From DeepMind to 200 Customers in 20 Countries: Building the Execution Layer for Sales | Adam Liska, CEO of Airspeed

The single most expensive sentence in sales is "I'll follow up on that." Adam Liska joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to break down the "execution gap," the space between knowing what to do in a deal and actually doing it, and why that gap is where most pipeline quietly dies.

Adam left DeepMind's Gemini team in 2022, pre-ChatGPT, to build a native revenue execution platform now serving 200 customers across 20 countries (recently rebranded and fresh off a $20M Series A). In this conversation, he gets specific on what is actually changing in the sales role, what should be automated, and why he thinks this is about to be the golden age for sales reps.

What you'll learn:
- Why "I'll follow up on that" is the most expensive promise in revenue, and how the execution gap compounds from rep to manager to CRO
- What parts of the rep workflow to automate now (research, CRM updates, business cases, follow-ups) and what stays human
- Why AI is squeezing middle management, not reps, and flattening GTM orgs
- How per-rep coaching changes when every call is recorded, shared, and analyzed for patterns
- The "corrective action" approach to coaching deals on the job, in real time
- How to sell globally when borders disappear but local-language talent still matters
- Why in-person events drove 70% of early pipeline, and how that compounds with cold calling
- How to keep your team at the AI frontier by never locking into a single model
- Adam's #1 piece of advice for first-time founders (hint: it starts with your co-founder)

Chapters:
00:00 Why AI won't replace sales reps
00:22 Leaving DeepMind's Gemini team pre-ChatGPT
01:18 What airspeed does and the "execution gap"
02:07 "I'll follow up on that": the most expensive promise in sales
03:28 The $20M Series A and the rebrand from Glyphic
05:30 Why walk away from frontier AI research at DeepMind
07:17 Leading when the frontier models keep changing
08:39 Buy vs. build, and keeping customers at the AI frontier
11:03 Landing the first 200 customers across 20 countries
12:41 Advice for first-time founders
14:04 Selling globally and what AI changes about language
17:07 What the sales rep role looks like in an AI-first world
19:24 How reps and leaders should start automating today
20:51 The channels driving results right now
22:41 How AI makes per-rep coaching actually work
25:14 Building an execution-first culture
27:10 The DeepMind departure story
28:51 Building in London vs. selling in the US
30:43 Adam's favorite AI use case as a busy CEO
31:26 The biggest misconception about AI in sales

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

Guest: Adam Liska, Co-founder and CEO at Airspeed
X: https://x.com/adliska
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adliska/

About the guest: Adam is the co-founder and CEO of Airspeed (formerly glyph), a native revenue execution platform that closes the gap between knowing what to do in a deal and executing on it. Before founding the company, he worked at DeepMind on the team that became Gemini. 

About GTMnow: 
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The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think there was a lot of talk around AI completely replacing sales reps. I don't think that's happening.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Adam Lizka, co-founder and CEO of Airspeed. I mean Devang both came up in one of the most elite research environments in the world, frankly. Deep mine. What made you walk away from like a frontier AI research and start a company as a founder?

SPEAKER_01 0:19

So we left in uh 2022, actually pre-Chad GPT. I guess being a DeepMind, we kind of saw the future. We were both Devine and I were on the Gemini team before it was called Gemini, but we're scaling element training, scaling the models.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

You recently raised $20 million Series A round. Thank you. We branded from your former name Glyphic to AirSpeed. What comes to the rebrand?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yeah, no, super excited about the series A, kind of uh unlocking a lot of the growth that we want to do right now. On the rebrand side, it's an interesting one. We started with the name Glyphic. The meaning behind that was really, you know, generative intelligence language. But as we were building the product and as we were seeing our users use the product, what we realized that it's not really matching any more kind of what were the problems we're solving for the teams, which is mostly around execution, mostly around speed.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

