In Depth Go hard early: How lessons from Verkada shaped Serval's AI agents for IT teams | Jake Stauch (Founder and CEO)
Oct 23, 2025
Jake Stauch, founder and CEO of Serval, shares insights from his experience at Verkada in shaping the future of IT automation. He emphasizes the power of tackling existing categories rather than creating new ones. Jake reveals a customer interview tactic that unearths IT pain points, and discusses how Serval leverages AI to create codeless automation workflows. He also covers the importance of hiring adaptable talent and embedding engineers within customer teams to drive innovation. With a focus on delivering consumer-like experiences, Serval aims to redefine enterprise IT.
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Win By Improving Existing Categories
- Go after existing categories where customers already spend money and build a markedly better product.
- The experience must be undeniably superior (about 10x) to overcome migration costs.
Live Camera Link Demo That Blew Minds
- Verkada demo: sales rep texts a live camera link and the customer streams to it on their phone during the call.
- That simple consumer-like moment convinced buyers a modern platform unlocked many new capabilities.
Ask Who You'd Hire To Reveal Hidden Work
- Ask customers: "If you could hire someone to sit next to you, what would they do?" to reveal latent tasks to offload.
- Use this reframing to uncover automation opportunities customers won't describe directly.