Andy Mewborn

Distribute.so

I use to be young & cool. Now I do b2b SaaS. 

Husband. Dad. Ironman. Pilot. Taco lover. 

Founder of Distribute // Co-founder of Taplio (acq. by Lemlist) // Early @ Outreach.io.

Creator

A community of over 4,000+ B2B professionals growing together on Linkedin.

• "Brand30 absolutely did wonders for my business." -Maritha Koortzen

• "Brand30 changed the trajectory of my life...To say it’s opening doors for me is an understatement" - Amanda Stern

• "Brand30 provided the group accountability and expert advice I needed to more than double my LinkedIn engagement in just one month" 

🚀 Start Building An Audience Of Potential Buyers On LinkedIn In 30 Days👇

• https://www.brand30.io/

Sellers

When should you walk away from a deal?

A) No budget confirmed
B) No clear timeline
C) Prospect won't give you access
D) You should never walk away

P.S. - 15,000 sellers stopped writing follow-ups. Take the 2-min quiz to see what they switched to: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Andrew Mewborn

Sellers

Your pipeline is thin. What do you do?

A) Outbound blitz
B) Revisit closed-lost
C) Ask for marketing help
D) Work referrals harder

P.S. - Still writing follow-ups manually? This 60-second quiz builds you an AI system that does it for you: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers 

Biggest time waster for sellers?

A) Internal meetings
B) CRM updates
C) Chasing bad-fit deals
D) Waiting on legal/procurement

P.S. - If your follow-ups take longer than 60 seconds, you're doing it wrong. Take the quiz: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers 

What separates top 1% reps?

A) Natural talent
B) Relentless follow-up
C) Deal qualification
D) Executive presence

P.S. - Took me 2 min to find out I was wasting 11 hrs/week on follow-ups. Take the quiz, get your number: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers 

Cold calling in 2026 is:

A) Dead
B) Harder but still works
C) Underrated
D) Only works in certain industries

P.S. - 15,000 sellers stopped writing follow-ups. Take the 2-min quiz to see what they switched to: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers

Is in-person selling obsolete?

A) Yes - Digital demos/contracts achieve same results faster
B) No - Physical presence builds irreplaceable rapport
C) Hybrid wins - Use tech for efficiency, save travel for key accounts
D) Industry-specific - Pharma needs face time, SaaS doesn't

P.S. - If your follow-ups take longer than 60 seconds, you're doing it wrong. Take the quiz: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers 

Hot take: What's overrated?

A) Discovery calls
B) Social selling
C) Sales methodologies
D) Demo environments

P.S. - Steal my 1-pager email follow-ups: https://lnkd.in/eQr9JQhq

Sellers

What ruins discovery calls the most?

A) Talking too much
B) Asking scripted questions
C) No real pain uncovered
D) Jumping to demo too fast

P.S. - Steal my 1-pager email follow-ups: https://lnkd.in/eQr9JQhq

Sellers

What pipeline source is the most underrated?

A) Referrals
B) Past customers
C) LinkedIn
D) Cold calling

P.S. - 15,000 sellers stopped writing follow-ups. Take the 2-min quiz to see what they switched to: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

What pipeline source is the most underrated?

Sellers

What can ruin a sales career fastest?

A) Staying too long at one company
B) Job hopping too much
C) Avoiding prospecting
D) Avoiding enterprise deals

P.S. - If your follow-ups take longer than 60 seconds, you're doing it wrong. Take the quiz: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers

What actually closes deals?

A) Relationships
B) Timing
C) Price
D) Pain

P.S. - If your follow-ups take longer than 60 seconds, you're doing it wrong. Take the quiz: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers

What do prospects usually do with sales emails?

A) Delete them
B) Skim them
C) Forward them internally
D) Save them for later

P.S. - Still writing follow-ups manually? This 60-second quiz builds you an AI system that does it for you: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

What do prospects usually do with sales emails?

Sellers 

What builds pipeline fastest?

