Show Notes
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
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Russ Mikowski, CEO of SurePeople and longtime revenue leader in tech, never planned to become a CEO. Recruited to lead a 10-year-old company into its next stage of growth, he faced technical debt, an unfocused ideal customer profile (ICP), and the challenge of turning the company's potential into a scalable business. In this episode of Topline Spotlight, Russ joins Sam Jacobs and AJ Bruno to discuss the decisions behind SurePeople's transformation, including rebuilding parts of its product, narrowing its target market, and resisting custom requests that could pull the business off course. Russ talks about: - How to identify and focus on the customers your product serves best - When rebuilding is a better option than refactoring - Why saying no to the wrong opportunities can protect long-term growth - How to keep a team aligned through organizational change - Why great leaders attract and retain talent by removing obstacles Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Topline Spotlight 01:54 Meet Russ Mikowski, CEO of SurePeople 03:00 SurePeople and the PRISM Assessment 05:51 Russ's Journey to CEO 08:55 Tackling Technical Debt and Rebuilding the Product 12:01 Narrowing the ICP and Finding Market Focus 14:50 Communicating Change and Aligning the Team 17:53 Leadership Lessons from a Mentor 24:00 Where to Find Russ Mikowski and SurePeople Try SurePeople: surepeople.com
Michael Walrath, CEO of Yext, is back on Topline to explain how Yext went from breakeven to 31% EBITDA margins on an 80% gross margin business, after halving its headcount and using its balance sheet to buy back roughly 35% of every share it ever issued. He joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman to argue that the old rules of business still apply: why VC math and founder math are different games, why employees lose the most when an overvalued startup like Airtable lands far below its peak valuation, and why this market feels like 2004. Plus, why Yext stopped doing earnings calls and replaced most stock comp with cash, why cutting the bottom half of a sales team can raise bookings, and how Yext is blurring the lines between AEs, account managers, CSMs and sales engineers. Key Takeaways: - Real profitability turns any growth into fuel. As Michael put it, "when you're actually profitable, like really profitable, then any growth becomes hugely accretive." With 80% gross margins and 31% EBITDA margins, "Every incremental dollar, I can spend 45 cents of it and not affect my margins in any way," so a left-for-dead software company can fund its own growth whatever the market says it's worth. - Chase growth only where it actually exists. "Nothing's more powerful than growth at creating value. Nothing is more destructive to value than chasing growth when the growth isn't there," said Michael. Airtable avoided the trap by leaving its cash on the balance sheet, while Yext once spent 74% of revenue on sales and marketing into a declining growth rate. - Cutting your weakest sellers can grow bookings. When 20% of reps make quota and the bottom half brings in 20% of bookings, the spreadsheet says cutting them costs you that 20%. "It's not even close to true. It's the opposite," said Michael (his numbers were illustrative). Yext now has fewer, better sellers, and is "effectively eliminating all distinction between go-to-market roles" in favor of teams that own books of customers. - Stock comp can turn your own employees into sellers of your stock. Most people sold their RSUs the day they vested, and every quarterly issuance meant the company sold shares to cover taxes too. "The last thing you need are more sellers of your stock every quarter," said Michael, so Yext now pays most employees more cash and points long-term believers to its employee stock purchase plan. 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: Michael Walrath, CEO at Yext - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-walrath-b63166/ Topline is more than a podcast: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Check us out on YouTube for the #1 video podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.youtube.com/@TOPLINE-Media 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 Mike Walrath 03:13 VC Math vs Founder Math 04:46 Why Employees Lose the Most 09:05 Why This Market Feels Like 2004 12:04 31% EBITDA Makes Growth Accretive 16:12 Why Mike Is a Jobs Bull 19:48 What Airtable Got Right 28:19 Hot Startup Equity Is a Lottery 41:37 Yes, You Can Attract Talent 44:16 The Road to 30% EBITDA Margins 47:45 No Earnings Calls, No IR Team 51:52 Replacing Stock Comp With Cash 54:41 Cut the Bottom 50% of Sellers 57:19 Collapsing Go-to-Market Roles 01:01:22 From PE Guy Back to Growth
