BLOG

Josh Schachter:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Unchurn. This has kinda become a tradition annually. It’s my favorite episode of the year. I’m joined today by Nick Mehta.

Josh Schachter:
Nick is the CEO, as you all know, of Gainsight, And we’re gonna be talking all things Pulse. We’re we’re we’re recording this a couple days before Pulse, but we’ll release it right before. And, I’m very excited. I’ll be there. Nick, thank you so much for being on. Welcome to the program.

Nick Mehta:
Awesome to see you. I know you say it’s a favorite episode of the year to all the guests, but I will take it. I do. To get you. That’s true. Yeah. No. But this

Josh Schachter:
one really is. This well, let’s be let’s be fair. This is also the favorite episode of our listeners. So my opinion doesn’t really matter. It’s the people that speak and and, you know, and this is what they get. So okay. So Pulse in Vegas even added another layer of of craziness and excitement to the mix. Tell us how that came about.

Josh Schachter:
And and I wanna know, like, what additional element do you think Vegas is gonna bring to the show this year?

Nick Mehta:
Let’s be clear that I remember early on in Pulse where, you know, Lauren Ullrich, who you’ve spent time with is amazing. She’s been a part and sole of Gainsight Marketing since the beginning along with, yeah, Anthony, our original CMO. And I remember talking to them probably in 2013, ’20 ’14. They’re like, hey. Should we do Pulse in Vegas? I was like, over my dead body, will we have to do pulse and bits? You know what I mean? I’m the biggest guy. Like, look at me. I’m like the least cool person you ever meet. So, like, no.

Nick Mehta:
I’m not a I’m like a

Josh Schachter:
I’m not Wait wait a second. Because every time I see you on stage, you you wear some variation of, like, what l what I imagine Elvis would have been wearing in the seventies in Vegas.

Nick Mehta:
I said Vegas fashion and not not me that’s Vegas. Exactly. I’m I’m playing an issue that way. No. But it’s funny because we always were like, hey. Well, Vegas is a Gateside so different. And then a childlike joy is one of values that’s not it’s adultlike joy in Vegas. Right? It’s a different vibe.

Nick Mehta:
Fully okay, but different. And so, but then a few years ago, our amazing events team, Lauren and then Kat who works on Lauren’s team, they were like, look. Eventually, Vegas is the only alternative. There are not that many ones in a Vegas. It’s been big and all that. It’s set up for conferences. I’m like, okay. Fine.

Nick Mehta:
But then I got excited about it because it’s gonna be fun. And, yeah, definitely, this year is, we’ll probably talk about the theme is the the Wicked, movie slash musical. And it’s like that pageantry is, like, perfect for Vegas.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. And so it’s become a little bit of tradition that we you know, when John and Christy and I are on the program here with you, we always kinda take a prediction of of what your what your wardrobe’s gonna be, specifically your shoes. Right? And I I feel I feel like this one’s probably a slam dunk. Is is it the ruby red slippers? Is that where we’re going with the theme?

Nick Mehta:
I remember every time I say, I never tell, never tell.

Josh Schachter:
You never yeah.

Nick Mehta:
Be there. You have to be there. Come on. If you’re watching, you gotta be there.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. You want I saw I saw a prop at Ford in DraftKings, so I might place that back because I think it’s pretty good odds that it’s gonna be the ruby red slippers. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. But, you know, last year, so I I went to to Pulse in Saint Louis, and, I know there’s roots of Saint Louis for for the company. People were, Saint Louis, you’re making me fly to a flyover state. I should continue on to one of the coasts.

Josh Schachter:
You know? What’s good? But I actually love St. Louis. I thought it was, like, so intimate for Pulse. You know? The city’s a little quieter, but it just it felt really nice, and the programming was great. I loved the party at the end where it was, like, kind of what I would imagine would be like an in indoor, like, practice football facility that was just full of of of food and fun and games and stuff. So I don’t know where I’m going with there’s not a question there, but kudos to you on St. Louis, I suppose.

Nick Mehta:
It’s awesome. It just shows, like, you know, when you have a team that’s creative and an awesome community and customer base and everyone, like, yeah, they they did an amazing job. Transferring to the Saint Louis is great. And then, obviously, we won’t be as we won’t won’t be as relatively a big of a deal in Vegas. I think we won’t be, like, pissed. Out of all the stuff that will happen in Vegas those two days, can Pulse be this?

