No SDRs, Still Growing: How a CRO Builds Pipeline in 2026

0:00 "I both say I'm a data-driven person and usually end up going with my gut, so two things can be true at once."

0:11 "My guest today is Xander Cotsatos, Chief Revenue Officer at Aquifer, where he is running three go-to-market departments at once for the first time in his career, spent running them one at a time."

0:22 "And we put on blazers, we put on ties, and we went in there and we just started working the room, and then play that character.

0:28 And then you're always going back to what that character would do rather than trying to think, 'What would I do?'"

0:35 "I have looked back on my career a little embarrassed. I was like, 'Wow, that chip on my shoulder is a little bit too big.' But maybe it was what was needed."

0:45 "Another thing I say about Sales is like, 'You are fundamentally tasked with controlling the uncontrollable.' The adage I like is like, 'AGI is supposed to be as smart as a human, but it's like, which human?'"

0:56 "Like, I can feel it getting annoyed by a car going slower in front of it, or like, trying to get past something. It's like, I don't know. It's like, almost too good."

1:04 "Yeah, do the easy things right, and that will give you a lot of grace on everything else."

1:14 "Xander, you graduated into the recession with no job, and you and a friend put on blazers and walked into an Alumni Council reception. You were not even invited to.

1:24 You walked out with an internship. Take us all back into that room, and what was actually going on through your head."

1:31 "Yeah, first, Anthony, thanks for having me on. Great to be here, and excited to talk."

1:36 "Yeah, I mean, it's been a little while, but that's basically exactly what happened. I did graduate from college in 2009, and I think the stat that came out of our graduation is 50% of the class didn't have a postgraduate activity,

1:53 which is actually, I think, a little bit echoing now with AI and kids coming out of college as well, but certainly in the in-between times did not happen so much.

2:05 Anyway, a buddy of mine and I, we did not have our next option, and we sent out resumes. We looked at all the different things we could do. We were kind of grasping at straws, and we said, "You know what?

2:20 There is an Alumni Council meeting coming, and it's interesting because the school really liked to curate those experiences for the alumni, right? Like, they would have kids on stage, and then specific meet and greets, etc. But within the student center, there was a room where they were having a reception afterward, and we put on blazers, we put on ties, and we went in there, and we just started working the room, which is kind of a wild thing to do in retrospect, but they actually loved it. I had a lot of great conversations, and 20 minutes in,

2:49 someone who had a PR agency within the omnicom group in DC said, "Hey, we're still looking for interns this summer, and do you want to apply?" And I did, and I got in, and that was my first job.

3:03 So, it was really good experience. I think the lesson there for anyone is just get out in the real world, put yourself out there, make connections. I think there's a big push from a mental health standpoint to do that, but also from a career development standpoint, so important.

3:19 The funny thing about it is I learned I was terrible at PR, and didn't like PR, but it got me my first thing, which got me my next thing, which got me into ad tech, and more tech, and digital advertising.

3:31 Well, I think that's the type of hustle you need in order to survive, and make it in startups, and then go to market. So, I'm assuming that that has translated throughout your career since then.

3:45 Yeah, it's funny. I mean, what I sort of did a little bit naturally, and just kind of growing up in a fairly outgoing household, I was never afraid to go into groups. I've almost, in some ways, become more self-conscious of that over time, right?

4:01 As anybody does. But, you know, everything from talking to professors, to when I was in high school, I did Model UN, just kind of, I was in musicals and stuff. So, I was fine going into uncomfortable situations, and I don't want to say acting, but putting yourself out there and trying to put your best foot forward.

4:21 In fact, I talked to people, more junior people on my team, when they go to conferences, and they say, "I'm so exhausted after day one." And I said, "For day two, think of a character. The character is yourself, and then play that character."

4:35 And then you're always going back to what that character would do, rather than trying to think, "What would I do?" And I think, even though it's a funny way to frame it, it's a good way to kind of pace yourself and almost remove yourself a little bit from the actual scenario.

4:52 So, you can go out and do networking and do your meetings as if, you know, it's sort of an out-of-body experience, as if it's an academic exercise. I've never actually heard that, but it makes a lot of sense, kind of separating from your, like, it and ego, and just playing the character, playing the role, like you mentioned.

5:10 Because then, I mean, inevitably, in sales and marketing and, I mean, just life in general, you're going to run into rejection. You're going to run into difficult situations. And I think it makes a lot of sense.

5:24 People who have embodied that, bringing on a character, have been able to turn on that performance. Other than trade shows, any other venues or situations you kind of recommend putting that mindset in?

