0:03
It's a whole new world and a new exciting world. So, I feel like I have
0:05
to we have to reset the playbooks again. Like I thought, oh, now I know the
0:08
playbook of what SAS framework and go to market is and I think we're just walking
0:12
into a whole new world that none of us know how to approach.
0:15
Well, yeah, I was going to say, is there a playbook? Like, you know, like maybe
0:19
there kind of maybe felt like there was in the last decade, but if there was, I
0:23
never quite cracked it at at Zapperri. We had to figure it all out on our own.
0:26
And now I'm definitely like there's not a playbook for how to go do this with
0:30
with AI. So, you know, you're How are you doing it?
0:35
Am I allowed to turn the question back to you?
0:37
Gosh, that's a good question. We're figuring it out.
0:51
Hey folks, welcome to Agents of Scale. I'm WDE Foster. I'm the co-founder and
0:56
CEO here at Zapier. And my guest today is a serial entrepreneur, uh, Amanda
1:01
Kao. Uh, she is founder and CEO of One Mind. Before that, she founded Six
1:05
Sense, grew it into a billion dollar plus company. And at One Mind, she is
1:09
building superhumans, uh, designed to sell, reason, and connect with
1:14
customers. Uh, kind of like your top salesperson, but uh, but smarter. So,
1:18
we're going to talk a little bit about what Amanda has learned building,
1:22
scaling companies, but particularly now that she's doing it in the age of AI.
1:27
Amanda, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Wade. It's awesome
1:31
to be here. And just for uh I just always like to clarify, I didn't take us
1:35
to the five billion marker. I was in the early years. Um stepped down and brought
1:40
an awesome team in and they've done wonders with the company. So, just like
1:43
to take full credit for what's Yeah. like it wasn't my my whole doing. I did
1:48
have a piece of it, but not a not the biggest piece.
1:51
Well, I want to go back even further to kick it off. Tell me about CI Insights.
1:56
This was the first company I think you started and ran that for a good while as
2:00
well too. What like what did you learn about bu starting running a company
2:04
there that you've now applied to your prior uh or or your I guess later uh
2:10
companies? Yeah, that's crazy. No one ever asked me
2:13
about that company, but um I started my So yeah, I'm kind of what I guess a
2:18
serial entrepreneur. I started I started that company when I was 22. Um so I was
2:24
actually working for a company called Giga Information Group. They got bought
2:28
by Forester. I was working on a project. I asked for a raise. I was told I needed
2:33
to wait six months to get the raise and I was like, h I'm gonna spin off and do
2:36
my own thing. So that's how it kind of spun out. that went on for 16 years and
2:41
we were basically a big data before big data was sexy and it was a thing and now
2:45
probably you know the younger generation probably has no idea what like the term
2:49
of big data is anymore we don't say it anymore but taking unstructured data and
2:52
matching it up with structured data making sense of it our customers were
2:55
Cisco um Intel you know we had a lot of big enterprise B2B companies and I was
3:01
merging together their sales data with their marketing data with their customer
3:04
success data and doing a lot of backward analytics um so it was It was a good run
3:09
and it was a lifestyle business. I never really sought out to be a venture-backed
3:14
uh CEO of a tech company. In fact, I was living in San Francisco and I don't even
3:18
think I knew what it meant to be venture-backed um at the time, but I
3:22
knew I wanted to purpose build software based on a project I had worked on at
3:26
Cisco. And I was like, [ __ ] I need money to do this. How am I going to go
3:29
get $10 million to build what I need? And so that's how Six Sense was born out
3:33
of that company that went on for quite some time.
3:36
Got it. And you know now with one mind you started a company post chat GBT and
3:43
also started multiple companies pre- chatg. So we get a little bit of a
3:46
comparison here. Uh what's different for you this time around with this company?
3:50
What are you doing differently in how you building your company because you
3:54
have these capabilities that you can tap into?
3:57
Yeah, I mean I think everything is different. I think everything's well
4:00
personally for me I'm in a different place in my life and I one of my
4:04
favorite um sayings is the more you know the more you know you don't know. So I
4:09
think back in 2012 2013 when I started 6ense I thought I knew everything and I
4:14
knew basically nothing um and I was going in blind. So now having been to
4:18
this rodeo and seen it before coming into this world at six at one mind from
4:23
my past life at six sense it's you know I made every mistake in the book at six
4:28
sense um and the playbooks back then there were no playbooks really for go to
4:32
market and SAS like you know that we were just getting started at the early
4:36
days like the only company really to look up to in those early days was
4:39
Salesforce and so we're all trying to emulate Salesforce um which was which
4:44
was a mistake like that as an early stage company trying to copy what
4:47
they're doing without the resources that they had. Huge mistake bringing people
4:51
over from Salesforce that I think oh well if they're doing it at Salesforce
4:54
they can do it here. That was another big mistake. Um so made plenty of
4:57
mistakes along the way. But to your question about having you know the
5:01
foundational models today at our disposal. I think it's a world where we
5:07
you know obviously everyone's saying this we can do so much more with less
5:09
and everything is about speed. You know at the end of the day we have to ship
5:13
fast. I expect a lot more. I drive really hard. I'm, you know, I feel like
5:17
I'm kind of a combination of this empathetic, uh, loving person that cares
5:22
deeply about the people that work for me, but I also drive very hard and I
5:26
have incredibly high standards. Um, and I'm very transparent about where I stand
5:31
on things. Um, but yeah, it's a it's a whole new world and a new exciting
5:35
world. So, I feel like I have to we have to reset the playbooks again. Like I
5:38
thought, oh, now I know the playbook of what SAS framework and go to market is.
