BUILDERS

How TwelveLabs sells AI to federal agencies: Mission alignment over process optimization | Jae Lee

TwelveLabs is building purpose-built foundation models for video understanding, enabling enterprises to index, search, and analyze petabytes of video content at scale. Founded by three technical co-founders who met in South Korea's Cyber Command doing multimodal video understanding research, the company recognized early that video requires fundamentally different infrastructure than text or image AI. Now achieving 10x revenue growth and serving customers across media, entertainment, sports, advertising, and federal agencies, TwelveLabs is proving that category creation through extreme focus beats trend chasing. In this episode, Jae Lee shares how the company navigated early product decisions, built specialized GTM motions for established industries, and maintained technical conviction during years of building in relative obscurity.
Topics Discussed:
How military research in multimodal video understanding led to founding TwelveLabs in 2020 
The technical thesis: why video deserves purpose-built foundation models and inference infrastructure 
Targeting video-centric industries where ROI justifies early-stage pricing: media, entertainment, sports, advertising, and defense 
Partnership-driven distribution strategy and AWS Bedrock integration results 
Specialized sales approach: generalist leaders, vertical-specific AEs and solutions architects Maintaining extreme focus and avoiding hype cycles during the first three years of building 
Federal GTM lessons: why In-Q-Tel partnership and authentic mission alignment matter more than process optimization 
The discipline of saying no to large opportunities that don't fit ICP 
Keeping hiring bars high when the entire team is underwater
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Hire vertical specialists on the front lines, not just at the top: TwelveLabs structures its GTM team with generalist leaders (head of GTM and VP of Revenue) who can sell any technology, but vertical-specialized AEs, solutions architects, and deployment engineers. These front-line team members come directly from the four target industries and understand customer workflows, buying patterns, and integration points without ramp time. For founders entering mature markets with established tech stacks and complex procurement, this inverted model—generalist strategy, specialist execution—accelerates deal velocity because technical buyers immediately recognize domain fluency.
Infrastructure plays require integration partnerships, not displacement: In established industries with layered technology stacks, positioning as foundational infrastructure demands partnership-first distribution. Jae explained their approach: integration with media-specific GSIs, media asset management platforms, and cloud providers ensures TwelveLabs fits into existing workflows rather than forcing wholesale replacement. This is particularly critical for selling into industries like media and entertainment where technology decisions involve multiple stakeholders across production, post-production, and distribution. The AWS Bedrock integration delivered 30,000+ enterprise agreements in seven weeks—a distribution velocity impossible through direct sales alone.
Extreme focus on first-principles product development beats fast-follower tactics: While competitors built quick demos by wrapping existing models, TwelveLabs spent three years building proprietary video foundation models and indexing infrastructure from scratch. Jae was explicit about the cost: "It was painful journey in the first like two and a half, three years because folks are flying by." The payoff came from solving actual customer problems—indexing 2 million hours of content in two days, enabling semantic search at scale, building agent workflows for specific use cases—rather than impressive demos that couldn't handle production workloads. For technical founders, this validates staying committed to fundamental research even when market momentum favors surface-level innovation.
Federal requires cultural alignment before GTM optimization: TwelveLabs' federal success stems from authentic mission alignment, not just process execution. With In-Q-Tel as an investor providing interface to agencies and founders with military backgrounds, the company established credibility through shared values rather than sales tactics. Jae was direct: "If you're kind of entering because, oh, federal market is big and you go in, you're going to get your butt kicked. So I think like you need to actually build your team in a way that's like passionate to work on this project." This matters because federal deals require sustained engagement through long sales cycles, security reviews, and deployment complexity—momentum that only comes from genuine conviction, not quota pressure.
ICP discipline protects product focus and team morale: Saying no to large early opportunities that don't fit ICP is operationally painful but strategically essential. Jae acknowledged the difficulty: "Early on saying no to customers is hard... as a founder you want to grow your business and you know that's going to be good for the morale. But that's only true when the customers are actually their ideal customers." Wrong customers create three failure modes: they pull product roadmap toward one-off features, they consume disproportionate support resources, and they generate reference cases that attract more wrong-fit prospects. For early-stage infrastructure companies, every customer shapes your market position—choose deliberately.
//
Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
 
//
 
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

How Shush differentiated against competitors by solving business operations, not just deploying technology | Eddie DeCurtis, Co-Founder & CEO of Shush Inc.

