Topline

Pavilion

The #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech. Tune in every week to hear Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno and Asad Zaman discuss and debate the trends, news, and developments impacting the B2B tech world. Enjoy the hot takes, strong opinions, and dry humor.

  1. 22 h fa

    The (Painful) Pivot To AI-Native: What They Don't Tell You | CEO @ Mutiny, Jaleh Rezaei

    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 (Painful) Pivot To AI-Native: What They Don't Tell You | CEO @ Mutiny, Jaleh Rezaei

  2. 3 gg fa

    SPOTLIGHT: He Said No to Bad-Fit Customers. Growth Got Better. | Snehal Nimje, CEO & Co-Founder @ Outdoo

    In this episode of Topline Spotlight, Sam Jacobs sits down with Snehal Nimje, co-founder and CEO of Outdoo, to talk about one of the hardest calls an early-stage founder can make: narrowing focus when leads are coming in. Snehal breaks down how Outdoo went from trying to serve every mid-market and enterprise buyer to getting much more specific about where the product was truly essential. They get into why usage dropped, what customer conversations revealed, how the team handled the internal shift, and what changed once they focused on insurance and finance use cases where compliance and ramp speed mattered most. They also talk about: why enterprise readiness starts with architecture, compliance, and security how to tell the difference between interest and real traction what founders miss when they chase every lead where defensibility really comes from in AI Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:46 Meet Snehal Nimje and Outdoo 04:55 Why selling to everyone nearly derailed the business 06:51 Finding the customers who truly need your product 08:54 The hard decision to narrow their ICP 11:00 How focus accelerated enterprise growth 13:09 Advice for founders struggling to find product-market fit 15:36 What creates a moat in the AI era? 17:13 Why workflow, not AI models, is the real competitive advantage 18:51 Snehal's biggest business inspiration 19:38 Where to find Snehal and Outdoo Try Outdoo: outdoo.ai If you're building an early-stage company and trying to find traction without turning your product into a Frankenstein, this one's worth your time. Subscribe for more founder stories, operator lessons, and go-to-market conversations from Topline.

  3. 2 ago

    Meet The World's Most Advanced AI Sales Team | Amanda Kahlow, Founder & CEO @ 1mind

    Amanda Kahlow, Founder & CEO of 1mind, joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman to break down how an AI-powered solutions engineer named Nigel took 33% of the talk time in a two and a half hour enterprise meeting and produced a $278,000 deal. Topics include why AI aimed at efficiency gains misses real revenue impact, Amanda's prediction that marketing, sales, and customer success collapse into one function within 12 months, and why AI adoption has to be top-down instead of bottoms-up. Plus, the 15 agents running behind every superhuman, a 98% accuracy bar measured by live evals, whether agents will negotiate with other agents on the buy side, and a bulls versus bears round on Salesforce, sales dinners, and the health of the average go-to-market team. Key Takeaways: - Most go-to-market teams are pointing AI at the wrong layer. Better forecasting, faster research, and cleaner dashboards make the people you already have marginally more productive, which is not where the revenue is. As Amanda Kahlow, Founder & CEO at 1mind, framed it: "My thesis is that buying and selling happens in the conversation." Everything built around the conversation to enable a seller is, in her words, yesterday's workflow. - Trust, not novelty, is what moves an enterprise deal. Amanda flew a red-eye to Austin for a second meeting with a CPO and CMO, brought a superhuman named Nigel on screen, and watched the room turn to the AI for depth even she could not provide. As she told it, "the CPO was like, Amanda, shut up, basically. I wanna talk to Nigel." The meeting scheduled for an hour ran two and a half, and produced "a $278,000 deal from one in-person meeting going through procurement in one week". Her read on why it worked: "People say people buy from people. You buy when you trust." - The human face on an AI agent is a click-through device, not the value. Amanda's verdict after a year of selling them: "The face is a novelty." 1mind drops the face entirely on live calls because the movement distracts. The important part is the conversational AI, where "each superhuman has roughly 15 agents working behind the scenes." One handles small talk, another loads the live demo, another builds the perspective slide a human seller would normally take a week to produce. - Bottom-up AI adoption is where the value leaks out. Amanda's pushback on the idea that people who use AI will simply eat the people who do not: telling every individual to go be more efficient produces slop and no measurable gain, while the real impact, in her words, "is going to come at the top down when we think about restructuring the org". 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: Amanda Kahlow, Founder & CEO at 1mind - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandakahlow/ 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 Amanda Kahlow 00:59 Building Superhumans At 1mind 03:24 Why Efficiency Gains Miss The Point 06:04 GTM Functions Collapse In 12 Months 08:48 The Ghost Note Debate 15:20 Nigel Takes 33% Of Talk Time 20:41 The Face Is Just Novelty 22:27 Fifteen Agents Behind One Superhuman 38:46 Compute Costs And AI Margins 41:19 How Accurate Are AI Agents? 47:08 Positioning An AI Company 52:13 When Agents Negotiate With Agents 53:54 Will CSM Jobs Survive? 57:56 Bulls and Bears 1:06:15 Boards, 6sense, And Burnout

