Get Paid with Manny Medina

In the latest episode of Get Paid, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jim Cutillo, a 30-year veteran of the mortgage industry and founder of Alpha7x. His company is transforming mortgage lending with AI agents that cut costs and streamline the entire process.If you've ever bought a home, you know the mortgage process can be a nightmare. What you might not know is that it's actually getting worse, not better.Jim shared a startling revelation: despite decades of technological advancements, the mortgage industry has become less efficient. "The cost today is at a record high for producing a mortgage," he explained. The time it takes to close a loan has actually increased by 10-12 days compared to just a decade ago.The numbers are eye-opening. It costs about $12,000 to manufacture a mortgage loan today. Manual tasks account for approximately $2,200 of that cost. These costs get passed directly to consumers through higher interest rates. Consumers pay for these inefficiencies over the entire 30-year term.Why is this happening? Jim points to fragmented systems and siloed data. "You get stuck staring and comparing data and documents against system data all day long," Jim explains. "As more technology was introduced, you've created more complexity."Jim's solution is simple: Alpha7x has created an "army of digital AI-based agents" designed to replace human labor across the mortgage supply chain. These aren't just chatbots. Alpha7x has built sophisticated agents that handle complex tasks like processing mortgage loans, reviewing closing documents, and performing compliance checks.Jim shared a compelling example: "We did a proof of concept for a large bank doing OFAC checks. I was shocked at the number of people they have doing the process today—15 people manually doing this process. With our agent, they'll need three people."Perhaps most interesting is Alpha7x's business model. They use outcome-based pricing, not seats or licenses. They only make money when they save clients money. "Our incentives are aligned right out of the gate," Jim says. This approach stands in stark contrast to both SaaS vendors who charge licensing fees regardless of outcomes, and Business Process Outsourcers who simply move labor offshore.Alpha7x has also built a tool that allows customers to create new agents without writing code. "We intend to put the power of these agents in the hands of our users," Jim explains. Organizations can rapidly deploy new automation. "They can configure that and have an agent working for them in two weeks."Jim is applying the same principles to his own company that he preaches to clients. "How are we going to ramp this company to 10 million ARR and have less than 20 people? Because that's my goal," he says. "I'm not going to build a people company when I'm trying to talk to people about building agents."This puts Alpha7x in the emerging camp of "$1 million per employee" AI companies. "Drink your own Kool-Aid," Jim advises. "If we're building agents, we might as well act like agents and build a company that is run by agents."While Alpha7x is focused on mortgages today, Jim sees potential far beyond this market. "We could do this in insurance. We could do it in other industries that are data and document centric," Jim says. What sets Alpha7x apart is their deep domain expertise. "What we're building is a micro LLM, a private LLM that understands mortgage regulations and guidelines. That's a much different animal to build."Alpha7x is in an enviable position when it comes to funding. "We have investors knocking on our door that want to invest, and I'm like, 'Okay, we're fine,'" Jim says. "Everybody's like, 'When are you going to do a Series A?' I'm like, 'What would I do a Series A for?'"He continues: "This will print money. It's a high-margin business. We should be able to reinvest that cash in development of the product. From a sales perspective, we haven't even hit go on the sales side, and we're getting calls every day."Jim's advice for entrepreneurs looking to build in the AI agent space is to find domain-specific problems. "Find a niche in a market, own that niche, and expand it," he suggests. But technical expertise alone isn't enough. "You need somebody with domain expertise on your team."With a $15 trillion mortgage market ripe for disruption, Jim Cutillo and Alpha7x are proving that AI agents can transform even the most document-heavy industries.