We now have 200 customers in 20 countries. How did you get your first customers? Adam, welcome to GTM Now.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Super excited to be here. Hi, Sophie.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Great to have you here. For anyone unfamiliar, give us a quick overview of Airspeed.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Great. Yeah, so Airspeed is the AI native revenue execution platform. Uh when you look at your GTM stack now, most of it is mostly storing data, analyzing data, but at AirSpeed, really executing on that data, whether that's you know understanding your dealer risks and the suggested best next actions, updating your CRM, or improving your forecast. And through that, really improving how your how your team executes. Maybe if I can give you an example here, every rep has said, and we've all heard this sentence, I'll follow up on that. It's a you know very simple, very simple question. It sounds kind of harmless. If anything, it sounds maybe even a bit uh responsible. You know, you you'll do that, you'll do that thing. But in in revenue teams, it's really the single most expensive promise uh you can do. And that's where most of the deals go to die, actually. When uh and why? When you when you when you think about it, when when someone says this, what happens afterwards? They they finish the call, uh, they might have five more additional conversations, and that follow-up gets put on a list. That list then really loses to your inbox, your personal admin at the end of the day. Uh, and what happens, you know, three days later, the urgency on the prospect side is gone. And that this is this is a problem that kind of we we see across the board, and it's also a problem that compounds within uh within the organization. Because the CRM, the the deal is live in the CRM, but it's not moving. The manager makes a forecast. Uh, they they're relying on this on the data in the CRM, but they know they're mostly guessing. The C the CRO then goes, misses their plan. In a board meeting, they're kind of stumbling, trying to understand, trying to explain, explain what happens. But the problem is that you know, this whole time, this data was based on a promise, and a promise that wasn't executed on. Uh, and that's that's really that's really the problem. That's the problem we're trying to we're trying to solve. Because when you when you look at it, you have you might have all the data, you might know what to do, but there's still like a huge gap between knowing what to do and doing that thing. Internally, we call it the the execution gap. And that's the thing that we're we're we're trying to close and we're trying to solve.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

The execution gap. I love it. And before we get into the sales-specific areas, you recently raised a $20 million series A round. Huge congratulations and rebranded from your former name, Glyphic to Airspeed. What prompted the rebrand?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, no, yeah, no, super excited about the the the series A. Uh, it's I'm sure we'll get to that later, but it's kind of uh unlocking a lot of the growth that we want to do right now. On the rebrand side, it's uh it's an interesting one. We we started with the name Glyphic, you know, back already uh three, four years ago, you know, when it when it was early days. And kind of when we were Glyphic is really from Hieroglyphic, what we wanted to, the meaning behind that was really you know generative intelligence language. But as we were building the product and as we were seeing our users use the product, what we realized that it's not really matching anymore kind of what what we're the problems we're solving for for the teams, which is mostly around execution, mostly around speed. Uh and so that kind of prompted prompted the search. When I uh I think that's kind of one part of the story. I'll I'll be open. There's a second part of the story as well, is you know, I'm sitting, I'm sitting with the sales folks, they're behind me calling, and then very often I would hear, you know, hi, hi, this is Hector from from Glyphic. Glyphic, G-L-Y-P-H-I-C. And then kind of hearing that on a daily basis kind of made me realize we we need to rebrand. And so we kicked that off. It was a it was a you know tough decision. You it's not the decision you take, you take lightly, but uh it was the right, right decision. Uh and then kind of now looking back, we we announced it when uh I think two weeks ago or something like that. And it's been been accepted, you know, great by our customers. The team really embraced it, and so I think it was the right decision.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Incredible. I mean, if you've already got so much data just two weeks in that it was the right decision, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah, no, I'm definitely getting, you know, I'm I'm probably getting biased, uh, biased view of the of the feedback, but uh, I would say 99% of the feedback people people liked, uh, like the new name. Some of them kind of like the quirkiness of Glyphic. Uh uh and so yeah, I mean, just just like I did, but yeah, we're we're very happy that we we we've we've gone through this.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Well, two different names, different eras of the company's growth. And Adam, you and DeVang both came out of one of the most elite research environments uh in the world, frankly, deep mind. What made you walk away from like a frontier AI research and start a company as a founder?