5:41
And I think we're just walking into a whole new world that none of us know how
5:44
to approach. Well, yeah, I was going to say, is there
5:47
a playbook? Like, you know, like maybe there kind of maybe felt like there was
5:51
in the last decade, but if there was, I never quite cracked it at at Zapper. We
5:55
had to figure it all out on our own. And now
5:57
I'm definitely like there's not a playbook for how to go do this with with
6:01
AI. So, you know, you're How are you doing it?
6:05
Am I allowed to turn the question back to you?
6:07
Gosh, that's a good question. We're figuring it out. like we're, you know,
6:10
we we did the PLG thing for so long and now we're trying to figure out how to
6:14
how to do turn that into like a an enterprise sales motion. Uh I don't know
6:18
that I've got enough uh uh lessons learned yet to pontificate on it. The
6:23
the sort of more you know, the more you don't know definitely rings true to me
6:26
uh on that question. What but you are you're building one mind that helps
6:32
people sell better using you know what you call superhumans. Probably other
6:37
people might call them agents. like what are you learning from your customers
6:40
around what is working at this moment in time because we hear all the hype and
6:43
all the sort of fantastical stuff but what is practically working if you're
6:47
you know running these companies today what is the thing that you should be
6:49
doing that maybe you aren't yet. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to bring it
6:52
full cycle to circle to what you were talking about with your PL motion. So
6:56
just to answer the question what we're doing first we're building what we call
6:59
go to market superhumans. It's a face voice and double click on the brain. So
7:04
think of it as a gotomarket glean if you will. It's all about being able to take
7:07
action in agency and to have human-like experiences. The face is a gimmick to
7:11
get people to talk to it. Uh I don't believe the face is where the core IP
7:15
lives. I think the you know it's really all in her ability to carry on a
7:19
conversation exponentially better than a human. So and it these our superhumans
7:25
behave and take on roles across your entire goto market cycle. So everything
7:28
from first touch and inbound. So when somebody comes to the website it's
7:32
obvious not just a chatbot. She can share slides. She can give the pitch.
7:35
She can give a live demo. She can read the screen. She can see what's
7:39
happening. So, you know, humans have limitations. If I were giving you a demo
7:43
right now, I would have to and I'm going through slides or if I'm going through a
7:46
slide deck and you ask me a question, I might have the slide, but I can't bring
7:50
it into the conversation in real time. I can't take 10,000 slides and be like,
7:54
"Boom, there's the one that answers your question because I don't know where the
7:57
conversation's going to go." So I think these our superhumans supersede the
8:01
capacity limitations of humans both on memory humans forget everything recall
8:07
you know ability to go deep and wide so a company like data bricks for example
8:12
that we're talking to that mean they sell to everybody who needs data right
8:16
so anyone who needs data across any industry any vertical your sales people
8:19
can't really understand all the different industries and verticals
8:22
they're selling to and talk the vernacular of their customers but what
8:25
if you could truly empathize with your customers so we're building these
8:28
human-like experiences that are better than humans, help you grow, help you cut
8:32
costs, but at the end of the day, delight buyers, create a better buying
8:36
experience instead of going through a bunch of SDRs. So, no offense, but the
8:39
22-year-old kid who doesn't know your business just trying to qualify you. And
8:42
then you get passed to an AE who can't go deep technically. So, then you get to
8:45
a solutions engineer, sales engineer, and then you then you buy, and then you
8:49
go to a customer success person, and oh my god, it's a it's a nightmare what we
8:52
do to our buyers. Um but to your question about the where do we see the
8:57
most value um and where do we see that like this is actually like resonating
9:01
and working and the answer is in those areas where there is no business model
9:06
to put a human. So for you in like a PLG motion and you're trying to go salesled.
9:11
So if I if I were selling to you I would say let us help you where you we call it
9:16
AILG AIL growth where your buyers actually want to have a conversation and
9:20
know how to use your tool. We are a happy customer of your product and we
9:24
use it within our product and we absolutely love it. But I can tell you
9:27
right now that I kind of barely understand it in the sense I'm not using
9:30
it every day, but if you're trying to sell to me, you'd have to like dumb it
9:33
down to the CEO level, right? And help me understand like, okay, this is how
9:37
you can connect your different systems and these are all the different
9:40
workflows it can do. So if you were selling, you don't know if I'm going to
9:44
be a $500 a month deal or if I'm going to be a $5 million a month deal, right?
9:49
So you can't and by ICP and other attributes, we don't know those things.
