Voiceover: What does it take to stay ahead in B2B SaaS? Welcome to The New Go-To-Market Playbook. I'm your host, James Kaikis, Chief Revenue and Experience Officer at Testbox. In our interview series, I sit down with go-to-market operators, leaders, and industry experts who are defining the next era of go-to-market by winning in the margins. These leaders are focused on incremental innovations and non-obvious advantages that drive big results. The goal of this interview series is for you to take action in your business. So sit back, grab a notepad and enjoy the episode.

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James Kaikis: Godard, thanks so much for joining me today. It's great to see you. 

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Godard Abel: Yeah, fun to be here with you. 

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James Kaikis: Yeah, and I really appreciate your time, because something about you is you know, Sam Senior, our CEO very well, and actually were introduced to TestBox in the infancy of the business. Is that correct? 

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Godard Abel: Yes. I moved to Boulder during the pandemic. And Sam, you know, now my entrepreneur friend also lives in Boulder. So we got to know each other. We're both in YPO now as well but all through the Boulder entrepreneurship ecosystem. 

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James Kaikis: That's gotta be a tight-knit system. 

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Godard Abel: It is, because I was in the Bay Area in Palo Alto before and compared to the Bay Area, well, probably everything's tiny. But it does make it also a closer community. 

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James Kaikis: Yeah, I love that. Sam speaks very highly of you and obviously, I think many people know about your background. But what was it about TestBox and Sam that made you want to be an angel investor in this business?

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Godard Abel: Well, I think the vision is very complimentary, because I think we both saw that software buying and selling is way too hard, especially for software buyers. You know, I think the part we're trying to solve, it's hard to just even discover apps. It's hard to know which app to even look at. G2 is trying to solve that with g2.com and our reviews and sort of a master directory to make it easier to discover the right apps and see which ones you can trust based on peer reviews. But then typically the next step in software buying is you want to get your hands on the product. Some people have a demo button, a free trial button, but I think the challenge that Sam saw, which was also something I saw when I was building my last two companies — an empty demo or a generic demo video usually doesn't do it. And most customers want to load some of their data. And I remember Sam was starting with helpdesk software. But they want to see, what it would look like for my helpdesk, for my workflow with my case data, and how would this app actually work? And so I love that vision, to allow the buyer to get hands on. And they could do multiple apps. I think they could look at Zendesk, they could look at Freshdesk. They could look at Service Cloud, but they could actually get a real working demo environment or a TestBox and so I thought that was a very complementary vision to what we're doing a G2 and I thought it would also help the software buyer and seller collaborate more efficiently. 

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James Kaikis: That's actually how I got introduced to TestBox as well when I heard the marketplace I was like wow this is a fascinating idea. Obviously we've shifted as a bit of as a business but still that core premise is true to what we do as a business and one of the things that you mentioned that I'd love to dig into is your own background and experience building companies and dealing with demo problems. So can you just give a little bit of a background on yourself and what you've done in your career? 

