July 29, 2025 • 45 mins
I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
Remember when marketing was about gut feelings and Rolodexes? Those days are long gone, replaced first by data-driven automation and now by something even more transformative: AI-powered buying agents.
The marketing landscape is broken. Pipelines are down, sales math doesn't work, and marketing channels are saturated beyond effectiveness.
In this eye-opening conversation with tech industry veteran and founder of Zeer.ai, Santosh Sharan, we explore how AI agents may soon become the buyer's first move in the discovery process.
What happens when your prospective customers deploy AI to evaluate options before humans ever enter the conversation? When your carefully crafted pitch lands in front of an algorithm instead of a decision-maker? This isn't science fiction. It's happening now, and it's reshaping everything we know about marketing and sales.
Santosh explains how the democratization of marketing tools has created unprecedented noise, leading to buyer withdrawal from traditional engagement models. The future belongs to marketers who can build trust at scale and optimize for both human and algorithmic evaluation. As Santosh puts it, "Trust cannot be copied," making it the ultimate differentiator in an age of feature parity.
The most fascinating revelation? The emergence of agent-to-agent commerce, where AI intermediaries continuously search, evaluate, and negotiate on behalf of both buyers and vendors. This creates entirely new channels for discovery beyond traditional search and social platforms.
This episode is essential listening for any marketer struggling with rising customer acquisition costs, diminishing returns on outreach, or the challenge of standing out in crowded marketplaces. The future of marketing isn't about better automation—it's about rethinking the entire model of how buyers discover, evaluate, and engage with sellers.
🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.
New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin Kerner (00:00):
Hello everyone.
This is Kevin Kerner with TechMarketing Rewired.
Photo market isn't what it usedto be.
Channels are saturated, thebuyers are guarded and AI agents
are starting to do the workhumans used to handle.
In this episode, I sat downwith Santos Sharon, founder of
Zier AI, to talk about how AIagents aren't just automating
outreach they're increasinglybecoming the buyer's first move.
It's a new model for discoverywhere agents collect, qualify
(00:23):
and surface the best optionslong before a human ever enters
the chat.
This is revolutionary stufffrom my good friend, santos.
I hope you enjoy it.
Let's get into it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
Hey, welcome to Tech MarketingRewired.
(00:47):
I'm Kevin Kerner, your host, andtoday I'm joined by my good
friend, santos Sharon.
I watched firsthand how he'sreally had a front row seat and
led, but I don't know all thestuff data intent, platforms,
all the go-to-market stuff.
It's really evolved over theyears and, more importantly, I
think Santos is at the forefrontof how it's changing,
especially with AI.
He's held roles ranging from Ilooked at your LinkedIn, saw
(01:11):
your Digitas, I forgot aboutthat Lead Genius, rb2b, and we
actually go way back to Aberdeen.
We were at Aberdeen togetherand today he's the founder of
Zier AI.
So, santosh, I'm super happy tohave you on the show.
How you been.
Santosh Sharan (01:26):
Very good and so thrilled to be here.
Look forward to chatting withyou, Kevin.
Yeah, this is good stuff.
Kevin Kerner (01:32):
Can you imagine if we had the capabilities that we
have now, when we were both atAberdeen?
The whole intent?
Santosh Sharan (01:38):
Like 12, 15 years ago.
Kevin Kerner (01:40):
Yeah.
Santosh Sharan (01:45):
I just think we were a little ahead of our time
back then.
We were, we were, and you know,in some way, the biggest change
that has happened since then tonow is that earlier playbooks
were only accessible to savvymarketers, and now everybody has
a playbook with a button.
Kevin Kerner (02:00):
And that's direct marketing with a button and
that's the direct marketing.
Can you imagine all therules-based stuff that we were
doing?
It's just crazy.
And you didn't have any accessto it.
Now you can just go to Claudeand just make it happen.
It's crazy.
Well, so I went a little bitover your history.
I wonder if you could take usthrough a quick intro, your
(02:20):
journey of how you got to whereyou are, and then just dig into
a bit about what's happeningfrom your perspective and go to
market right now.
Santosh Sharan (02:30):
All right, let's dive in let's do it.
So my career started off.
I started off my career as asoftware engineer that's what I
studied in college and somewhereseven, eight years into my
career I was part of a smallstartup that got acquired for a
lot of money by Johnson Johnson.
(02:50):
It was a pharmaceutical startup.
So that's when I got this bugof starting companies and I did
one, and then I really began tolike go-to-market.
I realized that more value canbe created through go-to-market
than through product developmentand that led me with ZoomInfo.
(03:11):
And then last 15, 20 years,increasingly, I've been spending
more and more time with salesmarketing teams, sometimes
operations, but primarilyfocused on go-to-market.
And here's something radical Ihave to share.
I think the last time I feltlike this was 15 years ago.
(03:31):
So if you break go-to-marketinto big generational shifts,
before 15 years ago I think youwould hire a CMO for their gut
feeling or CRO for their Rolodexright.
People were more intuitive,more relationship-based
(03:53):
go-to-market, right.
But then, like somewhere around15 years ago, data and
automation started to take over,where relationships didn't
matter as much.
Right Attribution mattered alot than intuition.
Right Now, it was all good inthe beginning.
Now, fast forward to today.
(04:15):
I feel like everything's broken.
Pipelines are down.
The sales math doesn't work.
All marketing channels suck.
Nobody responds.
There's almost dignity in salesand marketing that's got lost,
because imagine being a salesrep and doing 20 calls and
everybody, like screaming at theother end, don't want to talk
(04:37):
to you.
That's not how it used to beRight and we got to fix that
right and we got to fix that.
Kevin Kerner (04:48):
Yeah, do you think it's um?
I was just.
I just told on the pre-callhere.
I was telling you about talkingto elaine at um tofu.
Do you think it's generationalto some degree?
Like like the part of thechange is the technology that we
now have has changed, but nowthe buyers now uh, b2b buyers
are in a different generation tosome degree.
So it's like the tools are havegotten to the point where
they've matured and moreaccessible, but it's almost like
the generation now sort of ismaybe not used to the same
(05:11):
tactics that we used to, ordoesn't like the same tactics
that used to work back in theday.
Santosh Sharan (05:16):
That's a good point, Although I feel like too
much of good thing becomes a badthing.
So we got greedy with data andautomation, so greedy that we
said you know, like it doesn'tcost us anything, let's just
send 100,000 email when we couldsend thousand.
Right, Because it doesn't costmuch.
(05:38):
Now think about a CMO of acompany that just raised $50
million.
So when we were at Appendine 15years back, this CMO would have
gotten, say, two or threeemails saying, hey,
congratulations, and I think myproduct could help you scale and
let's talk, right.
(05:58):
But today the CMO is getting100 emails because it's become
so easy and accessible that withone click, like, every signal
provider is providing fundingsignals right, and every
automation is integrated withfunding signal outreach, and so
that's such a lousy playbook nowLike so then, what the buyers
(06:20):
are reacting with?
This is what Gartner has beensaying for like 10 years.
Buyers don't want to talk tosalespeople increasingly right,
and they are responding by beingdisengaged.
They're just stepping away anddoing their own research and
they want to come in when theyhave made their final decision
to work with, say, two of the 20vendors right.
(06:41):
Of the 20 vendors right.
I think part of it isgenerational, but a lot of this
is just buyers responding todemocratized or accessible or
low-cost data and automation,and a lot of lazy automation, I
should say the smart automationstill works.
Kevin Kerner (07:02):
Yeah.
So the thesis is it's a lot ofnoise led the collapse of
channels because you've got somuch spam or poor marketing
going on, and it's only going toget worse.
It's just going to get biggerand bigger.
What do you think theopportunity then is how do you
(07:24):
react to that as a marketer?
Now, what's?
Santosh Sharan (07:28):
the opportunity.
I think everybody has to thinkabout new playbook.
So when we were talking aboutABM and signal-based marketing,
really we were doing noise-basedmarketing.
Kevin Kerner (07:40):
And even ABM.
Now, Sanjay, if you think aboutit, it's still pretty noisy
because everyone has the ABMtechnologies.
Santosh Sharan (07:47):
There's another vector that is fueling all this,
just sitting in the back of theroom, and that's AI, a sector
that only had, say, 50 vendors.
(08:07):
There's going to be 100 in likenext 12 months, or 150, because
the cost of building tools aregoing to just go like near zero,
right?
So what that does is the buyercost increases because buyer has
to search through like a fewtools they could count on
fingers.
Now they can't.
They're like 50 more and theneverybody begins to look the
same.
There's like no differentiationbetween tools.
(08:27):
How do you differentiatethrough the noise?
When you're 20, then it's hardto differentiate.
Imagine if they're 200.
Yeah, right.
So this is where a new breed, anew age and new generation of
marketers have to emerge, and Ifeel like a lot of consumer
marketing will start to, becauseconsumer marketers are already
(08:48):
used to dealing with this noise.
So brand, for instance, is moreimportant.
Cutting through narrative,radical differentiations,
connecting with human emotionsall of that becomes more
important.
In fact, productdifferentiation will start to
take more of a backseat thanbefore, because cost of product
(09:13):
building will be same Even ifyou're different.
So what?
Somebody can copy you in twoweeks.
So then there will always beparity.
Kevin Kerner (09:20):
Yeah, that's a super interesting concept.
And so, because you're right, Imean I can go into base 44 and
replete right now and I'm doingthis right now and it's a lot of
fun and I'm building apps thathave pretty good features.
I'm not launching anything, I'mjust doing it just to test it.
