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The AI Revolution Show

Alex Theuma / Shift AI

The rules of B2B software are being rewritten. The AI platform shift isn't coming — it's here. And the founders who understand it earliest will build the companies that define the next decade. The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating that shift. Every episode, host Alex Theuma sits down in person with the founders living through it — the SaaS operators rebuilding their businesses for the AI era, and the AI-native builders who never looked back. No PR polish. No rehearsed talking points. Just honest, field-level conversations about what's actually working, what's breaking, and where software goes from here. Brought to you by Shift AI — the conference and community for founders building software in the AI era. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

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#21
October 8 · 24 min
Inside Docket's Demand Agent: Arjun Pillai on Showroom Features, Marketing Factories, and Cracking Buyer Attention
Only 1% of website visitors ever fill in your form. Arjun Pillai built a company around the other 99%. In this episode, Alex Theuma sits down with Arjun, founder and CEO of Docket, an AI demand agent serving enterprise and mid-market B2B companies, to talk about what happens when buyers stop trusting the tools that were supposed to help them grow. Arjun shares how Docket signed its first eight design partners from nineteen cold conversations, why outcome-based pricing does not work for most GTM use cases, and what a "marketing factory" actually looks like in practice. In this episode, we explore: (01:26) Arjun defines Docket and the 99% bounce problem (02:04) Fourteen years in GTM tech and why that led here (04:07) Why vibe coding does not scale for enterprise products (05:06) The "code factory" model cutting dev time from nine days to two (07:07) The third AI use case: creating TAM, not just replacing humans (09:30) From nineteen cold LinkedIn messages to eight paying design partners (13:23) The single hardest thing about being CEO at an AI-native startup right now (15:23) The $80,000 car giveaway and how the Lucid partnership came together in three weeks (19:35) Arjun's "marketing factory" concept and what it means for your team size (23:27) Why the founders still running the old GTM playbook have a two-year window left The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This episode is brought to you by Leapsome. For more information, visit Leapsome: https://hubs.li/Q04xm8f_0.
#20
October 1 · 30 min
The Bootstrap Founder's Bet on Agentic Support
What do you do when your bootstrapped business hits $5M ARR but stops acquiring new customers entirely? Alex Turnbull didn't wait for the answer. He shut it down and started over. Twice. Host Alex Theuma speaks with Alex Turnbull, CEO of Helply, formerly CEO of Groove for 15 years. With 100 companies already committed with deposits and a $165K MRR pipeline before launch, Turnbull explains why he killed two products to build one agentic-first platform, no seats, no legacy baggage. In this episode, we explore: (00:41) Why Groove became a textbook NRR zombie at $5M ARR (03:21) The decision to bolt AI onto Groove and why it failed (08:13) Helply V1 reaches $1M ARR in 12 months then gets shut down (11:01) Why owning proprietary data is the real moat in agentic support (15:08) How Helply's ICP and ARPA shifted dramatically from Groove (19:20) The no-seat pricing model and why incumbents cannot copy it (23:04) Turnbull's honest warning to legacy SaaS founders still on the fence (28:19) How vaporware at SaaStr AI Conf produced 125 qualified demos The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This episode is brought to you by Leapsome. For more information, visit Leapsome: https://hubs.li/Q04xm8f_0.
#19
September 24 · 33 min
Bolt-On AI Doesn't Work. Eléonore Crespo, Co-CEO of Pigment, on Why You Have to Rebuild from Scratch
Finance teams at Anthropic, Coca-Cola, and Unilever have stopped using spreadsheets entirely. Is your business planning keeping pace with the speed of the market, or are you running a Formula 1 race with a bicycle? Alex Theuma sits down with Eléonore Crespo, co-CEO and co-founder of Pigment, the AI performance management platform that has doubled revenue for three consecutive years and recently crossed $100M ARR. Eleanor shares why bolt-on AI is a losing strategy, how Pigment is cutting enterprise implementation from nine months to 20 days, and what it actually takes to build and defend a moat in the age of agents. In this episode, we explore: (02:06) Why Eleanor keeps engineering in Europe and sales in the US (04:09) Crossing $100M ARR with three straight years of revenue doubling (08:11) Why large enterprises cannot just run their business on Claude (10:23) How Pigment pivoted from pre-AI infrastructure to agentic workflows (12:05) Eleanor's three rules: AI-native thinking, moat-building, and speed (22:50) Why two co-CEOs works, and how they handle opposing visions (27:31) Launching a free trial inside an enterprise sales motion (33:10) What people dangerously underestimate about execution and great teams The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This episode is brought to you by Leapsome. For more information, visit Leapsome: https://hubs.li/Q04xm8f_0.
