---
title: "How to Bolt Sales onto PLG Without Cannibalizing It"
episode: 130
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Dan Cook"
guest_title: "President & CEO, PDQ"
date_published: 2026-10-01
date_modified: 2026-10-21
duration: 00:55:46
word_count: 11145
topics: ["gtm-strategy", "revenue-operations", "sales-leadership", "mergers-acquisitions", "brand-positioning", "demand-generation"]
canonical_url: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/dan-cook-pdq-bolt-sales-onto-plg/
source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# How to Bolt Sales onto PLG Without Cannibalizing It — Full Transcript

> Episode 130 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Dan Cook.
> Published October 1, 2026 · 00:55:46 · 11145 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/dan-cook-pdq-bolt-sales-onto-plg/

## 00:00 — Cold open + intro

**[0:00]** You know, great story at PDQ. It's a great American story. You know, the founders who are

**[0:03]** twin brothers, they graduate high school. They want to be Hollywood writers. They move to LA,

**[0:09]** and it turns out they can't get jobs as Hollywood writers. Maybe no surprise.

**[0:13]** My guest today is Dan Cook, president and CEO of PDQ, a device management company that two twin

**[0:20]** brothers bootstrapped to 20 million in revenue and 15,000 customers before Dan ever walked in the door.

**[0:28]** The journey clearly, whatever operations were for me was not working because the COO pulled me aside

**[0:33]** and said, "Hey, Dan, would you want to try out sales here at Lucid?" Of course, my first question

**[0:37]** was like, "Well, why me?" And the business at the time was about 30 plus people, and he said, "Well,

**[0:42]** you like to talk." I've seen it go really well, and I've seen it go south to where you start to

**[0:50]** really take away maybe the magic of what you have built. The road is littered with SaaS companies

**[0:55]** that PLG'd in, added sales reps. The sales reps got paid commission, cannibalized. What was already

**[1:00]** going to happen, all you did was add cost to your P&L. And then there's a few that don't know how

**[1:07]** to value that early investment or don't know how to articulate that to their CEO or CFO of, "Hey,

**[1:14]** this is necessary." If a wave is coming, how do you make sure you don't miss the wave? And how do you

**[1:20]** make sure you don't have the wave crash down on you? You want to ride this wave. One area I want

**[1:24]** to get into as well, I think a lot of the former moats that companies were built on are just

**[1:33]** starting to really go away. And one that seems to be continuing to provide outsized returns are

**[1:40]** companies that build a very, very strong audience. Dan, your first sales call at Lucid was with the

## 01:51 — The first sales call: "How much can I get for 15K?"

**[1:56]** head of IT at Uber. And the guy essentially handed you a credit card and asked, "How much could I get

**[2:01]** for 15 grand?" Take us into the room. What did that moment tell you about what you had actually

**[2:06]** walked into? Yeah, sure. Well, first, thanks for having me. Really excited to be here. And congrats

**[2:11]** just on building a great podcast and community. Honestly, it was one of those kind of fun and

**[2:16]** career defining moments for me that I always look back on with fondness. So just to set the stage,

**[2:21]** I had joined this business called Lucid Software. They make a product called Lucid Chart, great

**[2:27]** business, a great product if you ever need to try it out. And turns out this business had built a

**[2:32]** great product that hundreds, if not thousands, hundreds of thousands of users were signing up

**[2:36]** for in a freemium style and then they could pull out their credit card and buy a single license

**[2:40]** here or a small team account there. I had joined to do what--the title was Director of Operations.

**[2:47]** And, you know, for those of you who know, you know that that title means really very little or no one

**[2:52]** understands what a Director of Operations actually does. And about a month into the journey, clearly,

**[2:57]** whatever operations were for me was not working because the COO pulled me aside and said, "Hey,

**[3:02]** Dan, would you want to like try out sales here at Lucid?" And, of course, my first question was like,

**[3:07]** "Well, why me?" And the business at the time was about 30 plus people of which everyone was an

**[3:12]** engineer except for me. And he said, "Well, you like to talk." And so it was a very low bar for

**[3:17]** qualifying to be a salesperson at Lucid at that time. But I was eager to give it a shot. So it

**[3:22]** turns out you show up at this business with a great kind of freemium motion, users that are already

**[3:28]** enjoying the product and that sets you up pretty nicely. You would then list the companies where

**[3:34]** you were seeing some of this self-serve adoption from top to bottom and you would see some of the

**[3:38]** great names where oftentimes hundreds and a few instances thousands of end users had found this

**[3:43]** product without a salesperson ever knocking on the door. And so it turns out Uber is one of these

**[3:48]** companies where there were hundreds of users of Lucidchart that already existed there all on

**[3:53]** scattered subscriptions or oftentimes using the free product. Well, it turns out, you know, maybe

**[3:58]** TMI but I had previously worked with someone who had gotten fired from a job but ended up as the

**[4:04]** number 10 hire at Uber just to tell you how life's not fair. And so when I saw that Uber had a lot

**[4:10]** of Lucidchart users and I reflected on this former colleague, I reached out to him, said, "Hey, who

**[4:14]** should I talk to about this Lucidchart adoption at Uber?" He connects me with the head of IT.

**[4:19]** My very first sales call because I like to talk, I get on the call and so said, "Hey, you know, you

**[4:24]** got a couple hundred users of this product called Lucidchart. We see that sometimes people want to

**[4:28]** put it all onto one subscription and manage it centrally. Would you be interested?" And he says,

**[4:34]** "Yeah, how much can I get for 15K?" And of course, I wasn't expecting that response so I hit mute on

**[4:38]** the phone. I pretend to calculate a number and I just make up, "Well, how about 300 licenses?"

**[4:44]** And he says, "Yeah, here's my credit card. Gives me the credit card number. We close a 15K deal."

**[4:49]** And I was in the room with another member of the team and as soon as we got off the call,

**[4:53]** he stands up. He's fist-pumping, chest-pumping and I'm like, "Is this not normal?" He's like,

**[4:57]** "No, man. That's like our third biggest customer." And so I walk out into the broader room where

**[5:02]** there's a bunch of engineers who, you know, generally don't like to talk and they're giving

**[5:05]** me like a nice golf-clap round of applause for closing this deal. And I guess I'm off to the

**[5:09]** races at that point because, you know, you close your first deal for 15K which at the time was a

**[5:13]** big deal for us and all of a sudden the bar is pretty high for me to keep the pace up. But it

**[5:19]** did set a really nice stage for me and candidly a ton of learnings along the way about how you

**[5:24]** can inherit something that's really great and then try to really elevate it via a sales-assisted

**[5:29]** and sales-enhanced motion. And so I'm grateful that that first call close happened. That's such

**[5:36]** an amazing story and I'm personally, I'm a huge fan of Lucidchart. I've used it at every company

**[5:42]** I've ever been at. I use it still to this day. Lean Scale, building org charts, building flow

**[5:48]** charts, all kinds of stuff. I feel like it's the best thing to organize my thoughts. It really is

**[5:52]** a great product. Fantastic. You know, if you're in like a revenue ops role or any kind of leadership

**[5:56]** role, just to get your thoughts on paper, document a process, think through things. It's a great

**[6:00]** product for that type of thing. So hat tip to them. Totally is. Totally is. I'm curious though

## 06:07 — The accretive test: is sales adding growth or eating it?

