The AI Revolution Show

Alex Theuma / Shift AI
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  • Entrepreneurship

The rules of B2B software are being rewritten. The AI platform shift isn't coming — it's here. And the founders who understand it earliest will build the companies that define the next decade. The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating that shift. Every episode, host Alex Theuma sits down in person with the founders living through it — the SaaS operators rebuilding their businesses for the AI era, and the AI-native builders who never looked back. No PR polish. No rehearsed talking points. Just honest, field-level conversations about what's actually working, what's breaking, and where software goes from here. Brought to you by Shift AI — the conference and community for founders building software in the AI era. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

  1. Oct 8

    Inside Docket's Demand Agent: Arjun Pillai on Showroom Features, Marketing Factories, and Cracking Buyer Attention

    Only 1% of website visitors ever fill in your form. Arjun Pillai built a company around the other 99%. In this episode, Alex Theuma sits down with Arjun, founder and CEO of Docket, an AI demand agent serving enterprise and mid-market B2B companies, to talk about what happens when buyers stop trusting the tools that were supposed to help them grow. Arjun shares how Docket signed its first eight design partners from nineteen cold conversations, why outcome-based pricing does not work for most GTM use cases, and what a "marketing factory" actually looks like in practice. In this episode, we explore: (01:26) Arjun defines Docket and the 99% bounce problem (02:04) Fourteen years in GTM tech and why that led here (04:07) Why vibe coding does not scale for enterprise products (05:06) The "code factory" model cutting dev time from nine days to two (07:07) The third AI use case: creating TAM, not just replacing humans (09:30) From nineteen cold LinkedIn messages to eight paying design partners (13:23) The single hardest thing about being CEO at an AI-native startup right now (15:23) The $80,000 car giveaway and how the Lucid partnership came together in three weeks (19:35) Arjun's "marketing factory" concept and what it means for your team size (23:27) Why the founders still running the old GTM playbook have a two-year window left The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This episode is brought to you by Leapsome. For more information, visit Leapsome: https://hubs.li/Q04xm8f_0.

  2. Oct 1

    The Bootstrap Founder's Bet on Agentic Support

    What do you do when your bootstrapped business hits $5M ARR but stops acquiring new customers entirely? Alex Turnbull didn't wait for the answer. He shut it down and started over. Twice. Host Alex Theuma speaks with Alex Turnbull, CEO of Helply, formerly CEO of Groove for 15 years. With 100 companies already committed with deposits and a $165K MRR pipeline before launch, Turnbull explains why he killed two products to build one agentic-first platform, no seats, no legacy baggage. In this episode, we explore: (00:41) Why Groove became a textbook NRR zombie at $5M ARR (03:21) The decision to bolt AI onto Groove and why it failed (08:13) Helply V1 reaches $1M ARR in 12 months then gets shut down (11:01) Why owning proprietary data is the real moat in agentic support (15:08) How Helply's ICP and ARPA shifted dramatically from Groove (19:20) The no-seat pricing model and why incumbents cannot copy it (23:04) Turnbull's honest warning to legacy SaaS founders still on the fence (28:19) How vaporware at SaaStr AI Conf produced 125 qualified demos The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This episode is brought to you by Leapsome. For more information, visit Leapsome: https://hubs.li/Q04xm8f_0.

  3. Sep 24

    Bolt-On AI Doesn't Work. Eléonore Crespo, Co-CEO of Pigment, on Why You Have to Rebuild from Scratch

    Finance teams at Anthropic, Coca-Cola, and Unilever have stopped using spreadsheets entirely. Is your business planning keeping pace with the speed of the market, or are you running a Formula 1 race with a bicycle? Alex Theuma sits down with Eléonore Crespo, co-CEO and co-founder of Pigment, the AI performance management platform that has doubled revenue for three consecutive years and recently crossed $100M ARR. Eleanor shares why bolt-on AI is a losing strategy, how Pigment is cutting enterprise implementation from nine months to 20 days, and what it actually takes to build and defend a moat in the age of agents. In this episode, we explore: (02:06) Why Eleanor keeps engineering in Europe and sales in the US (04:09) Crossing $100M ARR with three straight years of revenue doubling (08:11) Why large enterprises cannot just run their business on Claude (10:23) How Pigment pivoted from pre-AI infrastructure to agentic workflows (12:05) Eleanor's three rules: AI-native thinking, moat-building, and speed (22:50) Why two co-CEOs works, and how they handle opposing visions (27:31) Launching a free trial inside an enterprise sales motion (33:10) What people dangerously underestimate about execution and great teams The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This episode is brought to you by Leapsome. For more information, visit Leapsome: https://hubs.li/Q04xm8f_0.