5:40 That's interesting. I mean, for trade shows, so I said I was an extrovert. I'm really, whenever I take those personality tests, I'm like 54%, so 4% just over the ambivert line towards extrovert.

5:56 So, I am someone who gets some energy from the big conference activities, but not so much that I can do it nonstop, right, the way a 99%er would.

6:07 Yeah, I guess, really, for any difficult conversation, not that every meeting has to be a difficult conversation, but you have to be on your game, right?

6:16 Especially if you're in sales, you're trying to earn trust, or you're trying to sell someone, or you're trying to negotiate, or if, you know, something isn't going well with an existing client for proof of concept, you're trying to put them in, you know, all sorts of different things.

6:31 I think in all of those different scenarios, whether it is be a character or whatever, you have to have a process that you're going to follow, and you have to be prepared and have a story.

6:43 One of the things I did take away from that internship in PR, one of the things they had the interns do, actually, was they did some pro bono work with 501c3s, and we did with some of the more junior count executives for some small 501c3s, we did media training.

6:59 And the biggest thing that I took away from media training was before you go into any interview, whatever question they're going to ask, think of three things you want to get across.

7:10 And for every question, pretty much, you want to find a way to bridge back to one of those three things so that you can really get your message through. And so I think that is true for pretty much any conversation where you're trying to get a specific point across an interview, a sale, a client success meeting, etc.

7:31 I think that makes a ton of sense. We could all probably benefit from going through a little bit of media training. I'm curious throughout your career, you've ran sales, you've ran partnerships, you've ran support, where a lot of what you're mentioning you would be pulling from, and I think would resonate well in any of those departments.

7:50 This is the first time though, you're managing all three. Is there anything that's different about being accountable for the entire go to market org versus being specialized within one department?

8:04 Yeah, a few things. Well, the first thing is, when you're junior at a company, maybe not everybody feels this way, but I feel like I did at every company, you're kind of six months into an organization once you kind of know what you're doing, you look at the executives in that organization

8:20 and you're like, wow, if I could just be there, I would fix all the problems, right? Either they don't know what they're doing, or there are still all these problems here, like why don't they just do this, right? And as I become more senior, I become really humbled by how difficult that is in practice.

8:37 And there's a lot of reasons for that, right? And at some point, sort of by definition, as you advance in your career, you lose domain expertise, because you have more responsibility, you have responsibility over departments that you didn't grow up doing.

8:51 And so, because those are different functions, it's impossible to be a perfect operator in all of those and have an ideal, you know, perfect situation day to day.

9:03 So that being said, coming from, so before this, I was at Comcast, and I had a fairly decent sized team, but we were all focused on the sales motion, right? And today it is sales existing customer stuff and technical solutions.

9:21 And at a big company like Comcast, you know, time is stretched, you work on the same project for a while, the numbers are bigger, there are more stakeholders, it's more political, and people have less domain expertise.

9:33 At a startup, things move fast, decisions are made quickly, teams are smaller and they are specialized, right? And I sort of got bored of selling the same product for five years and explaining my domain to other executives at the company.

9:48 What I really wish for was a more dynamic environment. So to kind of your initial question, which is kind of funny, I spent five years wishing for a more dynamic environment.

9:58 And what has been really interesting coming into this role is I got what I wished for. And it's a lot of fun and very interesting, but it is exhausting all the contact switching because I am the CRO, but I do some CMO stuff, I do some CEO stuff, I do some strategy stuff.

10:17 And, you know, you kind of, the grass is always greener and you get what you wish for, but it is interesting kind of seeing both sides of that.

10:25 I can definitely empathize with that as well. And I think I had the exact same chip on my shoulder where I typically I had some sales roles, some marketing roles, really got in leadership and customer success.

10:40 I was my first VP type of role, then got into RevOps at a few companies and was always working underneath the CRO and always just in my head thought, oh my gosh, I could do this job so much better than that person can.

10:54 And I think starting LeanScale in 2021, that was my first time like, okay, you're responsible for the whole thing, even maybe more than what a CRO would be responsible for.

11:08 And there are just so many things, like you have no idea what's going on, you have no idea what pressures are coming from here or there. And this little thing that you think could be better and you have no idea why they're not working on it is because there's a priority that's 10 times the size of that and this isn't even important right now.

11:26 So I just, I have looked back on my career a little embarrassed. I was like, wow, that chip on my shoulder was a little bit too big, but maybe it was what was needed to have the courage to jump off and do my own thing too.

11:41 It's funny, I have friends that have gone the other direction, right? I have a friend who's CEO of a startup and he came from sort of a finance product consulting background. And he said, you know, I always thought the sales side of things would be all about smoothing and, you know, being gregarious and being out there.