**[6:07]** how, I feel like I've seen this a few times, like great product, building a bunch of momentum

**[6:13]** on the self-serve motion and then just hadn't done any sales-led growth at all. But I've seen it,

**[6:22]** I've seen it go really well and I've seen it go south to where you start to really take away maybe

**[6:30]** the magic of what you have built. Yep. When you're thinking about, okay, it's time to start layering

**[6:36]** this on. What order of operations do you take and how do you make sure you don't ruin the good thing

**[6:42]** you have while being additive with the sales motion? Yeah, it's a great question. And you know,

**[6:48]** now that I've probably talked to, I don't know, tens, if not close to a hundred different PLG to

**[6:53]** sales type leaders and companies, I think there are playbooks that have emerged here and maybe

**[6:58]** a lot of the listeners have participated in some of that. To me, I think the first, like in most,

**[7:04]** what I'll call right in front of your face risk in layering sales on is, is sales actually going

**[7:09]** to be accretive to growth? Or when you add a sales professional, are they just going to cannibalize

**[7:14]** the PLG motion? And you might not get any better, but you've just layered in cost and maybe some

**[7:18]** sophistication. And so it seems as if every company I've talked with, and of course, in my journey at

**[7:24]** Lucid and now at PDQ, you've had to ask this question, which is what, how comfortable are you

**[7:30]** with introducing a sales rep into this process? And where do you draw the line so that you can

**[7:34]** clearly define attribution that a sales professional or sales team is adding and driving growth to your

**[7:40]** revenue, not just cannibalizing existing revenue? And a lot of companies do it quite differently. So

**[7:45]** at Lucid, we determined that the self-serve product was quite successful. You could buy a

**[7:51]** small team account with your credit card and no friction. And so why add friction? But what we

**[7:55]** found was that just like this Uber example, there were businesses that wanted to manage software

**[8:00]** centrally. They felt really compelled to, to make sure that they knew everything that was going on.

**[8:05]** And I'm really grateful for this shadow IT movement because it's basically helped build my career.

**[8:09]** And so what we determined was there was an actual SKU or paywall we would introduce

**[8:14]** for an enterprise wide offering that only a sales professional could provide and you had to buy

**[8:20]** through sales. You could self-serve into the small accounts, but you wouldn't get some of the

**[8:24]** enterprise or administrative features that organizations oftentimes require. And that

**[8:30]** line of that paywall, so to speak, created a real nice bifurcation because then you could clearly

**[8:35]** show attribution where a sales rep was able to drive an upsell into this SKU versus maybe a

**[8:41]** self-serve account that they could have just bought with their credit card online. What's

**[8:44]** been interesting to me to see is not every company does it that way. There's actually quite a few,

**[8:48]** there's a spectrum of models. So there are some PLG businesses that decide, you know what, we're

**[8:53]** actually going to let the sales reps cannibalize or engage in every single self-serve PLG lead.

**[9:00]** And they'll use quota as an offset to say, hey, we know you're going to get X percent of your quota

**[9:05]** through what would have been self-serve. We need you to show that you can drive some percentage

**[9:10]** increment on top of it. And the way you might do that is through larger deal sizes, maybe by

**[9:15]** qualifying and trying to expand into other parts of the business, you can land a larger deal than

**[9:20]** self-serve would. Or maybe you do it through a cross-sell motion. We have multiple products,

**[9:25]** we want to, you know, take that lead and see if you can cross-sell. And if you can do that

**[9:29]** effectively, it's worth giving up the freemium lead so that you can drive a larger, you know,

**[9:34]** land footprint. And, you know, each company has to kind of make their own decisions. Interestingly,

**[9:38]** at Lucid, we drew the skew on this enterprise IT admin product. At PDQ, we've actually opened it

**[9:46]** up, the aperture, and let our sales reps engage in leads. And what we've seen there is we go for

**[9:51]** larger deal sizes. And because of their discovery and the presence that they have in engaging with

**[9:56]** prospects, the larger deal size makes up for, you know, the cannibalization of what maybe would have

**[10:02]** self-served, if this makes sense. So every company has to kind of do it a little differently. But I

**[10:05]** say that's like bucket one, is how do you really truly understand is sales accretive to your growth

**[10:11]** and not just cannibalizing something that's already working? That does seem to be the part where

**[10:16]** companies have the biggest challenge, where it's the messy middle. It's should sales come into

**[10:22]** this opportunity? Should we just let them grow organically and keep stacking on licenses?

**[10:28]** I think your point of bringing it back to the offer is really helpful. I'm curious. So at Lucid,

**[10:35]** you have the carved out, here's the enterprise plan with like, oh, we need HIPAA compliance,

**[10:39]** we need XYZ things, and, you know, probably things that you would only need if you're doing a bigger

**[10:45]** deal. At PDQ, is it a product offering that made you say, hey, we're going to take a different

**[10:53]** approach? If somebody's listening to this thinking, hey, should I carve out that enterprise plan

**[11:00]** versus kind of keep the same plans regardless and then just let sales navigate where they need to,

**[11:06]** what went into making that decision? Yeah. So I think there's a couple of kind of parts to the

**[11:10]** framework. So, well, and we'll just call it like, what are the, what are some examples of the

**[11:15]** decision nodes that might make you comfortable doing this? So we mentioned one, we'll call it the

**[11:18]** SKU or the Paywall, clearly bifurcates where rep can engage versus where marketing or growth kind

**[11:25]** of drives, you know, adoption. At PDQ, our thesis was actually, hey, we are generally dealing with

**[11:31]** an end user IT professional that might be nested within a larger business with other similarly,

**[11:38]** similar IT professionals. The title of these, of our customers is often the system administrator.

**[11:42]** They're the people that like, when your computer's not working, you send them a note and say, hey,

**[11:46]** man, my computer's not working and they generally tell you to, have you tried restarting your

**[11:49]** computer again? That's our customer. So what we, what we, what our thesis was, was that we're

**[11:54]** landing with that one IT professional who might manage a set of devices in their company.

**[11:58]** If we let our sales team engage with that lead and do the right discovery, can we actually expand

**[12:03]** the size of the land by getting the other sysadmins involved in the buying decision? And so therefore,

**[12:10]** instead of doing the land a small deal and then hope to expand later, maybe we can actually pull

**[12:15]** forward some of that in the initial land. So that was thesis one. And again, you have to test it. You

**[12:21]** have to see if our sales reps do this the right way. Can we actually drive a larger deal size?

**[12:26]** I think the second element was we actually had other products that we had acquired. You'd

**[12:31]** mentioned in the intro and we had this additional thesis, which was, hey, they come in with one

**[12:36]** product in mind. Can we do the right amount of discovery and introduce this portfolio of products?

**[12:42]** And that might also be another way to enhance your deal sizes. And it turns out on the former

**[12:47]** thesis, it became actually quite difficult. We were elongating our sales cycles and oftentimes

**[12:52]** weren't getting the larger deal because it just was hard to do. But when we introduced the cross

**[12:57]** sale motion of, Hey, what about product two and product three? We found that we got a larger

**[13:02]** attach rate by having sales touch those leads and that more than paid for the increased cost of the

**[13:07]** sales reps quota. You have to have a key thesis in mind of why the sales rep should engage with a

**[13:12]** lead that was otherwise coming to you. I think you have to be very test driven and really try

**[13:17]** to isolate the rep and see if they can perform an action that drives that growth in deal size or

**[13:23]** across the skew or whatever the thing might be. And if you can see that you can prove it over a,

**[13:27]** you know, period of time with one or two reps, then you can have confidence that maybe that's

**[13:30]** the right step for you to take. And maybe the last thing I'll share is when I talked to a couple

## 13:35 — Smartsheet's ghost book: A/B testing against the status quo

**[13:35]** different companies, there's a company called smart sheet. That's a great, another great business

**[13:39]** that built on PLG and sales assist. And they actually did something really interesting,

**[13:43]** took some sophistication, but they would create a, they called it a ghost book. So imagine you have

**[13:48]** five reps to start or four reps or whatever. They would create a fifth kind of a book where they

**[13:53]** would not let a rep touch it. And they wanted to just run an AB test to say, Hey, let's just,

**[13:57]** let's AB test our reps against each other and see which reps are doing a good job at this thesis.

