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This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast drops you smack dab in the middle of the closed-door sessions where Jess Cook (Head of Marketing) and Joshua Perk (CEO) are working to turn their company, Vector, into B2B marketing’s next big thing.
In each episode, they tackle a real, strategic decision together—"Should we hire an agency?", "Should we push free trials or demos?", "What are we going to do with all the swag Josh bought?!"—dishing out pros, cons, knowns, unknowns, wins, challenges, and stories along the way.
Come for the big picture strategy and day-to-day tactics, stay for the jokes that make HR nervous.
Josh: Hey, Jess. I just had the best idea.
Jess: Hey, Josh. Is this about AI?
Josh: Everyone at Vector needs to be using AI for everything, but in a human way.
Jess: What does that even mean?
Josh: I don't know, but it's urgent.
Jess: Hey, Josh, remember in, mid-March, we're talking 2026 still-
Josh: Yep ...
Jess: there was, like, this very fast shift from, people are using ChatGPT to create content to, everyone's moving to Claude, and everyone's doing really intense, very sophisticated things. And we aren't doing them, and we need to catch up, and oh my God, we're behind.
Jess: Do you remember that feeling?
Josh: Yes. I deeply remember that. It felt like we went from, 2024 and '25 was like, "Oh yeah, you can, write blogs with this." Yeah. And, but outside of that, whatever- Yeah ... to all of a sudden it's like agents, Claude Code, MCP. If you're not using this, you're behind. Yeah.
Josh: Your team's gonna get fired.
Jess: You're a total loser.
Josh: A loser. Yeah, it escalated real quickly.
Jess: So fast.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And it was kinda scary and a little bit, I don't know, jarring. I wasn't, I wasn't sure what to prioritize. do we need to sit down and focus on this AI thing? Do we need to- Yeah ... figure this out?
Jess: But also, we have all these other programs that are running that, they don't involve that, or they don't involve that yet. And, it just felt very disruptive.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: It- and not in, the most calming way.
Josh: No. And CEOs like me weren't doing us any favors, right? We were coming back from our board meetings and just being like, "So the entire world's about to explode."
Josh: "And we need to be on Mars when it explodes." "So we just need to change everything about what we're doing." Which I did that- Yeah. ... a handful of times.
Jess: Yeah. In many ways. But we're specifically talking about the AI way this time.
Josh: Yes, the- Yeah ... yeah. I exploded the company in many ways. Yeah. But yeah, the ... I did that.
Josh: I came back and, whether it was after, our Series A raise or just, reading all these articles, it's undeniable that, AI is shifting the world. Yeah. And so it makes, every CEO and founder think about, "Okay, what does that mean for what we're building and our teams?"
Josh: and then the classic thing of, the, the LinkedIn post forwarding- Yes ... starts to happen. "Hey, Jess, look at this post of this other CEO who fired his entire marketing team so that they can write content with AI. Why aren't we doing that?"
Jess: Yeah. I ... That guy's the worst.
Josh: He's the worst. Ugh. And
Jess: I was one of them.
Jess: I know.
Josh: Yeah. What did that feel like as a marketing leader? you see, okay, there's some legitimacy to, the shift in the world, but also, an existential crisis to everything we are currently doing.
Jess: Y- yeah. I think it gave everybody pause of, "Okay, wait. What does this even...
Jess: F- first of all, what does this mean for our business, our product?" Like- Yeah ... how does it affect that, right? And I think the data we're built on, the, the abilities that we give a marketer, the superpowers we give a marketer, are relatively shielded- Yeah ... from that a bit. we do have a moat- Yeah ... that can't quite be touched by AI yet-
Jess: as it stands today,
Josh: right? Yeah, fingers crossed.
Jess: and but there's something where it's like, now it's, table stakes to have some of this stuff built in. It's also table stakes for your teams to be, like, creating processes and taking things that, they normally would have done manually and, really figuring out how to do that- Yeah
Jess: with some sort of project or workflow or Claude code thing, right? Yeah. And I took a look at the team, and I was like, "Well, we're all in, varying states of, comfort with AI and usage of AI." and it made me pause a little bit even there too, where it was like we've all gotta level up, equally.
Jess: We've all gotta be on the same playing field here, and we weren't.
Josh: Yeah. One of the things that I think is interesting is, I do believe that, LinkedIn's an echo chamber-
Jess: Totally ...
