Ep # 192: Speed Beats Capability in Every Build vs Buy Decision ft. David Karp (SVP, Customer Success, Billtrust)

David Karp 00:05 What's really neat about AI and kind of fun, it lets us do a lot more experimentation than we ever did before. And there's two participants in every experiment. There's a scientist and a lab rat, and you can decide which one do I want to be. Intro 00:16 Welcome to Across the Funnel, where we dig into concrete go-to-market moves across sales, customer success, and account management, so you can build revenue that lasts. Brought to you by Hyperengage and Dextego. Adil Saleh 00:34 Hey, good mornings, everybody! This is the old Hyperengage podcast now being rebranded as Across the Funnel this year, starting from January of 2026, for the last I would say six months, we are now trying to find these unique stories and trying to bring these GTM operators from across different verticals because we now know that it's it's it's the it's not about the it's not about the industry or or different avenues of CS that we can explore is more about how people at doing implementing AI at scale and measuring, of course, the success and and keeping all these conversations to post sales. GTM is has been has been the bigger part of our vision since the beginning. So today we are going to be talking about you know Billtrust. Billtrust is one of the I would say, the market leaders in account receivable workflow automation. Now it's an AI-powered platform that is helping these, you know, retailers to make like smarter financial decisions and helping them with all sorts of payment workflows. Today we're going to be talking about talking to senior vice president at Billtrust, David. David, thank you very much for taking the time. David Karp 01:46 Absolutely, my pleasure. It's good good to speak with you, and and just good to be part of any conversation that talks about how we help our customers be successful, and of course, how that translates in our own growth as a company. Adil Saleh 01:59 Love that. Thank you very much. And who knows it better than someone like you been been doing it for almost like as as many years that like I got my got into my senses. You know, I'm I'm 30, so getting to learn from people like you has been has been slightly more essential to these conversations that we are bringing. So first off, David, I would appreciate if just go ahead a little bit about about your role that you recently joined, about you know almost three quarters into it, and Billtrust as compared to many other roles that you had in the past is has was kind of a challenge when it comes to you know looking at traditional customer success and now jumping into an era where AI is taking over so much and you know of course, your consumers are consumed with so many options, so many a lot of noise with this in presence of this AI beat, a text tag beat. You know, other solutions in the market. So, how it feels like being leading this there and taking up this challenge? David Karp 02:55 Yeah, I appreciate it. It's a it's a really exciting, fun challenge, and I think you know, regardless of whether it's now where disruptions coming from AI, there's times in the past where disruptions coming from different market forces. As you look at the how loose or tight capital has been out in the markets, it's just a new opportunity to learn and and really do the right thing for customers and a pretty in a pretty interesting space. You know, Billtrust has been around for for 25 years and has been really really focused on kind of the heart of what matters to customers, and that's really you know unlocking cash in any business, and so that's a really cool place to be, but there's a lot of challenges with that. If you think of AR for any company, when you're out working with customers, you always think about behind the scenes how critical that cash flow is in a business. And what's really incredible about being here is we get to focus on helping solve those problems for for customers. So it's been a really great great opportunity. You know, we're one part of an entire post-sale motion that's really about how do you help customers get up and running quickly, really take advantage of a collective set of capabilities, and in the end, you know, it's helping them win win more in their business and win with their customers. So it's really an incredible place to be, and I think it's a really great time to be in customer success. It's been a great time to be in customer success. I think we all each get to decide, you know, how we want to react to external forces and make the most out of this really unique opportunity we have. I will tell you that if you're in the world of customer success, you have the always have the privilege of representing your company's collective efforts to to create value for customers. You just happen to be on the front lines of that every day, and if you can't get excited about that, regardless of the challenges, I'm not sure what else you'd get excited about, frankly. So it's just we get we get a whole new set of challenges. And a whole new opportunities with with AI that we all get to wrestle with, but you know, in the end, customer success is still the same, right? It's really making sure that we are helping customers make the most out of working with our organization. That's a pretty cool place to be. Adil Saleh 05:18 I cannot agree more. And and on a broader scheme of things, I