11:57 And he said, you know, as an executive at some point, you sort of do that anyway. What he was really surprised about sales is sort of the sales operations piece that it is so much about organization, about being type A, about pushing the rock up the hill, about, you know, all the management in the system.

12:15 And I also think even in my own career, when I've gone back and forth for more technical roles into sales roles, I think the kind of picture of salespeople is they're just out there glad handing and there's some amount of that.

12:30 But the actual operations of the role are not only really important, but surprisingly difficult and tedious.

12:39 So whatever angle you come from, there's a lot to learn.

12:44 100%. Yeah, a lot of it looks obvious, like, oh, how difficult could it be to measure, you know, pipeline sales, turn retention? Why is this difficult? And then follow a sales process.

12:57 But the amount of variability on the go-to-market side, like, one, because it's not just all within your control. A lot of it has to do with reacting to external things that are happening too.

13:09 Is a competitor doing something different? Did some legislation pass? Did funding start moving in a certain direction? Are there new roles? Whatever it is.

13:17 It's like, oh my gosh, now we have to adapt messaging, how we sell. It feels like you're constantly reinventing everything. And if you don't have a really strong muscle to do that, you can get left behind really quick.

13:29 Yeah. And the other thing I tell my team is like, in sales, the most important thing is to hit numbers. But the second most important thing is to be right about whether you will or won't hit numbers.

13:40 Because it's almost as bad to absolutely obliterate a quarter to the upside, but be really wrong about it and didn't see it coming as it is to miss numbers.

13:51 But to know that you are going to and to actually plan for that. Because if you don't have an accurate feedback loop, you can't do all the things from hiring, to building the right product, to doing the right strategy, to doing market spend, anything.

14:05 Yeah, it just completely looks like you don't know what you're doing. And then to your point, once you get to planning, what are you going to do next?

14:12 How is the board going to trust you if you get on every single call and you're like, well, we'll just see what happens. Stay tuned. We'll see if it's a good quarter or a bad quarter.

14:24 What would have been maybe some pressures or stresses of getting into the CRO position that were a little unexpected or maybe not obvious at the beginning?

14:41 I guess I would say the highest pressure part of the role is something I'm familiar with, which is the sales side of it.

14:47 Another thing I say about sales is like you are fundamentally tasked with controlling the uncontrollable, which sort of goes back to the forecasting and being right.

15:00 You have to somehow manifest things to a certain degree. And there's a lot of process and know-how and relationships and all the things that go into that. But that probably is the biggest pressure.

15:12 The unexpected part of it is making the various functions work together well and having the right structure of the team.

15:24 And kind of second to that, making sure you have the right amount of time for the different folks in the different roles, like not have a bias toward, hey, I mean, ultimately, the CEO kind of is like head of sales, head of strategy, right?

15:40 Like that's the type of vision, right? But there's a big operational component. And the nice thing about sales is you can kind of sell it in and be like, okay, now we got to do it. But my team also does delivery, right?

15:54 And we stay with the clients. And so doing kind of that blocking and tackling of how do we grow this thing? How do we keep clients happy? How do we sell things that before it wasn't sell things that are good? But how do we sell things that are good that we can deliver on and repeat on and will be a good runway for upsell and the margin that we need to make all those things?

16:16 One thing, when I look at sort of my three departments, right, sales, CS, and solutions, sales is really about narrowing focus, right? Removing distractions from the reps, have them, you know, focus on closing, right?

16:29 And to a certain degree, the best thing for sales reps is if they wake up in the morning and have nothing, right? And have to outbound and have all their meetings set. And I'm sure my sales team, if they listen to this, they're going to be like, oh, we could do a lot better at that.

16:42 But, you know, it's really trying to put blinders on. CS and solutions, interestingly, to me, is much more about expanding focus because the more that they can synthesize information between their different clients, between the different products, the more valuable they'll be on calls and the more breadth that they can cover.

17:01 And to the degree that CS customer success tends to be more junior, that's a real focus. Solutions, I guess, is somewhere in the middle, right?

17:09 Like, tech expertise is expensive, so I want them to be used to full capacity, but I want them to be able to get in, get out, go to the next thing.

17:19 But, you know, it's also expansion for them. A lot of them are technologists first, so getting good at the client side, and a lot of them are specialists in certain parts of technology, and we kind of are in three different realms.

17:30 So to the degree that they can, you know, not only be an expert on, you know, data tech, but also cloud tech and ad tech is really important.

17:40 That's really interesting. I've definitely heard people talking about, hey, you need to really narrow the aperture for your sales team.

