Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:26:15 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[00:26:15] S1: That's absolutely true. [00:26:18] S0: And the flip side of that is, how many companies... The number of companies formed is going to mushroom over the next 10 years relative to the last 10 years, and the last 10 years compared to the previous 10 years is mushroomed. I just think in my life, I'm old, and when I was a kid I'd walked into CVS corner drug store and I wanted to buy a toothbrush, there are four or five there, you pick one. And in the 90s or 2000s you go to Amazon, there are four or 5,000 toothbrushes. Four or 5,000 companies bringing us toothbrushes. It got much, much easier to make stuff. And even technology. AWS just made it easier to start a software company. So, it's like a huge jump, back then when we started HubSpot in 2006, but now it's going to be an even bigger jump. So, it's easier to start. Now, there's so much noise and competition, it's just going to be hard to stand out and really accelerate and scale. So, that's why I say it's never been easier to start, there's never been more competition, it's never been harder to scale. [00:27:22] S1: And a big part of this is distribution, essentially, breaking through the noise is what I'm hearing? [00:27:26] S0: Yeah. And it's hard to learn that. You didn't grow up doing distribution, you don't know. So, they're all learning it, and the ones that learn fast... It's like a learning game, the faster you learn, the better you do.
00:27:26 · Brian Halligan, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:27:26] S0: Yeah. And it's hard to learn that. You didn't grow up doing distribution, you don't know. So, they're all learning it, and the ones that learn fast... It's like a learning game, the faster you learn, the better you do. [00:27:38] S1: Along these lines, I saw you tweet this recently, where people talk about which jobs AI is going to replace, and you said that sales is maybe the last job AI will replace. Why do you think that's the case?
00:27:53 · Brian Halligan
[00:27:53] S0: Well, if you look inside a typical enterprise, where's AI really working? Let's say inside of HubSpot. Software development is working incredibly well. Customer support, incredibly well. Legal starting to work incredibly well. But there really aren't apps in the rest of the org that have really changed things a lot. And in the go-to-market side has been kind of slow, really just support. There isn't a canonical marketing, or sales, or... Maybe the BDR is the first one. But I think ye old enterprise sales, where there's actual trust built up between two carbon-based life forms, I think will be very, very, very late to go in the white collar world. I think a lot about the go-to-market. I think the go-to-market is going to get turned on its head. When we started HubSpot, if I think of the way the funnel worked, you want to get found in Google, someone clicks on a blue link, they land on your website, they go down the rabbit hole, they clicked on contact sales, they wait until that sales rep's ready, go down that rabbit hole, and I think it's going to get turned on its head, where people are evaluating a product, they start in Gemini or they start in Anthropic, or they start in ChatGPT, And for example, ChatGPT knows everything on your website, everything beyond that, knows all your competitors. So, they will stay in there and do lots more research, and be incredibly well-educated. So, your website's a lot less important. And then they go to your site, I think sites will change where you're going to have a really high quality avatar that knows everything about your products, knows everything about your company, and your pricing, and packaging, and you can have a high quality conversation with that person. That person that will get stored in your CRM, and will get scored. Is this is good quality conversation? And then the sales rep will follow up. But that sales rep will bring an avatar with them on every sales call. You won't have to wait for their SC, they'll have their own SC that's all knowing, that will follow them through the process. So, go-to-market hasn't changed much yet, but I think over time it's going to change a lot.
00:30:03 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brian Halligan
[00:30:03] S1: This avatar, just so I understand. So, this is the buyer has their own little agent that comes with them? Or on HubSpot you have this avatar that walks you through the sales process? [00:30:15] S0: I think both. I think me as a knowledge worker, what I really want as a homo sapien is I have a Delphi clone that I really like. [00:30:26] S1: Same. [00:30:26] S0: It's actually quite good. [00:30:28] S1: Yeah. [inaudible 00:30:28]. [00:30:28] S0: Yeah. [00:30:30] S1: Where do people find yours? [00:30:32] S0: They find it on my footer, they can find it on Delphi- [00:30:34] S1: Okay. We'll link to it. [00:30:38] S0: Yeah. And what I want is connect that thing to my email, into my Granola, into my plot, and it knows everything about me. And then, when I go to a meeting, Lenny, I want to invite that thing to my meeting. So, it's sitting there in the Zoom meeting, it's not just taking notes like Granola, it's a participant. So, if I forgot something, I ask it a question, if somebody else forgot... I think every knowledge worker will have one of these in 3, 4, 5 years. But mine was more on the go-to-market side, where I think every website will change and there'll be an all-knowing avatar on that homepage. And if it's a considered purchase, I think it gets handed off to a sales rep, and that sales rep has a conversation, but when that sales rep's on Zoom, they have their SE avatar that's kind of all-knowing. And so, I think this stuff all changes a lot in the next few years, but it hasn't really unlocked yet.
00:30:38 · Brian Halligan, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:30:38] S0: Yeah. And what I want is connect that thing to my email, into my Granola, into my plot, and it knows everything about me. And then, when I go to a meeting, Lenny, I want to invite that thing to my meeting. So, it's sitting there in the Zoom meeting, it's not just taking notes like Granola, it's a participant. So, if I forgot something, I ask it a question, if somebody else forgot... I think every knowledge worker will have one of these in 3, 4, 5 years. But mine was more on the go-to-market side, where I think every website will change and there'll be an all-knowing avatar on that homepage. And if it's a considered purchase, I think it gets handed off to a sales rep, and that sales rep has a conversation, but when that sales rep's on Zoom, they have their SE avatar that's kind of all-knowing. And so, I think this stuff all changes a lot in the next few years, but it hasn't really unlocked yet. [00:31:28] S1: What are we going to be doing in this world, these two bots chatting with each other? [00:31:33] S0: It's going to be great, Lenny. You and I are going to be sitting on- [00:31:37] S1: We're into podcasts. [00:31:37] S0: We're in Turks and Caicos, relaxing, on a month-long vacation, sending our avatars to all the meetings. [00:31:42] S1: Go buy me some HubSpot seats please. I think this is why ClawdBot was so popular. I think this is essentially what they're building, is this idea. Which is now called Moltbot, which might be changing again. It's just this personal agent that can go do stuff for you. [00:31:56] S0: Totally.
00:31:56 · Brian Halligan, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:31:56] S0: Totally. [00:31:58] S1: So, you're talking about the future of go-to-market is this world where there's these little bots and agents that are doing things for you on both sides. When you look at companies today that you work with, that are doing well, that are especially AI-driven companies, what are they doing differently in terms of go-to-market that is working really well? [00:32:15] S0: Honestly, the only thing that's different today, it's exactly the same as it's been for 100 years, except they call their SCs or their system consultants for deployed engineers. The rest of it is the same. I thought it would be totally different in AI, and working with all these companies, they're hiring all the same folks, running the same enterprise sales processes. So, it hasn't changed that much, at least on the enterprise side. Actually, I spent the first 10 years of my career at a company called PTC, which is like an enterprise sales machine. Enterprise sales hasn't changed that much since the 1990s. [00:32:49] S1: And so, forward deployed engineer, a very hot term, the idea there is they come work with the customer and help them implement this thing. And that's come up a lot on this podcast just with AI tools, rarely are they just plug and play, you can't just set up some agent that figures everything out. Takes a lot of onboarding and integration. Is it actually a different thing at all versus sales engineering in the past, things like that, or- [00:33:12] S0: I think it's a solutions consultant sales engineer. [00:33:14] S1: Okay.