**[14:01]** But let's also make sure we're testing it against like the status quo to make sure that it's actually

**[14:05]** truly a creative to growth and not adding costs without benefit. And I thought that was another

**[14:10]** interesting approach on how you might test your way into sales coverage on top of PLG. So

**[14:19]** makes a ton of sense. And I think what I'm hearing, and let me know if I'm hearing it correctly,

**[14:24]** it depends on the value proposition that the product may be offering to the customer.

**[14:29]** The way I'm seeing it is Lucid, you may have value just for that one particular person who

**[14:36]** wants to have a license and they don't necessarily need to have the entire company leveraging Lucid

**[14:40]** to get the value out of it. Or maybe PDQ like, Hey, the real value comes when you're managing

**[14:46]** all of the devices with the software. So we want to make sure you're actually getting the most out

**[14:51]** of the product offering. Does it feel like individualistic versus like enterprise value

**[14:57]** can maybe shift the spectrum? Yeah, that's another great kind of way to think about it. And in fact,

**[15:03]** you know, you think about the contrast in these, these two businesses, which again, listeners

**[15:06]** probably wouldn't know enough about, but like with Lucid chart, anyone can use it for any

**[15:10]** use case at PDQ is a very specific persona. And so I think that also creates an interesting dynamic,

**[15:16]** you know, how horizontal is your product versus how vertical are you? If you have like a key core

**[15:21]** persona, that might actually have additional implications for how you approach this. Whereas

**[15:25]** if you're this broad platform where every single person could use it at a low ACV, you might need

**[15:30]** something more compelling to drive the right sales types conversations with a, with some sort of buyer

**[15:35]** or persona at the business in order to really justify a sales approach. And, you know, I've

**[15:40]** seen a few PLG based businesses where the product just might not be important enough candidly to

**[15:45]** the enterprise where it's really hard to break into some centralized buyer and IT team or elsewhere.

**[15:51]** But there's plenty of businesses who figured that out as well. And, you know, oftentimes it's a

**[15:55]** paywall around some enterprise view and IT admin features. So, yeah, I mean, each business has to

**[16:00]** kind of think about it a little differently. I would say my learnings are you got to test into it,

**[16:04]** you got to be aligned with your marketing and product teams. You definitely got to be watching

**[16:08]** for cannibalization and you can't get too confident that success is truly earned if you're just

**[16:13]** cannibalizing something that would have happened. And, you know, I think the road is littered with

**[16:18]** SaaS companies that PLG'd in, added sales reps, the sales reps got paid commission,

**[16:22]** cannibalized what was already going to happen and all you did was add cost to your to your P&L.

**[16:26]** So, it's a, it's a, it's a quite an interesting journey, but when you do it right,

**[16:30]** it can really accelerate growth. And, you know, fortunately at Lucid and PDQ it's worked.

## 16:36 — Capital allocation: SEO, AEO, growth, paid, then sales

**[16:36]** Once you feel like you have the right thesis and you've been testing it, it feels like, okay,

**[16:41]** we have an understanding of where sales comes in versus what we let live in the PLG world.

**[16:48]** I imagine the next challenge is how am I going to allocate capital across these two motions?

**[16:54]** I know sometimes they serve each other, but PLG is typically much, much more marketing driven

**[17:00]** versus layering in sales headcount and as a CRO leading revenue, how would you

**[17:08]** recommend going through that decision of where to shift capital from your PLG motion to your

**[17:14]** SLG motion? Yeah, great question. So, I think, you know, if you think about the order of operations,

**[17:22]** there's generally, I think, a very positive benefit to nailing the PLG part first before

**[17:28]** you add in the sales motion, right? And for obvious reasons. If you're having people adopt your product

**[17:33]** without a sales team, it suggests that there's real value there. And, and so I think the order,

**[17:39]** at least that we took it at Lucid and I think similarly here at PDQ was you'd start with what

**[17:43]** I'll call traditional search. You try to drive an optimized SEO strategy and now increasingly an

**[17:50]** AEO strategy. Make sure that people can find and discover your product when they search for

**[17:55]** something in the category that you exist in. That's generally a function of, of course, you know,

**[17:59]** adding the right content strategy and team and, and of course, someone who's expert in these,

**[18:05]** in these ways of attracting customers to click on the link and to find your product.

**[18:10]** The second one, once you've kind of nailed that, and that's usually just a headcount cost,

**[18:14]** you're then going to think about how do we make sure that when they land on our webpage,

**[18:17]** there's an optimized path to get into the product and to get the value as fast as possible.

**[18:21]** And of course, different companies define this role differently. There are growth teams and other,

**[18:26]** other approaches that you might take. But really what you're trying to do then is to just take the

**[18:31]** most advantage of any single person that comes to your website and get them to try the product. And

**[18:36]** again, we have a team that does that here. And again, that's headcount centric. You then,

**[18:40]** if you want to start widening your funnel, you start paying for campaigns. And of course,

**[18:44]** that's where I think you have to have a particularly quantitative

**[18:48]** set of team members who can ensure that you're getting an appropriate cost per lead or,

**[18:53]** or cost per demo or cost per trial. And I think if you, if you can feel comfortable about those

**[18:59]** economics sand sales team, that, that's a really critical, what I'll call inflection point before

**[19:05]** you decide to start layering on sales. You know, that's maybe just rocket science, but I think,

**[19:10]** or not rocket science, it's, it's probably pretty basic, but we've just tried to make sure that we

**[19:13]** understand our marketing fundamentals before we start layering in a sales team. I think once you,

**[19:18]** once you start thinking about sales, and again, I'm trying to think if this is going to be that

**[19:21]** novel to listeners, but maybe it's good just to revisit it. And here I am kind of thinking through

## 19:25 — The 4x payback rule, and the forecast Dan got badly wrong

**[19:25]** it out loud with you. You know, you, you, you add two reps or four reps, you, you, you always start

**[19:30]** in multiples so you can kind of A/B test against each other. They have a base salary. They have a

**[19:35]** variable compensation. You want to try and use over some period of time, call it three months or six

**[19:40]** months to identify whether they're run rating in terms of ROI on their own compensation. And, you

**[19:46]** know, we tried to target a 4x payback on the sales rep in, in their first year. And we felt like if you

**[19:52]** had 4x payback plus a tuned marketing funnel with an understanding of costs that you could sit back,

**[20:00]** stare at the spreadsheet, sit down with your finance partners, and feel really comfortable

**[20:04]** about whether you were scaling efficiently and effectively and in a capital efficient way.

