Latest / The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors / From Zero to 20 AI Agents in 10 Months: The SaaStr Playbook for Actually Deploying AI Agents That Work

Transcript

From Zero to 20 AI Agents in 10 Months: The SaaStr Playbook for Actually Deploying AI Agents That Work · The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

0:00
SPEAKER_02: All right.
0:00
SPEAKER_02: Welcome, everybody.
0:01
SPEAKER_02: My name is Craig Swensford,
0:03
SPEAKER_02: the founder and CEO of Qualified,
0:04
SPEAKER_02: and I'm joined today in Qualified Studios by two very special guests.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: Of course,
0:09
SPEAKER_02: we have Jason Lemkin,
0:10
SPEAKER_02: who's originally the founder and CEO of EchoSign,
0:13
SPEAKER_02: sold to Adobe in 2011.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: And of course,
0:16
SPEAKER_02: everybody knows him today as the founder and CEO of Sastr,
0:20
SPEAKER_02: and also Emilio LaRoute,
0:23
SPEAKER_02: who is the chief AI officer.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Of Sastr, which is totally awesome.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for being with us today.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's great.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: All right.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: So what does everybody want to know about in today's day and age?
0:35
SPEAKER_02: Agents.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: What's going on out there in the real world with agents?
0:39
SPEAKER_02: And Jason,
0:40
SPEAKER_02: something I read that you post on LinkedIn was people are wondering,
0:44
SPEAKER_02: there's a ton of agent platforms,
0:46
SPEAKER_02: agentic solutions,
0:48
SPEAKER_02: AI this,
0:48
SPEAKER_02: AI that,
0:49
SPEAKER_02: that are on the market right now.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: Where do I actually...
0:52
SPEAKER_02: And then I think somebody wrote, what's better, Replit or Lovable?
0:56
SPEAKER_02: Which AISDR platform is the best?
0:58
SPEAKER_02: What AI tool is the best for RevOps?
1:00
SPEAKER_02: And you had a killer answer to that.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: Can you share that with us?
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was learning, because we started 2025 behind.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: We had a lot of AI speakers at Saster, but we were pretty AI lean here.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: We started with one general tool, and now we've expanded it to 20 agents.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: And we use Qualified and 20 tools that are sort of,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: maybe 12 are part of our core architecture,
1:23
SPEAKER_01: which Amelia can talk about.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: But it took me a while to know the answer to that question,
1:28
SPEAKER_01: or to know the answer between Replit and Lovable,
1:30
SPEAKER_01: they're related,
1:30
SPEAKER_01: we could talk about it,
1:31
SPEAKER_01: but listen,
1:33
SPEAKER_01: Today, the world's gonna keep changing.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: This stuff is new, right?
1:36
SPEAKER_01: In fact,
1:36
SPEAKER_01: most of these products,
1:37
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about Qualified,
1:38
SPEAKER_01: but certainly Replit and Lovable didn't even work before,
1:41
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:41
SPEAKER_01: Claude 4,
1:42
SPEAKER_01: okay?
1:42
SPEAKER_01: It didn't even work before the start of 2025.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: Replit, Lovable didn't even exist.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: Replit existed for a decade, but the AI just wasn't good enough.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: So everything's changed.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: And what I learned is,
1:53
SPEAKER_01: pick a leading vendor,
1:55
SPEAKER_01: for sure,
1:55
SPEAKER_01: it does matter,
1:56
SPEAKER_01: but training's more important.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: Training is more important.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: There are very few agentic products
2:03
SPEAKER_01: At least...
2:04
SPEAKER_01: that have some of a complexity,
2:06
SPEAKER_01: where you wanted to do something,
2:07
SPEAKER_01: like a Qualified,
2:07
SPEAKER_01: interact with customers,
2:09
SPEAKER_01: speak with authority,
2:10
SPEAKER_01: close deals,
2:11
SPEAKER_01: right?
2:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Amelia was telling me last week,
2:13
SPEAKER_01: Qualified set up seven appointments for us,
2:15
SPEAKER_00: right,
2:15
SPEAKER_00: on its own.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Now that sounds great, and it is great.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Like, put that as a case study.
2:19
But it wouldn't have happened if we put zero minutes of
2:21
training into it,
2:22
right?
2:22
SPEAKER_01: Right, 100%.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: So I would rather,
2:24
SPEAKER_01: listen,
2:24
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:25
SPEAKER_01: we're on the Qualified podcast,
2:26
SPEAKER_01: by Qualified,
2:26
SPEAKER_01: we are super fans.
2:28
But more important is just,
2:29
in any space,
2:30
support,
2:31
marketing,
2:31
sales,
2:32
coding,
2:32
just pick a leader.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: and go deep, train it, train it upfront for 30 days, commit the time,
2:40
SPEAKER_01: And every day for the next 30 days, train it, and then every week.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: And first of all, most people don't know how to do it.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is if you think, I mean, you were at Salesforce.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: Think about how people bought enterprise software before AI.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: You would buy it from a sales rep.
2:54
Then you might hire an Accenture or a Blue Wolf to deploy it
2:57
over like a year.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And you would hope and pray it worked like the sales rep told you.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: You got it.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: No one will tolerate that in AI this year.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: No one will tolerate it.
3:05
Time to value actually often has to be even before you get a
3:09
contract signed.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: Right.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: And so and training is this key piece to it.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: You've got to train it.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: So that's I mean, you know, we love qualified.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm deep on replet versus lovable.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: But in the replet versus lovable, they are different.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: But most important is just knowing the goddamn thing.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: Spending a hundred.
3:28
You know,
3:28
I've only 100 days into replet,
3:29
but I'm probably 200 hour expert now.
3:32
to make it great and so that's that is just a sea change in how
3:35
we use software
3:35
we're used to buying from a people person and then scaling it
3:40
up over time and
3:41
having humans do all the work put the leads in and the context
3:44
those days are
3:45
behind us but remember the old adage which was like no one got
3:48
fired for buying ibm
3:49
so yes in like the old days people would wait to see like who's
3:52
the emerging leader
3:53
so they would wait wait wait until there was like the ibm and
3:56
then they would go
3:57
SPEAKER_02: but you're just saying
3:58
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to pick the leader.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: Just pick a leader.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: Like pick somebody.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: Pick a leader and go.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: And go and invest the time in training it.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: And we're also at a weird time where –
4:09
SPEAKER_01: In many categories, there is no billion dollar ARR company yet.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: There is no,
4:13
SPEAKER_01: you can say you're a leader,
4:14
SPEAKER_01: maybe qualified's the leader,
4:15
SPEAKER_01: but as great as qualified is,
4:17
SPEAKER_01: it's not a billion ARR yet,
4:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't think,
4:18
SPEAKER_01: right?
4:18
SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen the numbers.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: Not quite yet.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: Not yet.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: So we are seeing leaders emerge, but it's early.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time,
4:24
SPEAKER_01: what is different from the old days,
4:26
SPEAKER_01: not only are leaders emerging,
4:28
SPEAKER_01: but we've never seen so many folks looking for new vendors.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: They're either looking for new vendors because they have AI budget,
4:35
they're looking for vendors because they're under pressure from
4:36
their boss to show
4:37
SPEAKER_01: AI innovation,
4:40
SPEAKER_01: And in many cases, it's the only incremental budget.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: No one is putting more budget into their old SaaS software.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: It's all going into AI.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: And so everyone's in market.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: It used to be,
4:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you learned as a marketer at Salesforce,
4:53
but traditionally you'd hoped a prospect would be in market
4:56
every five to six
4:57
SPEAKER_01: years.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: right, for a big buy, right?