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Good question. And I yeah, I get this question quite quite often. It's uh so we left in uh 2022, actually pre-Chad GPT, uh, but kind of, I guess being a deep mind, uh, we we kind of saw the future. We were both Devang and I were on the Gemini team before it was called Gemini, but really scaling, uh scaling LLM training, scaling the models, especially looking at how how LLMs can work with external data, how they can be kind of kept up to date and reason about external data. And uh we're really excited about the shift that that was going to um you know going to bring about. But it's also funny, you know, it's just four years, but looking back, it was pre-Chad GPT. People are actually, especially even even internally at Google, kind of very unsure, you know, will this go into production? Uh, what are some of the risks around that, etc.? And so we knew, you know, this is gonna change things, but at the same time, we we knew that if we wanted to move fast and build something in the space, we we had to leave. And uh, and so in the end, it was it was uh it was quite a quite an easy decision. It's but yeah, kind of deep mine, very, very fortunate. We we both really enjoyed that in that that time there. It's funny, I thought 2022, when we were leaving, it was really you know the top AI hype uh in a way. I I knew you know the the kind of the the things it was gonna bring about, but kind of the growth since then, it's been it's been amazing. And it's it's very easy to kind of underestimate how how quickly change can happen.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Truly. And very timely, seeing as uh Mythos has had some recent updates and is now more generally publicly available. What is that like for yourself as a leader, as a CEO, when the frontier models and underlying AI that products are built on are just constantly changing?

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yeah, the rate of change is really high in the in the space and it I think it really pushes companies and and product builders to operate much more kind of flexibly. And you you just need to execute faster because there's just so much, so much change happening. And we when I look back kind of over the last three years of us building uh AirSpeed, it's really we've we've had to change the underlying architecture so many times because you know we we started with actually our own models that we trained ourselves because in the early days there were already LLM APIs available, but the context length wasn't wasn't good enough for us. And so we actually had to train a lot of our models. Since then, we kind of we learned uh that kind of we we had to build the product so that we can we can be always moving to the best model available. And in a way, it's also kind of what we it's part of the promise at Airspeed as well. Around we want to keep our customers as close to the AI frontier as possible. What we see on the on the product side in GTM Tech, but it's also in in in other areas. You know, you've got existing kind of legacy tools somewhere over here, and then AI, AI capabilities are somewhere over here. And people, people know what's possible because they they're really kind of playing with it. Uh, they're using Cloud for their personal admin, for planning, you know, for planning their trips and all that stuff. And so they know there's this huge gap between what what they get, what they have in you know their daily work and what's possible out there. And that's why that in a way kind of spurred a lot of a lot of kind of internal building. And I feel like it kind of there's a resurgence of the buy versus build uh conversation. I think it's just a temporary thing because legacy products are not delivering the value that's out there. And so people are kind of trying to bridge this, but but that's one thing, one thing that we we try to do, and it's we try to do it airspeed, and it's one of our promise, is really keeping our users, our customers as close to the AI frontier as possible. And so we have to build everything uh in the back end so that we can always be kind of using the best model for the best thing. And so we're we're actually we're not using just a single model behind the scenes, uh, it's multiple models. We have to build a little lot of evaluation frameworks, etc., so that we kind of always pick the best model for specific workflow within the product.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Brilliant. Yeah, I heard it saying where customers are really looking to vendors now to bring them into the future. So it's less about just your product quality in the moment. It's much more of who's the vendor that can actually keep you at the top as all of these changes occur.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Definitely. And I think that's uh I think people are really looking kind of trying trying to evaluate uh vendors and partners uh through this lens is just because of the rate of change. They want to make sure they're investing in something that's gonna stay, stay around. And I think kind of looking, looking back at some of the tech in in the space, I feel like there were very few GTM tech products that were kind of that build durable products. It's very often, you know, you you build something, you scale something very fast that works in that moment, but GTM is always it's kind of constantly evolving. You're always looking to get that alpha, to get that small improvement over others. Uh, and then if if you're if the products that you you use are not improving, not kind of chasing that, uh, you're stuck with you know with the previous generation of tools. And so I feel like that's maybe in in GTM, it's even kind of this feeling is even stronger than than in other areas.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Yeah, I would definitely agree. The advances are are just far quicker, and there's a lot more options, but only a few actually durable companies that will keep you at that top level. And you've been building for a couple years, you now have 200 customers in 20 countries. How did you get your first customers?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah, I mean, there's nothing really glamorous about that. It was a lot of uh a lot of hustle, a lot of founder at sales. Uh we were Devang and I were going, you know, to many conferences, uh, meeting people kind of where where they were and kind of really talking about the pains they had. And kind of looking back at uh early days of Airspeed, one of the biggest pains we were solving back then, and it's a pain we're still solving now, is around data. Because if you want to execute fast, you really need to have a good understanding of what's happening in your motion. Why are you winning, why are you losing, and all that stuff. And it's really the data piece that was our first kind of wedge into many conversations, and it also what people kind of understood very well. And so we were, we were, we were kind of discussing that problem, we were solving that problem very well. Uh, and it was, yeah, kind of a lot of a lot of hustle, a lot of fun to let sales, uh, I remember kind of and a lot of chance as well. I mean, but it's all uh serendipity. It's uh I'm sure this is kind of the case for everyone. But I remember one of our early bigger deals, uh, a company called PriceFX. I remember I was in Nashville at the Pavilions GTM conference, and the last, I think the last day, the last lunches people are leaving and randomly, you know, joined a table with uh with their team. We started a conversation, and then that led to uh a big deal for us back back in the days. And so, yeah, a lot of a lot of that.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