With over 30 years in wireless—from helping pioneer intercarrier SMS to running mobile identity operations across Americas and Asia Pacific — Eddie DeCurtis saw what others missed: 967 of 1,000 global mobile network operators lack the infrastructure to monetize CPNI data while protecting customers from fraud. The technical challenge isn't building APIs. It's that operators spent billions on 5G infrastructure and now lack capital, internal expertise, and operational frameworks to launch authentication services. In 18 months, Shush went from PowerPoint to 30 employees, supporting 47 network APIs with full GSMA Open Gateway compliance. Eddie shares how understanding regulatory frameworks by jurisdiction, not just deploying technology, became their competitive moat—and why hiring the executive who built T-Mobile USA's authentication platform gave them credibility no competitor could match.
Topics Discussed:
Why operators repeatedly said "we want to do it, we have no idea how, we have no money, we don't have a platform"
Validating the thesis with former AT&T Communications CEO John Donovan before launching
Securing a POC with a major operator pre-incorporation—with only a PowerPoint deck
The three-legged stool: technology, network integration, and business operations (where competitors fail)
Why knowing privacy regulations for CPNI data sharing by country became a deal-closer
Reducing network integration from dozens of touchpoints to three specific network elements
Supporting 8 Linux Foundation Camara APIs and TS.43 GBA AKA authentication standard
Going from 3 to 30 employees and launching at Mobile World Congress on a $75/night Airbnb budget
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Validate with the person most likely to kill your idea: Eddie deliberately chose John Donovan—former CEO of AT&T Communications, board member at Lockheed and Palo Alto Networks—specifically because "he's going to be rough, he's going to totally ask the really hard questions." When Donovan's response was "go raise $40 million and own this space...you're not going to be alone for long," the validation carried weight because it came from someone incentivized to find fatal flaws. Most founders validate with friendly audiences or investors looking for deals. Find the battle-tested executive who has nothing to gain from being kind.
Convert pre-product conviction into design partner commitments: Eddie secured a POC agreement with a major operator before Shush incorporated. "I had nothing. I didn't have software. We had an idea, we had a PowerPoint presentation." This only works when you've spent decades building domain expertise and relationships. The lesson isn't "sell vaporware"—it's that deep industry knowledge lets you articulate problem-solution fit so precisely that sophisticated buyers commit before seeing code. Infrastructure founders with 10+ years in-market can accelerate 12-18 months of product-market fit by converting expertise into early design partnerships.
The enterprise moat is operational knowledge, not technical capability: Eddie's thesis: "Anybody can come up with the technology. You walk down the street in the Bay Area, 10 developers will develop it for you." Shush differentiated by answering questions competitors couldn't: How do you price SIM swap detection per query? What are CPNI data sharing regulations in Indonesia versus Brazil? How do you navigate internal stakeholder alignment across legal, privacy, and regulatory teams at a tier-one operator? When Eddie told an operator "here's the privacy rules for your country" after they admitted "I have no idea," he closed a knowledge gap that pure technology vendors can't fill. In regulated infrastructure markets, execution expertise beats technical superiority.
Target the ambition-capability gap in capital-constrained buyers: Operators told Eddie the same story: eager to launch authentication services, zero clarity on execution, budgets decimated by 5G spending. This created perfect conditions for a full-stack solution. "Mid-market is hard because you have a buyer with problems that are not basic anymore, but they lack the ability to execute." Shush didn't sell point solutions—they delivered technology, integration, and business operations as a turnkey package. Identify buyers with sophisticated needs, strong intent, and constrained internal resources. That's where full-stack platforms win over point tools.
Hire the operator who ran your exact use case at scale: Eddie cold-called John Morrowton, who "built this actual product and service offering at T-Mobile USA, from its inception to its execution and ran it for four years." His pitch: "I'm Eddie DeCurtis, how are you? You want a job? You're Chief Product Officer." Hiring someone who'd operationalized authentication services at a tier-one carrier gave Shush instant credibility with operator buyers and compressed years of trial-and-error into institutional knowledge. In infrastructure sales, hiring executives from reference customers eliminates "can you actually do this" objections before they surface.
Minimize integration surface area to accelerate deployment: Mobile operators run highly secure networks with limited external access points. Shush "narrowed it down to three network elements that we can communicate with to provide all 47 APIs." Fewer integration points means faster deployment, lower implementation risk, and reduced operator IT overhead. This architectural decision became a sales accelerator. Infrastructure founders: identify the minimal viable integration that unlocks maximum API coverage, then make that your differentiated deployment story.
 
//
 
Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
//
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

How Ludus survived 95% revenue loss during COVID-19 and came out stronger than ever | Zachary Collins