5:00
SPEAKER_01: Because it would take like a year to get it going,
5:02
SPEAKER_01: the second year to scale up,
5:04
SPEAKER_01: the third year to get frustrated,
5:05
SPEAKER_01: and the fourth year to start looking at a new solution at a fifth year,
5:10
SPEAKER_01: right?
5:10
SPEAKER_01: Now everything's in market again.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: This has never happened, maybe when the web started, right?
5:15
SPEAKER_01: But everything's in market, it's in total flux.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: It means a lot of things for different players.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: But if you're a buyer, just get going.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: It's the right parallel, right?
5:24
SPEAKER_02: In 1999, 2000, like everything was in flux.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: And nobody knew, is PeopleSoft going to lead me to the future of HR?
5:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, is Siebel going to lead me to the future of CRM?
5:34
SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of like that same thing right now.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: Like who's going to lead me to the future of,
5:38
SPEAKER_02: in our case,
5:38
SPEAKER_02: go to market,
5:39
SPEAKER_02: but in all these other markets.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: But even there, you know, as cloud got bigger, you know,
5:45
The only time I think in our lifetimes we saw intense pressure
5:49
to go to the cloud was 2020.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
5:50
And that was an exogenous situation where people,
5:54
I literally saw investments I made.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: We saw it in new signatures,
5:57
SPEAKER_01: but I saw it in companies I invested in,
5:59
SPEAKER_01: like,
5:59
SPEAKER_01: talk desks for cloud contact center.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: Like,
6:01
you could wait 20 years to decide if you really wanted your
6:03
contact center to go to
6:04
SPEAKER_01: the cloud.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: And then in March 2020, these businesses went 10x.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, because I have no choice, right?
6:10
But that was the only time when people felt like they had to go
6:12
to the cloud instantly.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: But now...
6:15
SPEAKER_01: Yes,
6:15
SPEAKER_01: it is a small subset of tech and innovation,
6:18
SPEAKER_01: but there's so much money in I need to go AI today.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: Right.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: Right.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: And you've got to be part of that if you want to win.
6:23
SPEAKER_02: For most companies, it's coming tops down from their board.
6:26
SPEAKER_02: It's like their board to the CEO to everybody else.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: Move, move, move.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: And so, of course, that's where the incremental budget is coming from.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: You guys are a unique company because of who you are and what you do.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: But you said at the beginning of this year, I had zero agents.
6:40
SPEAKER_02: And now I've got 20 agents that are in production doing various things.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: And Amelia, you're the chief AI officer of the company.
6:49
SPEAKER_02: What have you got?
6:50
SPEAKER_02: And kind of how have you done it?
6:51
SPEAKER_02: And what have you learned?
6:52
we started with a platform for advice right so saster that
6:56
jason started was for
6:58
giving founders advice giving them you know how to hire my next
7:01
vp of sales what
7:02
should their comp plan be how should i hire the next cro when
7:05
to hire a cro don't
7:07
SPEAKER_00: hire you know a marketer who's only going to give you blue pens like
7:10
fate now famously classic advice right um for saster and so we
7:15
started the year
7:15
with no agents and we're like okay what's the number one
7:18
problem we have is like
7:19
outside of saster annual or like saster london all these events
7:22
we do people always
7:23
want to ask jason a question right like they come up to him
7:25
even here at dreamforce
7:26
people come out to him and ask him questions and you can't
7:29
really scale that and so
7:30
SPEAKER_00: we started with a platform that's called delphi and it's a clone of jason
7:34
SPEAKER_00: So it is all of your advice,
7:36
SPEAKER_00: your social media,
7:38
SPEAKER_00: everything on Saster for the last 12,
7:40
SPEAKER_00: 13 years in the clone.
7:43
By the way,
7:43
it's incredible for the founders and entrepreneurs that are out
7:45
there.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Try it.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: It is incredible.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: Go to saster.com in the bottom right-hand corner.
7:50
SPEAKER_02: You'll see it.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, yeah.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were blown away at first how good it was.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: With training.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: With training.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: With training.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Because it ingested all of Saster,
7:56
SPEAKER_00: which is pretty...
7:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
7:58
SPEAKER_00: now I'm like,
7:58
SPEAKER_00: oh,
7:59
SPEAKER_00: a lot of tools do that.
8:00
But back,
8:00
like at the beginning of the year,
8:01
I was like,
8:01
that's impressive.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a lot of... It's like, what, 20 million words?
8:05
It was 20 million words of content,
8:06
1,000 YouTubes,
8:07
all the tweets,
8:07
all the LinkedIn's.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: It did break the ingestion engine.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: It did.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: But once it did, it was pretty good once we trained it.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, that's pretty magical.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: So you started... You call that Jason AI?
8:15
SPEAKER_00: That's the Jason AI.
8:16
Okay,
8:16
so you started with the Jason AI,
8:17
and then where did you go from there?
8:19
SPEAKER_00: So that was before our big event this year, which was in May.
8:22
And so in the run up to that famously,
8:24
we both were like,
8:25
okay,
8:25
this is pretty cool.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: And people are starting to use it more often.
8:28
They like it for advice again,
8:29
classic like,
8:30
but now it's like,
8:30
how do I hire VP of sales?
8:32
They have the conversation with the AI and the AI can have
8:35
follow-up conversations.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: So now we'll see people use it as like a copilot of,
8:38
SPEAKER_00: oh,
8:39
SPEAKER_00: Hey,
8:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about hiring this person for my VP of sales.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: What do you think of their resume?
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Or I asked them this in our interview and they asked me for this comp.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Should I push back on that?
8:47
SPEAKER_00: What would real Jason do?
8:49
And so that piece was cool,
8:50
and it's really good at that,
8:52
and it still is,
8:52
to your point.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: But where I kind of saw some failings that we both saw,
8:56
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
8:57
SPEAKER_00: it's not as good at answering our actual SaaS-ster needs of,
9:01
SPEAKER_00: okay,
9:02
SPEAKER_00: we have this event coming up.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: Right, so that's a specific use case of basically trying to clone Jason.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: But the interesting part to Amelia, for sure, it's a horizontal,
9:10
We talked at Dreamforce today about horizontal versus vertical
9:12
agents,
9:13
right?
9:13
SPEAKER_01: Delphi is as horizontal as it gets.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: There's almost no workflow.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: There's maybe a couple little triggers.
9:19
It can't do things that Qualified can,
9:20
but it can do a little bit of everything.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: And so it was supposed to just be digital JSON.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: And what was interesting is,
9:26
SPEAKER_01: and this is an issue with a lot of agents,
9:27
SPEAKER_01: people would start using it for support.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I got a booth at Sastra Annual.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: Can I have popcorn?
9:34
SPEAKER_01: And we didn't expect that.
9:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: And this is an issue so many will have with AI agencies.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: If it's good, if it's bad, you'll have no ROI.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: If it's good, people will start using it.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you hear it all the time.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: People will use it for things you did not envision if they trust it.