Josh Schachter:
Well, Kenny Chesney is in town, so you’ve got another personality to compete with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, alright. Well, I

Nick Mehta:
hope I hope you come to Pulse at least for part of it because I know you’re probably gonna see them. So

Josh Schachter:
No. No. No. I’m there for the full thing. What what number pulse is this?

Nick Mehta:
This is what’s funny. This is the whole problem of how you, how you can’t think. This is we our first pulse was in 2013. So I guess this is the fifteenth pulse. So Wow. I’m sorry. Twelfth pulse. Sorry.

Nick Mehta:
Twelfth pulse. I can’t do that. Twelfth pulse. Yeah. That’s not including the European ones, but not in The US. This is our twelfth pulse. Crazy.

Josh Schachter:
And we know they’ve started from, like, a like a luncheon, right, at, like, a Sheridan hotel or something to, like, now to Vegas Strip.

Nick Mehta:
Yeah. Yeah. Vegas is pretty it’s pretty nice to, like, kind of imagine pulse, like, kinda getting the spotlight in the city. Yeah. Never sleeps. Right? Or no city of what? No. Bright light city? I don’t know. I was gonna give you.

Nick Mehta:
City, I knew they’ve been the city.

Josh Schachter:
We know it’s Sin City. That’s for sure.

Nick Mehta:
Bright Light City. Yeah. Some city. Exactly.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Well, so pressure is a privilege. I’ve been hearing athletes say that a lot recently. And, you you know, you’ve earned that privilege for putting on the Super Bowl of the industry event.

Josh Schachter:
What pressures do you feel either this year or just in general? I know there’s lots of dress rehearsals and planning and all that kind of but what pressures do you feel going into these pulse events?

Nick Mehta:
You know, it’s weird is that just once you do something a long time, the pressure does drop. And I think that is also tied to, like, that sports thing where, you know, you talk to some of these athletes and, like, they don’t they just feel like it’s in flow. Right? And so I think some of this the pressure is definitely lower. But the majority of the reason for that is we have such a great team. And all of this stuff, the logistics, if you’ve ever put an event on, whether it’s a small one or a really big one, events are really stressful. And we have the best events team in the business. I would I would I would pick them over anyone out there, and they just are amazing. And I remember the early days of Pulse when we’re just figuring it out.

Nick Mehta:
So there is a there is a Pulse, I think, 2016 something, where, you know, the machine to register people had broken because this is, like, you know, back in the printed badge days. And, you know, literally, I’m I’m walking up and down the line, handing angry people coffee because I’m like, they’re all angry. They can’t get into the sessions. And and I’m just handing them coffee because I’m like, okay. Well, we gotta do something. I can’t really do anything else.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. And

Nick Mehta:
so this year, the pressure on

Josh Schachter:
That’s illegal in the state of Georgia, by the way. Really? Not joking. Oh, yes. Collection laws. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Mehta:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It’s layered. Okay. And so, so, yeah, so, like, the pressure on the event is actually not high because our team is so amazing. I think the opportunity and the excitement this year was really weaving in the theme of, you know, what we’ll talk a lot about, which is, you know, agents in the post sales world, into everything. And then, by the way, finding a way to tie it to Wicked, the movie.

Nick Mehta:
And that’s actually where a lot of the fun, at least for me, creativity creativity comes from, which is, like, how do you tie, like, what’s happening in the business world with what’s happening in the kind of pop culture world and link them together? So not I wouldn’t say pressure, but definitely, like, it it expends a lot of intellectual calories for all

Josh Schachter:
of us, thinking about it and do it right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, I I had been told by one of your PMs that, the new AI agents in in Gainsight, they’re gonna be like, it’s going to be a logo visualization of a flying monkey that is kind of as it as it, you know, completes the task. That’s exactly where you’re going.

Nick Mehta:
Yeah. They’ll kind of destroy your computer and then like,

Josh Schachter:
yeah,

Nick Mehta:
just take over. Exactly.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah, it’s the new it’s the new Clippy. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Lots of changes at Gainsight over the past year since we spoke it, but before the last polls. And and I like to kind of, bucket things into the three p’s, people, products, and processes. So I wanna talk a little bit about the people, the products, and the processes at Gainsight over the last year, like the new stuff. Four out of seven, I think, if I have my my numbers right here, of the folks on the leadership team are new.