    Meet The World's Most Advanced AI Sales Team | Amanda Kahlow, Founder & CEO @ 1mind

  4. 28 lug

    SPOTLIGHT: AI Is Making Sales Reps 60% Faster to Revenue | Justin Shriber, CEO @ Terret AI

    AI isn't just changing sales. It's completely rewriting how revenue teams operate. In this episode of Topline Spotlight, Sam Jacobs sits down with Justin Shriber, CEO of Terret AI, to break down how modern revenue organizations are using AI to improve forecasting, shorten sales cycles, ramp reps faster, and operationalize winning sales behavior in real time. Justin shares: Why traditional sales enablement is broken How AI helped reduce rep ramp time by 40% The "answer-to-action" engine powering modern RevOps The hidden dangers of decentralized AI adoption Why companies are struggling with inconsistent AI-generated data The real debate: build your own AI stack vs buy from vendors How leading teams are using AI agents today One of the most interesting conversations in GTM right now. If you're a CRO, RevOps leader, founder, or GTM operator trying to understand where AI is actually delivering value, this episode is worth your time. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:40 Meet Justin Schreiber and Terret 04:17 How AI is changing sales productivity 06:07 The biggest problem in revenue execution 09:37 Why great strategies never get executed 11:01 Building AI that's secure, accurate, and scalable 13:32 Buy vs. build: The future of enterprise AI 16:25 Why AI needs centralized governance 17:35 Jurassic Park, AI agents, and organizational chaos 20:15 Justin's biggest inspirations for building great companies 22:58 Where to find Justin and Terret Try Terret: terret.ai

  5. 26 lug

    World's #1 Banking CMO: How AI Is Changing Billion Dollar Banks Today | Tim Rutten, CMO @ Backbase

    Tim Rutten, CMO of Backbase, the €2.5 billion Amsterdam tech company whose AI-native Banking OS powers 120+ banks worldwide, joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman with the clearest AI ROI numbers we have heard on the show: double the pipeline on 25% less budget. Topics include the custom go-to-market operating system his team built on the Vercel stack, why real bank deployments are 99% deterministic, the 90% cost reduction banks are finding in customer care, and why most enterprise workloads do not need frontier-model intelligence. Plus, where the AI bubble breaks, what happens to judgment and taste when anyone can generate output, and a bulls-versus-bears round on LinkedIn, banking apps, and sales spiffs. Key Takeaways: - Backbase's marketing org runs on GTMOS, a custom go-to-market operating system built on the Vercel stack and wired into Salesforce and the company's finance tools, and the numbers behind it are specific. As Tim Rutten, CMO at Backbase, put it: "Double the pipeline, 25% head cut on my budget... So with 25% less budget, I'm actually still doubling the pipeline." The unlock came from rebuilding how the team works rather than layering tools on top of it. - Shipping AI into a regulated industry means using AI more narrowly than you might expect. On what real bank deployments look like, Tim Rutten said: "the actual implementations are almost 99% deterministic, and there's this one little percent that actually gets them to gain, to reason at the right moment in time." That same architecture caps the bill, because most banking workloads are repetitive and rule-bound. But the same rigor can net fantastic results from AI in broader applications as well. - Backbase treats AI slop as an architecture problem, containing content generation inside hard boundaries. Per Tim Rutten: "You have tone of voice, you have guardrails that we don't have AI slop. There's like 22 rules that are applied. If they don't check out, the agent needs to rewrite and continuously learns to rewrite." The human half of the risk is harder to engineer around, as Asad Zaman, CEO of Sales Talent Agency, framed it: "a lot of people that didn't have a skill are using AI for that thing. And if you didn't have a skill in an area or judgment or taste in that particular area, you have no mechanism to stress test the quality of what is coming out." - On how the AI bubble pops, Sam Jacobs, CEO of Pavilion, put the risk on the business model sitting underneath the capex: "if everybody presumes the way that all these companies make money is selling tokens… and then all of a sudden it turns out selling tokens is a really terrible business. Well, then that's a thing that would compress." Tim Rutten lands in a similar place on timing while staying long on the outcome: "a little bit bearish on timing, massively bullish on the future… it will happen nevertheless, but it's going to be a very rocky ride." 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: Tim Rutten, CMO at Backbase - https://www.linkedin.com/in/timrutten/ 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 Tim Rutten 03:11 Inside Backbase And 120 Banks 09:42 90% Cost Cuts In Call Centers 12:04 Why The Application Layer Wins 15:23 Europe, The US, And Regulation 21:50 Where The AI Bubble Breaks 27:24 Why Banks Skip Frontier Models 34:34 Bank Budgets Shift To AI Native 38:23 Real ROI At Lloyds And JPMorgan 44:31 Quiz Pro Quo 49:37 GTMOS, The Go To Market OS 52:02 Double Pipeline On 25% Less Budget 53:53 Judgment, Taste, And AI Slop 1:06:15 Real Time Marketing By Christmas 1:09:30 Bulls and Bears