17:48 Like you mentioned, get them focused, get non-selling activities off of their plate, just get them focused on being in front of prospects, closing deals, and then driving that process.

17:59 I'd love to double click on what you mentioned on opening the aperture for the CS team and the CS organization. Intuitively, as I'm hearing it, it makes sense.

18:07 But what are some operational or tactical ways you're helping them open up their view, peek around corners, and get that broader sense that you're looking for?

18:19 Yeah, it's a good question, and I think, honestly, we're working on this. This is a lot of the conversations we're having internally, because with customer success, there's sort of three paths, right?

18:31 It's either you go in to... The funny thing about customer success is, as you move up, the less you talk to clients in some ways, right?

18:39 You're managing other people and trying to train them to do it. So that's one kind of angle, and I would say the internal operations angle, right? And the management angle.

18:51 One side is, a lot of CS people go into sales. I'm actually sort of an example of that, right? I started as a trader and account manager, and then went into sales.

18:59 And then the third is, some folks really like the technical aspect and become good sales engineers or solutions people, etc.

19:07 So a lot of it is broadly educating. One thing we've started to have a real focus on is recording existing customer calls, not just sales calls.

19:17 And this is one angle. Like many people, I'm conflicted on AI, but there's now our recording software is green, and there's now a cloud plug-in to green.

19:29 So one nice thing we can do is not only for me joining calls, but I don't have to bother people quite so much for every new call, like, "Where are we here?"

19:39 I can just use cloud to synthesize our last few meetings with green, but I can also use that sort of for a professional development standpoint with certain folks and pinpoint certain areas where we think we can expand.

19:51 And our CS team runs the gamut. We have somebody who's brand new who's fairly junior. We have kind of mid-level folks, and we have really senior folks on the team.

20:00 And they, to a certain degree, cover different accounts, but you also have a broad range of skill sets. And our team is small enough that, at least historically, solutions and CS and even sales to a certain degree, they've just kind of known who the players are and kind of adjusted based on that.

20:17 But we are really getting to the point, like I said, about 60% growth on our team this year, where we need to have much more defined roles and a much more defined process, and everybody covering at least the minimum or the expected things that they're doing so that as we grow, there's a repeatable process, right?

20:37 And maybe at some point, I mean, the old adage with CS and solutions is, like, do you have a pod structure? So everybody sort of has their own mini thing, like what we're doing now.

20:47 Or do you have sort of this fungible, you know, layered structure so that whoever gets paired together, it's okay because they know what the process is.

20:58 And the answer is both yes and no, probably. And I'm sure we'll try different things over the next however many months or years.

21:07 I think I've seen every single type of structure. All of them have trade offs, all of them have compromises. I do see a little bit of a trend where AEs are becoming more full cycle AEs and then potting up with the CSM rather than getting super specialized.

21:31 But that also is maybe more relevant in the enterprise segment. Mainly, I think people are just trying to be more efficient and have less resources on the team, but that's putting a burden on people needing to cover a little bit more of the cycle.

21:46 This is a little bit more specific to my industry, although maybe tech in general, but to your point, at least my first job in sales, I was fairly young, and it was sort of like, hey, you might have a few agency relationships, there aren't that many players out there.

22:05 There was only, you know, when I started, there was display advertising on websites and then as bandwidth got a little faster, we said, hey, maybe we can do video and then mobile phones came, we said now we can do mobile and then it was connected television, which became streaming, which became digital out, right?

22:20 So the ecosystem has grown massively and for that reason, salespeople have gone from, hey, I bet this person could email someone at an agency and develop a relationship and have some knowledge around what they're doing, to salespeople need to both have relationships in the industry so they can get in the door.

22:43 But also be technical enough and have enough domain expertise to create the bridge from our products to the need at the client and really sell that in and so they're not just salespeople, they really are account owners and strategists.

23:02 And one thing I tell my sales folks because they all are pretty senior is you are the CEO of your own business, right? Not only do you have the most financial upside and downside here, but you really need to run this, you know, for however long you are on the account as if, you know, it is your business and let me know what you need.

23:20 It's my job to get you the resourcing you need, right? But I agree. I've seen that too. One thing I think is really interesting about your structure is you're running go to market without STRs.

23:33 So I'd love to hear the why behind not investing in that type of role and where are you shifting investment instead in order to build pipeline?

23:46 Yeah, it's interesting. So the STR team was gone before I arrived here. And in my previous role, we had STRs and then we didn't, we kind of went back and forth.

24:00 Sort of what I said before, for our business, domain expertise and relationships are key, right? One thing I tell my team is I want to be your best STR, right? To the degree that I am going to every conference, to the degree that theoretically I have a good network.