know that you know most of these GTM leaders that came onto this stage, and you know we spoke, they are mostly like core B2B SaaS, you know distributors, and they are you know more fishing in the same kind of you know water, and a lot of them they are more traditionally heavy on interactions and you know product usage and all of that. So just for you, like for for audience and myself, like on your viewpoint, how is customer success on a broader spectrum is fine. Like making your customers widely successful, staying on top of what is the business impact that they're gonna have with with the product or solutions. How you're putting in place, starting from let's say any segment, make it like retailers, make it you know all these suppliers that you know you you get to work with. David Karp 06:10 Yeah, I I think that's what's fascinating. What I've what I've learned, and I've been in you know as you as you rightly said in go-to-market roles for for quite a few decades. the The number of decades starts with a starts with a three now. If you want to go the number of years, I've been doing it. So, and you're in the you know whatever part of that go to market life cycle you're in, your ability to be successful is going to be tied to understanding what is that, what's the pain for the customer. What are you really helping solve for, and how do you help them do that? And so, one of the reasons why you'll go through the effort of segmenting customers by vertical by size is it just helps you get a more specific understanding of what problems they're facing, what pain they have, and how are you helping them solve for it? And the ways in which you're going to help them do it will you know will vary by segment. But for us, for me, just to personalize, it's do I understand what those unique challenges are for that customer, and how are we helping you know solve them and create value and hopefully value that we can measure. We talk about it all the time in customer success, but if you can't measure it, it's really hard for to know if you're actually doing that for people. So it's it's it's the same it's the same story, just with a different set of challenges. And I think again, every vertical is going to have a different way in which they need to create value for you know we can create value for them. They have a different set of pains based on their vertical, based on the size of the organization, etc. So if you don't understand that, it's really hard to be successful. If you understand it really well, and you understand that across the entire customer journey, you're really set up for a lot of success. And so it all, to me, it somewhat starts and ends with a lot of stuff in the middle with our ability to understand what is pain for our customers, what problems do they have, and are we able to really uniquely help solve for those? Adil Saleh 08:05 Gotcha. And and interestingly, like you know, when you think about this entire post sales function, and we call it customer success, and a lot of teams that they overlap or maybe come adjacently with with revenue as well. A lot of these renewals are owned by not customer success. A lot of them they think that hey, customer success should own the renewals, and of course, like any account management. So, what kind of workflow you guys have under this success org? David Karp 08:34 Yeah, so we've got some traditional CSM motions that, of course, you have new opportunities with with AI and some of the ways you can structure a team. We also do have a renewals function that's inside of the the realm of customer success. Our support team and our professional services teams are separate. We call it just global customer experience across the board. So if you look at that, we've also got a customer operations team, which is really helpful around data reporting strategy. But within customer success for us, it is that post go live, really making sure customers are we're unlocking value for them at scale, and then all the things that go into a proper renewals renewals motion. So that's how we've defined it, and to your point, I've probably seen it seen it defined every possible possible way. Whether you've got expansion responsibility, there's a lot of different ways to to you know to to define it. We certainly have a fair amount of of revenue responsibility for the organization, which I'm very thankful for. Adil Saleh 09:42 I love it. You know, because that's that. This this this motivates people a lot as well. Because this is this been a big thing that's going on with a lot of these platforms that are more like tech heavy, and they're like forward-deployed engineers replacing a lot of CSMs that are traditional CSMs. There was a big noise at a CS meetup as well last year when when when we were New York City. So there's there's this thing that is going that is more responsible for the onboarding time to value, like how we can mitigate a lot of these steps during onboarding to adoption phase. So as I mentioned, like some of these questions come coming from from the team as well, you have these AI powered solutions now being driven and self serving. A lot of these and and you you mentioned that CSMs looking after like slightly bigger book up businesses and automating a lot of stuff. At the same time, how do you think this customer education piece at your persona? A lot of these segments, they are not like so much technical, and you know, with this AI