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Do you need an AI strategy? Do AI SDRs work? And if they don’t, what does?
This and more we talk about with Andy Mowat
Never miss a new episode, join our newsletter on revenueformula.substack.com
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (05:47) - RevOps vs GTM Ops and retitling
- (11:10) - AI Usecases in the GTM
- (12:18) - The main sales usecase
- (14:15) - AI SDRs: Efficiency vs. Conversion
- (19:02) - AI that actually works in sales
- (23:06) - AI and data
- (26:08) - Generative AI and Data Normalization
- (30:05) - Future of AI in Business
Never miss a new episode, join our newsletter on revenueformula.substack.com
Creators & Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, 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.
[00:00:00] Mikkel: Do you have a strategy for AI? And should you even have one?
[00:00:03] Andy Mowat: Some of the other day, it was like, what's our AI strategy? I'm like, I don't have an AI strategy. I have like, I spot opportunities and then I figure out how to solve them. And AI is a piece of that solve, right? I'm not like, where do I throw AI?
[00:00:13] I'm like, no, no. Where do I find a business problem that needs solving?
[00:00:16] Mikkel: That's Andy Mowat, VP of Go To Market Ops at Carta. And with him, we discuss use cases that work and those that don't.
[00:00:25] Andy Mowat: You know, most of the sales use cases revolve around one thing. Sending more email, which obviously I hate, and most of us do.
[00:00:33] The concept of like mock calls is something where, you know, it's like you, you're like, go practice in front of the mirror. You'll get better, and objectively you will, but people do it like one time and then give up, right? But imagine if you've got those mock agents that you can do things with there. I think that's really powerful.
[00:00:49] Mikkel: In today's episode, we talk about practical use cases for AI in the go to market. Enjoy.
[00:00:56] Toni: Wonderful. Mikkel, are you uh,
[00:01:00] Mikkel: Am I doing the intro? Yeah, you're always doing the intro. So this is you're actually the first guest.
[00:01:04] We've been on been on a break for a while a I, I on traveling uh, three weeks. And then last week, This week Zenon. last week was just trying to return to normal. So I think We tried to record a regular episode today and the entire equipment just failed. I think we, we had three goes until we finally made it.
[00:01:23] Three times. Yeah. Three, three times until we finally made it. So twice,
[00:01:26] Toni: twice he
[00:01:26] Mikkel: forgot to hit the record button, but you know, we'll blame it. We'll blame it on the equipment. That's not true.
[00:01:31] But anyway, anyway, it's just to say, I think now we've gotten that out of the system. Yes. Hopefully everything, everything works out until we bag a full show
[00:01:40] Toni: A full show with Andy.
[00:01:41] Andy, really,
[00:01:42] really nice nice have on
[00:01:44] Andy Mowat: Yeah, no, thanks guys. It's good to see you.
[00:01:46] Toni: you know, for, for everyone for doesn't this, Andy has been a Ravos like on big companies I think I CultureAmp You've been there, been
[00:01:53] you stole Lewinsky, who was actually working with the two of us then when you, when you you snagged I think I think to found Gated And now you're I don't want to say back to the roots, but back into the operations, RevOps, go to market operations realm with, with Carta. So really, really cool to have you on the show.
[00:02:10] If you reflect yourself between, you know, being in revenue operations before you were a founder and now in a similar space after you were a founder, what would you say is different for you now? Kind of what, what change in your head that you're doing differently with your organization than you, than, than you did before?
[00:02:27] Andy Mowat: Yeah. So I've actually done this three or four times, right?
[00:02:30] So
[00:02:30] I was, I
[00:02:31] was
[00:02:31] working for a wealthy family and then realized I need to get
[00:02:34] into tech in 08. So I went to work for the CEO of Upwork, or elance that became upwork Box.
[00:02:47] And then I went straight to CultureAmp. So I've kind of done the founder
[00:02:51] to big company three or four
[00:02:53] times. And so it was different, you know, definitely
[00:02:56] like talked
[00:02:56] about Ben. Ben definitely helped me drink the Kool Aid on how the modern data stack works and the power of it, and
[00:03:03] also of
[00:03:04] operationalizing that.
[00:03:06] I think Carta has a very good. Data infrastructure and a good data team. So it enables
[00:03:11] us to start to go down that journey that I really envisioned, which is thatin i dont know call it 3-7 years . for It's towards I which using was, you know,
[00:03:37] put a
[00:03:38] big smile, put a big smile on my face in some ways. I mean, I love and hate Salesforce at the same time.