9:50
So instantly people wanted it for issues with attending our
9:54
events and for sponsors.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: And we're like, oh, well, then it started to hallucinate.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: It was pretty good on my content.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: And so we had a magical moment, which is we uploaded our prospectus.
10:04
And it only took a certain amount of context and training,
10:07
but then it started to get good.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: So then it was pretty good at doing maybe 20% of a qualified good.
10:14
But here's the thing,
10:15
and the people get this wrong,
10:16
20% is a lot better than zero.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: Like if we never used qualified and only used this general agent,
10:21
SPEAKER_01: we wouldn't have the seven appointments because it can't set meetings.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: But even 20% is better than zero if it's good.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: Just the fact that instead of it being,
10:29
SPEAKER_01: like we used to use intercom and it would be a weak response time.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
10:33
so we switched to our agent and it could instantly tell you
10:35
about 90% right,
10:37
SPEAKER_01: your customer question.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes 20% is enough.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: That's as far as we got.
10:42
And then when we had time after annual,
10:43
we're like,
10:44
okay,
10:44
let's do better.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: Let's go from horizontal to vertical as a phase two.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that's a bad approach for some folks.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: Like get one thing working that's horizontal,
10:53
SPEAKER_01: gets confident and then go,
10:55
SPEAKER_01: okay,
10:55
SPEAKER_01: now let's do SDR,
10:56
SPEAKER_01: BDR,
10:57
SPEAKER_01: marketing,
10:58
SPEAKER_01: dedicated this,
10:59
SPEAKER_01: dedicated that,
11:00
SPEAKER_01: right?
11:00
SPEAKER_01: So we went from horizontal to
11:02
SPEAKER_01: you know, 12 verticalized agents in a sense, right?
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
11:04
SPEAKER_00: but we knew in that process it set us up for where we are now,
11:08
SPEAKER_00: like successfully with multiple agents,
11:09
because I think otherwise if it had failed or if we expected
11:12
too much out of it,
11:13
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
11:14
SPEAKER_00: we probably would have stayed on the one or something or dumped it,
11:17
SPEAKER_00: right?
11:18
i think that's where we're like okay post annual when we have
11:20
more time um i
11:21
started to look for vendors like a qualified an artisan adelphi
11:26
that we could bring
11:27
on that would make sense for us right so saster has big scale
11:30
but internally we're
11:30
very small so it's okay the number one thing that was driving
11:33
me crazy was two full
11:34
like two things were driving me crazy the first being that when
11:38
you came to the
11:38
website to become a sponsor or buy a ticket is very antiquated
11:42
like fill out this
11:43
SPEAKER_00: contact form
11:44
SPEAKER_00: which I hated.
11:45
I was like,
11:46
not only is this the worst affiliate contact form,
11:49
it's very dated.
11:50
And also half the time I round robin it to our sales team,
11:52
they don't follow up.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: So that at least half the time, at least half the time.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: So like, I'm like half the time.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: I know if I'm giving it to like one of the better reps,
12:00
SPEAKER_00: it's going to get followed up with instantly,
12:02
SPEAKER_00: but I give it to the other rep because it's their day on round robin.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, they're either getting a response half the time or not at all.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: So have you blown all that up and you just do it all with agents now?
12:11
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: And who manages the agents?
12:14
SPEAKER_00: Right now, I do.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: This is why we changed my title to Chief AI Officer.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: It's an issue, right?
12:19
SPEAKER_01: Just briefly, we can talk about that.
12:21
The learning for folks that watch,
12:23
I didn't know this at the time,
12:24
stair-step it.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: I learned this for our agents and I learned it on Replit, okay?
12:28
SPEAKER_01: So the fact that we went from Delphi, a horizontal agent,
12:31
SPEAKER_01: which basically can self ingest your content with no training.
12:34
Like you do need to,
12:35
but it's the least amount of training of the tools in our
12:37
stack.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Start easy, start broad, get a few, get a win under your belt.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: Even if you started with say qualified,
12:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a total qualified,
12:45
SPEAKER_01: start for the simplest use case.
12:46
Because if you fail with your first agentic thing,
12:50
not only is it frustrating,
12:51
you won't know.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: You just won't know.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: Because we had the early win that was better than expected.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: Like our general digital JSON could do some sales.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: It could do some qualification.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: And it would start to say,
13:02
SPEAKER_01: you know what,
13:03
SPEAKER_01: Craig,
13:03
SPEAKER_01: you're not big enough for Saster Annual this year.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: Don't come.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: That was great for us.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: It would do it on its own.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: And so we gained confidence.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: And then I know we use different nomenclature.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: from you,
13:13
SPEAKER_01: but going from that to SDR to BDR,
13:15
SPEAKER_01: so going from outbound to inbound,
13:17
SPEAKER_01: for us,
13:17
SPEAKER_01: different people are different,
13:19
SPEAKER_01: for us outbound was easier than inbound.
13:21
It was less risky to send a better email than a mediocre human
13:26
than to trust an
13:27
SPEAKER_01: agent with a precious lead.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: You got it, totally.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to go to the most complex part,
13:35
SPEAKER_01: at least somehow learn first, cause it's just too risky.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: But if you can stair step this stuff,
13:40
SPEAKER_01: you will build confidence by your second,
13:42
SPEAKER_01: third agent or deployment.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: And we didn't intend, but that's what we ended up doing.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: That's how even us were successful.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: We stair step.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: I think every company is probably a little bit different,
13:48
SPEAKER_02: but like the stair step,
13:50
SPEAKER_02: we always talk about,
13:50
SPEAKER_02: you gotta,
13:51
SPEAKER_02: you gotta crawl,
13:51
SPEAKER_02: walk,
13:52
SPEAKER_02: run.
13:52
SPEAKER_02: Everybody like sees the prize of like, I'm going to be sprinting.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, whoa, you know, where do I start?
13:57
SPEAKER_02: And you got to get the quick win.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: You got to build the confidence internally.
14:00
SPEAKER_02: You got to kind of learn the tool.
14:02
SPEAKER_02: You got to invest the time and like,
14:05
SPEAKER_02: You have to invest the time in the tool.
14:06
SPEAKER_02: But it doesn't take that long.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: You guys had zero agents at the beginning of this year.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: And now you have 20.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: So it's not like we're talking about crawl, walk, run in three years.
14:16
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about in months, right?
14:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: But I don't want to hear Amelia's thoughts.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: I would say there's different ways you could count.
14:22
Because I think there's agents that are simplistic and there's
14:25
rich agents and
14:25
SPEAKER_01: there's agents that take more of your time than others.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: But we think of us as maybe having 12 prime agents.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: Without another human, this is about the most we can do.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: It was fun, now the bar is so high for us to add a 13th core tool.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: We will, there's some stuff that is not automated, but
14:46
SPEAKER_01: It is, you know, the, cause you wake up, Amelia wakes up in the morning.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: Used to be me when I trained her general.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
14:51
it's an hour of work in the morning dealing with the output and
14:55
you're thinking
14:56
SPEAKER_01: about it all day.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: You're thinking about it all day.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: You said a couple of times,
14:58
SPEAKER_02: I can't remember what show it was on,
15:00
but you said you put in an hour in a day and you'll reap the
15:04
rewards of doing that.
15:05
SPEAKER_02: We'll never go back.