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Godard Abel: Yeah, well I've been in enterprise software now for 25 years and it's hard to believe. This week is Dreamforce and it's also my 20th Dreamforce. So we started our first company, Big Machines, way back in 2000. And this was really the original dot-com boom here in the Bay Area, and for about a year it was incredible. We raised like 20 million bucks. And I was also very young. I think I was like fresh out of business school, maybe like 27/28 years old. And we were able to just on vision, PowerPoint, smart team, able to raise 20 million bucks. And we thought, you know, we're going to create the company for the next millennium. For a few months, we kind of operated that way. We scaled up to like 70 employees from zero and, you know, we were just going. But then it got much harder quickly because what happened was a dot-com bubble burst. And I remember in 2001, people were even saying Amazon was gonna go bankrupt. Because they'd gone public late '90s, but they also took on like $500 million in debt. They were losing a lot of money and then I think there's a big lash back against the internet, where people were like, wow, this was just a fad. And if you read Bezos’ biography, he's still kind of bitter about it, but these credit analysts on Wall Street were just betting when's Amazon going to be bankrupt. And so, we started Big Machines to help manufacturers sell complex products online. And the founding vision was to help manufacturers. My father was in pump manufacturing. And he was back in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So, I remember the idea actually came to me like November 99. I went back to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving and I was here in the Valley you know and at the time it was the reality distortion zone - that’s what people called it. It might still be that. It might still be that. It's gotten close to reality I think. And but everyone here was already punch-drunk on the internet and the internet's gonna change everything and then it was like very sober. I went home to see my dad and he was selling complex industrial pumps. I was like dad, “how's the internet going to affect your business?" He was just like, "It's not." And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, "Hey, look, my products aren't like books, which is all Bezos and Amazon were selling at the time." He's like, "They're very complex pumps, and we have to configure a different pump based on pressure, flow rate, viscosity, chemistry for each customer." And he's like, "I need a pump engineer to help our customers do that, right? There's no way to do it online." But at that time, I saw what Michael Dell was doing, and he was also obviously a great entrepreneur, started in the 90s, started Dell. It’s still a huge company today, but he was one of the first to sell PCs direct to consumers online, and they were also, especially at that time, quite configurable. You could obviously choose like a different screen size, you could choose your RAM, your CPU, your operating system, and so they built this online configurator that would help you put together the perfect PC. But also in real time you could see pricing, lead time and just place the order online and that was very revolutionary at that time. It was like Dell was the first company to do it and then I said wow I could help my dad sell his pumps like Dell sells PCs. That was the idea. Then luckily my dad was skeptical, but ultimately supportive of his son. So he became my first customer my first angel investor, but that only had like 100 employees, he only had two IT people, and he also knew nothing about even hosting a website, and certainly not running online software. So we also decided to build a, today you call it in the cloud — but we would handle all the hosting for the customer, just send them a login and they could upload their own products, their own rules and be up and selling, that was a basic idea. 

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James Kaikis: Wow, that's incredible. That's not the only company that you founded, You've obviously founded a couple more companies. So what happened after Big Machines?

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Godard Abel: Well, first, like Big Machines, honestly that company three years in almost failed. Just to kind of complete that story, because of the dot-com bust. And then I remember like 2001, 2002, I'd raised venture capital. And I think my business plan, like 2001, I'm gonna sign up 20 customers. I ended up signing up two. And so I was 90 % off sales plan. Same thing happened in 2002. And then by 2003, we were almost bankrupt, because we burned through 19 to 20 million, and I wasn’t going to be able to raise any more money. Like our numbers were terrible. And I remember then we had to pivot to organic positive cash flow, and we only had like 12 customers, because manufacturers are also, like we'd call on them, they're like, "Yeah, this is kind of interesting, but the internet's a fad. We're happy sending out paper catalogs." You know, so it was very tough, but we did persevere. And I think my co-founder Chris and I, We I think we didn't want to quit on each other and we did have a dozen early customers. It was actually working, they were able to do quotes and orders online like 80-90% faster. And so we're like hey eventually the market will come around if we can survive, kind of through a deep chasm. Because that led to the second company, we did — eventually we actually partnered with Salesforce and I came to their first Dreamforce in 2003 and met Mark Benioff and he was just starting to partner as I'm like, hey, Mark, I think we should partner for our CPQ app. And it turned out to be true as Salesforce moved up market. They started selling to big manufacturers like GE and they needed a partner like Big Machines. So that's what made the company successful, eventually, you know, after many years of struggle. But we wound up selling it to Oracle. You know, kind of 12 years in the journal became Oracle CPQ. And then I had a break for about a year. And I remember it was kind of nice. Like I was home with my wife and kids, we had young kids, but I was kind of depressed. You know, after a few months, my wife was like, "Hey, what's wrong with you?" because I wasn't getting out of bed in the morning. And then I kind of realized, when I was kind of burned out, like it was so much stress and like from the near failure. But then after a few months, I kind of realized, wow, I missed it. I missed building, especially I missed my team. And that's when I decided let’s build some more, you know? And then after Big Machines was acquired by Oracle, we thought there'd be a vacuum in the Salesforce ecosystem. And Salesforce was our biggest partner. And so we decided to build Steelbrick, which was like a Big Machines 2.0, a next gen CPQ, but specifically built just for Salesforce customers on the Salesforce platform. And that company, we started in 2014. And because like that time, we kind of knew what we were doing. We of partnered with a smart CTO, Max Rudman, who was already building a quoting app for Salesforce. And within two years, we scaled that business, I think from like one to over 16 million ARR. And we were acquired by Salesforce because they really, I got a meeting with Mark Benioff and did a demo for him and he's just like, "Wow, this is so much more intuitive and many of our customers are gonna want it." And so we were acquired and then I spent about a year and a half at Salesforce integrating that, but all of that also spawned the idea for G2. Which we actually started in parallel to G2 and this goes back to also why I was excited about TestBox. But it goes back to this idea that software buying and selling is way too hard. And one of the problems we saw in addition to being hard to get your hands on the product, it's like the discovery was really hard and one of the blockers we thought was Gartner, frankly. Because I just remember my first company Big Machines because it took nine years to get into a Gartner report, 12 years to be the leader. And then frankly when these big companies like GE finally found us they would say wow, I wish I'd known about you two or three years ago. You know I'm gonna build a software in house, but I was just looking at that Gartner report and you weren't in there. And the idea in some ways was obvious, we just wanted to bring consumer-like shopping to B2B software. And obviously by the time we started G2 in 2013, people were already shopping on Amazon. That had become mainstream. And obviously Amazon didn't go bankrupt. But frankly it went the other way, right? We started buying everything online. And also Amazon invented the idea of online reviews. And again in Bezos’ biography, I think he first launched them in like 1995. And actually it was interesting, at the time he was only selling books. And actually the book publishers, his partners got really mad at him. Because they were like, Jeff, why are you allowing people to say nasty things about our books? And that's one, like it's good feedback, but two, he also had data right away that a book even with just one negative review would convert higher. And obviously a book with a hundred reviews, you know, mostly positive, would convert a 30-40% higher. Now it's obvious, but like when I buy anything online, I always look at the reviews. Or at the beginning, we called G2 a Yelp for software. Because if I'm like in San Francisco and I don't live here, you know, a bar or restaurant, that’s, 4.5 or higher, like I'll go there. 