#18
September 18 · 26 min
AI Exposed the Problems SaaS Already Had: Jacco van der Kooij on What's Coming in 2027
AI didn't break SaaS. It just made the cracks impossible to ignore. And according to Jacco van der Kooij, the AI industry is now sprinting toward the exact same cliff edge, only faster. Alex Theuma sits down with Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design and advisor to companies including Canva, SpaceX, and Boston Dynamics. They cover why inbound-dependent growth models are a ticking clock, where AI is being wasted on old processes, and why human-to-human connection is still the dominant force in sales. In this episode, we explore: (01:32) Jacco on what excites and scares him about AI right now (03:29) Why AI exposed SaaS problems rather than causing them (05:09) Using AI to eliminate your top six business constraints (06:13) The Ferrari-as-lawnmower mistake most founders are making (17:57) High-touch vs. high-volume sales: where humans still win (21:27) Why applying AI to old processes changes nothing (22:11) The inbound dependency trap, and why AI companies are repeating it (23:41) What Jacco expects to learn, not just teach, at Shift AI Europe The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#17
September 11 · 39 min
St John Dalgleish on Scaling What Works: Perlon AI's Case Against Plug-and-Play AI SDRs
Alex Theuma sits down with St John Dalgleish, CEO of Perlon AI, to talk about what actually separates a working AI GTM motion from a wasted one. They cover why ownership matters more than tooling, where the human salesperson still wins, and why AI cold callers are a brand risk few founders are willing to take. In this episode, we explore: (01:36) Why most companies are still failing with AI SDRs (05:29) The ownership problem inside sales teams using AI (08:02) How Perlon AI qualifies customers who are actually ready (09:57) From consulting spinout to seven-figure ARR product (12:16) Where the human SDR still beats automation every time (14:34) St John on why AI cold callers are a brand liability (19:23) Dogfooding at scale: 70% of pipeline from their own tool (22:07) The AI backlash driving a comeback for face-to-face events (31:35) Three things Perlan AI actually differentiates on in a crowded market The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#16
September 4 · 34 min
Why Pricing Is a Leaky Bucket: Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz on the Mistake That Kills SaaS Companies Slowly
Most SaaS founders touch pricing once every two or three years. In the AI era, that might be the single most expensive decision they never consciously make. Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz, founder of Valueships and former McKinsey pricing specialist, has run surveys across 40 to 50 companies a year and the data is clear: the noise is wrong, and moving to pure usage-based pricing without a process behind it can do serious damage. Host Alex Theuma talks with Krzysztof about why 95% of Valueships engagements end with a price increase, how to identify the right value metric before changing anything, and what separates a pricing transformation from a pricing disaster. If you suspect your pricing is wrong for the AI era, this episode tells you where to start. In this episode, we explore: (02:26) The single most expensive pricing mistake SaaS founders repeat (05:23) What Valueships does and why Krzysztof built it (08:52) What AI is actually doing to SaaS pricing models right now (10:57) Why a 180-degree shift to usage-based pricing backfires (13:35) How to identify the value metric worth charging for (21:31) The Lovable example: changing pricing 12 times in one year (24:06) What AI-native founders should do differently from day one (32:49) Krzysztof's one action for founders who suspect their pricing is wrong The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#15
August 7 · 32 min
When Agents Outnumber Humans 3 to 1 — Jay Hack, Head of AI at ClickUp
Agents outnumbering humans 3 to 1 sounds like a future state. At ClickUp, it is already the baseline, and Head of AI Jay Hack thinks the real ratio is closer to 10 to 1. Jay Hack founded CodeGen, one of the earliest coding agent companies, before it was acquired by ClickUp. Jay now leads AI across the entire platform. With hundreds of thousands of workspaces running agents today, Jay shares how ClickUp governs agents using the same permission model as human employees, why process mining is the most underrated first step for any company getting started, and what it actually takes to drive adoption bottom-up inside a large organisation. In this episode, we explore: (02:02) How Jay built CodeGen as a coding agent before the term existed (05:20) Why ClickUp's unified data model solved CodeGen's biggest technical blocker (09:38) The three-stage hierarchy of agent adoption Jay recommends to every company (13:01) Process mining: letting an agent identify what you should automate first (20:25) How ClickUp governs agents using the same permissions model as human employees (22:57) Jay on the lump of labour fallacy and why ClickUp is still hiring aggressively (25:34) The one thing Jay got wrong: how fast agent capabilities would actually move (28:57) The single action any company can take this week to start with agents The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#14