[00:03:43] Mikkel: Yeah. I mean, we also discussed that one, and it's like such a good marketing stunt. Probably still have a lot of seats. At least,
[00:03:52] Andy Mowat: Right.
[00:03:52] Mikkel: you're just going to rip that out.
[00:03:53] Toni: We're not a hundred percent sure if they're really fully churned away from Salesforce. Or if there's some kind of a, you know, marketing piece in them.
[00:04:00] Andy Mowat: The data model is so easy, right? Like it's all deeply hardwired into Salesforce. So in theory, when you decide to do it, it's not actually that hard. You're not working with unstructured data. You're working with highly structured data
[00:04:12] Toni: Yeah, exactly. But I think kind of getting that switch done and, you know, Klarna is not a small organization, right? No, no, no, no. It's like a thousand employees plus something. But to be fair, they made it smaller before cutting Salesforce. Well, that's probably true. But you know, yes, kind of, there's the whole realization around the data stack, but is there I mean, it would be great to kind of see a, or kind of hear maybe a story where.
[00:04:34] You maybe kind of changed your, your way of thinking around, you know, revenue operations or go to market operations after, you know, founding Gated actually. Is there something stand out for you where like, Hey, you know what, actually I used to do it like this and now that I've seen and, you know, founded a company again, to your point, kind of, I actually changed my mind on this.
[00:04:54] Andy Mowat: No, I think they're so different, right? I mean, founding a company, we had six people. We were just cranking and, you know, CultureAmp was 1200 when I, Left box was, you know, 2000, Carta is close to 2000 as well too. There's just different environments, right? Like it's I get to play with the systems every day.
[00:05:12] When I'm a startup CEO, when I'm running rev ops or go to market ops at a big company, it's, it's a lot of like. Inspiring people, unlocking people, helping them understand like what they can achieve. so like those don't change. I think what you bring from a founder mentality is a set of urgency. It's been fun to watch Carta's got other.
[00:05:34] Like five or six other former founders in the company as well, too. So, I, I, I think that urgency within a big company but I'm, I'm passionate about driving change through orgs, but I've always
[00:05:47] Toni: I mentioned this now a couple of times, RevOps, GoToMarketOps. Yeah. Are those synonyms for you? Are they different? Can you, can you enlighten our audience a little bit on that,
[00:05:55] Andy Mowat: Matt Voelm and I at RevOps Co op will have this beef at some point live, but I think RevOps is a, it's just a sexified SOPS. Like if you talk to most people and you ask people with the RevOps, Title. What do you do? You know, probably 85 90 percent of them are doing sales ops. They've never touched marketing ops.
[00:06:15] They don't understand, like, the top of funnel data flow, or they've never done, like, post sale ops. To me, go to market ops means, and generally that's going to be the leader that's sitting across all three of those things, but the vast majority of people on your go to market ops team are doing SOPs. Or Mops or CSOps.
[00:06:34] And like, that's the title of the people underneath me. I run GTM Ops cause I think across the entire funnel. I spent a lot of time thinking through how does my team think across the entire funnel? And so like my head of Mops said the other day, he's like, my favorite meeting of the week is when I hang out with our, your head of SOPs.
[00:06:50] Like we built this just tremendous partnership and that's amazing. And literally one of the. Folks on the MOPS team has asked if she can learn more about sales ops and one of the sales ops people that does routing has asked if she can learn more about there. And so I'm a big fan of moving people across my teams, right?
[00:07:06] Like Ben was a great example. He joined us to run MOPS. He ended up running SOPS. Another guy at CultureAmp was running CSOPS and he said, Hey, I want to grow my career in the SOPS. And now he's running, we, we added like a couple areas of SOPS to him as well too. So I'm a big fan of like, if you've got good people cross pollinating them I think it works really well.
[00:07:27] But man, I think RevOps is just, you know, you've seen that before. Like Demand Gen becomes Growth Marketing or all these other things. It's just a sexier term for the same thing.
[00:07:40] Mikkel: We need to attract more talent. What do we do? New title.
[00:07:43] Toni: Yeah. No. So, I mean, that's
[00:07:46] Andy Mowat: It's just like, what is it? You're a sanitation engineer rather than a janitor or
[00:07:50] something
[00:07:50] Mikkel: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is.
[00:07:53] Toni: But the thing is, right, from a, from a vision perspective, you know, what have all of us thought RevOps was going to be
[00:08:00] is kind of what you're saying about go to market ops is to you, right? It's, it's really I wonder, I wonder if in two years from now, we're going to call it go to market operations.