But, like, what is the cost ofa feature?
Now?
It's like it's, it's so easy.
I'm not building anythingthat's production grade, but you
(09:44):
know, fast forward, another twoor three years, I might be able
to build something that'sreally pretty darn good, and so
I think you may be right.
I think the big playersobviously are seeing this, like
Salesforce and others.
They're seeing these micro apps, or what does Scott Brinker
call it.
It's like it sort ofdemocratizes the creation of,
(10:07):
you know, app creation.
Let's say I think you're right.
Um that.
Santosh Sharan (10:13):
But trust and credibility cannot be copied
that easily.
Yeah right, your sense thatthis company will stand by me
when difficult times come.
That cannot be copied right.
So I've and in one-on-oneconversation like this you can
build trust.
I think we will start to seemore scalable trust building and
(10:36):
that will become the primarydifferentiator for good market.
Kevin Kerner (10:41):
Completely yeah.
So brand is the trust part ofbrand is super important and
authenticity and having genuinerelationships.
So tell me what you tell mewhat you see the business
opportunity for a platform isnow.
I know you're doing some ofsome interesting things at Xere.
Tell me a little bit about whatthe vision is for a more
(11:03):
authentic go to market.
Santosh Sharan (11:05):
Yeah.
So I was reading somewhererecently that in the last three
years surveyed winning by designin Europe surveyed 50 SaaS
companies public SaaS companieslargest and they found that the
CAC rose by about 60% in thelast three years.
(11:26):
Now let's extrapolate that andI'll answer your question more
directly.
So with AI and more competitivenew entrants coming in the
market, cac is going to rise.
Right, and what's happening onSEO we'll talk more about that
(11:46):
is going to make CAC risebecause the inventories are
dropping right, the adinventories.
So endpoint solutions.
So if you go 15 years ago, bestof breed was the way to build a
SaaS company.
Right, buyers were buying thebest of this and best of that
and best of that and put it alltogether and integrate using
(12:09):
Zapier and other tools.
And put it all together andintegrate using Zapier and other
tools.
Now, if the CAC becomesunsustainable for endpoint
solution, where the CAC is sohigh that they can't afford
given the cost of the software,right.
So I feel like the high CACwill ensure that all softwares
are just platforms.
(12:29):
So once your customer is in,you can support all different
workflows, not just one endpointright.
So I foresee every softwarebecoming a platform.
Either they build a platform oftheir own or they join a
platform.
I also think, like someone likeSalesforce can build end-to-end
(12:49):
platforms, but small companiescannot.
But I do think one likeSalesforce can build end-to-end
platforms, but small companiescannot.
But I do think one of thebiggest opportunities that's
going to come in the next 12, 18months is there'll be rise of
multiple industry stacks wherethese companies are going to
cooperate and compete at thesame time and they'll build
(13:10):
industry stacks out of box sothey'll be priced together.
They'll be pre-integrated soyou can go just hook it up as if
you are working with SAP orRippling or some of those
platforms that are compound, butwith different companies.
Without that, they won't beable to sustain the high cost of
(13:33):
CAC.
Kevin Kerner (13:35):
The platform, ecosystem becomes the channel.
That's a great way to put it.
Yeah, do you see any industrieswhere that, or can you give me
some examples of where you thinkthat might play?
First, you mentioned Rippling,which I think is a really
interesting example of how youcould plug into that ecosystem.
Can you think of any othersthat are top of mind for you?
Santosh Sharan (14:00):
I think the general platforms, like, say,
marketing or sales, those aremore broad, yeah, also, they
have more budgets broad Also,they have more budgets.
I would think verticals orsmaller platforms where they
have less budgets could even bea good place to start to take
(14:21):
over, because then the CACreally makes a difference.
Also, platforms that areverticals or segments that have,
say, premium players, thosewould be good ones for smaller
players to take off, because ifthere's a premium player,
(14:43):
they're charging more but theyalso have more features with
that others cannot replicate,but together five companies can
replicate what, say, sap isdoing for manufacturing or some
vertical.
So now, for the first time, Ithink, there'll be real
competition against thesepremium players.
Kevin Kerner (15:00):
Yeah, and the whole key to all this is the
composability between thedifferent platforms, the ease of
integration with other systems,and you know what will really
activate that is that I have alot of fun playing around with
MCP now.
It's so fun too.
It's not the easiest thingbecause if you're, if you're
connecting it with somethingthat isn't isn't, doesn't have a
really easy integration with,like cloud or something, but
(15:24):
it's not that hard.
But once that clicks in yourbrain that you can use MCP to
have an LLM dig into somethingelse Right, and I just posted
the other day about this GitHubthat had 3,000 MCP connections
to it.
But psychologically, once thatclicks into the general public
or the general business person,I think what you're saying is
(15:47):
right.
It could, this connection toeverything could really begin to
take off.
Santosh Sharan (15:55):
Yeah, and that is going to disrupt.
Because if either you are partof a platform or you're out,
because then it becomes nowthere'll be limited slots in
these platforms, right.
And if buyers are saying, look,it's cheaper for me to just
work with a single platformbecause the car gets subsidized
(16:18):
for everybody else, right,Otherwise, the endpoint solution
they are to keep spending moneyinto acquiring customers.
So, yeah, you're either in oryou're out of business.
It's going to be amazing.
Kevin Kerner (16:33):
Yeah, that's incredible.
So what's the next step fromthis thesis, Like where does it
go from here?
As a product owner or amarketer?
Santosh Sharan (16:45):
I think every endpoint SaaS company need to
think.
Like every SaaS marketers needto consider can they turn their
product into a platform or canthey go after adjacent workflows
easily?
Now cost of development hasgone down, so maybe they can
right.
(17:05):
That way they can charge moreor give more value to their
customer for the same price.
That way they can charge moreor give more value to their
customer for the same price.
The real battleground is goingto be once you have a customer,
how do we retain that customer?
Because the new acquisitionwill just either be too
expensive or start to dry up,because everybody will be
holding on to the customers theyhave, right, yeah, and if
(17:28):
you're a large company and youenjoy brand premiums and that, I
think premium will kind ofthere'll be downward pricing
pressure.
So I think there will be issueswith enjoying those premiums
invested, hoping that there'llalways be this winner-take-all
(17:50):
model where excess capital willturn some of these companies
into enjoying these brandpremiums and charging far more
than their competitors can.
I think with AI and lower costof development, those premiums
are going to start to give wayto smaller companies or start to
get distributed.
Kevin Kerner (18:11):
Yeah, I completely agree, and I know you posted a
lot on different pricing modelsand the sort of more
credit-based or results-basedpricing models.
I think it's going to putincredible pressure on the
HubSpots and the sales forces ofthe world, the big enterprise
platforms.
It's just even as a buyer, as abusiness owner, it's really
(18:33):
hard to swallow some of thosebigger fees.
Now, now that I see the otherpricing models, if I can pay for
usage or credits, it's so mucheasier than paying per seat.
It just doesn't work for me aswell as it has.
Santosh Sharan (18:46):
Right, right yeah.
In some ways, those are marketinefficiencies, right yeah,
Marketing is the science ofexploiting market inefficiencies
to your favor.
And now we are getting moreefficient and the companies that
are benefiting from it aregoing to give back.
Kevin Kerner (19:04):
Yeah, okay, I want to go back to the channel thing
that you brought up earlier.
Search is difficult becauseAIOs paid is tricky, although I
have a perspective that I thinkpaid search is maybe a bit more
important now because you can'tget in the top, you can't get
past the AIOs, so pay, you know,spending some on paid search
(19:26):
actually is is not a bad idea ifyou're trying to get your brand
noticed.
But ads are tough.
Email is almost impossible.
Santosh Sharan (19:37):
Right Phone is impossible.
Even email is getting ranked.
Kevin Kerner (19:42):
I have an agent now that goes through my email.
I don't know why Gmail doesn'tdo this, but it basically goes
through my email and pulls it.
It's the Relay app Pulls outwhat it thinks are cold emails,
identifies them, builds a nicereply to them, puts them in my
draft folder and I just scanthem every day and I just hit
send.
I don't even have to look atthem anymore.
(20:05):
It's pretty incredible.
Santosh Sharan (20:06):
What you just did with email.
What you just described, Ithink, is the core or the crux
of the future of go-to-market.
It's really important tounderstand what you just did,
because you were looking atemails yourself and now the
agent looks at it, first decidesfor whatever reason, and then
(20:27):
you look at the remaining emails.
Now apply that model, exactsame model, to search.
We were looking at searchresults.
Now we're not going to belooking at search results.
Some agent will look at it andgive us only the top or top two.
Apply that to sales calls.
Kevin Kerner (20:46):
Browsers.
Santosh Sharan (20:49):
Buyers are not going to talk to so many sales
calls.
They'll only talk to the toptwo right, and that's just going
to be the norm.
So those comprehensively likegoing through every candidate in
the.
Those days are gone andthere'll be a lot of agent to
agent communication.
Now the race will shift to howdo I impress the agent?
So if I am sending email toyour inbox I should be thinking
(21:14):
what should I write?
So your filters or your agentwill escalate it to you
Completely.
I think that would be the newmarket 100%.
Kevin Kerner (21:22):
And same thing with your website, like do
websites become really justagent tools, like the agent to
agent?
Yeah, so that's superinteresting, did you see?
I just saw this morning thatApple's new beta has a browser
function.
So if you're looking at yourphone, you can hit I think it
must be in Safari.
(21:42):
So you hit the button in Safariand you can click on any part
of the screen.
