The Revenue Formula

What if a company could hit $10M ARR per founder—with zero employees? 

In this episode, Amos Bar-Joseph (CEO of Swan) joins Toni to break down their radical vision: scaling to $30M ARR with just three founders and an army of AI agents. They unpack what it really means to run an "autonomous business," why headcount isn't always the answer, and how AI is transforming go-to-market strategy from the inside out.

If you're a founder, CRO, or GTM leader, this one's for you. 

Never miss a new episode! join our newsletter at revenueformula.substack.com 

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (02:23) - Road to $30M ARR with AI
  • (05:11) - Orchestration over operation
  • (07:35) - Navigating AI and human jobs
  • (11:43) - Strategies for scaling with AI
  • (22:20) - The Second Wave of AI
  • (25:38) - What exactly is Swan?
  • (28:46) - The future of AI in business
  • (36:58) - The new AI playbook
  • (41:49) - Wrapping up
  • (42:19) - Up next: Unemployment in the GTM community

Creators and Guests

Host
Toni Hohlbein
2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host
Guest
Amos Bar-Joseph
CEO @ getswan.com

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

$10M ARR per founder. No Employees. All Agents. (with  Amos Bar-Joseph)
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Introduction
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[00:00:00]

Amos: The biggest misconception of people who are looking from the outside is that thinking, okay, they're just hiring digital workers instead of growing the team. It's not about how can we add an AI SDR, how can we add an AI support rep? It's not about abstracting away the relationships with our customers so that AI could take over everything and manage it for us.

This entire notion of building an autonomous business is designed around, around changing the operating system. Of your business around unlocking that 100 x growth out of the same human

Toni: stack. Today I'm talking to Amos Bar-Joseph. He's the CEO of Swan. What makes him fascinating is that he and his two co-founders are committed to building a company with 10 million a IR per founder, no employees agents only.

This approach is both radical and clearly intriguing. I'll discuss with him whether this is a serious long-term strategy [00:01:00] or simply a way to tell a story that stands out. Either way, it's clearly working as this company is growing by $300,000 ARR weekly. This episode will be inspiring for founders and valuable for go-to market leaders looking to transform their orgs in the age of ai.

As usual, write me on toni@active.ai for comments. And hit subscribe if you haven't already. And now enjoy the show.

So Amos, uh, from kind of, you know, getting to know you just a little bit online, I think there are two really interesting stories here to discuss today. One is really around this whole AI SDR topic.

Everyone is like talking about it. Everyone has like crazy opinions about it. This will be a reason why people, you know, click and, and, and wanna, wanna listen to this. But I think the more interesting one maybe to start out with is this whole thing that you've started to kind of push online, which is like, hey, um, it's not only about a IR per employee, it's [00:02:00] that you three founders building swan, uh, won Atlanta, 10 million a RR dollars.

Dollars, uh, ly basically us. US

Amos: dollars.

Toni: Yeah, exactly. There's, you know, I'm in Denmark right now, not Euro. It's not Euro. There's funny, it's not Denmark dollars.

Amos: Exactly,

Toni: exactly. So this alone is crazy and everyone is like, okay, this, this dude is, you know, you know. Let's see how serious, but let's just jump into this actually, kind of what is, when,

Road to $30M ARR with AI
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Toni: when you tell this to folks, what is the, the main misconception, because I know you're serious.

I know you're serious about this. So what is the main misconception that people have when you tell them, Hey, and I wanna do 30 million with three founders?

Amos: Yeah, no, that's, that's a, it's a beautiful question, Tony, and actually, um, the beautiful thing is that it connects both of the points that you just mentioned earlier.

You know, the. This what I think about ai, SDR and what, um, you know, is the biggest misconception about building an autonomous business. So for the folks out there who don't know, so at Swan, basically we're on a mission to get to $30 million [00:03:00] a RR with just three employees and an army of AI agents. And I think that, uh, the biggest misconception of people who are looking from the outside is that thinking, okay, they're just hiring digital workers instead of growing the team.

So instead of hiring employees, they said, yeah, let's, let's just hire AI agents. And I think it's kinda like, um, represents what is entirely wrong about AI adoption and, you know, and. 2025 when people are trying to just replace their, uh, you know, their humans instead of empowering them. And the way that we're building our autonomous business, which is about scaling with intelligence, not with headcount, it's not about how can we add an ai, SDR, how can we add an AI support rep?

It's not about, uh, abstracting away the relationships with our customers so that AI could. Take over everything and manage it for us. It's not about that. It's actually about a discovery process. How can we [00:04:00] discover and unlock that 100 x founder, that 100 x worker? So we're actually, instead of trying to hire a I SDRs, we are actually looking to, uh, unlock that 100 x seller, which is me, basically.