**[20:08]** And so that's the approach we took. You know, you can get into the real weeds in terms of the math

**[20:14]** on this and the right way to drive attribution and those types of things. But of course, took a real

**[20:19]** partnership with both marketing, sales, and your finance team to make sure everyone's on the same

**[20:24]** page about the right rate and pace to invest in sales team members. What we found was, and you'll

**[20:30]** actually appreciate the story, we hired four reps. I had been selling. I, you know, closed the Uber

**[20:35]** deal, of course, and was feeling pretty proud about myself. I had closed a few other deals. And so

**[20:40]** when I was hiring the first set of four reps, I assumed that they would be able to do half the

**[20:44]** production that I could do because, you know, how could they do as well as I do? And they were going

**[20:49]** to be pretty efficient at it. And it turns out about three months in, we were watching their run rate

**[20:53]** and they were 2x'ing my pay. So I was materially off in my forecast of what a sales rep could do

**[20:59]** at Lucid. And so we quickly adjusted those quotas and also felt confident we could start adding

**[21:03]** additional headcount. And I think just being deliberate, being thoughtful, having good partners

**[21:08]** and making sure you're data driven, you can't let emotion get in the way. And I think that's

**[21:11]** probably a great way to just approach that problem. I think that's one of the only times

**[21:17]** I've heard someone be surprised that the new reps are outperforming what their expectations are.

**[21:23]** Well, what can I say? I was pretty confident in myself.

**[21:26]** No, I think that makes a ton of sense. I think just culturally, I think it's a big change

**[21:31]** when the team is used to having, okay, we're pouring money into marketing and ads usually for

**[21:38]** for PLG motions and all these other channels. And then it's like, oh, we have to start shifting and

**[21:44]** taking some of that that maybe we can't do some of the things we did over here anymore. We got to

**[21:47]** move it over there. So I think the way you framed it, hey, let's measure the unit economics of each

**[21:52]** decision. And then as well, drive alignment between sales and marketing and product. It's

**[21:58]** probably the only way to do it. Yeah. I mean, it takes some iterations. I think one of my learnings

**[22:03]** was you have to obviously be meeting regularly and communicating regularly. You have to have really

**[22:09]** good, I'll call them SLAs for lack of a better term between teams and departments to just make

**[22:12]** sure that we agree on what is success and what are the outcomes we're looking for here. And we're

**[22:18]** humans, emotion can get in, especially in scale of mode. Everyone's working hard. Everyone's got the

**[22:22]** right motivation in mind. So you just always got to be aware of that. Because you mentioned there's

## 22:28 — Red flags: quant versus relationship leaders, and RevOps as Switzerland

**[22:28]** a lot of companies where this has gone off the rails. So you have a great PLG company, you layer

**[22:34]** in SLG and it's just a complete miss on the investment. What are some of the big red flags

**[22:40]** a CRO or CEO should be looking out for when they start running this new motion? Yeah. So maybe a

**[22:47]** few things and maybe they might not all be red flags, but they might be things to avoid the red

**[22:52]** flags. So maybe I'll kind of pivot your question a little bit. I think one of the things I found,

**[22:57]** and I'm curious if the folks listed in have had similar experiences. It's like you think about the

**[23:02]** diversity in GTM organizations and just in terms of how people think, their strengths and their

**[23:07]** weaknesses. You're going to have like one set of sellers on one spectrum that are going to be a

**[23:12]** little more what I'll call quant heavy and into the numbers and the metrics. And then you're going

**[23:17]** to have the other side of the spectrum of the sellers who are amazing with prospects, amazing

**[23:22]** with customers. They're really into the relationship, but maybe the numbers aren't as much of a

**[23:27]** strength. And I think that that's an important dynamic to understand as you're reflecting on

**[23:32]** yourself building one of these organizations. Where are your comparative advantages? Where

**[23:37]** do you skew? And that way you can then hire people around you that can compliment you because I think

**[23:42]** to be successful in this motion, you need people who are good at both of these things. And sure,

**[23:46]** there's some people who are amazing with people and quants, a little harder to find. But I found

**[23:50]** that very quickly identifying your own strength which takes some humility, your own weaknesses

**[23:55]** especially, and then trying to compliment with hires that can surround you with additional skill

**[24:01]** sets. So let me give you an example. I think one of the biggest challenges in the PLG motion is that

**[24:06]** when you hire your first sales leader and if they're more on what I'll call sales relationship

**[24:11]** side of things, they're going to feel really excited when they're closing deals. But they're

**[24:16]** probably not going to fully appreciate, and this may be a stereotype, that there's this

**[24:19]** cannibalization risk and that we have to be incredibly careful that we're not just consuming

**[24:24]** revenue that was already happening. They'll spike the football on the deal, but it's like, "Well,

**[24:27]** that deal might have happened." And before you know it, it happened without you. And before you

**[24:31]** know it, you have misalignment culturally and you have the execs and folks in other rooms saying,

**[24:36]** "Well, the sales team is not closing anything incremental." But the sales leaders over there

**[24:40]** spiking the football with their team because they were able to close the deal. So what is my point?

**[24:45]** I think a RevOps infrastructure early is actually incredibly helpful. And what is RevOps? We can all

**[24:51]** define that differently. But to me, it's a reflection that there's someone or a team that

**[24:57]** are slightly more quantitative in nature that can be a little bit of a, we'll call it the Switzerland

**[25:03]** between your exec team and your sales leaders to really truly measure the efficacy of the effort

**[25:08]** and ensure that the appropriate amount of support is being lent to make sure it's working appropriately.

**[25:13]** And this, of course, is across a variety of things. So, for example, you got to be quantitative enough

**[25:18]** to actually, you know, present outcomes. Are we closing deals? Are they truly incremental, etc.

**[25:24]** But then you work your way into compensation plans. You work your way into systems. And we could have

**[25:28]** a whole conversation about the landmines associated with your system strategy. And of course, you have

**[25:34]** an enablement strategy that you also want to implement so that you can think about how you

**[25:37]** might scale this effort if it's working rapidly. And so I found that maybe it's not a red flag,

**[25:44]** unless you're not doing it this way, it might just be something you should think about. How do you

**[25:47]** invest early and often in an appropriate, quantitatively driven Switzerland-like RevOps

**[25:53]** function that can just make sure that the ship is headed in the right direction with the right

**[25:58]** alignment? I think that's like a critical one to watch for. I really appreciate you bringing that up.

## 26:04 — The RevOps ratio study: 6:1 early, 30:1 at scale

**[26:04]** And I'm wondering if you have, I know it'll depend on different companies and what the

**[26:09]** GTM setup is, but I think there's a lot of companies or a lot of leaders that recognize

**[26:16]** that and they do make the investment early. And then there's a few that don't know how

**[26:23]** to value that early investment or don't know how to articulate that to their CEO or CFO

**[26:29]** of, "Hey, this is necessary." This might be a two-part question. One, when should you start

**[26:36]** investing which resources? What do you need early stage, mid stage as you're scaling?

**[26:42]** How do you think of building out that RevOps team? And then two, how do you justify the

**[26:49]** amount of investment? Do you tie it to how many sellers? How much ARR? Why do you need a five

**[26:57]** person team versus a one person team? So the magnitude of investment, where do you tend to

**[27:02]** make that argument to senior executives? Yeah, so great question. Maybe I'll start with the

**[27:07]** second one first. We actually did a little bit of our own informal study on this and we interviewed

**[27:12]** a couple of companies that we admired to understand the RevOps investment relative to, we'll call it

**[27:17]** generic sales investment early and then we'll call it later in the scale journey. And I can't remember

**[27:23]** all the companies we interviewed and again, stages, how do you even measure stage? Probably based on

**[27:27]** employee count. But what we found was some of the best in class companies that at least we admired

**[27:32]** over invested early in RevOps to the magnitude of like a six to one seller to RevOps higher ratio.