  4. Sep 18

    AI Exposed the Problems SaaS Already Had: Jacco van der Kooij on What's Coming in 2027

    AI didn't break SaaS. It just made the cracks impossible to ignore. And according to Jacco van der Kooij, the AI industry is now sprinting toward the exact same cliff edge, only faster. Alex Theuma sits down with Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design and advisor to companies including Canva, SpaceX, and Boston Dynamics. They cover why inbound-dependent growth models are a ticking clock, where AI is being wasted on old processes, and why human-to-human connection is still the dominant force in sales. In this episode, we explore: (01:32) Jacco on what excites and scares him about AI right now (03:29) Why AI exposed SaaS problems rather than causing them (05:09) Using AI to eliminate your top six business constraints (06:13) The Ferrari-as-lawnmower mistake most founders are making (17:57) High-touch vs. high-volume sales: where humans still win (21:27) Why applying AI to old processes changes nothing (22:11) The inbound dependency trap, and why AI companies are repeating it (23:41) What Jacco expects to learn, not just teach, at Shift AI Europe The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

  5. Sep 11

    St John Dalgleish on Scaling What Works: Perlon AI's Case Against Plug-and-Play AI SDRs

    Alex Theuma sits down with St John Dalgleish, CEO of Perlon AI, to talk about what actually separates a working AI GTM motion from a wasted one. They cover why ownership matters more than tooling, where the human salesperson still wins, and why AI cold callers are a brand risk few founders are willing to take. In this episode, we explore: (01:36) Why most companies are still failing with AI SDRs (05:29) The ownership problem inside sales teams using AI (08:02) How Perlon AI qualifies customers who are actually ready (09:57) From consulting spinout to seven-figure ARR product (12:16) Where the human SDR still beats automation every time (14:34) St John on why AI cold callers are a brand liability (19:23) Dogfooding at scale: 70% of pipeline from their own tool (22:07) The AI backlash driving a comeback for face-to-face events (31:35) Three things Perlan AI actually differentiates on in a crowded market The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

  6. Sep 4

    Why Pricing Is a Leaky Bucket: Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz on the Mistake That Kills SaaS Companies Slowly

    Most SaaS founders touch pricing once every two or three years. In the AI era, that might be the single most expensive decision they never consciously make. Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz, founder of Valueships and former McKinsey pricing specialist, has run surveys across 40 to 50 companies a year and the data is clear: the noise is wrong, and moving to pure usage-based pricing without a process behind it can do serious damage. Host Alex Theuma talks with Krzysztof about why 95% of Valueships engagements end with a price increase, how to identify the right value metric before changing anything, and what separates a pricing transformation from a pricing disaster. If you suspect your pricing is wrong for the AI era, this episode tells you where to start. In this episode, we explore: (02:26) The single most expensive pricing mistake SaaS founders repeat (05:23) What Valueships does and why Krzysztof built it (08:52) What AI is actually doing to SaaS pricing models right now (10:57) Why a 180-degree shift to usage-based pricing backfires (13:35) How to identify the value metric worth charging for (21:31) The Lovable example: changing pricing 12 times in one year (24:06) What AI-native founders should do differently from day one (32:49) Krzysztof's one action for founders who suspect their pricing is wrong The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

  7. Aug 7

    When Agents Outnumber Humans 3 to 1 — Jay Hack, Head of AI at ClickUp

    Agents outnumbering humans 3 to 1 sounds like a future state. At ClickUp, it is already the baseline, and Head of AI Jay Hack thinks the real ratio is closer to 10 to 1. Jay Hack founded CodeGen, one of the earliest coding agent companies, before it was acquired by ClickUp. Jay now leads AI across the entire platform. With hundreds of thousands of workspaces running agents today, Jay shares how ClickUp governs agents using the same permission model as human employees, why process mining is the most underrated first step for any company getting started, and what it actually takes to drive adoption bottom-up inside a large organisation. In this episode, we explore: (02:02) How Jay built CodeGen as a coding agent before the term existed (05:20) Why ClickUp's unified data model solved CodeGen's biggest technical blocker (09:38) The three-stage hierarchy of agent adoption Jay recommends to every company (13:01) Process mining: letting an agent identify what you should automate first (20:25) How ClickUp governs agents using the same permissions model as human employees (22:57) Jay on the lump of labour fallacy and why ClickUp is still hiring aggressively (25:34) The one thing Jay got wrong: how fast agent capabilities would actually move (28:57) The single action any company can take this week to start with agents The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

  8. Jul 30

    Distribution vs. Product: Why Enginy Is Building a Sales CRM to Own Europe Before Touching the US

    Kai Brandt built Enginy to $6M ARR in 24 months with a 65-person team and almost no outside capital, competing directly against tools burning $20M to reach the same number. Alex Theuma sits down with the Enginy co-founder to hear how capital constraints forced genuinely efficient growth, why Europe's multilingual first-party data is a defensible moat US competitors cannot easily replicate, and what it actually takes to keep a founder sharp enough to make good decisions every day. In this episode, we explore: (02:48) Why less funding forced Enginy into genuinely efficient growth (05:51) Building an end-to-end AI sales tool in a category full of point solutions (10:53) What Barcelona gives founders that Silicon Valley cannot (16:04) How Enginy uses its own product as its primary growth engine (19:38) Gamifying LinkedIn posting across the whole team with real cash incentives (24:01) The Claude MCP playbook powering Enginy's internal GTM workflows (35:40) What changes between $3M ARR and the road to $100M (40:51) Why first-party multilingual data is Enginy's long-term competitive moat (44:21) The personal habits Kai changed to stay sharp as a founder The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

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About

The rules of B2B software are being rewritten. The AI platform shift isn't coming — it's here. And the founders who understand it earliest will build the companies that define the next decade. The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating that shift. Every episode, host Alex Theuma sits down in person with the founders living through it — the SaaS operators rebuilding their businesses for the AI era, and the AI-native builders who never looked back. No PR polish. No rehearsed talking points. Just honest, field-level conversations about what's actually working, what's breaking, and where software goes from here. Brought to you by Shift AI — the conference and community for founders building software in the AI era. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Information

  • Creator
    Alex Theuma / Shift AI
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Alex Theuma / Shift AI
  • Show Website
    The AI Revolution Show

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