Uh, or we're trying to unlock that 100 x product or that 100 x engineer. And this entire notion of building an autonomous business. Is designed around, around changing the operating system of your business around unlocking that 100 x growth out of the same human

Toni: stack. So I love this. A lot of other people are loving this, um, fun story.

So when I hit you up on LinkedIn and we're like, cool, let's talk. But also put my marketing agency in CC Gerard. Like, cool, cool guy, by the way. Mm-hmm. Amazing. So this, this to me also means like, hey, you know, this is not only an autonomous AI business, also more like, um. You know, it almost seems like a hub, hub business, right?

Where you have a core of, of full-time workers that are managing as much internal workforce as possible. [00:05:00] I'm sure you have, you know, not, not, maybe not only an ai, uh, sorry, a marketing agency, but maybe you have some other folks like specialists that jump in and kind of help you guys out. Is, is that how you're kind of building this?

Amos: Yeah, that's an interesting question.

Orchestration over operation
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Amos: So we see every founder more kinda like evolving from an operator, uh, into an orchestrator. Okay. Yeah. So it's, it's more about orchestration and how can you, um, uh, create leverage. Engines rather than, you know, processes. So it's a little bit different. And so we look at resources at our disposal and we think, okay, what could serve the founders to actually accomplish that mission?

But I would say that we did set a constraint that we are going to achieve that $30 million mission, a goal, basically with just three. Core FTEs. And the reason why we did that is because, um, uh, in, in hindsight, I will tell you that, you know, every, [00:06:00] um, necessity yields innovation, right? Mm-hmm. And when we actually set that constraint, we said, okay, we can't really add headcount to solve that problem.

We can't throw bodies at the problem to solve it. And so what we left is, is thinking out of the box and the most. A valuable resource that we had we're okay using AI and AI agents to actually solve these bottlenecks. And so that constraint actually developed into that discovery process into, okay, where can we apply ai?

How can we use it, and how can we turn it around? Each founder so that we can continue to grow that process in an exponential rate without losing that human touch that is so sacred to us. So I

Toni: absolutely love this, right, because it's, there's like this, um, this startup. You know, law, I wanna say that is about, oh, you need to remove your limiting constraints.

You almost kind of put this on its hat and say like, no, you need to add some constraints in [00:07:00] order to create creativity coming out of this. Right? And if I were to translate this into, let's just say I'm a CRO with a $10 million budget, I, I would kind of try and find similar constraints and, and I guess by now, you, you, you, Mr.

CRO can choose, is the board or the CEO going to give you those constraints? Or are you coming up with those constraints yourself? Uh, and then kind of, I don't know, either reduce your budget or grow more with it or whatever it might be, but using this constraint way of thinking, I think it's a, it's a really cool way to, to unlock, um, you know, additional possibilities.

Yeah. And, and on, on this note, right?

Navigating AI and human jobs
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Toni: So I mean, if, if someone is out there wondering, okay, cool, I get this, um, and I'm sure Swan can help me with, you know, a bunch of my, you know, go-to market, uh, thinking and, and then AI pieces there, but. How do you internally kind of navigate this? What should I give to an AI versus what should I give to a human?

Or, you know, maybe outsource, you know, how, how do you, how do you maneuver this? Mm-hmm.

Amos: Yeah. No, that's, that's, [00:08:00] that's a great question, which I get a lot, um, from, you know, CROs and go to market leaders, CMOs, et cetera, basically. First of all, you should start with this notion that nothing has changed, okay? Uh, you have bottlenecks that you want to unlock, and you should start from there.

Okay? So it's the same thing. It's not about how can I find something that I don't even know of that could save my business? That's not how. Things work in, you know, in in businesses specifically in B2B. Um, it's not about just a, a magic wand that could change your entire, you know, efficiency metrics. It's not about that.

And when I see go to market leaders, you know, depending on that, looking for that outside help to change your business, 99% of the times they will fail. So first of all, you need to, um, adopt that mind. Um, you know that the way of thinking that. Identify bottlenecks first. Okay. And we did the same at swan. We didn't actually.[00:09:00]

And try to look, which off the shelf AI tools can we use? We actually looked at internally at our business and we said, okay, where do we have the biggest bottleneck and where do we have our core strength? And we actually wanted to say, okay, we want to amplify our core strength and we want to eliminate our bottleneck.

