Every Pitch Deck Looks the Same and That's the Problem

When every pitch deck looks the same, sameness becomes the fastest path to the rejection pile.

In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP Reddy and Nick unpack why AI-generated pitch decks have become the new resume red flag, why Zero RFI scrapped ROI calculators entirely in favor of just doing the work, and why a GTM leader took a salary cut to join a startup without ever doing the math on what a successful exit would actually pay them. KP walked them through the numbers. Their face went white.

The conversation spans the Bay Area network effect (Nick is two weeks into testing a potential move and already has data), why construction innovation teams are now spinning up working prototypes two days before board meetings to justify replacing vendor software, and why Autodesk's $250M bet on World Labs might be the smartest move they've made since buying Revit. The deeper thread? AI is creating a sameness problem. Pitch decks look identical. Buildings are starting to look identical. And if your pitch for a construction AI startup looks like everyone else's, you've already lost. KP's new sales process: send an NDA, send your files, let us show you the value. If we created it, pay us what you think it's worth. If we didn't, pay us nothing. Four meetings replaced by one.

Key questions answered:

• Why does KP refuse to open a Claude-generated pitch deck?
• What did the GTM leader's face look like when KP ran the startup math?
• How did Zero RFI replace their entire sales process with "send us your files"?
• Why did Zero RFI delete all their ROI calculators?
• What is the "show me, don't tell me" sales model and does it actually work?
• Why are construction innovation teams building working prototypes before board meetings?
• Are large engineering firms starting to replace vendor software with internal builds?
• Why is Autodesk's World Labs bet smarter than anything Procore is doing?
• What does "Zoom is for tactics, in-person is for strategy" actually mean?
• Why is the Bay Area network effect getting stronger, not weaker?
• Should startup employees be money-motivated and why is that not taboo?
• What happens when every building starts looking like an AI-generated pitch deck?

If you're a founder sending Claude pitch decks and wondering why you're not getting meetings, a GTM leader considering a startup salary cut, or an innovation team trying to justify your budget to a CFO with a working demo, this episode will make you rethink what standing out actually requires when everyone has access to the same tools.

Listen now.

Transcript

California As An Unfair Advantage

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Two weeks of California now.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Yeah, how's it? Two weeks is providing me more data that California is a good place.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

So I was listening um to Joe Rogan, which I were able to. It just depends on the guest, right? Over Joe Rogan. Like I don't care about the MMA people and all that. But he had JD Vance on yesterday. And what they both agreed about with California is like California might be the most amazing place in America.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Tough to disagree with. Just object objectively, right? California is an amazing place. Right. Beautiful, access to anything you want, mountains, beach. It's a massive state, so you can get a lot of different types of cultures. Pick and choose your, you know, where you want to where like who you want to live around, what your values are, and you can probably find it somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

And part of the conversation was why people are so angry about LA going downhill as like is because it's an amazing place. If it was a crappy place, nobody would really care. It's like write it off. And they were they were kind of having this discussion that, like, while you know it's it's it's never probably gonna be a red state, it's still like very important, right? And that you you can't, you know, they were they were talking about this idea of like writing off California, like we should write off California. People ask that way. And their point is like you can't, like it's too important, which I thought was like super interesting from a less than balanced you know, point of view, these two guys, right? And you know, I mean they're right. They're right. I think they're right. I think it's true. It's like it's a very special place. I think quality life-wise and also doing business-wise. I mean, how many meetings have you had with founders and other venture firms?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