Josh Schachter:
Brent has been with Gainsight. Right? But new to the leadership team executive team, I should say. Chuck, maybe he dates a little bit beyond one year, but effectively, he’s around that mark.

Nick Mehta:
He’s fifteen months. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
He’s 15. Hey. He’s yeah. Okay. I wanna go through, and I want you to share and we didn’t I didn’t give you the prep on this. I want you to share what’s what really excites you most about these people, products, and processes that are new to Gainsight in this new this new journey. Chuck, let’s start with Chuck Anapathi, your right hand man, the the president and COO of the company.

Nick Mehta:
Oh, he’s amazing. Like, definitely, like, wish I had had Chuck along the entire journey, but met him, you know, more than a decade in. But he’s just so amazing. Really incredible combination of he’s a wonderful human being, like, truly caring. But then also, like, as I know you’ve interacted with him too. He’s just incredibly thoughtful and smart. His ideas lot lot of being a executive is your intuition, your ideas. Like, you get to make good judgments.

Nick Mehta:
And, you know, he was the one who said we should buy a staircase and push for buying a skill jar and all these other things that we’ve done. Chuck has been the center of, you know. And, obviously, like, he and I are the two, probably along with you and our CTO and Ori, our the founder of Staircase are the nerdiest AI people within the, like, b to b SaaS world. And so that’s also great. And so I think Chuck is just, like, combination of heart and smarts and drive too. So, like, the full deal. Like, truly, one of the most complete exact type of man.

Josh Schachter:
I I totally agree. And you said a word there, trailblazer, which I think sticks out because he he’s just going for it. I mean, he’s got the smarts, and he’s got all the the EQ and IQ and everything, but he also just wants to go and has such a big vision for the company. On the note of trailblazers, let’s talk about the next one. You know how you know where I’m going here.

Nick Mehta:
Where are you going? Erica Cool. Erica. Oh my god. Erica just joined us a few weeks ago. For folks that don’t know, she had an amazing career and joined Salesforce, I think, in 02/2002. I mean, we’d seen employee like one seventy six and actually started actually one of the first trainers on Salesforce, like, training people how to use it, but then eventually, built Trail what we all know as the, like, the online incredible community for Salesforce. Right? All many I think most folks trailblazer, all that stuff that some of you pricing the jackets. And she was the one who kinda kicked the whole thing off, and it’s the biggest b to b community in the world.

Nick Mehta:
And, we knew her actually, it it was interesting. Like, Insided, which is the company we bought to become our community product, they’ve been partnered with Erica because she had become a consultant full time, helping companies with their community strategy. And then Chuck knew her because they overlapped at Salesforce. And then I I didn’t know her before, but I got to know her. She happens to be a huge Broadway musical fan, so we hit it off, like, immediately. And she’s amazing because she’s, like, truly the world’s expert. I couldn’t imagine a better one in b to b community. She is also really deep in learning, and so we put community learning and in product, all that stuff underneath her.

Nick Mehta:
She’s the GM of all that at Gainsight. But she’s also just incredible, like, just the most charismatic person you can imagine, so we’d want to spend time with, learn from. So, yeah, super excited to have her here.

Josh Schachter:
Awesome. Awesome. Merilee Baer, she’s new?

Nick Mehta:
Merilee’s new. Merilee’s our CRO. I just need to send a note to our board about her. Like, some one of our the people that had recently come over, from an acquisition, had sent. So I was talking to him and he said, Merilee is like the thing he she’s working for Merilee is the thing he’s most excited about at Gatesight. And that made me so happy. She joined us in, late last year as our chief revenue officer. As as I think some folks probably know, I decided to actually do what I think a lot of folks have done, which is let’s have one integrated revenue org.

Nick Mehta:
So Merly has both presales and post sales. Post sales being Brent, our chief customer officer, reports into Merly. And Merly is like like I think sales is such a hard job and revenue, because she’s got the whole revenue cycle, such a hard job. You’re always focused on the quarter, but you also have to build the plan and the pipeline and the strategy for the future. It’s really hard. And she somehow balances it. She’s super smart. She’s able to drive the team internally, but in a way that is, like, positive.