15:06
yeah i'm never going no for sure like well i do think
15:09
stair-stepping was very
15:10
important like to your both of your both of your points there
15:13
uh but i think part
15:15
of it too is like when i spend that hour in the morning it's an
15:17
hour i used to
15:18
spend with people like okay when we add we had human sdrs and
15:22
human bdrs that again
15:23
SPEAKER_00: would maybe half the time follow up with an inbound lead or half the time
15:26
maybe a quarter of the times than an outbound right like maybe
15:29
even worse for
15:30
outbound um like this is an hour i would spend with those
15:33
people either doing
15:34
one-on-ones or going through accounts or you know going through
15:36
accounts they
15:37
should be following up with or again like hey here's a lead
15:40
here's what they did
15:41
with saster like giving them the context of what people have
15:43
done with saster so
15:44
instead of that hour going to that now i just spent an hour
15:47
with the agent i'm like
15:48
SPEAKER_00: okay
15:48
the agent i wake up in the morning i'm like okay the qualified
15:51
agent has booked
15:51
already you know whatever a couple meetings with david i can
15:54
see the conversation i
15:55
can give him any context i can be like hey david you know just
15:58
because we use
15:59
momentum too i'll be like okay read the pre-read and momentum
16:02
so you can see what
16:02
SPEAKER_00: they did with us before
16:04
make sure you just open an op so it'll move the stage for you
16:06
and then like done.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: And then I'll check on, like I literally go agent to agent.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Like I'll go qualified, I'll go artisan, I'll go Delphi.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Now I go agent force.
16:15
Like I just go through all of our agents and I just check on
16:17
them for that hour.
16:19
SPEAKER_02: But let me get your perspective on this.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: You said that same hour you used to spend with
16:24
SPEAKER_00: People.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: With people.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: And inevitably,
16:26
some of those people would move on from your organization or
16:30
you'd find that maybe
16:31
SPEAKER_02: they weren't the best and like you'd part ways in some way.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: But that hour you spend with the agent is so much compounds over time.
16:38
SPEAKER_02: Have you found that?
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's so much more productive.
16:40
I would say in the early days for any platform you get,
16:42
that's a genetic,
16:43
right?
16:43
Most of your time is going to be more than an hour and it's
16:46
going to be setting it up.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Like all these at the forefront required a lot more set up time, right?
16:50
Like it just does because either you have to fix your data or
16:54
it needs to talk to
16:54
SPEAKER_00: something else.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: It needs to talk to something else or like us.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: I was like, you know, I thought we had OK data quality in Salesforce.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, no, it's terrible.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: But it exposes that.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: It exposes that, right?
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Or like famously,
17:08
SPEAKER_00: when we hooked up Momentum,
17:10
which is like a bit of a recorder and a complimentary
17:13
go-to-market tool to
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Qualified,
17:15
we had somebody leave our team that day because what it does is
17:18
it will slack you a
17:20
SPEAKER_00: summary.
17:20
It does a lot of stuff,
17:21
but it'll slack you a summary after each sales call.
17:24
And it'll also slack me anytime like a new opportunity is
17:26
opened or meetings booked
17:27
SPEAKER_00: or like whatever.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: And this rap was like, I have no activity.
17:33
so like it literally exposed that like what are you gonna do
17:35
you have to quit that
17:35
day you like you can't hide you're gonna be found out instantly
17:40
so yeah instead of
17:40
my hour now being with those people i spent an hour with all of
17:44
our agents in the
17:45
morning again used to be set up now i check on all of them i
17:48
see if there's any
17:49
follow-ups we need to do and then i do more things now right
17:51
like used to be okay
17:52
i'm gonna set up all the platforms to do their core thing so
17:55
i'm gonna set up
17:55
SPEAKER_00: inbound outbound support
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Ticket information, event support, like whatever we need.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: We have that all set up now with our agents.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Then I was like, oh, now I can do email.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: Like I can de-anonymize some of our website traffic.
18:07
I can send them a follow-up campaign if they didn't actually
18:10
buy a ticket.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it doesn't matter if they were on the website or not.
18:13
Like now we have all these different use cases that it started
18:16
to compound itself
18:17
SPEAKER_00: because I'm like,
18:17
SPEAKER_00: now I can just do a lot more.
18:19
that one hour with like my five core agents then talking to two
18:23
humans 30 minutes
18:25
each and what it is more like this as a society we're gonna
18:28
figure this out it is
18:29
because you can do more work it is a higher cognitive you have
18:33
to think more right
18:34
you don't you don't spend time arguing with people as I say
18:37
with Amelia the agents
18:38
don't cry okay they don't cry and and that is exhausting right
18:43
but it's exhausting
18:43
SPEAKER_01: in a different way
18:45
SPEAKER_01: You know if someone's gonna cry meeting with you,
18:47
SPEAKER_01: Craig,
18:47
SPEAKER_01: you just have to sit there for an hour.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: But you don't have to use all your brain cells for an hour, do you?
18:52
SPEAKER_01: With your agents, it's so many brain cells.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: And so I just think that
18:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
18:58
SPEAKER_01: even if you think about coding,
18:59
SPEAKER_01: you know,
18:59
SPEAKER_01: everyone,
19:00
SPEAKER_01: I just wrote this up,
19:01
SPEAKER_01: everyone brags that 50% of our code of qualified is written by,
19:05
SPEAKER_01: by a cursor or,
19:07
SPEAKER_01: but that doesn't mean your engineers only work three hours a day,
19:09
SPEAKER_01: does it?
19:10
SPEAKER_01: No, not at all.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: And so I haven't seen a lot of engineers complain about,
19:13
SPEAKER_01: but I do think for the best engineers,
19:15
SPEAKER_01: there's more cognitive load because you can do more.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: It's not as simple as doing more releases.
19:19
That's more you have to think,
19:20
okay,
19:21
you know,
19:22
engineering is very creative.
19:23
And so the more of the road stuff that's done,
19:25
it's fun,
19:26
but it's exhausting.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: You know,
19:27
you might have to think about how to make that agent work
19:30
better eight hours a day
19:31
SPEAKER_01: instead of three hours a day.
19:32
It's much better,
19:34
but I don't know that everyone can make the jump,
19:37
right?
19:37
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
19:37
SPEAKER_02: So where do people start?
19:38
SPEAKER_02: You did a post that was about the layup roles.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: And can you define,
19:42
SPEAKER_02: like,
19:42
SPEAKER_02: what are these layup roles if somebody is like,
19:45
you have now almost a year's worth of experience in getting
19:49
agents into production.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: You've seen what works.
19:51
SPEAKER_02: You've seen what doesn't work.
19:53
SPEAKER_02: What are these layup roles?
19:54
SPEAKER_02: Where should people start?
19:57
SPEAKER_01: I think the layup,
20:00
SPEAKER_01: maybe it's Captain Obvious,
20:00
SPEAKER_01: the layup are the things where there is a tool that exists,
20:04
SPEAKER_01: that is trustworthy,
20:06
SPEAKER_01: where it's just not getting done in your org,
20:08
SPEAKER_01: right?
20:09
SPEAKER_01: And there are a lot of reasons that might not get done in your org.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: It might be an area that's tough to hire in.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: You might be in a geography that's tough to hire in.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: It might just be your DNA, right?