Ludus operates a zero-cost ticketing platform for performing arts organizations, monetizing through patron convenience fees while transferring full ticket face value to venues. What began as a freshman year project for a high school theater director evolved into a company processing millions annually across thousands of customers. After surviving COVID-19's 95% revenue elimination and competitor market exits, Ludus captured displaced customers and achieved their growth inflection point. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, CEO and Co-Founder Zachary Collins detailed the execution mechanics behind customer advocacy generation, human-differentiated scaling, and market expansion through systematic word-of-mouth amplification.
Topics Discussed:
Monetization alignment between platform and venues through patron-paid fee structures
Crisis survival mechanics: reducing to two employees while maintaining core product functionality
Systematic customer advocacy through documented attribution and public recognition programs
Counter-positioning against AI-first competitors through human-guaranteed support availability
Strategic capital deployment: transitioning from profitable bootstrapping to venture-accelerated expansion
Geographic and vertical expansion from high school theater to community venues and concert halls
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Deploy bottom-up penetration to bypass procurement friction and generate authentic adoption signals: Collins chose theater director sales over superintendent-level contracts despite longer individual deal cycles. This approach avoided forced adoption resistance while creating measurable engagement data from actual product usage rather than mandate compliance. The strategic insight: bottom-up sales generate higher-quality expansion opportunities because satisfied end users become internal advocates who influence broader organizational adoption. Implementation requires identifying decision-makers with both budget authority and day-to-day pain points, then optimizing for usage depth over initial contract size.
Transform support incidents into systematic advocacy generation through zero-effort resolution protocols: When database corruption lost customer registration data, Ludus manually contacted every affected parent, reconstructed missing information, and delivered complete solutions in organized spreadsheets. This zero-customer-effort approach generates 97-99% satisfaction scores while creating advocacy moments from potential churn situations. The tactical framework: establish incident response that eliminates customer work entirely, document extraordinary efforts taken, and follow up to ensure complete satisfaction. This converts support costs from pure overhead into measurable advocacy generation with direct attribution to pipeline growth.
Engineer feature request workflows for collaborative product development perception and testimonial generation: Collins maintains attribution tracking for every customer suggestion, notifies requesters when features launch, and credits contributors in public release communications. This systematic approach creates investment psychology where customers feel ownership in product evolution rather than experiencing transactional vendor relationships. The operational mechanics: implement CRM tagging for feature requests with customer attribution, maintain development pipeline visibility for relationship managers, and create regular recognition touchpoints that generate authentic testimonials from customers seeing their ideas implemented.
Capitalize on crisis-driven competitor consolidation through rapid capability expansion and customer acquisition: During COVID-19, while Ludus approached business failure with 95% revenue loss, they developed social distancing seating configurations and streaming integrations. As competitors failed or lost customer trust through poor crisis management, displaced organizations sought alternatives, creating Ludus's 2021 growth acceleration. This demonstrates the competitive opportunity in market disruptions: companies that maintain product investment during crisis periods position themselves to capture market share from failing incumbents. Strategic preparation requires maintaining development capabilities during revenue downturns and building crisis-specific feature sets before market demand crystallizes.
Counter-position against AI commoditization through human interaction guarantees and relationship depth: While competitors deploy AI-first support to reduce costs, Collins maintains human availability guarantees including coverage 10 minutes before customer events. This creates differentiation as AI standardizes basic interactions across the industry. The strategic positioning: as routine customer service becomes commoditized through AI deployment, companies maintaining genuine human relationships capture disproportionate value in relationship-dependent markets. Execution requires deliberate investment in support team scaling, clear AI boundary policies, and metrics that measure relationship quality rather than just response time efficiency.
 
//
 
Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
 
//
 
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire
Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
 
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

How Shadowbox evolved it’s ICP from desperate labs to health systems with 500-1,000 community providers | Gregory Stein

Healthcare providers waste $950 billion annually on manual workarounds caused by fragmented EHR systems and integration costs that don't scale. Shadowbox has developed a patented browser technology that functions as an API, enabling instant EHR data access without traditional integration expenses. In this episode of Category Visionaries, we sat down with Gregory Stein, CEO of Shadowbox, to dissect how the company evolved from serving desperate lab diagnostics customers to building strategic partnerships with established healthcare IT players like HC1 to reach health systems.
 
Topics Discussed:
How the 21st Century Cures Act information blocking provisions remain largely unenforced, allowing EHR vendors to maintain data monopolies through integration fees
Shadowbox's technical architecture: a white-labeled browser that accesses the document object model and API endpoints to extract HIPAA-compliant data without custom integrations
Market entry strategy—targeting financially distressed lab diagnostics providers who couldn't afford traditional integration costs
The HC1 partnership model: splitting the market by use case rather than geography, with HL7/API integrations going to HC1 and rapid, low-cost deployments going to Shadowbox
Sequential interoperability capabilities that enable multiple vendor touchpoints (prior authorization, eligibility verification, billing) from a single data extraction
 