24:15 On the team and that I talk to a lot of different folks right across accounts. I want to be your best STR, right? I tell my team, ideally, my leads get you to half your number, you are responsible for the other half.

24:28 Not to say there isn't work on that one half, but like I want to be accountable to that. And we do generate most of our leads from conferences and through consulting and channel partners.

24:40 Interestingly, like we have a specialized cell and we have a clearly defined ICP. So I think we would have to vastly expand our total addressable market if we wanted to bring in STRs, right?

24:54 Like if we started to say, I am going to sell to enterprises and just by way of background, like most of our clients are other ad tech companies, data companies, agencies, right? Like a pretty publishers, right? A pretty clearly defined set of folks in ad tech and martech.

25:11 But I think we would have to go to brands and a much larger B2B sales motion to justify having a team that did that.

25:22 Now, for what it's worth, we also have nobody in marketing right now. I'm not sure that's the best plan long term. And we haven't all year, right? But for instance, we just redid our website and our CEO and head of solutions did most of the heavy lifting we've had consultants come through.

25:38 It does show in the short term that like at least year over year, right? Demand Gen didn't suffer. We grew. We grew new business year over year without a marketing department. And it allowed us to invest more heavily in solutions and sales resourcing, which I think ultimately is what's going to get us new business in the short term.

26:00 But, you know, we're a series a company. If we continue to grow, we're going to need some of these things like we're going to need a sales operations department. We're definitely going to need a marketing department.

26:11 Some folks would say yesterday, right? And so I think the jury's still out on SDRs in total, but it's tough. They were really effective during COVID when people were moving digitally, but I just get hammered all day long, personally.

26:29 And personally, I've gotten to the point where I'm trying to like tune out emails, LinkedIn messages, phone calls, right?

26:38 Yeah. I mean, I have a fortunate enough to have a EA and she filters all of those. So when I log into my inbox, both on LinkedIn and in my email, she only tags the things that I need to see.

26:53 So I don't, those don't, I don't even see the subject line or like get the eyeball. So you got to get through Paulette before it even gets to, gets to me anyway.

27:02 But I think the volume and the noise has just gotten completely out of control. And it feels like the only way is to kind of the old school is the new school again, events, relationships.

27:19 I have seen content being very effective as well. If it resonates good content, not slop content, but those are the ways and all those require a lot of effort too.

27:33 Yeah. Partially the prevalence of slop is further highlighting good content and curation of that content, right?

27:42 Go deeper on that.

27:43 So journalism in general is under fire right now, right? And I think we all know that. But for instance, in our industry, the main in programmatic advertising, the main kind of independent folks in journalism focused on the industry are names like DigiDay, AdExchanger, Adweek, etc.

28:05 Those are still important brands and a really good article still rises to the top.

28:11 Historically, they've run a lot of the events, but I remember in 2018, I would get into the office. The first thing I would do is look at the homepage of AdExchanger to see what's going on.

28:21 And I don't do that anymore.

28:23 There are a couple groups within the industry of mostly veterans who are now either you can call them journalists or events companies, and they curate specific newsletter content, Twitter feeds, things like that. And that is what I pay attention to.

28:40 It lands in my inbox, and I trust those people and I know where it's coming from, and it's already kind of pre curated to the right content and I don't have to sift through, you know, all this other stuff.

28:53 I love that. And so, if I'm hearing you right, because the volume of content, the amount of slop, the amount of stuff you have to sift through has increased so much people are just not even looking in the sea of madness.

29:07 You're going back to some type of trusted source that's curating the good stuff out of the slop which gets it more eyeballs anyway. Yeah.

29:17 Yeah. And I mean, my own media consumption habits right like I listened to podcasts that's where I get most of my news for better for worse that in Instagram, it sounds terrible to say.

29:29 I think I'll follow the same thing. Then the like little headlines box on LinkedIn and it's like, if it's not that my wife, my wife is really good she'll still read the New York Times we still have a New York Times subscription, right.

29:41 But again, like the article has to jump beyond the publication in order for it to get to me at this point, either from somebody sending it or me seeing it on one of the aggregation layers that I pay attention to.

29:58 Where do you think this trend is going? Is it is anything going to change in the next couple years? You think it's going to continue to go that route? Are we going to find new authorities that have equal clout to what New York Times used to be?

30:12 What is it going to look like?

30:14 That's what I mean. It's a big question. I for a long time in my industry and the companies I've worked for, I felt really good about the part of my job that ultimately supported independent journalism and making the internet free.

30:33 And I felt really good about investing in the open web and having that be kind of the bastion in which I lived and the really dynamic ecosystem that we are in.