That's a distraction and itwill remove those containers
from the browser.
Wow, so if you're reading anarticle, like in wired or
something or you know, you justmaybe you want to read an
article and there are a ton ofdifferent ads that show up you
can just like you literally justhit this button and then you
just start clicking off the adsand it makes them just like poof
(22:05):
and they just, they justcompletely disappear.
Santosh Sharan (22:08):
Just went up a little bit.
Somebody spent money to reachout to you.
Kevin Kerner (22:14):
So can you imagine , yeah, and I don't know, maybe
the click action is actually aclick, so you're spending the
money as a brand, but your ad isdisappearing.
There's no reason that thatcan't happen with an agent
instead of a person having to,like, put their finger on their
phone.
So it's just a matter of timebefore that stuff is tricky and
there really is no system rightnow to scale authenticity, so
(22:39):
authentic brands.
It's tough because you know Ido the podcast, because I'm
super interested in it, but andI'd learned from all these great
people but it's also you knowwe as a brand need to be out
there talking about this stuff,because you know we're a tech
marketing organization, so weneed to be at the forefront of
these discussions.
But it's not easy, you knowthere's no, it's very manual.
Santosh Sharan (23:02):
It's the toughest problem of the next
decade.
I can tell you how we aretrying to do that.
Yeah, I can't say we havecompletely cracked the code, but
yeah, that is.
I'm sure there'll be multipleinitiatives to do it right.
Kevin Kerner (23:16):
Yeah, Things that we don't even expect to see yet
and then and then it'll get allspammed out.
So what we'll be after onauthenticity, who knows what
that will be.
But yeah, I would like for youto talk about what you see the
opportunity to scale.
It sounds terrible to scaleauthentic relationships because
(23:37):
you don't really want to do that, because they're authentic and
real.
But how do you keep it real anddo it in a way that allows you
to at least scale, multiplyyourself in some way, scale
multiply yourself in some way.
Santosh Sharan (23:50):
Yeah, I think a big part of that is to just
acknowledge what's going on andnot fight it, ride the wave
right and then the other is.
So, for instance, this noise isjust going to stay Right.
And this sales-led marketingwhere sellers raise the hand and
(24:11):
said look, my ICP has 10,000people, I'm just going to go
round robin on all 10,000 or abulk of them and see who's in
market to buy, that justgenerated a lot of revenue for
every vendor in that platform,every channel.
So everyone recommended thatapproach, but then it generated
a lot of noise and a lot ofmistrust and it basically
(24:35):
wrecked those channels in thelong run.
Right, I think?
Think about the buyers.
They just want to buy somethingand it's difficult to buy.
They're not even paid orrecognized for what they're
doing, right?
So, companies, you're talkingabout how to get you know how to
build trust at scale.
One way to build trust if I ama vendor um, even enterprise
(25:00):
larger vendor um, and Irecognize that buying is
difficult in my space, I wouldcreate a website.
I I would create buying tool.
This is exactly what we areenabling at Xero.
That will help my buyers buybetter.
So it reduces all the you know,hurdles and friction and that
(25:22):
generates trust and credibilityin ways that otherwise you can't
.
That's one way.
The second way if buyers can beencouraged to share their
problems every day and theproblems could range from like I
have churn, I need to hire acontroller, I need to do a
campaign, I need playbooks andbest practice for getting some
(25:49):
lead gen.
So buyers are constantly havingthese problems every day in
business, in the course ofbusiness.
If they could come to a siteand like ask for those problems,
and then agencies and vendorscould respond just to those
problems, right, not startpitching and saying, hey, I have
this tool I think you shouldbuy, and here are the five
(26:11):
features my tool does, which ishow they do today.
Right, and if that can be donein a targeted manner, at scale,
through agents, agents areactually going to get pretty
sophisticated.
Agents won't be like just chatgpt giving you generic answers.
Agents will get.
It will become an extension.
(26:32):
It'll begin to.
If I have an agent, um, overtime, if there's a mathematical
certainty, then it starts tosound like me.
Now, in the beginning it'sclunky and it doesn't sound like
me and it's barely reactive, uh, but uh, it's just like
learning If it has all thecontent, it learns pretty
quickly and it starts to.
(26:54):
So we could respond in a verytargeted manner to buyer pain
and buyer needs On demand inreal time within the context at
scale.
And now think about the buyer'smindset If they're getting
answers and responses from thesame brand or same agency again
(27:15):
and again, they like to workwith this agency, maybe
prioritize and just go to theagency next time, right?
And so this is how business isgoing to be done, where the
agents create credibility in thebeginning and these agents
don't get annoyed.
If a seller agent asks the buyeragent 10 times a day, is there
any demand for me today?
(27:35):
But buyers get annoyed, like,stop chasing me, but agents are
just API calls.
So in our platform, agents areasking each other all like 10
times a day if needed, andthat's fair game, right.
And as soon as there's a demand, as soon as there's a question,
as soon as there's a problem,as long as they're in the right
ICP, these agents figure it outand then start helping each
(27:57):
other.
Kevin Kerner (27:58):
Yeah, so agents can filter out the noise between
agents and serve up the stuffthat's valuable for the buyer
right.
Santosh Sharan (28:06):
Yeah, so one more point there, since you
mentioned the noise part.
The biggest problem inmarketing and sales today is we
have created too many jobs andchores for ourselves, a lot of
which are not useful right,since people are sitting on
calls.
If you look at their calendar,like a lot of the calls don't
(28:27):
yield into revenue, but thenthere's no way to get around.
You have to do like 40 calls aweek to find those four that are
valuable, but you don't knowwhich four.
Otherwise you could have donejust four right.
So when agents do those 40calls between other agents, the
sellers just have more timeright and they can focus and
(28:49):
they can do something morevaluable with their time.
Plus, I don't think we'll needthis large teams We'll probably
undergo, you know, higher quotaper rep.
But also, I think there's goingto be the way agencies work
will change.
I think a lot more budget willshift to agencies than before.
(29:11):
But yeah, this is a massivetime of change and transition.
A lot of the noise that wecreated in the last two decades
agents will cut through thatnoise.
Kevin Kerner (29:24):
You know, what's super interesting about what
you're saying is if I'm going toask a question and I want to go
to a community, I'm probablygoing to go to G2, or I'm going
to go to Reddit or somewhere.
I'm going to look throughReddit throughout.
I'm going to ask that question,I'm probably going to start in
Google or something or maybeChatGPT.
So I'm going to the communityin that way.
But if I'm if I'm I don't dothis proactively, but if I'm
(29:45):
following a brand on LinkedInand they have good content, I
will interact with that content.
So my brand affinity ishappening on the LinkedIn side,
let's say, because it's throughcontent and stuff and so and
it's a lot of it's happeningthrough personalities with that
content.
And then the the part of me thatwants to buy something is, or
ask a question about how tosolve something, is going to the
(30:06):
community sites.
There's no bridge between thosetwo things and if a brand shows
up in the Reddit side, I'mgoing to not, I'm going to be
like not, I'm probably notinterested, and LinkedIn really
isn't the place to ask.
Ask, you can, but it's kind ofan odd place to ask a question
that doesn't have the form forthat.
So it's a super interestingconcept of something that links
(30:28):
that same I guess need togetherfor a-.
Santosh Sharan (30:32):
Spot on.
When you ask a question onGoogle, you're really engaging
with content that somebodyposted some of the time that was
not designed to answer yourquestion.
You're trying to barely matchto like a demand and a supply
that were not made for eachother, right?
But agents change that.
(30:53):
With agents, when you ask aquestion, like in our platform,
it will go first do ai research,um, and then it will go to
brands that it thinks should beable to answer this question.
It will position it as as alead to say a vendor or agency,
and say, hey, do you think thisis relevant?
(31:15):
Because there's a $100 millioncompany, there's a VP, marketing
of this company that is havingthis problem.
Are you interested in writing anote?
Right?
So the good thing about agentsis humans just have to respond
to questions, like one time.
This is like a long tail ofQ&As that was missing in search.
Search was built for thedominant use case, right?
(31:38):
The same question that wereasked the top 20% of the use
case where search handled verywell because it was doing
keyword match, but there wasthis long, 80% of long tail that
were not handled, which I thinkagents and with support of
humans, because these will turninto real leads, could handle.
Kevin Kerner (31:59):
And AI mode in Google doesn't quite get there
because it's using….
Santosh Sharan (32:05):
The same 20% content.
Kevin Kerner (32:07):
The old regurgitated content yeah.
Santosh Sharan (32:10):
If Google could add a feature that if somebody
asked a question at that time,they could go to the content
author that they thought was thebest expert in those content
and say, hey, there's a questionthat your content doesn't
really answer, but I think youhave the answer because I see
what you wrote and can youplease give me a new answer?
Right, and if there wasincentive for this author and
(32:34):
they could give that answer,then Google could do this right.
But then the use case of Googleis instant real time.
In our case, if it's lead genand business problem, it doesn't
have to be real time.
It could be like one or twodays or a week later.
If you get some churn playbookfrom some VP marketing of
(32:55):
Zendesk or somebody crediblelike you would probably, it's
still as valuable right?
Kevin Kerner (33:01):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, for sure.
And that's after it's vetted,after the agents have talked to
each other and got out what theyneeded.
Yeah, it's like you have acharacter AI sort of scenario
where you can talk to the.
You know I can talk to, uh, youknow one of my kids characters
that they like, but then, uh,then that's vetted.
You know that is being vettedbetween the agents, but then I
(33:23):
can actually talk to thecharacter.