And so how can we, um, solve these? Problems without throwing bodies at the problem. Mm-hmm. But by throwing intelligence at the problem. So for example, what works for me is, uh, you know, my LinkedIn game. I love to write. It's my passion. I love content, I love writing content, and LinkedIn is going well for us.

So instead of buying an A-I-S-D-R that would send emails to mass, you know, spamming the mass market, why should we do that? We designed a system around my. Strength and my bottlenecks, which are around LinkedIn. So, um, I get, you know, 15,000, um, engagement points every month on my posts. So I can't actually monitor that.

So we need an intelligence way to actually monitor all these signals and surface the [00:10:00] signal out of the noise. And then I get, you know, 300 connection requests each day, some of them from very interesting leads. So I need to start these conversations so I could, how could I use an AI agent to help me filter out through that noise and engage with the right conversations?

And we have, you know, website visitors, et cetera. Mm-hmm. And, and it goes on, and I can talk about our, you know, go to market, um, swarm that we build of agents. But most importantly, um, I want to go back to your question. So we talked about, uh, bottle x. We talked about strength, and then the third most important thing is AI should be designed around your humans.

And so when you try to understand which processes should I actually hand off to ai and which processes should the human take, that's that's the wrong type of question. Okay. It's actually, you don't need to ask that. You have, for example, an AE and they excel at things. So how can you use that AE to, to the maximum?

How could you, you know, um, uh, [00:11:00] exploit their potential to the maximum? So, for example, in, in my point of view, it's a. It's not that I, we asked our ourself, how can we hand off as many tasks to ai? Where can we do that? Is this AI or human? Is this AI or human? It's not the question that we asked. We said, okay, I want to be, uh, the most critical touch points with, you know, the hot leads that I have.

So if it's a valuable lead, I wanna know that there's a valuable lead. I wanna be in the loop. I wanna see the message that is being sent, and I actually want to be at the starting point of that conversation supported to me when it's a low value lead. I don't wanna waste my time on that. So AI could take that, and then you can see what's the constraints, what AI could actually perform whatnot.

But it, it starts with where, where do you see your humans fit into that picture?

Strategies for scaling with AI
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Toni: I mean, following on, on this, and this is, you know, maybe, maybe I'm pushing you here a little bit, but you guys are, you know, three, three highly capable individuals. You, you taking care of the go-to market side, um, you guys are scaling, generating a bunch of pipeline.

Can you, can [00:12:00] you foresee the point in time where the three of you sit down maybe with a, with a wine or a beer, like, geez, man, wouldn't it be nice to maybe have one or two more folks helping, you know, use, you know, cursor and code faster or do some of this stuff so we can leverage more and more AI on top of this?

Mm-hmm. Don't you foresee that, that, and maybe this has already happened, I don't know, but, but you know, how are you gonna navigate this? Right? Kind of this fear of like, well, you know, we have a pretty cool persuasive vision. It helps us a bunch, like, you know, breaking through the noise. But on the flip side, chip, maybe we want to have a few more employees.

How do you navigate this?

Amos: Yeah, so it's, it's an internal discussion that we have, uh, every once in a while. And, um, it's not easy. We're working very hard and, you know, to, to, um, add 300 KARR every 30 days. Right now it's not, it doesn't come with a, you know, small feed, uh, with just such a small team. But I would say two things.

First of all. We know that, um, adding more [00:13:00] people doesn't give you more time. It doesn't give you, you know, the leisure of, you know, spending more time with your family or something like that. More employees means more responsibility and, you know, taking, um, you know, uh, responsibility of more things. So that's, that's the first notion.

The second one is that every time we had that discussion, we're almost there. We say, we always say, okay, what if we actually add another developer? What if we actually had an AE that would take these demos out of, you know, my responsibility that would actually. Allow me to do so much more things. We realize that we can solve that barrier again with intelligence, and it leads to a whole different type of, uh, thinking about go to market for example.

And it actually yields a different go to market strategy and a different processes around it. And so we, we, we. We say that we are true to ourselves without mission, not because we think it's a cool goal to get to $30 million with three people, not because we're greedy or something like that. Because we believe that's the [00:14:00] only way to really rewrite the playbook, to really uncover how can an autonomous business could look.

Only if you get to that extreme, basically you can really uncover these tactics and strategies.

Toni: I think it's really cool. Again, right. Kind of using this as a source for, for creativity. So I, I know for a fact that, you know, we have a bunch of folks in, you know, leading go to market positions other than ops or sales or marketing kind of listening.