And yeah, I mean, it's I'll sh, you know, I'll share. So I I don't know how many people listening are aware of where I live, but I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, not known for its tech ecosystem. Yeah, mid julips more for mid julipes, horses. And Kentucky's a beautiful state too, for its worth, but certainly not tech concentration. And I actually think like I think there's a lot of benefits to being outside of the bubble purely from like a picking standpoint because you don't get caught up in narratives and hype cycles. Like, I'm just removed from that on a daily basis. But I think the I think for most early stage firms, the game is really one on the ground. And what I've really observed being here for two weeks now is just how networked everything is locally. Like, just to give you an example, there's a co-investor that is actually doing quite quite well as a firm that we've yeah, we've co-invested on a few deals with, and both their partners are based here. I went to meet with them at their office. I've chat I've chatted with them over Zoom numerous times. So like we're friendly. Yeah. But there were two founders they introduced me to after that in-person meeting that happened to be in San Francisco for the week fundraising. Yeah. They would not have called me, right? Were I not here. I just it was just top of mind. They're like, oh, I just met with Nick. This is applicable to Shadow because of the you know, they're built-in Barb and angle. And they were just like, oh yeah, go meet with him. He's in town for the month. And it's just like that sort of oh, yeah, another example, there's a founder that has built a really successful business. It's out of out of our zone, but just as like, you know, I've kept in touch with over the years, you know, has become a friend. We've been going back and forth, actually co-writing an essay together. So it's related to housing. And anyway, we're kind of in this stuck place with this essay. And he was like, hey, super swamped. I'm traveling this week, I'm in San Francisco today. Let's chat on Friday. I'm like, oh, you're an SF? Swing by the ferry ball then. Yeah. You would even for lunch. Let's just chat, chat, you know, chat about over lunch. Met chatted over the essay for lunch, like completely spontaneously. And just like that sort of like shelling point for like this as the shelling point for for for tech and just the place where people congregate to just, you know, fly in for a day. This guy lives in New York.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Flew in for the day. There's just immense value in that sort of networked environment and just being, you know, being here locally. And so, yeah, it's been great and 100%. Like, I think it's clear that especially even with the the labs and you think about future IPOs that are gonna that are gonna happen and the amount of liquidity that's gonna come into the ecosystem, like the network effect is going to get stronger, actually. It's already a monopoly. Yeah. It's like the monopoly is just gonna grow from here for you know from here on. And yeah, that's like a tough reality for you know for me to sit with not being here. No, I think you have to decide what what's important, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:30

I mean, I I think when we moved here, I told my wife, like, I think if we don't move, I should probably do something different. I should like go back and teach or you know, go back to Georgia Tech and be a professor, like whatever it is, right? Yeah, I should probably look at a different option because my hypothesis was while during the pandemic and with SaaS, there was some dispersion of talent and capital that I actually believed with AI, you're gonna see a doubling down of capital and concentration of

The Bay Area Network Effect

SPEAKER_03 6:04

talent in the Bay Area, and either we need to be there or just not participate, like opt out. And that's not to say that someone you know that you have to move here, yeah. Yeah, but I will say that I think for me lately it's been Zoom is for tactics and in-person is for strategy. I think it's very hard to have a strategic conversation via Zoom. Yeah, I I just I just don't think it's the right medium versus you know, whether it's you know a meeting with GC or a potential investor, like whatever it is, right? To sit down and coffee at either our office in Half Moon Bay or here in SF and sit down and spend like an hour flies by when you're just like whiteboarding and doing and like riffing on each other. And what about this? And it's weird, like it's kind of hard to like. I feel like disagreeing with people and uh debating via Zoom, it's like just gets mean. I think it's like loses the human touch. Where if I'm arguing with you via Zoom, it's like we're yelling at each other.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

If I argue with you here and we disagree, it's like I don't know, the feedback has a there's a missing dimension, right?

SPEAKER_03 7:19

It doesn't feel like we're fighting on Zoom, it feels like when I disagree with people, especially like internal team calls. I feel like whenever I disagree with someone, it sounds like a fight. Yeah. And it's like, but if it was in person, it wouldn't sound that way. Um so I I think there's there's something kind of happening, there's something to all that. But I mean, look, I I think in the world of like there's so much going on, it's it's really hard to explain to people if you're not here just how much is going on. The other thing I've just found really interesting, and I think I've we're talking about different posts I made. Now I posted on LinkedIn this idea that like uh if you're doing a tech startup, you might want to stop doing your tech startup and just go back into your family business, like in construction. Like go go over for your grandfather's construction company for a minute, because that might be the better place to be. And I think what we're really starting to understand is like if you want to do big things, the definition of big has changed. The timeline to big has changed. And I think a lot of founders are like missing that. You know, it's not, you know, hey, I've been grinding for a year and I'm at 500k in ARR. Like, people don't really care about that. That's just not that's you're not hitting the radar. And I think what that requires is to take a little bit longer to incubate with no revenue and then launch and then do bigger things. And I think I think it's just really hard. I think it's a different playbook than the SAS playbook. I think capital is now a mode, right? Your ability to attract capital, attract early large amounts of capital is important. And I think it's either you raise capital because the business model requires it, not because you require it, but because the business model requires it, or you should really quite honestly just bootstrap. But, you know, I think that's what's kind of interesting about like what what the Bay Area sometimes misses is a really good lens into some of the traditional businesses that you could go grow and do, right? Because a lot of those traditional businesses don't exist here anymore. Not a lot of manufacturing happening in the Bay Area.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that post that you referred to. If you grew up in construction, this is the exact wrong time to do a tech startup. It's the exact right time to go back to the family business and apply tech.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, very interesting.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

