Guy Nirpaz (00:00)
After I exited we sold to private equity

Kevin Holmes (00:02)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (00:02)
and then I stayed on for SCO for another year and then know Chat GPT moment just came up and

That was a great opportunity to realize that the work we started to Totango we didn't finish

my daughter just asked me this a few days ago. She's you know.

Early 20s, and she said, How do you how did you know? How how did you how were

you able to keep going while not knowing if it's gonna work or not? what you learn over time is to believe in yourself more and more, where I don't know what the solution is gonna be, but I have strong conviction

Kevin Holmes (00:24)
So take that much time is to believe yourself

Guy Nirpaz (00:37)
you gotta be able

to live with uncertainty

Kevin Holmes (00:40)
All right. welcome everybody to the Founders Network Podcast. I'm Kevin Holmes, founder CEO of Founders Network here with our guest today, Guy Nirpaz Guy is a pioneer of customer success. And quick intro on Guy. He founded Totango in 2010, scaled it to 20 million users across 2 million businesses, raised 149 million across seven rounds for that company, eventually exited to private equity.

And is the award-winning author of Farm Don't Hunt, which is the definitive guide to customer success. This is actually how I first encountered Guy, was believe it or not, reading Farm Don't Hunt. so if you haven't yet, check that out. he's currently the founder of Perspective AI, which is AI-powered CX agents building the company in a healthier way, enabled by AI. So he's really an incredible resource about the topic of customer success. If you're thinking about that, we're gonna talk about that today. We're gonna talk about

why he's doing another startup, what's going on with AI in July of 2026 and for founders and in the venture ecosystem, how to think about this moment and how to operate in it. So welcome Guy. Thanks for being here.

Guy Nirpaz (01:45)
Thanks, Kevin. Happy to be here.

Kevin Holmes (01:47)
So why don't we start off with I guess why? So you've you're coming off of a 14 year run with to Totango, and here you are at it. Again, Founders Network is lifelong success through peer mentorship. It's a 15 year old organization for tech startup founders, founders helping founders. And one of our core insights is that once you do one startup for some masochistic reason you want to do another. So I thought we could just start off with that and and and ask you why you're doing this to yourself again.

Guy Nirpaz (02:15)
Yeah, no, it's it's a good question. so I After I exited so we sold to private equity

Kevin Holmes (02:19)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (02:20)
at the Totango and then I stayed on for SCO for another year and then you know parted and you know did some bored work. But very quickly I I became bored and you know Chat GPT moment just came up and

That was a great opportunity to realize that the work we started to Totango you know, we didn't finish it. and the work is around customer centricity and customer

Kevin Holmes (02:41)
So

Guy Nirpaz (02:45)
obsession. And although these terms have been around for a very long time,

Kevin Holmes (02:49)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (02:50)
most companies are unable to execute customer centric and sustain it for for a long time. And and the idea was okay, maybe.

You know, what's the issue here? Potentially the the problem is, or that's kind of my belief, the problem is

that it's hard. It's just very hard to, you know, sc scale and stay customer centric at the same time. for two core reasons what

that we were gonna talk about, but so so the idea was okay, let's let's use AI as a way to, you know, so now we have a new form factor, a new way

to engage. let's use that to

solve that problem once and for all. that's so that's kind of on a on a on a personal mission level. And the

Kevin Holmes (03:27)
So that problems.

Guy Nirpaz (03:33)
other part of of the founder level, I think, you know, you call masochistically, which is,

Kevin Holmes (03:36)
I think we're supposed to see

Guy Nirpaz (03:39)
you know, s sometimes true, but but more importantly, I think it

I mean, i it it is true, but but it's kind of more of a personal journey, right? I I think what you what happens

Kevin Holmes (03:47)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (03:48)
you embark on a personal journey and you know, besides building companies, you really find yourself

by going through this journey. So the journey is gives you presents you a lot of challenges and these challenges is basically your opportunity to learn about yourself, yours you know, what you like, what you don't like, what you're good at, where

you need to improve and so forth. And I think it's pretty addictive to constantly stay on that journey. So you know I I

Kevin Holmes (04:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (04:16)
I I enjoy the I enjoy the journey a lot.

Kevin Holmes (04:19)
Well, I mean, we say the masochistic thing is a tongue in cheek joke. And it's important to remember, you know, we we also say in Founders Network that we chose this path. And I don't know, maybe many of us have had jobs, cubicle farm, you know, jobs. I know I had one, right? And nine to five kind of jobs. it's who I think it's who you who you are, right? You've you're you're just bored as you said, you're bored doing that.

Right. So it's it's about that stimulation. Yeah. And the learning

Guy Nirpaz (04:45)
Yeah, I I mean I obviously once you have experience then you're being sought out for board positions or advisory board

advisory jobs or even investment, which

Kevin Holmes (04:56)
Yes.

Guy Nirpaz (04:57)
you know I sparingly do. but I realize that I'm not a good I'm not a good advisor.

Kevin Holmes (05:03)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (05:03)
You know, when people come

to me with a problem, I want to jump in and help solve it. So, you know, that's not like sit on the sideline, observe and and comment. and I'm very opinionated. So I think you know, I might as well find a problem, go solve it, and enjoy the path. Build a team, build, you know, build something of meaning, make make impact on people's life,

Kevin Holmes (05:27)
on

Guy Nirpaz (05:28)
on my on my family's life, through that.

Kevin Holmes (05:31)
Yeah, and making touching on a few things, right? Like making meaning, impact. technology is a multiplier, right? And so creating a startup, a technology startup, you're not just impacting the employees, but the customers. Totango had twenty million customers, which is incredible. Or users, yeah, and tw and two million customers, which is incredible. So you've definitely had that impact. you mentioned growth and learning.

I wonder about that for you. What what have you learned about growth and learning as a founder? you know, like is it about kind of figuring out where you're the the Peter principle of you rise to your own level of incompetence? or is it about actually gaining new competencies or where how do you think about, you know, where you want

Guy Nirpaz (06:11)
Yeah, no.

Kevin Holmes (06:12)
to grow and learn and and where do you kind of realize I need that partner?

Guy Nirpaz (06:15)
Yeah, I I think you mentioned this before.

Being a founder or CEO, early stage company CEO, this is not a job. It's not like a, you know, if if if you're gonna try to build a job description, kind of like the classical one with being specific and what you it changes so frequently, right? So it's not like you know, here's the job and now go go do it. This is I think sometimes why.

you know, very experienced people that come to start a startup life are not successful because the you know it's very dynamic. It's very kind so so so the point being is

I I was joking in the past, but I think it's true that every year your job is different, right? And if you're unable to morph into the new job and I think some of the very fast growing companies right now it's every two weeks your job is different.

It's more like a problem solver. So you basically solve the problems at hand and you basically have a bunch of tools, which is okay, what is it that you do?

Kevin Holmes (07:07)
More like a problem solver, so you basically

Guy Nirpaz (07:14)
What what do you delegate? How do you delegate? How you know a lot of times it's how do you solve the sorry, how do you define the problem? How do you know it's it's a work of discovery? What are we dealing with? What's the

what can we do? What are the options available for us? Who can do what?

And let's go do it. And is it working? And and that's kind of basically the

Kevin Holmes (07:33)
And it's good

Guy Nirpaz (07:37)
the cycle you're on. So it's not, you know, you want to call it maybe maybe it's like more like a PI, like a private detective job. It's it's it's not you know, the framing is get this from inception

Guy Nirpaz (07:52)
to commercial success. but what are the activities to do along the way? This changes with the situation, and it's very different

when you still try to figure out what the product, what

the problem of the market is, what is the opportunity, what's the market, what's the distribution model. And later on it's okay, how do I grow

it beyond the markets I'm in? And it's just different types of problems. And this is why in many

cases you sometimes need to find, you know, additional partners, additional team members that can help you

get this done. And you know, in the

Yeah, so so I think that's the this is kind of the it's learning and and and I I would say that it I I don't don't necessarily think that learning is you you're gonna consume and you're becoming better. I think over time you just morph. Sometimes it's accumulating and more. Sometimes you gotta forget early lessons and relearn them because maybe, you know, market conditions ten years ago are not market conditions right now. So

just applying, you know.

Go to market strategies from

10 years ago to today are not necessarily gonna work. so I think there's a lot of humility and kind of constantly filling the gap of what is it that I don't know w how do I, you know, solve these issues as as we go along. I I but I think the the the key is my daughter just asked me this a few days ago. She's you know.

Guy Nirpaz (09:23)
Early 20s, and she said, How do you how did you know? How how did you how were

you able to keep going while not knowing if it's gonna work or not? So I'm saying that what you learn over time is to believe in yourself more and more, where I don't know what the solution is gonna be, because I don't know what the problems are gonna be, but I have strong conviction

Guy Nirpaz (09:45)
that I will be able to overcome a lot of it. So that's kind of the

Kevin Holmes (09:47)
Yeah. So that's kind

Guy Nirpaz (09:49)
That that's the mental framework

that you build yourself into over time. I think that's the that's the journey.

Kevin Holmes (09:55)
Look, sounds like a yeah, it sounds like a belief in yourself and your ability to solve problems versus having all the answers at at the start.

Guy Nirpaz (10:02)
Yeah. And and and I think, you know, it's it's your ability to to to to keep going, right?

Kevin Holmes (10:09)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (10:10)
be because I mean how many of us have so many days where you so so it starts with you don't know what the problem is, but you can't put your finger on it, and then you know what it is, but you don't have a solution for it, and then you try to solve it and it doesn't solve and so forth and so forth. So there's a lot of

uncertainty and in in in your mind. so you gotta be able to hold

you know, to live with uncertainty while not gaining forty kilos or whatever, right? That's that's

kind of the key. Eighty pounds, ninety a hundred pounds.

Kevin Holmes (10:38)
How do you manage how do you manage

manage stress? Have you found a way to kind of you know, live a healthy lifestyle as an entrepreneur?

Guy Nirpaz (10:46)
so I I'd say that origin like on the Totango days, yeah, I I definitely that that was my

I I didn't do well there. enterprise business, international travel, you know, very imbalanced lifestyle, a lot of stress. in recent years, what I found is I've got the aura ring. I just posted something on

LinkedIn yesterday.

Aura ring is the measurement and swimming is the diffusing activity. So I'm kind of focused

Kevin Holmes (11:15)
Okay.

Guy Nirpaz (11:16)
on you know, I I gotta swim at least four or five times a a week.

yeah.

Kevin Holmes (11:20)
Okay. Yeah. And

are are you are you putting in good distance?

Guy Nirpaz (11:24)
you know, as you grow older the joints are having a harder time than the muscles, but

Kevin Holmes (11:27)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (11:30)
you know, my swim is usually like two two thousand meters a swim.

Kevin Holmes (11:34)
that's

great. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Well there there you go. I think life lesson right there for founders about managing the stress, right? I think I yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (11:42)
Yeah, but I I'm super concerned

that once international travel is gonna go back into this business as well, which this is what things are starting to look

Kevin Holmes (11:51)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (11:51)
like, the the balance is gonna I'll I'll have to learn how to balance through imbalance lifestyle

Kevin Holmes (11:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (11:58)
as well.

Kevin Holmes (11:59)
Boundaries, right? I d I don't know if they're if that's a word that entrepreneurs are familiar with a lot of times, right? Because you eat, sleep, drink, your startup, you're thinking about it, working about all the time. And that's a big difference from what we were starting out talking about with the nine to five boundaries. But with a startup, you say it's not a job description. It's not even on a a you can't write it up on a paper, right? So

to me that also hasn't changed tomorrow. It's gonna change tomorrow,

Guy Nirpaz (12:20)
You could, but it's gonna change tomorrow.

Kevin Holmes (12:23)
but there's a double edged sword there, right? So on one hand, it creates an opportunity for self-growth, discovery, learning, interesting every day. On the other hand, how do you kind of find the edge of the paper and find those times to go to the pool and, you know, take care of yourself?

Guy Nirpaz (12:39)
Yeah, I mean I mean that's kind of y you know, one one thing I I'm you know I'm I'm I'm very kind of my my style is very ad hoc and I've learned this about myself and and so forth. But one

Kevin Holmes (12:49)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (12:52)
of the the fact that this that aura is kind of basically creating a daily journal for everything.

Kevin Holmes (12:58)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (12:58)
It actually helps me kind of go back and look. And I I see the I see the impact on performance. Like mental performance,

Kevin Holmes (13:02)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (13:06)
creative creativity performance, keeping at a at a task for longer and so forth. And I can see the difference. So, you know, the for me it's not I gotta find time that actually creates time for me because I'm my performance is is better. And and it so I think it kind of

Kevin Holmes (13:22)
think

you know

Guy Nirpaz (13:23)
You know, that everyone can can find their own thing.

It's a coach, it's it's a journal, it's

Kevin Holmes (13:28)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (13:30)
but ultimately I think kind of when the rhythm is better then the performance is better and

Kevin Holmes (13:36)
the the performance is better. Yeah. So, anyways, creating some structures or some, you know, quantification to help what can't be measured can't be managed, right? 2,000 meters four times, five times a week, right? it's an important part of this topic of, you know, which I wanted to start out talking about, which is kind of the founderhood topic of why are you doing this and what motivates you. And I think it's a good sort of segue into.

Totango and what you're doing today. So I I encounter a lot of founders who their next startup is in a totally different industry and space than their last startup. occasionally you come across founders who have success, not many, who do multiple startups at the same time. I don't recommend that. But as far as what I'm hearing from you, it's very much like this is a life's work. This is a passion, customer success. You helped create that category with Totango.

what what is it about that problem that you know, wh why do you suppose you've kind of landed on

Guy Nirpaz (14:30)
Yeah, I I I think like you know, if you're in B2B, right, which is, you know, my the domain, I I I think businesses are very if you're selling to businesses, that's good what I mean. you know, you got like key domains that define business. One of the key domains is customers, right? Obviously. you know, employees, finances, products, operations,

But but customers is a is a is a key thing and it's and it's not very well addressed. There's a there's a there's you know there's a gap. Fir first is the realization that customers is a relationship problem, not it's not a transactional problem, right? It's the

Kevin Holmes (15:07)
Okay.

Guy Nirpaz (15:07)
domain is kind of more of a, you know, it's it's secondly, customers is

Kevin Holmes (15:09)
Hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (15:13)
long term problem. It's not even even in even in e-commerce.

the expectation is repeat buyers. It's not like a one

Kevin Holmes (15:18)
Expectation is not given years and stuff.

Guy Nirpaz (15:20)
time. You can't do business on a single you know

Kevin Holmes (15:24)
That's

Guy Nirpaz (15:24)
treating the customers and transaction. And I think the so these these challenges have led to kind of trying to figure out and I must say that I have at home my wife, she runs her own yoga and pilates business

as a solo owner operator of that

Kevin Holmes (15:43)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (15:44)
business and and

I can always kinda look at how she manages customer relationship, how she cares about her clients, right? specifically in in her business. It's about you know, she has customers of over ten, fifteen, twenty years and so forth. So and and how different it is w once companies become, you know, bigger. Right. And

Kevin Holmes (16:04)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (16:04)
So I want either all businesses

Kevin Holmes (16:05)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (16:06)
to be able to have a relationship with the customers like my wife's business or like Amazon, right? And and Amazon, I mean Amazon the aspiring model, it's not where it is right now, but

Kevin Holmes (16:12)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (16:16)
at least conceptually about, you know, customer obsession and so forth. So and and and a lot

of folks have you know, let me say this differently. it seems logical that

if there's perfect alignment between your business and your customers, meaning the products and services and experiences that companies provide to customers

are in great alignment with what the market is looking for. That is underlying core principle for healthy business, you know, high margin, high growth and so forth.

but in reality we we barely speak that language in business, right? There's a lot of like

Kevin Holmes (16:56)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (16:56)
very quickly this, yeah, that's true, but then let's focus on demand generation and

and marketing campaigns and sales processes and sales enablement and onboarding customers

Kevin Holmes (17:07)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (17:07)
and so forth. And very quickly the organization kind of forgets

Kevin Holmes (17:09)
That's it.

Guy Nirpaz (17:11)
the core, yeah, the this this this

Kevin Holmes (17:12)
Hm. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (17:14)
core principle.

You know, and when it doesn't forget, good things happen and with it does for it does forget, you know, a lot of bad things could bad things happen.

Kevin Holmes (17:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (17:23)
And I think it can't be like after the fact principle. That's kind of what my my my core belief is. But on the other hand, everything that they just described, you know, if if it was so simple, why wouldn't people do that? Because I think it's hard. So so I think that

Kevin Holmes (17:36)
Yeah. Because I think it's maximum.

Guy Nirpaz (17:38)
that that kind of friction point has

Kevin Holmes (17:41)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (17:41)
to be

Has to be resolved. and and has, you know, it's good for the customers, it's good for the business, it's good for, you know, for the world. That that is what, you know, I and I think it's a hard problem to solve. So, you know, customer success was one attempt to solve it through the lenses of recurrent revenue business. So, how are we gonna convince everyone to to solve for it, to drive value for customers?

Kevin Holmes (17:43)
and

Guy Nirpaz (18:11)
In a recurrent revenue

business, there's a clear

relation, churn,

Kevin Holmes (18:16)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (18:17)
net revenue retention, and so forth. The metrics don't do not align if you're unable to keep your customers for a longer period of time. So it's a lifetime value business. If you can't do that, you can't grow. All right, so let's here's a here's

motivation to drive customer success and so forth. I think another

It's a domain that is similar is customer experience. So if customer success was kind

of more like the B2B version of that, the customer experience, the dollars metrics of the world was more on the on the B2C side of the world. And their attempt

was around this idea that okay, there's a gap between customer experience and the customer experience you provide, the customer experience the customer receives, and you you gotta measure.

measure

this gap over time and then continuously close this gap, right? so that that's a good that's a good concept, but now I think I gotta I got a

bigger framework for that. I I I think I I call it the customer momentum loop, which is that's

Kevin Holmes (19:21)
Yeah, which is

Guy Nirpaz (19:22)
the that's the framework I I'm thinking that, you know, customer success is the problem with that, it was anchored around the team.

Although I don't

Kevin Holmes (19:28)
the team.

Guy Nirpaz (19:29)
think it should have been anchored around the team, but that's what happened. It was anchored around the team and customer experience was anchored around the dashboard or the survey.

Kevin Holmes (19:38)
Hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (19:38)
And customer momentum is the is the operating model to actually execute on the customer obsession concept that Jeff Bezos coined, right? So customer obsession is the driving principle, like the energy that drives alignment for the business around customer needs and experiences, and the continuous

improvement of the way the the business

operates around what customer needs. And I I you know the reason why I felt like to start perspective around this idea is with AI changing everything right now. The entire stack is changing, the entire value chain is changing. Not being able to to be in sync with your customers

and the markets you operate in presents a a huge potential drift.

into a business that goes you know into into

the ground eventually or being very much aligned and in sync with the markets you operate in gives you this opportunity that is driving by you know all this energy and dynamics of of the market. And you know I happy to talk more about the the the customer momentum loop but you know

Kevin Holmes (20:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (20:53)
but that's the the I I think the the this massive change of AI is basically kind of

reinforcing that motivation

Kevin Holmes (21:00)
So customer momentum loop is the new book or or concept that may be coming soon. And I remember when

Guy Nirpaz (21:04)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Holmes (21:07)
I read a farm don't hunt, it was prefaced on in the beginning there's customer service, but customer success is a new function. And it's in the world of SaaS, we have renewals and and we want to nurture those relationships so they renew. and it's proactive. That was the big difference from customer success, anchored around, as you said, the team.

customer these new customer success teams. I wonder with like let's explore that. Yeah. Let's let's tell us more about customer momentum loop. And I'm just curious, like how does that what does that mean for customer success, right?

Guy Nirpaz (21:34)
Yeah,

so so so I think it's kind of it's it's broader than the customer suc I mean, I mean even even I I'd say in the customer success space, there's always like two camps. One was the camp I mean, I mean it wasn't like official, but I think different point of view, different emphasis. there was one emphasis where customer success is around the fact that you have a function called customer success and they are the organization responsible for

driving the customer, driving value the customer so to maximize renewal upsell, whether whether or not they own the number or or not, it's a separate topic, but the key is someone needs to make sure that the customer that signed up the contract will renew it, will buy more, and there needs to be a a process and a workflow for a consistent behavior like that. that was camp number one.

The way I saw that it was always around the customer journey. Even in the book, custom the farm downhunt book, it was around the customer journey. So think about the customer journey and and drive value proactively along the journey. So the renewal is a non-issue

and and so forth, right? So that it's it's was kind of more focused on the on the on on the customer journey. And and and then in the in the recent years.

I think because of AI optimization, because of post-2021 you know, cost reduction needs by organizations, the fact that all of a sudden companies started to ask, do we need such a large customer success team? How do we, you know, put the metrics of success managers to customers to revenue and so forth?

that kind of opened the question, okay. So what happens?

to customer success when the team shrinks, budgets evaporate and so forth. But but my answer is yeah, but let's leave the team aside for a second as a separate topic. You still have customers

that you need to onboard, drive value to, ensure they renew on time, sell them product. So you know whether it's the the same team is doing

this, whether you split it across other functions, still it needs to it needs to happen, right? For for for the business.

Kevin Holmes (23:36)
do you think the

Guy Nirpaz (23:38)
So I think the my framing is okay, so let's think about this as the the journey needs to be proactively managed if you want to renew customers and add the shift that is happening right now from subscription proceed models into usage based pricing and so forth. So all of sudden, there's even a a stronger tie between value and consumption to revenue.

Right, because usage, right? I mean, all those FDs right now, the front deployment engineers are basically

Kevin Holmes (24:09)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (24:11)
plumbers that are being sent on site to connect the the enterprise to the token to the token pipeline, right? So you gotta you gotta

connect the token pipeline to be to in order to make money for the token providers, which are the AI models and so forth. So

Kevin Holmes (24:26)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (24:27)
so it's even it's even it's even more important. So so I don't think

Kevin Holmes (24:32)
I love that metaphor. Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (24:32)
Any anything thank you. I don't

think anything kind of changed in the i specifically if you focus on the customer journey, right? we can see that by the way, that if you think about subscription, you think about tokens, these are very customer-facing models, right? The customer pay for the value, whether it's measured in tokens or whether it's measured in seats or whatever, but they pay per value,

Kevin Holmes (24:56)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (24:57)
which is very different than the way it used to be before. You pay for

access now you pay for you only pay if you consume right so that's kind of even so you know more

Kevin Holmes (25:05)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (25:05)
choices for the customers and so forth. So what what I'm basically trying to say is if we take like a broader a broader look here what companies are the customer momentum

let's let's talk about where what is the outcome of customer momentum so when when

when

There is customer momentum, and we can see this with products like Cloud Code or Cursor or things like that. There's a pool from the market, right? There's there's a pool from the market. You you you market very little, you sell very little,

because you know, there's a alignment between the product you you you generate and what the customer needs. There's almost no friction in the flow. Customers talk to one another, they convince one another.

To buy more from you, they convince within the organization to buy more and more and more, and it creates this, you know, energy

Kevin Holmes (25:55)
Flywheel. Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (25:57)
that is driving the business. So the customers are creating this energy that drives drives the business. This is, I mean, this is the dream every CEO has, right? That's that's what we want to have. okay, so what

Kevin Holmes (26:05)
The Holy Grail, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay,

Guy Nirpaz (26:11)
I'm thinking of it, the the metaphor here is alignment. There is

Almost 100% alignment between the customer and the market and the business, the product, the services, the experience, the pricing, all that. It's like in a complete alignment.

And because of this alignment, the energy from the market is basically driving this loop and it creates this acceleration. And this acceleration drives growth and fuel fuels innovation and so forth and so forth. That's great.

The other approach, the you know, when you don't have that, there's a lot of cost in the business because there's a lot of friction. You gotta market very aggressively because there's no pull from the market, you gotta sell very aggressively, so acquisition cost is very is very high. You gotta onboard, it's very hard to onboard customers and it's very expensive, and every renewal is a battle, and so forth. Why is that? Is because there's inefficiencies, there's no good alignment between the business and

And the market. So what you're trying to do as an organization is find the alignment, grow the alignment, maintain the alignment. That that's what you're this is the loop that I'm talking about. And the idea is

Kevin Holmes (27:16)
but the

Guy Nirpaz (27:18)
you got the customers, and then you got you you have like an engagement firm, you talk to the customers, you learn from it, you you identify problems, opportunities, and so forth, you you prioritize them, you sequence them, and you create a new version of your company.

New version of your product, your service, your experience, your pricing. And you and you and you keep going back to the customers and you're improving. In every new version of your company, what you're trying to do is have a high alignment between where you are

and where the market is. And because the market keeps moving, right? Who would have known three years ago

that Claude Code is going to be such a huge business today, right? So everything

had to be.

iterated

super quickly. The companies that are able to be at the in in their markets at the closer alignment to their customers and continuously stay in alignment and iterate and you get even closer, not only they grow faster, they grow also more efficiently because they need to market less, they need to sell less, the customer acquisition cost is lower, the win rate is higher, right? Win rate is a metric of win rate is

a metric of efficiency.

And that increases the profitability, right? You you for the same amount of deals, you close more, you make more, so your margin is higher. The same thing with running the journey. So onboarding

customers is simpler, and and the product, every feature of the product creates more value to customers and so forth. So if you think about this, this alignment is what what is the holy grail. And the loop is the customer the customer momentum loop is this process.

To measure the gaps, identify

the reasons, learn as an organization. I mentioned before, the key friction points in customer centricity is understanding, truly understanding your customers, right? That could at granular level that can be actionable. In making sure

that understanding is an organizational understanding, it's not a single person or single department understands something, but but it takes

you know, three months, six months from the customer success team to get the message

across to the product team to build the feature, you know, that to and now that building and making change should not be an issue anymore because of AI, it's got much, much simpler. The key is making the right set of changes super quickly across the board in complete alignment with the customers. So that's the that's the customer

momentum loop. And I think that that's what the organization needs to do. They're the the

Technical elements that are tied to that. And there's a lot of you know this vision tied into the way we build Perspective AI as a product. But but the key idea is to get to to be able to run your organization like that.

And I also think it's a it's a new concept that the chief customer officer, that the CEO can bring to the board and and to to the to the answer. So, what do you guys do with AI?

So how do you guys do things differently with AI? Because when I went to ask

a lot of folks in the customer success and the customer experience space, I learned two things. One is they're a bit demotivated. It seems like the that you know, some some sometime along the way, scaling customer experience to customer success led to one size fits all experience, which is not

It's not their core belief. They don't think that. And when it comes to AI, you know, everyone told me that they're building customer 360 which is like, you know, we're CRM initial promise in the 90s was customer 360. And then

customer success was customer 360 So customer 360 is not the solution for what do you do with AI for customer experience. I think I think the that that's kind of my core belief that the customer momentum loop.

That's

what you do with AI in order to take your customers, take the energy from the market, drive it through your business, back to your market, and continuously driving you know profitable growth. So growth and higher margins,

which gives you competitive advantage and so forth. So it's it's a it's a similar concept to the flywheel, the generic flywheel, but more specifically to

You know, that that part of of the business.

Kevin Holmes (31:41)
specifically should be Yeah.

I guess that makes me think about your concept with with the hundred percent alignment. And like is this a phase in a company life cycle? Is it a phase in a market life cycle, industry life cycle, that eventually new entrants come in and crowd out and compete?

And then the cost of sales just goes up. Is it it does it have a sort of point in time, or conversely, is this objective of of a hundred percent alignment is it something that great companies in competitive spaces just rate higher on it and they're they're growing at a better rate because of it?

Guy Nirpaz (32:17)
so so first I think I think it's gonna fit it's it's always relative.

I I think there's never hundred percent alignment. So that's that that's the advantage here. So you always aspire

to be better. Right. So, you know, think if we take the Amazon example, right now it's same day delivery or you know, few hours delivery. That wasn't the case ten years ago. So

the point being is there's always the the it's it's a moving target.

Kevin Holmes (32:41)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (32:41)
Which is which is a good thing, but the direction of the target is to c to to understand what is what does alignment look like

should look like now, like today, and where are we against that and what's the gap? And let's close this gap. So my expectation is that your top three priorities need to change constantly, let's say every month or so, every quarter, but your top top three priorities.

need need to change for two reasons.

One is your number one priority is being fixed. You solved it, so now number two becomes number one and so forth. Secondly, a new number one emerges because of competitive pressure, because of market dynamics, because of technology shift, and so forth. So so this is why I call it a loop, because it's not like we do it once and we're done. It's constantly figuring out

Where are we against the markets? How well do we understand the markets, the customers that that we serve, and how fast can we execute on either taking advantage of technology opportunities or market opportunities or friction points that that could represent risk or could represent inefficiencies and so forth.

Kevin Holmes (33:50)
Yeah.

another I reaction to this I to this idea and question I have is like whereas to Totango, as you mentioned, was about customers about relationships and long term, maybe creating stickiness from those relationships and improving renewal and maybe collecting some insights and passing it back to product. Customer momentum sounds a lot more like purely on the

on the product side of understanding insights and passing that back to product because product now the the barrier, the bar, is lowered down by your ankles basically with Claude code. And so the emphasis at this moment in time is more so on how quickly can we equip companies to gain insights and iterate more quickly on product. Is that accurate or is that not exactly right?

Guy Nirpaz (34:35)
I I I think I mean I mean I I I can see that if if the if the serv if the if the company that you're talking about is a product company or but but but I I think even in customer success the discussion has been on value delivery. Right. So so I so I think is okay, the customer is buying for value. And the value is being delivered on a mix, depending on the business model, on a mix of product, could the value could come in directly just from the product, could be come from the product.

And the packaging of the product, product packaging and pricing, product packaging, pricing, services around this product, or it's a could be that the product is a service, or even the experiences around it. So the question is what is the value the customer is looking for and where's where is the gap? And and you're right. The now that now so you're you're you're 100% correct in the sense that okay, so there's the customer facing part of it. So

How well are we aligned with the customer on the value delivery chain? What are the specific gaps? And then the gaps could be product gaps, could be service gaps, could be pricing and packaging gaps, could be timing gaps, could be distribution gaps, could be all sorts of gaps. And then, you know, one well, then you gotta execute on that. So closing the gaps or taking advantage of these opportunities, that's the that's the next version.

of the company. If we be more specific, could be a next version of your sales deck, could be the next version of the homepage, could be the next version of the welcome experience, could be the next version of a specific feature, could be of the product and so forth. But but but you're right that if we use like a product, let's say product iteration mindset.

I mean I come from product, but a product iteration mindset where everything that you do is

Productized and you constantly create the the next version, and a a good iterative next version is no regression and only improvement. That that is how I see this, right? So so yes, I so may maybe there is a product framing here where you know everything is a product, but but but the company is the product of the value to

Kevin Holmes (36:33)
Yeah, I see. Yes. Yeah. But expanding is the problem that's Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (36:38)
deliver to the customer. That's kind of how I think about this.

Kevin Holmes (36:40)
Yeah. If

if you're a salesperson listening to this, it might you might be thinking about your pitch or it or by as you said, it's it's gonna be in the eyes of the beholder, what that means. and I suppose that the the moment we're in with AI is enabling enabling capturing that those insights at at scale and easier and faster in a faster iterative loop than never before. Is this kind of the premise for perspective AI?

Guy Nirpaz (37:03)
Yes.

Yes. I I I I

Kevin Holmes (37:04)
Yes. Yes.

Guy Nirpaz (37:05)
think that so so first, you know, over time we wanna we wanna be able to deliver this entire loop or at least and able to orchestrate this entire loop for for organization. but but but I think you know I I I think that you know I I've started thinking loops when I was head of engineering like

20 years ago,

Kevin Holmes (37:26)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (37:27)
implementing Scrum, and you know, so you know, so you have like the daily Scrum. If if people are not familiar, so Scrum was one of the early agile software development. And the concept of agile software development was around iterative development, meaning every iteration is better than the previous one. That's the that's the concept, and and also

Kevin Holmes (37:41)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (37:44)
iteration of the process as well, not just the product and

But one of the things is, you know, every sprint back then was one month and then two weeks, you basically

learn from previous sprint of execution, what can we do better? What can we learn? What can we do better? And the idea is to continuously improve the speed, the cycle that is drawn from lean manufacturer, Japanese lean manufacturing principles, Six Sigma, and so forth and so forth. So so this idea that you constantly

Gotta get feedback in order to learn. For me it has always been engraved. And when I

ran to Totango, we had a lot of, you know, loops like win loss analysis or churn analysis or you know, everything that you do, you wanna improve, you gotta learn how to improve it. I think the opportunity right now with AI is that the loops are much shorter. So you can do more. So if you think about learning, the more loops you run the b the faster the learning.

Is right. Because if you do a loop every month, then you got 12 learning opportunities a year. If you do a loop every day, you got 365 learning opportunities a year. Right. That's

the and the faster you learn, combined with super fast execution right now with AI. So if you can take learning into execution, and the learning

into next version becomes a matter of days instead of months.

you can clearly see the compounding effect of it. And that's one of the advantages. You can see that the companies that have the customer momentum, companies that Claude, sorry, Anthropic

or or others, the compounding effect,

Kevin Holmes (39:17)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (39:19)
right? They come from behind and all of a sudden, boom, this is like almost a direct line into Mars, because of the compounding effect. So loops are not just, you know.

feedback and so forth, it's kind of it creates like a compounding advantage.

Kevin Holmes (39:32)
Yeah, yeah, I love that.

I I love that idea of waterfall to agile to to AI loops. and and of course, you take it a step further, you can just sort of be in an echo chamber with AI for those loops, but very easily you're gonna be hallucinating and getting misled by AI. And so what do you want to anchor it on? Customers. If you anchor those loops on customers and in and that's the bottleneck.

Right. So if you if you can fan more quickly and fast in a faster way, in a faster loop, learn from customers, then everything else downstream from that in your iterations creates more alignment.

Guy Nirpaz (40:06)
Yeah, I agree. I mean a hundred percent. And and there's another another element here. No no no no

Kevin Holmes (40:10)
Well I hope you agree, you're building perspective AI. So I'm preaching

to the choir, but I'm I I l I love this this line of thinking. This is cool. 'Cause it's relevant to all founders, right? Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (40:19)
Exactly. And I want to add one

more thing here, which is energy. Like energy. Like the where is the source of energy? What's driving, I mean, you

Kevin Holmes (40:26)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (40:27)
know what? What drives me is impacting customer's business, impacting customer success. When you were coaching,

Kevin Holmes (40:33)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (40:35)
I'm suspecting, right? I'm guessing that one of your motivation is that you coach someone and you impacted their actions and it leads to success, right?

Kevin Holmes (40:43)
Yeah, it's it's not

and it's it's not necessarily you know, money related for a lot of founders. It's that it's the reward is in that the impact, right? And like the customers giving you that and telling you like, Hey, this was really amazing, right?

Guy Nirpaz (40:57)
Exactly. And so so we can we can tie it

back into the into the founders' journey. So when you get more and more energy from customers, right?

Kevin Holmes (41:08)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (41:09)
Energy, right? You get more learning, more feedback, and and this energy feeds in. And and and and it doesn't mean you don't you're not looking for you're great, you're awesome, your product is also no no, that's not what you're looking for. You're looking for this is working for us, but this, you know, we got some g big gaps here. We need

Kevin Holmes (41:24)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (41:24)
to close this is

I I I can tell you, I can I can see this, how it moves the the team, right? For me, every time there's something coming from customers, I'm distributing this to everyone on the team because first, the collective brain power of all my employees versus me is much bigger. And secondly,

Kevin Holmes (41:40)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (41:41)
the collective brain power of all my my team plus their AI agents is even larger,

Kevin Holmes (41:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (41:47)
but it also moves them, right? People solve problems to people, right?

That's that's very kind of the it creates this motivation. And I think

Kevin Holmes (41:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (41:57)
this energy is a very positive energy for businesses. Why do you exist? I mean, yes, value to shareholders, but you know, how do you drive value to shareholders? Through driving value to your customers and you know, building products that people like and enjoy and

Kevin Holmes (42:11)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (42:12)
changes their life, improve their life, creates better tomorrow for them, whatever whatever this is.

Kevin Holmes (42:17)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (42:19)
So

Funneling

this energy into

Kevin Holmes (42:21)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (42:21)
the organization to grease all the cogs in the machine in order

Kevin Holmes (42:25)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (42:26)
to produce the new version is a very positive flow. That that's by the way,

Kevin Holmes (42:29)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (42:31)
if folks didn't r read, I think it's the first shareholder letter by Jeff Bezos, and the the topic there about customer obsession and and customer aligned organizations, that's exactly what he talks about. I think

There's a practical way to think about this and execute on that. It's not just leaving an empty chair for the customer on your virtual meeting table. It's

Kevin Holmes (42:54)
Yes.

Guy Nirpaz (42:54)
it's kinda getting this energy into everything that we

Kevin Holmes (42:57)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (42:57)
do as an organization.

Kevin Holmes (42:58)
I love that. And it it loops back to our earlier conversation about why you do this, right? I think those customer conversations are fuel to keep you going as a founder. Whenever you're out of alignment with that, maybe you're two heads down, you're not leaving your four walls of your office, you're just on your your vibe coding away. Getting out talking to customers always is a is connecting with that source. it's gonna Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (43:20)
You know it's gonna yeah, absolutely.

Kevin Holmes (43:22)
Yeah.

I even feel more energized talking about talking about it. It kind of inspires you know, makes yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (43:27)
I'm I mean I I can

tell you that to me it was always like that the things that kept me going into Totango, even like the very difficult days, you know, where you lose a deal and yet you worked on so hard and so forth,

Kevin Holmes (43:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (43:39)
is spending time with customers, right? There's always something there. And and you know, I I would I I mentioned that you know, the customer six some of the customer success success leaders kind of have been, you know, a bit down in the last few years. And

Kevin Holmes (43:54)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (43:54)
I

had an interesting conversation the other day with a customer success leader, and that's what she told me. She said, you know, a good day for me is a day that I created value to customers, that you know I had a call with someone that basically reflected

you know, positive movement in their business because

Kevin Holmes (44:12)
Yeah, yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (44:13)
of something that my product did, my company w something that I did. A terrible day for me is administration day. so so

Kevin Holmes (44:21)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (44:23)
so I think getting back into so giving permission to giving us ourselves permission, you

Kevin Holmes (44:29)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (44:29)
know, because we work with other people, we work with financially motivated people like VCs and we work with you know we work with all sorts of

dimensions and you know and but giving ourselves permission to connect fast growth, success, profitability

into making meaning and creating value to customers. And creating this framework was very important for me, creating a framework

Kevin Holmes (44:49)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (44:53)
that that allows that to be able to say it's a

it's a very good business model to use AI to create maximum alignment to drive customer momentum to grow your business. That's it all these components they fit. It's not you don't need to feel ashamed that

Would you care about those things? You don't have to. I mean, there's other ways to run businesses, but the the way

in which I like and believe in is this.

Kevin Holmes (45:20)
I as I mentioned there's different types of entrepreneurs, right? And I and this actually resonates with me in the in the sense that I get energy from that too. we have LPs in the FN fund who started their businesses because it looked good on a spreadsheet. You know, and they just chose an industry because it it looked even better on a spreadsheet. and that's one way to do it. but I I like this. And I guess, you know, as I as I think about this idea of energy as a founder.

I and fourteen years. Fourteen years of Totango, right? And w a lot of members and founders network, it's a lifelong network. sorry, twelve.

Guy Nirpaz (45:51)
Twelve, but yeah, fine. It's okay.

Kevin Holmes (45:53)
Okay. Felt like fourteen. twelve years

Guy Nirpaz (45:56)
Ha ha ha.

Kevin Holmes (45:57)
of Totango. you know, at that point it's just a rounding air. You you must have had these ebbs and flows of energy and plateaus and maybe a lot of founders encounter burnout. I'm curious, like, you know, also part of it is as you grow, you to, you know, as we talked about, so many customers and

And how many employees did you guys grow to?

Guy Nirpaz (46:16)
at the max we were like two hundred.

Kevin Holmes (46:17)
Yeah. So that can create some, you know, distance from you and that source of of customers. Did you experience that? Did you have to kind of reconnect with like staying close to customers or are there any insights there that might be helpful to founders to like, you know, how to think about, yes, I need to build an organization that'll scale to 200 employees and et cetera, and all the and millions of customers, and I need to build a team. And there's other things that are gonna take my time and attention, but like

That customer obsession. How do you did you did were you always sort of true to that throughout the whole journey or did you have to relearn it? What I'm just curious about that.

Guy Nirpaz (46:49)
yeah, so so I think it's

Kevin Holmes (46:50)
So

Guy Nirpaz (46:51)
it's it's a it's a very it's a very good point. you know, so so first that's that's the reason behind be behind perspective where you know that this idea of can scaling customer conversations, kind of scaling meaningful customer conversation, attended and unattended, to be able to constantly and have it at the at the tip of your fingers to be able to to read, to listen, like voice to

to to analyze and it's always available. you know, I remember the a lot of the times I would, you know, given that I I w you know, I was not in all customer meetings, obviously, I would spend time with the customer success team, like with slow Fridays, I would go to, you know

Way before COVID when there was actually an office and so forth, I would go to where the customer success team and I would start talking to them. So what happened this week? What did you what did you learn? And I would interrogate them and so forth and then find

Kevin Holmes (47:41)
Okay.

Guy Nirpaz (47:41)
all sorts of you know, crazy stuff in the business that was very

You know, I I could see why would it frustrate a customer, right? I c I could see why you know,

Kevin Holmes (47:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (47:53)
you you talk to the to the folks and then and they they explain to you that for example there's no progress with this customer because they had training session of configuring something and because the UX experience, you know, was not as effective within forty-five minutes conversation.

Five minutes chit chat and ten minutes at the end, next steps. In thirty minutes they were not unable to complete the flow. So, you know, so the next scheduling

Kevin Holmes (48:18)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (48:19)
was in two weeks and you know this entire project was delayed by by a month for no no good reason. And so so this is just an example. So I mean I was try I tr I always try to be as close as possible to all customers,

but you know, it's un it's un it's unrealistic.

Kevin Holmes (48:33)
Impossible. Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (48:36)
But you know but you know, you probably heard that, you know, Jensen Huang is is, you know, NVIDIA CEO is is like over seventy people direct reports and he and he asks people from the company to write in emails directly to for him to scan all the the raw data. I I think this idea of staying true to the

you know to where

Stay connected with where the truth is without without the obstructions of of

summarization and so forth.

I think it's highly desirable. I think especially in the competitive markets. I think for startups for sure.

Kevin Holmes (49:12)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (49:13)
yeah. I for me for me it's always always the I I think a lot of folks that work with me felt that I was maybe too hands on and too many things,

Kevin Holmes (49:21)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (49:22)
too much. That that you know, that that it would be the feedback I would get. but

Kevin Holmes (49:26)
I I it it to me it connects with the topic of founder mode and like being a micromanager on on one end and then what is like the healthy mode of that, right? And staying connected to the customers is the is the imperative. otherwise you wind up with, you know, a new coke or something. so yeah, I I think that the and you talked about like having permission to do that, right? Like I think that maybe that's a takeaway here too for founders is just knowing that, hey.

You know, it might I might come across as interrogating you, but like this is as the leader, I need to know and and and you know, have those conversations to really understand deeply. if anything, it's a sign of how important those people are on your team.

Guy Nirpaz (50:05)
Yeah, no, no, absolutely. I I I I think I I think the difference is is this, right? It's I think this is like the I mean, by the way, this is very very timely with AI, right? So what is the the topic of the day? What how what how AI works well when it has context? What is context? It's not all the information, it's the information that matters, accurate.

right. So it's not customer 360, everything that has happened. It's kind of what is the information that

Kevin Holmes (50:30)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (50:31)
is needed in order to make a decision, take action, and so forth. That that's kind of so I think as we kind of observe the AI, basically telling us in order for me to work well,

I need to have the context. That's the we are talking about the same thing. As a leader, I need to have the context in order to, you know, s

Kevin Holmes (50:45)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Nirpaz (50:49)
understand problems, solve problems, take action. Same thing.

with

AI. So the the so the new idea is instead of silos where

you know all the data is aggregated and summarized, it's all the context is available for anyone to look, then you can have a healthy debate of interpretation and and taking action. That that's that that's the that's the approach. And I think, you know, I I actually think that you know

Seeing how humanity or the business humanity is trying to figure out what is cognition, what what

what what is intelligence, how do you learn decision-making process. I mean, in the past, decision making was you know only for managers or people that were very much interested in this topic. These days, every engineer is

Being an expert in decision making, because they build agents that need to make decisions. So they need to understand the ins and outs and what's a good decision, bad decision, and so forth. It's very fascinating to see. But the point that it makes is you know, the this idea of hierarchies or silos or you know, things along those lines, it's probably

not the right architecture for organizing work or organizing decision making and more of shared.

shared information

at all levels, row, summarized and so forth, is the right approach to create innovation, to make good decisions and so forth. So I think

this foun every every AI agent needs to be in founder mode, so, you know.

Kevin Holmes (52:19)
Yeah.

Yeah. that's actually a good you know, transition to this idea of like where we are now and where where do you what's your take on where it's going? Like do do you feel like you know we're in the hype cycle? Do you feel like you know, I was having coffee this morning with somebody who's thinking of shutting their startup down because they they're not convinced that this is the moment where like

vertical software is ever gonna make sense. Like it's it's it's gonna be too challenging and the AI is just gonna generate software, kind of ambient software, you know, bespoke in the moment and this kind of stuff. Like w what's your take on on all that and I don't know, where do you see things landing?

Guy Nirpaz (52:57)
Yeah, I I I think f yeah. So first, I mean, you know, like in in the Simpsons there's this with clouds part part way and it says the Simpsons. So I feel that we're kind of going through clouds and every like few months clouds part ways and there's a new theme of the day, right? So it used to be everything is gonna be assistant, and then assistants are becoming agents, and now everyone realizes the agents is just a new way to say software. So

And so forth and so forth. So I think like all these kind of absolute truths that social media kind of promotes,

Kevin Holmes (53:29)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (53:29)
you know, should be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe, maybe it's gonna be like that, maybe it's not gonna be like that. well, you know, who knows? I think AI is real for sure, right? We can see that the capabilities are real, you can do a lot of things.

But I'm I'm again coming to this. I mean, so my my my my premise is as long as humans making the purchasing decisions, right?

because that could change too, but then nothing else matters anyway. So so as long as humans are the the ones that you that consume the value, you build making purchasing decisions, but driving the economic engine.

If

you will, you start from there and you ask this this question, right? I mean the fact that everyone can build their own website is is a good is a good you know, first it's not true, but but let's say that is it is true. will

they want to build their own website, right? Will you want you know

Co you wanna cook off your meals because you can do it, or would you like to go to restaurants from time to time? So I think the the question kind of more is what is the market looking for

Kevin Holmes (54:27)
Is that

Guy Nirpaz (54:31)
on specifics, and then take it from there. And that's the so that's on one thing, right? So the thesis of businesses and products. So so in in my case, in perspective, I

Kevin Holmes (54:40)
Okay.