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Target customers facing existential financial pressure, not optimal market conditions: Shadowbox entered through lab diagnostics—a commoditized, low-margin segment hemorrhaging money where providers faced $5K-$50K integration costs per connection taking 3-6 months. Greg acknowledged labs are "the redheaded stepchild of healthcare" but their desperation made them willing to pilot unproven technology. The lesson: segments with severe unit economics problems become early adopter pools because status quo costs exceed perceived risk of new vendors.
Build a partnerships function before you have market leverage: Shadowbox hired a partnerships-focused employee early to cultivate relationships with RCM vendors and lab information system providers already selling to target customers. Rather than waiting for customer traction to attract partners, they used partnerships to generate initial traction. Greg emphasized healthcare adoption requires credible references—partnerships provide instant credibility entrepreneurs can't buy. Map your ecosystem's existing vendor relationships and pursue co-sell arrangements before achieving meaningful ARR.
Use early customer feedback to migrate upmarket, not pivot laterally: Shadowbox started with labs, expanded to imaging centers, but their true ICP emerged as health systems with 500-1,000 community providers on disparate EHRs where traditional integration economics break down. Greg noted: "health systems that have major outreach programs where it doesn't pencil out to have them on their EPIC system." The migration path moved from small, desperate customers toward larger organizations facing the same core problem at scale. Don't mistake initial ICP for ultimate ICP—use early segments as beachheads to validate technology before pursuing customers with better economics.
Partner with horizontal competitors when you solve orthogonal use cases: The HC1 deal splits the interoperability market—structured, predictable integrations go to HC1's traditional approach while rapid deployments to fragmented provider networks go to Shadowbox. This isn't channel partnership but market segmentation by use case economics. Greg explained they bring "something complementary to and in some ways competitive" but combined create offerings competitors can't match. Evaluate whether your "competitors" actually serve different jobs-to-be-done within the same category, then structure partnerships around use case delineation rather than territorial splits.
Leverage policy expertise as product moat in regulated markets: Greg's Capitol Hill background enabled Shadowbox to support the Coalition for Innovative Lab Testing's successful lawsuit blocking FDA regulation of lab-developed tests—directly protecting their customers' business models. This wasn't marketing but strategic positioning that demonstrates commitment beyond vendor relationships. In heavily regulated industries, founders with policy expertise or advisors who can shape regulatory outcomes create defensibility that pure technology cannot. Consider how industry advocacy amplifies customer loyalty while potentially expanding TAM through favorable regulatory changes.
 
//
 
Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
 
//
 
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire
Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
 
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

How StrongestLayer achieved 85% meeting-to-POC and 100% POC-to-win rates using transparent one-week pilots | Alan LeFort

StrongestLayer is building AI-native email security architecture designed for threats that defeat pattern-matching systems. The company pivoted from security awareness training after early customers discovered its phishing detection plugin caught advanced threats that legacy gateway solutions missed. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, we sat down with Alan LeFort, CEO of StrongestLayer, to discuss why architectural generation matters more than vendor reputation in email security, and how they're using transparent proof-of-concept methodology to displace 20-year incumbents.
 
Topics Discussed:
Why AI-generated attacks with n=1 datasets break signature-based detection architectures
The convergence of legitimate marketing automation and phishing techniques (lookalike domains, intent signals, AI-personalized messaging)
How 2% of attack types represent 90% of breach value, forecast to reach 17% of volume by 2027
Transparent POC strategy achieving 85% meeting-to-POC and 100% qualified-POC-to-technical-win conversion
Stage-based ICP selection: targeting 1,000-10,000 seats for sub-6-month sales cycles with enterprise compliance requirements
Harvard Kennedy School research: AI enables 88% employee profiling from public data, 95% cost reduction for targeted campaigns, and 60% click rates versus 12% baseline
 
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Deploy transparent POCs as category displacement weapons: When attacking entrenched incumbents, StrongestLayer runs one-week POCs behind existing email security gateways with zero commercial pressure—just visibility into what's being missed. At a sub-1,000-seat company running behind a top-three market leader, they surfaced 80 advanced threats in one week. This approach converts 85% of first meetings to POC and 100% of qualified POCs to technical wins. The insight: In technical categories where buyers are sophisticated, removing evaluation friction and letting comparative performance speak eliminates trust barriers faster than enterprise reference selling.
Stage-match your ICP to burn rate tolerance, not TAM: Alan deliberately excludes Fortune 500 despite universal email security need: "When their procurement team is bigger than your whole company, not a good scene." Instead, they target 1,000-10,000 seats—enterprises with SOC2/compliance obligations but without Fortune 500 security budgets or staffing. These accounts close in under 6 months. The framework: Define ICP by sales cycle length your runway can sustain, then expand segments as capital position improves. Your ICP should evolve with company stage, not remain static based on ideal long-term positioning.
Trade IP opacity for velocity when architectural advantage compounds: Unlike security vendors protecting methodology behind NDAs, StrongestLayer publishes full product demos on YouTube and shares detection logic openly. Alan's thesis: "I'm going all in on velocity. I'm going to transparently share, get it in front of as many customers as we can." This works because their advantage is continuous AI model improvement velocity, not a static algorithm competitors could copy. If your moat is execution speed and iteration cycles rather than a single proprietary technique, transparency accelerates trust-building and shortens enterprise consideration periods.
Quantify the shift from volume metrics to value-at-risk metrics: Rather than competing on total threat detection volume, StrongestLayer focuses on the 2% of attack types (BEC, advanced spear phishing) that represent 90% of breach value—and are growing to 17% of attack volume by 2027. They weaponize third-party research (Harvard Kennedy School) showing AI reduces targeted attack costs by 95% while increasing success rates from 12% to 60%. The pattern: Find authoritative external validation that the threat landscape is fundamentally shifting, making incumbent solutions architecturally insufficient regardless of brand strength.
Bifurcate messaging by operational reality, not just title: Alan messages CISOs around risk buying-down and ROI, positioning email security as a solved problem that's becoming unsolved. For security operations teams, the pitch centers on eliminating 70% false-positive user submissions that waste skilled analyst time. Both personas use the same tools, but CISOs face board-level breach risk while SOC teams face daily toil from alert fatigue. The takeaway: Map distinct daily operational pains for each buying committee member rather than broadcasting unified value propositions that dilute relevance.
 
