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Sam Slevin:
Onboarding is not a call. It’s an experience. So it’s understanding what are the things that this person why did they buy? And so usually, the the first thing that we do this is what you said and this is the reason that you bought. This is my North Star.

Josh Schachter:
Did I get this right?

Sam Slevin:
Align on. And and let’s change it right now because everything I do is gonna be aligning to this. And then so when you do your strategic business review, it’s you pull this back up. This is why you bought. Has anything changed? Are we still aligned? And then the usage and value story should align to those things. So it’s it’s it’s their words and why did they buy.

Josh Schachter:
And are you mapping that over time? Like, how are you how are you showing the time series of that of of of why they bought and where they are today and how those needs have changed and how you’re fulfilling those needs? Hey, everybody, and welcome to this episode of Unchurned. I’m Josh Schachter, your, host of Unchurned, and I’ve escaped Christy and John for this episode. I’m going solo, and I’m here today with Sam Slevins. Sam is the global senior vice president of customer success at AlphaSense. Sam, thank you so much for being on the program.

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. Excited to, to chat, and, I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that you’ve escaped, your your team.

Josh Schachter:
We’ll say Well, you know, they they bring me down, so I think you’re gonna see an elevated Josh in this episode, Sam. So we’ll we’ll we’ll we’ll elevate together on this.

Sam Slevin:
Looking forward to it.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. Cool. So you’ve been with with AlphaSense for about five and a half years. You you’ve risen to the ranks of global global senior vice president, and, tell us tell us a little bit about AlphaSense. You guys are an AI first really kinda company, doing a lot with with content reporting. But in your own words, what does AlphaSense do?

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. I think at the end of the day, AlphaSense helps you make better decisions. And so if you’re making multimillion dollar decisions, you’re a knowledge worker, you’re a hedge fund analyst, you’re a competitive intelligence officer, strategy, all those investor relations, We are there is more information now that is being created than ever before. And so how do you make better decisions? How do you remove the uncertainty of making decisions? And so what AlphaSense is is we, have millions and millions of high value documents. So you think about earnings calls and, and what the company is saying. 10 q 10ks, 10qs, earnings calls, industry trade journals, and news, as well as broker research, as well as expert transcripts, that’s completely proprietary. And also allowing the company to upload their own content on top of that, into AlphaSense and use our company name, tagging, AI that eventually pulls out and can ask in a generative form, what is what are people thinking about? What is the sentiment on capital expenditure in AI? And you can get that mix of information, that would take you 100 of hours to summarize and and put together that allows you to make a better decision on whatever you’re thinking about.

Josh Schachter:
So you’re you’re you’re helping the finance world make better decisions. You you’re digging into really rich, valuable financial data to help them do that, competitive intelligence, all that kind of stuff. Company’s about 2,000, full time employees. Tell us a little bit about, like, some of the the organic and inorganic growth of the company because I know there have been some during your time there recently.

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. So just to clarify. So so started in in financial services, our corporate business is as big as our financial services

Josh Schachter:
Okay.

Sam Slevin:
Now. So we’ll work with strategy, competitive intelligence, investor relations, BD, etcetera. So so both of those sides. So we’re, you know, fully, horizontal in terms of, like, every industry that we serve. And then yeah. So in terms of of the growth, it’s been been pretty, incredible. I think, you know, I I think you and I were talking about it and I say I don’t know if this is the right term or not, but I say, like, we’re an AI native company and have been doing AI for over 10 years because I think everyone today says we are AI or as a, you know, whatever the case may be. And it’s actually been a real tailwind for us instead of a a headwind because we used to try and explain what we do and how, like, they’re AI.

Sam Slevin:
And and you would get questions, you know, 5 or 6 years ago even. Yeah. So yeah. What do you mean artificial intel how is that like, what is that? And now everyone’s like, oh, so are you a chat GBT? So so the the the nomenclature and the this is the common, person understands why you would use this now better. And now what they’re worried about is trust, very, you know, verifiable, high content, accuracy, you know, good good places and source of truth. And so that has really propelled our our business as a result of that. And so, you know, I joined

Josh Schachter:
So you guys you guys had the you guys you’re saying you had the AI poll position, and you’ve maintained that poll position. And, the flurry of all these y combinator turds, as I like to call them, all the AI. Although, I don’t think that’s what you’re referring to. I think you’re referring to the larger organizations that that claim to have AI that don’t really have it truly. But this is, this is something that’s, the the market has kinda softened, and it understands AI now better. And so, you probably have to do less time explaining it, right, because it’s it’s they’re there with you, your ICPs.