**[27:39]** And then as you watch the scale journey happen and once they were into the hundreds of sellers,

**[27:44]** that ratio would be as, it would dramatically change to like 30 sellers to one RevOps person.

**[27:50]** And the takeaway for us was, hey, we should invest early because the foundations for scale

**[27:55]** are totally intertwined in your data, in your systems and in your process. And if you can feel

**[28:02]** real confidence that you've made the appropriate investments, that everything is looking square

**[28:06]** there, then your confidence in pouring gas on the fire and the return on that investment will

**[28:10]** dramatically grow. And as a revenue leader, your ability to communicate to your broader leadership

**[28:16]** team, the CEO, that what you're doing is working, the confidence levels just go through the roof.

**[28:21]** And so we actually, we did something interesting here. And this is a hack that I found everywhere

**[28:26]** I've worked. We'll specifically loose it in PDQ. It turns out there's a type of persona that's a

**[28:31]** great person to be like a first hire here. They can be generalists enough to be dangerous and they

**[28:36]** just grind. And the persona is basically, it was what I was when I graduated college. I went to and

**[28:41]** did an investment banking job and you basically sit in a cubicle all day. You stare at Excel spreadsheets,

**[28:46]** you work 100 hours a week and you just grind away and you make okay money, but not enough to really

**[28:51]** justify that lifestyle. And every single one of those kids eventually wants to go off to business

**[28:57]** school or be a CEO or whatever ambitious thing. You know, otherwise, why would you work 100 hours

**[29:01]** a week doing Excel? And what we found, and it's kind of a money ball strategy is if you could find

**[29:06]** someone like that two to three years, they've done their investment banking program, they're

**[29:10]** looking for another role for a couple years prior to going to business school. It was a great hire

**[29:14]** that was a low cost persona that you needed to pay them, but you didn't need to pay them nearly as

**[29:19]** much as some five, 10, 20 year veteran. They came in and were happy to work 80 hours a week because

**[29:25]** that's much better than 100. And they were quantitative enough to be dangerous to really

**[29:29]** help you get comfortable with the numbers associated with your scaling efforts. Maybe

**[29:34]** they weren't as systems centric and you need to augment there, but generally pretty smart,

**[29:40]** pretty motivated. The other group to hire out of is these, you know, you do these two year

**[29:44]** consulting programs out of Bain or BCG and McKinsey. And if you can convince somebody like that,

**[29:49]** hey, finish your two years, come work for me for two years and then go off to B school.

**[29:54]** It's a great money ball. There's real value in those types of folks and they will grind. So

**[29:58]** that's a little hat tip I could come back to. But so you hire someone like that, they can

**[30:04]** kind of be a generalist for you. They can hold down the fort on what we'll call forecasting

**[30:09]** and sales rep performance and be a partner to whoever your sales leader is or your sales reps.

**[30:15]** The next critical junk jump was into the systems piece. And I guess you want me to keep going.

**[30:21]** Yeah, absolutely. I'm loving this. First of all, I've never, I'm recruiting these people all day.

**[30:26]** And typically we're kind of looking for someone. Maybe they are already in the startup,

**[30:31]** but you're right. That's what happens. Like, well, once they've built a career in it and they have a

**[30:35]** couple, you know, good notches on their belt, then it is pretty cost prohibitive. And then it's like,

**[30:41]** where do you find the pool of people who haven't already made it yet? I think it's brilliant. So

## 30:46 — The first CRM was a Google spreadsheet

**[30:46]** yeah, I would love your perspective on the systems side too. Yeah. So the systems one is like, uh,

**[30:52]** you know, I'm sure everybody who's ever had to implement systems new or who's inherited bad

**[30:57]** systems, um, you know, could pull their sleeve back and just show the scars, you know, um, you

**[31:02]** know, what was interesting for me is because I hadn't really been a sales leader before I'd,

**[31:06]** you know, sold money for a venture capital firm, but like I was not a, I didn't know what I didn't

**[31:11]** know. And because I'd been in a cubicle for a couple of years, you know, building Excel sheets,

**[31:15]** the first CRM we built at Lucid true story was a Google spreadsheet. And, you know, the thought was

**[31:20]** like, let's actually figure out what information matters when we're engaging with the prospect.

**[31:25]** And let's, it was really interesting to watch what, what information would one of our four

**[31:30]** early sellers log? Clearly, if a sales rep is logging something on their own, it suggests that

**[31:35]** there's meaning or value to the information. Otherwise the sales rep will never log anything.

**[31:38]** I think we all know this 100%. What was, what was information that they were logging? That was

**[31:43]** telling. And then what was information that I and others felt like we just had to have in order to

**[31:49]** truly measure and vet the ROI of this effort. And so of course you come, we come with the things we

**[31:54]** want those reps to log and then they have the things that they're logging organically. And what

**[31:59]** do you know? You now have your V1 design for your CRM. And, and what I appreciated about that effort,

**[32:07]** even if it wasn't, I didn't do it on purpose. I just didn't know any better is I think there's

**[32:10]** actually real wisdom in it. If you understand your underlying process, and if you feel like you have

**[32:15]** a process that's now repeatable one, and then two, if you actually know what information is important

**[32:20]** to you as sales leader, as CRO, as CEO, and then as the reps, what do they need? You can basically

**[32:28]** reduce your margin of error on CRM implementation dramatically. And I think the, again, the road is

**[32:34]** littered with organizations who bring in the high priced ECRM consultant or who just do an out of the

**[32:39]** box implementation or candidly who just hack their way along the, along the way. And you just end up

**[32:45]** building the Frankenstein that then years later, the whole team is like, what have we, what have

**[32:51]** we done? And, and unfortunately, you know, look, it wasn't perfect, but I think for us, we were able

**[32:57]** to get that V1 out and it worked really well for us. And then of course you build and eventually

**[33:03]** hire the right professionals who can help you manage that your process will change inevitably.

**[33:08]** You'll get bloat in your opportunity object and all the different things you're doing on in your

**[33:12]** CRM. You'll have to occasionally whittle that back. But we found that the early effort in maybe doing

**[33:18]** the unscalable thing first was like critical and eventually allowed you to do the scalable thing

**[33:23]** more effectively. I think there is a lot of wisdom baked in that I, I worked for a few tech companies.

**[33:29]** One of them ended up getting acquired by Lexus Nexus fortune 1000 company, and they had a

**[33:37]** multi-billion dollar revenue organization. The forecast was all of the EAs of the VPs of sales,

**[33:46]** emailing a Excel spreadsheet to the top head of sales EA who compiled all of the forecasts.

**[33:54]** And they did that every Friday afternoon. That was their process. And that wasn't that long ago.