I love it, I love it. And you call it chance, and I say you open up the opportunities and kind of surface level for that chance. What kind of advice would you have for first-time founders?

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Yeah, I mean, it's uh I think they kind of went up, it's it's changed a lot uh between I think when we started and it's been just a few years ago, uh, and now, but it's but I think the the speed and everything, I think all these things change, but I think the basics are still the same. So, you know, you want to be solving a major pain, you want to be moving fast, you want to be kind of really staying close to your close to your customers, uh understanding how they use you, uh how their workflows work and what doesn't work, kind of all that, all that really, really stays the same. But then it means you know, going out there, talking to as many people as possible, uh being very flexible in the setup as well. We in the early days were doing a lot of POCs, a lot of trials, kind of making sure that we work with companies that we we learn through that as well. Uh, and I think that kind of that learning process, uh, kind of as you we're very fortunate actually that we had a stable product engineering team at uh at our speed. And I think that that kind of compounds uh as well as you kind of work with customers with every new one, you learn something new uh that you can then kind of incorporate in the product or incorporate in your next approach. Um yeah, so kind of all these things kind of remain the same, but I think just the speed uh speeds kind of uh changed a lot.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah, well, it's now in the new name.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Now you've scaled uh globally, you're in over 20 countries, and similarly, a lot of other companies are operating globally. AI has changed what it means to actually be able to operate globally, and sales a huge, huge part of this when we talk about language. What have you seen on your side? And what have you kind of seen in the space overall around how language is evolving, how we can actually sell globally?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Well, so I mean we we started in London, but kind of from the very beginning, we wanted to build uh we wanted to build a global business. I think if you wanna, if you wanna you know win, you need to you need to sell globally. And so from from the early days, we were selling globally. US actually has been our main market from I would say like month three or something like that. And so it's it's something that you you need to do. Uh also I think what's what what I think one thing that you know makes it a bit easier, or I think yeah, something that's changed is that you know the the talent is global and people are looking for solutions in the market and they're looking globally. Uh if they can get you know a slight improvement over their existing way of operations or the the way they're execute, there they will, and and that you know, that piece of tech is based out of somewhere else, they're gonna go for it. Uh, because the borders have really kind of disappeared in in that way. I think in terms of language, uh, etc., I think that to be honest, AI helps with, but it doesn't really, I don't think that kind of solves it. You still probably want to, if you're if you're selling in a specific market where maybe English is not the main language, you probably would want to still have local talent there. I think that's something that AI AI will not not change. But I think what what AI definitely helps with is around when you build a global business, uh, understanding how the different geos operate, what are some of the problems in the different geos, etc. We a lot of our customers, they might actually have the leadership in the US, but a big part of their business is in Latin America. And some of their managers actually don't understand what's happening, or the product team doesn't understand what's happening on sales calls in in that specific geo. Uh, and then they want to keep everything in English so that they can, they can, they can, they can review everything, get the feedback to product team, etc. So I remember one example with them with one of our customers was where in a specific geo, in in actually it was a case where in Europe, I think their SOC2 compliance kind of wasn't wasn't good enough. The leadership just kind of wouldn't really believe the sales team that this is the main main problem that they that they see in the market. But then with airspeed, with all the data they were getting, they actually saw that, okay, we need to change this, this, this. Even though they didn't really understand what's happening in Germany, what's happening in in France, they could tell from the inside Spoo surfacing that they need to change something around their uh compliance posture. And then that led to to them actually unlocking that specific geo. So I would say it's become easier to operate because you can you can really understand what's happening across what's happening across all the different teams, but you would still want to have your local teams if uh if uh in that market uh people are not comfortable kind of being sold to in English.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yeah, yeah, definitely. That makes sense. And um let's go a little bit deeper into the sales role itself and how it's evolved and and what's different, what people need to know. The big, big question everyone's asking is how much of the reps workflow should be automated? And what does that mean in an AI first world? Like what does the reps role look like now?