30:44 Since like into the 2020s and increasingly and now, especially with AI, not only are Google and Amazon and Facebook, for better or for worse, taking increasing amounts of market share of this ecosystem.

31:03 The ecosystem in general is just shrinking because folks are just browsing less, right? We see all that.

31:10 Even kind of the big wave right now in independent ad tech and more tech and sort of why I went, one of my theses around going from advertising to the data infrastructure and cloud side is that as things were moving to streaming television, that's been a big win.

31:28 Home's been a big win. Retail media has been a big win, but it's sort of like long form content in general is under fire, right? Because I think the number right now is broadcast media, believe it or not, is still like 130 billion a year and streaming media is about 35 billion or 40 billion a year.

31:46 I just saw these numbers last week at Adweek. When you look at the dollars decreasing percentage wise from broadcast, they are not showing up one to one on streaming. It's like 50 cents on the dollar.

31:58 So that means those dollars are either not being spent or they're being spent in emerging channels, AI, podcasting, social, you know, you name it.

32:09 But I think, and we see it in the M&A activity in the media space too, like content production is getting much more consolidated, media is being much more consolidated, just kind of all those old, you know, that vibrant ecosystem is really being squeezed.

32:30 And, you know, I'm part of the problem, so to speak, because I'm not consuming it either. Like I still, I cut cable last year, but I still belong to most of the streaming services, but I really don't watch them that much.

32:43 Like on a per hour basis, I don't watch them. And I probably should start cutting some of them when I'm not watching them because it adds up.

32:54 Yeah. They always get you with like one show, like HBO. I'm like, okay, House of Dragon, let me sign up. And then I don't watch anything for the next six months.

33:04 Yeah. Apple TV in particular will sign up for like two months and then cancel. Right. Netflix, I've been a member for a long time. Disney Plus because I have kids.

33:16 HBO. Gold. I think Disney Plus, that would be the last one we would rip out. I also have kids, but also just the quality, like every amazing Disney movie ever, you can watch it anytime and they're doing a great job, I think.

33:33 Yeah. And Disney's done well by consolidating Hulu and ESPN as well. I think HBO historically for the last twenty five years or longer has been like the gold standard of content. Right.

33:49 And I think they had a lifeline getting Discovery on there so I can watch TNT games for the NBA, things like that. I think merging. I've never signed up for Paramount Plus. I've wanted to watch some of the shows, but not enough to add another streaming service.

34:03 So I think consolidating that will help. It's interesting. Netflix is the one where I've really like hour by hour, my streaming consumption has gone down dramatically from, say, twenty twenty.

34:14 I'm kind of just realizing that as we're having this conversation, but I don't know. Maybe we cancel Netflix. We'll see. We heard it here.

34:22 Maybe. And not to go too deep on this, but I do feel like maybe I'm just older now, but I kind of feel like the same movies, same shows are just being regurgitated with new characters and slightly different thing.

34:38 I'm like, I feel like I've seen this exact movie a hundred times or this exact series a hundred times and it's not as exciting.

34:47 I don't know. Just I think maybe just the volume has gone up so much. It's like I've already seen it all. So it's not fun anymore. And I worry the golden age of content is ending. Right.

34:57 Either folks are going to use a lot more and maybe it's good. I mean, there is some good stuff out there or like, certainly the volume will go down the beginning of the streaming wars.

35:08 There was way too much content and it was way overspent versus the revenue right now the revenue is coming, but they're almost like overcorrecting.

35:17 So we'll see. And I'm again part of the problem, but I have to say platforms like Instagram, the algorithm do a really good job serving short form content that is generally pretty good.

35:32 And along with my algo and, you know, much like I've group texts with my college friends or my high school friends, like random groups of group thread texts on Instagram. And like it's not maybe the healthiest interaction.

35:50 Like I would never replace that with my in real life life, but I get I get genuine laughs out of it. You know, and and it's a fun way to keep in touch with people.

36:00 Yeah, even my wife and I are always shooting each other reels back and forth. And it's just like my wife finally got off Instagram, but I text her all the reels, which she can watch, I guess.

36:11 I know sometimes, depending on whatever industry you're in, it's kind of like you're trying to predict the future, open up your crystal ball, make some choices, make some decisions.

36:21 I think one of the things we talked about that every executive struggles with. And if you haven't been in that seat, then you might not know what this feels like, but you have to make decisions and calls with lack of data.

36:39 Everybody says like, oh, I'm a data driven CMO, I'm a data driven Sierra, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's fine. But usually you don't even have half the data you really need to make a really good decision.

36:51 But you have to make a call anyway. How have you navigated that in the past and in your new role?