**[33:59]** That was in 2020. So I think the point is if you have a really good process and you nail that out,

**[34:06]** nail that down first, that's perfect. Then you layer on the acceleration of having systems to

**[34:11]** make it efficient, even better. A hundred percent. Yep. And you know, I look, I think AI will probably

**[34:16]** help here a little bit. You know, I think you can, you can cover a multitude of CRM sins probably

**[34:21]** with just a good, you know, Claude, you know, back and forth and asking for the right information

**[34:26]** and data. But I think the, I think the underlying, the underlying principle for me is if you don't

**[34:31]** have a sales process that you believe is good and repeatable, then beware of your systems

**[34:35]** implementation because it will likely increase your, your, your risk significantly and the costs

**[34:42]** associated with it. So I think it's a really good caution. I want to get into PDQ a little bit

## 34:51 — The M&A playbook: four tuck-ins, worked backwards

**[34:51]** because I think one, one part of this journey that always throws a whole bunch of wrenches in the

**[34:58]** growth is layering in acquisitions. So you come in, there's a PLG motion. We're going to bolt on the

**[35:05]** SLG motion, which is already difficult enough and plenty of things to work out. Then on top of that,

**[35:11]** as you're growing, we're going to bolt on some acquisitions, do integrations and get new sales

**[35:15]** teams working together. New PLG motions combined into one story that makes sense. Walk me through

**[35:22]** it. How'd you do it? Oh man. Well, I'll pull up my other arm and show you the scars from, from that.

**[35:29]** You know, I think we've learned a lot. So we've done four tucking acquisitions over the past four

**[35:34]** years, you know, small to mid-sized companies between call it 10 and 60 team members, right?

**[35:40]** So we're not, these aren't massive deals, but you know, anyone who's worked at businesses of that

**[35:45]** size and scale knows that there's oftentimes a lot of homegrownness and you know, there's stuff that

**[35:50]** works really well. And then there's a few things where you inherit and you're like, huh, why did,

**[35:53]** you know, why did they do it that way? And of course they might say the same thing about PDQ.

**[35:57]** So what I think the playbook that we've, we've generated is one where you start with,

**[36:03]** when you're integrating two teams and companies and products together,

**[36:07]** you start with like the easiest thing first and you work your way back. And you, you of course,

**[36:11]** build a playbook that ensures that you have the right owners of each of these things. So let me

**[36:15]** give you an example. We found that you could very quickly acquire a business, send an email out to

**[36:21]** your customers and say, Hey, we've introduced this product to our new, to our family of products.

**[36:26]** Are you interested in a demo? And believe it or not, just a nascent or very basic marketing

**[36:31]** cross-sell campaign effort where you drive them to webinars or you just invite them to raise their

**[36:36]** hand and experiment with the product has been an incredibly easy and valuable way to drive leads.

**[36:41]** Now, of course, what happens is the lead gets registered and it's in their CRM or it's in our

**[36:45]** CRM. And so you have to start kind of working your way back to understand and identify how do we then

**[36:51]** build a unified process and eventually migrate systems so that this doesn't just become some

**[36:57]** similarly Frankenstein backend. So our playbook consists of a cross-sell strategy. It starts

**[37:04]** with marketing, a cross-sell strategy that then has the appropriate overlay rep that can speak,

**[37:10]** you know, an expert speak to the product and ensure a positive experience from the prospect.

**[37:17]** And then you eventually and inevitably migrate the CRM, which again requires a big systems lift.

**[37:24]** And then lastly, on the product side, you introduce and eventually build common authentication to the

**[37:30]** product and migrate them to a similar billing system. Whether you end up integrating the

**[37:36]** products completely as a UI, UX or whether you have an app switcher or whether the apps continue

**[37:41]** to be standalone, each product we've had a somewhat different strategy there. But said another way,

**[37:46]** you kind of work your way back through this playbook of sorts and I think we've got to a

**[37:50]** place where we're pretty good at it. You know, I think to summarize our playbook on acquisitions,

**[37:54]** we've effectively early and often cross-sold the product immediately to try and again generate

**[38:01]** interest using a marketing campaign that's generally pretty basic but, you know, a variety

**[38:06]** of different touch points there, email, webinar, webcast, etc. We then use sales engineers to

**[38:14]** help supplement or augment sellers who don't know the technicality of the new product that we've

**[38:18]** acquired yet but can then just help generate, you know, the movement of the pipeline.

**[38:24]** We do introduce an enablement effort so that our reps have to sign off on the acquired product

**[38:30]** in order to start getting leads. We want our reps to really feel confident in the products they're

**[38:35]** selling and so we force them through, you know, a recorded enablement and a manager signs off on it

**[38:40]** and we just find that as a nice touch point. Technically, we use--we will integrate authentication

**[38:46]** so you use the same username and password. We'll eventually integrate billing, same billing, same

**[38:52]** quote and then in some instances, we've integrated the apps completely or use an app switch or let

**[38:57]** the apps continue to exist standalone. So that's been our playbook. I think, you know, M&A can

**[39:02]** definitely create some real complexity in all of this. We're not perfect at PDQ. There's still

**[39:07]** some lingering systems that we're continuing to migrate but we built a nice playbook here and you

**[39:12]** built some capabilities around it. You utilize the right systems resources and sometimes occasionally

**[39:17]** contractors and other smart folks and that can be a real help as you move through kind of an M&A

**[39:22]** strategy. Yeah, I think I've seen it--I've seen it done well and I've seen it done really poorly

**[39:29]** and when it's done well, it's amazing. You get that synergy between the go-to-market teams,

**[39:34]** the cross-selling activity starts happening, you're sharing opportunities and there's a lot

**[39:39]** of momentum. Then I've seen it where how it's been years before you integrate the CRMs and they're

**[39:44]** basically just running on their own and we're not getting any outsized value of this acquisition

**[39:49]** that we made and if any or even worse some like toxicity between the teams and not giving them to

**[39:55]** gel well. So I think it's just be very thoughtful when you're making an acquisition which sounds

**[40:02]** like you've taken an extremely thoughtful approach in who you've targeted and who you brought in.

**[40:07]** Yeah, look, 100% and, you know, I think I would say M&A as a growth lever, I could argue at times

**[40:15]** it's you've got to be pre-dialed in to make it work. If you don't feel like you've got a really

**[40:19]** good playbook or experience doing it or just incredible conviction and I heard somebody once

**[40:24]** told me that if you're going to make acquisitions and you see hair during the diligence period,

**[40:30]** expect a wig factory once you've closed the deal, you know, and it turns out that's been the case

**[40:35]** for us a lot of times. You see something, we're like, "Oh, that doesn't seem right" or something

**[40:37]** maybe and then once you acquire the business, you're like, "Wow, we just inherited an interesting

**[40:41]** challenge," right? And, you know, it might not be the fault of the acquired business, they just did

**[40:45]** things the way that they did them. And so I think if you're going to explore an M&A strategy from a

**[40:49]** GTM perspective, you have to have real confidence that you can bring that product to your channel

**[40:55]** successfully or they can bring your product to their channel or that they bring a new channel

**[41:01]** that you can distribute your own products through. And I think if you can get conviction of those

**[41:05]** things, then it probably increases the probability and similarly covers a multitude of integration

**[41:10]** sins, you know, that can happen with an M&A deal. One area I want to get into as well, I think a lot

## 41:16 — The PDQ founder story: Hollywood writers to YouTube in 2010

**[41:16]** of the former moats that companies were built on are just starting to really go away. Sure.