9:52
So you can't put humans on every one of those deals. But what if you could
9:55
engage in a humanlike way and have a conversation and understand my pain
9:58
points and what I'm trying to do as a business and how I'm trying to scale and
10:02
then how you can use this to help us get to market faster and how we can use your
10:05
tool and have that conversation for the $5 deal as well as the salesled
10:10
enterprise deal. So, in those PLG like sales cycles where we can't talk to
10:15
everyone, where you have this massive longtail and you're trying to convert
10:17
free trial to paid, put a superhuman to engage your buyers and move them along
10:22
their journey and get them using your product and start paying for your
10:25
product. And I think that's that's the place like for example, HubSpot is one
10:29
of our key customers and they increase their revenue by 25% when they put a
10:33
superhum in their PLG motion. um another very large I'm not allowed to say the
10:38
name but very very large uh let's call it social networking platform is using
10:44
it and saw their sales cycles went down from 22 days on average to two days and
10:49
we doubled their ASP so massive impact when we're you know in that down market
10:54
commercial segment but we're also working for companies that are salesled
10:57
and doing enterprise as well and helping support Dale cycles
11:00
so one of the things you brought up that resonated with me is this you know Hey,
11:05
uh, you know, when you're talking to a human salesperson, they can't recall
11:09
the, you know, hundreds of decks you have on a particular topic. They don't
11:13
know all the industries. They don't know all that. Whereas for an AI, that's
11:15
something they're particularly good at. Now, my co-founder Mike, he runs this
11:20
thing called art prize where he studies these things around AI, and one of the
11:23
things he talks about a lot is that there are things that AIs are very good
11:27
at and humans are bad at. And then the inverse is also true. There are things
11:31
that humans are good at and these AIs are so bad at. And it's kind of weird
11:34
for us right now because we can sort of feel both of these things happening at
11:37
the same time. So I guess the question is like where do where does that apply
11:41
for this product category right now? Like what are the things where you're
11:44
like you know to your point the slide deck recall the things that's like
11:46
really really good at and then what are the bounds of it? Where are the places
11:49
where you're like hey you're just you know if this is the thing you're trying
11:51
to solve like we're just not there yet. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. Um yeah I
11:57
think I think to be honest across the whole continuum if I look at it if I
12:00
answer that question um as it relates to the different roles across the
12:04
organization I think the AE is the safest at this moment because there are
12:08
a lot of those more softer skills right navigating the org understanding who
12:12
you're talking to but I would say 80% of the deal is the conveying of information
12:18
understanding the buyer's needs what is their pain point what is the solution
12:22
that I can offer to solve that painoint and the most cost-effective
12:26
the most reliable accurate way and how can I get it into their product or into
12:30
into market to solve their their pain as soon as possible. And so in that, you
12:35
know, transfer of information, the AI is exponentially better than a human. So,
12:40
you know, I love it. You know, people ask me if the AIs will hallucinate and
12:44
like one of my favorite things to say is, "Do your sellers hallucinate?" And
12:47
they do so nefariously. They know they're hallucinating to get the deal
12:51
done, right? So they're they're likely to do it exponentially less. So I think,
12:56
you know, on the softer skills, of course, humans are still here um to meet
13:01
buyers when they're active, ready, engage, answer their questions. That's
13:04
where I think the superhumans and agents can do exponentially better
13:09
um than a human can in that process. You mentioned, you know, you think the
13:13
AE role is the one that is like most valuable still in this moment in time.
13:17
I'm curious when you look at you know these customers like HubSpot the social
13:20
network even at one mind like what about the go to market or structure is
13:25
changing like what how are how are they being built differently um in this new
13:28
age? Yeah I think right now are the playbooks
13:33
we have we have a marketing team if you look at like the journey of the life
13:36
cycle of a customer across you have marketing you have sales and you have
13:40
customer success right like to onboard upsell cross-ell etc.
13:44
I think as information as we can have these agents and superhumans, whatever
13:48
it is, be supporting buyers from step one, from first touch all the way
13:53
through to upsell, you're going to have to have one team managing that. It's not
13:58
going to be bifurcated into these three different departments that are in silos
14:01
that kind of talk to each other on an update call, but aren't actually working
14:05
together and don't have the common goal. And I think it'll really come around a
14:09
very customer centric if you will life cycle management of the customer that's
14:13
allin-one. And so the role of the human would be to manage from from beginning
14:18
to end. And I think we need new playbooks and new frameworks. And I
14:21
don't know exactly what those are. I think we need to rely on smart people
14:24
like winning by design or like whoever it is to say what is the new playbook in
14:28
today's world where all these tasks in the the transfer of information can
14:33
happen by by agents and superhumans and then where do humans play a role and the
14:38
humans will play a role not in these siloed organizations because we stay in
14:42
silos because humans have capacity limitations they have time limitations
14:46
they have recall limitations they get sick and when they're good they're gone
14:50
and they move to your competitor all those things go Hey, if the superhuman
14:53
is doing the job, once you train it up and she's good,
14:56
she's never going to quit on you. Well, unless you don't pay your one mind
14:59
bills, but right.
15:02
Well, so how are you deploying your AES? Maybe differently than how another
15:06
company would right now. Yeah. So, our superhuman, in fact, you
15:10
know, she is literally like I'm out for a raise right now. Um, and our
15:16
superhuman and I like we have all these metrics really clear right now is 76% of
15:20
the opportunities that we're in and our pipeline and our growth has been pretty
15:23
fantastic over the last 18 months has been sourced by our superhum and so
15:28
she's not just the first touch and she's not just creating the opportunity but
15:31
she's shortening our sales cycle. So for example, when I was selling to HubSpot I
15:35
sold to Kip who's the CMO and Kieran who's the head of AI at HubSpot but
15:40
their entire teams had to get on board with this. They had to say okay we're
15:43
going to implement this. I the deal wasn't done when they were bought into
15:46
the concept of buying one mind. I had to go and talk to 20 other people. But
15:50
instead of talking to me, I said, "Hey, talk to Mindy if you have questions." So
15:54
I had like the marketing ops people who were asking data integration questions.
15:57
And I was like, "Just go talk to our superhuman. Go talk to Mindy." So I
16:00
could see these conversations happening. And I think there were like 50
16:03
conversations that happened to Mindy. And that deal cycle, which probably
16:07
would have been like 90 days, a typical average enterprise sales cycle, went
16:11
down to 30 days because they got their questions answered. And then I got on a
16:14
call and I was like, do you have any further questions? Like I saw you asked
16:17
about our APIs. I saw you asked about how we integrate. I saw you asked about
16:20
hallucination. I got went into that call knowing what they cared about. And then
16:24
the deal cycle was like that and it just completely shrunk that cycle. So we're
16:28
using it not just to like get into deals, but I only have so many
16:33
resources. I only want so many salespeople. Like I want sales people to
16:36
manage the relationship and get it over the line and I want our superhumans
16:40
to be selling to be constantly always on always selling. We're building a
16:44
superhum right now to onboard our customers. That's the next piece. So
16:47
she's going to take them through here's what you need to do to onboard. Then we
16:50
have a superhum to support customers you know post implementation. Here's how
16:54
okay you've got questions or you want new data or you keep your data fresh
16:57
like how do you see into her brain? Here's a superhum to support that. So, I
17:01
want to put as many superhumans as I can across the full life cycle and eat our
17:05
own dog food or drink our own champagne or whatever you want to call it.