Sam Slevin:
Exactly. So I think that there’s a everyone in the board now, I think there’s a board level conversation of what is our AI strategy.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Sam Slevin:
And I think that gets confused with, like, what’s an LLM versus AI, whatever the case may be. But overall, that is a board level conversation which allows us to talk about how and why you should be leveraging AlphaSense now. And so that’s led to a lot of growth, and then that’s led to, a bunch of acquisitions as well over the last, 4 4 years.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. And we we’re gonna talk more about the acquisitions. Okay. So, so you report to the president and CRO. You have post sales, underneath you, account management, support, a little bit of presales as well, right, for for the folks that are helping to impregnate the deals. You oversee international and about 200 people total, a 150 plus in in the US. Is that more or less correct?

Sam Slevin:
More more or less. Yeah. I I think about I think customer success is one of those things that means a 1000000 different things at a 1000000 different places. And so the way that I think about it and and my mandate and remit is jobs to be done. So, I specifically think about 3 jobs to be done that we own and are accountable for. Wholesales, and that is making sure that value is greater than price. And there’s a bunch of, you know, underlying ways that we think about that. But, like, at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters is value is greater than price.

Sam Slevin:
And so that, we’re delivering those outcomes tied to business, host sales. Then there is a support function which ties into that and making sure that, no tickets and chats are handled and we’re supporting some of our more technical customers. And then presales as well, making sure that which is I think a little bit more unique and not as common sitting under customer success. But thinking about the presales documentation through post sales and and that alignment, there is one of the reasons that we do that.

Josh Schachter:
How do you make sure that value is greater than price? I I love that actually in its simplicity as a mantra. So how do you ensure that?

Sam Slevin:
For me, I think the expression is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So it’s really understanding why did this person or this firm or this group of people sign up for AlphaSense. And so that’s why one of the reasons I love having the presales function because we’re helping document those value. Almost all of our customers test before they invest. And so that’s a a luxury that that we have, which I think a lot of other companies don’t have, but that stops overselling. And it it really, allows you to align with what is in the road map today. And then there’s obviously things that are coming, but will you sign up with what you’ve experienced today? And so an accounts executive or an AE or a salesperson will qualify and and do discovery and understand what this person is trying to achieve. And then they will set them on a trial that aligns to that.

Sam Slevin:
And then I have my team come in that is training them, teaching them, having calls, capturing value stories that align to the reason that they bought. And then the onboarding from there is onboarding is not a call. It’s an experience. So it’s understanding what are the things that this person why did they buy? And so usually, the the first thing that we do in is we pull up the sales proposal and and the reasoning that they just put down. They just gave a stranger money to to buy AlphaSense, and we talk about, well, here are the reasons that you bought bought. And these are your words. And you

Josh Schachter:
Where where where is that sales proposal? This is like an order form or you’re pulling up, I know you guys

Sam Slevin:
you guys use Gong. It’s a Gong. It’s usually a proposal deck of some some sort of

Josh Schachter:
I see.

Sam Slevin:
Deck that that the sales team has done to get this deal done. And then we we start with, these are your words. And this is a and I we will have them edit it in their for like, I don’t know what this up, and I just wanna make sure this is what you said, and this is the reason that you bought. This is my your start

Josh Schachter:
Did I get this right?

Sam Slevin:
Align on. And and let’s change it right now because everything I do is gonna be aligning to this. And then so when you do your strategic business review, it’s you pull this back up. This is why you bought. Has anything changed? Are we still aligned? And then the usage and value story should align to those things. So it’s it’s it’s their words and why did they buy.

Josh Schachter:
And are you mapping that over time? Like, how are you how are you showing the time series of that of of of why they bought and where they are today and how those needs have changed and how you’re fulfilling those needs?

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. I mean, I I it it’s it’s a combination of the value stories from the users because, again, like, we’re a user by user model, generally speaking. So you you could sign up one large firm and then you could start with 1 division. You could have investor relations at at this global firm. They are buying for a different reason than maybe the FP and a team that is buying for a different reason than the competitive intelligence team. So it’s making sure that you’re mapping and doing that account mapping with the account executives that we’re figuring out how we land and expand and and grow within those, and and align there.