A) Cold calls
B) Cold emails
C) LinkedIn DMs
D) Referrals

P.S. - 15,000 sellers stopped writing follow-ups. Take the 2-min quiz to see what they switched to: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers

What matters most for quota?

A) Territory you're given
B) Work ethic
C) Product-market fit
D) Manager support

P.S. - Still writing follow-ups manually? This 60-second quiz builds you an AI system that does it for you: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers

Which role is the hardest in sales?

A) SDR
B) Account Executive
C) Account Manager
D) Sales Manager

P.S. - Steal my 1-pager email follow-ups: https://lnkd.in/eQr9JQhq

Sellers

What mistake do reps make most often?

A) Talking too much
B) Weak qualification
C) Poor follow-up
D) Selling features

P.S. - Still writing follow-ups manually? This 60-second quiz builds you an AI system that does it for you: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers

How important is personality in sales?

A) Extremely important
B) Moderately important
C) Skills matter more
D) Not important

P.S. - 15,000 sellers stopped writing follow-ups. Take the 2-min quiz to see what they switched to: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers 

What matters more for success?

A) IQ
B) EQ
C) Work ethic
D) Luck

P.S. - Took me 2 min to find out I was wasting 11 hrs/week on follow-ups. Take the quiz, get your number: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers

Why do most sellers miss quota?

A) Bad territory
B) Weak pipeline
C) Poor leadership
D) Lack of effort

P.S. - Took me 2 min to find out I was wasting 11 hrs/week on follow-ups. Take the quiz, get your number: https://lnkd.in/eNYQ3DeQ

Sellers

What matters more: industry experience or sales skills?

A) Industry 100% – You can't sell what you don't understand 
B) Industry 70% – Credibility opens doors skills can't 
C) Sales 70% – A great seller can sell anything 
D) Sales 100% – Process beats product knowledge daily

P.S. - Steal my 1-pager email follow-ups: https://lnkd.in/eQr9JQhq

What matters more: industry experience or sales skills?

Positive, engaging and seasoned doer with an entrepreneurial spirit. A visual storyteller who strongly believes we should always create exceptional experiences every day.

I wear multiple hats. I lead online communities's strategy for companies programs globally for the last 12+ years and have been awarded as the Community Professional of the Year 2020 at the CMX Awards - one of the most prestigious companies in the communities industry. 

What are my not-so-secret superpowers?
Idea generation, visual storytelling, growth hacking, event planning, building a brand of my own, lead generation, demand generation, proactive problem solving, fearless networking and cold calling, and fostering collaboration.

Where can you find me?
Behind cameras capturing a beautiful scene or in front of it sharing some thoughts; running events, playing drums OR https://ed.community

Casual, but not meaningless. I trust my guts, and I back it up with data.



Specialties
Online communities; Ambassador programs; Online support, scaled support; community platform tender; management of international communities, global communities; community strategy, community operations, social support, social media strategy, XFN; product ideation; lead generation; demand generation; campaign creation and execution; digital marketing; social marketing; social selling; product management; project management; Software-as-a-Service SaaS; Lean Six Sigma Green Belt; ScrumMaster; Vendor management; Partner Management; Outsourcing management;

Ed Giansante

Incredible how those simple things brings me joy:

- baby has eaten
- baby has pooped
- baby is sleeping better

Head of Community, AI ecosystem builder, Storyteller, Book Author (ex-Dropbox, Wix, Zynga)

No alternative text description for this image

I'm back from paternity leave.

What I learned:
- I thought I was "routineless" until I went all in on it (from sleep to not checking my phone for an entire day or two)
- I miss talking to people about literally anything other than sleep schedules and diaper brands
- Also missed hosting dinners and events
- Miss hanging with my team at Persona 
- Slack loading 8 weeks's worth of content and @mentions was weirdly satisfying

What will change:
- my calendar is about to see a lot more "no's" to extracurriculars, side projects, random coffee chats that don't involve my family
(sorry it's not you, it's me)

What I'm excited about:
- doubling down on small, high-signal IRL events for founders and execs
- new podcast episodes (some are out already but I got more recordisngs happening - if you're actively using Persona and would like to join, shoot me a DM!)
- New updates coming to our Startup Program (did I say it's free?)