Josh: and that we're probably in the early adoption wave. But, like- Yeah ... it'll certainly make you feel like you're not, like you're behind- Oh, yeah
Josh: and that you don't know anything.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: What did you do to, evaluate where your team's skillsets were and leverage those to help others?
Jess: Y- yeah. So we, Let me actually take us back a little bit. I went to, in March, right around this time, it was literally, in the midst of this very pronounced transition- Yeah
Jess: where I went to Exit5's leadership, marketing leadership retreat.
Josh: Yep.
Jess: And it was an amazing event. It was, like, 100, VPs and CMOs, VPs of marketing and CMOs all getting together to talk about the things their and their teams, they and their teams are facing, and AI was the topic.
Jess: And it wasn't the same as it was, a couple of years ago when AI first became, accessible to everyone. It was much more existential. It was a little more panicky. it was a little bit of, what are you actually doing? tell me what you're actually doing." Yeah. Right?
Jess: Yeah. there's this thing that everyone says they're using it, but, h- how? How are you doing it?
Josh: Yep.
Jess: And the thing that helped me wrap my head around- What the version of, like, how I wanted to use AI in marketing-
Josh: ...
Jess: what that would look like, was there was a CMO from Knack.
Josh: Okay.
Jess: Jenny.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And she was amazing, and she talked about how her entire company shut down for two whole days.
Josh: Wow.
Jess: And basically, h- they did a lot of prep work before these two days to, be ready for this. But essentially, they had IT and security on standby. Okay. They had a bunch of different little tiger teams who were all-
Jess: gonna work on specific problems, that they could build a system during those two days using CloudCode or whatever LLM- Yeah ... of their choice, to build during those two days. And, if they needed to bring in IT to, get access to a system- Yeah ... they could do that, and IT was, like, on it, right?
Jess: That's cool. And so over two days, they built, seven systems that were going to, really build up the business. Wow. And they, it was very cross-functional, right? And so I was like, "Okay, that, that feels right." Yeah. And I think that felt like a nice way to be able to go back to the team and say, "Let's build something as a team- Yeah
Jess: and let's all, work together to, elevate ourselves as a team."
Josh: That's a cool project.
Jess: Yeah. It was great. Yeah.
Josh: So you brought that back to your team, and how did that look?
Jess: So first I was like, "Let's all go around the table, and this is a safe space." Yeah. You can say, "On a scale of one to five, what's your comfort level?"
Jess: I even think I did 10, one of, one through 10-
Josh: Yeah ...
Jess: of, with AI, and "What's your comfort level, and then on a scale of one to 10, h- how much do you use it?"
Josh:
Jess: And so I was like, "I think I'm, like, a, I feel like a seven comfort level." Yep. "And, I use it, probably about a seven as well."
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And then we got to Kelly Arndt, our demand gen marketer- ... who I know I've said on this show before is, living in the future- Yeah ... when it comes to using AI. And he was like, "Yeah, I feel like I'm, like, a seven in comfort." And I was like, "Okay, wait, I, can I retract- Yeah. ... my comfort rating?" You're a seven.
Jess: I was like, "I'm, then I'm a four." "Then I'm a four, and I'm a negative five- yeah ... in usage," right?
Josh: We're on a different scale
Jess: here, Kelly. Yeah, we're, you are above and beyond. Yeah. And I think it was like, okay, we really went back and looked at it. I was probably a five or six. Alex was probably a five or six.
Jess: Annalisa felt like she was, like, maybe a four. Kelly gave himself a seven- Yeah ... even though I'm like, "You're definitely a 10." Yeah, a 10. "You're just being humble." Yeah. "Stop it." And then Abby, was somewhere in, the same range. I think probably five, six, seven. Yeah. And so six, seven. Six, seven.
Jess: It's so dead now. It's dead? It's not even, it, we've, like- We- ... it's not even cool- We killed it for the kids ... and, ironic for us to do it. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Good, I
Josh: never liked it to begin with.
Jess: Oh, guys. It didn't make sense. You're welcome. So- After that, it was just "Okay, now we all kinda know where we stand."
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And because Kelly was the furthest ahead, we were like, "Can you, would you be willing to, lead us in this? let's build something." And he was like, "Yes." "What do we wanna build," right? Yeah. And then that- that's where my brain gets stuck, too- Yeah ... 'cause the art of the possible.
