Agents of Scale

Wade Foster
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Business

Agents of Scale is a show about real stories of AI transformation. Hosted by Zapier CEO Wade Foster, each episode features a candid conversation with a C-suite leader who’s scaling AI across their organization—turning early experiments into lasting change. From mindset shifts to automation breakthroughs, these are the untold stories behind the enterprise AI wave.

  1. Gong's Amit Bendov on Powering Your Company Brain

    1d ago

    Gong's Amit Bendov on Powering Your Company Brain

    Amit Bendov started Gong on a bet most people thought was backwards: the truth about a deal does not live in the CRM, it lives in the conversation. A decade and $500M+ in ARR later, that idea looks obvious. He has built one of the most AI-native companies in enterprise software on it. And yet he is the guy telling everyone to be careful. Not "use AI less," he is emphatic that you should use it a lot, but don't believe the hype, and don't automate the parts that need a human. No autonomous AI SDRs ("BS," in his words). Do not cut headcount and call it an AI strategy. What is left for people, he argues, is judgment, taste, and accountability. In this episode of Agents of Scale, Wade Foster and Amit cover: - Why the CRM was always "a source of a truth," not the source of truth, and why he hasn't logged into one in years- The "company brain": how Gong now writes its own battle cards, onboarding, and marketing content from real won and lost deals instead of hypotheticals- Why he calls autonomous AI SDRs "BS," and exactly where AI should stop in the sales process- The layoff trap: why "we cut half the company because of AI" is often "not the whole truth"- How the SDR, CSM, and AE roles merge back into one AI-armed, full-cycle seller, and what made them split in the first place- Why AI is a work revolution, not an IT revolution, and why "our enemy is drudgery and ignorance, not the CRM"- The 75% problem: most reps spend a fraction of their time actually selling, and what happens when you halve the waste- Why data is the moat, not the models, and why capturing everything compliantly is the genuinely hard part- Surviving the 2023 "sales tech winter," being declared dead, and ten straight quarters of re-acceleration since This is a conversation about what a revenue org actually looks like when AI absorbs the busywork, and why the most AI-bullish person in the room is also the most careful about where he points it.

    42 min
  2. Veed's Sabba Keynejad: 99% of Companies Shouldn't Build Their Own AI Model

    Jun 25

    Veed's Sabba Keynejad: 99% of Companies Shouldn't Build Their Own AI Model

    Sabba Keynejad, co-founder and CEO of Veed.io, says 99% of companies shouldn't build their own AI model. Veed did it anyway. Sabba joins Wade Foster and Dan Slagen (SVP Marketing at Zapier) on Agents of Scale for a grounded conversation about the state of video AI. Why it's still 2-3 years behind LLMs. Why Veed built Fabric 1.0 despite every reason not to. And what most companies get wrong about AI video, YouTube, and creativity itself. In this episode: - Why video AI is 2-3 years behind LLMs- Why 99% of companies shouldn't build their own model- The "backed into a corner" Fabric 1.0 story- Why AI slop is a creation problem, not a technology problem- The 0.5-second rule for video retention- Why SaaS companies are sleeping on YouTube- How AI lowers the barrier to creativity without replacing creators Subscribe for more conversations with the operators and builders turning AI from experiment into infrastructure.

    41 min
  3. Brand Is Back: Guy Yalif on Marketing in the Agent Era

    Jun 18

    Brand Is Back: Guy Yalif on Marketing in the Agent Era

    Guy Yalif, Chief Evangelist at Webflow, joins Wade Foster on Agents of Scale to discuss what that means for marketers, how the playbook is changing, and why your SEO team is already your AEO team. Guy's point: AEO is a natural evolution of SEO, not a replacement. But the work is real. Content shifts from keywords to questions. Authority shifts from backlinks to consensus in plain text. Brand and PR are back because LLMs look for what shows up consistently. And agents are not here to read your site, they are here to take action. In this episode: Why LLM traffic converts 6x better (and why it is not a blip)The four shifts from SEO to AEOWhy brand is back in the AEO eraGoogle's WebMCP spec: when agents stop reading and start doingBrand guidelines as AI guardrails, not static PDFsGuy's six-level AI maturity model for marketing teamsIndividual AI vs. institutional AI: why individual wins don't automatically scaleSubscribe for more conversations with the operators and builders turning AI from experiment into infrastructure.

    46 min
  4. Lovable's Ryan Meadows on the New GTM Playbook

    Jun 11

    Lovable's Ryan Meadows on the New GTM Playbook

    Ryan Meadows joins Wade Foster and Dan Slagen on Agents of Scale to talk about how his revenue org is being rebuilt from the ground up: no traditional BDR team, AI-assisted outbound, customer feedback shipped in minutes, and creativity as the new hiring signal. Ryan's point: when your product lets almost anyone build software, you can't run the old playbook. You have to throw away 70-80% of it. AI handles account ID and outreach. Humans handle quality, creativity, deployment, and change management. And pace becomes the only operating metric that matters. In this episode: - Why Lovable hasn't hired a traditional BDR team- The AI BDR workflow: human-in-loop → approval rate → autonomous- The 80% admin problem that turned Ryan into a Lovable customer- Hiring for creativity over function- Feedback to shipped feature in minutes- Enterprise adoption: governance, permissions, and the "co-founder" framing- Why executives moving into AI companies need to drop the old playbook- "Everything is pace" as the operating question Subscribe for more conversations with the operators and builders turning AI from experiment into infrastructure.