    World's #1 Banking CMO: How AI Is Changing Billion Dollar Banks Today | Tim Rutten, CMO @ Backbase

  6. 24 lug

    SPOTLIGHT: Why 80% of B2B Buying Happens Without You | Alexander Kesler, CEO @ INFUSE

    Buyers stopped picking up the phone. They research on their own, ask their peers, and now they ask AI which vendors to consider before a single salesperson ever hears about it. So where does that leave marketers? Sam Jacobs sits down with Alexander Kesler, founder and CEO of Infuse, to break down the dark funnel and what it means for B2B demand gen right now. They get into why most of the buying journey happens before you're ever contacted, how AI tools are generating "day one" shortlists on the spot, and why the real game is earning a spot on the day zero shortlist — the vendors a buyer already trusts no matter what ChatGPT says. Alex has spent 25+ years building companies across marketing, media, and data, and is the author of two books on B2B marketing best practices. His advice for marketers comes down to one thing: stay flexible, read the research, and build the relationship before the buyer is in market. What we get into: Why the traditional B2B sales funnel no longer reflects how today's buyers actually buy What the Dark Funnel is and why 80% of the buying journey happens before prospects contact sales The difference between Day Zero and Day One shortlists and why every marketer needs to understand both How AI and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) are reshaping vendor discovery Why building trust and thought leadership before buyers are in-market is the new competitive advantage Alex Kesler's advice for modern B2B marketers on staying relevant in an AI-first world Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:36 Meet Alex Kesler and Infuse 03:10 The dark funnel explained 05:16 Why buyers don't want to talk to sales anymore 08:07 The AI buying journey and Day One shortlists 11:28 GEO: Winning recommendations from AI search 14:07 Day Zero vs. Day One: The new marketing playbook 16:06 Marketing 101 is making a comeback 16:27 Why ABM can limit your growth 17:35 The #1 trait every modern B2B marketer needs 19:20 Alex's leadership philosophy: Do the right thing 20:36 Where to find Alex and Infuse Try Infuse: infuse.com

  7. 21 lug

    SPOTLIGHT: The AI category GTM teams are about to converge on | Adam Liska, CEO & Co-Founder @ airspeed

    A rep says "follow up on that" on a call, then buries it under five more calls and a late-night inbox. Three days later the deal's gone cold, but the CRM still says it's live. The manager forecasts off that.  The CRO forecasts off the manager. The board asks the CEO if anyone actually has a grip on the number. The whole thing was built on a promise nobody kept.  Adam Liska worked on the early Gemini models at Google DeepMind before leaving to close that gap. His company, airspeed, just raised a $20M Series A on a bet that "revenue execution" is the next real category, not another tool that logs calls and calls it intelligence.  Sam Jacobs traces the full arc with him: DeepMind to founder-led sales to the unglamorous work of turning a founder's instincts into a system a team can actually run.  What we get into:  Why "follow up on that" breaks the forecast chain from rep to CRO to board What "revenue execution" means, and why it isn't revenue intelligence with a new label  Whether you own the interface or hand it to a chat model and live as middleware  The Nashville lunch that became airspeed's first six-figure deal  The real sequence from founder-led to scalable: capture the data first, then build the playbooks  Owning your data instead of renting Salesforce's architecture  The modern Turing test, AI-native orgs, and where the back office is headed Chapters:   00:00 Intro 00:44 From DeepMind to airspeed, and the $20M Series A  01:30 "Follow up on that" — the execution gap that breaks forecasts  04:00 What category is this? Revenue execution, defined  05:40 Headless vs. owning the interface  08:00 The origin story: leaving DeepMind in 2022  11:39 Founder-led sales and the Nashville lunch that closed a six-figure deal  13:18 The hard part: turning founder-led into a repeatable system  14:14 Why they recorded everything from day one  16:35 Owning your data, and where the source of truth lives  19:03 The playbook: data first, then hierarchical playbooks  20:52 Influences: the modern Turing test and AI-native orgs  23:37 Where to find airspeed  Try airspeed: goairspeed.com