Josh: Wild.
Jess: Y- you can do anything.
Jess: Anything. And it's like, what is the- Yeah ... what's gonna have the most impact- ... for all of us? after a little bit of debate, where we landed was, something that would actually go into our Fathom calls-
Josh: Okay ...
Jess: and scrape quotes from customers that was their kind of way of describing one of five major pain points-
Jess: that we see our prospects come to us with.
Josh: That's cool.
Jess: It was really cool, and I was very excited about that. Yeah. So he walked us through, like, how we would build something like that. And I'm gonna, I'm sure there are teams out there, I've been on, m- Mark Killen's marketing mastermind call.
Jess: He brought on somebody who has, and, granted, they're at a much larger company- Yeah ... with, 200 million in revenue and, 300 employees. And they had this entire library of, markdown files and skills- Wow ... that, anyone in the company can pull from and pull into their own Claude instance and, use.
Jess: Yeah. And I was like, "Okay, we're like- Eleventy billion steps from that
Josh: yeah
Jess: And I have to continue to remind myself, like, this is gonna be- th- this could be a slow process. Yeah And that, that's okay. Like- Yeah ... I want to use it in the correct way. I want everyone to get comfortable with it together.
Josh: Yeah
Jess: and so we built this thing, and I've now used it to scrape for quotes that help me write ad copy. we use it to scrape for quotes that help us, understand content we need to create. Yeah what we need to say on a landing page. So
Josh: cool
Jess: It's been really helpful, and so I think it's given us at least just a sense of more comfort with using Claude and- Yeah
Jess: AI to, connect systems. Yeah And you can't really break anything. I think that was always my concern- Yeah ... was like, "I'm gonna mess with the system, and, Sarah McNamara's gonna come after me."
Josh: yeah
Jess: Yeah but a, a lot of those things, unless you're, like, doing, w- being able to, have write access in HubSpot-
Josh:
Jess: yeah
Jess: which I don't have, by the way. Yeah. Which is good. by design.
Josh: No, I think that's the right approach. I think the, the knee-jerk reaction to, "Oh my God, AI's changing the world," "We all need to figure it out"- Yeah ... is like, okay, cool, but, like, how? What? What do we mean? Yeah what does figure it out mean?
Josh: Yeah And so I think the only really scalable way to bring it to your team is "Let's have a project." And like- Yeah ... let's do one thing at a time
Jess: Let's just try it.
Josh: Yeah
Jess: And, everyone, again, safe space, right? Yeah psychological safety. It's okay to ask a dumb question or not know what you're doing or not know where something is or how to hook something up.
Jess: Like-
Josh: Yeah ...
Jess: it's totally okay.
Josh: Yeah We'll
Jess: get there.
Josh: I actually think that's the right approach because what I, what Sarah and I are seeing on the RevOp side is there's ... We're actually concerned that there's gonna be this sort of over-rotation- Yes ... where, everyone's gonna have an app. Everyone's gonna build something.
Josh: All of a sudden, RevOp's gonna be turned into the maintenance team.
Jess: Yes
Josh: or, someone's gonna, mess with the system or break something. And so I've actually changed my tune over the last six months, where for a while my mission was like, "Oh my gosh, this is game-changing.
Josh: Democratize it to everyone. Everyone needs to be figuring out how to use this in their role," which I still think, we should try as much as possible. Yes But I think this notion that, everyone's gonna be an app builder is ... I think there's ... It's gonna create a lot of technical debt.
Jess: Yes
Josh: It's gonna be a lot of, u- unmaintained things that are just, sitting around inside of companies.
Josh: I don't ... I can't see that world where, everyone becomes a, a scientist or an engineer. It's just-
Jess: 100% ...
Josh: I don't think it's gonna happen.
Jess: Yeah. I think there's a lot of, extra work it gives us, too.
Josh: Yeah
Jess: for instance, Kelly runs his demand gen reporting through it. Yep He gets really rich reports.
Josh: Yeah
Jess: I don't always need a 20-page document- yeah ... right? And he is, of course, human in the loop going through it, making sure it's accurate, right? Yeah. And for him, that is fascinating. Yeah. He wants every-
Josh: Yep ...
Jess: single word of that report- ... because it's gonna help him do better in his job.
