Inside The Pipeline: B2B Sales and GTM
00:15:49 · Tris Tusa, Nick Casale
[00:15:49] S0: I I could not agree more. And also, I think physically coming into someone's office and seeing the team and seeing how it's set up and... Oh, okay. So Nick sits here and Freddie's over here from London, and they're going out for dinner tonight to talk about this and this. And he's sitting next to the person in marketing and actually getting that sort of perspective into the business. You then understand what are people's targets? How is it genuinely affecting them? Whereas I feel at the moment, you know, you do an initial half an hour call, and in that call, you have to try and identify the pain points. It's a lot more difficult. 100%. Is is in person interaction something that you guys focus on here? Is that something you're suggesting your team does a lot of? [00:16:32] S1: Absolutely. Yeah. We are... We're all in on in person. I always have been. Mhmm. I think I think both for the team, internally and externally, I would say. I mean, all the cliches are true. If you go if you go meet them in person, the deal's gonna close at, like, three times the rate. All that's valid. But I think also for the core team, like, as we hire and grow and expand across markets and with some roles being remote, like, I think I think specific... If you're trying to have it, if I have an enterprise rep who's joining in Austin, I need to make sure they're in an office to ramp, for example. They're... You're just not gonna get up to speed remotely. I think if we learned anything from COVID, that was, like,
00:16:32 · Nick Casale, Tris Tusa
[00:16:32] S1: Absolutely. Yeah. We are... We're all in on in person. I always have been. Mhmm. I think I think both for the team, internally and externally, I would say. I mean, all the cliches are true. If you go if you go meet them in person, the deal's gonna close at, like, three times the rate. All that's valid. But I think also for the core team, like, as we hire and grow and expand across markets and with some roles being remote, like, I think I think specific... If you're trying to have it, if I have an enterprise rep who's joining in Austin, I need to make sure they're in an office to ramp, for example. They're... You're just not gonna get up to speed remotely. I think if we learned anything from COVID, that was, like, [00:17:10] S0: high level. Yeah. 100%. And yet businesses like ElevenLabs seem to do really well performing rightly. I know now that they have offices. I mean, [00:17:19] S1: I think you definitely can... It obviously can be done. It's just harder. I think it's just way harder. I agree. And I would... I... I'll take the I'll take the easy way out on that one. [00:17:30] S0: So you led... I think you led mid market and enterprise at Sendoso Mhmm. Through a series c led by SoftBank [00:17:38] S1: Yeah. [00:17:38] S0: And then left to start your own business. [00:17:41] S1: I did. Yeah. [00:17:41] S0: What was it in you that that meant you wanted to go and try and do it by yourself and and start your own business?
00:17:41 · Tris Tusa, Nick Casale
[00:17:41] S0: What was it in you that that meant you wanted to go and try and do it by yourself and and start your own business? [00:17:48] S1: Yeah. I I mean, the Sendoso business, I felt that I was at my at my ceiling at that... In that time in that job. And I'm not I'm not saying that was correct. Right? But Yeah. I'm the kind of person that wakes up gen... Like, very excited to go to work every day. [00:18:05] S0: I can tell. [00:18:06] S1: Yeah. And that... All the... That's great. I do love it. Like, I love what I do. I love the team. Like, I love the people I work with. And that and that was certainly true true there. But I I had just felt like I was... I wasn't getting the same energy from the job that I that I generally did, and I just felt ready for for for something new. And starting a business had had been on my list since I had done it in college. It's now... It's off the list now. It's off... It's back off the list. [00:18:33] S0: And so what were you actually doing? What was the biz... Handoffs. Right?
00:18:33 · Tris Tusa, Nick Casale
[00:18:33] S0: And so what were you actually doing? What was the biz... Handoffs. Right? [00:18:36] S1: It was called handoffs, and this was early early ChatGPT. Okay. I think it had just come out. And I was like, it's funny in hindsight. The the entire thesis we built the business off was, like, so wrong. It's not even funny. Like, there was there was two there were two core thesis. One was true, which is, like, the handoff process sucks, and AI can make it better without it being painful for either the AE or the CS person. Thesis number one. Still true. Yeah. Thesis number two was, like, large incumbents will fail to add AI to their products. Okay. Might have Like, we could... That is like everyone has added AI Yeah. To their products. A bit wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were like, they'll never figure this out. [00:19:19] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Turns out AI made it quite easy for [00:19:22] S1: people to do. Wrong We there. I'll I'll hand up. That was that was dumb. But, no, it was... Mean, it still an incredible experience. Like, we did it for did it for two years, learned a ton. But I I I really learned intimately throughout that process Mhmm. That I loved growing businesses. Yeah. Like, I knew that. Right? But I took I took very for granted that the... There's a very... There's a huge difference. It sounds obvious, but there's a huge difference in growing from zero to one and growing from one plus. Because that zero to one is such a binary... The path from zero to one, as you know, is darkness and despair until it's A bit of bliss. Out. It's like, oh my god.
00:19:22 · Nick Casale, Tris Tusa
[00:19:22] S1: people to do. Wrong We there. I'll I'll hand up. That was that was dumb. But, no, it was... Mean, it still an incredible experience. Like, we did it for did it for two years, learned a ton. But I I I really learned intimately throughout that process Mhmm. That I loved growing businesses. Yeah. Like, I knew that. Right? But I took I took very for granted that the... There's a very... There's a huge difference. It sounds obvious, but there's a huge difference in growing from zero to one and growing from one plus. Because that zero to one is such a binary... The path from zero to one, as you know, is darkness and despair until it's A bit of bliss. Out. It's like, oh my god. [00:20:06] S0: We did it. Yeah.
00:20:06 · Tris Tusa, Nick Casale
[00:20:06] S0: We did it. Yeah. [00:20:07] S1: But you don't... You have no depth perception to one. Right? You don't know if it's, like, one call away, one feature away, or if it's forever away, and this isn't... And it's never gonna get there. Right? I think I have... So one, I think I I... It crystallized for me, like, give me something that's working even a little, and I wanna figure that out for sure for you. Like, I love that process. And working with founders that are way smarter than I am to, like, take something and help them really scale it massively, I learned that I loved that, and I built so much founder empathy too through it, which I think has been invaluable in this process. Because I definitely now thinking back didn't quite have that. Like, at Sendoso, was like, oh, like, founding AE. And it's like, you can call founding AE if you want, but, like, you're you're you're either a founder or you're Yeah. Yeah. Or you're just the first AE, my man. Yeah. There's a big difference because, like, you didn't go through that, know, the pit. Yeah. [00:21:04] S0: And then AirOps. I think it was late twenty twenty four when you joined? [00:21:10] S1: Two years ago. Yeah. [00:21:12] S0: Talk to us a bit about that because, like, in terms of the the SEO, GEO Mhmm. Well, the GEO, AEO space Yeah. Like, that was a pretty early move. I mean, you mentioned before where you guys were at in terms of revenue. What stage was the business at?