Josh Schachter:
Oh, so you’re so in many of your contract, it sounds like you have an overall kind of umbrella contract, but then you’ve got different stakeholders that have different purposes for your insights. That’s what I just heard from you.

Sam Slevin:
Yes. Exactly. We have we have in a corporation, we might have 5 or 6 different personas. Then if you think about some of the more sophisticated companies, a Google or Microsoft, it’s like Google is a a classic decentralized company. They have YouTube. They have, Android. They have so though though what that strategy team is focused on is very different than than another team.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. So that sounds like a great opportunity. It sounds like a great opportunity for expansion too. Right? You you, you land and expand in that sense of different personas. Also sounds like I don’t wanna use the word nightmare, but it sounds very difficult to be able to map all the relationships and the needs for each type of relationship. Because like you said, like, the investor relations person needs something completely different than the business analyst that’s doing competitive intelligence, potentially. So how do you systematically go about that? Is it one enterprise CSM that’s managing the whole thing? Is it a pool type of a model? Like, what’s the overall approach to to really synthesizing and organizing all of these needs and tracking those?

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. So so we work in partnership with the account executives. So, I think this is one of those things that’s debated who owns what or whatever the case may be. And the way that we think about it and I’ll talk about the ideal state because, you know, every single situation is always you know, doesn’t get exactly under the ideal state. But how we map it out is that we are responsible for the retention strategy. And the AE is responsible for the growth strategy. And then they have different areas of what does that mean from an account mapping standpoint. So our role is a lot easier when there’s one division and one team that we’re working with and gets a lot more complicated and complex when we’re not.

Sam Slevin:
So for those bigger accounts, we’ll have key account directors and they may work with 3 or 4 accounts total because really it’s worth working with like a 100 accounts, because you’re within those groups as long as you have the the ARPU or the ARR per AM that makes sense in the in the business model. And so as we grow, I can shed accounts from folks that so it’s like naturally and and it really aligns really well with, like, how how we think about career development. If you’re an account man like, we think about, like, account management, account manager, account director, key account director, global key account director. If you have one account of what could be one user, but could be 1 you know, video could be 1 user, and it’s your job to work with the salesperson to grow that. And once you do that, you will have promoted yourself and align, with your career path because you’re doing that.

Josh Schachter:
Right. Because you’ve grown the account into being so so massive that it’s critical to the org.

Sam Slevin:
To have more of a a book that is composed of a key account director or a global key account director because of the growth within some of your accounts.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. Hey, everybody. It’s Josh. I’m taking a quick break from the podcast to tell you a bit about UpdateAI. I started UpdateAI to solve 2 major challenges for CS teams. The first is that we save CSMs 4 to 5 hours per week with our productivity through AI. Secondly, we give leaders a window into all the conversations across each account and the entire portfolio.

Josh Schachter:
So we help knowledge transfer, we help increase the coverage model of your CS teams, and we help you detect emerging patterns in what your customers are telling your CSMs across all the risks, product feedback, advocacy moments, and expansion opportunities. So come check us out at www.updateai. It’s completely free to sign up and trial. You guys just had a just. I don’t know what what just means, but but you could tell me the time frame. But recently, acquired a company at a $1,000,000,000 market cap. Tell me a little bit about a little bit about that, and then I wanna talk about how you in this global leadership role are managing the integration of those teams.

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. So, we we acquired a company called Tigus. Tigus is the largest or was the largest expert transcript library provider, very, very strong brand in the hedge fund, financial services space. And then so if you believe in a world where maybe some of the general purpose LLMs are gonna be ubiquitous, and there are 5 or 6 of them that are all over the place, like a Claude or a GPT or perplexity or whatever the case may be. Differentiated content is gonna be one of your key modes. And so this is the we we had acquired a company called Stream before before that to get us in the door of building expert transcript library. And now we are 10 to 20 x the largest, repository and and, producing more and more calls than any other provider by a lot. And so that that is super high quality content.

Sam Slevin:
So that’s firms like Gerson Lehrman Group or Alphacytes. They charge something like 1500 to $2,000, per call. And so we’re not doing that. We’re doing those at cost essentially at the expert or maybe even at a loss to create this, super high quality, experts. And so we we bought that company, and and we’re integrating that into into AlphaSense as a content set where you can have, you know, it just feeds into our large language model and and AI technology that, allows customers to make better insights and and, make better decisions.