analytics and reporting, and a lot of this, how do you do you get with this customer education hand in hand to make sure they're well on board and adopt? And of course, the value has been unlocked the fastest. David Karp 10:57 Yeah, that's a it's a it's a fascinating question. I think one that is absolutely evolving as solutions evolve. You know, we one of the things that Billtrust and and my prior place I was at DISQO are very AI foundational AI and how do you build a product, deploy a product, create capabilities for customers, and so you are allowing customers typically to ask better questions to get to get to get to answers faster by how they can analyze the data they have available through your platform, your products, your service, whatever it is. So incredible opportunities in doing that, but of course helping them understand what are the questions we can be answering and how do we structure those questions is part of the education that you have to create. So some of that is obviously going to be embedded in the product, as any good product would do. You're going to create hopefully the ability for customers in the moment to get the answers they need, but it's also through you know how how we engage. If I think about a normal engagement motion with a customer, which can change now. Over in the past, you had certain cadences of strategic conversations, whatever you wanted to call it. I think now it's making sure in those conversations that you are understanding what are the questions that the customers are trying to answer today, and where can we help them answer those questions themselves, or of course through additional things we can do. So that education is going to be a lot more important. It's not just how do I click through my software, because quite frankly, customers are going to be getting sometimes to your solution, your software through you know you just look at the world of MCP that's opened up a whole new set of capabilities so you can't depend on teaching someone how to use your interface and that's sufficient for them to be successful you have to think about it in a in a much more robust way and understand again even more about what are the problems they're trying to solve and the closer you can get to that, the more you can educate them on how to get the most out of your solution. I think it used to be you run a play. Here's how you navigate our interface to get to the answers you need. That's a lot more complex than that. So you have to be intentional. I think it's intentionally when I'm having my most important interactions with customers, how much am I understanding the questions that are business acumen. Adil Saleh 13:20 Yeah, having the business acumen. Right, I know that you're pretty big at you know staying on top of the business goals and and you know the business impact you know the product has and it might people perceive value differently. Maybe there are a whole bunch of modules inside Billtrust, but you got to understand like how you know these suppliers and retailers and all these customers are perceiving value out of it, and without having in-depth business acumen into their industry and vertical, it's impossible. And now it's relatively easier than than in the past, you know, with all these LLMs and doing external critical research, deep research, and all of that. So how you're making sure? I mean, why I'm I'm I'm so much married to you know talking about CSMs in low touch motion because that's in your category what I what I to my understanding the growth opportunities are slightly more bigger than let's say a platform like you know Slack you know a small team 1015 people they're gonna take a lot longer to get it to like 3040 50 people to get a Slack connect or a paid Slack plan. The same goes for Notion, but in your case, suppliers, the the growth opportunity and the the cycle of growth is pretty fast and in quick succession because and and the hunger is big, big enough too, and success is kind of shared because they are they're able to automate their payment and make financial decisions really really smartly, and they want to do it fast because they're growing. So, when you talk about like CSM managing 30 suppliers, or 40 suppliers, or 50 suppliers a month, how you as a as an org are enabling those folks to be strategic, to be yeah, right from onboarding to kick off to you know all this this process more data. Driven, more personalized in their engagement, meaningful in their engagement. What kind of initiatives have you got taken? Tech stack, any technology, any internal tooling? What is the process that is ensuring that they are widely successful, even when they are small enough? David Karp 15:13 Yeah, look, I it's again, I love these questions because I think they're somewhat universal. In that, the first thing you do have to decide is how are you going to create a strong enough data infrastructure. And I'll use the the cool word. I have to put the word harness in here because then I feel like I sound like I know what I'm talking. But truly, if you create the right context and the right data, then then you're able to truly help people get to insights and decisions faster, and spend their time on the things that matter most to customers. You know, instead of having to log into eight different systems, or you know, really go through a pretty robust exercise of collecting information. If I have the commitment to build the