like why would, why would we hold back? [00:35:54] Cyril Belikoff: Um, you know, some of the discussions we have, um, is about how to balance today’s world with tomorrow’s world a little bit. [00:36:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:02] Cyril Belikoff: Today’s business model with tomorrow’s business model, today’s financial results with tomorrow’s financial results. Um, and there are very different approaches to all of this. [00:36:13] Cyril Belikoff: Those AI natives, they’re like, there is no yesterday. There’s only tomorrow. Um, there those companies that realize they’re being threatened by AI natives and so they have to move quickly. Um, and, uh. Figure out a, a, a business model and then someone else who wants to do a bit of both and bridge into it. [00:36:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:32] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and just within that frame there are different ways to tackle it, whether it’s create two teams, one’s the future team, one’s the current team, and, you know, may the best team win, um, makes sense with the customer and that, uh, or, uh, give the, give the customer the choice and have the teams going together. [00:36:49] Cyril Belikoff: So there are lots of different approaches. [00:36:51] Vince Menzione: Right. So great to have you. Did you have some, did you have a comment to make on that? [00:36:55] Jon Yoo: Uh, no. Just, uh, unwillingness to lean in and learn something new. Yeah. [00:36:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:37:00] Jon Yoo: I’m, I’m, I’m much more in the burn all boats buckets. Yeah, [00:37:03] Vince Menzione: I know. Me too. [00:37:03] Jon Yoo: Of, uh, no, no old team and new team. [00:37:05] Jon Yoo: Just new team and you know, that’s just push forward. [00:37:07] Vince Menzione: Well, great to have two amazing leaders on stage with [00:37:10] Cyril Belikoff: us. Thanks [00:37:10] Vince Menzione: so [00:37:10] Cyril Belikoff: much. [00:37:10] Vince Menzione: So thank you [00:37:11] Jon Yoo: so much. Yeah, thank [00:37:11] Vince Menzione: you [00:37:15] Jon Yoo: so much. [00:37:16] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget. Ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, October 26th through October 28th in Reston, Virginia. I hope to see you there. [00:37:28] I.

In Episode 178 of Love, Sex & Tarot, host Acacia opens with a personal story about how she discovered tarot during a major life turning point at age 37 — a period of burnout, mental health challenges, and radical self-reassessment. She shares how tarot became a tool for shifting focus from impossible circumstances toward possible futures, offering listeners insight into her conversational, intention-based reading style. This episode features multiple love tarot readings using charm pulls (Stingray, Captain's Wheel, and Snowflake), covering themes including: • Toxic and pressure-cooker relationships with third-party interference and drama queen energy • Reconciliation readings — exploring whether a person wants to return, apologize, and commit • Sexual energy and intimacy cards, including desire, passion, and deep emotional connection • Capricorn-specific messages about self-worth, walking away from situationships, and deserving loyal, divorce-level commitment • Shadow work and denial, including the pain of awakening to a situation you can no longer ignore • A general love note from spirit touching on surrender, authenticity, financial stress, and healing Acacia closes with guidance on finding your “cardinal direction” in love and life — encouraging listeners to stop circling in indecision and start taking daily steps toward what they truly deserve. ⚠️ These are performances and for entertainment purposes only. Make Good Decisions www.lovesexandtarot.com lovesexandtarot@gmail.com Socials: @lovesexandtarot Find me on YouTube and TikTok Keywords: love tarot reading, weekly tarot, reconciliation tarot, toxic relationship tarot, tarot for Capricorn, third party situation tarot, will they come back tarot, love sex and tarot podcast, tarot card pull, tarot for beginners, spiritual awakening, tarot love note​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​