But we also have some founders listening and founders usually have this dual role of Sure. Being maybe the CEO, but but also having some kind of a, of a, to market responsibility, right? Whether it's early on or later on. Let me kind of ask a question from their perspective, right? When they hear, uh, three employees and what is it, say, 300 KA week or three days or something like this, and, and added, added customers, um, there's also a, um, oh, okay.

Do you know that that must probably mean that you guys are, you know, casual, positive, and that must probably mean that you, uh, maybe didn't even raise venture [00:15:00] capital and kind of doing this whole thing by yourself, right? Kind of. That's, that's the flip side of this. Um, and, you know, let's not talk about funding itself, but if, if you were to give advice to folks, you know, deciding between the two paths, kind of a heavily VC fueled and potentially, you know, adding some headcount, you know, taking that constraint away, basically, uh, versus the path that you've chosen, how would you help them navigate that?

Amos: Yeah. So, uh, first of all, it's not a question of like zero one. So we don't, uh, advocate for like bootstrapping a business or going for the, um, you know, the VC path. We think that the unicorn playbook is dead, okay? The growth at all costs playbook is something that is, um, outdated and not relevant for building a company today.

So if you're actually looking to raise, you know, five to $10 million before you have even have product market fit. And you want to get to 30 people before you get, you even had your first million dollars in a R and then you're trying to get from one to 10 [00:16:00] by going to 100 people without you even completed like full sales cycles with your customers as the founding team.

Then you're doing it wrong and it's not about, um, you know. Just doing it with a lean team or not. It's just that this, uh, playbook is not sustainable anymore and even VCs are not enduring it anymore, are not promoting it anymore. And so what we offer to these folks is not like this crazy, um, I. You know, alternative of, you know, just fire everyone.

Just be the three founding team. It's not about that we're doing it to actually write the playbook and to discover these tactics, but all of these playbooks, which I share on my newsletter by the way, every week, are some tactics that you can deploy in your company. So just you can start small with a transformation.

Of a specific function in your company when you look at it, okay, right now we wanna scale support without adding more headcount. How can we, you know, generate more outcome to this department without hiring more [00:17:00] support? Rex, how can we do that? And it could, it could start with that. It doesn't mean that you need to transform your entire operating system or your business in day one, but taking these small steps could get you there.

Basically, and I think it's not only for founders. This is an advice for every person that manages a, a, a department or a function within the business. Um, and even if you are working as a solo operator, you can just adopt this mind shift, um, this, uh, approach basically, and, and just change the way that you think about scale.

Toni: Have you seen, you know, patterns of companies that are successful with that shift or is companies that are unsuccessful with that shift? C can you comment a little bit on that and maybe kind of give people a bit of a, of a, of a signal whether or not they're on the right path or if they're, if they're getting it wrong and need to rethink their whole, their whole approach to it.

Amos: First of all, I would say that, um, I. When you're thinking about tools and solutions instead of problems [00:18:00] and processes and your people, your human stack, then you're getting it wrong. You don't think, you know, you don't need to think about what's out there. You need to think about what's. Inside of your company, the transformation, the, these shifts towards AI native operating system.

The ones that fail are the ones that are driven by vendors, the ones that are driven by, you know, fomo. And actually by this notion of how can I turn my business into more, you know, AI native, it's nice. To have that motivation. But the real, um, um, you know, catalyst for change comes from a real challenge that you're experiencing from a real process that you're trying to transform basically.

And so when you look at a specific process within your company, uh, and you have a clear from to. Then basically you can start going outside of thinking, okay, what? What do we need to actually make that transformation? And when you see these types of [00:19:00] processes, you see actually buyers coming much more knowledgeable.

They understand what they need. They can filter out the fluff and the bs. And can identify which types of solutions could really have a potential for their business rather than, um, you know, GTM leaders who are just looking to increase pipeline. And so, yeah, maybe an A-I-S-D-R could save my ass. And then actually, uh, you know.

Bring me a lot of meetings. I don't know. Let's see, let's just see. We'll see what happens. And it's kinda like, um, it's called like an external locus of control, of trying to put it on someone else to save my business rather than me, uh, performing that diligent process internally.

Toni: I think it's a, it's a good way to think about it.

I think, um, you know, I, I've, I've been a COO and I've, I've tried to change things in, in organizations and, and something like this, I can just smell how. If it is driven top down, how there might be resistance from, you know, people around you, right? You maybe get to. Try one or two initiatives and maybe they fail or they don't, you [00:20:00] know, fly immediately after day two.

And, you know, everyone that you're pushing against feels validated. Like, see, see, it didn't work. Kind of. See, I mean, I, I'm not a particularly big fan of s St AI SDRs, but like whatever initiative you have running. I can, I can just see and smell how people pushing against that. Right? And this might be a fear in general for change.