Jess: But, he knows not to just hand that whole thing to me- Yeah ... and be like, "Read this. Here's the latest on- Yeah ... demand gen," right? And I'm like, "I, no."
Josh: I think there's, I think you're bringing up a good point, though. There's this almost this, new AI tax that- Yes ... businesses are paying when it's like ... And you know it right away.
Josh: you're, you, you know when you've been sent something that's either AI generated or designed or something like that. And I think for many of us, it's almost like the ... do you know what the Gen Z pause or the, the millennial pause- Yes ... is?
Jess: Where we get ready to f- film a
Josh: video- Yeah ... before it starts.
Josh: Yeah, 'cause we don't, we don't trust that, the phone's going to, like- ... record or something because, phones were new in our day and age.
Jess:
Josh: whereas, Gen Z doesn't have this pause. I almost think the same thing's gonna happen with AI. I think, because it was added or, invented in, our generation of being professionals, there's, we saw it when it sucked.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: And I see anything AI sent to me, and I'm like, "I just have to pause and, read this- ... and, really, turn on my brain to make sure that this, beautifully designed doc actually isn't just a bunch of slop."
Jess: Totally.
Josh: So I, I, that's, the thing that is concerning to me is just, it's so good at producing stuff-
Jess: Yeah
Josh: but it requires a human to, discern whether the stuff is valuable. It
Jess: makes it look great. It's like, in Clueless where she's like, "She's a full-on Monet."
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Like- ... from far away, it looks great, and then you get close, and it's a total mess. Yeah,
Josh: exactly.
Jess: It's the exact same thing.
Josh: That's it. Great.
Jess: Yes. You
Josh: pulled that one- Thank you ... out of nowhere. '90s girl.
Josh: Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah.
Jess: Here's what I'm most afraid of as a content person- Yeah ... is, the development of new marketers coming in- ... and using AI right off the bat.
Josh: Yep.
Jess: How do you build the reps to build- To understand what is actually good content, what is good writing, what does good look like- Yeah
Jess: right? Are you actually spending enough time doing it on your own-
Josh: Yeah ...
Jess: to know that what AI has given you is good or not. And that's ... Oh, man, that scares me so much.
Josh: Meera and I ... So Meera's a designer, a lead designer on our team. We talk about this a lot, and I think, the fact that it's true in both content and design tells me a lot of how it's going to affect sort of the artistic space- Yeah
Josh: in a business. something that, frustrates the bejesus out of her- ... is when, her and I are talking about, "Oh, here's where we should take the product," and I go to Claude, and I, generate a mock-up, and it's, super high fidelity, right? And she's like, "That's great." And, in many ways I think she understands, like, okay, that is somewhat the future, but at the same time, Josh, you've skipped all of the steps of design or- Yes
Josh: of content or of user research. And, it's such ... The design is so good that we're almost, now anchored to, this is how it should be. And I think content's the same way. It's just, yeah, I don't have to use my brain. Yes. I push out a bunch of content. It's, good enough- Yeah ... that it doesn't, make you question, is this what we should've written anyways?
Jess: Yeah. There's that meme of the guy who has, one foot on the floor and his second foot on, the seventh step.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And that is AI to me, where we're, like, we're skipping all of the fundamental stuff in between-
Josh: Yeah ...
Jess: that creates a good product- Yeah ... a good piece of content. Like-
Josh: Yeah
Jess: yeah, that's still so important. Yeah. And you can do some of that with AI. Yeah. you can pull competitive intel. We actually ... One of the thi- I think best things we've done with AI within our company is the engineering team built this incredible, we call it Scout, competitive intelligence tool. Yep.
Jess: It's i- within Slack, and it allows us to just ask, in the moment, "Tell us vector versus, competitor." Yeah. Or, "What is, this competitor's, unique selling proposition?" Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's given us so much great information ju- that, we would've had to string together or really figure out- Yeah
Jess: or go to d- a bunch of different places-
Josh: Yeah ...
Jess: to really understand. And now we really have it at our fingertips. So that is, that to me is an incredible use. data synthesis. Yeah.
Josh: Yeah. I would call it, orchestration, right? Yeah. like, where w- where do we spend a bunch of time just, gathering data today or gathering or doing, random tasks?
Josh: Yeah, it's super good at that. Yeah. What I'm not ready to trust it with is, tons of actionability, or I think we've called it recently, taste. Yes. Things that require taste, I'm not ready for it to take over.