July 30 · 47 min
Distribution vs. Product: Why Enginy Is Building a Sales CRM to Own Europe Before Touching the US
Kai Brandt built Enginy to $6M ARR in 24 months with a 65-person team and almost no outside capital, competing directly against tools burning $20M to reach the same number. Alex Theuma sits down with the Enginy co-founder to hear how capital constraints forced genuinely efficient growth, why Europe's multilingual first-party data is a defensible moat US competitors cannot easily replicate, and what it actually takes to keep a founder sharp enough to make good decisions every day. In this episode, we explore: (02:48) Why less funding forced Enginy into genuinely efficient growth (05:51) Building an end-to-end AI sales tool in a category full of point solutions (10:53) What Barcelona gives founders that Silicon Valley cannot (16:04) How Enginy uses its own product as its primary growth engine (19:38) Gamifying LinkedIn posting across the whole team with real cash incentives (24:01) The Claude MCP playbook powering Enginy's internal GTM workflows (35:40) What changes between $3M ARR and the road to $100M (40:51) Why first-party multilingual data is Enginy's long-term competitive moat (44:21) The personal habits Kai changed to stay sharp as a founder The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#13
July 24 · 23 min
The Vocabulary Test Trap: What AI Fluency Actually Looks Like with Wouter Durville, CEO of TestGorilla
Wouter Durville is the CEO and co-founder of TestGorilla, a skills-based hiring platform used by thousands of companies across the globe, backed by $80M in funding. Wouter shares his five-pillar AI fluency framework, explains which traditional hiring signals are genuinely dead, and makes the case for why screening people in matters more than screening them out. In this episode, we explore: (01:36) Why Wouter hires for behaviour, not knowledge, every time (02:24) What TestGorilla actually does and how it flipped the assessment funnel (07:37) How to test for skills when their half-life is collapsing (08:32) The five-pillar AI fluency framework Wouter's scientists built (13:10) Surprising data from the State of AI Fluency report (15:15) The most wrong thing leaders say about hiring for AI (18:29) What Wouter would do differently with $80M raised (20:17) Why established scale-ups can't move as fast as two people with AI tools (22:00) The Venezuelan medical doctor who topped the SEO assessment The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#12
July 16 · 34 min
Aleks Đekić on 90-Day Cycles, the Sales-Finance Chasm, and Why Your Billing Stack Is Holding You Back
The average top AI SaaS company is now changing its pricing every 90 days. Most billing stacks were not built for that. Aleks Đekić, co-founder of Alguna, has seen the gap between what sales teams promise and what finance teams can actually bill close far too many deals badly. Alex Theuma sits down with Aleks to cover why outcome-based pricing is further away than LinkedIn suggests, how Alguna's first customer forced them to build a product they never wanted to build, and what it actually takes to align price to value without terrifying your buyers. In this episode, we explore: (01:32) What Alguna does and the founding story behind it (05:45) Why AI has made pricing the most urgent problem in B2B SaaS (08:05) How often top AI companies are actually changing their pricing (11:45) Seat-based pricing under pressure: the model that punishes success (13:11) How to offer usage-based pricing without terrifying your buyers (15:24) The most wrong thing people say about outcome-based pricing (19:53) Getting the first ten customers when no one wakes up wanting to change their billing (23:50) The product Alguna never planned to build and why it became a competitive edge (30:01) Does per-seat pricing survive into 2028 and 2029 (31:35) Which SaaS companies are structurally exposed by the AI shift The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#11
July 10 · 41 min
Control vs. Automation: Why Light's Bet Is That AI Makes Finance More Accurate, Not Just Faster