**[41:25]** And one that seems to be continuing to provide outsized returns are companies that build a very,

**[41:32]** very strong audience. Early in PDQ's history, the founders did a really good job of that and

**[41:38]** team that up. I would just love your take on what it's like being in a business that made that

**[41:45]** investment early on and carried it through. And if you have any advice for other companies

**[41:50]** interested in doing the same thing. You know, great story at PDQ. It's a great American story.

**[41:54]** You know, the founders who are twin brothers, they graduate high school, they want to be Hollywood

**[41:58]** writers, they moved to LA and turns out they can't get jobs as Hollywood writers, maybe no surprise.

**[42:05]** And so to pay the bills, they end up becoming system administrators, IT professionals. And

**[42:10]** that ends up being a very fortuitous decision because within a few years of that, they build

**[42:15]** a little consulting firm and then a few later from that decide let's build software and that's where

**[42:19]** PDQ originates. And to their credit, because they had been the customer, they nailed product market

**[42:25]** fit with the original product, just nailed it. Understood. The need really had an ethos of giving

**[42:30]** IT professionals a win. And I think they landed that. Second, they would admit that they didn't

**[42:36]** know how to sell or market the product. And so they first, from a packaging standpoint, started

**[42:41]** just giving the thing away for free and eventually figured out, hey, let's ask people to pay us with

**[42:45]** a credit card. So they kind of fell into freemium meets PLG. And then last point, they thought,

**[42:52]** well, why don't we channel our Hollywood writing ambitions? And they just started going on YouTube.

**[42:57]** And they were so consistent and so religious about the consistency and the content that they

**[43:03]** wanted to bring to give IT professionals a win. And this was 2010 when YouTube was still pretty

**[43:09]** nascent. I mean, you know, that was the time when it was just, you know, what do you want to call it,

**[43:12]** user-generated content of all shapes and sizes. And so they would go on every week and do a live

**[43:17]** webcast. They would invite their customers to attend. They actually used some homegrown software

**[43:22]** for some of that at first. But then we're also doing YouTube content. And to the credit of these

**[43:26]** guys, they had the right kind of humor, the right authenticity. And over time, virality,

**[43:33]** you know, maybe not capital V, but an IT world virality that led to other IT professionals

**[43:38]** finding the content. And a few things that they did that I think were particularly smart. One,

**[43:41]** they didn't keep their content contained or confined to our product. Like they tried to

**[43:46]** broaden the conversation to a whole host of topics that sysadmins and IT professionals dealt with.

**[43:51]** And again, maybe not totally rocket science, but I think it allowed them to capture a wider

**[43:57]** set of viewers. And of course, that viewership just got nurtured over time. And eventually,

**[44:02]** all of them end up trying the product at some point or another, right? Second,

**[44:06]** the consistency was critical. And third, they actually would do live Q&A. So they actually

**[44:11]** had like a live show. And I think that just built a community that then found its way into Reddit,

**[44:18]** where people would speak very positively in terms of their sentiment. And, you know,

**[44:21]** Reddit's not what I would call the friendliest place in the world at times. But people talk

**[44:25]** very fondly of PDQ because I think these founders were really authentic. I think a couple takeaways

**[44:30]** that I've had since. First of all, you know, anytime you inherit a business and are asked to

**[44:34]** take over for founders, they've since retired. They moved to Puerto Rico. I think one of the

**[44:38]** things I appreciated was, one, let's not screw this up. How do we continue to invest in appropriate

**[44:45]** content that's regular, that's authentic, that is relevant to our customers? And, you know,

**[44:52]** I've been having this thought lately without getting too philosophical with everyone here.

**[44:55]** But, you know, you think about the world of AI. I mean, all of us are experiencing the AI slop,

**[45:00]** you know, that's all around us. I am convinced, and I don't know if it's some evolutionary thing,

**[45:05]** where we can see something and recognize that something's off. Like, it's not right. It's not

**[45:10]** real. And it'll get better, surely. And maybe there's a time when our brains will get tricked.

**[45:16]** And I'm sure we've all gotten tricked at one point by one of these videos even recently.

**[45:19]** But what is my point? Like, I think that authentic content, authentic communication,

**[45:25]** and authentic customer experiences and engagements are going to be the premium

**[45:29]** that can oftentimes separate your brand. There might be some instances where an agent is going

**[45:36]** to purchase from another agent and, you know, authenticity and personality, you know, won't matter

**[45:40]** at all. But in so much as I think humans will still be involved in a lot of the experiences

**[45:44]** associated with AI, I'm bullish that there's still a role for us, you know, in an agentic and AI world.

**[45:50]** Like, I think the authenticity of the content you create, the experiences you create for your

**[45:54]** customers and how you engage with them is going to be the differentiator. And I've even hypothesized

**[45:58]** that there will be some company or companies out there who say that they're only human,

**[46:02]** that they don't even use AI. And I bet all of us will decide at some point or another that we want

**[46:06]** to buy from that brand because they're a human brand, right? And so I think it just goes to show

**[46:10]** that there will be real premium to authentic, authentic to your brand, authentic to your team,

**[46:17]** experiences that customers will want. And the founders were a really great example of that.

**[46:22]** I've never heard it framed that way, but it makes me think people can even see through if it is a

**[46:26]** real person, whether that person is being authentic or not. So to try to get a AI avatar

**[46:34]** to exude the same authenticity, I think is going to be, to your point, unbelievably challenging,

**[46:40]** potentially impossible. And also just the supply of real people doing real things,

**[46:47]** that's inherently the value of it. And it's going to be really limited as we continue to create more

**[46:52]** and more AI driven content. So I'm with you. I think there's going to be a huge opportunity

## 46:58 — Keeping the voice after the founders leave

**[46:58]** for it. And maybe there's a point in time you can do this. I'm curious on the transfer of content,

**[47:08]** because a lot of times it's built around a personality. In this case, you had a very

**[47:11]** unique situation. You had two people who want to be Hollywood writers. They kind of got to live out

**[47:15]** their dream through their tech company. How do you transition that and keep the same feel of it?

**[47:26]** Yeah. Well, so this has been really interesting. When I joined PDQ with 70 team members, and I

**[47:31]** want to say 40 of them, had been system administrators, customers of PDQ, who'd been recruited

**[47:37]** to work at the business. And to the founders, maybe credit, I can say maybe, they then infused

**[47:44]** every function inside the business with system administrators. And I think all of our team

**[47:48]** members would admit that there were times when that was really great, because there was real

**[47:52]** customer empathy for what they were experiencing and doing. And so every function, product,

**[47:58]** design, engineering, sales, there was system administrator DNA that could just really empathize

**[48:04]** with the customer. But maybe you lacked at sometimes the benefits of specialization of

**[48:08]** people who were just really good at sales or really good at marketing independent of system

**[48:12]** administration. And I think we've tried to create the right fine balance mix of bringing in those

**[48:18]** experts so that you kind of get the best in class of how to do a certain function. But then you got

**[48:23]** a system administrator kind of tied or embedded in the team that can really help us understand the

**[48:28]** customer problems. And maybe even have some empathy for like what our IT customers are going

**[48:33]** through. I mean, they're grinding every day, oftentimes in a thankless job, right? So I think

**[48:37]** that's one is how do you keep the right amount of what we'll call customer empathy, just throughout

**[48:43]** your organization. To your point about like some of our content strategy, it turns out when you have

**[48:48]** really dynamic and we'll call it charismatic founders who are now living in Puerto Rico,

**[48:53]** and they're no longer on your webcast. I don't think I fully appreciated that I needed to be

**[48:58]** running like a studio operation almost akin to like an increment, you know, where I had to have

**[49:02]** like a weather person and the sports person and the anchors, right? And I think to our credit, and really

**[49:07]** the team, we've been able to develop additional personalities, so to speak, right? And it is pretty

**[49:13]** funny, like you need people who are really technical expertise to the point about authenticity.