When Rick Smolen stepped into the CRO role at ShipHero, he took on responsibility for the entire customer lifecycle, from marketing and partnerships to customer success and support. With a background primarily in sales, he had to learn how to lead functions outside his expertise without needing to have all the answers. In this episode, Rick joins Sam Jacobs to discuss the leadership lessons that came with that transition, from asking better questions to building trust with his team. He also explains how to learn from failure, navigate setbacks, and focus on what you can control as a leader. Rick talks about: - Why curiosity makes you a stronger cross-functional leader - How to challenge your team without micromanaging - Why experimentation requires accepting failure - What leaders should focus on when business results fall short - How to prioritize important work that rarely feels urgent Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Rick Smolen and ShipHero 01:10 What ShipHero Does 05:14 Rick's Career Journey 07:50 From Sales Leader to CRO: The Biggest Shift 10:49 Why Curiosity Makes You a Better Leader 16:23 Building a Leadership Team That Learns and Experiments 17:54 Evaluating Leadership Beyond Revenue 22:50 Rick's Book Recommendation: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 24:53 Where to Find Rick Smolen Try ShipHero: shiphero.com
Amy Konary, Founder & Chair of The Subscribed Institute at Zuora, coined the term SaaS as an IDC analyst around 2000, when her first forecast sized the whole market at $40 million. She joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman for the first in-person Topline to ask whether AI company economics are a house of cards, and whether circular financing and double counting are real problems. Plus, why POCs have stopped being a pipeline signal, experimental revenue versus true ARR, a new leverage index for sticky revenue, tokens versus credits, and how close outcome pricing can really get. Key Takeaways: - Treat POCs as a weak pipeline signal. As Amy put it, "it used to be that hands-on product was a really good signal from a pipeline perspective, but everyone's doing POCs just to kick the tires, but actually has no mandate to buy." Many are free, production-ready builds, and very few convert. - Usage alone won't tell you which revenue will last. Amy scores customers on scope and workflows, trust in the system's outputs, and how much of their own context they upload, because "you can have 2 customers with the exact same usage, but very different leverage." Low leverage means "That revenue is less durable." - Pure usage pricing can leave you as exposed as seats did. "If you're just tracking usage, and usage is highly experimental, and usage decreases over time as people optimize the tools, you're in the same vulnerable position you were in with seats," said Amy, who expects hybrid models with a smaller, trackable outcome piece. - Build for durability without rigidity. "So I think there's a difference between durability and rigidity," Amy said, and her metaphor is bamboo: one of the strongest construction materials, yet flexible, anchored by a clear focus on the customer's progress. 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: Amy Konary, Founder & Chair, The Subscribed Institute at Zuora - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amykonary/ Topline is more than a podcast: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Check us out on YouTube for the #1 video podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.youtube.com/@TOPLINE-Media 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 Amy Konary 01:43 From ERP Sales to Industry Analyst 03:33 How Amy Konary Named SaaS 08:03 How Salesforce Taught the Street SaaS 10:31 Building Durable Companies for AI 11:52 Does Gross Margin Still Matter? 15:10 Who Is Checking AI Company Math? 17:03 Circular Financing and Double Counting 18:30 Is AI a House of Cards? 21:49 Durability Versus Rigidity 29:19 Be Careful About Your POCs 33:40 The Leverage Index for Sticky Revenue 39:12 SaaS Companies Moving Into Services 41:59 Tokens, Credits and Outcome Pricing 48:32 P(doom) and Raising Kids With AI
When Sam Jacobs founded Pavilion, formerly Revenue Collective, he set out to build a private community for operators in a startup world that traditionally celebrated founders and overlooked the people running the business. But as Pavilion grew to 10,000+ members, the very thing that made the community valuable began to get diluted.