Like, I can actually reach outand get a and there's something
in it for both parties.
I get the answer but thecharacter gets the.
You know they get incentedsomehow.
The opportunity, let's say, isthe incentive Super.
Is that mean there's a massiveamount of training that needs to
go on on the brand side or theagency side to be able to have
(33:46):
these conversations in aplatform with these agents?
Like, how do you get the datato make sure the conversations
are?
Santosh Sharan (33:55):
relevant.
So in the beginning we thoughtthere would be massive training
required, but now we arerealizing it's actually much
simpler.
So we could start with whateverdata is out there and train
based on public data.
But then if a brand signs up ona platform and says, hey, this
is what I do, Say it's an agencyor a vendor and they have a
(34:18):
software that solves churn andretention so they set it up.
Anytime there's a conversationor question around those topics,
we put it in the demand tab forthere and said, look, you told
us you are interested in thesetopics.
We think this is early stage,but these are the questions that
came up in the last 24 hoursthat agents have already
(34:40):
answered and we share with themwhat conversation stage we are
in.
By the way, this is going to beimportant for Google as well.
I think the value will shiftfrom just keyword match to what
stage of the conversation areyou in?
Are you just like very highlevel, or this buyer is serious
buyer and they're like goingback and forth.
We think they have to make apurchase or the problem is
(35:00):
serious and we can tell, basedon the queries and repetitive,
how long they've been working onthe same problem and so on.
So we share and then the vendorchooses to.
So to your question.
Here is how the training happens.
The agents will respond tothese questions and the response
(35:21):
will say it's AI generated.
But either the buyer kicks backor challenges the response or
the agent themselves know thiswas not a high score or high
confidence response.
So then the response getsescalated to a human on the
brand side it could be a sellerand then when the human responds
the agent learns for the futurequestions, right?
(35:44):
So we find that this one-timeresponse in the first four weeks
, six weeks, this seller wouldbe seeing, say, 10 questions a
day, but two weeks laterthere'll only be six questions a
day.
Four weeks later there'll befour or six.
Eight weeks there's like onequestion a day or no question.
So learning happens whereupfront there's a lot of missing
(36:09):
sort of concepts, and then it'sbetter to train based on what
people are asking, because thequestions itself changes over
time, rather than pre-trainedsomehow and expect it'll all
work perfectly.
I believe the human curationaspect is a key part of agents
functioning, which I guessGoogle Answers or others are not
(36:33):
really thinking about it thisway.
Kevin Kerner (36:36):
No, because now you have a two-way conversation
that can train the agent on thenext conversation.
That's similar.
It's super interesting, it'svery interesting.
Where are you at with just yourproduct?
What's the launch been like?
What's the status?
(36:56):
I haven't got an update fromyou in a while on things.
Santosh Sharan (36:59):
What we are building is when people sign up
to our platform, everybody getsan agent of their own and then
they can come to our platformand write about whatever
challenges they have.
If you're a sales rep, you sayI want leads.
If you're a buyer, you couldsay, hey, I need to change my
CRM vendor, just give me someoptions.
(37:22):
And if you are just a CS rep,maybe you talk about churn,
right?
So everybody's got some problem.
That is top of mind.
They share that.
And then we have this AIresearch that we do, and then we
bring experts and peers thatare having the same problem, or
experts in those problems.
Our agents go out andproactively keep thinking about
(37:45):
this problem throughout the week.
So it's not a one-time searchlike Google does.
This is a continuous search andas soon as the agent finds some
interesting information, itpipes it in your Slack.
So this is going on andmeanwhile there are seller
agents and buyer agents, becauseeventually we want this to turn
(38:06):
to leads and sellers to engagewith content.
So what we have done is we havebuilt just the seller agent and
we want some sellers to startadopting standalone.
It'll take us maybe anotherthree months to build this whole
research platform, but once itdoes, the seller agent and the
(38:26):
buyer agent bolt on to thisplatform.
We also have built a buyeragent where buyers can send out
the agent and then this agentgoes to sellers and says pitch
to me, I'm working on behalf ofSantosh.
So instead of bothering Santoshwith your pitch, santosh is in
market to buy a CRM.
You can just pitch and then itcomes back to me with a grade
(38:49):
saying I spoke to 10 CRM vendors, but these are the two you
should really care about,because their responses were
best scored against the fivequalifying question you gave me
Amazing.
Kevin Kerner (39:00):
Wow, and they're always.
The thing that really gets meis, unlike search, when you have
a question they're alwaysworking to answer the question.
Santosh Sharan (39:09):
They're always analyzing looking for the next
person.
Yeah, they're always going toLinkedIn, google searching and
also, as the capabilitiesincrease, they'll be scheduling
calls and showing up on calls onbehalf of me.
Kevin Kerner (39:21):
Crazy.
I mean, that is just a wholenew dynamic and I can't help
thinking about it.
A combination of like where Igo to get information, Google
and LinkedIn where I go, andReddit and G2 and other places.
It's really.
It's really a unique connectionbetween, for a buyer, like
somebody who's buying me, asmall business owner, let's say,
(39:43):
seeking some sort of answer tosomething.
It's really because there's alot of utility.
Your agent has a lot of utilityfor me because I could go have
it work on my behalf and findthe answer and I don't have to
go through a bunch of Redditthreads.
Santosh Sharan (39:57):
Right or search Google.
Kevin Kerner (39:58):
It's amazing.
Santosh Sharan (39:59):
Yeah, right now those agents are just like
search engine or they're justreturning information to your
questions.
But we are already seeing theadvent of agent and we certainly
have on our roadmap where Icould give it tasks to like
(40:20):
execute and come back to meafter like a few days or week,
or it doesn't have to be doneright now, at this instant.
Kevin Kerner (40:23):
That's where it gets really powerful man, santa,
just like well, we could go onforever, because I remember the
old days when we would go onforever.
I know we both you have limitedtime.
I know this is somehow linked.
At some point on anotherpodcast, you and I are going to
talk about your ability to.
(40:44):
This sounds like somethingthat's sort of genuine in you,
because on LinkedIn you'reanswering questions.
You're giving a lot of value,like you're a brand of your own
on LinkedIn.
I can see how the kernel ofsome of what you're doing there
actually has affected this partof the product idea.
But I don't think we're goingto have time to get to that, but
we'll do it at some point inthe future.
I definitely wanted to get to myAI roulette question.
(41:06):
So this is a question I do witheveryone and I load just your
profile into Perplexity and Ihit a button and then Perplexity
gives me a question and I'veinstructed Perplexity to be kind
of sassy and, you know, maybecontroversial in some way.
So let me go ahead and do this.
I just literally just put inyour.
I'm now interviewing Santosh.
(41:28):
Here you go.
Okay, here's your question.
It's a little bit long, santosh, given your deep experience
with both data-driven sales andnow AI agents.
Let's play with a uniquescenario.
It's 2030 and 80% of B2B buyerinteractions are handled by AI
agents, but research finds thatmost buyers can now spot AI.
(41:51):
Speak the sanitized, overlypolite, jargon-filled responses.
In fact, a group of mememarketers M-E-M-E meme marketers
armed with humor and humanquirks, begin outperforming even
the most advanced AI-drivencampaigns, because buyers crave
authenticity and a good laugh.
So here's the roulette questionIf AI drives efficiency but
(42:14):
meme marketers drive trust andengagement, which side would you
bet on to win over the nextgeneration of B2B buyers?
Santosh Sharan (42:22):
That's just silly.
Would the memes win?
Kevin Kerner (42:26):
Does meme win or I don't know what it's asking?
Santosh Sharan (42:28):
Yeah, no, I think there's a profound lesson
in here.
I'm amazed by how it came soeventually differentiation wins.
So what it's saying is look,authenticity and scale and trust
can be scaled through AI, let'ssay in the next five years.
Let's say in the next fiveyears, and then through memes
(42:52):
which is silly you can tellwhich creatives are done by
humans or which campaign.
I think the memes will winhands down and there's a
constant battle for humans toseek trust and credibility.
Even if it comes by I meanthat's kind of even if it comes
(43:12):
through like some gimmicks.
Kevin Kerner (43:16):
I agree.
I was kind of thinking too thememes would win, that meme
marketing could become a wholething.
It already is a thing, butmaybe it's the thing that takes
down the AI stuff.
Santosh Sharan (43:27):
Yeah, there's going to be AI noise after like
2030.
You know what?
Kevin Kerner (43:32):
It's really weird too to see all the AI video
stuff, because a lot of the AIvideo stuff that's on MVO or
Kling or whatever is kind oftorching the AI space.
So it's using AI to say this isridiculous.
Why is this happening?
It's just funny to see.
Well, it's so great to talk toyou.
I don't get to talk to youenough, so I had to.
(43:53):
I had to build a podcast so hecould get on.
Get on a call together.
Santosh Sharan (43:58):
A lot of conversations.
Kevin, let's do it again.
Kevin Kerner (44:01):
Definitely.
So how does I know you'reactive on LinkedIn?
So I would encourage I'll putthe LinkedIn your LinkedIn
profile in the show notes, buthow do people learn more about
Xero?
Santosh Sharan (44:13):
So we are intentionally kind of keeping it
under wraps.
One of the things I learnedwhile at RB2B is the benefit of
working in public, but also thecounterintuitive reasons not to
do some of that, because wecreated like 20 other
(44:35):
competitors in the process.
So and then building thesetools are so easy these days and
what we are building is complexin idea, but it's taking time
just because we have lessresource.