Like, you know, I've seen this a lot, but I, but I do see in some organizations amplified by this, oh, oh, you know, this, this initiative is coming to take my job. Like, basically. Right. Um, and, and it's really tricky to push against that, I feel. Right. And it's not only from a technical perspective of like how to even wire these things together and maybe get like, I dunno, like a GTM engineer or something like this.

Also driving that change in the organization. Right? So I really like your approach of like, well, it needs to come within, it can't, it can't be a thing that comes from some vendor that, you know, steps to you and kind of says they wanna do that. But I think a nice way to trigger it, actually, tying back to earlier parts of our conversation, is [00:21:00] almost to set constraints.

Set constraints, maybe as a CO2, you don't need to tell them how to solve it. You can blink twice and maybe say like, maybe you try ai. Um, but basically, you know that from when I'm listening to you, this can actually be a facilitator for change. Right. I agree

Amos: 100%. And, um, you, you framed it perfectly. So it starts with, um, a constraint.

So. You can instruct your employees that, you know, if you want, you have these quotas or you have these goals and you need to get to them, but you can increase the size of the team to get there. So, okay, figure it out. How can you do, how can you do that? It should come with maybe like a budget for, you know, an AI tooling, um, because it's not about, um, doing it without any re additional resources.

It's just. It's as, as you mentioned, it's about how, right? Mm-hmm. It's not, it's not about scaling with headcount, it's about scaling with intelligence. And if you, more importantly, you need to [00:22:00] actually build this, uh, philosophy within your company of how to discover the right solution to your problem. And if you are always relying on vendors to tell you what you need, you don't, you can't really develop internally that competency to evaluate.

What is the right tool for you, basically. Mm-hmm. And so you need to develop that muscle. Um,

The Second Wave of AI
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Toni: internally, you know, when I read up on you and I read up quite a lot on you, um, I kind of stumbled over the second wave of ai. Can you maybe talk a little bit more about that?

Amos: You know, when we set out to build Swan, we.

We looked at, uh, you know, this challenge of, you know, generating pipeline of going to market. And we saw like the struggles and challenges and we looked at, okay, but there are like so many AI SDRs right now, right? There are like so many solutions out there. How is it that they're all still struggling?

Right? And um, I stumbled upon an interesting piece from Chris Dixon. He's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. It's one of the biggest, uh, uh, [00:23:00] venture capital in the US and in the world. And he. Actually used that term from Steve Jobs, but basically he coined the fact that what he called isomorphic design, and it sounds terrible, but what does it mean?

It means that with every technological revolution, um, with every wave of technology, the first thing that us humans do, we mimic what we had before with Afec. Mm-hmm. Okay. We just, we tried to do the same thing. With that tech. We are kind like very constrained with creativity. You don't have that creativity.

We don't really understand the technology. If you look at websites, for example, so you can look at Bars and Noble for, it's like a bookstore in the US and so they had one of the first websites in the world. It was amazing, like super innovative. But what they did was just, they took what they had in the store and just put like, okay, these are the books that we have.

You can just see it. A website. Right. It was just, you know, a read only website. Right? It was isomorphic design of what [00:24:00] they had in their store. They just tried to put it in a website, but then came Amazon and kind of like reimagine how would a digital native bookstore look like? Right? And we all know today where this Amazon said in order does Barn and Noble, right?

And we see the same, um, uh, you know, mechanics happening with the AI revolution, with this notion of. Digital workers, right? So digital workers are like, we treated websites in the nine, the end, like the late 1990s. So digital workers is like putting a read-only website in the internet. It's the same thing.

It's um, uh, it's lacking the creativity to imagine what could be a 100 x improvement if we actually. Redesigned the entire process, the entire operating system of the business with human AI collaboration at the core, and so swan. It's actually built for that notion. It's built for the second wave [00:25:00] of AI for people understanding that instead of trying to replace their processes with ai, they can create new ones.

And SWAN is actually, um, we can talk about it. Uh, more in the conversation, Tony, but in that context, Swan is actually an, an autonomous GTM engineer. It is designed to help you find, create, uncover, a agentic, go-to market workflows that fit your business. So it's about discovery and it's about iteration and it's about creativity.

It's not about, you know, rep replication and replacement,

What exactly is Swan?
---

Toni: but let's kind of dive into this now. Right? So in kind of my first question, you know, I checked your website out. I checked all your LinkedIn stuff, I checked everything out. I talked with some people about SWAN one. One thing, and this is maybe just a positioning thing and maybe you guys are still early on, but one thing that came up a couple of times was like, oh, these guys are like 11 x and a couple of other times came, oh, these guys are like RB two B.[00:26:00]

What is it kind of, are you both, neither one of them, kind of in which, which bucket should people put you guys in?

Amos: Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question and we, we get that a lot. So as I just, you know, mentioned earlier in the conversation, what we're actually building is that, you know, autonomous GT, M and G.

Okay. So let, let's start with the problem that we identify. The problem is that for SMBs that don't have a huge rev ops department at their, um, you know, under their belt. Their biggest barrier is, you know, is building these workflows. They have so many ideas of how to go to market and they can get creative, they can understand their audience and they can think of different ways to engage with them.

But just, you know, building each process is so hard for them. It takes so much time. It, you know, spans across data providers and their CRM and. Sales engagement, um, and, and so many different types of tooling that they need to actually coordinate between. So it takes a lot of time. And what we thought is what if we gave them a tool that would help them, you know, [00:27:00] take from an idea to, uh, a real experiment.

Any go to market idea in seconds, you know, from prompt to pipeline. Basically. And so that's the notion of that GTM engineer that is completely based on an AI agent. But, um, instead of trying to go wide at day one and, and, you know, spreading a lot of promises, uh, to people and say, yeah, you can do whatever you'd like, but we're just three people and we need to grow in a very efficient way.

Part of that constraint, we said, what if we will actually start from just the one workflow that we've identified? That is a very. In demand workflow, but for SMPs, it's really hard to scale and customize to their own needs basically without kinda like this notion of a, like a rev ops department that is sitting on their existing tool.

And so we doubled down on this first party intent motion, reaching out to folks that are actually showing intent on your website but are not converting. And we [00:28:00] realized that to actually nail this down in a way that is. Completely customized to how you wanna run it. You don't really have a great solution.

You can either connect R B2B or Vector to Clay and from Clay, you connect it to instantly and Hay reach and sync it with your HubSpot, et cetera. Or you can go for like off the shelf. A SDR where you don't really have a control over it. And it's kinda like, yeah, this is what they offer, this is what they'll do.

They'll just, you know, uh, spam and maybe we'll hit some meetings, but we can't really adjust it and, and customize it to our business. And so we doubled down on that motion and actually we're, um, releasing gradually a beta with our current customers that would increase the amount of use cases that we'd support beyond the first party intent.

So it's coming in the next couple weeks.

The future of AI in business
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Toni: I think there's a really big trend going on right now that, um, I, I feel it's almost, uh, maybe it was there before, but it feels it's almost kicked off by Clay to a degree. Right. And let's, let's, let's not get completely confused. Clay [00:29:00] is a, is a, is a, is a, uh, you know, Excel spreadsheet kind of approach that is in a lot smarter.

That's how these guys also started out, and that's their vision actually, and kind of they're going really in this direction. What happened there is that they were able to, you know, um, give people that were non-technical, some of those tools, and suddenly I could piece those things together. Right. And I think the, you know, if I understand you correctly, it's a similar direction you guys are going in terms of, I.

Not, not this, not this clear approach. That's not what I'm comparing you to, but really the, yes, we are starting with one workflow, but then there might be multiple use cases actually coming out of that. Right. And those might span some of the stuff at m Robinson's building that might span some of the stuff.

Hassan, uh, the 11 access building, right? Kind of it's basic kind of giving SMB teams kind of that, that capability without needing to buy five or 10. Different tools, I guess.

Amos: Yeah, 100%. And you really kind of hit the, the nail on its head. So, you know, we're transitioning from uh, um, a [00:30:00] phase where you had this, there's an app for this.

We all remember this wave and, um, you know, in SaaS and, or like mobile apps or Oh yeah, there's an app for this. There's an app from this. There's like this abundance of apps, what we're transitioning into. There's an app for me. Okay, the next wave that we're entering into is there's an app for me. I can build an application that fits perfectly to my needs, basically, and that is something that both Clay and Swan share together, is that idea of trying to actually build something that is fully customized to the way that I wanna run it without all the barriers that kind of like, you know, have it, you know, in between.

But. The way that we're very different in our philosophy is that, um, you know, clay is imagining a future where, you know, there are. And every SMB, they start turning their sales org and GTM org into an engineering org into an r and [00:31:00] d organization, right? And we believe that the go-to market organization should be focused on creating relationships.

With buyers, with existing customers should be focused on human interactions, not system interactions. And so instead of trying to build a development environment that will try to deepen the amount of time that this organization spends on their systems, I. We're actually building an autonomous GTM engineer as a resource so that you don't need to spend any second on your systems.

You can just work with Swan. Swan will spend time working on your system. We'll build these workflows for you so you can focus on strategy, creativity, and human connection. And I think that's a fundamental difference because we promise the sales teams and go to marketing teams at large. That their organization is not gonna fundamentally change.

It will still be people selling to people. They're not gonna change into an R and d organization where they [00:32:00] will need to build a capacity in-house of developers and engineers that could start building AI workflows. And I think that that is a very scary notion to a lot of go-to market leaders. And finding these people is like finding a needle in a haystack.

And there isn't a lot of people out there in the market that could actually live up to that expectation. And so instead of, you know, um, amazing and talented rev ops, um, um, you know, professionals trying to spend their entire time learning tooling, they could spend their time learning, you know, creativity, strategy, execution.

They could. Spend their time in a much more efficient ways if they could just have a resource that would take care of these, all these system interactions for them.

Toni: So, yes. Um, and I also think kind of, there is a, and it feels like we're, we're going in this direction where, um, the, the notion in the idea of AI completing [00:33:00] completely replacing work.

Is not fully landing yet, or may never fully land. We, we don't know. But there is a little bit of a, you know, the honeymoon is starting to be over. Uh, there's a little bit of, okay, the completely autonomous agent gentech network of things that just, you know, spewing out emails to things that are. Answering customer support requests and so forth.

We are seeing some people not only, um, questioning that, but also scaling back kind of very recently, uh, you know, kna, for example, stopped using only their, you know, their AI to do a customer service kind of their, their hiring folks. Now, again, right. And, um, SS similar so in, in other areas as well. Right.

And I think your point really also is not only kind of, you know, the GTM stuff is being kind of all built by itself. I'm not sure kind of how you, how you formulate it there, but the, the, the play, the interplay between the AI and the human, [00:34:00] um, that is kind of a really important piece. To get right into nail.

Right. And, and I left your previous, um, and I'm not sure if it was, you know, when we were talking previous to the recording or, or already on, but you mentioned that there's like, hey, some of the leads that maybe a rep is getting right. Some of them might be low volume. I. And maybe for those, it's okay that the AI reaches out like completely autonomously.

And then there might be some things where the AI maybe rewrites an email and then you need to approve. And then there might be some, it's like, no, no AI at all allowed. I wanna do this completely by myself. Right? And that kind of granularity, I think that will pull the teeth off all the. You know, the fears that people are having that the AI will screw something up, right?

Um, and, and I think that approach, I, I can, I can see myself and others believing in this approach a lot more. And then who knows, right? As AI learns, as it learns with their systems, maybe a trusted more and more and more, um, you know, there, there can still be a shift to kind of go even further. So [00:35:00] like.

From a vision perspective, I don't want to completely rule this out, but at least where we are right now, uh, you know, with your messy data, with your fragmented data, with the hallucinating ai, with all of that stuff, you probably don't want to, you know, be completely hands off here. And I think this is the vision you guys are supporting, right?

Amos: Yeah, 100%. I feel like, um, first of all, we view, uh, you know, go to market as a product actually, and every company develops their own unique product that is based on, you know, their demand, their market, their unique strength and skills within the company. And you see that, um, you know, we actually have, uh.

Same customers that are like competing with each other on the same persona, with the same value proposition. They run completely different go-to market motions. These ones are like completely heavy on the calls. They are more lean into, you know, automation, scaling emails with deliverability. Uh, every company has their own GTM motion.

So people should stop obsessing over the [00:36:00] question, will AI replace SDRs? Will AI replace low volume or high volume, or high value or low volume? What will it replace for you? What it will empower for your business, what it will change in your business? The question is contextual to your specific go to market motion.

It will replace some things. It will actually unlock new things. It will just change how your business runs. It will not create. A one person go to market organization that if you have 20 people, so you won't turn into just one and all of these AI agents running around know that won't happen, but it will change it completely drastically on its head so that you'll have different positions, maybe different people doing different stuff.

But it's not about just AI taking over and it's not about what will happen outside in the trend and what will other go-to market teams. You should ask that question in the context of how you run your business and how you run your go-to market motion.

The new AI playbook
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Toni: So last week we [00:37:00] had Jacco on, uh, actually we also talked with them about ai SDRs.

He has a very strong opinion there. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. And he actually talks, you know, he didn't say it like this, but once you said it, I was like, yeah, this is the same thing, kind of the um, the second wave, right? He was basically, oh, currently everyone is applying AI to how they're currently doing their job.

But guess what? That's actually wrong. Kind of. You need to take the step forward. And I think you, you explain it brilliantly there. Um, he's also talking about the new playbook. I think kind of you, you saying this, you know, you almost singing from the same, uh, song sheet here in, in some regards. And maybe this is kind of a question to end also the show, but like what's your, what's your, what's your thinking, what's your guesstimate on.

How will this change by 2030? Right. Or, or earlier. I don't know what your, what your vision, what your thinking is, but you know, when, when will we see the new playbook being adopted, whatever it is. Um, and, and you know, what, what role will AI [00:38:00] play in it?

Amos: Yeah, it's a great question. So, um, first of all, there's like a big difference between, um, SMBs and enterprises and my POB.

Yeah. Okay. And they are gonna experience a completely different shift because enterprises, um, their biggest advantage until now was headcount was, you know. The fact that they were big and that come becomes a liability in the AI world becomes the an inability to actually, um, be agile and change your operating system, right?

And, and so that will be, lead them to actually reducing workforce as the best action, right? Mm-hmm. And so that, that will actually, um, contribute a lot to how they will evolve. But SMBs. That by slashing their workforce would not gain a huge, you know, productivity gain. We need to look differently at the solution.

And so my POV is more focused on SMBs actually. Okay. And I believe [00:39:00] that in SMB, the change will be more in kind the core operating system. Of the business processes will kinda like shift and change drastically. And what we believe is that there are gonna be like two major changes happening. So first of all, one is that there's an app for me, right?

Instead of there's an app for this, there's an app For me, every go to market organization will develop their own product, right? Develop their own ability to go to market creatively in a way that fits their unique. Capabilities, their unique understanding of their market, their positioning of their product, um, et cetera.

And it all leans on. This pillar that go to market is a zero sum gate. We're fighting over attention. Okay. And there's always the battle of being better and different. And so AI will just unlock that ability to be different and be better than other [00:40:00] people in a way that just, you know, sits on what we're good at.

Right? So that's one major shift. Another. Major shift that we're seeing actually already happening within our business and within other autonomous businesses out there is that, uh, instead of having this division of labor between, um, you know, SDRs, AEs, CS. Support, demand, gen, you know, content, whatever. All these types of roles are gonna change completely.

And what we see as kinda like something more natural flowing as the customer lifecycle and the way that we work at Swan is that, you know, I in charge of, you know, creating top of the funnel. Um, you know, I also help with. Taking that top of the funnel and turning it into pipeline meetings book. Then I actually close these meetings and then I actually help with the onboarding and with the support.

So there's like, uh, one point of view across the customer lifecycle [00:41:00] that, you know, actually takes it through these stages from the top, top, top of the funnel all the way until the end. What it creates is like a much stronger alignment in, um, incentives. So it's not about like your. You know, a relay race when everyone says, yeah, I just wanna hit my quota, I just want to hit my incentives.

I care about MQ ls, I care about meetings booked, I care about, you know, demos, uh, close or whatever. Um, uh, and, and so what this creates is kinda like a very much more he. The, uh, funnel for the business and AI can give you all the context you need to manage these relationships at scale, across multiple touch points.

But what needs to adapt is the skills and the processes within the business to support this type of, you know, of. New funnel for customers.

Wrapping up
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Toni: Ammas, thank you so much for this session. Uh, if you know everyone listening, if you haven't already, kind of check out, get swan.com, um, or follow ammas on LinkedIn. [00:42:00] Uh, great content, very entertaining.

Very awesome. And also if you wanna support the show, hit subscribe, like, comment, whatever. Kind of send it to your friends because I think this episode is really worth listening. AMAs, thank you so much for spending the time here and enlightening our, uh, our listeners. And, um, yeah, see you. See you next week everyone.

Cheers. Tony, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Up next: Unemployment in the GTM community
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Toni: Next week, Raul, I are discussing a terrifying stat that we stumbled over recently, almost a quarter of people in pavilion. Which is the popular go-to market community are currently on the bench. That means they are looking for a job. We will discuss the root cause of this, which isn't only AI and what people affected can do to get out of the situation.

Hit subscribe. If you don't wanna miss it, I think I know two or three or four others, solid talent people that I respected, worked with, did fantastic work with. And they've been now struggling for what, 12, 18 months to land a gig. And, and that kind of makes you wonder, well, how did this thing actually happen?

I'm a [00:43:00] top

Raul: 10, top 5% head of sales in this kind of role, but now I have to compete with all these CROs and all these VPs and and ex founders, and all of a sudden I'm like. Quite packed in the middle.

Toni: I think it isn't only VCs and founders getting, uh, aft, I think it's also a lot of careers being burned in the process.