[00:08:10] And it's again, mostly going to be SOPs folks sitting there doing sales forecasting and
[00:08:16] Andy Mowat: Yeah, you're right. It's like, if you're doing deal desk or commission calcs, you're SOPS, right? You're not GTMOs. And so. I mean, everyone retitles themselves and I think it's just a matter of life. I, I guess I also believe, I remember I was sitting at a Topo conference eight years ago and some guy was going to speak on RevOps.
[00:08:34] I thought that was the coolest term. Cause I was always been like SOPS or MOPS before. And he was basically talking about collections the whole time. Right. So like, I don't, titles just don't mean much to me. I think it's like, what do you do and what scope do you have and how well do you
[00:08:49] Mikkel: Yeah, I think, I think it's also the classic when, with some of the RevOps folks we've talked with apply interviewing for a head of RevOps. And when they come in, it's like, so we need you to take over Salesforce. And that's like 95 percent of the jobs. Are there any teammates in this team? No, it's just you.
[00:09:04] Great. Yeah.
[00:09:05] Andy Mowat: I saw a job like that, a CRO popped me a job said, Hey, I think this Job is completely unrealistic. I, not, not trying to hire me, but she's like, can you give me some feedback? And I looked at it and you know, you look at those jobs and people laugh and those are the ones you slack back and forth in, in dark communities of like, seriously, is, can somebody do this with a one person role?
[00:09:26] Mikkel: And maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but it's also like with my marketing glasses. It's just a whole lot lot cleaner if you come out and and in the we're looking for for to because to apply for that job? Someone who wants to manage to Salesforce, they're going to be
[00:09:43] Andy Mowat: Yeah. And there's, there's, there's technical sales ops people or rev ops people. There are strategic ones. There's ones that think more marketing. There's ones that think more like data. And like, there's so many different profiles within the function.
[00:09:56] Toni: So I would actually kind of suggest to kind of of to move on to the topic we want to spend most of the time here on today. The last two minutes. two Yeah. Which is, which is basically. We've seen seen explosion of and is thinking is about how can this be used and you you know, of funding the bunch of coming you know, is like the the as to spend some time with actually into some of generative cases the go to market, right? right I think this is still what everyone is struggling with is the CEO says, Hey, we are now want to apply AI to save costs and do all those wonderful things. And then really not much actually comes out of this, right? So I wanted to kind of take the opportunity with you, Andy, to go maybe through a couple of.
[00:10:51] Your thoughts on this, you know, what do you think works? I know you've talked to the Clay guys. I know you talked to a couple of other folks in the space. So we'd really love to hear what you think is possible now, what maybe is around the corner and how people should be thinking about actually applying that new technology successfully in their go to market.
[00:11:11] Andy Mowat: A VC asked me four months ago, he's like, Hey, do you have a list of like, A market map of AI. And I sat there and I thought, and I said, no, I don't, but I certainly talked to a lot of AI CEOs. So I created a market map. It's on my LinkedIn. We could, we could focus on any specific area there, but I kind of focused not on specific companies because Lord knows there's too many, and I'll talk about that in a second.
[00:11:34] But Just on like the use cases that I see being applied. I think people are in the very early innings of this stuff. And I also think that you've got to rethink your data matters. First and foremost, like you can't do AI with shitty data. maybe it can help you clean it up a little bit, but so I think that's, that's kind of where I've personally focused at Carta on unlocking the data side before going
[00:11:56] crazy on AI use cases.
[00:11:58] I broke it down into sales use cases, marketing use cases, data use cases. Enablement and then like support engineering and then just some fun stuff on the legal side. I tried to not specifically focus it on GTM, although that's probably a lot of where it is focused and where you guys geek out, but happy to pick a specific area.
[00:12:18] I'd say the, you know, most of the sales use cases revolve around one thing. Sending more email which obviously I hate and most of us do. So I, I've been very cautious on some of those. I'm working on an AI or SDR article now with most of the CEOs there. Like we've got a Google doc collaborating on that.
[00:12:38] So happy to talk deeply about how I think about AI, SDRs and like the sending of more email.
[00:12:44] Toni: Let's, let's, let's take maybe that actually first, honestly, because the whole AI SDR topic. super, I mean, very popular right now, also popular with the VCs and some of them also growing like very rapidly, at least kind of from what I've picked up. Right.