So it's the other thing that I've uh, you know, we spend a lot of time. I think the other thing startups have to think about is uh, and it's not just startups, it's incumbent. I was talking to the former CEO of one of the incumbent software companies this morning. And I was kind of saying, like, here's what here's my point of view, right? This is not investment advice, disclaimer, disclaimer. I think most of the incumbent software companies, let's let's let's run through a few. Autodesk, I think best move they've made, best move they've made in the history of Autodesk, except for maybe buying Revit, is the $250 million investment into World Labs. So strategic, so smart. And I try to explain to people about built environment. I'm like, you know, LLM stands for large language model, language. Yes, we have contracts, but our world is physical AI. It's not really LLM. So there's a place for LLMs in what we do every day, but it is not the center of everything that we do every day. So I think that to that point, investing in world labs is a bet on the future of kind of the the physical AI world, which is super smart, right? They leverage their balance sheet in a strategic way. They also turn around and bought a company that was Maintain X or something. So they're also buying, they're buying innovation, which is normal for Autodesk, quite honestly. Yeah. Now, I'm not sure what Procore is doing, right? It doesn't seem like they're really doing that feature thing. Oh, we now have an AI chatbot type of thing, which is interesting. Bentley, I'm not sure what they're doing. You know, so you start going down the list of like, what are people? Trimble always will always have a physical element to what they're doing and a hardware element. So I think Trimble's making some interesting decisions there as well. But you know, some of the large CRM companies, my general hypothesis, you know, Salesforce just bought Finn. When has Salesforce ever released a product or feature new that you're like, wow, I need to switch to Salesforce? Hasn't happened. It's been all, you know, they bought Slack, they bought Tableau, you know, it's been all acquisitions. So my general theory about all these public companies, public incumbents, is they're they're gonna go private. Mostly because why be public, right? You're not getting rewarded with share price, getting slammed. Yeah, you don't really, you're not, you're not capital intense, so you don't need to borrow money, which is a big benefit of being a public company. You can borrow a lot more money better terms. You only need to borrow money, and then you're just like what supporting a thousand-person accounting, you know, to be a public company. And then, and by the way, when you're public, everything, every move you make, you know, gets vetted in in the market. You can't do anything in stealth, you can't say,

Zoom For Tactics In Person Strategy

SPEAKER_03 12:34

hey, let's forego two quarters of profitability to invest in X, Y, and Z. You can't do any of that in the in the public markets. So it'll be really interesting to see. So the the most interesting thing I've heard for the last few weeks is a lot of the people in the engineering and construction industry, a lot of them have built these innovation groups, right? For years, doing innovation stuff, looking at startups, a lot of them are investors with us at Shadow, but looking at startups and et cetera, et cetera, not necessarily justifying an ROI to their CFO. Sure. It's been like, are we doing this? Why are we investing? What's is it a marketing thing? What are we doing, right? It's a recruiting thing, what's the point? Well, now they're all starting to justify themselves. And the way they're justifying themselves is by replicating the software that they're purchasing. So they're going to their CFO and saying, hey, we've identified we're spending $100,000 a month on this little tool, on this little thing, on one of the incumbent software companies, add-ons, right? Like maybe it's like, hey, we bought this other module, like why are we? And they're going back and basically pitching the boards, hey, I can recreate all the software and I can save us $100,000 a month. And we get to own it and we get to customize it to the way we do business. And so they're actually growing these innovation teams, hiring coders, and displacing their current tech stack. And that's super interesting. In that, like if you're a startup, that maybe you're more of a feature startup, there's a good chance if you get on the radar, you you might get internally disrupted by these innovation groups. But I think what's really changed is you know, these guys can like spin up a prototype two days before a board meeting and say, hey, let me show you how we're gonna replace this and like have a working prototype to show the board. And the, you know, now the the uh uncomfortable truth is that getting it from prototype into production and secure and all that, I don't think these boards and executives really understand that. They just see the demo, like, oh yeah, like you already did it. Totally done, right? Totally. So that's gonna be an interesting dynamic. When they actually analyze the cost after the fact, yeah. It's like value, it's like value engineering and construction, right? Where's like, oh, we're gonna save 50 grand. It's like, well, it turns out.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yeah. But I think it is an interesting shift because in that in that meeting with the C with the C suite for the first time, they're actually demonstrating like real tangible value rather than talking about futuristic things that would require a lot of investment, right? They're just purely a cost center. No way in in good times, everyone's excited about those things, and bad times, everyone's ready to trim it and cut it immediately.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