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James Kaikis: And I absolutely agree. And I really appreciate you sharing your perspective because what I'm hearing throughout the journey is you've been ahead of the trend in almost every single, single aspect, right? To hear that the internet was a fad, right? And to now know how critical it is to everyone's DNA and our day-to-day lives is really interesting. So how have you been able to stay ahead of the curve? You've built three businesses and they've all been very successful. So how have you been able to do that? 

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Godard Abel: I do think that's why I come to events like Dreamforce, especially being out here in the Valley, I think just through a lot of conversations with peer entrepreneurs. I do think that's one great thing about the Bay area and San Francisco. And obviously now it's all about AI, right? And obviously open AI is here, chatGPT is here. But I do think, you know, keeping an eye out on the bigger ways and trends in tech. And I think to those of us in tech, it's often obvious. But then the harder part is how do you execute successfully? Because even in that initial internet era, you know, there were thousands of companies started. And obviously most of them failed. Failed in spite of betting on the right trend. And then I think the second part of entrepreneurship is like, how do you persevere? Because there are usually those downturns. Like most tech goes through like hype, like a kind of a boom bust cycle. And then usually it does come to fruition, but oftentimes years later. That's what happened with internet 1.0. That's what happened with the cloud. And maybe that's what happened with AI. 

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James Kaikis: I want to dig into that because it is very interesting. What do you think of AI right now? Is it a hype cycle? I think we've already seen in a year the narrative shifting to agent mode. As someone who's seen a couple of these cycles, what's your honest opinion of where we're at and where we're going? 

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Godard Abel: Well, I think one, we're still early in it, but I do think it's very real. And I think we see in our own company things like AI service agents but I think there's already use cases where AI is already working. You know we also all see it in our own lives like chatGPT as a writing assistant absolutely like so it's already working in some applications it probably has been a bit over-hyped. I think also one difference is that a year ago everyone was saying oh there's gonna be AI SDRs, like full automation, kind of going to full self-driving. And it's a bit more like I think the Waymo's. You know now there's finally self-driving, but I think like Elon Musk has been saying that for 10 years. Yeah, and I think the Teslas aren't still quite self-driving. You know, I think the same things happen in SaaS, where a year ago everyone said AI SDRs. Overnight full automation, SDRs aren’t gonna have a job anymore. I think everyone realizes that's premature and now I think like AgentForce, people are saying it’s more of a human assistant. \

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James Kakis: Sure, which I agree. This time last year, before I joined TestBox, I was doing a bunch of research and talking to folks as well. And I ran a bunch of, I ran 10 round tables with 30 executives, so the best software companies, asking about the impact of AI and the solutions engineering function. And almost everything that I heard was, this isn't gonna replace the job, it's gonna make the job more efficient and it's going to augment the role. And I think to your point about the SDR, everything takes a lot longer than we think, right? Everything always takes a lot longer. And to be able to go and replace a function with precision and deliver value with very low misfire rates is really hard to do. I mean, I don't know what you think, like most of the experience I've been hearing about the AISDRs is they're just inaccurate, right? And if you ask follow -up questions, you're not getting what you need And so you still need a human in a loop. So, you know, I think that perspective is very interesting. When do you think we'll start to see more of those efficiency gains in the AI agent space? 