Light co-founder Jonathan Sanders built two companies before this one, migrated both to Oracle ERPs, and decided there had to be a better way. Jonathan shares why legacy ERPs are failing in the AI era, how Light uses agents to check the output of other agents (and why that is more accurate than humans doing the same job), and what it actually takes to get finance professionals to trust AI with the general ledger. In this episode, we explore: (02:10) Why Jonathan founded Light after two painful ERP migrations (06:09) Why legacy ERPs cannot make AI work, and what Microsoft Copilot gets wrong (09:07) How Light uses AI to lower switching costs and win rip-and-replace deals (10:46) Speed, control, and accuracy: the three things finance teams actually need (14:09) How Light outperformed humans plus machines on bill parsing (21:29) The memory capability inside Light that learns your business from transactions alone (25:41) How a 100-person company runs its entire finance function with one person (29:08) Finance hackathons with JP Morgan and Deloitte, and what surprised every attendee (32:00) Why an immutable general ledger is the foundation of trust in agentic finance The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#10
July 2 · 40 min
Adam Liska on AI-Native GTM, Vibe Coding, and Revenue Execution
Host Alex Theuma sits down with Adam Liska, Co-founder and CEO of Airspeed, formerly Glyphic AI, after his team raised a Series A and rebranded. Drawing on experience building Gemini at DeepMind, Adam explains why AI-native companies must rethink their architecture, why reliability beats peak model performance, and why the future of sales is humans working alongside agents, not being replaced. In this episode, we explore: (01:40) Why Adam left DeepMind to build AI for revenue execution (05:10) Why Glyphic became Airspeed, and what the rebrand really signalled (09:16) Why dashboards create knowledge but rarely drive meaningful execution (11:29) The uncomfortable truth behind building genuinely AI-native software (14:09) How Airspeed agents rescue stalled deals before sellers notice (16:25) Why reliability matters more than benchmark-leading AI performance (20:39) Selling AI to sales leaders who judge every sales interaction (23:12) Build versus buy, and why internal AI tools rarely stay maintained (29:34) Why founders remain sceptical about AI GTM despite rapid progress (38:41) Adam's long-term vision for programmable companies powered by AI The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#9
June 25 · 32 min
Why Salesmotion Replaced Agencies with AI: Semir Jahic on Lean SaaS in 2026
What if your next hire wasn't a person at all? Alex Theuma sits down with Semir Jahic, co-founder of Salesmotion, the two-person sales intelligence platform growing through AI-first operations. After rebuilding their website, knowledge base and internal workflows with AI, inbound demand surged. Semir shares the automations every founder should build, why "ship at the speed of thinking" is becoming reality, and where human advantage still matters. In this episode, we explore: (02:39) How two founders compete against much larger sales tech companies (05:25) Rebuilding an entire website with AI, then watching traffic explode (08:20) Turning customer calls into high-performing SEO content automatically (14:11) The AI-built knowledge base Semir never had time to create (17:05) Replacing SaaS tools with custom AI automations and Slack workflows (22:32) Shipping product ideas almost as fast as thinking of them (25:14) Why AI makes human relationships even more valuable in enterprise sales (27:11) Can a two-person company really reach millions in revenue? (28:46) The anxiety every AI-first founder must learn to live with The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#8
June 11 · 45 min
Burning the Brand: Inside Intercom's Bet to Become Fin.ai — Des Traynor
Alex Theuma sits down with Des Traynor, co-founder of Fin (formerly Intercom), fresh from their complete rebrand around their AI agent that's already generating over $100 million in revenue. Des walks through the brutal calculus of retiring a billion-dollar brand, why he believes all legacy SaaS will need rebuilding from scratch, and the technical reality behind Fin's 70% resolution rate. From 27 interconnected AI systems to the collapse of traditional product team structures, this is the inside story of a platform shift in real time. In this episode, we explore: (03:17) Why Intercom's original pricing decisions nearly killed customer loyalty (04:43) The moment Des knew they'd hit product-market fit (06:37) Why Fin needed a separate identity from Intercom (09:27) The grief process of retiring a billion-dollar brand name (11:07) Des's test for AI-native vs AI-wrapped products (16:11) When Claude's artifacts convinced him software would change forever (20:18) Why technical debt is just a cope for legacy companies (24:36) What "70% resolution rate" actually means for Fin (26:08) How AI flipped their product-first culture to technology-first (31:05) Why AI sales now require four-week bake-offs (32:31) The genuinely hard problems that aren't waiting for GPT-6 The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#7
June 4 · 26 min