17:08
That is fascinating. So, I I'm curious um about like the human psychology side,
17:14
the buyer psychology side of that. Like when you said go talk to Mindy, go talk
17:17
to Mindy. Like in this case, I think there's probably like a curiosity where
17:21
people are like, well, I guess I am going to buy this thing, so maybe I
17:23
should go give it a whirl. But if you're not selling Mindy, say you were just
17:27
selling I don't know some other random software. Do you think that same
17:30
curiosity would be there to go talk to Mindy or if like Yeah. Walk me through
17:34
that element of it cuz uh yeah I just I'm you you I'm assume you see this with
17:38
all your cycles where people are like I want to see how this goes. So there's
17:41
like a Yeah. just sort of curiosity that drives people through the cycle.
17:45
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. So I think there's some industries and verticals
17:49
where just like if you're selling into tech you're selling tech to tech like
17:53
you're selling to technologists like they're they're going to talk to it.
17:56
they're used to. I think the world is moving the in the direction that we're
17:59
all talking to, you know, chat GPT on our phones, right? So, you know, we're
18:03
probably further ahead of it in the Bay Area and then in the tech world than
18:07
others, but the world is still going there. Like, and I love it when people
18:10
ask me if they'll talk to her because do it's just talking. I'm not asking you to
18:14
use a tool. I'm asking you to have a conversation. We all know how to have a
18:18
conversation. So, you know, we've got a couple like HubSpot being one or owner
18:22
being another one. Owner sells to restaurants, right? So they need to talk
18:25
to they created a clone of Adam their CEO so to help them with their grader so
18:30
once they come through they can talk about like the scoring before they come
18:33
in and tell them how well they're doing so they can sell their product
18:36
but you know if you look at that business as well those restaurant owners
18:41
do they know how to talk all they have to do is hit talk and then they're
18:43
talking right so it's actually not using tech it's not as like
18:47
technology forward even though you and I know like it's quite a bit to make that
18:51
happen from a technology side like there is a lot of tech behind behind the
18:54
scenes to make a superhum, but not to engage with a superhum. Hubspot saw that
18:58
88% of their audience when they landed on the page where she lived talked to
19:01
her. And of those, 35% had a conversation that was deep and
19:05
meaningful, meaning she was able to uncover pain points. She was solutioning
19:09
with them or she was driving them to free trial or to purchase. And so that's
19:13
wild. If you think about a chatbot, you're lucky if 5% talk to the chat,
19:17
like engage with a chatbot, and then maybe another 2% convert. It's like
19:21
nothing. and all they're doing is throwing you to to content or booking a
19:24
meeting. Like they're driving all these chat bots today, which I don't
19:28
understand why people love this inbound chatbot. It's if you look at the
19:32
conversion rates are so low and they're driving you to book a meeting with an
19:36
SDR, which is like you're driving to book with somebody who doesn't know
19:40
anything. Wouldn't you rather just have a high quality conversation right there,
19:44
right then, then drive them to a 20some who can barely represent your business?
19:49
So, okay. So you are you know replacing a lot of the traditional roles outside
19:55
of the AE now with this like freed up capacity.
20:00
What's next? How are you like you know where are you spending your like human
20:03
capital I guess inside the company? Yeah I mean we we have a thing at one
20:09
mind that if you replace your own job so I'm not here yet with the board but I
20:14
would love to get to the place. of just full transparency. We haven't fully like
20:19
papered this, but I would love to get to the point where we like forward invest
20:21
your equity or do something that allows you, right? Like if you fully replace
20:26
your role, I'll find another role for you because if you're smart and capable,
20:30
then there's other things for there's tons of things to do like building the
20:33
AI agents within. Like there are so many things that we can do ourselves like to
20:38
make us more AI forward within our own organization and outside of even just
20:42
using superhumans, but just building agents to do workflow and tasks and
20:45
everything else that we need to do. So I just think it's a different job um and
20:50
it takes a different skill set. Like it's a different skill set. So some of
20:54
those people may not have jobs. Um I think we're hiring for people who are
20:58
capable of all of it, right? So are capable of making that transition. And
21:02
that's something we look for as we're hiring right now. But I think the world
21:05
is going to shift and I think we're doing the world a disservice um when we
21:10
tell people that their jobs aren't going to be replaced because that's not the
21:13
reality that we're moving towards. That's a real money where your mouth is
21:16
move. I love it. Uh I think you know I sort of feel similarly that the folks
21:23
who figure out how to do this are creating immense value immense value for
21:27
um customers for the organization etc. But there still is that like
21:31
psychological safety that fear like it's easier for us to humans feel like uh uh
21:37
uh we feel loss aversion much more strongly than we do sort of like
21:41
opportunity gain. And so even for someone who sort of theoretically knows
21:44
like I can go do that, there's sort of that thing that kind of holds them back.
21:48
And so like having these little nudges where it's like no, this is a good
21:50
thing. This is a good thing. It kind of helps people just keep developing their
21:53
skills and pushing into areas where it's like this is going to be way more
21:56
valuable. And even though you're not doing this task anymore, the next task
21:59
will be just as valuable as the next one. And you can kind of just, you know,
22:03
repeatedly do that over time. And it's such a powerful innovative cycle.
22:08
Um yeah, we have to teach ourselves to use
22:10
new things, right? And so anybody who doesn't have that curiosity mindset,
22:14
you know, I mean, I was in remedial classes. I don't tell this story often,
22:17
but I'm happy to tell it. Like when I was young, I actually thought I was
22:21
behind. We moved a lot. My my parents were separated and I lived in 22 houses
22:26
before I was 18. So because I was going into a different school every year, the
22:29
school thought I was slower than everyone else. And I believed it. I
22:32
believed I was slower. I believed I was dumber than everyone else in the class.
