AI-Led Growth Summit | AI Community-Led Growth (AI-CLG)

[Music] welcome to the show Mark Oregan we are for

realer great hosting you mark Oregon founder and CEO of aloa and INF fluida and now category nut how's life life is

great and it's uh even better because I've so much enjoyed the content that had this is your best Summit yet Julia um and I have learned a lot and

you can really just you can see just how much more sophisticated everyone is becoming about AI uh and how it's used for go to market it's so exciting to be

here pleasure hosting you um before we start off just I know uh this is going to be a community and AI session I cannot think of a better person than you

to host it you build many communities many categories why are you excited about this that's a great question well um

yeah I've believe for a long time that Community is really the best way to go to market and uh it's for a few reasons

but um uh one of them is actually highlighted in the last interview is is just how much better the experience is

for participants uh to be surrounded by um their like-minded peers it's it's such a better experience than the typical marketing and sales experience

and and I if there's a longtime thesis I have for for go to market it's experience of the buyer wins and that's part of our job as as go to market Architects is to build great experiences for buyers and I think Community

absolutely does that um Community also is um effective throughout the enre buying cycle the whole funnel from you know generating awareness all the way

through to driving success and and advocacy I can't think of really anything else um that we do in go to market that has that much potential

impact as what communities uh can do and and I believe the future really is is companies are going to be Community F the best companies are actually going to be Community Le and Community First in terms of how they go to market so uh

that's why I'm excited about it and yeah like I I wrote I did write a book on it here the messenger is the message um about that idea and a number of great people that have believed in the same

thing and executed on that idea and excited about this panel we have because we have a bunch of people here that uh believe the same thing and are done a great job in in executing on this idea

of using communities uh to drive or go to market awesome let's open it up the stage is yours stood yeah let's do it why don't we have a quick intro for

everyone like 30 seconds on who you are and why you're excited about Community L growth hey we'll start with uh let's start with Nick yeah hey Nick ma CE of gain site

I'm really excited for three reasons um super inspired by everything Mark does number two um very passionately we built our whole company at gain site around Community like in our own business

events online Etc and then number three we got into the online community software space so learned a lot that way too awesome thank you Nick Lisa how

would let's go with you hey yeah I'm Lisa sheral and two time CMO and I've been in the marketing world for a couple decades now and back to what you

originally started with Mark what I've seen is without a community you're a commodity that's something I truly believe in the best experience is win

and so the more you can bring people together around your brand the the better well said leh

Hong hi uh this uh this is lehan hi on building they said uh they said the io we are AI conversational survey and interview company well I uh I I'm I'm

loving the AI leg growth Community here because it's very um very uh um Forward Thinking about crazy idea about how we can use AI to advance and also wanted to

see if people are more um willing to share how they can use AI in the go-to market space so um very happy to be here thank you that's great

Mark St hey there I'm Mark St I'm the CEO of proof analytics. a and I'm you know I'm really excited to see how

AI takes the community movement and transforms it and makes it very credible uh improves the overall

experience which really is in is indivisible from The credibility of the community so peerto peer is suffering right now so in that regard so I think that that uh this is going to be really

interesting to watch how AI improves that and then the as retainability of the community movement and its impact on go to market and on the business that's the other piece that

I'm personally excited about awesome and uh finally have AJ yeah hi everybody I'm AJ godi I'm a operating partner that focuses on go to

market in private Equity uh portfolio companies like work with about 50 companies anywhere from 10 million to 500 million ARR and Community is a big

deal for our companies uh and I I sort of see community in in three different areas um first for our portfolio companies they they they tend to be very focused with a very specific ideal

customer profile of two to 3,000 accounts that they're really going after and they're specialized businesses like Service Supply Chain people who run Child Care Centers uh folks who run uh

inventory manag Management in e-commerce um so there isn't natural kind of real world communities that exist at scale U so uh Community is critical and finding

a way to uh you know operationalize that um you know uh in Virtual channels uh is key but I think there's often an issue of um just uh you know getting to scale

such that the community actually stays active and doesn't become a ghost town so really excited to be a part of this discussion and involved a couple of other communities but I'll save that for later awesome that's great what a great

panel we have love to start maybe at the top maybe a little more high level like what's what do you think are you know a couple of the greatest opportunities in go to market that communities offer that

maybe are overlooked out there uh people really aren't seeing it but but uh are some of those uh most important benefits or opportunities that we could be

pointing our communities uh at to do um anyone could jump in who has a I'm happy to start Mark um I actually think that there's just uh a lot of uh Niche

business problems that exist out there and there are people who kind of live in isolation of how do I get uh a senior Executives in my company to care more about this issue so it could be uh you you know this just sort of describing

some of the companies I work with thirdparty risk management so managing all your suppliers Service Supply Chain managing spare parts for large

uh manufacturing companies you know these are actually um uh huge business issues but you don't have a collection of people that can kind of come together

and often times they're trying to solve their own problems but what they're also really trying to do is they're trying to get more recognition for the importance of their business issue and they don't

want to be sold to as much as they want but what they do want is the ability to engage with peers and figure out how they're uh you know addressing these problem so I think that's the

opportunity that Community has yeah I think speaks to the importance of experience and and Trust uh there which I think a lot of companies uh really do make that up who else you know I would

just stand on the shoulders of that last comment you just made and say that all the research says that AI is outstripping uh peer-to-peer

expertise right if only because human beings are limited in how much they can see and understand of the entire network

effect right and so the ability to come alongside the community at large and individual members of that community and

give them better information than they otherwise would have gotten more reliable information and also to based on the way conversations are going to

anticipate uh in the the information that's really going to be necessary you know one of the things that AI really is and there's it's a lot of things okay

but one of them is it's a giant detector right and that will only increase and so having an AI moderator

that kind of says hey that was a really good comment and you can take that one to the bank but you know in a really super nice way maybe you need to kind of

rethink your position over here is going to be really important right yeah and I we'll speak speak to a little bit of how Ai and humans interact in sort of the communities of the future

too so that's great um Lisa well I just want to kind of go back to the part though where like I join a community to

learn from my peers I can ask chat GPT or percolate or any of the how do you do this but it's really great to be able to troubleshoot something with someone

who's been through it before brainstorm things and bounce something off of other people so I mean what I can see

happening is you've got this community and maybe AI is helping aggregate hey here's a group of people who are having these challenges let's create a circle

around that let's bring that to the Forefront so they can have a discussion um maybe it's taking notes maybe that goes into a repository later that people

can go back through and find um but I don't what I don't want to lose is like the chance to actually talk to someone who's been there and have them like

troubleshoot with me in real time yeah I agree I just would say that it's a multiplayer experience right and AI is one of the big players going forward and

there's no avoiding that it just is yeah and it can enrich it right um and I think that's like that's where I see AI

really helping yeah you're gonna jump in there yeah sure and then and really leas I like what you said about like ai's opportunity to suggest who you should connect with and I thought something you

said up front was so spot-on should definitely be like an a bumper sticker of like you know if you're not uh investing Community or commodity or something I probably got it slightly wrong a community y yeah I love that and

I think that answering Mark your question just opportunities to go to market I think tied to what Lisa said one of them is differentiation for sure like you know software is a commodity

right like it just is you go on I if you all have used repet before but even if you're not a programmer just go on replit and you can say build me this app and it will build you an up it's like it's just magic right but what it can't

do is help you like you're saying Lisa like give you that Forum to meet other people that are going through the same challenges and the second thing marked to this opportunities for go to market

is making communities less transactional so like the example I was going to use was like field events right so if if we call them field events I think John Miller would saying experiences not

events if we call them field events and then we say you know what we have a field event it's for pipeline generation we can't have more than 10% of the audience be customers right that's

actually like that is and I get why CMO say that because they're on a traditional like very short-term pipeline Target and then you have the end of the event you said how much pipeline do we generate that's like I

mean literally thousands and thousands of events have gone through that cycle but I think it's very shortterm oriented versus we're doing an event to connect people together of course we're going to

measure metrics but we believe fundamentally that part of our jobs connect people together and part of our value prop is that

Community right yeah know all said this maybe leads to the next question which um are what the what are the key

challenges that you see in terms of uh how to make these communities operate to their full potential in order to generate go to market benefits and this is actually why I was so excited about

this panel because I really do believe that uh AI in a number of ways has an ability to uh solve some of the issues of why we don't have every single B2B

company in the world having a community I think AI solved some of that but love to hear from you on on the bottle on extra challenges maybe we'll start with leh Hong um I actually wanted to address

like when Lisa saying like people go to the community wanted to interact with other peers who have been there but I would say people you know if they have

trouble or troubles suit they more wanted to talk to people and help themselves think of a solution themselves rather than other people feed

them the solution or what work for them um so I I've seeing like you know they say you have a problem today you need to solve but the the peers who are who

available may not have the right exper or the people who have the right don't have the time the benefit with the AI is that you can actually say pretend you are a Buddha that you know this I read

your book about not reacting and I have this trouble like I I have this negative things you know let's talk through things out I think you know because AI

has the huge amount of personalization in huge amount like also uh real time 247 and speak mulle language I can ask

it in my native language it it adds a lot of uh value to the experience the user experience of the community members because it's all time anytime going on

um but in terms of like engaging the community to make the community better or more contributing to yourself it's like one thing is like you know getting the feedback getting the voice heard in

the community so often times in the community you hear some of the active members talking a lot and then the other ones are more silent so you know you you get a feedback through the normal

surveys and pools you get a number of X number of people like AI for sales but you don't know the why so I think AI will be able to bring out a lot of the more why because in today's world

there's a lot of misunderstanding there's a lot of different opinions it helps bring out a why of like why do you have this opinion and seek understanding

and actually can solve one of the biggest problem in the US like people are fighting and this like if we know more about the why and where why they are coming up with this situation then maybe there will be less fighting and

more understanding and make the community even better so just my two sents in know addressing like Lisa your opinion about uh Ai and the community I think it I'm pretty optimistic I think

it will move to a better position if we use AI correctly yes so how do we make these how do we make these communities more effective I

know from my experience in in building uh sort of Revenue Focus go to market communities a lot depended on the skill of the community manager um and the

energy of that person there's a lot to do and um you know this is where I see uh the value of Automation and AI um I'd love to hear from uh from you folks in

terms of you know challenges to making these communities full like maximally successful and um what we need to do in order to address them I pick somebody I think it I think

it just really it a lot of it I mean if you talk to people that are active in communities they will Baseline the performance of the community certainly

by the moderation right but also about the quality of the participation right the problem that everyone is coming into

right now and it's broad-based across many different Industries is that things are moving so fast so such high velocity

change such volatility in the environment that what was once known

okay is not exactly known today right and so the value of AI is kind of an eye in the sky super

moderator of communities is going to be really key because it's going to bring a c piece of view of information not just one person or two people or three

people's primary Viewpoint right yeah Al want that's super interesting point around um um you know really sort of creating a super

moderator you know who um uh armed with so much more information about and insight about what's really going on in the community so I think that's exciting I mean I'll give you a real life example real fast I've had a meeting with

LinkedIn right they estimate that 2third of the content on any given day is factually incorrect that's a huge issue in that

Community right so the ability to separate wheat from chaff helps everybody

right I can see a potential you amazing use case like imagine we have a super Nick meta right Nick you are one of the best community creators you know we

understand you just light up the audience and stuff but we can't have you 247 imagine imagine we make a female version of you as like AI Community

manager but see Tor script right you know have your energy your charming will be fun it's best of both world where um

you can have the personalization the instant connection um with the super with the AI the model after someone who's really the a player and then you

also have the um Personal Touch um maybe in the offline conferences where you can meet in person but I think I I think uh any Community that's good I haven't seen

a community that is only digital and no in person the work while work well I don't know that's just haven't se I don't know if AI can change that I want to hear other people's thoughts it's

like do you think you know yeah the old school engaging yeah oh go ahead Nick yeah well I was only gonna respond to like the first part of what you said is

the most dystopian view of AI I've ever heard is the that AI Nick that sings songs that's a definitely very very scary feature um we should definitely

regulate AI if that's what's going to happen but um on on like why do communities fail and how does AI fit into this like you know clearly and I think other folks have said this too

this uh issue where Community becomes a ghost town is a major problem right like this is where you know we have Community software and the customers that are not successful it's largely because the community becomes a ghost town and I

think part of that is actually like historically and there might be Solutions folks here on the panel have like most Executives don't go to communities online they like just don't except for LinkedIn they're going to

LinkedIn but besides that they won't go anywhere and so I think there's this issue where communities are very good for practitioners unlik communities but they're not as good for executives and

is there something in the future that could use AI to be more effective for executives and then final comment I make for Mark I think you're right about

LinkedIn having lots of uh spirous content and if all the content on a community like LinkedIn is AI generated it will just become a nightmare nobody

will want to read it because it'll just look like a different kind of spam and I can already I don't know if you guys can tell but I can see that Chad authored posts on LinkedIn you can tell still

like that they were written by AI and so I I don't have the answer but I do think in a world where AI is writing everything what happens like do we actually still want to engage with it so I've asked questions I don't have good

answers here but it's what I'm thinking about yeah no really interesting point and and I'll challenge the idea that Executives won't come to community and actually Executives do come to your communities Nick I've been to in person

so I meant online community yeah no online yeah no for sure in in person I've been to a number of of your events but um so you know we created a whole bunch communities that influitive

including some that were only only had sea level people in there and and I think the reason why and I think I think the the reason why they worked probably

speaks to what um we need to do with AI and and with the design of our communities and actually John Miller had three great points in terms of where the marketing of the future is going and

Echo the same ones one experiences two relationships to originality so if if my experience if you create a community that where the experience is great where people are going to form new

relationships and they're going to hear something original you will get people to go there online or offline um but that's hard to do how do you create great experiences with original content

and allow people to form relationships like that requires exceptional design I think firstly in order to do that Mark have you seen examples of where people

have done that successfully with AI because you go through those three uh elements that you just highlighted none of those feel naturally kind of uh

virtual or AI driven um you you know experience um second I think you said relationships and then the third was kind of originality um how how do you do that

with AI I can tell you how you do in the real world actually John's point was that that is the places that AI won't

transform I see first yeah which which I agree but it may be helpful though like there may be I think AI may be an adjunct to perhaps help with originality

that may help with but but I think it start up the manager's time to be more creative and create more original experiences because they're not doing all the administrative work and not

having to onboard everybody and and all the you know kind of stuff that's yeah takes up a lot of time right now so yeah I mean I think AI again can like totally

make it take make communities better in a lot of ways but I just I keep going back to like the original reason why people would join a community and the form needs to follow

function like people want to belong they want to learn from their peers they're looking to network so how do you make that better and I don't think you can

totally swap out like a a human generated AI to to do that in a lot of communities there might be some that that's the right thing like I just saw

jao um from winning by Design and he's got this new like sales bot that's him and can engage like a person and I think like that's great in sales and most

people don't want to talk to an actual person until they're in the final stages of of buying anyway um but like in the community part most people are joining

that for for the camaraderie and for the commity to actually work there has to be contribution from like both sides so yeah I mean I think it's just it's

fascinating to consider the options but I still think it's got to go back to like why do people join they want the experience of belonging So to that to

that very point right there's a lot of research on this that indicates that that while people join communities for many different reasons including camaraderie and all that stuff that we

all appreciate right that their participation in a professional Community is usually about drisking something right they're going out to

everybody and saying hey I'm thinking about X Y or Z right has anybody experienced this has anybody encountered the the risks how am I likely to get bit

here you know stuff like that right that's a big part of this and that's where the reliability of the whole Community experience becomes so

critical because it's not just a social clove right it's not your local right it has a purpose for existing so I I think that we can't lose sight of that I think

one thing where I can just what I've seen because I I understand what you're saying it's it's a good point like you know if you go and Reddit and you're trying to solve a problem you get a lot

of random answers that might not be accurate so your Point's valid and um if you go on Reddit you'll see tons of people are there just to like find other people that are like them like I'm a big

believer of part of communities belonging so I don't think everyone that goes to community at least in our experience is there to solve a problem I think some are like what you said's right I

think right I mean I'm just saying though that if you look at the at how pressed the average person is in their

time schedule right they're if they have to choose between real life social environments right and something digital they're going to probably go to a bar or

something like that right they're going to have a good time and and but if they have a specific question that they're trying to drisk they're going to go to what they believe is a locust of

expertise and they're going to try and get the answer right I think the last part I agree with I think I the thing again I think it's always an an not an or but I think the first part I don't

think is universally true I I mean I think you can just see it like you know younger folks where they don't go to bars like they don't want to they go on Reddit and Discord and tri Tik Tok and

that's their whole life we we can decide debate in a separate form if that's good or bad you know that's not the point it it's that like you know there's a reason why so many people unre it and I I'll

admit like for me sometimes those online interactions are nice they're like you get to just get your answers talk to people Etc um and so I what I've just

found is belonging in community is a big part of it problem solving is also a big part of it like there's and I think you're saying that too it's an end not to yeah I am I am very much saying that

I do think though that if you're the CFO and you're under pressure you're going to start asking questions about how much of the community existence is to make

people feel good as opposed to sell good point and Truth is is you need both right uh if don't have a sense of belonging they're they're not going to join they want to join something bigger

than themselves they want to feel like they're contributing um and if they do feel good then you may get more activity from them and I think that's why both why you're you're both right and uh that

was sort of a foundational idea uh for me behind uh behind influitive but I I'd love to get more back into like Ai and and design so we in order to have a community that works very well you need

to have great design we we talked about experiences we talked about original content we talked about being able to form real relationships uh that's what makes communities truly exceptional and

drive results um and and AI may be helpful for that but uh uh you need great humans and great design um where

where you know where does a where can AI really play um a potentially transformational role and and what what can't it do like what do we will what will we need the humans to do and step

up to do I'll jump in I think um um like Nick mentioned like a lot of online community becomes graveyard because it's not engaging but if you think about going to

an online community as like part of your job like it's going to be hard to convince yourself to go in there and engage and maybe on the day you have problem so if we can add some more like

personalization and interest so let's say you go to a Sim CFO Club where sure you you know at work you're CFO but also maybe you like to play golf or maybe you

like to go skiing right so I think AI helps um we can use AI to get more personalized information about the members interest and hobby and and then

we can have a CFL group who like to do golf and who live in West Coast and that that will maybe um enhance maybe we can organize a better event with a small

group um you know face Toof face meeting um so that way it becomes like it's our community is like it's kind of bad like sometimes you can't separate work and

life but this this this is how one of the ways you can engage people like this is their interest they love engaging

with the people who are similar careerly interest in a life stage so um that's my take on like how AI can yeah yeah use it use it to increase engagement whisper in

moderator's ears say try this I think that's cool yeah I would even add like personalization and curated content and you know back to like once you learn about that person when they come in

they're filling out a form they're giving you a lot of information and I feel like today that might go in their profile but it's not really being utilized in a way that's really going to

make their experience better you know help curate an experience for them within the community that's really valuable and then on the flip side of that you

know you might have internal webinars or circles or discussion groups and I mentioned this but I see it all the time where there's a great conversation and it it just it dies on the vine it's it's

this one isolated thing that happens when that could be something that then starts populating um a Content repository or

resource hub for people and if you've got one person running the community there is just like no way they can do all that but if you've got AI helping

you know curate all that and put it into like usable use cases I think it will really start to enrich the experience I

agree slam dunk that's great yeah I think the hybrid helps a lot I mean I've I've run a bunch of conferences I I run roundtables for our CMOS C ccos uh in

our portfolio and you know whether the frequencies you know a conference every six months or uh a round table every four weeks um there's all this engagement that spikes up but then

there's no way to continue the conversation and there's not enough what my experience is there's just not enough uh kind of Engagement that the online

community um you know maintains its momentum there there it's it's what was just be sure by by Lisa it's it'll Spike for a while but you you generally don't have enough in there that you've got a

community moderator who's going to be responding to it and if you don't get that immediate response then you're less motivated to post and so I've got a community of 500 Executives uh within my

firm and the online community you know we're more ghost town land um even though we do 25 uh you know round table or best practice sessions per

year W I think that's good moderate it's a really good point because ad because i' I've been your vents and are awesome and like the online even for us we've tried different executive online CCO

type communities I think part of it is very simple what you said it's the N the number of people because the great thing about LinkedIn is they're just so many people so even if most people aren't active enough people are active and if

there's enough people active then you have a desire to go you know engage we all know how social networks work right and so I think this is the problem 500% Community especially if it's executive

you're not going to get engagement so that's a that's I the the probably the smallest community that I see active would be the CMO coffee talk and that's about 5,000 people in the community and

but and they meet every week and what I I actually think Matt Hines has really done a great job of that I don't know that he's using AI yet but that would that would be an interesting conversation to have with Matt that's

funny I actually started that with Matt when I was at six cents and um it started as a CMO breakfast tour we had eight cities

and the last two were Boston and New York and Co hit and we went online and um the rest is history but I think what really has helped is six

sense has done also good job of like when they're in Austin for the Forester event they have a CMO experience within

their bigger VIP experience there you know there's always a a component of that in person and um so they've got this consistency and this engagement and

they've done a good job of likeing up some you know in-person components of that with online and it's consistent and there's just it's you

know they're they've just kept the Cadence going yeah so they've got the engagement yeah no and I think that's probably an area where AI I think can

help the most is driving consistent engagement just multiplying the ability to engage um you know mult multiple Folks at once so I that's a great case study and speaking of case studies it'd be

great to hear um success story that you guys have had either for your own company or for any of your you know your customers in terms of um some fabulous

business value that you know communities have generated um and you know whether or not you used AI I know you know AI is still relatively new in terms of how we're applying it for for Community I

know that one one that comes to mind for me I just I actually just went skiing with uh with Freddy from OCTA and when he he told me is that his community is actually was one of the key things that

helped him go public before his competitors and one of the reasons why is that his community members actually designed uh some award-winning ads for the company that frankly to this day I

can't understand them because they're for Network Engineers but um it just speaks to the power of uh what you can get your customers to do you know um and in some ways maybe your customers might

understand you better than your own marketing department um but that was that was a big success story I was very excited to hear it but I'd love to hear from you guys in terms of success stories and business value or like what

was the problem that you you had and then you know how did community help solve that problem what kind of metrics came out of it we have a we have a client actually that has done something

really super badass really um it has given their Community a mission of improving an llm about the topic that

everyone is focused on right um and so the community actually not only gets to contribute but to memorialize their contributions right

and they have gamified the cont the contribution frequency and quality and all this kind of stuff and so there's kind of a leaderboard and you know all that kind of thing and so

in this rather you know delineated space right um they have really created the The Authority right um on that

particular topic and co-authored by the community that's awesome that's a great story then let's jump in here with a big success

story I I can share a couple um briefly um so gong like you know we work with them and they have a great everyone knows gong right and so they've got a great community of sales professionals

across different levels and what I love about what they've done there's a woman named Nisha boxi if she if you're on Nisha shout out to you but um she runs their community and what they've done is

created Community as like an integrated customer destination versus a oneoff kind of thing that's one of the challenges people have with communities is they're often to the side so effectively like there's a support

portal there's somewhere to get help and documentation there's a take place to take training and like gong has integrated that really nicely and so they have tons of like I was just looking at the stats like they have

12,000 active users they they've got like massively higher upsell for people that use community so they do a great job and then we've for our own business we've built a really nice Community

that's kind that's very focused on product feedback and product interaction and I think that's one of the other things Mark that you know all about which is community for advocacy versus Community for self-service support

versus Community for connection and in our case it's really Community for product related feedback and issues what you might call your classic Community

but one of the things that's really cool I remember seeing this uh post where the person said um this like a kind of multi-time gain site operations person he said um this community makes me feel

less alone I was like oh tug at the heartstrings that's so sweet and there's there's an interesting element there where it's technical people they're trying to solve problems but they also feel belonging like so it's kind of a

nice and to what Mark has been saying and Lisa and others awesome any uh anyone else on that um yeah no the product product use cases

are actually really powerful I think is one of the underleveraged aspects of communities is using it for insights in terms of um uh how to go to market

better how to build a product better um anyone else in terms of uh big goom Market success anybody using it to get prospects and customers together anyone

using communities to drive a better Prospect experience because I I think that's a big opportunity that I really don't see enough companies doing I I I Envision in

the future where um you know companies are going to drive people to their Community instead of a website or a landing page um because it's more trusted and it's a better experience for

people is anyone you know doing anything like that that with or without AI Mark uh yeah I mean with or with or without I mean again I think I think AI is still

pretty young here but you yeah uh when I was at Salesforce I this is one of the key plays um uh you know

this is uh around like 2010 where cios were still wary of the cloud and uh so we had a a team Ross Piper and Simon M

who built a CIO Roundtable um program and it was a big uh Road Show um all throughout the world where you get you know 12 to 18 cios around a table You'

make sure there'd be a handful of customers and a bunch of prospects and they're just experience sharing and uh it just the biggest thing in community that I've seen when you do these kinds

of executive type roundtables uh and sort of think tanks is you accelerate the buyer's Journey um and so we're we're doing that with a number of our companies in our portfolio right now uh

I mentioned the service supply chain company uh and so yeah we're we're just following that formula and and take it it to top five cities and it works super

well I think the the six sense formula that they're running right now with Matt Hines for CMO Coffee Talk Works super well also um you know it's it's it's not an explicit six sense Community but six

sense's influence and engagement is all over it so it just has become uh a natural extension but because you have an external party that's running it uh and does it an authentic way um you know

people feel comfortable in the community and it just sort of Again Naturally draws people to the sixense brand it uh accelerates the buyer Jing well I'll share my my perspective

on the startup uh perspective because most of uh companies who have a community are already at scale or have a large volume of customers you can have

the brand effect so if you are a startup and then how do you engage with Community like you don't have enough resources to create your own community so for us we were like well that's not

bite up too much than what we can do instead of building another great our community Why Don't We join active engaging community and be an active member of that so I I've identified two

community that I personally um will pretty actively engage well one of them is this AI that grows Julia's um HSC Community because everyone here is very

AI focused uh willing to embrace new technology and a lot of them are go to market leaders who want to get new AI TX so I I you know ever since Julia reach

out to me uh couple months ago we been active in the community and then another group of community that um for startup that we often hang out is in product

hunt so if you look at product hunt um the top 10 prodct hunt every day is AI products so it's full of AI enthusiasts

who is excited about how do we make the generate AI or AI technology more applicable and make it you know new softwares a new system that replace is

see non AI products so um we've been dedicated to do like a a two prodct hunt every year so that's the the maximum amount they allow you to do so kind of

engage with our audience uh every time we roll out new product based on the feedback and they actually if you are trying to get product feedback Nick like pan people are really good at giving

product feedback really really solid like in a period of one week of like crazy lunch you get tons that you would spend month or year together so

accelerate your growth really well so I'm saying like Community is a very powerful tool um even if you're a startup you don't have the resources to build your own

Community let's attach to an existing VI community and be an active member there yeah no I think that I think that's right I mean I I think I think startups should um all invest in community even

if they have their own they have their own Community it may not be powerful in the beginning but there's a greater Community as you put it that your your perspective customers and customers are everywhere they're in LinkedIn they're

product hunt they're on Reddit um and and how do you connect all of those together and maybe in the future AI has a role to play there in sort of stitching together that Greater

Community I was going to say I've tried to kind of growth hack that a little bit in a couple of communities and you can have ai like listening in let's say a

slack Channel and be listening for the kinds of problems that you your organization can help solve so I was trying to get like our account Executives set up to be you know

listening for what's going on and be able to pounce in and then the whole idea would be well hey we've got another customer who's in that Community can can

we have them jump in and like help Advocate um and answer that question so it's not salesy uh but it's it's a lot but I think AI is something that can

help with that but then I think it loses its authenticity as a community too and so you've got to be really careful like how much of that's going on because I

think if I was a community owner I would not want that going on so yeah that's a that's a great segue to to what I think

maybe one of the most valuable um parts of our talk today which is where is AI um overhyped with respect to what you

know and I think today and and again I keep saying AI but there's multiple types of AI as we as we know which we haven't even got into yet um but but where is AI kind of overhyped in terms

of what it will actually deliver and I mean every technology always has overhyped somewhere you know remember the segue That was supposed to take over all of Transportation didn't but then

but then where is it underhyped um and even you know uh the Segway has taken over a lot of city tours for example a lot of people now now use it for that um but where you know where have we just

scratched the surface of what AI is capable of doing I mean specifically within communities I love to get your uh your takes on that I got start with Mark STS I know something you think about a

lot talk about a lot yeah I think there's a lot of evidence that says that AI all four types not just gen AI

are overhyped at the ground level in other words at the Tactical level at the you know kind of like daily life and

work level it's overhyped right I think where it is dramatically underestimated is at the network effect

or systemic level I think one of the clearly one of the great um maybe even the most powerful contributions that AI will bring to

business over the next say three or four years tops is unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability in every area of it right

it stuff will either be known or be knowable right and I don't think any of us are really totally prepared for that

reality um but it's kind of shrinking the zone of what is ambiguous right it's gonna

it's there's going to be a lot less room to maneuver in some areas of life and work and then in other ways it's it's going to open up new Vistas that are

kind of difficult for us to even imagine right now but I think it's really it's all happening so fast that that may also be

one of the things that's truly underestimated is just what a sharp knife this is and how quickly it it

moves through operations it's just it's pretty amazing so again you think is under hyped is the um I guess zeroing in on

what is really knowable and what it's not knowable who knows what they're talking about who doesn't know what they're talking about I I don't think a lot of people are thinking about it in that way right now like the big systemic

ramifications of it I mean like one of the one of the really interesting things that actually I'm getting ready to launch a business on is um the

convergence between the transparency and accountability of AI um the Judgment or the ruling two years ago in Delaware that's just now

filtering through that broadened out fiduciary duty from just where it had been and the board level and CEO CIO or

CFO to all officers and their directs personal liability and not just like did you intend to do something bad but did you fail to mitigate risk

appropriately and then the increase in share older particular activist year older but broader than that lawsuits

right so the the um the convergence of those forces is going to be really profound because until AI came along there wasn't really an enforcement

mechanism and fiduciary duty had a really high bar but no [Music] more I can add some sense here so since

we launch our AI conversational survey I've organized several surveys one for zulia for AI goto Market team people's

opinion about tools one for journalism ai go to market um he sells AI courses so what I see with this this do this I

think AI is very dramatic there's a big gap in between so on the upper end people are very hype about this advancement all this

potential but in the application part is pretty it's not like as there there's a lot of room to catch up so for example

what I typically see is people are talking about well how do you Invision AI in transforming your go-to Market strategy in 12 months okay I can tell

you AI is very good at automating routine tasks making the human manual work more efficient so it's really good at improve efficiency but it's not yet

in terms of impacting your decision making strategy site so that part is there's a gap there the second Gap is like what you're talking about you're

talking about gen AI right gen yes analytical causal right all that stuff is all about decision making that's right that's right but I'm still talking about in the application

size of goto Market leaders that in their opinion in their opinion they are using AI just to improve efficiency not as much for making decision which

there's a huge opportunity for you because there a Gap there's there's things people haven't done um but another Gap I would see from the survey results is

that when we ask that how confident are you in in in in using AI in your daily job what I found overwhelmingly C Level exact are the most confident I me and

then the individual contributors are the least confident so that is a big gap in terms of like you know who's more willing to use that and then you know a

group of people still trying to catch up on what what need to be used and then and the three thing I think in terms of underwhelming part is that the

um this is part where AI is overhype it's like AI cannot replace your business business is still the same if you're a size business it's still your size business AI is just one of the

tools that maybe you don't need to raise as much money because you can run a business more efficiently but there's also problem where entry entry barrier to entry for the market is a lot lower

now now you have a lot more competitors so it's not like AI solve everything it's it's similar what I see is similar to like when we adopt the cloud when we

adopt the mobile now we we adopt the AI is still the same right you just have to uh it's a tool it's not like a Holy Grail you you in in in you get AI

you do that you still need a strategy to driven and use this tool right away so those are the three things you know phone you know this reading about couple hundred so response I was kind of

surprised but and then I think about it it's like okay that makes sense you know makes sense it's surprising but makes sense yeah it really is true my observ observation of just how technology is

adopted like the old technology almost never goes away I mean apparently radio advertising had its hit its all-time high you know last year the telegraph didn't get abolished till like a decade

ago um if you look at like the how military works like the same units that were used in ancient history infantry and Cavalry I guess replaced by tanks but artillery still the same right you

keep adding things but you just fig the the the goal is to figure out how it all kind of works together and my guess is AI is similar is that uh in some ways transformative but in other ways not

transformative at all because you're right it's still it's still a business um so I think that's a really interesting comment some else jump in on underhyped and overhyped Ai and communities

well okay I was going to make a broader comment Mark so I'll just make it quickly look I think the way to think about it is in a business you still have the same use cases and business processes um just the question is what

role can AI play and uh in some places it can automate for example uh you know in handling customer support it can handle a lot of manual work at other places it's about augmentation hey I'm

going to be able to do content and I'm actually going to be able to personalize it more to the industry the Persona maybe the company being even the individual person so that's a huge augmentation but that same objective

that same business process that same use case still exists you've just got a new tool just like you got a mobile phone or a cloud the cloud or even like a car that actually made you much more

effective uh it uh doing that work and so I don't know that's the way I think about AI that the one challenge I have is the guy's on a c call earlier uh this

week hundred C's and the conversation was about how's it going in 2025 a kick off the year the whole conversation was about AI it wasn't about differentiation and positioning it wasn't about ideal customer profile wasn't about sales rep