infrastructure that lets us do that at scale. You're taking out a lot of what becomes is really I don't want to call it distracting because I think it's important to do all that data gathering and turn that into insights. But if you have the ability to and you prioritize setting up that infrastructure, we can talk about AI all day. But if it's sitting on top of a fragile foundation, it's like anything else. Absolutely, yeah. Adil Saleh 16:21 If it's not driving high value task or high value actions, it's gonna waste your time because, of course, it can not only hallucinate, but it can also. You talk about the automation. You talk about the low touch motion when you when you're dealing with so many customers. You gotta make sure that you have an AI data infrastructure that can prioritize the. Let's say for high growth signals, you know, for from from all those those those suppliers and low touch volume. David Karp 16:48 Yeah, and I I think what what's most important, right? Like if if I am being really thoughtful, if I understand what matters to a customer, the the question is, what can I do to help make sure they're getting that? And it's going to be very different for larger, more complex organizations that are going to have multiple stakeholders, probably much deeper, much deeply, more deeply dependent on our product set, our tech stack, all those things. A lot of complexity versus someone who doesn't have the same level of complexity, but is still counting on as valuable business results for themselves as somebody larger, just can we unlock that for them with less, you know, human touch and you know less manual intervention? It's the same problem underneath it. Is can I build the right, you know, architecture, structured data context around it? So now the the basics of how do I get insight out of that context? How well do I understand that customer? If I understand by cohort of customer where they should be in their adoption journey, usage journey, value journey from our products, it's really easy for me to create a set of signals that say you are on or off track, and then go design the right interventions to help them help them get on track. And a lot of those don't have to be human dependent. But if I'm asking humans to figure out where a customer is, I'm really constrained. So the first thing is, can I understand is a customer on track for what we thought collectively they were going to get from us? And so that's the again, if I have data and context to do that, I can absolutely do it. In the past, I was very dependent on somebody having conversations, logging in and out of systems, trying to stitch together, you know, all kinds of analysis. If I have enough enough structure, data, and context for it, I don't have to ask people to do that. I'm going to ask them to take some of the interpretation and know what to go do next. And again, at that long tail, you can do a lot more of that systematically with AI and other things that help you do it. Adil Saleh 18:51 Interesting. And why I'm asking all of this because a lot of these platforms, and even I myself, as the founder of a GTM tooling, and that is, of course, not a customer success, but one of the one of the adjacent you know ICPs is what like customer success, revenue, account management, and all of that, and that's why we're doing these these conversations to you know explore more and get more knowledge to these ICPs. So interestingly, I've found like a lot of these platforms that are core focus on retention and expansion piece with this MCP and all this part that that is making it an ecosystem alongside LLMs like Codex and you know Claude and all of these these platforms. Now teams of of significant like mid size to early enterprise, not not not SMBs, they are more reliant on building internally, like whether they are agents, whether they are workflows, whether they are like MCP connectors with all this data and infrastructure, and then they're building internal tooling on top. So, what is that you guys are thinking? As as of course you you being a decision maker yourself. David Karp 19:51 Yeah, look, build versus buy is always a you know an interesting conversation. I think the. The number one input into that decision is speed. How fast do you need to go to get to to some of the capabilities that you need? And then, are you going to get there at the time you need to, and then be able to scale if you do it yourself or if you leverage some other tools to help you do it. There's a there's a trade off there, and there's decisions we're making where no, there's this is a place where leveraging a broader third party capability is going to help us go faster and scale. And there's other places we're like, no, we can create our own skills. We put a lot of effort and and focus on on data. It's the right thing to do for our customers, which is where we're focused, and for us to grow as a business. And so there's other things we're going to be able to do ourselves. So it's really saying what are the what are the unique set of capabilities that we're trying to create? Everything from how well do I understand comprehensively everything I need to know about a customer to to take care of them really really well, to how do I how am I designing a workflow that is helping me understand risk and challenge and blockers and go act against that? And some of that is third party third party additions to our tech stack, and others are