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Yeah, I mean, a lot is changing. Uh I think there was a lot of talk around AI completely replacing sales reps. I don't think I don't think that's happening. Uh, and I think we're kind of over over that already. Uh, but there, the kind of the the workflows and the activities that reps are doing, that's definitely, definitely changing. And if anything, to be honest, I think what's what's happening now is that the role of the sales reps is actually getting uh increased and accentuated. We we see that, for example, in software engineering as well, where software engineering is kind of really ahead in terms of AI, AI adoption. But I don't really see you know engineers being completely replaced. But they're their work and the the kind of requirements and expectations have changed. But because everyone's moving faster, you actually want to keep your engineering team. You might be actually slowing down junior hiring, etc., but you still kind of want to keep your your team there executing. And I think something similar is happening in in sales and in GTM, where the roles of sales of sales reps is getting increased, where you need to rotate fast, but you don't need to now do, you don't in terms of execution. I think there's a lot of a lot of things that we can we can take off your plate, whether that's kind of doing some of that account research, whether that's doing you know post-call, postcall workflows, CRM updates, prepping the business case, uh, prepping that that follow-up email, prepping that handovers, all that stuff, that's getting automated and should be automated. And in a way, kind of selling will be really just about selling, whether that's you know, back channeling, uh understanding, you know, that hesitation in your champion's voice when you talk to them or when you meet them in person. I think that has always been the main kind of, I think best sales reps were always really good at doing that. But then on top of that, they had to do a lot of admin, a lot of other other tasks. I think those tasks are getting automated, but the selling is still is still remaining the the way it was.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

And presumably, I mean, you are using Airspeed yourself. You're uh if we think about an overall kind of maturity curve, you are far along the maturity curve from a sales organization perspective. What advice would you give to any kind of sales rep that's trying to evolve that process or a sales leader?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah, I think to be honest, it's uh I think one thing that I that we see in the market, we what we've been pitching kind of has been the same, let's say, over the past two years, year and a half. But it's really in the last six to eight months that things have really changed where people realize the urgency and they want to move faster. Uh my advice to to leaders or all sales reps, well, or sales reps is really kind of embrace that and do that every day. Kind of when you when you think about your workflows, what do you think you can automate? Experiment. If you can automate this part of your of your workflow, try automated uh and then see, you know, see what kind of gains you can you can you can get from that. What we see in uh one of our customers at Fermat, what what they were what they're doing actually is I think they got monthly or quarterly hackathons where everyone, I think it's like two days, three days, where everyone's tasked with trying to automate themselves as much as possible. Uh and I think kind of I think the this type of this type of uh kind of approach or or outlook is really something that that everyone needs to have and experiment so that they they can learn what's possible uh and then can have kind of always be pushing pushing the boundary.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

And then if we think about how sales reps are actually generating results, are you seeing any particular channels take the lead right now?

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, I mean I think it really depends on on your vertical and you know what you're selling. I think what what works really was works real well for us is in-person events, especially kind of on the top of funnel, in the in the kind of yeah, very much top of funnel. We do, we do dinners, we do breakfasts, we do hackathons as well. And all these events kind of really, really help because you might, you know, we're still doing code calling, it works real well for us. But if you have that kind of initial relationship, you met somewhere, you you went to an event together, or you uh you organized that dinner where the where the prospect came. I think that always helps when you reconnect with them, you know, a month later, half a year later. And so I think in person, in person really helps kind of early on. We're still mostly selling, you know, over Zoom. Uh that that hasn't really changed. We're doing call calling, we're doing uh automated outbound with with emails. But I think that kind of in person touch really, really helps.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah. I mean, it goes to back to your first customer story too. Just having that in person touch helps. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I remember we were I think in when we were finishing the first year, uh I think kind of half a year since our first uh paid customer, I did a I did a review of where the different prospects or the deals came from. And I think 70% were just events. Um and that that kind of really, really I think meeting in person, having that initial conversation, even if you close eventually kind of over Zoom, uh it just increases your win rate a lot.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Is that recent or renewed?