What did I miss?

p.s Kairos doesn't look that excited

Took me years to realize my "lack of focus" was actually my superpower.

Started as a designer when Dreamweaver and Flash were still a thing. Moved to marketing, then customer support, then project management, and finally found my way to community building. 

Now I'm running community at an identity verification company (Persona). 

people used to tell me to "pick one thing" and I'd feel like I was doing it wrong.

But here's what I've learned:
The tools change every 18 months. The fundamentals compound forever.

Michelle Higa Fox just wrote this piece about creative generalists and it hit me. She talks about taking improv classes and how it changed her work. 

For me it was that whole journey – design taught me how people process information, marketing taught me positioning, support taught me empathy at scale, project management taught me how to actually ship things. Building Edublin as a side gig (now 2M+ followers, 18 years running) taught me how to be entrepreneurial and scrappy with almost no resources.

Each one feeds into community work in ways nobody would ever connect on a resume.

With infinite options, discernment is the only skill that matters.
And you don't get discernment from a tutorial. You get it from:

- Doing things that scare you
- Learning skills that seem "off-brand"
- Staying curious when everyone else is specializing
- Being wrong enough times to recognize patterns

I've hired hundreds of people at this point. The ones who last are the people who can learn anything, connect with anyone, and figure out what actually matters when everything's on fire.

that's the generalist advantage. 

So what's the weirdest skill you've learned that ended up being useful in your career? Drop it below – I'm curious what connections we're all missing.

P.S video shows a new skill I just unlocked :)

Excited to be back at CMX this year to share some fresh insights ☺️🙌🏼

We’re excited to welcome Ed Giansante, Head of Community at Persona, to the CMX Summit speaker lineup 🎤 🎉 

Last year, Ed ran 85+ events with a lean, one-person team.

This year? His community has generated a multi-million dollar pipeline, driving $50+ for every $1 invested.

At CMX Summit, Ed is breaking down exactly how he did it:

- How to design event formats that actually resonate with your ICP 
- The missing link most community teams ignore: how to hand off value to sales
- How to build a flywheel that turns events → content → influence → pipeline
- How he uses AI behind the scenes to scale operations, without losing the human element

Because community isn’t “just belonging.”

It’s influence.
It’s reputation.
It’s revenue — when done intentionally.

And the best part? He’s doing it without a big team or massive budget.

If you’ve ever struggled to prove ROI, align with sales, or scale your impact, this session is for you!

📍 CMX Summit
🗓 April 30 – May 1

RSVP in the comments below! More speaker announcements coming soon 👀

#CMX #CMXSummit #CommunityROI #CommunityLeadership

Last night at the Historic Klamath was special.

MuleRun brought together 100+ AI enthusiasts for their launch event, featuring fantastic insights from PMs and engineers at Replit, Dell Technologies, Hive, and MuleRun. 

real product people sharing real lessons on AI agents, product decisions, and where this tech is actually heading.

Then SF blessed us with 80 degrees farenheit and we had to finish the night on the rooftop :)

Perfect weather. Great conversations. No fluff.

Congrats to the #MuleRun team on the launch :)

Thanks for having me mc it <3

If you're building in #AI and want to connect, you know where you can find me :)

Anthropic analyzed millions of Claude conversations to see which jobs AI is actually replacing.

Workers most exposed to AI:
- earn 47% more than average
- 4x more likely to have graduate degrees
- 6% more likely to be female
- older, more credentialed

White collar displacement is happening. Blue collar workers barely show up in the data.

the new metric: "observed exposure"
- combines what AI can theoretically do with what people actually use it for
- tracks real work tasks from their platform right now
- weighted by automation vs augmentation

Computer Programmers: 75% exposed. 
Customer Service Reps: 67% exposed. 
Bartenders, mechanics, lifeguards: near zero.