Jess: No, me either. I have great taste, and I'm not ready to give that up.
Josh: The fact that you said that it means you have questionable taste, but I'm
Jess: very confident in my taste.
Jess: Josh?
Josh: Yes?
Jess: It's time.
Josh: What time?
Jess: To deliver the affirmations.
Josh: Ooh.
Jess: The words of positivity.
Josh:
Jess: The light- Preach ... in the darkness of the day- Preach ... of a marketer. It's time.
Josh: Let's go.
Jess: Dear marketer, your demo request form is shorter than everyone else's.
Josh: Dear marketer, buyers be out here manifesting becoming your customer.
Jess: There's a moment where you came in real hot- ... in an all-hands meeting-
Josh: Yeah ...
Jess: with a, I don't know if it was a quote. It was like a bullet on a slide. Yeah. I also believe it was like Annalisa's second week. It was. And I was like, "Oh, God."
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Ugh. Oh, my God. how do I walk this back a little?
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: do you remember, do you know the bullet I'm referencing?
Josh: Oh, I remember it directly. I think I went to the ... So it was, it was a Friday company all-hands. Yep. It was like w- in the midst of our series they raised. So I was like not in the business a ton. I was just like- It was
Jess: like one of those like moment like Josh sticking his head out of the van- Yeah
Jess: to yell something at us-
Josh: Yeah ...
Jess: and then
Josh: run away. It was like, "Hey guys." "I'm gonna, I'm gonna make everything awful, but great to see you guys." Yeah, it was like Annalisa's like second week or something really early on, and I think the quote that you're looking for is I said something along the lines of, "The company with the most insecure employees will win."
Jess: And we're all like, "Wait, what?" What
Josh: the fuck does that mean? And what I meant by it-
Jess: Oh, here we go. Here we go. Yes, please enlighten us. Here we go.
Josh: What I was trying to get at was, was that we've seen in technology and just in the world, like cycles of change. and this is everything from, hundreds of years ago, the Industrial Revolution- Yeah
Josh: right? And how, we went from, farming, fields with, animals to machines, and there was, like, a moment of change there. And that, that singular change, affected the entire industry as a whole. Yeah. And then, there was, like, the dot-com, change, and then there was the AI change.
Josh: and what I'm starting to see is that the cycles are happening faster and faster. Yeah. the world used to change every hundred years. Now it changes, every weekend- Yeah ... it feels.
Jess: It feels like
Josh: that. And so poorly chosen words- ... but what I was trying to, convey to the company was that, if the world is moving that quickly, we need to move that quickly.
Josh: Yes. And in order to move that quickly, you almost have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Yes. And you ... If you're defining the way you do your job today the same way you were defining it a year ago, you are probably not reinventing your job to keep up with the times.
Jess: Correct.
Josh: I just happened to summarize all those words down into, "You should be insecure."
Josh: "You should have job insecurity." And that's what it was. I said, "The company, the, the company with the most, like, people that have job insecurity- ... will win." And our team was like, "Uh-oh."
Jess: you should let someone review this- ... before you put it out. Just-
Josh: I need a- Just saying ... I need a PR person- Yes ... for sure.
Jess: You, you do. Yeah. Yeah, your own- Yeah ... personal ... Yes. But I do... I do feel your intention behind the words. I do feel that. Yeah. Every week I'm like, "What is actually my job now?" Yeah. is my job to, make sure we're building these systems? yes. Yeah. Is my job to continue making sure that we come off as this really cool, interesting brand?
Jess: Also yes, right? So- Yeah ... there's gonna be this new kind of weird blend, and it's gonna take a little while to figure out the balance of it.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And again, we just have to live in that uncomfort- Yeah ... discomfort for a while.
Josh: Yeah. I think where it's ... It's funny. if you blend per- personal and professional, we're living in this world where it's like the news cycles really suck right now.
Josh: Yeah. we're post-COVID. we never really got back to, our in-person lives the way we were before, right? everything's, really sad-
Jess: Yeah ...
Josh: right now. Yeah. And then you go on LinkedIn, and you're like, "AI's replacing your job." Yeah. And it's like I think we're in this really difficult spot where it's like you can't deny the fact that AI is changing your job.
Jess: Yes.