22:35
Like I couldn't do it. But it wasn't until I had people believe in me. And it
22:39
was later in life that I actually in my 20s where I
22:42
somebody took a bet on me and actually that person passed away just recently.
22:45
So it's hitting me hard hearing this right now as I say the story. But when I
22:49
had that person take a bet on me and believe in me, I started to believe in
22:52
myself. And so I was like, wait, I can do a lot more than I ever thought I was
22:56
capable of. And I think that's true for everyone today. Like we can do and
23:01
accomplish and have anything we [ __ ] want in this world if we believe it with
23:05
positive emotion and positive intention. and we truly believe it, but if you
23:09
don't believe it and you put it out into the universe, it's actually going to
23:12
backfire and do the opposite. Um, so I think like in this world as we're moving
23:15
into this, you know, it's we're moving from like having machine not having
23:20
machines to having machines or carrying bricks on our back like this is the new
23:23
revolution and if you either can embrace it and try to like figure it out and be
23:27
a part of it or you will be left behind. So I I think it's just really hard for
23:31
me to hear people say, "Oh, well, no, like you know, we're not it's not as
23:34
going as fast as it is." And those of us like you and I who really know what's
23:38
happening and are like tapped in, I believe we do the humanity a disservice
23:42
by saying anything other than the job as you know it today is gone.
23:47
Yeah. I thank you for sharing that. Um on this topic like you see a lot of your
23:54
customers, prospects, you know, one mind itself are are thinking more ambitiously
23:59
about what is possible here. What do you think is separating those companies and
24:04
those teams and those individuals from the ones who aren't? And like what is
24:09
the 1% doing? And how how do the rest of us cultivate that mindset?
24:14
I mean honestly we're typically selling top down. So it's you know in an
24:18
organization we're selling to the CRO, the CMO and they have a mandate from the
24:22
board or the CEO to say you got to use AI and they're like well [ __ ] how do I
24:26
use AI? I can put some like you know copy editing tools in. and I can do some
24:31
you know there there's in and in go to market specifically like what are the
24:35
use cases they can do it and I think they're looking and I don't think today
24:38
I think today is a unique time where you're not going to get fired for trying
24:42
something today I think five years ago you might get fired for putting the
24:46
wrong tool in place and it's not working right so I think there is a mandate to
24:51
to try and to do things and be ahead of the curve because if you're not ahead
24:55
you're going to be left behind um and but I do find I'm Being completely
25:00
honest, there are some of our even our customers where people are lower in the
25:05
organization that are blockers that they get in like they see this as like, "Oh
25:09
my gosh, this might retaste my job." And the fear factor makes them slow the
25:13
project down or not get us the content we need or you know try to put it in if
25:17
you put the superhuman in a corner where nobody sees it then it's not going to
25:20
get an exposure and it's not going to work right. So um those are real
25:24
problems like that we have to figure out and solve and you know within that
25:28
organization I can't change that but I think it's you know it's the executives
25:33
at that company to make them feel comfortable that they you know if they
25:37
lean into this they still have a job and it just might look different.
25:39
The the executives you think that are doing a good job of fostering that
25:43
culture and foster like enabling this kind of experimental mindset. What are
25:47
they doing differently? I mean, I think well, first of all, I
25:51
don't think it's a matter of I've seen a couple companies. I actually heard one
25:54
company recently that like had everyone go out and build agents and they built
25:58
thousands of thousands of agents and half of them were all doing the same
26:00
thing and I'm like, "Oh my god, that sounds that sounds really scary." You
26:03
know, it's what what's cool about that though, actually, I I can speak out of
26:06
both sides of my mouth on it. Like I love the experimentation and fostering
26:11
curiosity of individuals, but they're not going to be production ready. So, I
26:14
think there's something beautiful that like go figure it out. go find a task
26:18
that you're doing today and create an agent to do to create something to do
26:21
the task that you're doing. I think that's amazing. But are they ready to go
26:24
into production and like scale the organization? Probably not. It's
26:28
probably not the IC's that are going to necessarily do it. Sometimes they will
26:31
and that's amazing. But I actually think the onus is on the executives to say,
26:35
"Okay, what are we doing? Are we build versus buy? Are we doing it ourselves?"
26:38
I heard uh Megan Eisenberg who's the CMO of Samsara recently said, you know, she
26:42
went out and built her own AEO like within their company, right? So like
26:46
they built the equivalent of profound themselves and it's amazing and it's
26:50
working incredibly well. So I think there are places where you can build it
26:54
yourself and do it and then she's encouraging the people down below her
26:57
organization and they have yeah I don't know how many she said but there were
27:01
many agents if you will that they've built and then they bought some as well.
27:05
So and to across the whole organ had to reset and like okay we're going to
27:09
figure this out. I'm going to make this a mandate as my team to figure this out
27:12
together. But I don't think it's any one individual task. And I think that's
27:15
sometimes where people fall down is they're like, "Okay, go use AI in your
27:18
day-to-day and having them figure it out." Yeah, we all should know how to
27:21
build an agent. We all should know how to build workflows and do things. But I
27:26
think it's we we have to as leaders guide and say what's the best thing for
27:30
us and like do we build it ourselves or do we buy it? And there are places. I
27:33
think there's advantages to both. I think what we have seen on that
27:37
experimentation front is the orgs that do do the hey we're going to get
27:40
everybody to build their first AI workflow or their first AI agent or
27:43
something like that. They raise the floor of what's possible inside the
27:46
company. They may not necessarily raise the ceiling but they raise the floor up
27:49
meaningfully because now everyone in the company has like this tactile feel for
27:54
oh how do these things work? What's possible? What's not possible? And when
27:58
you have that the fear sort of like kind of fades into the background. It's not
28:03
that it disappears. It's just you have a much more practical sense of like what
28:07
what's going on here. And so you can see how you could go solve some problems,
28:10
but you can also clearly see, oh, I'm still needed to help with this, this,
28:14
and the other. And all of a sudden, it's just a much more you're just problem
28:18
solving versus fear-mongering uh at that point in time where, you know, the the
28:22
narrative with AI is there's a lot of fear-mongering going on.