[00:12:59] Andy Mowat: not on a net retention basis. They
[00:13:02] aren't,
[00:13:03] Toni: yeah, I was about to say they, they have a bit of a churn problem, but I
[00:13:06] Andy Mowat: think we all know that now. It's funny. It's like, I've talked to like four VCs recently. Yeah. And even a reporter pinged me the other day around you know, how are all these AISDR companies doing
[00:13:14] Toni: I'm, I'm actually wondering kind of one thing. I mean, there's obviously the whole idea while you plug it in, they send out a gazillion. ish emails and they basically burn your tam and your domain. And then, you know, you see a small bump and then you need to off board because, hey, this, this didn't really work out.
[00:13:33] But I also do wonder, right? I mean, this is a new technology. everyone is a first time buyer. I think this also contributes to a lot of people doing like POC purchases. And then just concluding, hey, it didn't work out, right? So I think some of the churn stuff that we're seeing there is rooted in, this is just how this thing works, and it kind of doesn't work, and that's why, that's why you have a lot of churn.
[00:13:56] But I think you also will have a bunch of folks that are trying to do something AI. And then, you know, basically kind of failing with it because of, you know, whatever other reason, right? So, you know, be that as it may kind of, yes, there's a, there's a retention problem for sure. But what's your what's, what's your take on the whole AI SDR space?
[00:14:15] Is that just a better email cannon or, or is it, is it something different than that?
[00:14:19] Andy Mowat: better email Canon, but I can break it down for you. I'd say first I think there's a trade off between conversion and efficiency, right? Like I think right now. You probably accept a slight decrease in conversion. Then I can talk a little bit more about that, but you definitely get a lot more efficiency.
[00:14:38] So I see why it's attractive. I mean, I tested Conversica years ago and like it didn't work then. I think to me, the big point I would really make is. Most people just think it's about plugging in a tool and sending more emails. But to me, there are five great components of Outbound. One is targeting.
[00:14:58] And I think a lot of people stink at that. Two is brand. It's a lot easier when you've got a great brand to do Outbound, right? It's very different if you're a small little company, but if you invest in brand, and I'm a huge believer in the power of brand, I mean, we did a Culture Amp, we're doing the Carta, Gated was, it was first and foremost.
[00:15:16] What assets, what assets you offer people, right? Like if you're just sending an email trying to get a meeting versus you're sending me a warriors game or dinner, that's very The channels you reach people on and then finally What AI does is the message and that's the only piece that they are really doing.
[00:15:34] And so if you want to do great outbound, you've got to do all five of those.
[00:15:37] Toni: and then you're basically saying like, well, the AI piece is not solving outbound, it's solving the messaging bit and that's, that's kind of it,
[00:15:44] Andy Mowat: that is it. Yeah. I mean, it could over time solve, I guess there's like a six piece, which is the data, but I didn't include that piece. Cause I figured that's kind of a given. But yeah, the AI. AI solves a very small portion of it, but I think most people believe that that solves everything, right? And like, when you've got a new tactic, right, like you're doing people movement, or you've got, like, when Aaron Ross wrote Predictable Revenue, those were, like, new tactics.
[00:16:09] Like, Venn messaging alone might but given the fact that everyone's pummeling it with the same tactics at greater and greater scale, Like messaging alone will not succeed for outbound.
[00:16:21] Mikkel: It's, it's funny I think there's a lot of comparisons into marketing in this conversation that I'm just picking up off given my experience. And there's this classic saying that that When tactic starts the whole market just piles on and then the tactic becomes
[00:16:37] Andy Mowat: You are so right. That's our job is to kill it, kill a tactic. Well, the irony is people share their tactics, which I don't get, right? Like if you've got something that's working, don't get on a fucking podcast and talk about it. Like just, just, you're going to make more money just by doing that tactic over and over and over again.
[00:16:54] Don't write a book about it. It's
[00:16:56] Mikkel: That's why he's giving all these evasive answers. Let's come with some of the good stuff. No, sorry. I'm
[00:17:00] Andy Mowat: no, no, you're right there. We do have, we do have good stuff. Like, we, we. I always push the limits on growth loops and, and unique data sources for sure. Like those things can help a lot.