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Godard Abel: So I think it's hard to say exactly when, you know. But I think it's easier to like over a decade. I also love that Bill Gates quote: you will tend always overestimate what will happen in a year, but underestimate will happen in decades. 

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James Kaikis: That's a great quote. 

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Godard Abel: And in 10 years, do I believe an AISDR, AI support agent will be handling most of the current customer support in SDR job? I would definitely say yes. But how long does it take to go from assistant to full automation? I don't exactly know. 

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James Kaikis:  Yeah. I agree. I think I'm curious on how agents will impact your business model at G2.

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Godard Abel: Yeah. And we are excited about agents, and we have launched a Monty AI agent at G2. 

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James Kaikis: I've seen that. Congratulations. 

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Godard Abel: Thank you. And the first use case we have for Monty is to assist a software buyer. And because I think G2 has become a very complex store. There's over 2,000 categories of software. It is like TestBox is in demo automation and a couple more categories, but demo automation, like three years ago, they didn't even exist. And our industry keeps innovating, so there's over 2,000 categories on G2, which is kind of cool for us software nerds. But it's terrible for most software buyers. And let's say you're like a CMO, and probably you want to start with just saying, "Hey, "How do I improve my demand gen?” "How do I most more efficiently generate leads?" And in marketing software, for example, now we have like 20 ABM categories. And ABM is account-based marketing.And then there's like account-based orchestration, account-based execution, account-based ads, account-based selling, et cetera. But that's really confusing for the buyer. And what AI Monty can do is be almost like a virtual Accenture consultant that's an expert in MarTech, and then guides you to the right categories, to the right products, and obviously the AI can also consider what's your company size, and we encourage people to sign up at LinkedIn, so then we know, okay, you're a go-to-market leader for a 50-person startup in San Francisco, and based on that, we can recommend apps that will likely fit your use case, as well as your business context. And so that's what's really exciting about Monty is that it can guide the software buyer to the right solutions.

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James Kaikis: Yeah, very exciting.

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Godard Abel: And then there's a second version of Monty we've created, which is a seller Monty. And that's really to help you, and you could put this on your TestBox profile, let's say on G2, but it can help you actually qualify and answer buyer questions. Because at some point, you know, we might guide the buyer to like demo automation as a category, but then they're like, oh, TestBox looks cool, they have really good reviews, but now they have some specific questions for you. Yeah, they're like, hey, how long does it take to implement, what's it gonna cost? And traditionally, that's when you'd hand off to a lead form, but now we can train Monty to actually answer some of your seller FAQs, help the buyer, walk the buyer further down the funnel, and then we can hand the buyer off either to an SDR, or maybe we feed them into a demo. But I think that's the cool thing with a seller, Monty, we can really help the buyer get further into funnel and help the sellers start to drive conversion. 

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James Kaikis: Sure, I love that because I know when I'm looking for companies in different categories and using Google search, it's all SEO and you can't actually really sort through it. It's not very good. So even for us, when we you know, look like companies from a go-to-market perspective, I'd go to G2 and I'd go to the grid and I'd look to see who's on the grid. I think what's also really interesting and I went through this exercise at Testbox is I pulled up everyone in the demo automation space. I pulled up all their websites and looked at all their messaging and everyone sounds exactly the same, right? And in the demo automation space, which I appreciate that G2 has made this update in the last couple of months, there's a lot of segmentation now in this category, right? This category was new up and coming, but now there's really, you know, there's product tours, there's live demos, and POC automation, and those last two are where TestBox sits. When you go to companies' websites, you really can't figure out the difference, right? Because everyone's got their kind of jargon out there. So the idea that I can ask an AI to sit on the profile to give me better clarity sounds really good for buyers. And actually, I want to talk to folks who are more qualified at the end of the day anyway, so and we're happy to, we get a lot of folks, or we traditionally got a lot of folks who were looking for product tour softwares and we're like hey, we're not actually a fit for this but we'll recommend companies that are. So to get a better level of qualification sounds great to me honestly. 