things I can, you know, based on what we've structured with data, I can create skills and workflows without that and go design it ourselves. And so that to me is again, but the number one thing is speed. If you know that what's really different, I think today versus you know say three years ago or two years ago before you know AI was at the heart of everything. I think what we thought we were able to do quickly is dramatically changed. I think about the pace at what we at which we work. A lot of things are unlocked because AI, if we're smart about it and we're intentional about it, can help us do do so much more than we ever thought possible. I watch us collaborate, come up with things that AI helps kind of add a superpower into. So that so that's it. That's that's the different equation that I see is the potential for speed is what really really critical for making those decisions build versus buy, and we've got again depends on the problem we're trying to solve and where we have capabilities and where we need third party help. So we've got a pretty healthy blend of it, which I'm pretty excited about. There's things that we were using before, but as we've evolved internal capabilities, we don't need third party third party software help for it. Other places where we absolutely do is if we're going to try to scale at the at the pace and confidence that we're doing it. So that that's the that to me is the most fun conversation that we're having is what's this? What's the the speed and the pace at which we can move, given how much things are moving around us? And it's very it's a very different conversation now. Adil Saleh 22:49 Yeah, absolutely. And if I flip if I flip it like on the other side, if you talk about the people versus AI, what's your viewpoint on that? David Karp 22:58 Look, I um, it's it's interesting because I because I understand and I think there's a healthy sense of fear may be an okay word to use that that everyone has when you think about how disruptive AI is and how disruptive it is to the way we do business. It kind of reminds me a little bit. I'm I'm I'm old enough. You were kind enough to share your age, as I said. I got more than three decades of experience in me. I remember how disruptive the internet was. What's different about AI versus the internet, though, is the internet was kind of a a broader business decision, right? Businesses were tackling how to deal with the internet. Not every individual. I'm putting aside what we what we do on the internet today, but it became a a business tool. It was a business decision. AI is in the hands of of individuals, which I think makes it really really different. Like I remember how disruptive the internet felt and how disruptive it was in the early 2000s, AI is probably orders of magnitude more disruptive. So as humans, it's really like this feels like this is very threatening. But what I love is watching people solve problems in a very different way because they've decided I'm going to embrace this this opportunity. People are so foundational to how business works, and I think for us, it's it's always going to be really really important. Is just how can I help people focus on a very different set of problems that they can uniquely solve, and and and create opportunities for them to embrace what AI can do, so that they can go work on that next level next level of problem. So again, AI AI helps us. I think solve problems we couldn't solve before. It helps us scale the way we couldn't scale before. It doesn't eliminate the need for really really great people to help us do things you know that are right for our customers and right for ourselves. So, but I get it. It's one of those fear-inducing things, right? And my simple way is my simple way of thinking about it, right or wrong, is there's a what what's really neat about AI and kind of fun. It lets us do a lot more experimentation than we ever did before, and there's two two participants in every experiment. There's a scientist and a lab rat, and you can decide. Yeah, which one do I want to be? And I'm like, we're all gonna if you're if you're smart about it, like you know, I've got I've got a son who's a scientist who's you know 1000 times smarter than I'll ever be, but what's cool when I listen to him think about the problems he's trying to solve, right? He's thinking about how do I take all these tools at my disposal and go create something new and solve a new problem. We get we get to do that. AI lets us do that. It's not some big company initiative. Companies are being strategic about it, but as an individual, I can leverage it too. And that, to me, makes this a a very different moment where you don't have to be afraid. Adil Saleh 25:54 Yeah, man, you have to be absolutely. Of course, if you see the positive side of things, like how it elevates your potential as an individual, like you know how you can you know how you can 10x your everyday, like being a being a senior vice president of customer success, being a founder, being somebody that's literally a CSM. How you can elevate your potential, and of course, if you have ideas, if you if you see problems now for the first time, you can actually do something about it. So now your ideas are putting in the picture, and and and that's good, you know. But on the other side, some industries like healthcare, you know, so many things that we we hear on the news, that's also disturbing. You know, if you start