20:17
SPEAKER_01: There are companies that are very sales-centric organizations.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: There's companies that are very product-centric.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: If you like hate salespeople and you like product,
20:24
SPEAKER_01: maybe you should start with agentic sales,
20:26
SPEAKER_01: right?
20:26
SPEAKER_01: If you love sales and that's your superpower, right?
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Maybe get an AI to help you as an SE, right?
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Or to help you, to support you as sales as a superpower.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: So don't try to replace the stuff that's sort of working.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: Look at where like there's literally no one doing the work, right?
20:42
SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot of them.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: But at a basic level,
20:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:46
SPEAKER_01: the two areas that took off the most quickly were support and programming
20:50
SPEAKER_01: engineering,
20:50
SPEAKER_01: right?
20:51
SPEAKER_01: A lot of us have terrible support.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: Terrible support, right?
20:56
SPEAKER_01: So that's still the easiest layup of all.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Like go try your own support yourself as a founder and executive.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: I bet nine times out of 10 you're gonna cry how bad your support is.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: Not all of you, but people are often in tears when they do it.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: 100%, I think.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: How was I treated this way?
21:12
pretend quality you just had a huge issue with qualified i know
21:15
qualified never
21:16
goes down and has any problems but go to go go to your own go
21:18
to go and say listen
21:19
i have a p1 issue this is broken and it'll say we get back to
21:24
you in a week or i
21:25
don't understand the problem right or you know you just you
21:27
just want to start
21:28
there right and that's where we've seen the adoption of agents
21:31
like customer
21:31
support even internal it help desk coding and then you get like
21:36
go to market in in
21:38
SPEAKER_02: in in sales and marketing
21:40
SPEAKER_01: But I would say for us, like, so our order is ours.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: So the generalist was easy.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: Outbound, we couldn't get our SDRs to do outbound.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: So that was the lowest hanging fruit.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: But our qualification was terrible.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: That process of going to a website,
21:55
SPEAKER_01: clicking on something,
21:56
SPEAKER_01: and hoping over the next week a human would get back to you,
22:00
SPEAKER_01: that was,
22:00
SPEAKER_01: like,
22:01
SPEAKER_01: when we deploy qualified,
22:01
SPEAKER_01: it didn't have to be that good.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: Now,
22:04
SPEAKER_01: listen,
22:05
SPEAKER_01: it's great,
22:05
but it's not like we had a great team of qualifying of 10
22:10
people where we had an
22:11
SPEAKER_01: SLA.
22:12
If every prospect got back to in five minutes with 100% time by
22:16
a product expert,
22:17
SPEAKER_01: we might have waited a year,
22:18
SPEAKER_01: right?
22:18
But it was close to broken,
22:21
but none of our SDRs being willing to send an email was more
22:24
broken.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: Well,
22:24
SPEAKER_02: of course,
22:24
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
22:25
SPEAKER_02: you guys are a unique company,
22:27
but I think every single go-to-market organization has some
22:30
flavor of what you just
22:32
SPEAKER_01: said,
22:32
SPEAKER_02: which is you got high turnover of the people.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: You got people that are three months on the job.
22:36
SPEAKER_02: How could they know your products?
22:38
SPEAKER_02: How could they know your competitors?
22:39
SPEAKER_02: How could they know your market?
22:40
SPEAKER_02: Like how could they know all this stuff?
22:42
And then they'll only work a certain number of hours a day and
22:44
some don't like the
22:45
SPEAKER_02: job and they don't put in the effort.
22:47
And like everybody has some like flavor of this with these
22:50
types of roles.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: And that's when you look at AI and you're like, oh my gosh, like.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: I could just do so much better.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: It is.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: But I think the failure that I see,
22:58
SPEAKER_01: especially CMOs make,
22:59
SPEAKER_01: is they're looking for a hero purchase.
23:01
They want to go to their boss,
23:03
to the CEO or whoever and say,
23:04
I bought AI.
23:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think everybody right now wants that hero purchase.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: And listen,
23:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying you shouldn't save your job,
23:11
but I guarantee it's probably going to fail because that hero
23:14
purchase is probably
23:16
SPEAKER_01: going to be aligned with something you're decent at.
23:18
The bar is so high and you're not going to know how to train it
23:20
because it's your first agent.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: So you're looking for
23:23
You're solving medium high hanging fruit because it's already
23:25
working and you've
23:26
SPEAKER_01: never done it before and you don't know how to train and onboard it.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: Like I know you're going to get that.
23:30
There are a bunch of apps we know that have done really well as
23:34
the hero apps and maybe buy it.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: It's just a little bit of money, but I would not deploy it first.
23:40
I would leave it on the shelf and deploy something where your
23:42
org is just isn't doing it.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: Just it's not happening, right?
23:46
SPEAKER_01: And then you get a win, right?
23:48
But I just,
23:49
you know,
23:50
some of these hero apps,
23:51
we just watch them fail again and again.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't fully reflected on just one of the reasons is that it's not
23:56
SPEAKER_01: necessarily the most broken problem in their org.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: right?
23:59
If AI is only going to make something 20% better,
24:02
maybe 2025 is not the year.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's a 2026 project.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: So this is about picking... Everybody, I think, has started.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: I think we're sitting here in the fall of 2025.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: Very few people are like, I haven't even thought about this.
24:16
There's probably been some experimentation like there has at
24:19
your organization
24:20
SPEAKER_02: throughout the course of the year.
24:21
SPEAKER_02: But as all of this is coming together, you said something on a recent
24:25
SPEAKER_02: interview that was about, you know, what's happening to SAS?
24:28
And that's what people are kind of wondering is SAS dead is
24:31
like kind of the,
24:31
SPEAKER_02: the,
24:31
SPEAKER_02: the mega theme of the moment right now.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: And how are AI agents changing all that?
24:37
SPEAKER_02: But you've got a long history, Jason, in the SAS industry.
24:39
SPEAKER_02: In fact, you created a company called Saster.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: So I'm,
24:42
SPEAKER_02: you run a massive conference called Saster annual,
24:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
24:46
what do you see going on in the world of SAS and how is that
24:48
transforming in the
24:49
SPEAKER_02: age of AI?
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, look, um,
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Some of this is marketing and hysteria, right?
24:55
SPEAKER_01: SaaS is dead.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of truth in it.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: Let's step back.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, two things.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: One,
25:05
AI is putting more CIO budget and probably more SMB budget into
25:09
business software
25:10
SPEAKER_01: than ever before.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: In its own way,
25:12
it's like the tidal wave of 2020 because we needed – all of a
25:15
sudden budgets went
25:15
SPEAKER_01: up because everyone was at home,
25:17
SPEAKER_01: right?
25:17
So budgets for e-signatures,
25:19
for contacts,
25:19
it just – there was no limits,
25:21
right?
25:21
SPEAKER_01: We're not like that today.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: But tradition – now here's a stressor.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: Traditional budgets are frozen.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: In fact,
25:28
CAOs are still going around the table at the end of the year
25:31
and telling every
25:32
SPEAKER_01: functional head to cut some SaaS apps,
25:34
SPEAKER_01: right?
25:34
SPEAKER_01: We had Kaz who just took over as CEO of Opendoor.
