The Old Sales Playbook Is Dead: Hiring + Selling In The AI Era w/ Jacquelyn Goldberg, VP Sales @ Unframe AI
The Crew PodcastShow Notes
Jacquelyn's Background
Jacquelyn Goldberg is the VP of Sales at Unframe, which has been dubbed the "Palantir for AI.” Unframe works with Fortune 500 companies to identify business problems worth solving and ship production-ready solutions to them in days, not months.
Before Unframe, Jacquelyn was the VP of Global Revenue at Sama AI. She spent most of her career in machine learning-adjacent startups as an early go-to-market hire, then pivoted fully into AI about five years ago, before most salespeople had even heard the term artificial intelligence. She's an early-stage lifer who's built GTM at companies before their sales playbook exists, and has been in the arena long enough to know which hires actually work and which ones just can interview well.
Timestamps (00:00) Intro & What Unframe Does (Palantir for AI) (05:50) Why Every AI Startup Sounded the Same & How Jacquelyn Evaluated Defensibility (08:05) Industries Adopting AI Fastest (Real Estate, Financial Services, Healthcare) (09:20) How Unframe AI Lands & Expands Inside Enterprise Accounts (10:50) The 50% Assessment Failure Rate & What Candidates Keep Getting Wrong (13:40) Discovery as a Give-Get, Not an Interrogation(15:55) What Jacquelyn Actually Means by Intellectual Curiosity and Grit (18:25) Following the Cookie Trail: How to Show Curiosity in an Interview (20:25) Can You Teach Discovery? What's DNA vs. Trainable (23:05) AI Literacy Tiers: From Not Using It to Vibe Coding (25:15) How to Prove Grit When You've Never Worked at a Startup (26:45) "It Functioned Like a Startup" and Why That's Not the Same Thing as One (28:25) Most Pipeline Problems Are Actually Thinking Problems (31:10) What's Actually Working in Outbound Right Now (32:55) The Rolodex Is the Lowest Thing You Should Hire For (34:45) Industry Expertise: When It Matters and When It Doesn't (37:00) Radical Honesty: Telling Candidates Every Reason Not to Join (38:40) Two Weeks Feels Like Six Months at the AI Company Pace (40:00) Why Big Company Reps Struggle at Startups (It's Not Talent) (43:35) How Enterprise Selling Changed Post-COVID (47:50) Is Sales Dead? Why AI Makes Sellers Better, Not Obsolete (49:20) The Future of Entry-Level Sales & Why Universities Need to Catch Up (51:50) Alpha School and Rethinking How People Find Their Career
About The Vibescaling PodcastThe Vibescaling podcast interviews GTM leaders and investors at top AI startups and early-stage companies. Every week, host Chris Balestras, partner @ Vibescaling (an advisory, recruiting, investing, & media firm for seed through series C AI-natives) sits down with GTM operators from the fastest-growing AI natives and SaaS companies to break down what's actually working in go-to-market today. No fluff, no theory - just honest, tactical insights from people in the trenches building the next generation of AI breakouts. About VibescalingVibescaling is an advisory, recruiting, investing, & media firm for seed through series C AI-natives & fast-growing SaaS startups. Where to Find Vibescaling LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vibescaling/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-rcm2qdgF22H2th_Khrlxg Newsletter: https://www.vibescaling.blog/ Website: https://www.vibescaling.ai/
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