//
 
Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
//
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

How Lincode's move from Silicon Valley to Michigan accelerated automotive customer acquisition | Rajesh Iyengar

Lincode Labs is transforming quality control in automotive manufacturing through AI-powered visual inspection systems that replace traditional machine vision cameras with advanced computer vision technology. After nine years and $10 million in funding, the company has established itself as an early mover in bringing modern AI to one of manufacturing's most conservative sectors. In this episode of Category Visionaries, I spoke with Rajesh Iyengar, a fourth-time founder with multiple exits, about his methodical approach to market validation, the operational realities of selling into automotive manufacturing, and the counterintuitive GTM strategies that enabled market penetration in a notoriously risk-averse industry.
Topics Discussed:
Pre-incorporation market validation methodology: surveying 300-400 manufacturers over one year
Positioning within existing "vision systems" budget categories versus creating new AI category
Manufacturing engineer versus quality engineer buyer persona discovery and implications
Trade show strategy for demonstrating complex AI technology to skeptical prospects
Geographic arbitrage: leveraging Silicon Valley for fundraising, Michigan for customer proximity
Structured investor feedback collection across 400-500 pitches for business model refinement
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Execute systematic pre-incorporation market validation at scale: Before incorporating Lincode, Rajesh spent an entire year surveying 300-400 manufacturers through a structured questionnaire approach. Starting with 8-10 manufacturing contacts, he expanded through LinkedIn outreach to validate core assumptions about AI adoption, deployment complexity, and willingness to pay. This wasn't casual customer discovery—it was quantitative market research that de-risked his fourth venture before committing capital. B2B founders should design systematic validation processes that generate statistically meaningful data rather than relying on anecdotal feedback from a handful of prospects.
Position within existing budget categories to accelerate procurement cycles: Despite building AI technology, Rajesh deliberately positioned Lincode within the established "vision systems" category rather than creating a new AI category. As he explained, "as far as customer is concerned, whether it's AI or not AI, they'll put us into a category of vision systems... so they can assign the budgets." Creating new categories extends sales cycles as procurement teams struggle with budget allocation and vendor evaluation frameworks. B2B founders should analyze how their innovation maps to existing enterprise budget line items and position accordingly, reserving category creation for later market education phases.
Identify economic buyers through productivity impact mapping, not feature alignment: Lincode's initial assumption that quality engineers would buy quality inspection technology proved completely wrong. Manufacturing engineers became the actual buyers because quality bottlenecks directly constrained their core KPI: productivity. Rajesh discovered that "manufacturing engineers responsibility is on productivity, so quality kind of puts a bottleneck on that." This required repositioning their value proposition from quality improvement to productivity optimization. B2B founders must map their solution's economic impact across organizational functions to identify who controls budget decisions, which often differs from the obvious feature-benefit alignment.
Deploy experiential marketing for technology adoption in conservative industries: Traditional SaaS demo strategies failed in automotive manufacturing where "AI is something which nobody wanted to just believe on a buzzword, especially in Midwest." Rajesh invested in major trade shows with hands-on demos, allowing prospects to physically interact with components and see real-time AI analysis. This strategy mimicked automotive showroom experiences where customers need tactile engagement before purchasing decisions. For B2B founders selling complex technology to traditional industries, budget allocation should prioritize experiential marketing that enables physical product interaction over digital marketing channels.
Structure investor feedback as systematic business model iteration: Rather than fundraising episodically, Rajesh treated investor pitches as structured feedback collection, comparing it to AI model training: "if you give thousands of images, then the AI will work perfectly." Pitching 400-500 investors generated business model insights that shaped core strategic decisions, including the critical industry focus recommendation that transformed their approach. One investor's feedback about avoiding multi-industry approaches directly contradicted Rajesh's initial strategy but proved transformational. B2B founders should design investor interaction as ongoing strategic consulting, maintaining regular dialogue for continuous business model refinement beyond capital needs.
 