So the best way to learn aboutwhat Zier is doing is reach out
to me.
I love talking, I love sharingand more often than not, I love
(44:56):
to share what I'm doing and getyour perspective.
I don't think I'll bementioning it on a website just
yet.
If we do, we'll just talk aboutthe sales agent, what we are
launching, but I'm more excitedabout the overall vision Sounds
great.
Kevin Kerner (45:13):
Yeah, and I can say that you're super active on
LinkedIn and you're alwayswilling to share perspective and
comment and stuff.
You're just a great friend andthought leader to have out there
.
You're my in part, you're my AIthought partner, Santosh.
I still need Claude and chat,but you're not that good, but
you are pretty good, All right.
(45:34):
Thank you so much, santosh.
We'll talk soon.
Cheers, cheers.
Hello everyone.
This is Kevin Kerner with TechMarketing Rewired.
Photo market isn't what it usedto be.
Channels are saturated, thebuyers are guarded and AI agents
are starting to do the workhumans used to handle.
In this episode, I sat downwith Santos Sharon, founder of
Zier AI, to talk about how AIagents aren't just automating
outreach they're increasinglybecoming the buyer's first move.
It's a new model for discoverywhere agents collect, qualify
(00:23):
and surface the best optionslong before a human ever enters
the chat.
This is revolutionary stufffrom my good friend, santos.
I hope you enjoy it.
Let's get into it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
Hey, welcome to Tech MarketingRewired.
(00:47):
I'm Kevin Kerner, your host, andtoday I'm joined by my good
friend, santos Sharon.
I watched firsthand how he'sreally had a front row seat and
led, but I don't know all thestuff data intent, platforms,
all the go-to-market stuff.
It's really evolved over theyears and, more importantly, I
think Santos is at the forefrontof how it's changing,
especially with AI.
He's held roles ranging from Ilooked at your LinkedIn, saw
(01:11):
your Digitas, I forgot aboutthat Lead Genius, rb2b, and we
actually go way back to Aberdeen.
We were at Aberdeen togetherand today he's the founder of
Zier AI.
So, santosh, I'm super happy tohave you on the show.
How you been.
Santosh Sharan (01:26):
Very good and so thrilled to be here.
Look forward to chatting withyou, Kevin.
Yeah, this is good stuff.
Kevin Kerner (01:32):
Can you imagine if we had the capabilities that we
have now, when we were both atAberdeen?
The whole intent?
Santosh Sharan (01:38):
Like 12, 15 years ago.
Kevin Kerner (01:40):
Yeah.
Santosh Sharan (01:45):
I just think we were a little ahead of our time
back then.
We were, we were, and you know,in some way, the biggest change
that has happened since then tonow is that earlier playbooks
were only accessible to savvymarketers, and now everybody has
a playbook with a button.
Kevin Kerner (02:00):
And that's direct marketing with a button and
that's the direct marketing.
Can you imagine all therules-based stuff that we were
doing?
It's just crazy.
And you didn't have any accessto it.
Now you can just go to Claudeand just make it happen.
It's crazy.
Well, so I went a little bitover your history.
I wonder if you could take usthrough a quick intro, your
(02:20):
journey of how you got to whereyou are, and then just dig into
a bit about what's happeningfrom your perspective and go to
market right now.
Santosh Sharan (02:30):
All right, let's dive in let's do it.
So my career started off.
I started off my career as asoftware engineer that's what I
studied in college and somewhereseven, eight years into my
career I was part of a smallstartup that got acquired for a
lot of money by Johnson Johnson.
(02:50):
It was a pharmaceutical startup.
So that's when I got this bugof starting companies and I did
one, and then I really began tolike go-to-market.
I realized that more value canbe created through go-to-market
than through product developmentand that led me with ZoomInfo.
(03:11):
And then last 15, 20 years,increasingly, I've been spending
more and more time with salesmarketing teams, sometimes
operations, but primarilyfocused on go-to-market.
And here's something radical Ihave to share.
I think the last time I feltlike this was 15 years ago.
(03:31):
So if you break go-to-marketinto big generational shifts,
before 15 years ago I think youwould hire a CMO for their gut
feeling or CRO for their Rolodexright.
People were more intuitive,more relationship-based
(03:53):
go-to-market, right.
But then, like somewhere around15 years ago, data and
automation started to take over,where relationships didn't
matter as much.
Right Attribution mattered alot than intuition.
Right Now, it was all good inthe beginning.
Now, fast forward to today.
(04:15):
I feel like everything's broken.
Pipelines are down.
The sales math doesn't work.
All marketing channels suck.
Nobody responds.
There's almost dignity in salesand marketing that's got lost,
because imagine being a salesrep and doing 20 calls and
everybody, like screaming at theother end, don't want to talk
(04:37):
to you.
That's not how it used to beRight and we got to fix that
right and we got to fix that.
Kevin Kerner (04:48):
Yeah, do you think it's um?
I was just.
I just told on the pre-callhere.
I was telling you about talkingto elaine at um tofu.
Do you think it's generationalto some degree?
Like like the part of thechange is the technology that we
now have has changed, but nowthe buyers now uh, b2b buyers
are in a different generation tosome degree.
So it's like the tools are havegotten to the point where
they've matured and moreaccessible, but it's almost like
the generation now sort of ismaybe not used to the same
(05:11):
tactics that we used to, ordoesn't like the same tactics
that used to work back in theday.
Santosh Sharan (05:16):
That's a good point, Although I feel like too
much of good thing becomes a badthing.
So we got greedy with data andautomation, so greedy that we
said you know, like it doesn'tcost us anything, let's just
send 100,000 email when we couldsend thousand.
Right, Because it doesn't costmuch.
(05:38):
Now think about a CMO of acompany that just raised $50
million.
So when we were at Appendine 15years back, this CMO would have
gotten, say, two or threeemails saying, hey,
congratulations, and I think myproduct could help you scale and
let's talk, right.
(05:58):
But today the CMO is getting100 emails because it's become
so easy and accessible that withone click, like, every signal
provider is providing fundingsignals right, and every
automation is integrated withfunding signal outreach, and so
that's such a lousy playbook nowLike so then, what the buyers
(06:20):
are reacting with?
This is what Gartner has beensaying for like 10 years.
Buyers don't want to talk tosalespeople increasingly right,
and they are responding by beingdisengaged.
They're just stepping away anddoing their own research and
they want to come in when theyhave made their final decision
to work with, say, two of the 20vendors right.
(06:41):
Of the 20 vendors right.
I think part of it isgenerational, but a lot of this
is just buyers responding todemocratized or accessible or
low-cost data and automation,and a lot of lazy automation, I
should say the smart automationstill works.
Kevin Kerner (07:02):
Yeah.
So the thesis is it's a lot ofnoise led the collapse of
channels because you've got somuch spam or poor marketing
going on, and it's only going toget worse.
It's just going to get biggerand bigger.
What do you think theopportunity then is how do you
(07:24):
react to that as a marketer?
Now, what's?
Santosh Sharan (07:28):
the opportunity.
I think everybody has to thinkabout new playbook.
So when we were talking aboutABM and signal-based marketing,
really we were doing noise-basedmarketing.
Kevin Kerner (07:40):
And even ABM.
Now, Sanjay, if you think aboutit, it's still pretty noisy
because everyone has the ABMtechnologies.
Santosh Sharan (07:47):
There's another vector that is fueling all this,
just sitting in the back of theroom, and that's AI, a sector
that only had, say, 50 vendors.
(08:07):
There's going to be 100 in likenext 12 months, or 150, because
the cost of building tools aregoing to just go like near zero,
right?
So what that does is the buyercost increases because buyer has
to search through like a fewtools they could count on
fingers.
Now they can't.
They're like 50 more and theneverybody begins to look the
same.
There's like no differentiationbetween tools.
(08:27):
How do you differentiatethrough the noise?
When you're 20, then it's hardto differentiate.
Imagine if they're 200.
Yeah, right.
So this is where a new breed, anew age and new generation of
marketers have to emerge, and Ifeel like a lot of consumer
marketing will start to, becauseconsumer marketers are already
(08:48):
used to dealing with this noise.
So brand, for instance, is moreimportant.
Cutting through narrative,radical differentiations,
connecting with human emotionsall of that becomes more
important.
In fact, productdifferentiation will start to
take more of a backseat thanbefore, because cost of product
(09:13):
building will be same Even ifyou're different.
So what?
Somebody can copy you in twoweeks.
So then there will always beparity.
Kevin Kerner (09:20):
Yeah, that's a super interesting concept.
And so, because you're right, Imean I can go into base 44 and
replete right now and I'm doingthis right now and it's a lot of
fun and I'm building apps thathave pretty good features.
I'm not launching anything, I'mjust doing it just to test it.
But, like, what is the cost ofa feature?
Now?
It's like it's, it's so easy.
I'm not building anythingthat's production grade, but you
(09:44):
know, fast forward, another twoor three years, I might be able
to build something that'sreally pretty darn good, and so
I think you may be right.
I think the big playersobviously are seeing this, like
Salesforce and others.
They're seeing these micro apps, or what does Scott Brinker
call it.
It's like it sort ofdemocratizes the creation of,
(10:07):
you know, app creation.
Let's say I think you're right.
Um that.
Santosh Sharan (10:13):
But trust and credibility cannot be copied
that easily.
Yeah right, your sense thatthis company will stand by me
when difficult times come.
That cannot be copied right.
So I've and in one-on-oneconversation like this you can
build trust.