getting into that loop of you know all this this this this this war, this hacks, and this, this medicine, this, this weapons, all of this, that also creates a lot of, lot of, I think, a lot of fear on top of these. I'm, David Karp 26:52 I'm smiling because, yeah, I'm a pretty avid reader, and one of my favorite books two years ago was called Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, and she just she just released a new one. I'm I'm actually in the middle of reading it right now called Biological War, and it's all taking foundational things that are true about you know design of nuclear programs, and now it's on biological programs, and just creates a scenario: is what if such and such a thing happens? What are the likely outcomes? And and they're they're pretty intense, right? And so it's true in every every area of life. Just eyes open, right? AI is AI is really great, but just like you could argue with the internet and social media, there's been a lot of benefits, but a lot of downsides. There's trade offs in every side. Adil Saleh 27:41 Yeah. There's some articles that I've read. I I was like I was thinking to my sleep. It was so hard for me to you know go to bed looking at people creating second gods or like these these kind of things and you know thinking that you know it's it's gonna it's gonna replace the brain and it's all these abstract feelings that a human has right so so again. David Karp 28:01 Like here's the thing. I, what's the the? It is the greatest privilege I think you can have to be in a customer success role, where the company is essentially saying we trust you to represent all of our hard work with customers. So, if a customer is having a hard time getting value, you get to see it and help solve for it. You're going to do it in close partners, partnership with support colleagues, services colleagues, sales colleagues, finance. It's a team game. You're just out there. You're out. You're out in front, and that is the greatest statement of trust and privilege you can have. I don't think that's changed. I don't think that'll ever change. It's just what do you do with it? And if you can understand, that's that is a high. That is the biggest driver. Adil Saleh 28:49 Yeah, David Karp 28:50 It's a that is the biggest driver. Yeah. So let me take advantage of new tools, new capabilities. Do the hard work that helps me learn it, understand it, put it into practice. Bring back insights to the rest of the company because I can do that at scale now that we're really hard to do. It's a it's a really great place to be. How big of a part I am of this this this this business and impact and everything. Adil Saleh 29:10 Yeah, David Karp 29:13 Right. So why why worry about all the things I can't control? Let me go focus on the things I can control, which is the most important thing, which is if I'm helping our customers be really, really successful with what we do, that's how that's how we win. Go help them be really successful because I can control that. I can actually have an impact on that, and I just choose not to worry about all the other things I can't I can't control. Adil Saleh 29:37 Yeah, absolutely. You know, I saw your team like it's pretty diverse, and a lot of this is in Asia too. And could you tell us a little bit more about your culture and DNA across your team? As yes, I know that this this is also like pretty. You know, read some of your your presence. This you're so much married to your principles and operating. You know, all these. Principle and DNA-that's that you get to show up every single day. So, could you also explain a bit of the culture, some of the roles? Of course, people can you know go and check out, and if they want to join the team. David Karp 30:10 Yeah, absolutely. Like it's it's it's pretty great. I would say everything you know really does kind of start and end with with company values, and if those values resonate with you, then that's the starting place. And you know, I I think you can be in a lot of different environments where just yeah, I I think of the I'm a Seinfeld fan, so apologize if I bring up a Seinfeld episode. Adil Saleh 30:34 I'm a big fan of Seinfeld. David Karp 30:36 Jerry and Jerry and Elaine are going in to rent a car, right? And the car's not there, and they make the statement, you know, you gotta, you know, there's two parts of taking of of renting a car. There's the taking of the reservation and the holding of the reservation, and the holding is kind of the most important part. It's the same thing with values. Declaring values is one part of it. Living them is another part of it. And when you and focusing on living values and understanding, it's not a a point of perfection. Is can we understand them? Can we hold ourselves accountable? Do we call out when we're getting them right? Do we call out we're getting them wrong? Are you pursuing those values sincerely? 100% here, 100% And so, first thing is, if those values resonate with you, the question is, are they real? And they're very real here. So that to me is kind of the foundation of everything, and that's kind of been baked into me. So that is really, really important to any culture. And you know, when you have values that are around customer and and and taking action and and winning as a team, like those are, I think, things you can stand on in the kind of roles that customer success people have, and they're real. So that's number one. And I love the fact that we're that we're global. I am stunned is probably not too strong of a word when I look at what we're doing to grow globally and the quality of people and experiences and capabilities that we have on the team. You know, you you hope you're surrounded by really great people that are bringing things to the table that you're not. When you see yourself surrounded by people that you can learn from every day that are helping you be better, whether they've had five years of experience or 20 years of experience, that's kind of the kind of got what we've got going on on the team here, and it's one team regardless of where you sit globally, because that's what our customers are counting on, right? They're less worried about where you're located, and they're much more worried about are you able to help us be successful, and so that's kind of how we're building it, right? We're building it as one team with capabilities that exist globally, and that, and all, all rooted in our values. When you get that right, man, it's a really great place to be. Adil Saleh 32:47 Interesting. One last thing that you want to share for all the VPs, all the customer success leaders, all the GTM leaders to do to help them upskill at their leadership. Of course, being yourself with this much of experience behind anything that you want to share with a lot of these VPs that are listening to this? David Karp 33:07 Yeah, I look. I I don't I don't know where each individual is on their own journey, and you know, there's really foundational things that I think everybody knows. How well do you know your customer? How well do you know your you know what their pain and needs are, et cetera. The thing that's helped me the most, I'd say, and since I've been here, is knowing that we're trying to go really, really fast. We're trying to create incredible value. We're driving a lot of change, and AI is an important part of that. So, what am I doing every day myself to raise my own own game every day, and how I'm leveraging AI, but how I'm helping the leaders on my team and colleagues leverage AI as well, because it can't be an individual game; it's got to be a collective game. Adil Saleh 33:55 Yeah, David Karp 33:55 and so that for me is is challenge challenge yourself, and as an individual, am I am I growing? Am I thinking about how it's helping me be better as a leader every day? But am I equally focused on how I'm enabling the other leaders on the team and the rest of the team to do the same? I think it's more important now than it's it's ever been, and it also tends to be a lot of fun. So you don't always you don't always get to spend as much time doing something new and learning and have it be as much fun. So that that to me is absolutely every everybody take stock of where you are on your own journey of of leveraging AI and challenge yourself and how you're measuring your own growth and and equipping your team to do the same. I think that's a great place to start. Adil Saleh 34:42 Yeah, and to your point, thinking of this AI and LLMs as magic box, and you bringing every individual is bringing their own intuition and context and reasoning and critical thinking, and when you being a leader step and go first as a leader, and you collaborate on this these initiatives and. You know all these upskilling on AI, using AI every day work day to day. This becomes so interesting because everybody comes up with new ideas, new research, new initiatives on the table for you as a leader. You know to to see and even get better. You know about from other people's experiences with with AI. David Karp 35:19 Yeah, like it's it's when I was down and we were talking earlier about me being down in Austin and I challenged myself can I spend can I spend 30 minutes without talking about AI and it was a great victory because I I think I did and because there's a lot to talk about that's not AI Adil Saleh 35:34 Yeah, but it's also David Karp 35:36 Something that I think because you mentioned it right it brings a lot of discomfort to people because it's disruptive, but man, I can't. I can't think. I I can't think right now about working without it for things that really, really matter that help me focus on things that I wouldn't be able to focus on otherwise. And so it's challenging myself. Am I am I leveraging AI and creating the ability for the whole team to leverage AI in a way that lets us focus more on things that matter to our company and to our customers at more scale, and of course at at at fast speed too. Peace, Adil Saleh 36:11 Perfect. Thank you very much, David, for all this time and insightful you know conversations and topics that we we went on deep. And I love your energy and the way you you've been so concrete and genuine about it. So thank you very much for being that person. And let's let's keep in touch. Next time I'll be in Austin or closer to Dallas. I'll definitely ping you, and we meet up and get to learn more about you. David Karp 36:34 I'd enjoy that very much. Thanks for the time. It was great to speak with you. Adil Saleh 36:38 Likewise. Have a good rest of your day, brother. David Karp 36:40 All right. Thanks. All right, take care. I see you finally. Bye bye. Outro 36:43 Thank you very much for listening to Across the Funnel. If you got one useful GTM idea out of this show today, please share this with a teammate and hit follow. Explore Hyperengage at hyperengage.io and Dextego at dextego.com