//
 
Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. 
www.GlobalTalent.co
 
//
 
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire
Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM 
 
 

How Cerebrium generated millions in ARR through partnerships without a sales team | Michael Louis

Cerebrium is a serverless AI infrastructure platform orchestrating CPU and GPU compute for companies building voice agents, healthcare AI systems, manufacturing defect detection, and LLM hosting. The company operates across global markets handling data residency constraints from GDPR to Saudi Arabia's data sovereignty requirements. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, I sat down with Michael Louis, Co-Founder & CEO of Cerebrium, to explore how they built a high-performance infrastructure business serving enterprise customers with high five-figure to six-figure ACVs while maintaining 99.9%+ SLA requirements.
Topics Discussed:
Building AI infrastructure before the GPT moment and strategic patience during the hype cycle
Scaling a distributed engineering team between Cape Town and NYC with 95% South African talent
Partnership-driven revenue generation producing millions in ARR without traditional sales teams
AI-powered market engineering achieving 35% LinkedIn reply rates through competitor analysis
Technical differentiation through cold start optimization and network latency improvements
Revenue expansion through global deployment and regulatory compliance automation
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Treat go-to-market as a systems engineering problem: Michael reframed traditional sales challenges through an engineering lens, focusing on constraints, scalability, and data-driven optimization. "I try to reframe my go to market problem as an engineering one and try to pick up, okay, like what are my constraints? Like how can I do this, how can it scale?" This systematic approach led to testing 8-10 different strategies, measuring conversion rates, and building automated pipelines rather than relying on manual processes that don't scale.
Structure partnerships for partner success before revenue sharing: Cerebrium generates millions in ARR through partners whose sales teams actively upsell their product. Their approach eliminates typical partnership friction: "We typically approach our partners saying like, look, you keep the money you make, we'll keep the money we make. If it goes well, we can talk about like rev share or some other agreement down the line." This removes commission complexity that kills B2B partnerships and allows partners to focus on customer value rather than internal revenue allocation conflicts.
Build AI-powered competitive intelligence for outbound at scale: Cerebrium's 35% LinkedIn reply rate comes from scraping competitor followers and LinkedIn engagement, running prospects through qualification agents that check funding status, ICP fit, and technical roles, then generating personalized outreach referencing specific interactions. "We saw you commented on Michael's post about latency in voice. Like, we think that's interesting. Like, here's a case study we did in the voice space." The system processes thousands of prospects while maintaining personalization depth that manual processes can't match.
Position infrastructure as revenue expansion, not cost optimization: While dev tools typically focus on developer productivity gains, Cerebrium frames their value proposition around market expansion and revenue growth. "We allow you to deploy your application in many different markets globally... go to market leaders love us and sales leaders because again we open up more markets for them and more revenue without getting their tech team involved." This messaging resonates with revenue stakeholders and justifies higher spending compared to pure cost-reduction positioning.
Weaponize regulatory complexity as competitive differentiation: Cerebrium abstracts data sovereignty requirements across multiple jurisdictions - GDPR in Europe, data residency in Saudi Arabia, and other regional compliance frameworks. "As a company to build the infrastructure to have data sovereignty in all these companies and markets, it's a nightmare." By handling this complexity, they create significant switching costs and enable customers to expand internationally without engineering roadmap dependencies, making them essential to sales teams pursuing global accounts.
 
//
 
Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. 
www.GlobalTalent.co
 
//
 
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire
Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM 
 

How Whatagraph generates 500+ marketing qualified leads monthly through competitor pain point SEO | Justas Malinauskas ($10+ Million Raised)