**[49:18]** One way you show authenticity is that you are a technical expert. And so we've had to make sure

**[49:22]** we have people who really know their stuff. And then sometimes it's nice to just have some charisma,

**[49:26]** someone who can be kind of the person who brings levity and enjoyment, and you know,

**[49:30]** they have to know enough to be dangerous. But so said another way, anytime you deploy a strategy

**[49:34]** where personalities are actually important to being authentic and authentic brand, you know,

**[49:39]** just just be aware that you're also going to, you know, run into a situation where you're going to

**[49:43]** have to have a pipeline, you're going to have to realize that some of these folks will, if they

**[49:47]** ever leave, you know, you'll have you might have some challenges to replace them. And, you know,

**[49:50]** we've had different moments where it's worked really well, and others where it has, it's been

**[49:54]** a challenge. But, you know, kudos to the team, they continue to find great people to to be our voices

**[49:58]** and our, our, you know, our presence, you know, on these on these forums. So

## 50:05 — What's next: AI at PDQ and riding the wave

**[50:05]** what's next for you and PDQ? What's on the horizon?

**[50:10]** Yeah, well, like probably many of the folks listening, I assume there's going to be like a

**[50:14]** spectrum of folks that are going through similar stuff. So you're either one, you've already joined

**[50:20]** the what I'll call like AI native business. And so a lot of what you're trying to think about is

**[50:25]** old paradigms to new, and how do you now scale a PLG company in an AI first or centric era?

**[50:33]** That's an interesting set of problems. PDQ is not in that category. We were a SaaS business that's

**[50:38]** now kind of going through that evolution of how do we continue to stay relevant, but also continue

**[50:44]** to delight our customers and be prepared for a future AI or a gentic driven era. And I think that

**[50:50]** that category, so that's where we are, there's probably another set of folks that are listening

**[50:54]** who are looking for their next opportunity or might not even be in the software world.

**[50:58]** I think for us at PDQ, we feel one really confident in the position of our products,

**[51:03]** you know, it's hard to vibe code what we do. You can, we're putting software on the devices we

**[51:07]** manage. There's a lot of trust that's embedded in that. And we're in that kind of cybersecurity

**[51:12]** vulnerability management world that is actually quite, quite positive for us, given that AI is

**[51:19]** showing really well at finding vulnerabilities and other issues, right? So we feel pretty well

**[51:23]** positioned for that. That being said, a lot of what we're doing, we're revisiting and trying to

**[51:28]** think through how can AI be appropriately introduced in an authentic to us way and in

**[51:34]** an effective ROI driven way. You know, we talked about the ROI of PLG and sales assist and how do

**[51:40]** you make sure you're, you've got the economics right. I mean, you talk to any business right

**[51:44]** now and we're all trying to wrap our heads around token usage and what's the appropriate kind of

**[51:48]** amount of spend on AI relative to the ROI and can you measure it? But how it looks for us though

**[51:55]** is one, we've tried to enable every single team member here to have access to appropriate AI

**[52:01]** tools. Two, where we've introduced some rigor associated with budgets. We just can't go spend

**[52:06]** money like crazy. We kind of need some justification. I'd say three, in product, we're actively

**[52:11]** evolving our products to include the appropriate automation that we think will delight the customer.

**[52:16]** In our go to market, we're actively revisiting our entire customer acquisition strategy

**[52:21]** and finding the appropriate and what I'll call mature enough AI driven approaches to the pipeline

**[52:28]** and to the funnel. That's everything from experimenting with some outbound BDR concepts

**[52:34]** with AI to building a RFP generator that scrapes the web using AI and identifies some opportunities

**[52:40]** for our sales team to our sales enablement strategy and how we ensure that our sellers

**[52:46]** have the right content and training and certification so they can feel confident

**[52:50]** in the products that they're selling. So I would say AI is a key theme as it is for probably many

**[52:54]** in terms of how we adopt, implement, and see real returns from that investment. We're still in the

**[52:59]** wilderness there a little bit in terms of feeling totally confident in where we're headed, but I'd

**[53:05]** say that's been a big theme. And then the second theme of course is always just how do you keep your

**[53:08]** own saw sharp or your blade sharp, right? And I think each of us owes it to ourselves to make sure

**[53:15]** we're spending the appropriate amount of time reflecting on how our own roles can evolve or

**[53:20]** how we can adopt tools to help us be better at our jobs. And so that's been a big kind of

**[53:26]** personal focus is just how do you make sure that we don't, if a wave is coming, how do you make

**[53:32]** sure you don't miss the wave? And how do you make sure you don't have the wave crash down on you?

**[53:37]** You want to ride this wave and I think it's an exciting time and hopefully everybody feels

**[53:42]** motivated enough to have fun riding it. Yeah, and I think you mentioned something. I don't think

**[53:47]** anybody's sitting in there feeling like they're fully confident and dialed in on exactly how to

**[53:51]** take advantage of the wave. So I think most are feeling that way. If you are feeling that confident,

**[53:57]** then you're probably going to have the wave crash down on you because you're probably missing

**[54:00]** something. I mean, things are changing so fast, right? I mean, it's every day is something new.

**[54:04]** And I think the key thing is how do you just appropriately set aside some time in a week

**[54:08]** or in a month to try a new thing here and there. And it's hard when you're trying to build and

**[54:14]** scale and there's any problem on any given day, but I think it's an exciting time.

## 54:19 — Wrap

**[54:19]** Yeah, adaptability and agility are going to be super key here in the next. They always have been,

**[54:26]** but in particular now. Dan, this has been incredible. Thank you for sharing everything

**[54:33]** you have. Everything from your story of how you got into SaaS Lucid is such an amazing company to

**[54:39]** begin that journey in. And I love the story of bolting on the SLG to the PLG motion and all the

**[54:44]** wisdom that you shared in there. Also appreciate you diving deep on RevOps and helping people

**[54:49]** understand how much investment they should be making at which time, knowing it might be a little

**[54:54]** bit heavier at the beginning, but letting that investment scale out. And then everything you're

**[54:59]** doing at PDQ from bolting on SLG, managing acquisitions, maintaining an audience after

**[55:06]** the founders are living their best lives in Puerto Rico, as you put it, and really preparing for the

**[55:12]** future. I think there's so much in here. So Dan, really appreciate you being on the podcast,

**[55:18]** everything you shared. Can't wait to watch what you in PDQ do next. And thank you again.

**[55:25]** Yeah, thanks for having me. I mean, congrats on all you've built at Lean Scale and I've enjoyed

**[55:29]** a lot of the content you put out. And of course, if, you know, to anyone listening, if you're going

**[55:34]** through any of this stuff or just want to compare notes, you know, happy to connect on LinkedIn.

**[55:39]** But otherwise, yeah, I really appreciate the conversation. It's been a lot of fun.