SPEAKER_01 22:25

No, that was that was that was uh yeah, a couple of years back. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't looked into it recently, but I would imagine we're still doing a lot of events. I don't think it's 70% now, but definitely I think meeting that person in person uh first improves the sales cycle length, improves the win rates. Uh I don't know if the numbers from our pipeline, but I would I would still think so.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Yeah, yeah, definitely, or at least it's more of an omni-channel experience now where it's supporting the efficiency of other channels.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

I love it. And you know, a big part of sales role is also improvement, especially when you take away a lot of the administrative work. Like now we're talking about relationships, we're talking about hands-on conversations with prospects, and coaching is usually a big part of that. You know, how do AI platforms like Airspeed make personalized coaching better than otherwise possible?

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Yeah, I mean, there's I think the issue with coaching kind of traditionally was you know, it was very much reliant on you talking to your manager, your manager actually spending time to review some of the conversations and some of the activities you do. Uh, but we all know you know this wasn't happening. And if there was any feedback, it was kind of very much, you know, ask better open questions or you know, listen more, things like that. I think it was very, very generic uh feedback. I think what's what happens now, and kind of one thing that we also want to encourage with encourage with our with our product and in our customers is around you know being very open within within the go-to-market team so that everyone can learn from everyone. And so that all that all those conversations, most of the conversations these days are recorded or transcribed. We we we kind of encourage everyone, all our users, to make all these available across all their teams so that everyone can learn from everyone else. And once once you have all this data, you can actually have a look at per rep kind of patterns, you know, who's bringing up pricing earlier versus later, who's doing better multi- multi-threading, who's actually really good at understanding the paper process, you know, before they commit their deal. Kind of all these things. I think we can we can now analyze per rep and then give give that feedback to to you know to kind of everyone within the team. And I think feedback's also changed from you know getting that written feedback or you know, feedback in your one-on-one quarterly to actually now we're in a way we're actually kind of creating corrective actions in in Airspeed where we can we actually suggest you should really engage the uh the CFO on this deal because in similar deals previously, this was the case and the CFO blocked it, and you still, you know, you still haven't discussed the CFO at all. And we can actually kind of do coaching on the job, around the conversations through these corrective actions and corrective suggestions. So I think that that really changed. But I think that's one thing. The other thing is around just that mindset, around you know having everything open, accessible to everyone so that so people on the team can learn from each other.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Brilliant. And as AI makes information accessible everywhere, it's really execution that becomes more of the competitive advantage. And this translates not only from the product itself, like we've been talking about, but also to go-to-market teams. And I think if if anyone meets someone from the airspeed team, you get that notion of that everybody is here from an execution capabilities and desire perspective. Like, what are you doing as a CEO, as a C as a leader to motivate your people and empower them to be so execution first for anyone else looking to empower and motivate their teams?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah, no, great, great question. I think one aspect of this is, you know, I think people, people on the team, and one thing that I kind of wanna wanna get get across to my team in our own hands, and when we when we when when we talk internally, is that it's there's a really great reset happening right now around tech and and software and kind of what's what's possible with with with AI and the kind of execution really being being the the next and maybe the last frontier. And I feel like kind of people internally understand it. We we we kind of preach it across the whole team. So it's not just the GTM team, but it's also the the engineering team. And if anything, we've got this nice healthy competition between between the GTM team and the engineering team around you know who can execute and who can automate more and faster. Uh, and we're we're actually kind of sharing learnings. That actually it's it it's it's quite interesting. I think we're quite quite uh fortunate building in this space and seeing how things are developing in software engineering. I think we can bring a lot of those learnings to to go to market. I think the team on the go-to-market side, they're really excited. They know the opportunity, they know we can win, uh, they know the size of the market. They're they're salespeople. Uh, and so they know the tech, they know the opportunity, they know the problems uh that that sales teams have been kind of running into over the past decade. And so I think all that really, really helps internally to keep that execution and urgency very high.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Nothing like a little healthy competition to get people motivated.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yeah, I know for sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

I love it. Well, I've got a couple last questions for you, Adam. One, going back to Deep Mind, you and Devang leave. This is pre-Chat GPT. What was actually happening? Like, take us back to that moment. Who pitched the other on leaving, or was it a mutual?