Ben Douablin on Product-Led Growth vs. Enterprise Sales: Full Enrich's Path from Bootstrap to 10M ARR
What happens when a founder with "long sales cycle PTSD" builds a company designed for AI agents from day one? Ben Douablin pivoted from a struggling sales commission platform to FullEnrich, reaching 10 million ARR in under 24 months with usage-based pricing and zero traditional sales tactics. Alex Theuma sits down with Ben Douablin, CEO of FullEnrich, a data enrichment platform serving over 25 vendors to sales teams and AI agents globally. Ben reveals how he built an influencer-led go-to-market strategy using 50 LinkedIn content creators, why he optimised for end users instead of decision makers, and how FullEnrich positioned itself as data infrastructure for the agent economy before most founders realised agents were buying software seats. In this episode, we explore: (02:36) Ben's failed sales commission startup and painful pivot (06:19) Why FullEnrich chose data aggregation over ownership (08:53) Building usage-based pricing for AI agents from launch (11:13) The PLG strategy that drove 10M ARR growth (16:51) How 50 LinkedIn influencers became FullEnrich's distribution (18:38) B2B influencer marketing without platforms or tracking links (22:30) Scaling beyond founder-led growth with the right executives (24:26) Building AI-first systems instead of hiring 50 salespeople The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#6
May 28 · 17 min
Make's AI-First DNA: Samurai Owners, 70% Impact Projects, and Doubling Revenue Per Employee
Most SaaS companies talk about AI transformation, but few have actually restructured their entire operation around it. Sara Maldon, Head of Internal AI at Make, started leading their transformation three years ago when "there was no such thing as AI transformation." In this conversation with Alex Theuma, Sara breaks down Make's approach to becoming AI-first from the inside out, including their "samurai" system where full-time AI champions are embedded in every department, their mandate to double revenue with the same headcount, and why she believes traditional companies have the biggest opportunity to gain competitive advantage right now. She shares practical insights on getting leadership buy-in, the tools powering their operations, and why every founder needs to think like an orchestrator managing AI agents rather than just adding AI features to their product. In this episode, we explore: (00:36) From lawyer to cybersecurity to AI transformation leader (01:52) Make's visual platform for building operations without code (04:02) Starting AI transformation before it had a name (05:18) The "samurai" system: full-time AI champions everywhere (06:31) Doubling revenue with the same headcount through AI (08:00) Beyond drinking your own champagne: the tools (08:55) Creative applications of Gamma's presentation API (09:49) Why traditional companies have the biggest opportunity (11:19) Top-down vs. bottom-up: what actually works (12:17) Sara's personal AI stack for unpredictable work (13:52) Practical first steps for 5M ARR founders (15:36) The future: orchestrating agents, not doing tasks The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#5
May 21 · 19 min
Inside Fathom's Platform Play: Richard White on Data Assets vs. Software Liabilities
What happens when transcription costs drop from £3 an hour to nearly zero and AI can write better meeting notes than any human? Alex Theuma sits down with Richard White, CEO and founder of Fathom, the AI meeting system used by thousands of teams to automatically capture, transcribe, and summarise their calls. Fathom has built a viral growth engine around a simple insight: everyone hates taking notes, but only managers will pay for meeting intelligence. Richard shares how they built "the chassis" first and waited for AI to become the engine, why they abandoned building internal AI tools in favour of smart vendor selection, and his contrarian advice for established SaaS founders: fork your company rather than bolt on AI as a feature. In this episode, we explore: (01:19) What Fathom does and the meeting note-taking problem (01:57) Building from a personal pain point at his previous startup (03:21) Starting with hypotheses about where AI was heading (04:46) The viral growth loop and network effects strategy (06:38) Alex's own discovery journey as a Fathom customer (08:07) The agentic era and opening up the platform (10:39) Competition dynamics and being "past peak note taker" (13:36) AI adoption internally and the 100M/150 people goal (15:50) Why building internal AI tools was a disaster (18:08) Advice for established SaaS founders: fork your company Links mentioned: Richard White on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rrwhite Fathom: https://www.fathom.ai/ The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#4
May 14 · 18 min