Right. Because before what it would be, it'd be like, oh, here's four slides. I need you to budget half a million dollars for me to build a team and go build something. Yeah, they're showing up with the demo. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

And CEO's like, amazing. Yeah, go do it. Really interesting. Yeah, I think it's like it almost enables innovation teams to ride both sides of market cycles, whereas before they could not ride the downside. Whereas like they ride, you know, time like times times are fairly good right now, right? For the most, for the most part. I think if you're able to show the the potential ROI of it, of investing in an innovation unit or CVC or all the things you're you're you're mentioning, during good times, like you can extrapolate what that could do strategically to the balance sheet or the PL of a company. And a down cycle, there's literally no, like there's no way to do the same thing until until now, which is like, hey, I actually can can reduce the cost in all these different areas of the business. And I think that's like a that's actually feels like a breakthrough for the first time.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

Yeah, and it's and it's it's interesting too, is like, do these big construction and engineering companies actually become exit strategies for startups? Because if you're not growing double, double, triple, triple, like all the all the metrics that VCs look for, where do you end up? And if the incumbents are kind of not interested in acquiring, because I think incumbents are less interested in acquiring technology, they have to acquire revenue, right? Autodesk had to buy a maintenance acts that has a ton of revenue, right? So you know it'll be interesting to see if it becomes an exit path for some of these startups, because quite honestly, I think a lot of these engineering and construction companies, I think for them to acquire, you know, a three, four-person team from a startup would be a massive cultural impact to them, to really their innovation teams versus just you know someone from IT that moved over to the innovation team. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know, it's interesting times. There's just a lot of moving parts these days.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Okay, let's uh let's get back to our script of unpacking KP's posts. There were a couple good posts this week. Congratulations. One one that I liked, I think this is like this this is worth spending some time on. So we don't do demos with sample data, we do demos with your data. Construction projects are too complicated to treat them all the same. I learned this doing large ERP implementations, complex clients don't want to see generic demos that they can't relate to. Yeah, just walking up.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Yeah, I mean, so back in the day, early internet days, we all decided there was this kind of concept called ASP. So we all transformed from being ISPs, internet service providers, to application service providers. So one of the first things I built was actually a web interface for Microsoft Exchange. Okay. Because back then you couldn't host Exchange, it was like locally deployed. So we would host Exchange in a data center, and I had my skin on it essentially, so you could check email via the web. Yeah, surprise. So we we got heavily into the ERP business. So we're systems integrators and implementers for Lawson, SAP, Epicore, all these like mid-market ERPs, and we would host them and then put a skin on them so people could access it over the internet. And that's when I learned like when you're gonna talk to even a mid-market company and they manufacture rubber o-rings, you can show them every instance of every implementation with

The New Playbook For Big

SPEAKER_03 19:14

demo data, and they just don't get it. And I think one, I hate to say it, but like a lot of people lack imagination. And two, it's very hard to ask good questions with a sample set of data. Whereas when you see your own data and you're like, yeah, that's my project. Like in our case for zero, that's my project. Great. Well, use our tools to interrogate, use our tools to do whatever, right? They actually have an intimate knowledge of the data and information to dig into it. I mean, we've all sat through like CRM sales pitches, right? And that's all there is like, well, that's interesting. But if I had my data in there, I would be like, okay, what's happening with that guy? What, what, you know, what was the process here? Pull up, let me pull a forecast report, right? And so I think it's super important when you're dealing with complicated things. It's one is so that the prospect understands context. And two, I think that you have a system we can talk about, oh, it's really easy for us to work together after you sign the contract, or it's really easy for us to work together, regardless of whether you sign the contract. And I had a boss tell me one time, like, you should never treat a client, a prospect like a prospect. Just start teaching, treat them like a client on day one, and then they will become a client. If you play too many games and do different things, you know. So I think part of us just say, hey, let's let's figure out if we if we can work together. And I think that's a great way to work with the quote unquote prospect to make them a client, is to is to have that command. Like, let me show you how easy it is. Yeah. I just spun something up for you. What?