Whatagraph has evolved from a bootstrap marketing reporting tool to a comprehensive marketing intelligence platform processing data from 12+ sources for marketing teams globally. With over $10 million in funding and a decade of iteration, the Lithuania-based company recently launched "Whatagraph 3.0"—a fundamental shift from pure sales-led to hybrid PLG motion. In this episode of Category Visionaries, Justas Malinauskas shares the technical and strategic decisions behind their transformation from agency tool to enterprise marketing intelligence platform, including their multi-agentic AI implementation and the SEO strategy that generates 500+ MQLs monthly.
Topics Discussed:
Technical architecture evolution from reporting automation to full-stack marketing intelligence
Strategic pivot from sales-led to hybrid PLG/sales-led motion triggered by mission misalignment
Advanced SEO methodology using competitor pain point analysis and search behavior reverse engineering
AI implementation using multi-agentic systems rather than simple LLM integration
Lithuania's bootstrap-first ecosystem and knowledge-sharing networks among unicorn companies
Go-to-market evolution across three distinct phases over 10 years
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Engineer time-to-value as your primary PLG enabler, not feature breadth: Whatagraph achieved 5-minute time-to-value from data connection to dashboard generation—versus the industry standard of hours—by rebuilding their onboarding around AI-powered automation rather than manual drag-and-drop configuration. Justas notes this wasn't just UI optimization but fundamental product architecture changes: "It's basically a lot of knowledge from our last 10 years...we're able to build it like really multi-agentic platform which helps to build those things in steps, not just like drop something randomly." For PLG success, optimize your technical stack for immediate value delivery, not comprehensive feature exposure.
Weaponize competitor technical limitations through content strategy: Rather than competing on generic "best marketing tool" keywords, Whatagraph dominated by creating authoritative content around specific competitor pain points. Their "Looker Studio being slow" content strategy captured high-volume searches from frustrated users by actually helping solve the problem while positioning their technical advantages. Justas explains: "The biggest problem was it's actually very slow...when we have everything in house we can make things like very quick and speedy compared to there." Target technical pain points your architecture inherently solves rather than fighting brand-to-brand keyword battles.
Align your ICP strategy with your actual technical capabilities, not market perception: Whatagraph's shift to hybrid PLG wasn't market-driven but mission-driven. Justas realized their technical product could serve smaller organizations, but their sales-led approach artificially excluded them: "We were not empowering in the first place people, everyone to make those data driven decisions fast...we were not allowing everyone into the product even if our product was allowing to." Audit whether your go-to-market motion matches your product's actual technical capabilities and addressable market, not just your current revenue optimization.
Build SEO moats through search behavior psychology, not keyword tools: Whatagraph's SEO dominance came from Justas thinking like customers in problem-solving mode rather than using standard keyword research. He reverse-engineered the complete buyer journey: "People go through a very much regular process...they search for a problem...find a blog post...find a product...competition...pricing...reviews...then actually buy the product." They attempted to own multiple touchpoints in this journey through strategic content placement across different domains. Map your customer's actual research psychology, not just search volumes.
Implement freemium with full core functionality, not feature limitations: Whatagraph's new freemium tier includes their complete AI-powered report generation ("Whatagraph IQ") with only data source limitations, not feature restrictions. This approach lets small users experience the full product value while creating natural upgrade triggers as they grow. Justas notes: "All the core functionality...you're able to talk with your data within AI capabilities and ask questions about your data as you would pay a couple of thousands a month." Design freemium around usage scaling, not capability restrictions, to demonstrate full product value.
 
//
 
Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. 
www.GlobalTalent.co
 
//
 
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire
Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM 
 

How NumberEight books 45 targeted meetings per conference while avoiding booths entirely | Abhishek Sen

NumberEight converts mobile sensor data into contextual audience segments without capturing PII, addressing the fundamental breakdown of cookie-based targeting as media consumption fragments across podcasts, gaming, and connected TV. What began as a thesis project for contextual SoundCloud recommendations has evolved into a B2B data platform serving podcast platforms, media sales houses, and agencies. In this episode of Category Visionaries, we sat down with Abhishek Sen to unpack how NumberEight navigates the complex adtech ecosystem and the tactical GTM strategies that drive their expansion across multiple customer segments simultaneously.
Topics Discussed:
How NumberEight evolved from a Netherlands thesis project (contextual SoundCloud recommendations) to solving adtech's identity crisis
Technical architecture: converting mobile sensor data to contextual audience segments without PII collection
Multi-segment GTM approach across podcast platforms (AdSwizz, Triton), media sales houses, and agencies
Why the company targets podcasting and gaming simultaneously despite different data density challenges
Conference strategy: 45+ targeted meetings per event while completely avoiding booths
Building category credibility through IAB Tech Lab standards work and white paper contributions
The breakdown of cookie-based targeting as consumption fragments beyond web browsers
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Execute systematic conference preparation to maximize deal flow: Sen books 45+ targeted meetings across 4-day conferences like Cannes Lions through advance relationship mapping and mutual connection identification. The tactical framework: pre-research each prospect's annual priorities, identify shared connections for warm introductions, and plan specific value propositions for each conversation. Execute daily follow-up during the conference to prevent pipeline degradation. Sen's insight: "Prep is incredibly important... we evaluate okay, Brett, head of monetization at ABC Company. Who does Brett know that I know? What is the actual proposition we want to discuss?"
Avoid booth competition when capital-constrained: NumberEight deliberately avoids exhibition booths at major conferences, recognizing the futility of competing against Amazon's "entire city mockups" and Google's massive displays. Instead, they focus on authentic relationship building through targeted meetings and dinner sponsorships. The strategic principle: startups should leverage their authenticity advantage rather than attempting to out-spend established players in awareness channels where they're fundamentally disadvantaged.
Maintain strict messaging separation between investor and customer tracks: Sen emphasizes the critical disconnect between vision-focused investor pitches and problem-focused customer conversations. His customer insight: "You tell any customer you're going to revolutionize... they're like 'man, you make me money, I'll be your friend.'" The implementation: develop completely separate messaging frameworks where investor decks emphasize market transformation while customer presentations focus exclusively on measurable business impact and revenue generation.
Build category authority through standards body participation: NumberEight invests significant engineering resources in IAB Tech Lab white papers and industry standards development without direct revenue impact. This work establishes credibility when defining new data categories in established industries. Sen's co-founder leads technical working groups on identity-less targeting standards. The strategic value: "If you're trying to change the game, you have to be seen as someone giving back to the ecosystem and that helps drive your credibility."
Time market entry around regulatory and consumption pattern shifts: NumberEight's positioning leverages two simultaneous disruptions: privacy regulation breakdown of cookie-based targeting and consumption fragmentation beyond web browsers. Sen identifies the core market inefficiency: "Consumption has moved beyond the web... but the data companies, in terms of how data is actually collected, hasn't changed. There's a mismatch." Founders should identify regulatory or technological shifts that create incumbent solution inadequacy and time market entry accordingly.
Focus on vertical-specific events over broad industry conferences: NumberEight exclusively attends podcasting-focused (specific platforms), gaming-focused, or adtech-specific conferences rather than generalist marketing events. Sen explains: "We don't attend any conferences that are generalistic... The ones we attend are very focused on either podcasting or gaming or adtech focused ones. That's where we get the most bang for buck." This concentration strategy yields higher prospect quality and more productive pipeline development than broad industry networking.
 