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Godard Abel: That's exactly what Monty can do, you know, because he can ask, oh, you think you're just in demo automation but is it really POC automation? And you're right and I ultimately want G2 to be more like a dating site. And maybe our new slogan is like fall in love on the first demo.

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James Kaikis: Oh, let's go, I like that, no, that's good. 

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Godard Abel:  Because ultimately, like you said, the seller, right? You're happier if you get more qualified inbound. You don't want more volume. You want perfect fit. They're looking for your functionality. They're the right company size, right industry. And obviously it's also what the buyer wants. Right, so I think if we can be a more efficient matchmaker between software buyer and seller, and I think AI makes it a lot easier that we can do better on both sides for the buyer and the seller.

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James Kaikis: Yeah, I really like that. And I will even just give you a quick end on TestBox. When I first joined, we had a lot of inbound and a lot of demo requests 'cause there was a sophisticated SEO strategy. But when I started combing through all the data and seeing the progression, I found things were not really progressing very well because they weren't qualified. And my philosophy is I'd rather have, if there were 100 leads, I'd rather have 10 that were qualified than 100 that are unqualified, right? And so like getting the right people to my site and in our processes is really important for us. One thing that you had just mentioned that I'm really curious about is all the categories on G2. I don't want to be too controversial, but I feel like there's a lot of tech bloat out there, right? You said there's so many categories and it's confusing for buyers, right? If we put the emphasis on the buyer, it's just like, you know, we're taught to sell value but it comes down to feature function, right? And sometimes in these categories, do you see a shift in, you know, consolidation or platform plays in tech over the next couple of years?

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Godard Abel:  I think we have, I've seen that over the last two years. And probably through 2021, it was all about more apps and more categories and exciting to have in our industry. And probably the past decade was that way. 'Cause cloud was still new. And I remember even like 10 years ago, like even marketing automation was still a new category. You know what I mean? 'Cause first it was just like even Salesforce was just Salesforce automation. Then it became CRM, right? And then people were like, like, "Oh wow, we need different software for marketing." And then, but then you also have email marketing and then you get ABM, right? But it's got maybe then too granular all of a sudden? You know, even like in sales tech, you know, now we have demo automation. But even within that, there's like POC, right? So it's gotten very stratified. And then I think the last couple of years, buyers and also with a tougher economy, also in tech, right, people all of a sudden started saying, "Wow, I have too many apps." And I know at G2, we all of a sudden had over 200 apps. Yeah, 'cause like marketing has 50 apps, HR has 25 apps, you know, every team has older apps, but I do think the trend in the last couple of years has been towards consolidation. And like, hey, let's have fewer apps. And I know our CRO, G2, Eric Gilpin, he's also like, it's also hard for the AE, 'cause they have to go through like 10 tools. It's also just inefficient. So I think there has been a trend towards, hey, fewer tools, and then also probably the other trend is they just have to be better integrated. So if you are going to multiple tools, it doesn't feel like it to the user. 

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James Kaikis: Well, we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording is that I tend to think that in software over the last decade, we've built organizational structures around our own internal needs instead of the customer. And you know, we've really lost sight of who matters in software buying and it's the customer and delivering value. And I think a lot of teams see the signature, they sign off, they say my job's done here, but really the work's just getting started. And even when you talk about it from your own perspective, if I think about my own sales team and sales organizations I've been a part in the past, we have all these platforms and all these tools for them to make them better at their job, but it ends up being a clunky experience, it ends up being too much for them to be able to handle. So the idea of a consolidated platform, or a couple of tools that makes their job easier, feels like it's the trend that we're about to go down. Especially if you add in the layer of, the market's getting tighter, getting funding's tougher than ever, and if you're not meeting growth metrics as a Series B or C or D company, what's that next step for you? 

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Godard Abel: True, and I do think the other trend thats going to drive it is AI. And I was also having the vision of Salesforce presented this week is agents, AI agents. I think that's probably gonna be more the software interface. As a sales rep, you just, there's an agent assistant. And frankly, behind the scenes, that agent may be calling many apps and pulling from many data sources. But really, hopefully, the sales person, maybe even just speaking. You know, maybe we can stop typing one day. You know, you're just having a conversation. Obviously, there's some tools like Gong or Chorus with conversational intelligence that can kind of do this for you, right? You set like manually write up notes and figure out your next steps. And now the AI obviously analyzes your call, can recommend next steps. And so I think we're getting closer to where maybe there's one conversational AI interface for like sales. It's like their sales assistant agent. And so that's like another way to make it easier for the salesperson just do your in your AI system, it was the one feeding the apps. And it's actually something we just rolled out of G2, like we're rolling out a MEDIC system, with our new CRO. But now rather than our reps meaning we have to go fill in all the MEDIC fields, we're leveraging conversational intelligence, we fill it out for them. And then they can just correct it. 