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Elias Torres, founder of Agency and formerly Drift (which sold for $1.2B), joins us to explain why he considers that exit his "biggest failure" and how he's reimagining business building in the age of AI with his new company, Agency.The Billion-Dollar Failure That Wasn'tDespite selling Drift for $1.2 billion, Elias surprisingly calls it his "biggest failure." Why? Because his ambition was to build a $30 billion company that would go public:"My mind for Drift was we were gonna build a $30 billion company. We were gonna take it IPO... And that did not happen, right?"This stark honesty sets the tone for our conversation about what truly matters in company building.The "100 People to $1B" ConstraintElias's new mission is radical: build a billion-dollar company with only 100 employees. It's not just a catchy slogan—it's a deliberate constraint:"I'm trying to create a constraint, right? Because a constraint forces creativity. You have to learn how to manage cost."In his view, when companies grow to hundreds or thousands of employees, the mission changes from serving customers to managing humans:"When you have too many people, it becomes a whole different job... Your focus is how do you feed all those mouths? How do you guide them? How do you coach them? How do you manage their emotions?... It becomes no longer the mission of the company."Why "Seat Pricing Is Dead"Perhaps the most provocative stance Elias takes is on pricing. He doesn't mince words:"I think that seat pricing is dead. I think people ask me all the time and they say, how are you planning to charge it? You know, is it per seat? I think it's a stupidity to charge per seat nowadays."Instead, he's eyeing a percentage of customer revenue—the ultimate alignment:"Why couldn't I have a percentage of your revenue? And that's what I want. Right? It's like, if you don't make money, I don't make money."First Hire: A Lawyer, Not a RecruiterOne fascinating contrast: Elias's first hire at Drift was a recruiter. At Agency? A lawyer. This subtle shift reveals everything about his new approach to scaling:"Most companies delay hiring someone like that. And the founders spent all this time doing all the legal, all the contracting, all the payment, all the financing, all the budgeting."By immediately delegating administrative functions, he's guarding his most precious resource—time.The Extrovert Becoming an IntrovertIn a moment of candid self-reflection, Elias (a self-described extrovert) admits:"I'm becoming more of an introvert with age, right? And I realized that I don't want to interact with people, especially if it is to troubleshoot something for 20 days in a row. It's like, why can't it just work?"This personal evolution mirrors his professional thesis: humans are the "hardest roadblock" to AI adoption, yet they'll increasingly prefer automated solutions that just work.The Secret Lever Most Founders MissThe conversation took a turn when Elias revealed the most underrated growth lever:"Pricing is the most important lever in terms of effort... you make one subtle change to your CPQ or to how you or the number that you charge as the platform price... And that could make or break your business, right? You can increase revenue 50%, you can double revenue."For founders chasing product excellence or distribution, this reminder about pricing's leverage feels like uncovering a secret weapon.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, CEO of Artisan, shares his bold vision of prioritizing a single AI outbound agent, Ava, to drive unprecedented customer results. He argues that depth beats breadth in a crowded market, even amid a backlash from their provocative 'Stop Hiring Humans' campaign, which ironically attracted death threats yet skyrocketed their visibility. The conversation also explores innovative pricing models and the crucial balance between AI efficiency and human touch in sales strategies, making for a thought-provoking discussion on navigating chaos in the tech landscape.