30% of workers show no AI exposure at all.

the gap:

AI could theoretically handle 94% of Computer & Math tasks.

Right now Claude covers 33%.

Massive difference between technical capability and actual adoption.

labor market data:
- no mass unemployment spike for exposed workers since ChatGPT launched
- BUT hiring dropped 14% for 22-25 year olds entering those roles
- fewer entry-level openings, not layoffs of existing workers

what this means long-term:
Jobs with 10% more AI exposure are projected to grow 0.6 percentage points slower through 2034 (according to Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Slower growth, not collapse.

why this matters:
Every other AI impact study uses theoretical models. "this could be automated someday."

Anthropic used actual usage patterns from millions of real users.

The most vulnerable workers show zero exposure.

the biggest opportunity right now is helping companies figure out adoption since there's still a massive gap between capability and actual implementation.

organizing communities and curated events where decision-makers from companies actually implementing AI internally can share what's working (and what's not) is how we close that gap faster.

We rented an entire café in NYC for you 

If you’re: 

1. building something and want to meet fellow founders
2. Leading teams or visiting and looking to network
3. Want to learn more about Persona  

Come meet Jasmine Yuen - tag someone who would love a free coffee and pastries :)

Link in the comments

february was insane for bay area AI funding:

- waymo: $16B (yes, billion)
- cerebras: $1B
- elevenlabs: $500M
- bedrock robotics: $270M

that's $17.8B deployed in like 3 weeks.

what this means:
capital is flooding into production AI: stuff that ships and generates revenue (not research projects).

autonomous vehicles, AI hardware, enterprise voice AI, construction robotics. all getting massive checks.

I'm loving to connect with AI builders. Let's catch on 3/17. Link in the comments

a tech guy in Australia just used ChatGPT to design a custom cancer vaccine for his dying dog.

$3,000 in DNA sequencing.
Zero biology background.
Tumor shrunk by 75%.

Paul Conyngham's dog Rosie had months to live because mast cell cancer, chemotherapy wasn't working. 

So he did what any determined founder would do: he sequenced her tumor DNA at UNSW, fed it into ChatGPT and AlphaFold, identified the mutations, and worked with researchers to manufacture a custom mRNA vaccine.

First injection: December 2024.

By February: tennis ball-sized tumor cut in half.

the reactions are wild:

Sriram Krishnan "one man with a chatbot and $3,000 just outperformed the entire pharmaceutical discovery pipeline. we are going to cure so many diseases."

Greg Brockman shared the story calling it "the first personalized cancer vaccine designed for a dog"

Pall Thordarson "the intersection of RNA technology, genomic & AI poses an opportunity to change the way we do medicine and make access more equitable"

Moderna + Merck are spending billions on this exact approach for humans. Their melanoma vaccine showed 49% reduction in cancer recurrence at 5 years. Phase 3 trials happening now.

one guy with a laptop did it in months for his dog.

the tech is democratizing. AlphaFold is free. ChatGPT costs $20/month. DNA sequencing dropped from millions to thousands. mRNA manufacturing exists.

the red tape was harder than making the vaccine, Paul said.

is this the future? personalized medicine designed by founders with ChatGPT and university partnerships, not just pharma companies with billion-dollar R&D budgets?

Rosie's jumping fences again, chasing rabbits. She's not cured but Paul's already working on vaccine # 2 for another tumor. But she's here.

and the precedent is set.