28:26
Uh 100%. And I'd rather embrace it and be a part of change than be left on the
28:31
sidelines. Totally. You know, so you could Yeah. So, we
28:34
talked about, you know, all these jobs changing. What like how have you like
28:38
what are the new jobs that are arising? What are the new skill sets that you're
28:41
seeing folks lean into? Yeah. One of my favorite things I don't
28:45
know what it's called, but like having like an internal job to manage all the
28:49
AI across your organization, right? So, like
28:52
I'm hiring for that right now. So, if anybody sees that, like we're trying to
28:55
figure out who that person is. like our CTO and our head of product and our head
28:59
of customer success are right now like they have weekly meetings talking about
29:02
like all the agents and things that we need to build and I'm like you guys I
29:05
need to off you guys need to do your jobs and I need to find somebody to do
29:08
this job um across the whole or I think that's super exciting. Um obviously the
29:12
prompt engineering like job like understanding like literally anyone
29:16
could learn how to prompt engineer like you don't I I I find it interesting that
29:20
everybody has these engineering titles though actually I was thinking about
29:22
this in the shower this morning. I was like like the forward deploy engineer
29:25
and like I'm like like they're not really engineers and it's actually I
29:29
don't think it's fair to the people who are engineers who have worked really
29:32
hard to get that you know that degree and understand technology the way that
29:38
they have. So I think it's kind of cute um but it's not what it is. And so let's
29:43
let's call it something else that's incredibly valuable but it's not an
29:46
engineer. Like that's not what they're doing. Um so I don't I don't buy into
29:50
that. And I actually like you know put my engineers on a pedestal and I you
29:54
know even in today's world where you can do things very fast I think you know
29:56
they're one of the most valued everyone's value but they're one of the
29:59
most valued you know orgs within the company of course still
30:03
in a world where you can do it fast. I like the uh I like the word builder like
30:08
we're all built on something like that to me feels much more representative of
30:12
the work that is happening and it is distinct from you know uh like an a like
30:18
a true like you know machine learning engineer or something like that or
30:22
that's a that's a different skill set uh in a lot of ways.
30:26
Yeah. And they're and they're creative too. Like what they're not giving
30:29
themselves credit for is like engineers are creative as well, but like on like
30:33
when you're actually building these, you have to like there's an art. It's a
30:36
combination of art and science. Like there's an art to a lot of this
30:40
and that art they're not giving themselves credit for the art that
30:43
they're doing, which obviously I love art and
30:46
you know I have my own art that I do and but I think that there's a value in that
30:50
and they're devaluing the creative side of us. And I think as a world where we
30:54
go where agents and superhumans can do all the tasks and all the workflows that
30:59
side the creative art softer skills are the ones that going to be most valued.
31:05
Um so you talked about like this this job of like managing the agents like
31:10
what is what does that practically look like um for you all right now and like
31:13
where do you think it's heading in the next 6 12 months something like that? I
31:17
mean right now I think it's somebody who understands that the it is somebody who
31:21
has to understand the full organization right across because I think the agents
31:24
have to talk to each other across functions and so it's not just doing one
31:28
task but agents managing agents is the ultimate goal right so that like the
31:33
handoff the flows the process um we're still trying to figure it out like I
31:39
don't have all the answers uh and it's not I think the moving again moving away
31:43
from these siloed disciplines is where the world is going.
31:47
Um, and I think it's exciting. If I were
31:50
like starting my career again, that's where I would like that's where I want
31:54
to start. Like I want to understand the whole organization. Like I'm hiring a
31:57
chief of staff right now who is going to have to have their hands in everything
32:01
across each piece of the business. And I think it's similar. It's like a chief of
32:05
staff for agents, if you will, for AI. Yeah. It's the the thing we're seeing is
32:10
um the workflow looks a lot like a person who is reviewing the output of an
32:15
agent and that's kind of the job like day in and day out you're looking at it
32:19
you're saying yep that looks good or no not quite and if it's no not quite it's
32:22
like well what if we what if we tried this or what if we tried that to try and
32:26
get it to more consistently output you know thumbs up versus like ah not quite
32:31
and that's uh you know so you're kind of like managing these rubrics managing the
32:35
evaluations uh and It's it really is like getting
32:39
very good at just sort of holding a quality bar, knowing what that standard
32:43
and rubric looks like, and then just tuning the engine over and over again.
32:47
Yeah, the AI slop that's out there is like incredible. Like I looked at
32:52
something the other day and I first at first glance I was like, "Wow, this is
32:55
[ __ ] good." Then I like printed it out and I read it and I was like, "Gh."
32:58
Do you prescribe to the dead internet theory?
33:02
Have you I don't even know what that is. No. What
33:03
is the dead internet theory? The dead internet theory is that if you go to
33:06
like, you know, any of these major social networks, like the vast majority
33:09
of content out there is written by an AI at this point in time. And so, uh, you
33:13
know, what's being written, what's being read is all AI talking to AIS.