Nick Mehta, Gainsight’s CEO, didn't mince words in our latest conversation. He says the entire enterprise software model we've built over the past 20 years is fundamentally broken.What doesn’t work about SaaS anymore?The model that made Salesforce, Workday, and countless others into tech giants? According to Nick, it doesn't work anymore:"We bring in data from disparate systems, we use some kind of ETL to combine it, we have rules that say if this, then that, we have workflow for humans to take action, and then reports for managers. I argue that model's totally broken."Why? Because:* Users have to take manual action* Ops teams define rigid rules that can't adapt* Leaders review reports on low-quality data that users entered* Nothing happens autonomouslyNick framed it in a way that we love, because we feel the same way."The whole SaaS industry, and maybe all of humanity, is going from 0 to 1 again."The Three Phases of AI TransformationWhat's replacing the old model? Nick outlined three evolutionary phases for how AI transforms SaaS:* AI as an Assistant: Like an executive assistant for employees – helping write emails, summarizing meetings, prompting within existing workflows* AI as an Analyst: A layer that analyzes all communication in real-time, reveals patterns, and gives leaders visibility they never had before* AI as an Agent: Fully automated workflows that take action without human interventionMost companies are stuck at Phase 1 because they're afraid to cannibalize their existing seat-based business models.Classic innovator’s dilemma!The vibe revenue problem few are talking aboutPerhaps the most eye-opening part of our conversation was when Nick revealed what he's seeing in the market:"If you're an AI company, you think you have customers. They think they're doing a trial."He explained the disconnect happening across the industry: AI startups claim big enterprise deployments, but when you talk to those same customers, they describe it as "just a proof of concept" or "playing around with it."Even more shocking: "Some of them have massive churn... like 70% churn!"We call this vibe revenue!The innovator's dilemma in actionWe asked Nick how established companies like Gainsight navigate this transition, and his answer referenced Clayton Christensen's famous book:"Almost every time there's a discontinuous change in business, most companies don't make it because they're not willing to say, 'our old stuff doesn't make sense anymore.'"He's taking his own medicine too. Rather than spreading his new CTO across all of Gainsight, he's focused him exclusively on their new agentic initiatives - acknowledging they need separate focus to avoid being hampered by legacy thinking.Will Your Headcount Survive?When we pushed Nick on what happens to customer success teams as these agents take over, he was surprisingly candid:"Short-term, you're replacing atomic tasks, which is easier to digest... Long-term, yeah, you probably end up replacing seats.""This is going to be awesome for the customer."Nick believes we'll see dramatic consolidation of customer-facing roles. No more need for separate CSMs, TAMs, support people, and account managers - the agentic layer will allow fewer humans to cover more ground.The surprising answer to AI deployment failuresNick's final insight shocked us. When asked why so many AI deployments fail despite the amazing technology, his answer had nothing to do with models or features: "Human change is really hard. We're so inertial."His prediction: companies deploying AI in enterprises will need consulting practices to help re-engineer workflows:"If you're an enterprise company deploying one of these AI tools, if you don't have somebody, some advice and consulting resources, you're going to buy the AI tool and you're going to churn it - guaranteed."Your takeaway from this episode should be that most SaaS companies won't make this transition. They'll keep trying to fit AI into their existing paradigms rather than fundamentally rethinking what software even is.If you want to succeed, do what Nick says: Understand that stuff don’t make sense anymore, and be honest with your employees and customers about it.What do you think? Is your SaaS company ready to make this jump? Leave a comment below 👇Watch the full podcast here or wherever you listen to podcasts:👉 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agent-talk-podcast/id1792748956?i=1000705561812👉 https://open.spotify.com/episode/2hd0evHQIByeAbIAT5sIYN?si=MCL2qytsT1GExCCX-oIb5g👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgePQ9sgSXg This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit agenttalk.substack.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this conversation with Anshul Gupta, founder of Actively and recent fundraiser of $22.5M, he challenges the idea of ‘personalization at scale,’ arguing it’s often just laziness. Gupta emphasizes that top sales performers focus on quality, not quantity, advocating for ‘relevance at scale.’ He predicts a future where AI guides human efforts in sales rather than just responding. Further, he critiques AISDRs in complex markets, hinting they may hinder success for growing companies. A thought-provoking discussion on sales efficiency unfolds!