//
 
Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. 
www.GlobalTalent.co
 
//
 
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire
Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM 
 

How Surgical Safety Technologies targeted the most challenging customers first (massive hospitals) | Teodor Grantcharov

Surgical Safety Technologies is pioneering the transformation of operating rooms from secretive environments into data-driven spaces that optimize patient outcomes. With their "Operating Black Box" platform now deployed in over 50 hospitals across the US, Canada, and Western Europe, the company has generated over 100 peer-reviewed publications demonstrating the ability to reduce patient morbidity and mortality by more than 30% while increasing hospital efficiency by $20 million annually for a typical 40-50 OR facility. In this episode, we sat down with Teodor Grantcharov, founder of Surgical Safety Technologies, to explore his 20-year journey from academic researcher to category-creating entrepreneur in the challenging world of healthcare innovation.
Topics Discussed:
The evolution from virtual reality surgical simulators in the late 1990s to comprehensive OR analytics platforms
Breaking through the cultural resistance to measurement and transparency in surgical environments
The strategic decision to target top-tier academic medical centers as early adopters
Building a platform with four distinct modules: efficiency, compliance, quality/safety, and education
The 10-year journey from research hypothesis to proven commercial success with measurable patient outcomes
Creating the category of "data-driven healthcare" in traditionally dogma-driven medical environments
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Use demanding customers as product validation engines: Teodor's team deliberately targeted top-tier academic medical centers as their initial customer base with a specific thesis: "If we can make the best in the world even better, then we can make anyone better." This wasn't just about prestige - these customers had "internal, very sophisticated systems" and "very knowledgeable professionals and leaders" who would stress-test the platform in ways that revealed product gaps early. The approach creates a competitive moat: once you can satisfy the most demanding buyers in your category, you possess capabilities that competitors serving easier customers lack.
Build category credibility through academic validation at scale: Surgical Safety Technologies generated over 100 peer-reviewed publications before their sales process accelerated, creating what Teodor calls "irrefutable" evidence. This wasn't just marketing - the publications came from top hospitals proving 30% mortality reduction and $20 million annual efficiency gains per 40-50 OR facility. The strategy transforms sales conversations: instead of pitching features, they present peer-reviewed outcomes data that procurement committees and clinical leaders cannot dismiss. Category creators in regulated industries should consider academic validation as sales ammunition, not just credibility building.
Structure modular platforms for multi-stakeholder enterprise sales: Rather than forcing binary adoption decisions, Surgical Safety Technologies created four distinct platform modules (efficiency, compliance, quality/safety, education) that can be sold individually or as a complete suite. This addresses the reality that "each of those have different stakeholders" within hospital systems. The modular approach enables two distinct sales motions: land-and-expand with single-module entry points for budget-constrained buyers, or comprehensive platform sales when "we usually upsell additional modules to the subscription." This architecture is particularly valuable in complex enterprise environments where different departments control separate budget lines.
Leverage mission-driven culture as a competitive advantage: Teodor emphasizes that every hire must understand "what we do, why we do it" and that the company constantly reminds itself "this is not just a gadget or an application. We have a responsibility for improving performance and ultimately improving quality of care for patients." In industries where trust and outcomes matter more than features, a genuine mission-driven approach becomes a critical differentiator that influences everything from branding to employee retention.
Time market entry with regulatory and cultural shifts: The company's success accelerated as healthcare systems became more willing to measure performance and embrace transparency. Teodor observes: "Now we see hospitals recognize that you can't improve what you can't measure." B2B founders should identify when broader industry trends create openings for previously resistant categories, and position themselves to capitalize on these inflection points.
 
//
 
Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. 
www.GlobalTalent.co
 
//
 
Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire
Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.
Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM