Jake Dunlap

2025 will be the year EVERY company must implement Generative AI in their revenue org. I personally am seeing time savings for SDRs, AEs, and AMs of 20-30% per role and predict that we will see quality of sales conversations go up by 40% or more.

We have developed a new category of consulting designed to help your company see these results in just weeks/months: AI-enabled Revenue Transformation

My deep passion for the science and art of sales has fueled my journey over the past 12 years as the founder and CEO of Skaled, a globally recognized sales consulting firm. According to G2, we have outperformed industry giants like McKinsey in Management Consulting and Accenture in Sales Consulting due to our mix of strategic foresight and tactical follow through.

We’ve consistently driven a 10-20% increase in qualified opportunities, reduced sales cycles by 8%, and enhanced overall team productivity by 20% within the first 60 days of engagement. Our approach is methodical and data-driven, ensuring that every strategy we implement translates into tangible business results.

With a team of over 30 elite professionals and access to a vast network of industry experts, we specialize in aligning sales and marketing to create scalable, replicable processes. We leverage cutting-edge generative AI technology to automate critical functions like follow-up, data entry, and task management, freeing your teams to focus on what truly matters—closing deals and driving growth.

As the USA Today bestselling author of Innovative Seller, I’ve helped to shape the future of sales, offering insights and strategies that resonate with both seasoned executives and the next generation of sales leaders. My work has been recognized in the New York Times, Forbes, Inc., and HuffPost. 

Check out my YouTube: Jake Dunlap to discover over 500 sales, revenue and AI for Sales videos: bit.ly/2Qu3niE

Highlights:

	• USA Today Bestselling Author of Innovative Seller - #21 in all books
	• First VP of Sales at Glassdoor (acquired for $1.2 billion - May 2018)

Chief Executive Officer

Everyday we help companies operationalize key aspects of their sales and marketing organization.  As CEOs, Senior Execs, and Sales people, our world is changing so rapidly and keeping pace is extremely hard.  We help with both strategic and tactical support through various phases of scaling and when larger organizations are looking to re-invent or stay relevant with their current marketing and sales strategies.

Here are a few of our clients in key verticals:

Enterprise Technology and Services:
Microsoft / GLG

Hospitality/Customer Service Tech:
Duetto / NoWait (acquired by Yelp) / Stella Service

HR Tech:
LinkedIn / ADP / The Muse / Grovo / ConveyIQ / Wayup / Vettery / Paypro

Education/Legal Tech:
Newsela / Bodhala / Hire an Esquire / Allovue / Codio / Busylamp

Real Estate/Financial Services Tech:
Breather / Nestio / Honest Buildings / Hightower / Everplans / CredSimple / Captalys / ReThinkCRM

Sales Technology:
Outreach / SalesLoft / Everstring / Lead Genius / Terminus / Discoverorg / Emissary.io / Redbooks / Speek / 15Five / Honey

Advertising and PR tech:
BounceExchange / SaleMove

Services:
Dom & Tom / Betts Recruiting / Moxie / Palantir

The worst advice in sales training is also the most common "People buy from people they like."

This feel-good sound bite has probably cost more deals than any other sales myth.

Modern B2B buyers don't care if they like you.

They care if you can solve their problems.

Buyers are evaluating solutions, not salespeople. Look does it help to be both….10000%

But most will take competence over charisma all day

Here's what actually drives purchase decisions: 
➡️ Understanding their business better than the competition. 
➡️ Demonstrating clear ROI with specific, measurable outcomes. 
➡️ Proving you can implement successfully with minimal risk.
➡️ Providing social proof from similar customers. 
➡️ Making the buying process easier, not harder.

The best sellers I track aren't the most likeable. They're the most helpful.

They don't try to be your friend. They try to be your guide. 
They don't focus on building rapport. They focus on building confidence. 

Stop trying to make buyers like you. Start trying to make them trust you.

Trust comes from competence, not connection.