[00:17:10] Mikkel: I think it's also just, when I look at the list you wrote down on what great outbound looks like, right? You gave us four or five different elements to be a plane. We say messaging, that's kind of done. AI can do it, but the rest, it can't really. Aren't there any workflow and AI assisted tools out there that can help in some of those elements? Because I think what we've heard from someone like Kyle Coleman is you need to have a human in the loop,
[00:17:33] Andy Mowat: Yep. Yep. So let's we'll come back to message and a human loop in a second. Like channel, it's just really hard to innovate in that, right? Like if you find a new channel, go hit it hard, right? LinkedIn opens up a new ad marketing feature, the ROIs are going to be huge, right? Like we're always looking for new channels.
[00:17:51] They're hard to find. I don't think AI is going to help you there. Assets. Yeah, I've seen some cool companies where they're using AI to generate assets, but like, that's just content assets. Like, I don't want more of that. What I want is, like, small group, like, when someone's going to engage me, it's like, send me a small group dinner with 10 top people that are my peers, right?
[00:18:12] Send me to a warrior game. you know, send me some really unique differentiated swag. One recently, somebody sent our CRO a bobblehead of him, right? Like that stuff is just, you're going to take the meeting, right? So like people just aren't, aren't innovating there. I think brands like AI can't help you with brand.
[00:18:29] Like you've got a really deep, your company has to deeply believe in brand and then targeting. Yeah, but it's like great product marketing, right? Like great, it's like, it's art versus science, right? And you've got to really understand that stuff. And you've got to be, you know, Super disciplined and then it can help, like once you have that piece it can help, but I think a lot of people are just like spray and pray, right?
[00:18:48] And, and so I would take your list of 10,000 with a 1% or half a percent response rate, narrow it down to a thousand, and really focus in on like great assets and great branding.
[00:19:02] Toni: So that's the outbound piece in sales itself. Do you see another application or another, another way to use AI that's starting to, to work out a way of a little bit more hopes than the AI sorry, the SDR application?
[00:19:17] Andy Mowat: Yeah. I love the enablement use case. I think there's some really, I I, I have been re. Along with some of our good enablement team, like kind of rebuilding it and really like investing deeply there. I've got kind of like five or six use cases there. I think search, Glean is amazing. Curation of knowledge and, and contextualizing knowledge.
[00:19:37] Docket with Arjun is pretty cool. The concept of like mock calls is something where, you know, it's like, you're like, go practice in front of the mirror, you'll get better. And objectively you will, but people do it like one time and then give up. Right. But imagine if you've got those mock agents that you can do things with there.
[00:19:54] I think that's really sales deck generation, like all those types of things are like easy, quick wins cases for
[00:20:03] And here's the thing, like none of them mess with your brand. Lived on top of Outbound. You know, we filtered 2 billion emails. Like, that's what I CARTA. When I gave, when we turned off Gated, I got swamped with email when I joined CARTA. And so, I just wrote at the bottom of my LinkedIn profile.
[00:20:24] You know, I care about Keanu. He's pretty awesome. If you include that in your outbound, you'll get through. Otherwise, you will get marked as spam. And I will tell you, like, less than half of 1 percent of people do. And the people that do get a reply, and everyone else gets marked as spam. And and, you know, one woman from sales loft sent the most amazing email.
[00:20:42] She's like, do you want to take the red pill or the blue pill? Da da da da da. Like, to your point, like, human in the loop, right? Like, I don't want, and I've gotten really lined with our head of SDR on this. We're not here to have AI send generated emails. Ideally, AI does everything else, but you still let the rep have creativity, because AI is not going to go like the danger with giving AI creativity.
[00:21:04] I forget what the term of the the slider is, but you're going to send some really shitty stuff. That's going to nuke your brand. Right? So you need creativity with like discipline at the same time and AI can't give you that. And so I'd literally give people roadmap to my inbox and nobody takes it
[00:21:18] Mikkel: It's so funny. like, I think I saw Alina Vanderberg from ChiliPiper also sharing that she, she was in a discussion with an AI SDR that kept on telling her in spite of her saying, I don't need this thing, period. It's like, no, no, you need it. Here's three reasons why. And just like, kept on going. So I agree.
[00:21:37] It can be it can be really dangerous,
[00:21:39] Andy Mowat: Well, also like if you, if, if the Reggie folks said it well, there's like two things you can't automate and I believe there's more you probably shouldn't automate, but the reply and the phone call, but like if somebody replies to you, that is deeper down funnel and you want, and you don't want to AI bot that one, whoever AI botted it, Alina.
[00:21:59] You lost her, right? Like, you took something that was worth, like, at the first level, it's very cheap, but like a, like an engaged prospect in your ICP is worth a couple hundred bucks, and so, like, why would you put AI on there? Because if somebody figures out they're getting AI They're out there.