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Yeah, no, I think it was uh somehow mutual. I think so. Devang joined during COVID. And I think we when we were working from home, and so that meant that we actually started you know meeting outside of the office and discussing as well, because that was kind of the only way how we could talk about projects, etc. Because we were not in the office and Devang lived nearby. And so we started talking, and I think uh, you know, very quickly we we realized that we both are really excited about building products, about selling, about being you know, close to our customers. Uh, and then I think it kind of all developed relatively, relatively quickly from there. We saw you know the change that was happening. We also saw that that change is not happening fast enough for us internally, especially on the product side. And uh, but to be honest, I think the main thing in in starting any business is finding a co-founder you're comfortable with that you you you can rely on because it's you know it's a it's a long journey. You spend so much time together, you need to rely on each other. When you know one is down, the other one needs to kind of maintain the momentum and maintain the excite excitement. Uh so yeah, I think the single most important decision or the single most important thing is really find the right co-founder and then everything is downstream from there.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

I love it. Find the right person. And both of you, when you were meeting up, and maybe people can tell by your accent, but when you were meeting up, that was in London. The company's HQ is in London. Any strong thoughts about company building in London versus the US?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Yeah, to be honest, I don't really have super strong opinions on this. It just happened. So both Devang and I moved to the UK, eventually ended up at Deep Mind, worked together. And so it just it just kind of made sense for us to start start the business there. Uh I think the talent in in London is amazing. It's very international. Uh, I mean, I'm Czech, Devang's Indian. We ended up there. Uh, I think we, I don't know now how many, how many nationalities we've got on the team, but but it it's it's gonna be a lot. Uh, it's so it's it's great to be building in London. I think what's what's nice in London as well, I think uh the team is is more loyal. We've been you know, we've been building with the same team from the very beginning, or nearly the same team, and that really compounds is you know that experience with all the different customers, all the different new models, and all that stuff. So I think we've been really fortunate uh in in this way. But you know, as I mentioned before, from the very beginning, we we wanted to be a global business. We were selling globally, we're selling remotely. You know, I remember you know doing so many late evening calls. I still do a lot of late evening calls, maybe a bit less now. But uh one thing, one thing that I also wanted to add is you know, building London, we we really enjoy. Uh selling in the US is you know what what we need to do. US just moves much faster. I would say in terms of tech adoption, they're kind of one gener you guys are one generation ahead of the rest of the world. And so you're always looking for that next solution. And so it just made a lot of sense for us to be selling more in the US than uh in a uh in the in the early days. Uh but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

I think it's really interesting when we talk about retention of employees too, because it's one of the most underrated things for growth, if you have the right person, I'll caveat with that. But yeah, if you look at companies like GitHub or Carta, who've had CROs that have just scaled with the organization or Snowflake or you know, other orgs, you see it compound over time. Yeah. Um, and it reflects in their revenue. So that is very, very cool.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

And what's one of your favorite AI use cases that helps you as a busy CEO?

SPEAKER_01 30:55

I mean, I'll I'll be a bit boring, but uh, I think for me it's really staying on top of all of my inbox and uh LinkedIn inbox, especially. And so I actually do I have a Mac Mini, you know, running uh running Cloud remotely and then helping really understand what are the top conversations that I maybe forgot to answer and get back to. I was I was a very much inbox zero type of person, but then I had my daughter now two years ago, and I think everything slipped, and then I wasn't really able to get back to inbox zero, and I think that is a use case that I love uh and that I'm kind of like fully, fully embracing.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yeah, I have to agree with you. That is my favorite use case too. Email inbox. Last question biggest misconception about AI in sales.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Yeah, I mean, I think I mentioned that earlier as well, but it's I think what when you look at the you know, the discussion a year ago, two years ago, it was all around AI replacing salespeople uh and the role of sales reps kind of diminishing. If anything, I think it's the other way around. The role of sales reps is getting stronger. Potentially, the the middle management is getting squeezed a little bit, uh, and so organizations are getting flatter. Uh, but yeah, I think that would be that would be the biggest one. And I think it's it's gonna be the golden age actually for for sales reps.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

No better time to be in sales.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Adam, this has been fantastic. Thank you for the time and the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Thanks so much, Sophie. Really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Absolutely, and congrats on the Series A.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Thank you, thank you.