Josh: At the same time, you, you, like- You don't wanna, bury your head in the sand to it- No ... but you also, you're like, "Oh my God," just "What now?" "What do I need- Yeah ... to learn today? I still have to move my job forward." And I think there's, a really healthy balance to take in the middle, which is yep, AI's gonna change the world.
Josh: It's probably not tomorrow.
Jess: Yep.
Josh: you should probably be aware of it. You still have to get, some shit done today- ... for your job. But, just be aware. Be aware of it.
Jess: Totally.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: The other, quote that I love from this moment in time was Kelly, our demand gen marketer- Yeah
Jess: came to me during a one-on-one and was like, "I'm building all this really cool stuff with AI. I'm h-..." he obviously, as kind of the face of our daily user-
Josh: Yeah ...
Jess: gives a lot of input to product. And so we were working on some, some new kind of features, and, AI had a lot to do with them.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And he was like, "I love that I get to be involved in that, but I definitely feel like I'm sharpening the shiv that's going to stab me in the back and then take my job."
Jess: And I was like ... That's
Josh: such a great quote.
Jess: I
Josh: know. Also, not wrong.
Jess: No, yeah. that's the thing. Yeah. And I think, we d- especially when you're gone for the series A and kept coming back, like We kept talking about the kind of company we want to be- Yeah ... is not one that makes marketers feel like-
Josh: Yeah
Jess: this AI is gonna take your job. Yeah. You're gonna be gone. We want it to feel like something that gives them superpowers, that makes them even better at what they do. And th- Yeah ... I think that's that's the fork in the road, and there are companies who are going that first way and being like, "No."
Jess: Yeah. "CEO, this is the tool you want because you can, you know- Yeah ... reduce your head count, get the same amount done." Yeah.
Josh: And it's like- Yeah. No ...
Jess: really? I don't know about that.
Josh: No.
Jess: You sure about that? You
Josh: sure about that? One of the, the marketing initiatives that you refuse to pick up, which I'm really upset about, is I've been asking you to, write a book-
Josh: for the last year. Yes. I wanna write a book. And, and I don't know what the book's about, but I know what the title is. Classic CEO. D- did the fun part, now I'm gonna hand you the hard work. Yeah. But we, we, we have decided that, if we wrote a book, a potential title is something like, The Future is Human.
Josh: Yeah. And like a book cover would be like, "The future is awful," with the word awful, strucken out. "The future is human" instead. And, I think this is true, and I think that there's, there's, some BS stuff on LinkedIn that I think is trying to get at it, but not all the way. You'll see things like, "Oh, the human's not gonna get replaced.
Josh: The human that doesn't use AI is gonna get replaced." Yeah. These, kind of tropes. but I think there's some truth to it. I think, I think AI will simply reinvent the way we think about some tasks today. But ultimate, the reason, Vector's brand and our marketing initiatives- Yeah
Josh: are successful is because of the human element. Correct. we're starved of that piece.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh:
Jess: Yeah. And that is, AI's not good at that.
Josh: No.
Jess: it's actually really horrible at that. Yeah. Thank God.
Josh: And if it gets good at it, I don't wanna live to see the day.
Jess: No.
Josh: Yeah. I
Jess: know.
Josh: I just ... No.
Jess: I'll just go work at a Starbucks.
Jess: Yeah. Or I'll go work at Target. S-
Josh: Starbucks, you're the first thing that's gonna get replaced. Making drinks? You kidding me?
Jess: Damn it.
Josh: What will I do? What will I do? Yeah, I don't know. Universal employment and salary, 'cause there ain't gonna be no jobs left. No, I think there's gonna be tons of jobs. I think- Yeah
Josh: the reality of, e- all of those shifts I named before, agriculture, Industrial Revolution, i, dotcom bubble, is like, jobs just shifted, right? Yeah. there's still as many humans on the planet. In fact, there's more, right? employment rate, still maintains, a similar employment rate.
Josh: Yeah. Which means we're finding jobs, right? Yeah. the people that used to, check you out at Target and now it's self-checkout, they found jobs elsewhere. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's just not Target anymore.
Jess: there, there will, it will, all of these roles will look very different.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And that ha- that has happened, like you said- Yeah ... so many times in the course of history, and this is just another one of those times.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Something I'd love to hear from you, since you are very much, leading the product side of things- Yeah ... is, like, how in this crazy quick shift are we evolving our own product to, like- Hang with the times.