I think we will start to seemore scalable trust building and
(10:36):
that will become the primarydifferentiator for good market.
Kevin Kerner (10:41):
Completely yeah.
So brand is the trust part ofbrand is super important and
authenticity and having genuinerelationships.
So tell me what you tell mewhat you see the business
opportunity for a platform isnow.
I know you're doing some ofsome interesting things at Xere.
Tell me a little bit about whatthe vision is for a more
(11:03):
authentic go to market.
Santosh Sharan (11:05):
Yeah.
So I was reading somewhererecently that in the last three
years surveyed winning by designin Europe surveyed 50 SaaS
companies public SaaS companieslargest and they found that the
CAC rose by about 60% in thelast three years.
(11:26):
Now let's extrapolate that andI'll answer your question more
directly.
So with AI and more competitivenew entrants coming in the
market, cac is going to rise.
Right, and what's happening onSEO we'll talk more about that
(11:46):
is going to make CAC risebecause the inventories are
dropping right, the adinventories.
So endpoint solutions.
So if you go 15 years ago, bestof breed was the way to build a
SaaS company.
Right, buyers were buying thebest of this and best of that
and best of that and put it alltogether and integrate using
(12:09):
Zapier and other tools.
And put it all together andintegrate using Zapier and other
tools.
Now, if the CAC becomesunsustainable for endpoint
solution, where the CAC is sohigh that they can't afford
given the cost of the software,right.
So I feel like the high CACwill ensure that all softwares
are just platforms.
(12:29):
So once your customer is in,you can support all different
workflows, not just one endpointright.
So I foresee every softwarebecoming a platform.
Either they build a platform oftheir own or they join a
platform.
I also think, like someone likeSalesforce can build end-to-end
(12:49):
platforms, but small companiescannot.
But I do think one likeSalesforce can build end-to-end
platforms, but small companiescannot.
But I do think one of thebiggest opportunities that's
going to come in the next 12, 18months is there'll be rise of
multiple industry stacks wherethese companies are going to
cooperate and compete at thesame time and they'll build
(13:10):
industry stacks out of box sothey'll be priced together.
They'll be pre-integrated soyou can go just hook it up as if
you are working with SAP orRippling or some of those
platforms that are compound, butwith different companies.
Without that, they won't beable to sustain the high cost of
(13:33):
CAC.
Kevin Kerner (13:35):
The platform, ecosystem becomes the channel.
That's a great way to put it.
Yeah, do you see any industrieswhere that, or can you give me
some examples of where you thinkthat might play?
First, you mentioned Rippling,which I think is a really
interesting example of how youcould plug into that ecosystem.
Can you think of any othersthat are top of mind for you?
Santosh Sharan (14:00):
I think the general platforms, like, say,
marketing or sales, those aremore broad, yeah, also, they
have more budgets broad Also,they have more budgets.
I would think verticals orsmaller platforms where they
have less budgets could even bea good place to start to take
(14:21):
over, because then the CACreally makes a difference.
Also, platforms that areverticals or segments that have,
say, premium players, thosewould be good ones for smaller
players to take off, because ifthere's a premium player,
(14:43):
they're charging more but theyalso have more features with
that others cannot replicate,but together five companies can
replicate what, say, sap isdoing for manufacturing or some
vertical.
So now, for the first time, Ithink, there'll be real
competition against thesepremium players.
Kevin Kerner (15:00):
Yeah, and the whole key to all this is the
composability between thedifferent platforms, the ease of
integration with other systems,and you know what will really
activate that is that I have alot of fun playing around with
MCP now.
It's so fun too.
It's not the easiest thingbecause if you're, if you're
connecting it with somethingthat isn't isn't, doesn't have a
really easy integration with,like cloud or something, but
(15:24):
it's not that hard.
But once that clicks in yourbrain that you can use MCP to
have an LLM dig into somethingelse Right, and I just posted
the other day about this GitHubthat had 3,000 MCP connections
to it.
But psychologically, once thatclicks into the general public
or the general business person,I think what you're saying is
(15:47):
right.
It could, this connection toeverything could really begin to
take off.
Santosh Sharan (15:55):
Yeah, and that is going to disrupt.
Because if either you are partof a platform or you're out,
because then it becomes nowthere'll be limited slots in
these platforms, right.
And if buyers are saying, look,it's cheaper for me to just
work with a single platformbecause the car gets subsidized
(16:18):
for everybody else, right,Otherwise, the endpoint solution
they are to keep spending moneyinto acquiring customers.
So, yeah, you're either in oryou're out of business.
It's going to be amazing.
Kevin Kerner (16:33):
Yeah, that's incredible.
So what's the next step fromthis thesis, Like where does it
go from here?
As a product owner or amarketer?
Santosh Sharan (16:45):
I think every endpoint SaaS company need to
think.
Like every SaaS marketers needto consider can they turn their
product into a platform or canthey go after adjacent workflows
easily?
Now cost of development hasgone down, so maybe they can
right.
(17:05):
That way they can charge moreor give more value to their
customer for the same price.
That way they can charge moreor give more value to their
customer for the same price.
The real battleground is goingto be once you have a customer,
how do we retain that customer?
Because the new acquisitionwill just either be too
expensive or start to dry up,because everybody will be
holding on to the customers theyhave, right, yeah, and if
(17:28):
you're a large company and youenjoy brand premiums and that, I
think premium will kind ofthere'll be downward pricing
pressure.
So I think there will be issueswith enjoying those premiums
invested, hoping that there'llalways be this winner-take-all
(17:50):
model where excess capital willturn some of these companies
into enjoying these brandpremiums and charging far more
than their competitors can.
I think with AI and lower costof development, those premiums
are going to start to give wayto smaller companies or start to
get distributed.
Kevin Kerner (18:11):
Yeah, I completely agree, and I know you posted a
lot on different pricing modelsand the sort of more
credit-based or results-basedpricing models.
I think it's going to putincredible pressure on the
HubSpots and the sales forces ofthe world, the big enterprise
platforms.
It's just even as a buyer, as abusiness owner, it's really
(18:33):
hard to swallow some of thosebigger fees.
Now, now that I see the otherpricing models, if I can pay for
usage or credits, it's so mucheasier than paying per seat.
It just doesn't work for me aswell as it has.
Santosh Sharan (18:46):
Right, right yeah.
In some ways, those are marketinefficiencies, right yeah,
Marketing is the science ofexploiting market inefficiencies
to your favor.
And now we are getting moreefficient and the companies that
are benefiting from it aregoing to give back.
Kevin Kerner (19:04):
Yeah, okay, I want to go back to the channel thing
that you brought up earlier.
Search is difficult becauseAIOs paid is tricky, although I
have a perspective that I thinkpaid search is maybe a bit more
important now because you can'tget in the top, you can't get
past the AIOs, so pay, you know,spending some on paid search
(19:26):
actually is is not a bad idea ifyou're trying to get your brand
noticed.
But ads are tough.
Email is almost impossible.
Santosh Sharan (19:37):
Right Phone is impossible.
Even email is getting ranked.
Kevin Kerner (19:42):
I have an agent now that goes through my email.
I don't know why Gmail doesn'tdo this, but it basically goes
through my email and pulls it.
It's the Relay app Pulls outwhat it thinks are cold emails,
identifies them, builds a nicereply to them, puts them in my
draft folder and I just scanthem every day and I just hit
send.
I don't even have to look atthem anymore.
(20:05):
It's pretty incredible.
Santosh Sharan (20:06):
What you just did with email.
What you just described, Ithink, is the core or the crux
of the future of go-to-market.
It's really important tounderstand what you just did,
because you were looking atemails yourself and now the
agent looks at it, first decidesfor whatever reason, and then
(20:27):
you look at the remaining emails.
Now apply that model, exactsame model, to search.
We were looking at searchresults.
Now we're not going to belooking at search results.
Some agent will look at it andgive us only the top or top two.
Apply that to sales calls.
Kevin Kerner (20:46):
Browsers.
Santosh Sharan (20:49):
Buyers are not going to talk to so many sales
calls.
They'll only talk to the toptwo right, and that's just going
to be the norm.
So those comprehensively likegoing through every candidate in
the.
Those days are gone andthere'll be a lot of agent to
agent communication.
Now the race will shift to howdo I impress the agent?
So if I am sending email toyour inbox I should be thinking
(21:14):
what should I write?
So your filters or your agentwill escalate it to you
Completely.
I think that would be the newmarket 100%.
Kevin Kerner (21:22):
And same thing with your website, like do
websites become really justagent tools, like the agent to
agent?
Yeah, so that's superinteresting, did you see?
I just saw this morning thatApple's new beta has a browser
function.
So if you're looking at yourphone, you can hit I think it
must be in Safari.
(21:42):
So you hit the button in Safariand you can click on any part
of the screen.
That's a distraction and itwill remove those containers
from the browser.
Wow, so if you're reading anarticle, like in wired or
something or you know, you justmaybe you want to read an
article and there are a ton ofdifferent ads that show up you
can just like you literally justhit this button and then you
just start clicking off the adsand it makes them just like poof
(22:05):
and they just, they justcompletely disappear.
Santosh Sharan (22:08):
Just went up a little bit.
Somebody spent money to reachout to you.
Kevin Kerner (22:14):
So can you imagine , yeah, and I don't know, maybe
the click action is actually aclick, so you're spending the
money as a brand, but your ad isdisappearing.
There's no reason that thatcan't happen with an agent
instead of a person having to,like, put their finger on their
phone.