    43 min
  5. Eric Ries on Vibe Coding and Building Incorruptible Companies

    Jun 1

    Eric Ries on Vibe Coding and Building Incorruptible Companies

    Fifteen years after The Lean Startup, Eric Ries is watching a new generation of founders rediscover and stress-test the core ideas behind build-measure-learn. AI has made the build step radically faster. Code that used to take weeks can now appear in minutes. But Eric's warning is sharp: when building gets cheaper, measurement and learning become the new bottlenecks. Teams that use AI to close the learning loop are flying. Teams that use AI to outsource their judgment are building what he calls "slop factories." In this episode, Wade and Eric cover: Why the Lean Startup feels more relevant, not less, in the AI eraThe difference between vibe coding and engineeringWhy LLMs can become dopamine machines that make you feel more productive than you areHow to use AI to learn instead of outsourcing your learning to the machineWhy token maxing is the wrong metric — and validated learning is still the right oneHow AI may collapse old functional silos between product, design, engineering, and marketingWhy most founders have never read their corporate charter — and why that mattersEric's new book Incorruptible, and how governance becomes the art of organizational soul craftThe Costco hot dog story, Cloudflare's free encryption decision, and why "harder is easier"Check out Eric's brand new book Incorruptible: https://incorruptible.co

    57 min
  6. Guru's Rick Nucci on Building AI Your Team Can Trust

    May 21

    Guru's Rick Nucci on Building AI Your Team Can Trust

    Rick Nucci has spent more than a decade building AI-native knowledge systems at Guru, long before the current LLM wave. In this episode of Agents of Scale, Rick joins Wade Foster to explain why so many enterprise AI efforts get stuck in pilot purgatory. His core argument: the problem is not just which AI tool a company picks. It is whether the organization has trusted, governed context that every tool can rely on. As Rick puts it, today's models are "wonderfully brilliant" but know nothing about your company by default. Without verified internal knowledge, teams risk confident wrong answers at scale. Wade and Rick discuss what separates individual AI productivity from institutional AI transformation, how agentic systems expose the next operational bottleneck, why accountability still belongs to the person using AI, and how Guru's knowledge agents help teams find stale, conflicting, or unverified information before it spreads.

    47 min
  7. How Wistia started shipping nearly 10x feature releases per year

    Mar 19

    How Wistia started shipping nearly 10x feature releases per year

    Most companies are scrambling to figure out AI. Wistia did the hard part first — a total culture reset that made a 188-person company operate with the efficiency of a 30-person startup. Then AI poured gasoline on it. Chris Savage co-founded Wistia nearly 20 years ago, grew it to serve hundreds of thousands of businesses, and took on $17 million in debt to buy out investors and stay independent. He joins Wade Foster to unpack what it actually takes to rewire a company's operating system — and why doubling headcount didn't make them ship any faster. One mandate changed everything: ship value to customers every two weeks. Features that had been sitting on six-month roadmaps launched in two weeks. Wistia went from 12 major product updates a year to over 100 — same team size. Chris explains why the bottleneck in software is shifting to taste, how Wistia's new agentic video editor Remix is turning 45-minute sales calls into 3-minute shareable highlights, and what the "ChatGPT moment for video" means for trust in the workplace. Plus: Wade and Chris riff on Block's AI-driven layoffs. Linked Resources Chris Savage on the Economics of AI Avatars (Sacra)Wistia "Complete Control" — AI-Generated Ad Campaign Deep Dive"The ChatGPT Moment for Video" — Chris Savage on LinkedInWistiaChris Savage on LinkedIn

    38 min
  8. Why "Get With the Program" Doesn't Work—Claire Vo on AI That Actually Sticks

    Mar 12

    Why "Get With the Program" Doesn't Work—Claire Vo on AI That Actually Sticks

    Product and leadership roles are changing—and “PM is dead” still holds. Claire Vo, CEO of ChatPRD (100,000+ users) and former CPTO at LaunchDarkly, Color Health, and Optimizely, joins Wade to talk about what that means for how you show up: as a leader driving adoption or as someone deciding whether to lean in. They cover why CEO "AI Mandates" and headcount freezes don’t move the needle—and what does.  Claire shares how she frames AI as career development for skeptics, the rituals that actually stick (AI Fridays, hack weeks, “no lanes”), and why executives have to get hands-on themselves (“era of the hard skill”). She gives concrete ways to start if you’re rusty: the Sunday Scaries Zapier agent, vibe coding a prototype, exec hackathons—and why leader vulnerability makes it safe for everyone to experiment. They also talk about making space for ideas at every level (dogfooding, the “cringe” channel, trading certainty for ambition), what the future product role looks like, and why hiring for willingness to learn and fearlessness about tooling beats tenure. Claire walks through how she’s building ChatPRD with fewer humans—where she’s not constrained and where she still invests in people—as a lens on how work is shifting. In this episode, you’ll hear: - Why “PM is dead” still holds and what the skill of the future looks like for product and leadership. - What actually drives AI adoption—and why CEO edicts don’t. - Why execs’ jobs are changing too and where to start if you’re embarrassed or rusty. - How to create an environment where ideas can come from anywhere. - Why leaning in now is a career move and what hiring looks like when adaptability and tooling matter more than tenure. - How one AI-native company is built: where humans still matter and where they don’t. Guest: Claire Vo — CEO & Founder, ChatPRD. X: @clairevo.

    51 min
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5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

Agents of Scale is a show about real stories of AI transformation. Hosted by Zapier CEO Wade Foster, each episode features a candid conversation with a C-suite leader who’s scaling AI across their organization—turning early experiments into lasting change. From mindset shifts to automation breakthroughs, these are the untold stories behind the enterprise AI wave.

Information

  • Creator
    Wade Foster
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    29
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Wade Foster

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