"How Can We 10X Right Now?" Marty Kausas on Revenue-First AI Strategy
Marty Kausas is the CEO and founder of Pylon, the AI-native customer support platform built specifically for B2B companies. Pylon serves customers like HiTouch and has driven growth from zero to millions in ARR through unconventional strategies like LinkedIn storytelling and conference quota systems. Marty shares why his 30-person engineering team, using Cursor and Claude, achieved a 40% productivity lift (not the 4X everyone expects), why he started the company "purely for fun" with a goal of hitting $1 billion in revenue in under 10 years, and why he's sceptical of the vibe coding trend. In this episode, we explore: (01:32) Why most conference strategies fail completely (02:43) Setting aggressive demo quotas and working backwards (05:00) What Pylon does for B2B customer support (06:57) Starting a company "purely for fun", not money (09:38) Finding first customers in a San Francisco hacker house (10:49) LinkedIn storytelling that drove $8M in revenue (13:26) 40% engineering productivity lift from AI tools in reality (15:25) Why Marty optimises for growth over efficiency (17:00) Vibe coding hype versus 30-person engineering reality (17:42) The "how can we 10X" question Links mentioned: Marty Kausas on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/martykausas Pylon: https://www.usepylon.com/ The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#3
May 7 · 33 min
Paul Becker on VCs vs. Debt Investors: re:cap's Balancing Act in the Growth-Quality Tension
Most SaaS founders reach for equity by default, even for costs that debt could cover in nine months. In this episode of The AI Revolution Show, Alex Theuma sits down with Paul Becker, co-founder and CEO of re:cap, the debt-funding platform helping SaaS founders raise capital without giving up equity. Paul breaks down the emotional cost of bad funding decisions, why gross margins still matter more than AI hype, and the two moments AI genuinely changed how his own team works, including one that turned a week of junior research into two hours and a good prompt. In this episode, we explore: (00:29) What re:cap actually does for SaaS founders needing capital (02:01) The accidental origin story behind re:cap (03:21) Bootstrapped vs VC-backed: why re:cap chose venture capital (06:11) Why most revenue-based financing competitors disappeared (09:00) Capital efficiency vs. growth at all costs in the AI era (11:11) Is AI killing SaaS? Paul's take on the SaaS apocalypse (14:18) Why 90% gross margin beats 70% every time for lenders (16:48) re:cap's own AI journey, from machine learning to LLMs (19:44) The event prep trick that saved Paul a week of junior work (25:02) What Capital AI does inside the re:cap platform (29:55) Direct advice for a founder at £3M ARR taking only equity (31:15) The emotional cost of a bad funding decision nobody asks about Links mentioned: Paul Becker's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbckr/ re:cap: https://www.re-cap.com/ The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
#2
April 29 · 33 min
Inside Monday.com's AI Pivot: Roy Mann on Three Waves, Agent Talent, and the Hardest Calls
Roy Mann is the co-CEO of Monday.com, a company that's generated over $1 billion in revenue and serves 250,000 paying customers across 200+ industries. Roy shares the bold strategic pivots Monday.com is making to survive the AI platform shift. We explore why they're now letting AI agents buy seats on their platform, how they've fundamentally changed their company vision from "managing work" to "doing work," and the critical difference between adding AI features versus building AI-native products. In this episode, we explore: (02:09) Monday.com's unusual approach to broad market positioning (05:41) The surprising challenges of rebranding to Monday.com (09:33) How two co-CEOs make decisions when they disagree (12:15) Roy's honest take on February's market crash and stock drop (14:10) Why the per-seat SaaS model faces an existential threat (16:13) AI agents are now signing up for Monday seats (18:01) Roy's three waves of AI and his coding epiphany (21:11) The mindset shift from managing work to doing work (23:32) Build AI-native or add AI? Roy's take on the debate (26:38) The hardest decision Roy can't delegate to anyone else (29:37) Roy's advice for scared SaaS founders: go deep on technology (32:05) The question investors should ask but never do Links mentioned: Roy Mann's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manroy/ Monday.com: https://monday.com/ The AI Revolution Show is the intelligence podcast for B2B software founders navigating the platform shift, the founders building through it, and the founders already on the other side. Hosted by Alex Theuma, founder of Shift AI Events. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

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