[00:22:18] They're gone. And they're, and that's your brand as well, too.
[00:22:21] Toni: Let's move a little bit onto the, I think the data quadrant or data space that you kind of mentioned there in, in in your AI map, because I think the sales marketing, CS use cases, I think they're pretty straightforward and clear. Actually. I love the, I think there's a lot of hype around the AISDR. So that's why I wanted to kind of tap a little bit on this and kind of see where, where this, where this goes with you.
[00:22:43] But in terms of the data space in AI, I think many people are extremely clueless. What, you know, what, what is the application? Why would you kind of, you know, how could you actually use it there? So we'd love to hear what you're seeing and also with your rather unique view of, Hey, let's just build all of this on top of a data warehouse and, and, and be done with it, right.
[00:23:03] We'd love to hear a little bit of, of your thoughts on this.
[00:23:06] Andy Mowat: Yeah. I asked Kareem the other day, like, is he a AI company? said, no, not really. I agree. Like, I don't think anyone wants to be an AI company per se. The ability to, like the old way is you buy a different data vendor for every single use case you need. Right. Like you guys are in Europe. Um, At CultureAmp, our European reps expensed Lusha.
[00:23:32] Or Lusha, I don't know how you say it, but because they needed like SMB phone numbers for Europe. And I'm like, ah, crap. Now I got to go do another deal with another vendor. And we ended up doing that deal. About four months ago, our reps at Carta in Europe started expensing Lucia too, right? And so we've kind of got locked down on the expenses so we can turn it on or off, but you're like, crap, now I got to do that again.
[00:23:53] But with people like Clay, It's kind of, this isn't even AI, this is just like when I saw it pre AI, I was like, aha, I get it. This is just like basic waterfall. I want to do one data vendor, one deal, and then I want to wholesale all the people in, versus like having, I generally will rip out data vendors every like two to three years.
[00:24:13] So like that's, that's not even AI, that's just data. Then you get into like, okay, cool, so I've got the best data points from all the different data vendors. But there's still areas where I want to supplement, right? Like, I want to go out and crawl the website. I don't like the industry classification from LinkedIn.
[00:24:29] I want to normalize that. Like, that's where AI and I mean, effectively what you've got with Clay is you've got a waterfall. Could have done it pre AI. Probably they were doing it pre AI. You've got a scraping bot. Like, I used to buy those all the time on Upwork. Now, I don't need to because I can use Clay.
[00:24:45] And then you've got some AI on top of that, but I wouldn't put it as like an AI solution, but yeah, some like that vision for data of a single data enrichment. Like platform makes so much sense to me.
[00:25:00] Toni: basically kind of the waterfall plus additional enrichments and workflows, right? Kind of, that's clay for you right there. And that's, that's what you're using to basically, you know, distribute data. And in this case, prospecting data specifically I
[00:25:14] Andy Mowat: No, I think there's two core, I think there's two core use cases for Clay. There is like what all the, you know, the hyper, super smart folks at like RAMP or any of the other companies are very like, let's get rid of the SDR team. And let's just have two people in a room, running clay. That's one use case. There's the other enterprise use case, which is enrichment, right?
[00:25:32] Like, you know, for us at CultureAmp, we were 90 percent inbound. CARTA, very high percentage inbound as well, too. And so I want to know everything about those companies to be able to target them. And then the ones, and I also want to know, like, what's changing or what's unique. To be able to like hit them up before anybody else, right?
[00:25:51] But it's, it's less outbound per se. And it's more like being smart about where you're targeting. And I think they figured out the first one, like, This, the second one is still like being
[00:26:04] Toni: And staying in the data space, is there anything else that you're seeing on the AI front?
[00:26:08] So specifically generative AI? And, and the thing is, right, a lot of folks are marketing in this direction simply because there's lots of budget to be found right now, lots of willingness to buy and try.
[00:26:19] But to your point, right, Clay was there before you know, GPT came around and it, it had all the automations already kind of the waterfall. I think I saw this the first time four or five years ago or something like this. Right. But do you see any other folks in the space that are or use cases in the space rather than companies that are starting to, you know, get you interested?
[00:26:39] Or is there anything, anything in the data space you, you find interesting?
[00:26:42] Andy Mowat: I think in data, like normalization of data is really powerful. I think I've always said I want anyone on my go to market team Ops team to have data fluency. I think now you're starting to see tools like Hex that can write SQL for you.