Josh Schachter:
Because you don’t want the analysts going to to ChatJPT and just using that as their as their source that doesn’t have verified information and whatnot. I mean, obviously, that could be a competitive threat.

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don’t see chat JBT or any of those firms as a competitive threat, given the fact that that’s a general purpose large language model where we are vertical. And you can be 90% accurate when you’re, you know, typing an email or Right. Or, you know, doing a podcast. But when you’re making a multimillion dollar decision, like that 99.9999% accuracy and making sure that you have the audibility and trackability and the understanding of if you’re gonna be a hedge fund analyst or where to put an office location or a strategic shift, those are multimillion $1,000,000,000 decisions.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Sam Slevin:
You cannot get that stuff wrong.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good that’s a good, selling point right there for sure. Right. So so what did the the Tigas team look like when they came in as far as the composition, constitution of that team, coming in with your team, and how tell like, walk us through that integration a little bit.

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. So we’re we’re under you know, you don’t you don’t absorb, an $1,000,000,000 company overnight. Yeah. And and what’s really exciting is that there’s so many. It’s an opportunity to look in the mirror and and just say, what are we doing great? And what are we doing that’s not working? And what are they doing that’s working and what’s not working? And what how do we take the best of of both pieces from, like, an org structure, goals, alignment, etcetera, and and and and start to figure out and do that that, you know, the talent mapping and aligning on those sorts of things. So we’re in the in the you know, and it’s good timing for 2025. So we kinda are, thinking about how we talk about and integrate as as an organization going into into 2025.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. What what’s one thing that you’ve seen from them that they’ve done really well

Sam Slevin:
No. No. No. I think there’s a lot of there and they want to to to pinpoint one thing, I think they’ve I would say, for me, the number one thing that I’m super impressed by is the talent. And the people that they have hired and brought in seat is fantastic. It is hard to hire, train, and service this type of industry, hedge funds, investment banks, private equity firms, and to have a peer to peer relationship with those types of folks. And they’ve done an incredible job from the talent that that we have. And that’s one of my favorite things about acquisitions is if you’re growing really fast and you have to hire 30 people next year and there’s 20 people on the customer success, and that’s 10 less hires that I need to make, that we can focus on, you know, the ramp, the ready to go, that understand our persona, and it’s just teaching around the edges of what’s different about AlphaSense versus TDIS.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. When we prepped this call, we talked a little bit about digital success. That’s a hot topic. It was kind of like the 2023 topic or even maybe 2022, and then AI came up. And I I seem to hear it coming back, because AI is kind of like just that’s that’s not really, like, that’s not really a strategy now. That’s just kind of an overarching enabler. But, this idea of digital success and being able to to to reach the longer tail and and keep you folks engaged is something I keep on hearing coming up with leaders towards the end of this year.

Josh Schachter:
So tell me a little bit about what that means to you and what your priorities are right now as far as, taking the next step with your digital success program.

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. I think to take a step back, I think the reason that digital success is so exciting and then potentially also gets, like, overblown is, like, it’s at the end of the day a forcing function from what you should be doing anyway. And so what you should be doing anyway is understanding how to drive value for your customers. And there are things that a human being can and should do. I think it feeds into the AI pipe cycle of, like, there’s maybe AI triggers that can help do that. There’s customer success tools that can then help do that. But overall, it’s like, how do you drive value for your customers? And then a digital success strategy, one of my favorite things about it is when you are looking in the mirror again and trying to map out each one of those areas and what does value look like, how do you think about onboarding? What are all the things that should be accomplished to successfully launch, a person? So right now, we do that with just a human being, but what are the how do you partner up with marketing, with rev ops, with, customer education, and and making sure that each one of these things is delivered at the right time. And so should that be human? Should that be email? Should that be an app? Should that be a text message? Like, you get to think about all the different ways working backwards from what are the outcomes that we wanna drive.

Sam Slevin:
And then that works for digital success, but that should also be air cover for you that makes all of customers better if you do that the right way. And so I think that’s what’s so exciting about it. And then I think you also live in a world where a lot of customers, especially with some of the people that we work with, like, some of them don’t wanna talk to someone day in and day out to use the product or

Josh Schachter:
Right.