25:36
He told them they had to get rid of 20 or 30% of their SaaS
25:38
apps or they're gone the first week.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: That still seems to be a layup.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, we want you to cut the number of apps.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: We have app load.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: And worse, half of our incremental budget is going to price increases.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Salesforce raised prices 8%.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: This year, 6%.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: That compounds.
25:54
So if I'm growing my IT budget 6% and my core vendors are all
25:58
raising prices 7% to
25:59
SPEAKER_01: 8%,
25:59
SPEAKER_01: how much room is there for another business process workflow app?
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Like,
26:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: the cap of the vendor,
26:06
cutting the vendors and all the incremental budget going to
26:10
price increases is
26:11
SPEAKER_01: tough.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: That's also why even the leaders are struggling with upsell, right?
26:15
SPEAKER_01: If all that budget went into my price increase at Salesforce,
26:18
SPEAKER_01: it's probably harder to buy another cloud,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: isn't it?
26:20
SPEAKER_01: At the margin, right?
26:22
SPEAKER_01: But there's so much AI budget and when you add it together,
26:26
SPEAKER_01: Business software is growing faster than it has ever before.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: But if you don't tap into that AI budget, it's tough.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: There just isn't budget.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: It's just not there.
26:35
So if you're selling the way you sold in 2021,
26:38
this is one of 50 reasons it's dead.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: The budget's harder.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: It's all going to exist in investors.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Inflation and price increases are doing all.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: And all the energy is in AI for solutions.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: So if that's you, it feels dead.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: It feels like these are all the people on LinkedIn.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: The playbook doesn't work.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: Outbound's dead.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Nothing works.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: Events don't work.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, tell it to anyone that's on fire.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: It all works.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: Meeting with your customers works.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Outbound works if anyone wants to buy your product, right?
27:01
You said something like classic SaaS is in fact dead or it's
27:04
geriatric or something like that.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: But B2B software right now is exploding.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:08
And that like that's something that is I think maybe it's kind
27:12
of obvious if you
27:12
SPEAKER_02: live here in Silicon Valley.
27:14
But when you look at the software industry from the outside in,
27:16
it's like a tale of two cities.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: Tale of two cities.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: But the simple question I ask founders.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: who are struggling,
27:22
SPEAKER_01: right,
27:22
SPEAKER_01: is if you haven't figured it out yet,
27:25
SPEAKER_01: what can you do,
27:26
SPEAKER_01: and you already have a thousand customers,
27:28
SPEAKER_01: 5,000,
27:29
SPEAKER_01: 10,000,
27:29
SPEAKER_01: what can you do in AI that couldn't be done before,
27:32
SPEAKER_01: that's magical,
27:33
SPEAKER_01: that's 10 times better?
27:34
SPEAKER_01: So take a pause and figure this out in your space.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: But it has to be something that's 10 times better.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but usually there is an idea.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: Usually there's an idea, right?
27:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, even we're here at Dreamforce,
27:43
SPEAKER_01: If AgentForce were fully deployed at Mark's vision,
27:45
SPEAKER_01: like if everyone was live with AgentForce,
27:47
SPEAKER_01: everyone had all this automated across a million workflows,
27:50
SPEAKER_01: it would be magical,
27:51
SPEAKER_01: wouldn't it?
27:52
SPEAKER_01: It would be.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it would be magical.
27:53
So you maybe,
27:54
Mark's not,
27:55
can't do,
27:55
I mean,
27:55
it's so much business process change,
27:57
right?
27:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you work there, right?
27:58
SPEAKER_01: But at least that's the answer, I think.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: I think it's the right answer.
28:01
But if you're running a company,
28:03
if you don't have that answer today,
28:04
you get an F.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk,
28:06
SPEAKER_02: we're here at Dreamforce,
28:07
SPEAKER_02: so let's talk about the agentic enterprise,
28:09
which is kind of the vision that Salesforce is talking about at
28:12
this conference.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: How long does a company have, do you think, to get on board the
28:18
SPEAKER_02: the train before they just miss the train.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: How fast do people need to be moving right now?
28:22
SPEAKER_00: I said till Halloween.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: For a startup, I said Halloween.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Halloween's the very latest.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Halloween's for a startup.
28:27
Yeah,
28:27
because you're going to get out-competed if you're a startup,
28:30
right?
28:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you're already behind.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: Almost.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: You have like two weeks.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: You have two weeks.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: Or you're already behind if you're a startup.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you,
28:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:36
SPEAKER_01: maybe it's mean every VC I know,
28:38
SPEAKER_01: every investor I know,
28:39
SPEAKER_01: where the startup hasn't made the jump yet,
28:41
SPEAKER_01: they've given up.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: Now they've lost hope.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, tell me more about that.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: They've all lost hope.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: you could make,
28:48
SPEAKER_01: when ChatGPD came out,
28:49
SPEAKER_01: we could all make fun of it,
28:50
SPEAKER_01: right?
28:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I honestly didn't get it at first.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, there were so many hallucinations, right?
28:55
SPEAKER_01: But if you didn't pay attention to how everything changed,
28:58
SPEAKER_01: at least at the start of 2025 and didn't have a plan,
29:00
SPEAKER_01: there's no excuse.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: Everything's great now.
29:02
In fact,
29:03
even mediocre software just got better when you put the fours
29:06
in,
29:06
right?
29:06
SPEAKER_01: Claude Forge,
29:07
SPEAKER_01: you can take the same,
29:08
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how qualified change,
29:10
SPEAKER_01: but I bet you it's a five times better product just changing the LLM.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: Like, I tell this story about Qualified.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's true, but I know it's true.
29:16
I'm like,
29:16
the reason they're having to glow up,
29:18
because they've been doing this for a while.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: Like, they have a great team, but you stick a better LOM.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: And it was, I mean, Replit took 10 years to get to a million, right?
29:26
SPEAKER_01: They add Cloud4.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: Now they're at almost 200 million in one year.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: But it's the same IDE, right?
29:30
SPEAKER_01: It's the same software, right?
29:32
So my point is,
29:32
everyone that sees other companies know,
29:34
okay,
29:35
we'll give you 2023.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: If you didn't figure it out, totally cool.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: We get it, right? 2024...
29:40
SPEAKER_01: You had to be, you could be a critic.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: Like you might start losing deals to all these hot AA companies,
29:45
SPEAKER_01: but at least you could have a principled position.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: This stuff wasn't gonna work.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: There's no excuse in 2025.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: So Halloween you've had 10 months.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: You don't have anything in production that is disruptive.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: You're not working at an acceptable speed in the age of AI.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: You have already lost.
30:01
It may not be over,
30:02
but you've got to get rid of most of your team at a minimum and
30:04
start over.
30:05
If you're not in market with a disruptive AI agent as a startup
30:10
on Halloween,
30:11
SPEAKER_01: you need a brand new team.
30:13
SPEAKER_01: A brand new team.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: Maybe even 80% of them got to go.
30:16
And you give them a nice Thanksgiving bonus and a turkey and
30:19
tell them they got to
30:19
SPEAKER_01: go because you've had 10 months.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: How about on the flip side?
30:23
SPEAKER_02: Not for the technology vendors, but for businesses out there.
30:28
SPEAKER_02: In our case, marketing, sales organizations that are out there.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: Even at,
30:32
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:33
SPEAKER_02: 1,000 plus person companies,
30:35
SPEAKER_02: Fortune 500 enterprises,
30:37
how fast do they need to be adopting relative to what you see
30:41
going on in like
30:42
SPEAKER_02: the...