36:57 I both say I'm a data driven person and usually end up going with my gut. So two things can be true at once.

37:09 We live in this world of data proliferation. And increasingly, I am trying to use data and synthesize it, especially with AI in a way that's helpful to my job.

37:22 I can't remember if I talked about our sales debt yet, but, you know, we use green. We use a company called Sales Intel on the front end to get sort of like prospecting information and technographic information, et cetera.

37:34 And then HubSpot is our CRM, right? And LinkedIn navigator because you kind of have to.

37:39 So I will sort of use all those tools with AI as much as I can to get the background information. But ultimately, the decisioning engine is me.

37:51 Again, sort of my approach to AI holistically is like it can do research for you. It can help you edit.

37:59 But the actual story and the decision making and the pre-planning at this point should be done by a human because otherwise it's like, what are we even there for?

38:12 Right. And maybe we get to a point where, you know, with true AGI, the adage I like is like, AGI is supposed to be as smart as a human, but it's like, which human, right?

38:24 It's a pretty big range, right? But there are some folks who I think are amazing at this. And if AGI got there, that would be great.

38:34 But at this point, I think it's really important that the strategy and the ultimate decision making is done by the human side, even if some of the pre-planning and research and the editing is done with AI.

38:50 The only thing I've been able to boil down, like first principles on this topic, because the question would be, well, could it be a better decision making engine than what your brain would be?

39:04 Or it can get more data, it can get more inputs, it can create better. So when you ask, what are the humans left for?

39:11 The only thing I can really think of is AI can't be accountable. And if something goes wrong, who's going to be there to fix it?

39:23 And not to take it too far, but if it goes wrong and can't be fixed, what kind of justice can be had?

39:30 And I think those are all like human things that need to be satisfied in order to make a deal, move something forward, whatever it is.

39:37 And if you're going to be accountable, and you're using AI to do something, then you still need to make sure that if you're putting your name on something, you believe in everything that it says, because you're not going to be able to just blame the AI for it after.

39:52 Yeah, what's really funny to me is two different applications in the United States right now of AI have taken two totally different paths. If you look at self driving, all the data is there with Waymo and LiDAR technologies where self driving is way better than people.

40:11 It's not perfect, but it is way better than humans. And we are still very, very reticent to let it even make one mistake. And that could set things back, you know, tremendously, even if replacing with the human is ultimately going to be worse in many cases, right?

40:31 There is LLMs you see kind of to your point, like, what was the hugging face instant where it's like, just like if a person had hacked, like they would be doing a perp walk right now, right?

40:44 And so the fact that this model has obfuscated responsibility, it's like there is absolutely no regulation around that. And it is fascinating to me that we are simultaneously under the same regulatory environment, looking at these two very opposite paths.

41:03 And you see the drawbacks to both, right? Like, I think self drive, like if I had the ability to decide when to enable self driving and when not to, and most people did, like we would be there basically today.

41:18 But we don't have that ability in most cases because it is, you know, so tightly regulated. Whereas on the LLM side, it's like, what won't we let it do, right?

41:29 That's a complete wild west on the LLM side. And nobody, nobody cares. And they're given a lot of grace and a lot of excuses, 100%. I am promoting Waymo as much as I can.

41:40 So I'm in Phoenix. They've done a great job out here. It's a great hub. They've been testing out here for years. Anytime I need a ride, I go Waymo because I feel safer than whoever's going to come pick me up.

41:54 Are they Jaguars in Phoenix as well? They are Jaguars. And they just recently, they released a bus version. I'm pretty sure it's like a, it looks like the Volkswagen bus.

42:08 I'm not sure if it's the same one, but you sit in it like a limo so you can fit more people in it. Interestingly, they've done such a good job where it feels like a human is driving in a weird way.

42:21 There's a certain assertiveness to the way they drive that I can feel it getting annoyed by a car going slower in front of it or trying to get past something. It's almost too good.

42:35 I can't remember where I listened to someone, but somebody was talking about self-driving. This was earlier on before it was as good as it is now, but they were like, even today we could do self-driving if we could turn it on for everybody all at once.

42:50 Because basically they could all communicate, but it was so fascinating to your point. If every car was self-driving, you know how when you're in a long line of cars that are stopped at a stoplight? First the first car goes, then the second car. You have to get all that room.

43:05 But basically with self-driving, if they all could communicate, everyone could start at once and that distance, it would be perfect. There's all these little things that would just drastically help all sorts of traffic patterns if it could just flip.

43:23 I'm a big fan of Waymo too. I live in Philly. I do wonder how are Waymo's going to do New York? How are Waymo's going to do Center City Philly or downtown Boston where I grew up? How do people do it? Barely.