Guy Nirpaz (54:41)
think I'm saying, okay, all this AI

You know, building AI on top of organizational data is

good, but there's data set that is missing, it's in customers' heads. So if you don't go grab it, this is always going to be missing. And because it's critical, that's the basis for perspective, right? We there's always something in customers' heads. It's always fresh, it's always like new ideas,

Kevin Holmes (54:58)
something

Guy Nirpaz (55:01)
new needs, new motivations, new requirements, because of their dynamics. And if

Kevin Holmes (55:05)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (55:06)
if you don't bring this into the organization, your decision-making process is impaired.

Kevin Holmes (55:10)
Mm.

Guy Nirpaz (55:11)
So th that that's

kind of that's my thesis for what we're doing. At the same time,

you gotta be s we said like you gotta be super aligned and super nimble. things

are moving, perceptions are changing, the so you can't it's it's not like this, you know, you know, especially in the application market, that's you know, it's a one size fits all or like I have a thesis I can run with it for like five years. No, you gotta be very qu quick.

And lastly, I think when everyone is when everyone is doing the exact same thing, probably sticking to something which is opposite to what everyone else is doing has a higher

potential for alpha than than doing like you know, when everyone is building agent builders that build websites, you know, at some point yeah, that's good, but it's hyper commoditized. So I I don't know. So there's no like

I think it's real. Personally I think it's very exciting. I I I enjoy it a lot. I think you know, working with a team these days is a lot of fun because there's you know, you can try things out. You kinda mentioned earlier about you know, build versus buy. I don't remember if those in the pre call or you know, should should you build it? Should you should you use existing ones? Right? It I think I

think like

If we were talking six months ago, SaaS is dead. You're gonna build all of your SaaS product from scratch. Now it turned back into why would you wanna do that? You know, don't you want to focus

Kevin Holmes (56:37)
Wanted to

Guy Nirpaz (56:39)
on the stuff that makes the most value for you? I think, for example, it's it's hard for us. We we're comparing performance or productivity compared to ten years ago. I was able to build something super cool ten years ago, it would have taken me fifty people for three months. I don't think it's a good comparison.

Kevin Holmes (57:03)
you're competing with the companies

Guy Nirpaz (56:58)
Because you're not you're not competing with the companies of ten years ago, you're competing with the companies of today and tomorrow. So the fact that you can build something that six month six year ten years ago was you

know, ten X to build doesn't really matter for right now. You're competing against the others that have the same tools that are available to you. So

so so I think how how do they like to code like first principles? I think first principle thinking is very good thinking these days and I think to me first principle starts with the customers always. so

Kevin Holmes (57:28)
That's good opportunity selection. And you're this time around, do you see yourself as creating that category? Or or do you see it as more versus

I think with Totango, you were creating a category. You were publishing Farm Don't Hunt. You were educating the market. this one, do you see it that way or do you see it sounds you see it more as a continuation of?

Guy Nirpaz (57:46)
you know, the

Kevin Holmes (57:46)
You know,

Guy Nirpaz (57:49)
one of the in the in the book Four Steps to the Epiphany, but

Kevin Holmes (57:53)
Mm. Steven.

Guy Nirpaz (57:55)
yeah, that I read initially. So creating a category was the worst desired option. And we didn't didn't want to do it. Right? What we ended up doing that because that was the dynamics. And and now I I feel that a lot of you know, I just heard like a podcast, like a dressing Horitz podcast yesterday about

B to B and Enterprise and creating a category was the recommended the recommended approach there. So

Kevin Holmes (58:15)
Yeah. It's great.

Guy Nirpaz (58:17)
so maybe maybe it's their framing. So you know, you can call customer momentum a category, you can call it a continuation of everything that happened before the customer success, customer experience, customer obsession. I I don't think that that matters that much. I think from from

From one one of the things that I've learned with the book is that if you create an easily consumable concept, like like a book, right? The reason why I wrote the book is because I had too many pictures that I did that I had to repeat the same concept again, again, again.

Kevin Holmes (58:51)
Yeah.

Guy Nirpaz (58:51)
I realized, okay, what you know, how can I sleep more and spend more, let's write it once and distribute that. And that that was the motivation. It was no

I I I never had aspiration to be a published author. It was just like a more efficient way to deliver these ideas. so so I think I I wanna capture much of that these days. So we're doing a lot of that on perspective where there's a lot of around self-service, a lot around like simple concept,

a lot of transitional concept where people can, you know, you used to use it used to be a survey, now it's an agent, used to be a forum, now it's

Right. A lot of like helping people kinda move from you know where the the status quo to the new thing and and you know and obviously there's a lot of tailwind with you know AI and agents and voice agents and so forth, so kind of people can see the see things that are connected. I think the transition into loops,

I can see this also with the team, it's a little bit more tricky these days.

thinking in task delivery is much easier for people than designing self learning continuous growing systems. So this is where right now kind of we focus energy

on, but you know, but you know, we'll know in in in a few years if it's actually working or not.

Kevin Holmes (1:00:06)
Well, I mean that's but we will have faith, you know, you'll have faith in yourself that you'll discover the problems and discover the solutions

Guy Nirpaz (1:00:13)
Yes.

Kevin Holmes (1:00:14)
if you stay anchored on the customers and first principles. So it it's it's it'll be fun to watch you build it and it has been fun and I I've enjoyed the conversation and and you know encourage everybody to check out

perspective AI is there something somewhere is that where they should go and who's this for and who who do at this stage who do you think should be ch kicking the tires on it?

Guy Nirpaz (1:00:35)
Yeah, so so first it's get perspective.ai.

It's you know, can s people can start for free without credit cards just to kick try it out. There are a bunch of templates on the website as well. it this is for so so it's so the classics, the transition. It's for customers, it's for chief customer officers for customer success teams, customer experience teams. That's on the transition, but it's also for product folks, for founders that were looking to

You know, figure out the market. So if you think about information that you need from the market, and the market could be potential customers, existing customers, partners and so forth, and you want to turn that into decisions and actions, that is for you, it's very easy to get started. and you know, we've got customers all the way from, you know, single people, single person companies to companies that you know, thousand employees and

Right now we're starting also with much larger organizations like True Enterprise. But yeah, and we're looking I mean, as as as as anticipated and expected, we're looking for market feedback. So there's many ways to give it to us and you know, I'm and I'm very approachable on LinkedIn, on X, email,

Kevin Holmes (1:01:42)
Cool. All right.

Guy Nirpaz (1:01:43)
whatever works.

Kevin Holmes (1:01:44)
Awesome. Guy, thank you so much for stopping by and appreciate you sharing your experience with the audience. Thank you, Kevin. appreciate the invitation.

Guy Nirpaz (1:01:51)
Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate the invitation and

we're happy to report back in a few few months.

Kevin Holmes (1:01:57)
All right. See ya.