I partner with forward thinking B2B CEOs/CROs/CMOs to transform their business with AI-driven revenue strategies | USA Today Bestselling Author of Innovative Seller

AI training is the new “Sales Kickoff high”

Everyone attends

Everyone nods

Everyone goes back to their desk… and uses it twice.

Then they go right back to the 2018 playbook

That’s the entire game in 2026:

Curiosity + consistency

Not “which AI tool is best”

Not “what prompt should I copy/paste”

The reps (and SEs) who win are the ones who turn AI into an everyday habit… not a one-time experiment.

Here’s the part most sellers miss:

AI’s real power isn’t prospecting

It’s pre-sales

Discovery. Point of view. Tight demo narrative.

Turning a “qualification call” into a validation session.

That’s where teams close 10–30% more (and most orgs have no idea why).

Tomorrow’s episode of AI Powered Seller drops with David Maloof

We get tactical on:
→ How AI-assisted discovery actually works
→ How pre-sales + AEs stop tripping over each other and start attacking deals as a unit
→ How to use transcripts + feedback to rebuild demo stories fast
→ Why “I don’t have time” is officially dead (3 minutes is the new standard)

If your process still starts with:
“What keeps you up at night?”
…you’re already behind.

"We need better leads" is usually code for "our follow-up process is broken" or “I thought my job was to only deal with layups”

I just reviewed lead response data for a company complaining about lead quality.

Marketing was generating 200+ qualified leads per month. Sales was responding to 23% of them within 24 hours.

Speed matters more than script.

The companies with the highest lead-to-opportunity conversion rates respond within 5 minutes.

Not 5 hours. Not end of day. 5 minutes.

But most sales teams treat inbound leads like they're doing them a favor by calling back.

"I'll get to it when I finish these other calls."

Meanwhile, your competitors are already having conversations with those prospects.

The best lead response systems I've seen work like this:
Minute 1: Automated email confirmation 
Minute 2: Text message with calendar link 
Minute 5: Phone call from AE 
Hour 1: Video follow-up if no contact 
Day 1: LinkedIn connection with personal note

Your leads aren't bad. Your response time is.

Marketing can't fix what sales won't follow up on.

New year. Same playbooks.

That gap is about to get expensive.

AI isn’t moving at planning speed. It’s moving at execution speed.

AI isn’t just evolving. It’s outpacing our team’s ability to adapt.

We just dropped a deep-dive on where AI actually stands heading into 2026. What tools are saving reps time, what features are driving revenue, and where the next wave of innovation is going to hit.

Here’s what stood out to me:
⚡ 28% of sellers are already saving 5+ hours per week using GenAI like ChatGPT.

📈 Reps using AI in prospecting are booking 10% more meetings in the first month.

🧠 Adoption isn’t just about automation. It’s about skill development, onboarding, and personalized messaging at scale.

And the gap between prompting and strategy-driven GPTs is widening fast. The winners in 2026 won’t be the teams who use AI.  It’ll be the teams who train it to sell like they do.

If you’re still treating AI like a “nice to have” as you kick off the year, you’re going to get smoked by someone who turned it into a competitive advantage months ago.

Check out the full report below or DM me for the breakdown.

State of AI

Your CRM is making your sales team dumber

Every time a rep updates an opportunity stage without understanding WHY the buyer is moving forward, you're training them to be process followers instead of deal strategists

Guess what MEDDPIC or MEDDICC or whatever Ps and Cs doesn’t actually track if your people ran a good call or now which is the wild part

Most CRMs track what happened.

They don't track why it happened.

Stage: Discovery Complete ✓ 
Why they agreed to move forward… [blank]

Stage: Proposal Sent ✓ 
What convinced them we're the right solution… [blank]

Stage: Negotiation ✓ 
What competing priorities might derail this… [blank]

Your reps are updating stages like they're checking boxes 
They have no idea what's actually driving buyer behavior.