30:42
SPEAKER_02: the technology ecosystem.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: Well,
30:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
30:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
30:45
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
30:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
30:46
SPEAKER_01: I know this is an annoying thing to say,
30:47
SPEAKER_01: but it really does vary.
30:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: If literally your business is fine,
30:51
SPEAKER_01: if your business has not changed since a year ago,
30:53
SPEAKER_01: if your growth is as good,
30:54
SPEAKER_01: as better as it was 12 months ago,
30:56
SPEAKER_01: you're in a traditional industry,
30:57
SPEAKER_01: everything's working,
31:01
SPEAKER_01: you can be a late adopter.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: You don't have,
31:03
SPEAKER_01: not everyone has to,
31:04
SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of pressure to be an early adopter from a lot of companies.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of reasons there's that pressure.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: But if it's not external, if it doesn't exist, be a late adopter.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, Qualified's gonna be a better tool in a year.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: It's a much better tool than a year ago, you just said, right?
31:17
SPEAKER_01: It's a much better tool, right?
31:19
SPEAKER_01: I know you want them today, but here's the thing about like,
31:23
SPEAKER_01: I know Replit so well.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you in 100 days how much better Replit is than I started.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: It's not a little bit better.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: It's epically better.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: So there are early adopter advantages in AI,
31:34
SPEAKER_01: but if you can wait as a customer,
31:36
SPEAKER_01: as a deployer,
31:36
SPEAKER_01: there are late adopter advantages too,
31:38
SPEAKER_01: right?
31:39
SPEAKER_01: Maybe if qualified,
31:40
SPEAKER_01: can't do what I want to do in a year,
31:42
SPEAKER_01: rather than classic SaaS buy it anyway and brute force it.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm not dropping out of your pipeline.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm not buying another vendor, but...
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Kip me up in the summer.
31:51
We've all been in the old SaaS days when a customer would come
31:55
in and say,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: I need this,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: and you would promise it in the contract and it didn't exist.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: I think those days are dying in AI.
32:00
Don't promise me it'll be here in a year like we used to do to
32:02
close a big deal.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: Now with AI, just show me the agent that it works.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: And if it's not ready, I don't blame you.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: I get it's early.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Come back to me when it works.
32:10
SPEAKER_03: I might be there in three months.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: So for example, we're doing on your website, we're doing Amelia AI.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: And we're turning it into your face, right?
32:19
SPEAKER_02: And you're super excited about that.
32:20
And we're going to have you in our studio and film a whole
32:22
behind the scenes episode on it.
32:24
SPEAKER_02: And some people are going, ah, it's not quite right.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: And the voice interrupt detection is like, oh, it's not.
32:31
SPEAKER_02: Everyone is very quick to point out all the little flaws.
32:34
and like my message back to them is just like just wait nine
32:38
months like and all
32:39
those things that you are nitpicking about right now those are
32:42
going to be gone
32:43
yeah but even in that point right it's like okay talking to the
32:46
jason ai or now the
32:48
amelia ai more so like on our event sites for like support or
32:51
sales tickets
32:51
sponsorships whatever it is like half the time right now our
32:54
next event's in london
32:56
SPEAKER_00: so half the time i wake up and i spend this hour with our agents
32:59
SPEAKER_00: Most of the conversations for London have already happened,
33:01
SPEAKER_00: because when we wake up in Pacific time,
33:03
SPEAKER_00: it's their afternoon.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: It's their evening.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And at first I was nervous.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I was like, OK, we're going to deploy the qualified.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: But like,
33:08
what if it does answer things wrong and I'm not there to catch
33:12
it because I'm not
33:12
SPEAKER_00: awake?
33:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I got over that with training and help from your team,
33:16
SPEAKER_00: and we got it,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: okay,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: nevermind,
33:18
SPEAKER_00: it's pretty good.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: It's good,
33:19
SPEAKER_00: it knows enough,
33:20
SPEAKER_00: and it knows when to escalate,
33:21
SPEAKER_00: which is nice,
33:22
SPEAKER_00: of like,
33:22
SPEAKER_00: okay,
33:23
SPEAKER_00: it'll say,
33:23
SPEAKER_00: oh.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's better than when you started with qualified.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: It's better than when I started, yeah, for sure.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: So that part has been really nice,
33:27
SPEAKER_00: I've gotten a lot of comfortability around it,
33:30
SPEAKER_00: but I am excited to add the voice and video portion to it,
33:33
SPEAKER_00: because I'm like,
33:34
SPEAKER_00: now I trust it to do more overnight,
33:37
SPEAKER_00: right?
33:38
SPEAKER_00: I trust it fully now on chat to answer people's questions.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: It's a seller, like literally,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: It's been selling tickets to our events.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: It's done, I was just looking at it this morning.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: It's probably done 100 tickets to our London event.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how long we've been non-qualified, six weeks?
33:53
SPEAKER_01: It's definitely helpful, at least.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: Eight weeks, yeah.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: 100 out of 2,000 is not nothing.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty good percentage of people.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Pretty awesome.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, pretty awesome.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: And so now I'm like, oh,
34:02
let it do more like let it you know have let let's do the voice
34:06
and video like let
34:07
it can sell tickets sure but it can also start to be a co-pilot
34:11
like the amelia ai
34:12
much like the jason ai can turn into our agent like event
34:15
copilot of oh hey i saw
34:17
you're coming to london you already bought the ticket because i
34:19
got you to buy the
34:19
ticket as the agent but now let me tell you about like the
34:22
networking because you
34:23
didn't sign in for like your networking yet or you haven't
34:25
booked your sessions yet
34:26
like let me tell you what sessions to book like well let me
34:28
just talk to you
34:28
SPEAKER_00: because like real amelia is asleep
34:31
but amelia.ai is awake and can answer your questions like half
34:35
the time i see
34:36
unqualified it is current like ticket holders or sponsors
34:39
asking questions like we
34:40
used to get before annual of like hey i forgot it was the first
34:43
or hey i forgot the
34:44
link for the hotel block or remind me what hotel the venue is
34:49
and it will just
34:49
answer all these things again overnight while i'm sleeping
34:53
which is kind of crazy
34:54
SPEAKER_00: and cool because
34:55
that's what it should do right like it should empower you to
34:58
talk to your customers
34:59
whenever 24 7 because the ai doesn't sleep but real amelia has
35:02
to and then let it
35:04
do more like i just have all these edge cases now of like how i
35:06
want to use it
35:07
because we've built trust in our agent and now also people
35:11
people will walk up to
35:12
SPEAKER_00: me and they'll be like
35:14
SPEAKER_00: you're that Amelia AI.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, I'm Amelia.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's my AI that you talk to.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: And so that's fine.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: I know Blake has had the same experience because she's your piper.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: And that's a little funky because I'm like,
35:29
SPEAKER_00: okay,
35:29
SPEAKER_00: now when we get to London,
35:30
SPEAKER_00: people are going to be like,
35:30
SPEAKER_00: oh,
35:31
SPEAKER_00: I had this whole conversation with you.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And I'll have to...
35:35
either say it was my ai or fess up um it happens on outbound
35:39
too like i get the
35:40
question all the time on outbound like hey is this really
35:43
amelia or is this an
35:44
agent of amelia and it's but it's always after a purchase so
35:48
i'm like it already
35:49
doesn't matter like it doesn't matter if it was real me or ai
35:52
me or one of my
35:53
agents because you got the value and people are getting so
35:56
comfortable correct with
35:57
SPEAKER_02: this yeah you guys are so awesome for stopping by our studio today
36:02
SPEAKER_02: just one final question.
36:03
SPEAKER_02: Do you have any words of advice for our,
36:07
SPEAKER_02: the listeners of this podcast are primarily like go to market executives,
36:11
SPEAKER_02: marketing leadership,
36:12
SPEAKER_02: people kind of in the revenue line,
36:14
SPEAKER_02: B2B companies.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: And they're probably like tuning into this and they're like,
36:19
SPEAKER_02: what's your advice?
36:20
SPEAKER_02: You don't speak on behalf of any specific vendor,
36:24
SPEAKER_02: but you see it all in a way that almost nobody else does.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you mine first, you can go last.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: I recently had a CRO I've worked with for years,
36:31
SPEAKER_01: the deepest respect,
36:33
SPEAKER_01: reach out to me in an almost panicked email,
36:36
SPEAKER_01: I need to learn AI, right?
36:38
SPEAKER_01: I'll do anything.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: I'll intern for you.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: I'll hang out with Amelia's office.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: I'll do whatever.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: And I hear this all the time.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: I need to learn AI.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: We hear it all.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: I need to learn AI, Craig.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: It's important for my job.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: It's the simplest advice tied to all this.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, you need to do AI.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: Don't do it, don't learn it.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: Buying a subscription to Claude does not count as learning AI.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: The way you're gonna do it is pick an agent, an agentic product.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: Pick the simplest possible one,
37:05
SPEAKER_01: use case,
37:05
SPEAKER_01: and I know it can be scary for some people,
37:07
SPEAKER_01: deploy it yourself.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: Buy it.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: Set it up.
37:10
If you need a little bit of help connecting it to your CRM or
37:13
your marketing,
37:13
okay,
37:14
that's okay.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do the connectors.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: Own the deployment.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what training is?
37:18
SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
37:19
SPEAKER_01: Take your time.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: Do something simple.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: If you deploy an agent yourself,
37:24
SPEAKER_01: train it,
37:24
SPEAKER_01: QA it,
37:25
SPEAKER_01: test it,
37:26
SPEAKER_01: you will be ahead of 90% of the world.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: Hands on.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yourself, not your team.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: And don't learn it.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: Don't learn it.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: You know,
37:33
SPEAKER_01: we do so many workshop Wednesdays with CMOs and they're like,
37:36
SPEAKER_00: oh,
37:36
SPEAKER_01: we encourage our team to use any AI tool they want.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: Like we allow them to try perplexity if they want.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: And we encourage them to learn recipes online.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you will never learn to go to motion in today's.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: You've got to do it, right?
37:51
SPEAKER_01: And it can be scary to some people that don't want to do it.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: It is different.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: It is different learning how to deploy and train an agent.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: It's not what we were taught five years ago.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: And it is scary to people.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: But it is not impossible.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: But if you don't do it hands on keyboard, you will not have a job.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: And literally, I'll give you another example.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: For example, another CMO who I love, I've gotten her her last two jobs.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I recommended her.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: Just reached out.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: After many years, she's ready for her third.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I don't even mean I got nothing for you.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: I was really direct.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, can I be honest with you?
38:24
SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, I always trust you, Jason.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: I got nothing for you.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: I gave you five ideas.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: I got nothing for you.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Why?
38:29
SPEAKER_01: You don't know this stuff yet.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: You don't know this stuff yet.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: You go out and deploy an agent.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: Tell me how it worked.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: Tell me how the training went.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: Come back to me.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: I'll get you two jobs.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: I got nothing.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: I got nothing for her.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, because I get a lot of folks.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: I know it's stressful to be a CMO, but I'll tell you it's a weird thing.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: There is much more demand than CMOs think.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: I know 100 CEOs today that for a great marketer, they are desperate.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: They'll do anything for a great marketer.
38:57
SPEAKER_01: But they do not want someone running the Marketo 2019 playbook.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: There's just no interest in hiring that person.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: So you've got to do it.
39:06
SPEAKER_01: You've got to suck it up.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: You've got to do it.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: It is scary.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: It is.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: So do something simple.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: But if you don't, that's my best advice.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: I would say,
39:16
SPEAKER_00: I'll take the founder perspective,
39:17
SPEAKER_00: which is like,
39:18
SPEAKER_00: I was just talking to founder this week,
39:19
SPEAKER_00: because we're at Dreamforce,
39:21
SPEAKER_00: on,
39:22
SPEAKER_00: she was asking me about all of our agents.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: She was like, how's it going?
39:24
SPEAKER_00: What do I need to know?
39:25
SPEAKER_00: Like,
39:26
SPEAKER_00: I have some agents,
39:27
SPEAKER_00: but I'm worried about,
39:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm next worried about rolling this out to our sales team.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: Like,
39:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm worried about sales specifically for go-to-market AI,
39:36
SPEAKER_00: because I don't know how our 50 sellers are gonna react.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, I think they might revolt, or some of them might quit.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: And I said,
39:43
that's okay let them like it's okay it's almost halloween it's
39:48
okay like it's
39:49
nearing the end of 2025 i think if your team can't get there
39:53
over the hurdle some
39:55
of them may quietly leave and that is okay but i was like you
39:58
can't forsake the
40:00
future of your company and how much faster it could grow with
40:03
ai booking meetings
40:04
doing outbound for you to not hurt people's feelings i was like
40:08
you have to just go
40:08
SPEAKER_00: for it like rip the band-aid like you gotta go for it
40:11
obviously try and do it in the right way where you can show
40:14
them that they can be
40:14
SPEAKER_00: empowered with the AI.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: They can have more use cases.
40:17
They should actually be excited to do it because they can crush
40:19
their quota with AI.
40:21
Like they should be roaring to get the AI going,
40:24
not like scared of it,
40:25
right?
40:26
SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, if you see those people that start to hide in the corner,
40:29
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's okay if they quietly,
40:30
SPEAKER_00: you give them a turkey and you let them weed themselves out,
40:32
SPEAKER_00: right?
40:33
SPEAKER_00: But the other folks will want it because they can do more.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: They can sell more.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: They could buy another purse or whatever it is for the holidays, right?
40:40
SPEAKER_00: Because they'll crush their quota with AI.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: Like they can book more meetings.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: They can have better conversations.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: They can get more inbound meetings.
40:47
They could just 10X themselves as like AEs and sellers once
40:51
they get over that fear.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of people, the best ones will.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: But I was like, you just got to do it.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: Like, you just got to go for it and not worry.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I know you're the founder.
41:00
So sometimes you do have to talk to people and have therapy in
41:03
your one-on-ones.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: But I was like, this is not one of those times.
41:05
SPEAKER_02: Like, just go for it.
41:07
SPEAKER_02: That's actually a perfect way to end this podcast.
41:09
SPEAKER_02: Rip the Band-Aid off because we got to go.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: We got to go, guys.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: It's almost 2026.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: Well, Jason, Amelia, thank you so much for being on the podcast here.