So it's just a matter of timebefore that stuff is tricky and
there really is no system rightnow to scale authenticity, so
(22:39):
authentic brands.
It's tough because you know Ido the podcast, because I'm
super interested in it, but andI'd learned from all these great
people but it's also you knowwe as a brand need to be out
there talking about this stuff,because you know we're a tech
marketing organization, so weneed to be at the forefront of
these discussions.
But it's not easy, you knowthere's no, it's very manual.
Santosh Sharan (23:02):
It's the toughest problem of the next
decade.
I can tell you how we aretrying to do that.
Yeah, I can't say we havecompletely cracked the code, but
yeah, that is.
I'm sure there'll be multipleinitiatives to do it right.
Kevin Kerner (23:16):
Yeah, Things that we don't even expect to see yet
and then and then it'll get allspammed out.
So what we'll be after onauthenticity, who knows what
that will be.
But yeah, I would like for youto talk about what you see the
opportunity to scale.
It sounds terrible to scaleauthentic relationships because
(23:37):
you don't really want to do that, because they're authentic and
real.
But how do you keep it real anddo it in a way that allows you
to at least scale, multiplyyourself in some way, scale
multiply yourself in some way.
Santosh Sharan (23:50):
Yeah, I think a big part of that is to just
acknowledge what's going on andnot fight it, ride the wave
right and then the other is.
So, for instance, this noise isjust going to stay Right.
And this sales-led marketingwhere sellers raise the hand and
(24:11):
said look, my ICP has 10,000people, I'm just going to go
round robin on all 10,000 or abulk of them and see who's in
market to buy, that justgenerated a lot of revenue for
every vendor in that platform,every channel.
So everyone recommended thatapproach, but then it generated
a lot of noise and a lot ofmistrust and it basically
(24:35):
wrecked those channels in thelong run.
Right, I think?
Think about the buyers.
They just want to buy somethingand it's difficult to buy.
They're not even paid orrecognized for what they're
doing, right?
So, companies, you're talkingabout how to get you know how to
build trust at scale.
One way to build trust if I ama vendor um, even enterprise
(25:00):
larger vendor um, and Irecognize that buying is
difficult in my space, I wouldcreate a website.
I I would create buying tool.
This is exactly what we areenabling at Xero.
That will help my buyers buybetter.
So it reduces all the you know,hurdles and friction and that
(25:22):
generates trust and credibilityin ways that otherwise you can't
.
That's one way.
The second way if buyers can beencouraged to share their
problems every day and theproblems could range from like I
have churn, I need to hire acontroller, I need to do a
campaign, I need playbooks andbest practice for getting some
(25:49):
lead gen.
So buyers are constantly havingthese problems every day in
business, in the course ofbusiness.
If they could come to a siteand like ask for those problems,
and then agencies and vendorscould respond just to those
problems, right, not startpitching and saying, hey, I have
this tool I think you shouldbuy, and here are the five
(26:11):
features my tool does, which ishow they do today.
Right, and if that can be donein a targeted manner, at scale,
through agents, agents areactually going to get pretty
sophisticated.
Agents won't be like just chatgpt giving you generic answers.
Agents will get.
It will become an extension.
(26:32):
It'll begin to.
If I have an agent, um, overtime, if there's a mathematical
certainty, then it starts tosound like me.
Now, in the beginning it'sclunky and it doesn't sound like
me and it's barely reactive, uh, but uh, it's just like
learning If it has all thecontent, it learns pretty
quickly and it starts to.
(26:54):
So we could respond in a verytargeted manner to buyer pain
and buyer needs On demand inreal time within the context at
scale.
And now think about the buyer'smindset If they're getting
answers and responses from thesame brand or same agency again
(27:15):
and again, they like to workwith this agency, maybe
prioritize and just go to theagency next time, right?
And so this is how business isgoing to be done, where the
agents create credibility in thebeginning and these agents
don't get annoyed.
If a seller agent asks the buyeragent 10 times a day, is there
any demand for me today?
(27:35):
But buyers get annoyed, like,stop chasing me, but agents are
just API calls.
So in our platform, agents areasking each other all like 10
times a day if needed, andthat's fair game, right.
And as soon as there's a demand, as soon as there's a question,
as soon as there's a problem,as long as they're in the right
ICP, these agents figure it outand then start helping each
(27:57):
other.
Kevin Kerner (27:58):
Yeah, so agents can filter out the noise between
agents and serve up the stuffthat's valuable for the buyer
right.
Santosh Sharan (28:06):
Yeah, so one more point there, since you
mentioned the noise part.
The biggest problem inmarketing and sales today is we
have created too many jobs andchores for ourselves, a lot of
which are not useful right,since people are sitting on
calls.
If you look at their calendar,like a lot of the calls don't
(28:27):
yield into revenue, but thenthere's no way to get around.
You have to do like 40 calls aweek to find those four that are
valuable, but you don't knowwhich four.
Otherwise you could have donejust four right.
So when agents do those 40calls between other agents, the
sellers just have more timeright and they can focus and
(28:49):
they can do something morevaluable with their time.
Plus, I don't think we'll needthis large teams We'll probably
undergo, you know, higher quotaper rep.
But also, I think there's goingto be the way agencies work
will change.
I think a lot more budget willshift to agencies than before.
(29:11):
But yeah, this is a massivetime of change and transition.
A lot of the noise that wecreated in the last two decades
agents will cut through thatnoise.
Kevin Kerner (29:24):
You know, what's super interesting about what
you're saying is if I'm going toask a question and I want to go
to a community, I'm probablygoing to go to G2, or I'm going
to go to Reddit or somewhere.
I'm going to look throughReddit throughout.
I'm going to ask that question,I'm probably going to start in
Google or something or maybeChatGPT.
So I'm going to the communityin that way.
But if I'm if I'm I don't dothis proactively, but if I'm
(29:45):
following a brand on LinkedInand they have good content, I
will interact with that content.
So my brand affinity ishappening on the LinkedIn side,
let's say, because it's throughcontent and stuff and so and
it's a lot of it's happeningthrough personalities with that
content.
And then the the part of me thatwants to buy something is, or
ask a question about how tosolve something, is going to the
(30:06):
community sites.
There's no bridge between thosetwo things and if a brand shows
up in the Reddit side, I'mgoing to not, I'm going to be
like not, I'm probably notinterested, and LinkedIn really
isn't the place to ask.
Ask, you can, but it's kind ofan odd place to ask a question
that doesn't have the form forthat.
So it's a super interestingconcept of something that links
(30:28):
that same I guess need togetherfor a-.
Santosh Sharan (30:32):
Spot on.
When you ask a question onGoogle, you're really engaging
with content that somebodyposted some of the time that was
not designed to answer yourquestion.
You're trying to barely matchto like a demand and a supply
that were not made for eachother, right?
But agents change that.
(30:53):
With agents, when you ask aquestion, like in our platform,
it will go first do ai research,um, and then it will go to
brands that it thinks should beable to answer this question.
It will position it as as alead to say a vendor or agency,
and say, hey, do you think thisis relevant?
(31:15):
Because there's a $100 millioncompany, there's a VP, marketing
of this company that is havingthis problem.
Are you interested in writing anote?
Right?
So the good thing about agentsis humans just have to respond
to questions, like one time.
This is like a long tail ofQ&As that was missing in search.
Search was built for thedominant use case, right?
(31:38):
The same question that wereasked the top 20% of the use
case where search handled verywell because it was doing
keyword match, but there wasthis long, 80% of long tail that
were not handled, which I thinkagents and with support of
humans, because these will turninto real leads, could handle.
Kevin Kerner (31:59):
And AI mode in Google doesn't quite get there
because it's using….
Santosh Sharan (32:05):
The same 20% content.
Kevin Kerner (32:07):
The old regurgitated content yeah.
Santosh Sharan (32:10):
If Google could add a feature that if somebody
asked a question at that time,they could go to the content
author that they thought was thebest expert in those content
and say, hey, there's a questionthat your content doesn't
really answer, but I think youhave the answer because I see
what you wrote and can youplease give me a new answer?
Right, and if there wasincentive for this author and
(32:34):
they could give that answer,then Google could do this right.
But then the use case of Googleis instant real time.
In our case, if it's lead genand business problem, it doesn't
have to be real time.
It could be like one or twodays or a week later.
If you get some churn playbookfrom some VP marketing of
(32:55):
Zendesk or somebody crediblelike you would probably, it's
still as valuable right?
Kevin Kerner (33:01):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, for sure.
And that's after it's vetted,after the agents have talked to
each other and got out what theyneeded.
Yeah, it's like you have acharacter AI sort of scenario
where you can talk to the.
You know I can talk to, uh, youknow one of my kids characters
that they like, but then, uh,then that's vetted.
You know that is being vettedbetween the agents, but then I
(33:23):
can actually talk to thecharacter.
Like, I can actually reach outand get a and there's something
in it for both parties.
I get the answer but thecharacter gets the.
You know they get incentedsomehow.
The opportunity, let's say, isthe incentive Super.
Is that mean there's a massiveamount of training that needs to
go on on the brand side or theagency side to be able to have
(33:46):
these conversations in aplatform with these agents?
Like, how do you get the datato make sure the conversations
are?
Santosh Sharan (33:55):
relevant.
So in the beginning we thoughtthere would be massive training
required, but now we arerealizing it's actually much
simpler.
So we could start with whateverdata is out there and train
based on public data.
But then if a brand signs up ona platform and says, hey, this
is what I do, Say it's an agencyor a vendor and they have a
(34:18):
software that solves churn andretention so they set it up.