Sam Slevin:
How do I do this? Like, you know, I’m a hedge fund analyst. I teach myself SQL in the or Python in my free time. Like, just like, I I should be able to figure out how to use this. Like, give me the thing and I wanna do it. And if I have questions, like, what’s your live chat look like or what what the case may be. And so it allows you to meet your customers where they are, in terms of what they want or or don’t want. And then, again, I think it allows

Josh Schachter:
So you by the way, that’s an interesting perspective. Like, in your industry, you’re working with some pretty successful people, you know, very bright and talented and sharp people, you know, probably came from from some good schools. Do you find that that that that that changes a little bit of the approach that that some they they kinda wanna be able to to learn and do on their own with a little less hand holding?

Sam Slevin:
I find that f financial services is a little bit more like that, especially the kind of, like, the incoming graduates and and things like that. I think then you get to the MD level, and I’m definitely stereotyping this,

Josh Schachter:
all the types of

Sam Slevin:
people here. But, like, the MD level is, like, I I used to adding my analyst and my EM and whatever.

Josh Schachter:
It’s going

Sam Slevin:
to feed me everything. So just, like, I don’t wanna learn how to use the technology. I have my, like, Bloomberg keyboard from 30 years ago that I I know, like, the 3 buttons that I hit to get the thing that I need, and that’s not what I want. So it it it it really varies by persona, again, within within the the stack. And and so you have a very different conversation and relationship and and with the MD with the than the analyst.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. You get you start to get a little bit more comfortable as you become more seasoned in your career. And I remember when I was younger thinking like, oh, these these lazy older leaders. You know? But, like, no. No. No. No. No.

Josh Schachter:
It’s just, you know, there’s it’s a life cycle.

Sam Slevin:
Yeah. You’ve optimized it’s like one of the thing it’s like one of my biggest fears where I’m like, I’m gonna, like, you know, fossilize in, like, my process of, like, I use OneNote for everything right now. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to to be doing or not doing, but, like, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years. Every meeting that I have, you and I are preparing for a podcast. Like, I have, like, you know, ex like, tangential to work podcast. Like, Josh, like, let me take my notes on this stuff, and then I have that there, and and it is what it is. Like, is that the right way to be doing that? Should I be using some Notion or some Evernote or what like, who knows what I what I should or shouldn’t be doing? And so I get that because, like, that’s also I feel like I’ve become successful in using my process, and learning something new slows you down to speed you up. And so how do you think about that yourself as a as an individual?

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. And you’re busy and it works, so just do it. Yeah. I get it. I get it. Sam, I’m gonna leave it there. This was great great conversation. Good luck to you.

Josh Schachter:
It sounds like you’ve got a lot of cool stuff going. You guys are still growing. This is, like, the right timing for the company. I mean, it’s you guys have always been successful, but sounds like a really exciting next generation and chapter, for for you guys and, and for you personally and the team. And then lastly, stay warm, man. I know we’re both here in New York, and it’s getting chilly out there now towards the holidays. So so Awesome.

Sam Slevin:
Well, you know, I really appreciate the time. I don’t know if if you do this sort of thing or not, but since I’m talking in a microphone to you, we’re also hiring. And so,

Josh Schachter:
Oh, yes, please. Oh, they’ll every everybody wants and needs jobs. Tell,

Sam Slevin:
please. Yeah. I think in the in the tech, environment and customer success right now, there aren’t as many people hiring. We we are we’re hiring. We’re hiring product specialists. We’re hiring account managers. We’re hiring, technical support people on the presales. We’re hiring on the support side.

Sam Slevin:
So we are a high growth, high velocity company with a ton of exciting stuff. So, I’ll I’ll pitch that to my to to your audience as

Josh Schachter:
as well. Now, actually, let me I’m gonna put you on the spot here. Are you hiring anything that’s like a a team manager level or above? Because I find and maybe this might just be my exposure and connectivity in the industry, but I find a lot of folks at that director level out there that are looking that that and it just seems to be like this this imbalance between supply and demand right now.

Sam Slevin:
I would say we are getting we’re in the middle of 2025 planning that we’re, like, finalizing. And I think, like, I don’t have an open rep for that right now, but if there are people that are interested, definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn, and we will be, adding more over the course of next year.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. I got some for you. Alright. Alright. Thanks, Sam. Happy holidays.

Sam Slevin:
Alright. You too.

Josh Schachter:
Take care.