The best sales managers I know have added one custom field that changes everything 
→ Buyer motivation for this stage progression

And then we use AI to summarize and gut check this and call out threats around this as well 💥

This forces reps to document the actual driver 
Instead of "We sent a proposal," they write "CFO confirmed budget approval and wants to see ROI projections."

Instead of "Discovery complete," they write "Security team identified three technical requirements that we uniquely solve."

When reps understand buyer psychology, they can predict next steps.

Your CRM should be building deal intelligence, not just tracking activities.

Generic is officially dead

Not underperforming

Not “less effective”

Dead.

AI can already write a decent email

AI can already personalize at scale

AI can already sound like every other seller in your market

Which is exactly why AI-generated personalization won’t cut through the noise in 2026

The only thing you’ll have left is you

Your judgment

Your point of view

Your ability to make the last 10 percent better than everyone else

That’s the shift

Higher quality work

Done faster

With the human nuance as the differentiator

In my new episode of AI Powered Seller that just dropped, I review the biggest shifts we saw in 2025 and what they actually mean for selling in 2026

Not theory

Real patterns

And what to change now before everyone else catches up

I’ve got opinions on this
Interested to hear what’s working for you 👇

Check out the episode here: https://lnkd.in/gezm4brV

Your team doesn’t need more AI tools

They need AI they’ll actually use when deals are on the line

Back in November, we ran our first AI Sales Certifications for managers and reps
It worked for one simple reason

We removed the intimidation factor

Most people aren’t blocked by AI’s potential

They’re blocked by “this feels too technical for me”

One rep summed it up perfectly

They came in with “zero to little knowledge about AI agents” and still walked out confidently building real tools because complex ideas were broken down into practical, usable steps

That’s the bar

So we’re running it again

🚀 Next session starts in February

What you walk away with in 3 weeks
→ Managers clone their best thinking into AI
→ Reps build a personal AI stack that knows their product, territory, and deals
→ Research, prep, and data entry stop eating selling time
→ Coaching and deal strategy become systematized
→ No code. No technical background. No theory-only slides

This isn’t “try this prompt”

You build Custom GPTs, Gemini Gems, and AI Agents that fit how you sell

Managers close the process vs. production gap
Reps get a digital intern handling the busy work

⏰ Sign up before January 17th and get $150 off
👥 Team pricing available

Check out the links below and DM me with any questions
Managers 👉 https://lnkd.in/gsuQVGCT
Reps 👉 https://lnkd.in/g5vjXdEk

Open article: AI Sales Rep Certification | Sales Agents & Advanced GenAI by bit.ly

AI Sales Rep Certification | Sales Agents & Advanced GenAI

AI fluency won’t get you promoted in 2026

But it will get you passed over

Two VP of Sales candidates

Candidate #1
→ Big-name logos on the resume
→ Ran the “proven” sales playbook
→ Talks about tools, process, and headcount

Then I ask one question

“How are you getting 20% more revenue with the same team?”

No mention of AI

No chance

Candidate #2
→ “Here’s how AI replaces admin work”
→ “Here’s how we personalize without scaling volume”
→ “Here’s how reps perform like 2–3 people”

That’s the hire

This is what I break down on the next AI Powered Seller episode

2026 is the year the gap shows up on the org chart

Who moves up

Who stalls

And why AI fluency decides it

If a candidate doesn’t bring up AI unprompted, do you trust them to lead a team right now?

I want to hear how you’re thinking about this
Drop your take in the comments 👇

Christ First | AE @Airtable | Host - MSP Revenue Secrets

Rhondre Giscombe

I've been studying GTM engineering workflows in my free time.

Across the stack, I'm seeing three layers:

And across the stack it’s Three Layers.

Layer 1: Data
Your CRM. Data warehouse. Product usage data.
The foundation every software company has.
Mostly accessed by Data, Engineering, and some GTMEs.

Layer 2: Intelligence
Where orchestration happens.
Accounts get enriched, scored, routed.
Messaging gets prepped. Emails drafted.
This is where RevOps, Marketing Ops, Sales Ops, and GTMEs live.

Layer 3: Engagement
Where reps actually work.
Most salestech is fighting to own this layer.

I use five tools daily: Airtable, LinkedIn, Outreach, Claude, Salesforce.
Trying to get it down to three. Ideally one.

Here's the thing: the better my intelligence layer works, the less time I waste figuring out who to talk to and what to say.

Intelligence feeds me the signal. I send smarter outreach. That becomes pipeline. That closes.

Am I thinking about this right? What am I missing?

Would love to hear from folks building or operating in this space.

brendan short Brandon Smith Chris Balestras Joe Rhew

Disciple of Christ | GTM @Airtable | Building apps & agents for Operators

Over the next 4 weeks, I'm building an AI-powered call brief system in Airtable.

Not because I need another project. Because I used to spend 15 minutes before every call scrambling to remember what matters.

Here's what my prep used to look like:

Open the CRM to check deal history. Fire up Perplexity for recent company news. Review Gong history for previous calls. Check product usage data. Skim LinkedIn for the contact's background. Then tie together the core questions I should ask.

Every. Single. Time.

I built a system that does this for me. One hour before any scheduled call, an automation kicks off. It pulls everything I need, synthesizes it with AI, and drops a call brief in Slack with a link to an Airtable interface.

I already use a version of this, but I'm rebuilding it in public so you can see how this actually works in Airtable.

Quick note on scope: This leans into what Airtable does well: centralizing data from different sources. Company news, CRM deal history, Gong call summaries, product usage signals, all synthesized through AI. If you need third-party intent signals (job changes, website visits, LinkedIn engagement), other platforms handle that better.

Before I touch a single automation or field, I need to answer three questions. Skip this, and you'll build something you don't actually use.

⚫️ What's the desired outcome?
✔️ A call brief one hour before every first discovery call. Not raw data. A synthesized view: What's happening at this company? What's our history? How are they using the product? What should I focus on in this conversation?

⚫️ What's required to make this work?
✔️Company news (AI field agents or Perplexity) 
✔️ Deal history (Salesforce) 
✔️ Gong call summaries 
✔️ Product usage data 
✔️ Contact context (LinkedIn) 
✔️ Core discovery questions 
✔️ AI synthesis on what to focus on

⚫️ What does the workflow look like?
✔️ Trigger: Calendar event detected
✔️ Process: Automation pulls data, AI synthesizes the brief
✔️ Output: Slack notification with link to Airtable interface

I open the interface, scan the brief, and show up prepared.

Once I have clarity on those three, then I get into the fun stuff: table structure, automations, integrations, and the interface layer.

Next week: Starting the build. I'll show you the data model and first automation.

Most Airtable users don't know you can enrich LinkedIn profiles natively.

Here's how:

Use Airtable Field Agents to pull LinkedIn profiles as long as you have their Full Name and Company Name.

Back in November, one of my customers was manually finding LinkedIn URLs for 3,000 contacts. Every time a new prospect was logged into their system, they'd pull the profile by hand.

We built with an Airtable Field Agent and ran it across all 3,000 records in 5 minutes.

Coverage landed around 60-70%. Accuracy on matches was about 80%.

Not perfect. But good enough for their use case.

Now every new contact logged into Airtable automatically pulls their LinkedIn profile.

I'll drop the exact prompt in the comments.

I've been trying to understand how Claude Code impacts GTM work. Still early in my research, but one thing keeps standing out.

The compounding intelligence piece.

From what I'm seeing, it's not just about build speed. It's about how context accumulates over time.

Feed it call transcripts and it updates your ICP definition. Feed it more data and it refines what you thought was true. It challenges your assumptions and suggests new angles you might have missed. The system doesn't just store information. It iterates on what you know.

A few other initial observations:

1️⃣ The build speed is real. Clay tables, n8n workflows, JSON configs all ship noticeably faster.

2️⃣ Every Claude Code project pulls context from markdown files. ICP definition, messaging framework, competitor intel. Modularizing your GTM knowledge this way should make outputs more accurate and consistent across projects.

It's designed to compound intelligence, not just automate tasks. The system learns your business over time and gets smarter with every input you feed it.

3️⃣ It's not as "non-technical" as advertised. You still need to understand APIs, JSON structure, and how to set up proper context. There's a learning curve if you haven't touched these concepts before.

Would love feedback if I'm heading in the right direction here.

Matteo Tittarelli ⚡️ Jordan Crawford Jacob Dietle Joe Rhew Taimoor Tariq Javeria Shah

Call sentiment alone doesn't tell you if a customer is at risk. 

You need the full picture. 

Airtable integrates with Gong so RevOps teams can cross-reference call transcripts with product usage, CRM health scores, and support ticket trends in one place. 

→ Spot sentiment shifts in calls 
→ Layer in product adoption signals 
→ Surface real risk before it shows up in churn reports 

Complete customer intelligence in one system. 

Check it out today.

I'm going through HubSpot's RevOps Academy in my free time.

As I'm learning more about GTM engineering, I realized I needed deeper RevOps knowledge to understand how revenue operations actually work across the business.

Here's what's landing so far:

1. RevOps makes growth exponential by improving operational efficiency across the business

It's not just sales efficiency. It's marketing, customer success, product, everything that touches revenue.

2. Flywheel model beats funnel model

Customers don't disappear after they buy. They fuel growth if your systems are set up right.

3. Force and friction benefit the organization, even when it doesn't feel like it

The right friction in the right place keeps bad data and bad process from spreading.

4. You need the right number of leads as you scale, not just more
Volume without qualification breaks everything downstream.

5. The buyer's journey: Awareness (problem aware), Consideration (solution aware), Decision (provider aware)

Targeting certification by late Jan / mid Feb.

That said, what else should I be paying attention to? Any core lessons or principles I need to add?

Brandon Smith Jeff Ignacio Haris Odobasic Stefan Mersch 💭 Sebastien van Heyningen

I've been building AI-native apps on Airtable, Lovable, and Replit.

Here are 9 lessons that changed how I approach rapid app development:

1️⃣ Build in layers, not one-shot builds
Nail one component, then move to the next. It's easier to fine-tune and catch issues early.

2️⃣ Clarity of outcome is essential
AI platforms need clear targets. Vague inputs get vague outputs.

3️⃣ Edge cases require knowledge, not just prompts
AI handles standard paths well. Edge cases need platform expertise to close the gap.

4️⃣ Platform flexibility is the real unlock
Airtable lets you reshape your data model mid-build. That flexibility is the foundation of rapid app development.

5️⃣ AI is core to how these platforms work
It's not tacked on, it's foundational to what's possible and how fast you can move.

6️⃣ Advanced functions require platform familiarity
Formulas, automations, and integrations aren't plug-and-play. Expertise accelerates shipping.

7️⃣ Building happens in minutes. Production-grade takes weeks.
The first version is fast. Making it reliable and scalable is where the real work is.

8️⃣ Operators can build without waiting on IT
Quick wins in weeks vs waiting quarters for engineering to pick up your ticket.

9️⃣ The best builds are simple
The apps that stick solve one problem really well.

Rapid app development still requires expertise; it just shifted where it matters. But platforms like Airtable, Lovable, and Replit are unlocking what operators can build on their own.

Build with Airtable today. Link in the comments.

Most AI roadmaps in 2025 started with the wrong question.

They asked "What can AI do?" instead of "Where are my teams spending time on work that doesn't require a human?"

With AI adoption moving past experimentation in 2026, companies are deploying actual use cases and getting tremendous gains.

So let's look at where AI is getting deployed:

1️⃣ Summarization & Synthesis 
Product teams are condensing product feedback from support tickets, sales calls, and user interviews into actionable themes that inform roadmap prioritization.

2️⃣ Classification & Prioritization 
Product Operations teams are ranking feature requests by revenue association so teams build what impacts the bottom line first.

3️⃣ Personalization at Scale 
Marketing teams at retail companies are generating email copy drafts across multiple campaigns, each one tailored to customer segments and purchase history.

4️⃣ Workflow Automation 
Marketing Operations teams are turning campaign performance data from static reports into automated budget reallocation recommendations for next quarter while there's still time to act on it.

5️⃣ Data Enrichment 
Revenue Operations teams are finding LinkedIn URLs and contact data for prospect lists in minutes instead of hours of manual research.

6️⃣ Generation & Content Creation 
Marketing teams are creating localized campaign content across 12 regions while maintaining brand voice and compliance standards.

If you're building an AI agenda in 2026, start with the workflows you already have. The best AI implementations don't require new systems. They make your existing ones smarter.

Harvard studied 100,000 AI agent users. The pattern is clear: AI that's siloed in chat gets abandoned. AI that's integrated into actual workflows gets stickier.

The reason?

Context engineering.

Most companies buy AI tools that can't touch their CRM, their Google Drive, or their project tracker. Then they wonder why adoption stalls.

Here's the thing: AI's real value isn't answering questions. It's completing tasks. But to complete tasks well, it needs the right information at the right time. When AI is disconnected from your tools, you're getting 10% of its potential. You're stuck with a Q&A bot, not a system that can actually execute.

The breakthrough happens when AI can pull context from across your tools, take action based on that context, and learn as it completes more tasks.

This is why platforms that integrate deeply with Google Drive, email, and project management tools see higher stickiness. Users don't just ask questions. They complete workflows. The AI has context, so it can act. And as it acts more, it gets better.

When evaluating AI tools, ask yourself: Can it access the context it needs? Can it take action, or just suggest it?

Context plus action equals 10x the impact of chat alone.

(Read Will Sullivan’s full breakdown of the Harvard study, link in comments)

Week 1 of building the call brief system. If I mess up the data model now, I'll be fighting this thing for months.

And the whole point of this is to stop scrambling before calls, so I need the data to flow cleanly from the start.

I'm building seven core tables:
1️⃣ Calls (the main hub): Tracks every scheduled call. Links to Call Briefs, Contacts, and Accounts.
2️⃣ Call Briefs (the generated output): Stores the synthesized intelligence for each call. One brief per call. This is what I actually read before the call.
3️⃣ Accounts: Company-level data. Links to Deals, Product Usage, and Company Intelligence.
4️⃣ Contacts: Individual people I'm talking to. Linked to Accounts and Calls.
5️⃣ Deals: CRM history. Deal stage, notes, last activity. Linked to Accounts.
6️⃣ Product Usage: For existing customers. Bases, users, activity trends, automations created. Linked to Accounts.
7️⃣ Company Intelligence: AI-pulled company news, strategic priorities, recent developments. Linked to Accounts.

Each table does one thing. Calls are for tracking the event. Call Briefs store what I actually need to know. Accounts are where all the context lives.

Calls and Call Briefs are linked one to one, so every call gets exactly one brief. There's no duplicates or confusion on which brief belongs to which call.

Linked records mean when I update deal history in Salesforce, it flows through to the brief automatically. When product usage data refreshes, the brief reflects it. I'm not copying and pasting data across tables.

The Accounts table is the hub. Everything connects through it. Company Intelligence, Product Usage, Deals, all linked to Accounts. So when I pull a call brief, it knows which account I'm calling and it pulls everything associated with that account.

I tested this with a fake call record. Linked it to a contact and an account. Added some deal history. Data flows where it should.

Next week: Building the first automation. Can I actually pull company news and deal history on a schedule?

If your tables don't talk to each other cleanly, your automations will break. And you'll be right back to scrambling before every call.

Built this entire base structure with Airtable's Omni in 10 minutes. The hard part isn't building the tables anymore. It's knowing how they should connect.

I asked AI to build a competitor to SpaceX.

It came back with a full competitive analysis deck in 20 minutes.

We just launched Superagent, a whole new Airtable product.

I gave it one prompt: "Create a competitive analysis deck of the commercial space market and opportunities for differentiation."

Multiple specialized AI agents deployed. Each tackled a different piece: market analysis, competitive positioning, timeline synthesis, regulatory requirements, technology comparisons.

20 minutes later: rich visuals, interactive charts, full citations. Ready to present.
This isn't another AI summary tool. It's a research and design team working in tandem.

If your team is blocked on competitive analysis or market research that requires real depth, give Superagent a try: bit.ly/3ZC0m40

Most AI projects fail midway through.

Not because the tech doesn't work. Because the scope was never clear.

"Measure twice, cut once" was a principle from traditional trades. Carpenters and tailors used it to avoid irreversible errors and wasted materials.

Today's builders are AI engineers, FDEs, GTM operators, and non-technical people shipping apps and agents.

AI collapsed build time from months to hours. But it also means you can build the wrong thing really fast.

For AI builders, it's "Scope twice, build once."

Before you commit to a critical build, scope what you're actually trying to solve:

⚫️ The Workflow 
Not "automate project management."
But, "Our team spends 2 hours every Monday syncing status across HubSpot, Sheets, and Slack."

⚫️ The Impact
Not "save time."
But, "Cut sync to 15 minutes. Give the team 1 hour 45 minutes back."

⚫️ The Capabilities
What does "done" look like? Data sync? Auto-updates? Notifications?

⚫️ Time to Value 
Days or weeks? If it's 6 months, maybe it's not the right first project.

⚫️ The Initiative it Accelerates
Does this help you hit Q1 revenue targets? Reduce operational costs by 20%? Scale without adding headcount?

Tie it to a real OKR or strategic goal. Otherwise, you're just building because you can.

⚫️ The Phases
V1: Automate the sync. V2: Add notifications. V3: Build the dashboard. 
Don't solve everything at once.

Bad scoping: "Let's build an AI agent for project management."

Good scoping: "Our PM updates 3 systems manually every Monday. That's 2 hours. Automate the sync, give them their Monday back, help us hit our Q1 efficiency goal."

The worst thing teams do? Build fast because they can. Excitement takes over. Then they realize midway they're solving the wrong problem.

Resources wasted. Timelines blown. Sometimes people lose their jobs over a bad scope.

Clarity beats excitement.

Scope it twice. Then build it once.

Most teams are deploying AI without asking the right question.

It’s not “can we automate this?” 
It’s “what are we willing to lose?”

I’ve been building with AI for months now, across customers I consult with at Airtable and my own projects. And I keep seeing the same pattern.

AI is incredible for volume and speed. If you need 500 product descriptions written, or you’re generating e-commerce images at scale, it’s a no-brainer. The output is good enough, and you get it fast.

But the moment you need something that reflects your brand, your specific visual identity, your tone, your creative direction, AI falls short.

I’ve tested this with podcast graphics, brand assets, creative campaigns. The output is generic. It doesn’t carry the theme. It doesn’t have taste.

Here’s the tradeoff most people don’t think through. AI gives you efficiency, but it costs you originality. It gives you speed, but it costs you brand equity.

And that’s fine if you’re optimizing for volume. 
But if what you’re building is brand-critical, you can’t afford that loss.

Before you automate something, ask yourself: 
- What am I optimizing for? 
- Speed or originality? 
- What’s the tradeoff?
- What do I gain, and what do I lose?
- Can I live with that loss?

Zoom in on the task. Zoom out on the impact. 

Then decide what you’re willing to sacrifice.

Not everything should be automated. Some things still need a human in the loop.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve had the privilege to work alongside Alex. 

Among other things, three things stand out:

1 - He’s a leader that is in the trenches with you

2 - He’s a leader that challenges growing in your skillset

3 - He’s a leader that cares not just for your performance but, you personally

Joining his team is easily one of the best decisions I’ve made since, moving to ATX.

Apply today 👊🏾

P.S. You’re welcome to hmu too

Commercial Sales Leader @ Airtable | AI + Automation ⚡️

My team is growing! 🚀 I’m looking for a seller with natural curiosity, a strong desire to learn, and the drive to make a real impact. This is a hybrid role for someone who enjoys winning new business and thoughtfully expanding existing accounts over time.

You’ll partner closely with customers as they scale, helping them unlock more value with Airtable through strategic, long-term growth.

Airtable is in a pivotal phase as we build toward IPO, and this role offers real ownership and the chance to help shape what’s next.

📍 Austin (Hybrid)

If this sounds like you (or someone you know), I’d love to connect. Feel free to send me a DM.

Account Executive, Commercial Accounts  

How many internal tools is your team building that you could've bought off the shelf?

And what customer value did you trade for that distraction?

Kyle Norton talked about this on his podcast with Everett from Clay. He broke down a framework on GTM Engineering that clicked for me:

1️⃣ Buy is about 
→ Speed 
→ Broad organizational impact 
→ Resources required to support it

2️⃣ Build is about 
→ Fast execution 
→ Low org impact 
→ Or high enough strategic value to justify dedicated resources

Most things? Buy them. Very few things should you actually build.

If you're a sales tech company building an internal HR tool, you're spending engineering cycles on something Deel or Rippling already solved. That's a distraction, not a strategy.

HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah put it clearly: "Spend every calorie possible on creating value for your customers."

Build only when it's so unique to your workflows that it becomes a strategic asset. Something no off-the-shelf tool can do.

Everything else? Buy it and move on.

Stop writing better prompts. Start building better context. 

Most teams think the problem is their prompts. They're tweaking inputs and refining instructions, hoping AI gets smarter. It doesn't work that way. 

AI gets smarter when it has better context to work from. 

The problem is your data lives everywhere. Campaign performance in one tool. Customer intel in another. Product catalog somewhere else. 

When you ask AI to help, it's guessing because it can't see what worked last quarter or connect your product data to your customer data to your performance data. 

Every project starts from scratch and every output feels generic. 

Airtable changes this because it acts as the context layer. When everything lives in one system, AI has the full picture with relational data, linked records, and historical performance tied to real-time inputs. 

I built a demo for a fashion brand that was spending weeks aligning on every creative brief. Past performance was buried, brand guidelines lived in someone's head, and competitor research was scattered across tools. 

We moved everything into Airtable as their single source of truth. 

Now when someone starts a brief, they input the basics and the system pulls the rest: past campaigns, personas, product data, and competitive signals. 
AI drafts using what actually happened before instead of generic best practices.

Performance feeds back after launch, so the next brief is smarter because of it. 

The operators seeing results from AI aren't writing better prompts. They consolidated first and stopped fighting tool sprawl by building on one foundation. 

AI doesn't improve because the model changed. It improves because your context got better, and your context gets better when it lives in one place.

Prob one of the best decisions I made in 2025. 

Switched from Apple Podcasts to Snipd. 

I listen to 10-15 hours of podcasts a week across faith, mindset, leadership, AI in business, RevOps/GTME. 

Snipd lets me capture insights as I go. Nothing disappears into the ether. 

Check it out if you aren't using it already.

One of the features I've been pushing to every customer I work with.

With the latest improvements Airtable just shipped, there's never been a better time to explore what's possible with custom elements.

Network graphs. 3D models. Custom dashboards. If you can imagine it, you can probably build it.

Check out what builders are creating…

Introducing Built with Omni: a new showcase for builders to share bespoke AI apps 🚀

Get inspired: Browse bespoke elements created by Airtable builders.

Learn: Inspect real code and prompts to uplevel your app building skills.

Contribute your creations: Share your own apps and interfaces for others to learn from.

Plus, we launched a few key improvements to the custom elements experience:
✔️ Code inspection
✔️ Public interface support
✔️ Multi-developer support

Dive into Built with Omni →   https://lnkd.in/gDY2Kdij

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The Battle

Jake Dunlap

Rhondre Giscombe

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jake Dunlap's LinkedIn Performance

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