  8. 19 lug

    AI Marketing Master: The 'AI CMO' is a Beautiful Lie | Marc Ferrentino, CEO @ Quotient

    Marc Ferrentino, Co-Founder and CEO of Quotient and former chief technical architect at Salesforce, joins Sam Jacobs and Asad Zaman to separate AI-marketing hype from what actually works today. Marc's core claim: the 'AI CMO' is marketing fiction, and the real near-term unlock is clearing the roughly 70% of a marketer's day lost to busywork, so smaller teams can finally operate like big ones. Topics include the collapse of specialized marketing roles into cross-functional generalists, why the apprenticeship model that trained classic marketers is most at risk, where the durable edge moves as performance marketing gets automated... and how taste separates real work from AI slop. Plus, a Quiz Pro Quo trivia round on famous tech emails, an honest look at ageism facing marketers in their 40s and 50s, and a Bulls and Bears debate on legacy martech, HubSpot, and Figma. Key Takeaways: - Marc's near-term promise to marketers is not an AI CMO but the removal of busywork. As he puts it: "companies that come out and claim to be your AI CMO… I think that is the most misleading marketing, but it's also just not true." Buckle up for a story or two about how he's seen the "AI CMO" blow up in people's faces. - The hiring bar is shifting from raw craft to AI fluency. In Marc's words: "we're all looking for the 10x developer, but the 10x developer who knows how to use AI is a 100x developer. And so it's the same thing with the marketer… the marketer who knows how to use AI is a 100x marketer… That's the person we want on the team." And he shares how his own developer interviews changed to match. - Marketing roles are not disappearing, but the specialist ladder that trained seasoned marketers is eroding. As Sam Jacobs, CEO of Pavilion, put it: "I see the collapse of specialization within a particular function. That doesn't diminish the need for the function, but does create an opportunity for those that are more fluent in all of these cross-functional tools." His deeper worry is the pipeline: "the apprenticeship model is the thing that's most at risk," raising the prospect of "a lack of classically trained marketers." - Ageism is real in marketing hiring, and it often hides inside neutral-sounding language. Asad Zaman, CEO of STA, observed, clients are saying things like: "I'm looking for somebody with high energy. High energy is like, I need somebody who is 30 to 33… high energy is like an age, basically." To what extent do the hosts agree with this perspective? Only one way to find out... Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/ Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at STA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/ Guest: Marc Ferrentino, Co-Founder & CEO at Quotient - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcferrentino/ 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 Marc Ferrentino 02:09 Where AI Actually Works Today 04:05 The 'AI CMO' Is a Lie 07:10 AI Multiplies, Not Replaces 12:11 The Collapse of Specialization 15:10 The Apprenticeship Model at Risk 16:11 The Real Edge Is Brand 21:18 AI Slop and the Taste Problem 23:02 Marketing for the Rest of Business 35:15 Are the Models Asymptoting? 39:01 Quiz Pro Quo 44:44 Ageism in Marketing 49:18 Curiosity over Age 58:34 The 100x Marketer 1:03:54 Bulls VS Bears

    AI Marketing Master: The 'AI CMO' is a Beautiful Lie | Marc Ferrentino, CEO @ Quotient
Elenco completo (261)

Descrizione

The #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech. Tune in every week to hear Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno and Asad Zaman discuss and debate the trends, news, and developments impacting the B2B tech world. Enjoy the hot takes, strong opinions, and dry humor.

Informazioni

  • Creatore
    Pavilion
  • Anni di attività
    2023 - 2026
  • Puntate
    261
  • Classificazione
    Contenuti espliciti
  • Copyright
    © 012671
  • Sito web del podcast
    Topline

Potrebbero piacerti anche…