Josh: Yeah. Great question. I think there's two things. There's one, how are we thinking about the product evolution, and then what are we actually building? the trickiest thing has been, like, how do we think about product evolution? Because it's, every weekend- ... something's changing- Yeah ... where it's, either making new features possible that weren't possible before, or making existing features, like, obsolete because now the models can do them for you.
Josh: Yeah. And so it has changed the way we think about, the proximity of vision, right? Instead of being like, "We're building a contact level ad platform that does targeting and site DN," we've had to think a little bit more futuristic. Yep. And I've got a really great mentor. Her name's Tawni.
Josh: She's over at SignalFire, but she used to be at Netflix, and she was one of the authors of, the original, Netflix culture deck that is, pretty infamous at this point. Yeah. and she brought up a really great point to me, which is the best companies have, very enduring visions that survive changes in the world.
Josh: Yeah. and so at Netflix, theirs behind the scenes was, "We want to democratize access to the world's best storytellers." Yeah. So beautiful. Yeah. And what's crazy is, Netflix has seen, three world shifts, right? they were mailing DVDs to people's inboxes, to their houses- ... 20 years ago.
Josh: Yep. But even when they were mailing physical DVDs, they were democratizing access to the world's best storytellers. Yes. Then they moved into streaming because the world shifted entirely. And if they would've said, "Hey, we're Netflix, we're a DVD rental company," they would've died, right? Yes.
Josh: But they're like, "Hey, we're Netflix. We're democratizing access to the world's best storytellers, and it just so happens the way we need to give access is now via the internet." Yes. "So we need to move to streaming." And they survived a third one, too, which is after streaming, they moved to original content, and they're still, democratizing access to the world's best storytellers.
Josh: And so that's the shift that we needed to make. So instead of, tying us so deeply to targeting or site DN, we said, "Hey, Vector is where marketers go to become superhuman." Yes. And it's just- I
Jess: love it so much ...
Josh: super enduring, right? Like, all we care about is making human marketers better at their job.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: Sometimes this is with AI, sometimes it's not, right? But it's the super open, loose objective of what we're here to do. A
Jess: new North Star-
Josh: Exactly ... for
Jess: us.
Josh: Yeah. Yeah. And so actually today, the day that we're releasing this, we announced our Series A, and we announced our new MCP- Yes
Josh: which is our first new product in AI that will allow marketers to become superhuman by basically no longer having to, pull reports and query across their different ad platforms. and of course, we made it special because we associated our contact level site DN with it, so now you can ask it questions like, "Show me who saw this LinkedIn ad campaign I was running," which just wasn't possible before AI.
Josh:
Jess: yeah. When you're able to, as opposed to, "Okay, I gotta jump in HubSpot and I gotta grab this screenshot, and then I gotta grab this number from over here, and I gotta kinda triangulate those couple of things," it's like- It gets so, you could take forever trying to put together the things that really matter.
Jess: And so I love this new ability that we have to give marketers this information is f- one, fascinating, and two, like you say, it is a superpower. it is ... There's that moment where, your CEO asks you, "Hey, how did this perform?" And you're like, "Uh, I need some time to, go figure that out."
Jess: this completely eliminates that, right? 100%. you can just go, ask the question and get the answer. Yeah. And it's so fascinating.
Josh: That's the takeaway from this episode: use AI to make you look better- ... in front of your boss.
Jess: 100%. Yeah,
Josh: don't be afraid of it. Make- Claim it ... make yourself superhuman.
Jess: Yes. Hey, Josh, as a total side note, we're trying to, scale up our production of landing pages for our campaigns, right? Yeah. We're moving into ABM. We're gonna need a lot of them. So I'd like to go hire, a web designer and get that moving pretty quickly.
Josh: Can't AI just do that for you?
Jess: Were you not just in this meeting that we just had?
Jess: It was a great meeting.
Josh: It was a good meeting. This meeting could've been a podcast.
Jess: It could have.
Josh: It was.
Jess: It was. This meeting could've been a podcast is a Vector production. Vector lets you build ad audiences from real people that visit your site, click your ads, and research your competitors. Imagine seeing exactly who will see your ads by name before you spend a dime.
Jess: It's a great time to be alive, marketers. Go give it a whirl at vector.co. See you next time.