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yeah. Yeah, it feels like somewhat of a breakthrough in the sales process. You can shortcut the potential skepticism around the just the quality of the product by getting by by yeah, putting it to the test immediately.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

There's another extension of that that we don't talk about a lot that I think is becoming very interesting, is if we talk about AI, right? We talk about right, how should you charge? Right. So if we go back to our friend Alex Karp's rant a couple weeks ago, well, if they really, you know, if the LLMs created that much value, why are they charging you tokens? I don't know if you remember that note yet. Yeah. Right. And I kind of agree with him on that, right? I mean, the LLMs have their own, they're like more of a horizontal business model. And so we spent a bunch of time trying to come up with like ROI calculators. You know, it's so easy to do it now. You just like live code and ROI calculator, right? And I finally just deleted all of that. And I was like, these ROI calculators are just a bunch of BS. And so the team was like, then what are we gonna do? How are we gonna sell? Right. I was like, I'll tell you what, we do the work. If the client sees value, they can pay us whatever value they think. If they saw no value, tell them to pay us zero. And I'm like, that that's insane. I'm like, why is that insane? Like, let's stop talking. So we started this new narrative. We says, you know, stop telling, tell show me, don't tell me has been like what we've been talking about. I'm like, we can have four meetings. By convincing someone of the ROI. Or we just show them the ROI. And then we let them discern the value. And it's been wild because the team's like, we're doing what? Like, think about it. We're gonna cut, we're gonna cut out four meetings. All these meetings that you spend convincing someone of something, we don't have to do that anymore. Here it is, it's like, here's an NDA. Send us some files. That's the sales process. And then and then I've had people say, like, well, what if I decide not to pay you? I'm like, I mean, we created value and you don't pay me. They've said, I've said, well, then you're gonna lose me as a resource. Why

Incumbents Betting On Physical AI

SPEAKER_03 23:14

would you do that? And they're like, well, you know, are you gonna debate me? I was like, no, whatever you think. You know your business, you know the metrics better than I can. And I I can't begin to understand the metrics of you know a data center versus a hospital. That's that's not where I live, right? Yeah. So you tell me. What do you think? What do you think Alex Carp would say to that?

SPEAKER_01 23:36

He'd love it. Like in terms of so Palantir's pricing model to run an analog against that, they're charging out, you know, a base fee, right? For inf you know, for infrastructure setup implementation and all that. I don't think they're you know, they're it's not it's not, yeah, it's it's expensive. Like they're the client's not choosing their own path. I actually think there's another my yeah, my other question for you would be that would make me uncomfortable because I don't know what good for you means. Like if even if if I think you create value for me, it's hard for me to assess, like, and I want to continue to work with you. What is a price that you would feel good about if you know, like, and is there a massive delta between what you know, what I think the the market rate should be for that service, and then what you think what you're excited about as a you know, as a business owner? Does it matter?

SPEAKER_03 24:32

I mean, I think I think here's the here's the thing. If you're truly building an AI native business, what does it cost me to work? I mean, here's the other difference. I think with with what Palantir does is they're very much enterprise focused, right? They're we're gonna be here forever. I think our attitude is this is the construction industry, we're gonna be part of the project. And a project has a very discrete half-life, right? Whether it's by phase or the total project size. So it's not like, oh, we're gonna work together forever on this one project, we're gonna finish this project, claim project success, and move on to the next project, right? So there's even different scopes within a project. Yeah, I mean, we don't this the problem statements that are getting shipped to us are all over the place. In fact, we had a meeting this this morning about the website, and I was like, we shouldn't like cut down all the stuff on the website because we can't show every use case because it's like infinity, infinity, right? So, but it's like we can sit here and say words and have marketing slides and all this stuff, or we just say, let me just show you. Yeah, you know, what's wrong with that? Yeah, and it's funny because like I thought it'd just be so easy, but people are like, so what's what's the hook? Like, what's the what's the scam? I was like, there is no scam. The reality is there the big question everyone has, including what Alex Carp said the other day, is AI delivering value to me? Yeah, and I don't think we ever will know ahead of time. I think you only know after the fact, right? In a world of you know, consumer products, right? You know, like I'm on this like row RHO drinking all their stuff. I don't know why. It's all over my social media feed, so I start buying it, right? So I'm drinking all the creatines and everything else. I don't know. Like I bought it, I don't know if there's results, right? And so I think if there's still a lot of AI skepticism around am I getting value based on my token. I mean, everybody now ramp just launched their token spend management platform. Fascinating. I think there's gonna be a lot of companies. I saw their construction play, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:41

I know a little bit about that. Yeah, so so I think people are gonna try to figure out this token spend and try to figure out like what's our ROI? And the answer is you have no idea. Yeah, you have no idea. Yeah, so I think by going and working for clients on discrete project opportunities and problem statements, you can actually put definition around that, right? I saved you, wow, we found all these issues. I saved you X and potential change orders. Maybe you wouldn't have had them, whatever. I'll leave it up to you. Yep. For us, it doesn't matter, right? What's what's so I spent what, a few hundred tokens with this client? The time I spent with the client was probably the same time I would have spent selling them and convincing them and being in front of committees.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

But even in the AI, you know, in the AI native approach, there's still like with an AI native services firm, there's still humans that are completing the work. So there is like a floor of cost structure that, you know, even outside of token spin, that you have to absorb, right? Which is different than you know, what I would think about with the traditional SaaS business where the marginal cost of shipping new software is zero. And that's that was always the advantage. It's declining.

SPEAKER_03 27:59

Right. I would say we're probably, I mean, and especially if the person that's providing call it customer service or where we kind of kind of call our assistant PM, right? If I take their time spend to be the human involved in the process, it's

Innovation Teams Replacing Vendor Software

SPEAKER_03 28:14

probably cost equivalent to all the meetings that people, all the bodies, the warm bodies that we've gone to, the five or six meetings to convince the customer.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

So you're saying you're you're reducing your sales burden, right? But maybe increasing the operational burden or the services burden.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

I am questioning do we want do we even care about salespeople? Do we need salespeople? Like for what purpose? Right. And well, think about the Palantir model again, right? Right. Not sales model. Yeah, their sales model was like salespeople, like clients want to deal with the people that know what they're doing, right? They don't want to talk to a salesperson. No offense to all my sales friends. I'm sure you do a lovely job. But I think I did the math, right? So you you do four meetings to convince a client, right? And it's very stressful for them. It's very stressful. You're trying to close the deal, it's very stressful for you, it's very stressful for them. So let's take that out. So you do four meetings, probably three people on the team, right? So you do that math, and I'm like, or one subject matter expert has a call, says, Hey, help me understand. Great. I think we can help with this. I feel confident we can help with your problem. I'm gonna ship you an NDA and let's go. And they're like, What? Yeah, you send the files and let's go, right? Here's what we think we need, and we'll have a couple more meetings. So the iteration meetings we have are actually less number of hours than what a sales process would be. And everybody's on how I mean like I've been getting on these calls with people. I'm like, look, I'm not here to sell you. If you want to buy, I'm not gonna stop you, but I'm not here to sell you. And and I think people are just tired of being sold. And yeah, and I think with AI specifically, I think there's a real question, right? Like, yeah, is there value? Am I gonna give value? Yeah, oh, you're experimenting on me. Yeah. So yeah, um, but I do think that's that's been an interesting shift in thinking. And I do think that most companies should. If you're gonna be AI native, you know, I think you have to think about like how are you creating now? Does that mean a year from now, if we can show 20 case studies of how we created value that we charge up front? Maybe I don't know. Yeah. But I'll tell you this when you solve a problem for a client, a big problem, they generally are more generous than you would be to yourself.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Yeah, you're not capping, you're not capping your upside. No, if you truly satisfy them in a deep way. Yeah, I like that as incentive alignment. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, moving on. Another post. Let's let's shift a little bit more to the startup world for a second. Okay. Let me find it very quick. Scrolling through your post and chuckle on. Okay. I was talking to a G GTM leader at a seed stage startup. They took a salary pay cut for equity at the startup. They joined because they were excited to leave a big corporate and build something. I was walking them through the enterprise value and how they should look at this that their SaaS valuation, the TAM of the market, market size, average deal size, average sales cycle, et cetera. What basically what does the exit look like in five years for them? Then ran back of the napkin math for them in a situation where the startup was wildly successful and took an aggressive amount of the TAM and wallet spin, they would basically get their old salary back in the event of a successful outcome. I love that people want to join startups. It just isn't sometimes about the money, but do the math. This person never did the math. I was like, yeah, and that's some pretty interesting commentary.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Yeah, I mean, I've always found um hiring a great salesperson will do better due diligence than any DC. Because they dig into tell me about your last 10 deals, tell me about the deal size, tell me about how it started, and how did you discount it, and what was the cycle, and where did the lead? I mean, they dig into things in such a deep way that I would argue like attracting a top salesperson is harder than attracting venture capital. Yeah. And I'm not look, I think everybody has their different reasons to get into the startup world. It's just like eyes wide open, right? Actually know what the economics are gonna be. And this person, you know, they got very excited, they quit their job, and they had never done any of the math. And you know, should I start, you know, I just started walking them through. But but did they did they take the job because they thought it was a unicorn or a lottery ticket? It's gonna be a unicorn. Oh, it's they're solving a huge problem, it's gonna be a unicorn. I was like, it's probably not gonna be a unicorn. I was like, and in your best case, were like they they didn't do the study of TAM, they didn't study like what the average deal sizes were. You know, one thing I would say like really good salespeople are very good at prioritizing fit. And the minute the deal size gets too small, they just walk away. Like, oh, this client can't afford us. Like they they self-select and opt into the right customers. And I think this person just did not do the homework to really understand things, they got very excited about joining a startup. Oh, the founder's like amazing, and it's gonna be a unicorn and blah, blah, blah. And they raised some money. Got caught up in the hype cycle. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think it's fine if you want to take a pay cut to go join a startup.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