Anytime there's a conversationor question around those topics,
we put it in the demand tab forthere and said, look, you told
us you are interested in thesetopics.
We think this is early stage,but these are the questions that
came up in the last 24 hoursthat agents have already
(34:40):
answered and we share with themwhat conversation stage we are
in.
By the way, this is going to beimportant for Google as well.
I think the value will shiftfrom just keyword match to what
stage of the conversation areyou in?
Are you just like very highlevel, or this buyer is serious
buyer and they're like goingback and forth.
We think they have to make apurchase or the problem is
(35:00):
serious and we can tell, basedon the queries and repetitive,
how long they've been working onthe same problem and so on.
So we share and then the vendorchooses to.
So to your question.
Here is how the training happens.
The agents will respond tothese questions and the response
(35:21):
will say it's AI generated.
But either the buyer kicks backor challenges the response or
the agent themselves know thiswas not a high score or high
confidence response.
So then the response getsescalated to a human on the
brand side it could be a sellerand then when the human responds
the agent learns for the futurequestions, right?
(35:44):
So we find that this one-timeresponse in the first four weeks
, six weeks, this seller wouldbe seeing, say, 10 questions a
day, but two weeks laterthere'll only be six questions a
day.
Four weeks later there'll befour or six.
Eight weeks there's like onequestion a day or no question.
So learning happens whereupfront there's a lot of missing
(36:09):
sort of concepts, and then it'sbetter to train based on what
people are asking, because thequestions itself changes over
time, rather than pre-trainedsomehow and expect it'll all
work perfectly.
I believe the human curationaspect is a key part of agents
functioning, which I guessGoogle Answers or others are not
(36:33):
really thinking about it thisway.
Kevin Kerner (36:36):
No, because now you have a two-way conversation
that can train the agent on thenext conversation.
That's similar.
It's super interesting, it'svery interesting.
Where are you at with just yourproduct?
What's the launch been like?
What's the status?
(36:56):
I haven't got an update fromyou in a while on things.
Santosh Sharan (36:59):
What we are building is when people sign up
to our platform, everybody getsan agent of their own and then
they can come to our platformand write about whatever
challenges they have.
If you're a sales rep, you sayI want leads.
If you're a buyer, you couldsay, hey, I need to change my
CRM vendor, just give me someoptions.
(37:22):
And if you are just a CS rep,maybe you talk about churn,
right?
So everybody's got some problem.
That is top of mind.
They share that.
And then we have this AIresearch that we do, and then we
bring experts and peers thatare having the same problem, or
experts in those problems.
Our agents go out andproactively keep thinking about
(37:45):
this problem throughout the week.
So it's not a one-time searchlike Google does.
This is a continuous search andas soon as the agent finds some
interesting information, itpipes it in your Slack.
So this is going on andmeanwhile there are seller
agents and buyer agents, becauseeventually we want this to turn
(38:06):
to leads and sellers to engagewith content.
So what we have done is we havebuilt just the seller agent and
we want some sellers to startadopting standalone.
It'll take us maybe anotherthree months to build this whole
research platform, but once itdoes, the seller agent and the
(38:26):
buyer agent bolt on to thisplatform.
We also have built a buyeragent where buyers can send out
the agent and then this agentgoes to sellers and says pitch
to me, I'm working on behalf ofSantosh.
So instead of bothering Santoshwith your pitch, santosh is in
market to buy a CRM.
You can just pitch and then itcomes back to me with a grade
(38:49):
saying I spoke to 10 CRM vendors, but these are the two you
should really care about,because their responses were
best scored against the fivequalifying question you gave me
Amazing.
Kevin Kerner (39:00):
Wow, and they're always.
The thing that really gets meis, unlike search, when you have
a question they're alwaysworking to answer the question.
Santosh Sharan (39:09):
They're always analyzing looking for the next
person.
Yeah, they're always going toLinkedIn, google searching and
also, as the capabilitiesincrease, they'll be scheduling
calls and showing up on calls onbehalf of me.
Kevin Kerner (39:21):
Crazy.
I mean, that is just a wholenew dynamic and I can't help
thinking about it.
A combination of like where Igo to get information, Google
and LinkedIn where I go, andReddit and G2 and other places.
It's really.
It's really a unique connectionbetween, for a buyer, like
somebody who's buying me, asmall business owner, let's say,
(39:43):
seeking some sort of answer tosomething.
It's really because there's alot of utility.
Your agent has a lot of utilityfor me because I could go have
it work on my behalf and findthe answer and I don't have to
go through a bunch of Redditthreads.
Santosh Sharan (39:57):
Right or search Google.
Kevin Kerner (39:58):
It's amazing.
Santosh Sharan (39:59):
Yeah, right now those agents are just like
search engine or they're justreturning information to your
questions.
But we are already seeing theadvent of agent and we certainly
have on our roadmap where Icould give it tasks to like
(40:20):
execute and come back to meafter like a few days or week,
or it doesn't have to be doneright now, at this instant.
Kevin Kerner (40:23):
That's where it gets really powerful man, santa,
just like well, we could go onforever, because I remember the
old days when we would go onforever.
I know we both you have limitedtime.
I know this is somehow linked.
At some point on anotherpodcast, you and I are going to
talk about your ability to.
(40:44):
This sounds like somethingthat's sort of genuine in you,
because on LinkedIn you'reanswering questions.
You're giving a lot of value,like you're a brand of your own
on LinkedIn.
I can see how the kernel ofsome of what you're doing there
actually has affected this partof the product idea.
But I don't think we're goingto have time to get to that, but
we'll do it at some point inthe future.
I definitely wanted to get to myAI roulette question.
(41:06):
So this is a question I do witheveryone and I load just your
profile into Perplexity and Ihit a button and then Perplexity
gives me a question and I'veinstructed Perplexity to be kind
of sassy and, you know, maybecontroversial in some way.
So let me go ahead and do this.
I just literally just put inyour.
I'm now interviewing Santosh.
(41:28):
Here you go.
Okay, here's your question.
It's a little bit long, santosh, given your deep experience
with both data-driven sales andnow AI agents.
Let's play with a uniquescenario.
It's 2030 and 80% of B2B buyerinteractions are handled by AI
agents, but research finds thatmost buyers can now spot AI.
(41:51):
Speak the sanitized, overlypolite, jargon-filled responses.
In fact, a group of mememarketers M-E-M-E meme marketers
armed with humor and humanquirks, begin outperforming even
the most advanced AI-drivencampaigns, because buyers crave
authenticity and a good laugh.
So here's the roulette questionIf AI drives efficiency but
(42:14):
meme marketers drive trust andengagement, which side would you
bet on to win over the nextgeneration of B2B buyers?
Santosh Sharan (42:22):
That's just silly.
Would the memes win?
Kevin Kerner (42:26):
Does meme win or I don't know what it's asking?
Santosh Sharan (42:28):
Yeah, no, I think there's a profound lesson
in here.
I'm amazed by how it came soeventually differentiation wins.
So what it's saying is look,authenticity and scale and trust
can be scaled through AI, let'ssay in the next five years.
Let's say in the next fiveyears, and then through memes
(42:52):
which is silly you can tellwhich creatives are done by
humans or which campaign.
I think the memes will winhands down and there's a
constant battle for humans toseek trust and credibility.
Even if it comes by I meanthat's kind of even if it comes
(43:12):
through like some gimmicks.
Kevin Kerner (43:16):
I agree.
I was kind of thinking too thememes would win, that meme
marketing could become a wholething.
It already is a thing, butmaybe it's the thing that takes
down the AI stuff.
Santosh Sharan (43:27):
Yeah, there's going to be AI noise after like
2030.
You know what?
Kevin Kerner (43:32):
It's really weird too to see all the AI video
stuff, because a lot of the AIvideo stuff that's on MVO or
Kling or whatever is kind oftorching the AI space.
So it's using AI to say this isridiculous.
Why is this happening?
It's just funny to see.
Well, it's so great to talk toyou.
I don't get to talk to youenough, so I had to.
(43:53):
I had to build a podcast so hecould get on.
Get on a call together.
Santosh Sharan (43:58):
A lot of conversations.
Kevin, let's do it again.
Kevin Kerner (44:01):
Definitely.
So how does I know you'reactive on LinkedIn?
So I would encourage I'll putthe LinkedIn your LinkedIn
profile in the show notes, buthow do people learn more about
Xero?
Santosh Sharan (44:13):
So we are intentionally kind of keeping it
under wraps.
One of the things I learnedwhile at RB2B is the benefit of
working in public, but also thecounterintuitive reasons not to
do some of that, because wecreated like 20 other
(44:35):
competitors in the process.
So and then building thesetools are so easy these days and
what we are building is complexin idea, but it's taking time
just because we have lessresource.
So the best way to learn aboutwhat Zier is doing is reach out
to me.
I love talking, I love sharingand more often than not, I love
(44:56):
to share what I'm doing and getyour perspective.
I don't think I'll bementioning it on a website just
yet.
If we do, we'll just talk aboutthe sales agent, what we are
launching, but I'm more excitedabout the overall vision Sounds
great.
Kevin Kerner (45:13):
Yeah, and I can say that you're super active on
LinkedIn and you're alwayswilling to share perspective and
comment and stuff.
You're just a great friend andthought leader to have out there
.
You're my in part, you're my AIthought partner, Santosh.
I still need Claude and chat,but you're not that good, but
you are pretty good, All right.
(45:34):
Thank you so much, santosh.
We'll talk soon.
Cheers, cheers.
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