[00:26:58] Like I was always the guy I remember at Box, we had a course on SQL and I would always take it and then I get pulled off into something exact, but I would always hire those smart guys. So I'm like the executive that understands data deeply. But doesn't do a lot of SQL coding myself. Now I don't need to, you know, now, now that SQL will write, will write itself and in theory, I've seen some cool use cases where you can visualize and you can actually change different things in, in the code.
[00:27:26] So that's cool. If you think beyond go to market, beyond data, where should people not talk you're, when you're getting divorced or when you're doing a prenup those are perfect examples where you should tell the bot what are your preferences and your significant others should do the same and then the bot should negotiate versus letting passion get in the middle, right?
[00:27:49] So I think I would I, if I were somebody, I would be looking for, I don't think anybody's thinking very critically, about this and we can talk about all these AI startups, but everyone's basically saying there's Gong data, there's go to market structured data. Yeah. And, you know, the GONG data would include the email data. And let's just throw some AI on there. And that's not thinking critically about, like, what's the real problem to be solved or what's the unique insight. And so I probably talk to six to seven founders a week. On my commute, I got a little thing from Calendly, said you've done 150 of these calls this year.
[00:28:27] And most of them are doing the same shit. It's a really tough space. I try to talk most of them out of doing it. I see a ton of people pivoting into, Hey, we can build this AI thing. But I'm like, objectively, two years ago, you couldn't have built this. So it's cool. But you also just built it in 60 days. So like, do you think some other people might be building this thing too?
[00:28:48] And do you think it's going to be really, really crowded? And so I think there's just this mass of AI companies that like are going to just, you know, Bang their heads against a wall for a year and a half, selling it and then give up.
[00:29:00] Mikkel: But don't you think that's also a result of the space getting an immense amount of funding? So a lot of those companies can get created in the first place. I think, I'm just thinking this probably is pretty normal when foundational new technology. Yeah. Like you'll always have this,
[00:29:15] Toni: this wave basically kind of going through the space, And,
[00:29:18] Mikkel: And definitely a lot of them going to die. Like think, I'm just thinking about the digital camera when that arrived. A lot of folks didn't succeed there. Even Apple, they had like binocular looking digital camera. So a lot of folks, they just got it straight up wrong in the process. And I think a lot of money got burned as well.
[00:29:33] Andy Mowat: Yeah, I think you're right. I think VCs are disciplined enough that they're not investing in these things much anymore. But every single person is like, when you pivot, you pivot into like, there's like three logical places to pivot. Right. Everyone's like, Oh, we can, what can we do with AI? And they're like, Oh, we can do that.
[00:29:49] Where's a good data set? And then you end up pivoting to the same place, right? Like I literally talked to three founders last week that are pivoting into versions of using go to market data and AI to solve your go to market problems. And so like, I think this is just, it's just a wasteland for this
[00:30:05] stuff.
[00:30:05] Mikkel: We kind of said three AI use cases. Now we talked a bit about outbound. We talked a bit about, I would say, data. You mentioned, enablement enablement, but we actually didn't talk much about it.
[00:30:17] Andy Mowat: Yeah, I can run through some of these, like, search, like, you guys know what Slack stands for?
[00:30:22] Mikkel: No, I didn't know it was an acronym.
[00:30:24] Andy Mowat: Google it. It stands for Searchable Log of All Communication and knowledge
[00:30:29] Mikkel: Wow.
[00:30:31] Andy Mowat: Slack is completely unsearchable right? And, so, where do you go when you want to find something? Glean plugs in Slack. Salesforce, JIRA, GongData, everything. And it looks as though it's you, right? So Mikkel and Toni, like your searches will be different because you're in different DMs.
[00:30:52] You have different permissions on Google Docs and so it can find the right search for you. It's like enterprise chat GPT. So I was talking to a chief strategy officer at a big company and I said, Hey, do your reps use. This is a company not in like the core B2B SaaS space. But I said, do your, do your people, you put in stuff to the CRM?
[00:31:14] And he's like, no. And I'm like, well, how'd you solve it? He's like, glean. And so, but it also allows. So it'll say, like, if I'm searching for something, I'll say, hey, I'm looking for this company. They'll be like, great, cool, Toni knows that, but you can't see it. You gotta go talk to Toni, right? So it gives that data security as well, too.
