The PRQL: Generative AI Transforming the Sales Process Featuring Brendan Short of Groundswell

Eric Dodds 00:06
Welcome to The Data Stack Show prequel where we replay a snippet from the show we just recorded. Kostas, are you ready to give people a sneak peek? Let’s do it. What a fascinating show with Brendan Short from Groundswell. Kostas, I believe that’s the first guests that we’ve had that’s building a company that is sort of a bet wholly on generative AI. Is that right? Am I think Am I remembering correctly?

Kostas Pardalis 00:38
I think show Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the first.

Eric Dodds 00:42
We’ve talked a lot about AI and ML workflows and ml ops. But it was really cool to have Brendan on there. He’s a go to market guy, actually. So he’s the founder and CEO, and has a long history on the sales side, believe it or not, I mean, I guess maybe we’re making up for making fun of salespeople so many times on the show. But it was fascinating. I think there’s two big takeaways for me, because we covered a lot with Brendon, two big takeaways. One was certainly on the AI side, where, you know, his vision for what he believes to be possible for his company, using generative AI was really cool to hear about, it’s easy to get caught up in the technical side of it, you and I talked about the ethics of it, you know, recently, the infrastructure sides really interesting. But he really believes that he can make things drastically better for salespeople using generative AI, which is interesting. But perhaps the even more interesting conversation was around the supremacy of Salesforce as data model. And that is really one of the topics I think that on the show has been. I thought about it every single day, the week after the show, because you can say a lot of things that you want about Salesforce, but the lead contact account opportunity model route rules the entire world. And we had a fascinating conversation about whether it’s possible to dethrone the Salesforce data model that has become that has become king. So that was it was fascinating. Definitely one of the more intellectually stimulating shows that we’ve had, in terms of sort of broad market stuff in a while.

Kostas Pardalis 02:43
Yeah, 100%, I think it’s it. It is like a super interesting conversation that we’re having, not only because of generative AI, which obviously like is a very fascinating topic. And it’s very interesting to see people trying to build in the space today. But also because Brendon has like a very interesting backgrounds. She is not like a first time intrapreneurial founder, he has done this before he has done during, during like the previous, let’s say, iteration of innovation that had to do with SASS, and cloud. And it’s very interesting to hear all like the commonalities between, let’s say, the two eras in terms of like innovation back then. And now, what is similar What is different? And there’s a like a lot to learn, actually, from all the stories that he said about like Salesforce, about SaaS, how Salesforce became like, such a dominant product out there. And we also talked a little bit about what can happen like to what can potential dethrone them, right? How this can happen? What are like the threats against the Salesforce show? It’s a very interesting, so Joe about data again, but in some very surprising ways. So I think everyone’s going to find it like a very interesting episode to listen to me.

Eric Dodds 04:29
I agree. So do you think that Snowflake can become the new de facto can they create the data model for CRM? May we discuss that on the maybe does do for that sounds like a shock jock episode?

Kostas Pardalis 04:45
Yeah, I don’t disclose in mass let’s Okay. I want to

Eric Dodds 04:49
disclose I just wanted to I just wanted to drop a juicy enticing nugget of it. Yeah, definitely. Listen to this one. Really fun to talk to Have someone from the go to market side who has studied data and is building a startup on generative AI and using a ton of data so definitely take a listen. Subscribe if you haven’t tell a friend and we will catch you on the next one.