Effectiveness expanding new customers value selling everyone was just talking about AI tools I'm like you guys are lost that was it's a honeymoon phase of

the AI right it's a honeymoon phase we're still here remind me a lot of I mean when I started eloqua around 2000 you know everybody was talking about the internet and websites and whatnot

um but you know the most effective companies were actually hanging back and thinking well what's this thing really for um and and I guess that's kind of what I was getting at with the the the

you know underhyped maybe part of this is what's the AI really for what is its unique Advantage um and how does it really you

know how does it really transform I think I think that that one of the things that's really important about that is that it's a very rare functional

person meaning a in some function in the company who knows enough about AI to be able to correctly apply

it right and the problem also is it's kind of like if you ever taken calculus right if you get sick and you miss two

classes you are screwed right because you are so far behind and the step build on steps right and so this is the

classic tension in a lot of companies is that if they don't get moving with it with people who really know what the heck they're talking about they're going

to be too far behind the the ball before they finally wake up right and that's a and then that involves risk on their

part right um and so there's this great tension particularly in I'm saying this Loosely okay in an EPS driven business

environment right um that's a that's a challenge for a lot of Business Leaders right because it's expensive to do Ai

and to move ahead quickly so that's some of the real life aspects of it I think it's your you know your

classic hype cycle right and right now everyone is myself included Blown Away by the possibilities and just trying to

wrap your head around what is what is the capability and then I'm seeing people just throw AI agents at things some that's what I'm like back to your

point AJ of what is the real the business case you're trying to solve with this and what would the appropriate solution be and where does AI fit into that but until people really

understand the full power and potential of it I think we're going to have those answers it's going to take time I'll I'll uh I'll chime in um and I

and I think there's a lot of good points being made but just for fun I'll red team the the whole group uh AI is uh uh overhyped nowhere generative a is

overhyped nowhere and it's underhyped everywhere again I'm the extreme Kool-Aid Drinker in the rabbit hole probably will never get out of the rabbit hole um you'll call call me to

check on me every now and then and probably on chat GPT or clad or something but um it's I think a couple things I just wrote down a few points it there's no doubt it's the fastest evolution of progress in the history of

humanity nothing has ever moved this fast so if you follow a trend line it is insane I mean just read alman's posts right they're constantly like you know basically we have to go a little slower

because we have to be careful you read Dario for anthropic he's worried like these are the folks that are working on it at the Forefront they wouldn't be slowing down if they didn't think this

thing was so transformative um I think that like when I look at what's going to happen in B2B just for me I think a lot of this comes down to how can we play

like uh chess many moves ahead and that's very hard you know actually I looked on online like if you play a chess 10 moves ahead the number of possibility is 10 to the 30th power

which is like in in unimaginable for a human but if you play chess like even for five it's lot of possibilities and so what's multi moves ahead look like in

this conversation well AI will help people generate content on communities a lot of the content on a community will be AI generated it will largely be from

other content uh it'll be authoritative but it won't be that authentic what do I think Could Happen potentially who knows

is um more in person like basically more interest in authentic Comm communication because everything else could be fake well when I say fake that's not accurate

everything else could be artificial and so like the analogy some people have used which I think is really interesting is AI surpassed humans in chess many many years ago you guys mostly know that

right but people still play chess because it's fun and there's another human across the board I'm not coming with this in Aly other people came up with this by the way and so I

think there's some version of this which is like Community will exist in offline forums because want to meet other people but I on online we have to rethink it because everything is going to be

spammed it's a lot like um you were sing Le all the agents right so you know agents for sales right we're building agents for CS but if all the agents are communicating with customers and if the

customer has an agent as a vendor management agent or procurement agent or whatever what is actually happening there's no human on either side of the

equation you know so I don't think these are five years away I think these are like very soon and so that's why I think we have to get really thanky about these problems hence the CH analogy so Nick I

gotta asking bring it all home hey Julie are we are we good or what's when when are we we're up on time huh anomal conversation thank you so much Mark Nick

Lisa Mark lehong and AJ uh let's do a quick round of Sheamus buug just promotions Mark let's start with you where do our people go is it category

not uh where do we support your work yeah um so www. category ns.com that's my my website you can find me a lot on

uh LinkedIn probably uh the most at at Mark Oregon and love to uh interact with you especially anything around communities in AI it's pop of mind for

me right now our pleasure Nick how about site.com put me a LinkedIn and then lehong has built an AI version of me as well as was what you

said right yeah so check that out Taylor Swift version that's pretty funny I'm just trying to because you talk about Taylor Swift songs all the time I

was just like can we have a Nick Manda version the S Taylor Swift songs pretty funny Lisa I'm still waiting on my um AI

version ehong I'll have to talk to you about that offline so LinkedIn is the best place to engage with me AJ yeah

sure um so link but I I actually have a invitation only executive Community for go to market Executives and vcpe uh

people it's GTM leers society.com and we host uh um really high-end experiences like on the Cass dinners big p events uh

for senior Executives to uh connect in real life ising Mark Mark St proof analytics you find me all over

LinkedIn uh I tend to focus mainly on causal AI as well as its implications for executive level and other levels of decision making right so that's where I

tend to concentrate thank you so much and Leon we'll see you I think in two hours or so in two hours yeah yeah so uh again best

way to reach me is linking but I'm also um active in slack Channel with uh hsse so if you usually at at the end if people say hey can I get a copy of the

surveys I I'll pay me I'll post it there or pay me on linking on that so in about two hours I will an hour and a half I'll

show you what your voice said [Music]