There are other reasons to other than a lottery ticket. Right. Maybe you like the culture, maybe you like the mission, maybe you like the lifestyle of not having to wear a suit every day. There's lots of reasons to join startups. But yeah, if you're banking on if the core reason is, hey, this is gonna be a massive financial outcome for me, you better do your diligence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:01

Or just that it does matter, right? Maybe, maybe it's all those things, right? The culture and everything else, but also like I don't want to lose money. Like, I have bills to pay, blah, blah, blah. You know, commitments, financial commitments. But I I think it was just I felt really bad. Like sometimes I get into my Rain Man math world, and I'm sitting there mapping it out for this person. Yeah, if it's like post-mortem for them, that's kind of painful. And then I like that. They already made the decision. I looked up at them and they like their face was just yeah, white. Yeah. And I was like, I feel so bad now. But I also feel like maybe I was helpful.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

I think, I mean, just one more point on that. I think the it's like, you know, I don't maybe it's taboo to say, but I think that anyone joining an early-ish stage startup should be motivated by money. Like you want people incentivized to have a massive, you know, like you want them incentivized to to produce great output. Yeah. And like usually a motivator for that, if you're grinding and spending 60, 70, 80 hours a week, you know, with the team, at some point there's got to be a North Star and a personal reason to do it. And it's okay to be motive, be money motivated.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

Yeah, it's kind of funny. We've been having some debates internally, and I think every company, every startup has this debate, like level of transparency around money, around salaries, around all those things. And I remember we had our friends such a spectrum of schools of thought on this topic. Yeah. Yeah, it's I mean, you know, it was interesting. What came to mind was you know, our friend Mark Deixiro has comes on every once in a while to some of our mastermind groups and stuff like that to coach young people. And someone asked him, what you know, shifting from sports to business, like what was the biggest adaptation for him? And he said, sports is such a meritocracy. Like, you don't get to keep your job because the boss likes you,

Demos With Real Data Win Deals

SPEAKER_03 35:55

keep your job because your teammates like you.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Unless you're LeBron James's son.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Yeah. Well, he got to play one game, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:03

Do you see what he did, by the way? No, I didn't. So he opted out. I'm cutting cutting you out before you reveal the punchline. But so LeBron's son. LeBron, you know, he opted out of the renewing with the Lakers, and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna move on. But he did it the day after his son had got a guaranteed contract with the Lakers.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

Smart.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

So he's guaranteed, got a contract. I mean, we all you know know that you know Bronny is not an obvious starter on for an NBA team, and but it was literally the day after, it's been fine.

SPEAKER_03 36:37

Yeah, we call that good wealth. But I think so so the point Mark was making is everybody knows what everybody makes, and everybody understands salary caps.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

It's all public, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

And yeah, very interesting. Yeah, and like when your buddy gets traded due to poor performance, you kind of say, hey dude, it's great working with you, and I'll see you on the other side of the mound, or whatever it is, you know, they sports talks, right? But it's so transparent, it's such a meritocracy. And then he said he goes into the corporate world. What does that guy do? Yeah, how much do we pay him? It's like, oh, you you're not allowed to ask that.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Like, you can't. Well, then I mean, really, the reality is everyone bickers about it. Yeah, people are people get resentful, they bicker about it, it creates like a lot of internal politics.