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James Kaikis: If I'm a seller, right? Do whatever you can to make my job easier. And if I'm not spending time doing admin work, I'm talking to customers, I am helping progress deals and I'm delivering value, like that's what I wanna be doing. I think what's really interesting that you just highlighted that as a trend and the timeline I'm trying to keep my pulse on is the agent-to-agent interaction, right? I think that's where we'll start to see those efficiency gains and things really take off, is when agents are speaking to each other and I can just ask one interface that's triaged a number of systems behind the scenes. 

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Godard Abel: Yeah, and I think that's coming. I think one, you'll have your AI sales assistant that takes your call notes, identifies the next steps, probably drafts the follow-up email, you just correct it, logs it into your CRM for you, updates your forecast based on the quality of that call, so you really just, I think what most salespeople love doing is talking to the customer, having empathy, and you just do that and your AI assistant is kind of feeding the beast, right? All the systems that are processed to forecast updates. And I do think agent to agent, and there's another company involved with Logik, they can then generate a quote for you. And they're actually demoing this where it listens to your conversation. And, frankly, also, based on that conversation you just had with the customer, also generates a recommended quote for you. And I've been seeing people use that for a long time, it used to be a pain I had also. I had to fill in like 20 attributes, go through workflow, to then generate a quote for the customer. But now the AI can also listen, tap into the Logik quoting engine, and just have a recommended quote for you ready to go at the end of the call. Obviously, it's up to you whether you want to send it, correct it, and that's just an example of how your sales recording agent, your conversational intelligence agent, updates your CRM, but then it also talks to your quoting agent and prepares a budgetary proposal for the customer. And I do think that's going to happen happen quickly, and obviously I think a salesperson's life will be much better because all the manual administrative stuff, feeding systems, generating quotes will all be done for you and you can just focus on the customer, understanding the requirements and building the relationship and closing the deal. 

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James Kaikis: That is a future that I definitely want to be a part of, right? 

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Godard Abel: And I think it's gonna happen. I mean it's exciting. 

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James Kaikis: I want to dig into you and your experience and being able to see the trends, right? I think one thing that I've heard around the success of these agents working is clean data. So do you have any point of view on how that can get transformed and that can be better? Because then, if I've got trust in the data that's being utilized, I have better trust in the output that's given to me, I'm more likely to adopt and utilize a new agent. 

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Godard Abel: I do think there's a whole data layer that you have to get right. And I think Salesforce is calling it their data cloud, you know, where you do have to have accurate data. And I think that is still a challenge. But there are many vendors working on solving that problem, right? Like obviously like ZoomInfo, and Apollo to make sure you have the right contact data, the right title, the right email. Obviously G2, we also provide intent data. Yes, ideally you also have a signal, "What's the right time to reach out to the customer?" I do think that's probably still a challenge though, and I think why some people don't trust AI, and I think why it's still a human assistant, because frankly, sometimes, and you see this, if you're using, I don't know, CleatBit a lot of times you'll be like, "Oh, wow, that's the wrong title." Or they switch companies when you cross-check with LinkedIn, so I do think the data layer is still improving. And that's why I think we can't go 100% self driving yet in sales, you know. I think you still need a human to check it. 

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James Kaikis: Yeah, I can agree to that. One thing that I want to dig in there as well is you mentioned intent, right? And G2 having intent software as well. Right now, in my opinion, there's just so much noise out there. It is just so noisy out there. And trying to decipher the signals feels like a full-time job in itself. So do you see evolution in that category happening over the next couple of years? 