43:37 Not well, not well.

43:39 No, not well at all. I was in San Francisco for a conference and they have them running through the city. It's not quite as aggressive as a New York or something, but they work. The only thing I found was difficult.

43:59 This is a very interesting phenomenon. I think that happens. People don't respect the Waymo's because they know that they will just stop. So as you're in a Waymo going through the middle of San Francisco, people just walk right in front of it.

44:14 Pedestrians are cutting off your Waymo and it's stopping every single time and it creates a weird, I don't want to call it incentive, but if it's a person behind it, I'm not crossing the street. I'm not going to walk right in front of a car because I'm worried it's going to hit me.

44:32 If it's a Waymo though, they know it's not going to do anything and it causes issues where they just don't go as fast or move as fast. So anyway, I think to your point, though, they'll need all be hooked up.

44:44 It's funny you say that because I moved from New York City to the suburbs of New York City right before the pandemic when I had my first child. I came into Grand Central, but it was either a long walk or an annoying transfer to get to my office.

44:58 And so I got one of those electric scooters and everyone was like, aren't you worried about all the cars? And I was like, the cars are fine. It's the bikes and the people who just aren't looking and just step right out.

45:12 And I'm both an advocate for pedestrians and public transit and in practice when I'm a driver or certainly a scooter, they're the worst. So two things can be true at once, right?

45:27 That's right. That's right. With access to AI, access to basically unlimited research, unlimited reasoning, still not always having every single bit of data. You mentioned I'm data driven, but also go with my gut.

45:45 For those listening, maybe they're in an executive role the first time, they're in a leadership role for the first time. How do you navigate that? Do you have any processes you follow, any thought experiments that you follow to help you know if you're following your gut, you can trust it?

46:01 It's like everything kind of depends, right? So going back to usage of data or AI in proposals, for instance, with my team, I don't let sales use AI to write proposals.

46:20 But on the solution side of things, I'm much more open to it because they are having, they're doing a much more data driven role, right? Like we only have X amount of functionality at the company.

46:35 We only have X amount of prepackaged products. Doesn't mean there aren't some things that could be built or some combinations of things, but ultimately like it is what it is.

46:46 And so the actual technical solution, the, you know, we use Figma for the diagram of the solution, etc. Having prepackaged, quad trained things for various inputs is fine.

47:01 But the bridge from our solution to the client's business is fundamentally a creative exercise. And it's not that AI couldn't do a job of it, right? It could, but ideally my sales rep who either has contact there, knows the company, has spoken to the company,

47:23 can probably write a much more compelling argument for this company and actually do some, you know, essentially consulting on it, right?

47:32 So I guess that's sort of where I draw the line.

47:38 You know, I've talked about how the sales side, I'm trying to control the uncontrollable. And so you want to be data driven, but we're mostly dealing with humans who are buyers and the market, which is fickle.

47:53 It's a tough thing. Also with HR stuff, you know, if you're designing a team or designing a process, you want to look at what else is out there and you want to be informed by that.

48:06 So ultimately, you have to do what's right for your organization, and you have to do what's right for the people that you have or the people that you're going to have.

48:14 And so that is something where you have to make a call where it's like, okay, I understand, like, in business school, right? We read the case study, we understand the model, you have to know the rules to break the rules.

48:29 And that's sort of where I draw the line.

48:32 I think that makes a ton of sense. And one thing AI doesn't do, you'll still have to direct it to do this afterwards, but once you make a decision, there's a lot of execution to be done.

48:42 And I think even if you have maybe a B, I'll call it a C+ strategy, but if you execute A+, you're going to win.

48:53 So I think that's a part where, you know, make a call, stick to it, adjust if you have to, but usually the results come through execution more so than having the best, most well thought out decision and strategy.

49:09 Yeah, do the easy things right. And that will give you a lot of grace on everything else.

49:14 Xander, this has been awesome. Thanks for everything you shared on the podcast, especially just your perspective on bringing the departments together.

49:23 You know, you mentioned being an individual contributor to a lot of these departments, leading a lot of these departments, but things really change once you are accountable and own the entire thing.

49:33 And I also really like your sober approach to AI, how to use it, when to use it well, what stays human.

49:42 I think a lot of what you laid out would be helpful for any CRO, head of ops, CMO that's listening today and appreciate everything you shared.

49:50 And I also, I can't wait to see what you do next and follow you in your career.

49:58 Well, I appreciate that. Maybe we'll have to have a part two, but thanks so much for having me. Obviously a lot going on for everybody, but this was a great conversation and thanks so much.

50:12 (whooshing)