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**Adam Jacob:** \[01:47:50.21\] The implications are massive, organizationally. Like "Oh, this is the way our technology will work now. And I know a little about how my organization works today, and the gap between what we will be able to do, what we can do now, and where we were is so big" that they're in. They're lik... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** They're like "I quit. I'm going to the beach, okay? It's a great idea..." |
**Adam Jacob:** That's a real choice. And this happened in the DevOps movement, too. There were people who were like -- I had meetings where we got to the end and they were like "This is cool software. We should absolutely buy it, but I retire next year, and I'm not taking on --" |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "I'm not the one to do that journey." |
**Adam Jacob:** "I'm not taking on a transformation journey in 2005. That's not for me." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Interesting. |
**Adam Jacob:** And I think what we see now is the enterprise leaders, the technology leaders, practitioners who've been around a long time, the old heads - they tend to get it, and they tend to snap in pretty quick, and they're like "Oh, yeah. Okay... Woof." They've got to shake it out a little. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's like getting ready for a run. |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah, that's exactly what it is. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "Tomorrow I have a marathon, and I'm not prepared." |
**Adam Jacob:** Mm-hm. And you're like "Oh, I haven't been working out, and I need to." It's sort of that vibe... Which is strange for me, because in my career usually it's the opposite. Usually the things I build, it's the practitioners who pick them up and are like "This thing's amazing", and then they go convince th... |
And I was like "Well, just tell it that you want to repeat it." And they were like "What?" And I was like "Yeah, just say "Do it again, only in another region." And then it did, and they were like "Ohhh...!" Because we spent a lot of time being like "Oh, what I should do is build an abstraction, where if I wanted to pl... |
And so yeah, what we're seeing is the top down motion is working better, and the grounds up one... Like, I've got work to do. All I'm doing is making practical examples and writing documentation, and doing as much work as I can to just describe the details of like "Here's how this works. Here's the way AI works. Here's... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. It sounds your go-to-market strategy needs to be top down, if it's not already, Adam. Is it top down? |
**Adam Jacob:** I mean, it's pretty top down... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay... |
**Adam Jacob:** But it's weird that it's top down, for me... Once again, back to being transparent - I had an existential crisis, and I had to pull out my prayer reads, or whatever... I wasn't expecting top down. And I'm happy that top down is there... Top down is always part of your strategy. Anybody who tells you tha... |
\[01:52:17.19\] Large enterprise selling is always top down in the end. So I'm not upset that it's top down. But I get a lot of validation from practitioners, you know? So back to humility, you're like "Oh, I'd like it more if my friends thought it was cool..." \[laughter\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Going one more layer deeper here, what's sales like for you then? How does -- can we talk about sales? Do you mind if we talk about sales? |
**Adam Jacob:** I mean, I'm not gonna talk about numbers or customers, but yeah, I can talk about sales... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You don't have to say numbers... |
**Adam Jacob:** ...as a concept... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I'd say, you know, how does your sales organization work, basically? How does a lead come in? Do you go out and get those things? |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah... We're early enough stage that when you're figuring out the go-to market, when you're figuring out "What do we have" and how do you explain it to people, and how does that connect - like, you don't have a sales organization in the middle, because your sales organization needs to be enabled. They ... |
But a great way to kill a startup is to hire sales reps because you have a sales problem, and then watch them not be able to go to work. Like, they just can't do it, because you've gotta tell them what to do. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Do you have no sales then? ...salespeople. No sales folks? |
**Adam Jacob:** I'm blessed enough to have co-founders who have been here the whole time, and I'm pretty good at selling... Not to toot my own horn, but I'm not a bad sales rep... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Nice. |
**Adam Jacob:** So largely, a lot of that expertise is in house, so we can sort of hold that out a little longer than other people might. But it's really just - you know, once you know that that motion is there, and you understand it, and you get a little bit more repetition under your belt, and you're clear about wher... |
I think one of the things that's happening in AI is that it can really cause a lot of hypergrowth if the messaging connects to the practitioners, in a way, or if it connects to its market, in a way. They can drive a lot of motion. So we'll see what happens, but... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Always fun going deep... This was a fun one. I really enjoyed this. |
**Adam Jacob:** I hope so... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It was dope, man. I dug it. |
**Adam Jacob:** I always hope I'm not boring, you know? I don't wanna come and be like "Hang out with me for two hours while I talk about sales." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** No, I don't think you were boring. |
**Jerod Santo:** You're never boring. |
**Adam Jacob:** \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, just the \[unintelligible 01:55:16.26\] That was my fault. If no one else cared about that last five-ish, eight-ish minutes... |
**Adam Jacob:** I mean, look, if you're a startup founder or you're trying to go to market in this space, I can tell you for sure what you should be doing right now is you should be in every single deal for a long time. Because you need that product learning, and you need the deal flow learning, and the only way to get... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Adam Jacob:** You need the fire hose, you know? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:55:53.23\] Do you actually give it a naming, like founder-led sales? Is that what you call it? Or do you just -- |
**Adam Jacob:** I mean, people give it names... Yeah, people give it names, but... I don't know. I just think of it as like, as a leader and as a product person and as a CEO, I don't know how to do it differently. And I've had the privilege of working for truly great salespeople... Like Barry Crist, who was the CEO of ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's packaging. |
**Adam Jacob:** ...the packaging, sort of how it all came together... But if you don't know those things -- if you can't do the first part, which is explain it to a sales guy and be like "Here's how we talk about it, and here's why it matters, and here's what people value, and here's what their response is..." And the ... |
If you're listening and you have an infrastructure problem, right this second is the window where I will come sit in your house and build infrastructure with you. And you don't have to pay me money to do it. I'll just do it. I'll just come, and it'll be awesome. We get on planes, we go wherever. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So Adam, what do you know about Bootc? I'm just kidding... |
**Adam Jacob:** I don't know a lot about it, but I'll go. Because that's the stage you're in. That's how you learn to sell. You don't learn to sell things by staying at home, you learn to sell by going out into the world and make it happen. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So what you're saying is that there is an opportunity. You will literally fly to them, sitting hand in hand with them and show them System Initiative in their world, or how -- |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah. I will literally come to you and I will help you automate your infrastructure with System Initiative, because I want to learn what it's like to do it from your eyes. And that's how you learn to sell the software. You don't sell software by putting up blog posts and being like "I hope you read it a... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Are you flying lots then? Are you on the plane once a week? |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah, I mean, I'm flying -- |
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