33:17
It's not real. I mean, that's what the world we're
33:20
going to like right now. We're building superhumans to talk to humans, but it's
33:23
agent to agent, you know, and like that's the future. And so, we have to be
33:28
building infrastructure and you know what those processes are when agents are
33:31
talking to agents. And I can't even get my head around that. sometimes like [ __ ]
33:35
is this going to work? Well, I think it's definitely, you know,
33:38
we're definitely going to create a market for, you know, uh so like a a AI
33:43
free, you know, content or AI free art. Uh like we're going to want that from
33:47
humans. Uh there will be a market for that.
33:50
All right. Well, then that's where I'll go sell my artwork,
33:53
I think. So, I mean, you know, it's it's the same thing as like AI is clearly way
33:58
better than humans at chess, but chess has never been more popular than ever.
34:01
Uh and I think you'll you kind of see that across industries where like humans
34:05
we just I don't know like we we like to see what is possible by us. Uh and that
34:12
doesn't mean that we still won't have AI and agents doing enormous amounts of
34:16
economically productive uh work. Uh but there there still is a lot of places I
34:21
think where humans have um we just we just like each other. And what if what
34:26
if we move to a world where we all don't have to work so hard to meet our basic
34:31
needs? Like, okay, I'm not going to get into my politics, but Maslo's hierarchy
34:35
of like basic needs are met, like truly met across the world where we can all do
34:40
the things that actually feel good to us and give us joy and bring our elevation,
34:45
our energy, bring our energy up to another level. That's a world I get
34:49
really excited about, right? And if you and I want to create companies and do
34:52
things like that gets us excited, we get to go do those things. But not
34:55
everybody. Some most people are in jobs that I would imagine they're not loving.
34:59
They may tell themselves. Like I actually was pushing back on a friend
35:01
the other day. She's like, "I love I don't know what the industry was." And I
35:04
was like, "Really? What the [ __ ] do you love about that? Like that sounds awful
35:07
and boring." She's like, "No, I love this. I love what I'm doing." I'm like,
35:10
"I don't know. Like, do you love it? Like, what do you love?" So, I love
35:15
problem solving challenge. I love humans. I love people. I love managing
35:19
people. I love like understanding and connecting. I'm a relationship person
35:22
and a product person, but that's what I love. Not necessarily even building
35:26
superhumans, right? Like I love that I get to build something that makes
35:29
change. Um, but what if everybody didn't have to work so hard?
35:34
Well, I think that's the I think you're probably right that that's the direction
35:37
we're on. You know, if you looked at our, you know, agrarian ancestors, I'm
35:40
sure, you know, most of them probably weren't in love with farming. And if
35:43
they looked at today's jobs by comparison, they go like, you all look
35:46
like you're just having fun all day. like you're on you're you're a Twitch
35:49
streamer, a YouTube like is that a real job? Like that doesn't look real.
35:53
But here it here it is. Like we have created economically useful um jobs out
35:59
of what would appear to our agrarian ancestors is just fun or nonsense uh at
36:04
the end of the day. And so I do think that you know humans will just kind of
36:07
continue to move up that abstraction l layer and and find new ways to um you
36:13
know take up our time in ways that are economically useful.
36:16
Yeah. And well, I I'll add I'll tell the story of so my oldest I have two
36:19
brothers. My oldest brother was both of them are were CEOs and entrepreneurs as
36:24
well. I don't know, one of us should have ended up in jail if you look at our
36:26
history. Um, so we had a we had an interesting
36:30
childhood, but my my oldest brother was a CEO and then he just kind of like
36:34
dropped out of this world of capitalism and decided I'm not in it anymore. I'm
36:38
going to go be a Buddhist monk. And so like he went and was a monk for a
36:41
second, came back and now he's a chaplain. And so what he does in his
36:45
chapy is he walks around. So he sits by people's bedsides when they're dying,
36:49
when they have nobody else. And he walks around homeless camps and says, "Do you
36:52
need to talk to somebody?" There is absolutely no money in that. Like he
36:56
makes absolutely nothing. But he's doing God's work, you know? So I think it's a
37:01
shift like we will shift the value of what our work is. And
37:06
I think there will be a value shift hopefully. That's my that's my hope in
37:10
this new world is that his work will actually be valued.
37:14
Yeah. Yeah. I Yeah. I mean clearly that is valuable work that he is doing. Um
37:18
you were talking about yourself. You're like I am a relationship person. I love
37:21
to you know sort of do these things and here you are u you know changing the way
37:27
that sales works. So what would you tell a you know 22-year-old who's like I want
37:31
to be in sales. I'm the same as you. I love I love relationships. I I love sort
37:35
of helping people solve problems. what what what where would you direct them?
37:39
I would direct them to focusing on your software skills, right? So, it's less
37:44
about the um the process and the methodology and the transfer of
37:49
information and selling a product and talking about a product because I think
37:52
all that transfer information is going to go to AI and go to agents um
37:56
superhumans what we call them and it's more about creating connection to other
38:01
humans. I think like one of the valuable lessons I remember my dad told me when I
38:04
went to college is like I don't give a [ __ ] if you learn anything. Just learn
38:07
how to connect to people. Learn how to have a conversation. A really good
38:11
friend of mine is um from Ethiopia and her family was royalty in Ethiopia and
38:18
she was she learned at five she told me she had to go to parties and learn how
38:21
to socially say hi to people and like ask really intriguing and curios
38:25
questions that invoked curiosity. I thought that was fascinating, you know,
38:29
like that at that age, she was taught like this is how you show up and this is
38:32
how you like engage people. So that's what I would teach them is like learn
38:36
how to engage people and lean into your what makes you human, you know? So on
38:43
the what makes you human part, like it's it's pretty clear to me that
38:48
resilience is one of those things that is going to be increasingly in high
38:53
demand. And you have had an enormous amount of resilience both in you know
38:58
professional and in your personal life. Like what what do you think what you
39:02
know what do you think instilled that in you and how do we cultivate that in
39:06
others? Oo as a mom of two young girls right
39:10
now. I have a three and a 5-year-old. I think about this all the time. So I
39:14
believe I probably am have had the modest success that I've had because of
39:19
the trauma that I've had as a child. So, I actually believe it's a trauma
39:24
response that I am able to like I love it when people tell me no. I love to be
39:29
rejected. I'm like, I'm just going to use that as fuel to my fire. Um, I have
39:34
learned to if I feel something like I've learned I get it out and then I'm over
39:38
it. Like that is I've had to learn that in order to survive. There's a survival
39:42
mechanism. But [ __ ] I don't want to teach have my kids have to go through
39:46
any of the trauma. I mean, they have a very sheltered life. My oldest daughter
39:49
is adopted and if I look at the life that she would have had like her
39:52
biological siblings um very different one-bedroom apartment
39:57
in Philadelphia with her mom who works at McDonald's like and I don't I like
40:03
would never want her to have to go through what I went through as a child.