In a candid conversation at Paid’s launch party, EQT Ventures investor Doreen Huber shared her razor-sharp perspective on what’s working in AI agent investing, why traditional SaaS is losing ground, and what founders need to bring to the table to secure funding in this new era.Our favorite takeaways:* SaaS is no longer the focus to the B2B Software team at EQT Ventures:"My team is not investing in traditional SaaS anymore. Our strategy is to go for agentic, AI-native companies, and we tend to disqualify what doesn’t fit that bucket."* True agents only:"We only want to support companies doing something end-to-end—not just enhancing customer care with AI-drafted emails. We’re looking for agents that do the actual work from start to finish."* Commercial DNA matters:"I definitely have a thing for founders with commercial DNA. If someone comes from an engineering side, they absolutely need to learn this... the best CEO is also the best product person."* Founder qualities:"I personally love the outliers, the underdogs, or someone with a crazy CV. I'm not into the typical business school, textbook founder. I love it when someone shows up with an edge."* Legacy SaaS is under pressure:"Many legacy SaaS companies will lose market share to agentic players. A lot of them are struggling—they don’t have the AI talent, and they’re stuck in outdated stacks."* On industry hype:"Some of the big players are slapping AI labels onto old products. That’s not agentic innovation. That’s legacy software trying to catch up."What Doreen is looking for now:* Enterprise-ready agentic sales and marketing solutions – not just slim use cases, but holistic systems* Agentic cybersecurity – solving modern threats with AI-native architecture* Vertical AI applications – especially where AI is applied to labor, not just software budgetsWhat’s working:“Most companies moving faster than others have that AI-native mindset. They want lean teams and ask: ‘Can we do this with agents instead?’”What’s not working:“BDR email sequencing or scheduling tools... they look impressive at first, but in reality, these problems won’t exist in a year or two. That’s just a GPT anyone can build.”What are your thoughts on Doreen's take that traditional SaaS is finished? Do you agree that legacy companies can't catch up with AI-native startups? 👇 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit agenttalk.substack.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In our recent conversation with Amos Bar-Joseph, CEO and co-founder of Swan AI, he shared his radical vision for the future of business: autonomous companies achieving $10M ARR per employee through strategic AI implementation. Beyond the typical AI hype, Amos details a practical roadmap for companies looking to scale with minimal headcount.Here are the key insights from our discussion:The autonomous business revolution* The next 5 years belong to SMBs: "We believe that the next five years are the year of the SMB, the year of the small business, small lean teams that are showing the world that using AI agents, you can reach massive scale, like never seen before."* Rethinking business fundamentals: "It's about reimagining how humans and AI collaborate together, rethinking fundamentally the operating system of a business."* The Swan Metric: Targeting $1M+ ARR per employee (with Swan pushing toward $10M) through strategic AI implementation.Breaking the "throw bodies at problems" mindsetAmos said something that we think many founders have thought about: "The first instinct that the old playbook got you to do was throw bodies at the problem, right?".But Amos does things a bit differently, and we like that a lot:* Self-imposed constraints drive innovation: At Swan, they created the constraint that they "can't throw bodies at a problem" - forcing them to find more creative and intelligent solutions.* “Ops Wizards”, not just more headcount: "Every team should have that ops wizard" who can bridge technical understanding with business orientation.* Human-in-the-loop design: Always start with humans supervising AI and providing feedback to create "a self-learning system that takes your knowledge in a collaborative way."The future of sales is human + AI, not AI replacing humansWhen I asked about which parts of the sales cycle will be replaced by AI, Amos offered nuanced insight:* It depends on ACV: "The higher the ACV, the tougher it is to replace any part of the sales cycle... When you look at $20 million deals, then you want a human in the loop."* Low ACV should be marketing-driven: For $19/seat products, "from a unit economics standpoint, it doesn't make sense to do outbound."* Sellers love winning, not prospecting: "Sellers love winning. And for that 1% that they are winning, they love that notion... It's the best moment of their day when they get that yes on the screen."* The 100X seller: "The future of sales is first of all reimagining how sellers work with human and AI collaboration at the core. And it's more about finding the path to the 100X seller."The three types of businesses in the AI revolutionAccording to Amos, businesses will fall into three categories across a spectrum:* Biggest losers: "Those trying to automate their workforce, replace their workforce with digital workers. And they will be left behind."