[00:31:32] It's really powerful. So we're piloting it right now. You know, I was down in Brazil and the guys there were going to show it to me and they said, Hey, check it out. And he said, I asked him the question. So I was like, where does the team go for lunch and what do they like to eat? And it literally knew the answer to Right? So it's like, it's, it's pretty impressive. So that'd be one. Imagine now, even if you have the world's most amazing search. You have to know how to ask a question. And so if you're a new hire, you don't know how to ask a question because you don't know what questions are good and bad questions.
[00:32:08] So you still need curated right? Like curated knowledge is the foundation for enablement. And most people like their guru cards or their confluences, like, Badly out of date. So that's, that's like the second area of opportunity, right? So there you're all of a sudden, now you're equipping people to like, have the curated knowledge have kind of, and then you also need the ability to like imprint those lessons on people.
[00:32:31] I think I've been a believer of the gong chorus concept since it began But nobody listens to gong calls. It's the reality. Like nobody has the time. And so there's some people innovating on the ability to like actually pull real insights out rather than talk time or ums or something like that. Like those, we literally did an analysis at Carta on talk time versus our best reps.
[00:32:57] And it was like inversely right? Like by that, I mean that. The best reps were not the ones that talked the least. And so there's so many of these like dumb high level insights that aren't actually valuable. And it's much more of like really understanding and listening to the calls and, but listening to the right bits of the right calls and then operationalizing those.
[00:33:20] So I think there's so much opportunity because you're still going to have to have people and they're still going to have to talk to customers. And they're still going to have to sell people To up level enablement
[00:33:30] Toni: Do you
[00:33:31] Do you, do you
[00:33:31] actually, you know, maybe this is more of a, like an overall question. Do we actually see serious cost cutting potential by applying AI across the board? Or is it actually going to be more like a, an enhancement of what's already there, but you can't just. cut away half of the team or kind of 90 percent of the team in order to then still achieve what he wanted to achieve.
[00:33:55] Andy Mowat: I don't, everyone always says like CEO, CEOs that ask for like an AI strategy are naive by the way, our CEOs never asked for that. But I think he's much smarter about how we do that. I don't see cost cutting from AI. I see cost cutting from data improvements, workflow improvements, things like that.
[00:34:14] AI is just an enabler of that stuff. And so I think any, I was, somebody the other day was like, What's our AI strategy? I'm like, I don't have an AI strategy. I have like, I spot opportunities and then I figure out how to solve them. And AI is a piece of that solve. Right. So like I showed up here at Carta and one of the mid market, one of the sales leaders, like, Hey, we're literally spending half our time trying to figure out which companies to focus on.
[00:34:37] I was like, that's impossible. And he showed it to me and I was like, yep, you're right. And so like, that's not an AI solve. That's a data solve. AI may be a piece of that, but it's not AI there. And so I was like, I can make your team double as effective or double the productivity if I just fix this thing.
[00:34:55] And he's like, yep. And I'm like, cool. So like, I'm always looking for things like that where I can like drive better data insights and stuff like that. Like AI in of itself. I don't think it's going to, within this generation, specifically, like, I'm not like, where do I throw AI? I'm like, no, no, where do I find a business problem that needs solving?
[00:35:15] Toni: Yeah. And I think that's not going to change. I mean, there's going to be, you know, there was crypto, there was SaaS, now there's AI, there's going to be something else in the future again. All of those technologies are just enablers and new capabilities to solve this, you know, to a degree, the same problems in many cases.
[00:35:31] But I
[00:35:31] Mikkel: think it's also because we're still early. What is it? Two weeks ago Uh, Anthropic Announcement, and now AI can use a computer, whatever that means, actually, it can use the computer for you, right? And I remember there was a time when I was thinking, why don't I have a travel planner app on my phone, I mean, so we're still early innings in this this journey here, and it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. I think it was super interesting to hear some of the use cases you've been eyeing Andy, so definitely appreciate you coming on and sharing that here. You've teased a bit of an article that's on the way where might we find this?
[00:36:10] Andy Mowat: Everything I write is on my LinkedIn underneath articles. The AI market map one's there. I'll send you guys the AISDR one. It'll probably be there in three or four weeks. I just haven't had time to pull it all together, but I'd love your
[00:36:26] Toni: Wonderful. Andy? Thank you so much for taking the time. It's been a long time, you know, coming for us to kind of sit down and have that conversation and thank you so much for your insights on, on all the artificial intelligence stuff that, that we've been discussing. I think a lot of people will draw a lot of value from that actually.
[00:36:42] So thank you so much, Andy.
[00:36:44] Andy Mowat: Thank you guys. Cheers.
[00:36:46] Toni: Awesome. Cheers.