40:07
So I don't know. So the answer is I don't know what the answer is other than
40:12
I try not to give my kids what they want, you know, and I try to like I'm a
40:16
little bit of a tiger mommy. I don't actually believe in the gentle
40:19
parenting. Um, not that you're asking me about my parenting
40:23
styles here, but yeah, I also don't I don't believe in anything abusive
40:27
either, but I also like I don't know. I I'm struggling with it every day. So, if
40:31
anyone has an answer, let me know. I'd love to.
40:33
Well, I got a three and 5year-old girls, too. So, I I'm fig Yeah, I'm figuring it
40:37
out as we go, too. And it, you know, it's uh yeah, I think you're on to
40:42
something where it's like, you know, of course they're going to have maybe more
40:44
than I did when I was growing up, but that, you know, there's um you can build
40:49
resilience into them by like teaching them they have to earn things like, you
40:52
know, not not having instant gratification and all this other stuff
40:55
without, you know, to your point, putting them through trauma uh at the
40:59
same time. And so I I have to believe that there's a you know, a healthier
41:02
path to still instill those same uh skills, you know.
41:06
I I hope so. So, I mean, my one thing is like for all my child care, because I of
41:09
course I need a lot with the job I have. Um, I always say to them like the number
41:13
one thing that will get you fired like is if I see my kid crying and you give
41:17
them what they want. Do not [ __ ] give them what they want when they're crying.
41:21
Like, if they they have to like I don't care how old they are, get it together,
41:24
calm down and ask me in a reasonable voice, but you are not going to throw a
41:28
fit and get what you want. Like, that is a instant no for me.
41:32
Yeah. Uh, it's it's like, hey, we got to we're going to teach some skills here.
41:35
are teachable moments. Exactly.
41:38
What's um you know, you talked about um you know this like you like hearing no,
41:45
you use no as an edge. Um you know what where am I going with
41:51
this? Like I'm curious you know what what is like a what is a thing that you
41:57
where has that served you well? like where where have you been like oh that
42:00
actually helped and fueled this engine of curiosity this like can do attitude
42:05
and where do you feel like that um maybe it's held you back where you're like I
42:10
could have learned this the easier I could have learned this an easier way
42:14
well I mean so where that that comes from for me is that you know as building
42:18
a company and building a category if you will like you know in the early days of
42:22
six sense I got no all the time like when I was out fundraising and today you
42:27
know as I share it with the market. I share what we're doing. We get no quite
42:31
a bit. We get yes a lot. Um but I I actually get worried if we get yes too
42:35
much. And the reason for it is I feel like we're too close to reality of where
42:39
we are today. And I don't think you create a category or create something
42:41
new. If you're just like working in the bounds of what people are used to today.
42:45
So like if like if I think about like chat bots or something like that,
42:48
somebody looks at us as like a chatbot and it's a slightly better. I'm like e
42:51
like that's not good. like I don't want to be slightly better than I want to
42:55
create something net new of changing how that we're doing business and how we're
43:00
going to market and how we're talking to our customers and I think that cate
43:04
category defining companies are able to do that is that you have to get no
43:09
because most people won't accept it because it's not in the confines of the
43:13
playbooks that they know. So it is a point solution making something I'm
43:16
doing today incrementally better and I don't want that. So that's super
43:20
interesting. Like this idea of hearing enough no to know that you're taking
43:25
enough chances. It like do you operationalize that somehow or is that
43:29
just like a feeling that you have where you're like you know I feel like we're
43:32
kind it's a little too easy right now and we need it we we need to push
43:35
ourselves to the next you know uh customer persona or whatever.
43:39
Yeah. I don't know how to operationalize it other than I love hearing it like or
43:43
a saleserson, you know, one of our reps will call me and be like, "Oh, that was
43:46
that was bad." Or I remember the early days my I brought on a head of sales
43:50
when we were just at like a million dollars in revenue and um or a little
43:54
bit before and I remember like when people would reject what we're doing
43:57
like we're almost like virtually kicking each other under the table and she'd be
44:00
like, "Ah, like we didn't get that one." I'm like, "No, Katie, it's good. It's
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good. We cannot if everybody loves this like we're going to [ __ ] fail." So we
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have to get these nos like these nos are important like and also they tell us
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something too like you should like why did they say no right like where does it
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so it helps us be better and how we can grow and like create the best product
44:20
that actually meets the needs of the market and where the market is. Um but I
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don't think you create anything big by getting yes from everyone. That just
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means you're like oh you're slightly better and I get it. I don't want
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everybody to get it. Awesome Amanda. Well I think that is a
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fantastic place to end it. Uh so for those of you out here hearing no, use
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Amanda's uh wisdom. Uh it's just fuel to go figure out how to make it better. Uh
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and uh thanks everyone for listening to Agents of Scale this week. Amanda, it's
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been a pleasure. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'll see
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you soon. Thank you.