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Godard Abel: Yes, and I think clearly you need cleaner, better data, and I think most companies also need a multi-intent strategy. Like one, you look at your own digital properties, which is kind of like your first-party data, you can see how your prospects engage in your own website, your own webinars, et cetera, and you'll get second-party data, like that's what we call G2, which is, you know, obviously we can tell you what's happening on our marketplace, like are they looking at TestBox, are they looking at your competitors? We'll give you that signal in real time. And there's also third-party data, which is providers like Bombora, ZoomInfo, 6Sense, which is more like, hey, in general, what topics is this prospect engaging with online? And I think the key is, in a data cloud, you bring it all together and you find a signal. But I do think we have to make it easier as vendors. And I was also talking to Sam about this, provide better algorithms, better scoring, so you can ultimately trust a signal. In sales, we just want the clean signal. This prospect is definitely hot. And you can trust it. So I think it's still a bit like contacting account data. It's not perfect enough where you can go full automation. Yeah. I mean like you can't just get an intent signal and send automated emails because sometimes it's not accurate. 

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James Kaikis: I wonder and unintended consequences it will have if it gets so accurate, right? Like, do you have an opinion on that? 

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Godard Abel: Well, I do think consumer always leads the way. And maybe then I would say it's like insta-marketing. Which is creepily perfect, I think. Because like I have a 17-year-old daughter, she loves to ski, and now I'm like getting pre-season ski jacket clearance, and like happens to be her favorite brand, her favorite color, and it's always kind of creepy. Like, oh, it's weird, I was just talking to my wife about ski season and then boom, pops up.  And so I think consumer has gotten there. And obviously some people think it's creepy, I just think it's super useful. And I think B2B is just a bit behind.

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James Kaikis: Yeah, there was a quote Sean Whiteley told me a couple of years ago at a PreSales Collective event and he said Amazon and Uber have ruined speed and personalization for B2B software companies, right? Yeah, it's true because now our expectations are changing, right? He was like, hey, if you call an Uber and it said 45 minutes, you would likely cancel, right? You know what I mean? So it is very, very interesting. And I'm with you that I think those consumer trends are just bleeding into B2B. And I've had this debate for years to like, well, B2B/buying software is different in the enterprise, but my philosophy is the same person that you're selling to is also using Amazon. They're using Chewy, they're using Uber and Lyft, so those behaviors individually then start to creep into an enterprise. 

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Godard Abel: Exactly. That was the whole founding idea for G2, you know, because we were also like, "Wow, Gartner Reports are a bit like the encyclopedia Britannica. You may not even remember it, but like, when I was going to school in the 80s, like, there was no internet, right? So I went to the library, looked at Britannica. It was a well-curated book, but it was always two years old. You know, that's a bit like the quadrant, right? It's like a well-curated book, but two years old. So I do think eventually the consumer comes to B2B, but a lot of these things are harder in B2B. And frankly, we also don't have the resources, right, like a new brand, the amount of data. We have patchier, smaller data sets. And so I think it takes longer in B2B, you know, to make these trends really work. 

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‍James Kaikis: Yeah. That's a great call out. One question I'd like to finish with, right, is continuing to see around the corners, right? Again, I've brought this up a couple times, but looking through your career, you've been part of ups and downs, you've been able to see around the corners. We've talked about some things that are really top of mind for us in software today. Is there anything that you're thinking will fundamentally change over the five to 10 years that we haven't talked about today? 

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Godard Abel: Well, I think we have talked about it, but I do think, what I was just talking about with G2 is like, hey, what is really the system of engagement? And both kind of a fear and opportunity I see, does it just end up with one AI agent? Maybe it's also, you know, it's a chatGPT, right? And then it's almost all of their software behind the scenes. And then as specialist vendors, how do we differentiate there? You know, are we just kind of like an AI service or a secondhand agent that the primary agent calls? Do we have unique proprietary data? Well, what I'm thinking about the companies I'm involved with is like, hey, how do we, in this age of AI, as the software interface probably shifts to one conversational agent, how do we stay relevant and valuable, as the way software is consumed likely goes to conversational agents?

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James Kaikis: Yeah, it's very interesting and I'm very curious to see if there'll be incumbents that are leading the way, if there'll be companies we haven't heard of, there'll be companies that exist today. Very, very keen to see what these next couple years look like. 

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Godard Abel: Yeah, and that's why it's, I think it's exciting time to be in tech and be in San Francisco, 'cause honestly, like, I don't really know. But it'll be exciting to help shape that future over the next few years. 

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James Kaikis: Absolutely, you're definitely doing that. And I really appreciate your time. It was great talking to you. Great hearing about your journey. Love what you're doing with G2 and really that's social proof. I use it all the time. So, big fan, thanks for sharing your perspective and thanks for joining us today.

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