SPEAKER_03 37:22

Yeah, so I've been really struggling with that, and I think all startups do, right? Like, as far as I'm concerned, it's like I want to publish what everybody makes, I want to publish what everybody's equity positions are. Yeah, and some people would say that's like lazy leadership because what you're doing is kind of creating a Lord of the Flies thing, and it self-configures. People are like, hey man, like you make too much to not hit that pitch, right? We you get paid way too much to not hit that pitch. And it and it's interesting, but I think you also freak people out. Like we're talking about, I wonder how many startups communicate to the entire company how much burn rate they have left. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

It's a good question. I yeah, I don't have a rough idea of the percent. I would guess I guess it's like 50-50, to be honest. Yeah. I think there's a lot of founders that are very vocal about it because it's like it's I mean, that's truly motivated for the team. Yeah, in some cases, like if you're really early and you're running lean, you everyone's gotta be everyone's gotta understand the existentialness of producing.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Yeah, so I I think that's like a super interesting topic because I mean, we're now I'd say early days, we didn't talk about it as much. Now we're actually starting to create like weekly, monthly town hall dashboards around money because I kind of coined this thing. Did I I think I coined it, maybe I didn't. Is that you start off with like individual scale as a startup? Like how much can I produce to get the ball moving forward? How much can the next person produce to move forward? And then you kind of move into team scale. So how how much can you move together as a team? And then eventually end up at like functional scale, right? Because a team scale, it's a little bit more like street ball, street ball, right? You know, run down there and turn left at the station wagon, and I'll get the ball to you, right? It's it's it's more like team scale. And so I think um, I think like right now we're in team scale mode. Yeah. And I think that creates a different dynamic.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:20

You know, and it it's interesting. But I I interesting. I I do wonder how startups are thinking about that.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

All right. One more we can do a lightning round on this one. Let's keep it to a two-minute unpack. If claw design pitch decks are an early indicator of AI design buildings, we may have a problem. Are you saying the claw design pitch decks are bad? I think you and I have kind of been saying, like, I mean, I mean, I have I have a super strong opinion about this. If I see a claw design pitch deck, I'm not even gonna look at it. I'm not even gonna look at it. Yeah. Because it is to me an indicator of just like extreme laziness. They all look the same. So like there's the human nature of understanding the reviewer, which in this case is me or you. I can't differentiate what I'm seeing on the screen. Right. They look it looked the exact same as the last 10. So you're requiring me to like really dig in, and I've got you know 100 to look at, right? It's like an it's like a it's like a resume in in some ways. So, like, how are you like the the idea of writing a great resume is you have to figure out a way to quickly get to the point, stand out. And it's creating this environment where like no one's trying to stand out and differentiate, it's a lot of sameness, and it's just like to me, there's a really low bar of you know the the the energy that went into creating that and telling your story, which like if it truly is your personal mission, which every founder is on a personal mission on some level, like why are you spending two minutes on pitch deck? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

I also think it's like a point of pride, like, hey, I'm really excited about what I'm working on, and like I want to, I want to, you know, I want to talk to you about it, I want to show it to you. Yeah. Funny thing is, like, all the YC Kid pitch decks I get, they all started doing these pre-prompt links. Have you seen these? No. So basically it'll say, here's the slide, click on here, and it'll pop open a prompt in Chat GPT or Claude. And so you can like unpack what they're actually trying to say. Like ask it questions about that slide. Okay. I was like, that's that's cool, right? That's interesting, right? Versus which which I think they're basically saying, like, we know you're gonna take our slide and throw it through Claude and apart, right? Let me go ahead and do it for you. Yeah, right. But no, I think if if if any the ease, right, if you want to stand out, you would think AI, I look at AI and say, like, we should be able to

Startup Math And AI Sameness

SPEAKER_03 41:44

do much more highly personalized things, but it seems like everything's starting to look the same. And God forbid we start doing that with buildings. I mean, we already have that problem that people just do not build buildings of character anymore, design buildings of character anymore. And if they're gonna start using AI tools to design buildings, it's feels like it's gonna look like our all the decks. Sameness, same thing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

I mean, the design tools and I think the customization you'll get from them will improve, but to a certain extent, it has to, it's always gonna come back to like how much energy did you put into creating you know, creative output, I think. Yep. Yeah. Cool.

SPEAKER_03 42:27

All right. Well, that was awesome. So hopefully we'll do what we're doing with our next one, our live one. We're trying to figure that out.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Still working on the logistics for the live KP impact show. We will reveal all those details as soon as we uh have more information. All right, thanks for tuning in. All right.