* Partial winners: "Implementing AI agent tooling across their entire stack... but disparate solutions for different functions."* True unicorns: "Lean teams that are building AI agents as their product, able to rally their entire agentic workforce around that specific agent."Practical advice for outbound sales:Amos had some pretty practical advice too: Move from “digital workers" to storytelling engines.How?* Goodbye sequences, hello relationships: "We never pitch with a hard CTA. Never... It's only about, look, something happened in your business. There's an event that is relevant to your day-to-day as a VP of sales."* Non-deterministic outreach: "Swan looks at a timeline always, looks at what happened before, what is happening now, and will create a recommendation how to engage that lead."* Monitoring relationships at scale: "What we're envisioning is a future where SWAN can monitor relationships, top of the funnel relationships with thousands of accounts in parallel."What's your take? Are you seeing companies in your industry successfully implementing AI to scale without proportional headcount growth? 👇 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit agenttalk.substack.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pat Grady, a partner at Sequoia Capital, shares his deep expertise on AI startups, having invested in major companies like Zoom and Notion. He emphasizes that successful AI ventures focus on building trust rather than just technology. Pat argues that founders who execute relentlessly create the strongest competitive advantage. He critiques the overhyped 'data flywheel' concept, pushing for evidence over theory. Additionally, he predicts a shift to outcome-based pricing models in AI, highlighting the importance of user engagement and sustainable practices.

Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, shares how they completely revamped their pricing model - and actually REDUCED revenue in the short term - to drive explosive long-term growth.Since launching in 2011, Zapier has grown to help millions connect their apps without code, reaching a valuation over $5B with minimal VC funding. Their recent pricing change offers fascinating insights for SaaS founders.Key takeaways:* Zapier eliminated their dual-metric pricing (Zaps + Tasks) to simplify the customer experience* They made unlimited Zaps available on all plans - removing a major friction point* Every plan now includes pay-as-you-go options beyond the base subscription* They stopped counting utility features as billable tasks - providing more valueThe result? Short-term revenue dropped significantly, but task consumption and customer happiness soared. This bet on long-term growth would have been impossible for most VC-backed companies.More insights:* Being profitable and bootstrap-focused gave them freedom to make radical customer-first decisions that sacrificed short-term revenue* Pricing "debt" accumulates over time when you experiment with different models - eventually requiring a reset to first principles* The best pricing aims for customer "love" - Wade literally used this word - not just reluctant payment* Competition constantly forces pricing innovation - especially with direct competitors who counter-position against market leaders* AI is rapidly democratizing entrepreneurship - Wade sees teams of 10-20 people reaching millions in revenue with minimal engineering, driven by domain expertise paired with no-code toolsWhat pricing changes have transformed your business? Share your experience below 👇 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit agenttalk.substack.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Manny hosts Mickey Haslavsky of Enso, who's flipping the script on AI agents in the most refreshing way.Mickey says their mission at Enso is to reduce the prices of services, just in general, for small businesses.While lots of AI companies chase enterprise dollars or build complex multi-agent systems, Mickey's team is printing money with a simple contrarian approach: deliver "good enough" AI agents to small businesses at a flat $49/month.Some key insights from our conversation:* "SaaS is pretty much dead... some of the agents that we're building, you would have to raise like a seed round like three years ago, like raise like $5 million and have a team of like 10 engineers to build them."* "I don't buy this story of losing jobs. What's really important is reaching those who couldn't afford an agency before, who couldn't pay $3,000 for SEO or $5,000 for social media design."* "SMBs don't churn because they go out of business - they churn because they pivot constantly. That's why our unlimited access model works."Mickey's belief that LLMs will become completely commoditized, allowing companies like his to use cheaper models from anywhere (including Deepseek) to deliver services that previously required expensive agencies.The future might not belong to the fanciest AI, but to those who make it accessible, affordable, and actually useful for the millions of SMBs who just need to get things done.What do you think? Is this the true democratization of AI, or are there limits to the "good enough" approach? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit agenttalk.substack.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.