OpenAI reportedly raising $100 billion.

yep, you read that right. hundred billion. with a B.

they're in final stages of the funding round rn and Nvidia's throwing in up to $30B alone.

the round could value OpenAI at $850B valuation.

this is separate from that $100B infrastructure deal they announced back in September (the one everyone thought was on ice).

some context because the numbers are honestly wild:
• $2.5 trillion total will be spent on AI in 2026 alone 
• this single OpenAI round is bigger than most countries' tech budgets 
• Nvidia's $30B check isn't tied to deployment milestones—just straight investment 
• Microsoft, Amazon also in talks for the round

bottom line:
if you're building in AI, the capital markets are screaming that this is the moment.

funding environment for frontier AI is completely detached from normal VC math. you're either playing in this league or you're building tools/apps on top of it.

the infrastructure spend is generational.

if you're not thinking about how your startup plugs into this (or benefits from the downstream effects) you're missing the biggest wealth creation moment since mobile

meanwhile, rents start to rise in SF :(

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link to the article

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/25/uzbekistan-unicorn-uzum-series-a-funding/ 

Who are the best IRL b2b event organizers you know in the UK, Spain, Mexico and Brazil?

Tag them here 👇

Hiring has never been easy. But with the rise of AI-driven candidate fraud, it’s taken on a new level of complexity.

Today, we're introducing a new candidate verification solution to help you confirm that the person applying, interviewing, and onboarding is real, present, and who they claim to be.

Learn how you can reclaim time for the candidates who matter and stop security threats before day one: https://lnkd.in/gti6CfXc

Open article: Introducing Candidate Verification by Persona by withpersona.com

Introducing Candidate Verification by Persona

What does it take to turn cash management from a back-office function into a strategic advantage?

In our latest podcast episode, we sit down with Batu Inal, cofounder and CTO of Balance, to find out and explore how enterprises are optimizing cash management with real-time visibility, AI-powered forecasting, and automated insights.

With $50B+ in transactions processed and $2B+ in accounts monitored, Balance supports large, established organizations navigating increasingly complex financial operations. Batu’s journey from technologist to fintech founder reflects a broader shift: as financial operations grow more complex, teams need better tools to make faster, more informed decisions about their cash.

In this episode, Batu joins Ed Giansante, our head of community, to discuss:

• His path from technologist to cofounding one of the most data-rich treasury platforms on the market
• How Balance delivers real-time cash visibility and AI-powered forecasting across complex enterprise account structures
• Why traditional treasury management models are breaking — and how intelligent automation is reshaping them
• Where identity verification and trust infrastructure fit into high-stakes financial operations

Listen today:

🎥 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g_cyPnVN
🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gaE2KZRg

#Personally #Podcast #Fintech #TreasuryManagement #CashManagement #AI #EnterpriseFinance #Identity

We trained AI on 15 years of "just leave."

Now it's breaking up marriages.

The Reddit data is clear: relationship advice went from 30% "end it" in 2010 to 50% today.

But the problem runs deeper than bad training data.

Why LLMs default to breakups:
- Western therapeutic individualism = protect yourself first
- "Leave" is legally safer advice than "stay and work through it"
- Pattern matching on negatives, not weighing what you'd lose
- Clean answers beat messy reality

Ankit Maloo nailed it: "The training encodes a worldview where the individual is the unit of optimization and discomfort is a signal to exit."

Individual optimization vs group survival

That's the actual issue.

AI learned: optimize for YOU. Cut losses. Save yourself.

It didn't learn: fix the glitch. Carry the load. Survive together.

Real life is mostly about making imperfect things work.

You can't exit every job, every relationship, every partnership the moment friction appears.

Most valuable things are built through exactly that grinding adjustment.

The new phenomenon: LLM psychosis

Grok (the AI) described it: "heavy LLM use creates delusions where people prioritize endless AI chats over their actual partner".

They treat the bot as a superior confidant.

AI becomes the main relationship. Then ends the real one fast.
What marriage actually requires

Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."

Gave himself up.

Not "set boundaries and optimize for your mental health journey."

Marriage is covenant. You don't break covenants because an algorithm trained on anonymous strangers says you deserve better.

Christian foundation: love is sacrifice. It's choosing each other when the pattern-matching says leave.

For founders building with AI:
You're encoding a philosophy into every product decision.

If your AI defaults to individual optimization over collective resilience, you're teaching users to abandon anything hard.

Build tools that help people work through, not walk away.

taplio

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