Nick Mehta:
She’s great with customers. She’s hilarious. Like, I just die laughing every time she talks. She’s so funny. So, yeah, barely is the real deal.

Josh Schachter:
And then we have Keith Pierce.

Nick Mehta:
Keith Keith, is also relatively recent. He’s our chief market now, sir. Keith, and and, knew some folks. Actually, it’s it’s interesting. One of his former execs he worked for, I went to see him, had lunch with him. And, like, the guy literally wanted to have lunch with me, this is Keith’s ex boss, to do a proactive reference at Keith. That’s, like, how the followership Keith engendered from his past life. So marking is really hard, and and that’s also like a storied job, you know, given Gatesite has become well known for the brand and the events and all that.

Nick Mehta:
And he’s just a really caring, nice human being. And, you know, it’s not easy jumping in in postseason, but he jumped in two feet.

Josh Schachter:
Awesome. Awesome. And then we’ve got Brent. Brent’s been with Gainsight for a little while, but Brent Kremkes is now and by the way, I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing everybody’s names correctly, their last names, but, you know, I’m just gonna sweep and apologize for that.

Nick Mehta:
I think that’s mispronounced all the time.

Josh Schachter:
So Yeah.

Nick Mehta:
Yeah. As I think

Josh Schachter:
I’ve been mispronouncing yours for years as well. So I’m trying to be a little bit softer with the t. Right? It’s meta, not not meta.

Nick Mehta:
No. Josh, you go.

Josh Schachter:
You know, like, yeah, I’m trying trying to trying to acclimate a little bit here. We got So, so Brent’s been with a while, but he’s CCO now. And then, an orientist who came in through Staircase, who’s now your senior vice president really running running the the running the the the cargo ship. Right? The the beast of the company.

Nick Mehta:
% of the biggest part of the business. Yeah. So, yeah, we’re really lucky. You’re overall, I think the point you’re making is funny to even when you list them up, like, wow. We’ve done a lot of changes a lot here. And it Sometimes it takes an outsider to to to tell you that. Right? Yeah. Exactly.

Nick Mehta:
And I still have, you know, kind of we have some long time renting a long time. Rob has seen a much bigger job. But long time with Robin, our chief, you know, chief people officer and Allcott, our CFO. But, but it’s amazing that all these new people. You know how it is. Like, whether whether it’s new executives or, like, you know, we bought Skilljar and roughly about 60 people came over to Gainsight, And those are 60 new humans that we get to work with and learn from, and I love working with the people from Skilljar. They’re so smart. They’re so passionate.

Nick Mehta:
And so I’m I’m sure this you feel this way too. Whether it’s like a new customer or a new colleague or a new boss, like, as long as you like them, which obviously, that’s a big asterisk, there’s it’s so fun because it brings new energy and new learning.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Check the people box. Now we got products. So you’ve brought over you’ve got some new products here. We’ve got staircase.

Josh Schachter:
We’ve got skill jar, moderate kit, which came over with Erica, and and AI agents. Right? Not an acquisition, but there’s a whole chapter there, which I’m sure is gonna be, a lot of time dedicated to in the in the keynote. Which one do we want? Let’s just start with Staircase. Right? So Ori, came over, you know, brought Staircase. What’s what’s what’s exciting you these days about Staircase?

Nick Mehta:
Fastest growing product we ever had by far. And it’s interesting because it was tiny business when we bought it because you you I think you you knew Ori a little bit. Right? So Yep. It was a very small business. They hadn’t raised much money, very small, not much revenue. But just the, like, kind of like some of this life is just, like, product market fit is everything. Right? And it’s like, oh, yeah. Nobody wants a the manual human data entry, guesswork approach to CS.

Nick Mehta:
That’s where things were. That’s not where they need to be. So it was, like, the perfect product. In fact, I remember when we were talking getting demo staircase, everyone at Gainsight that saw it was like, holy crap. We should buy this company or at a minimum buy this product. Like, literally independently. I’m not talking, like, Chuck and our corp dev team. I’m talking, like

Josh Schachter:
Yes.

Nick Mehta:
SP people, all that. They were all, like, you know and by the way, like, many of them, equally, adore your product. So Appreciate it.

Josh Schachter:
What was it no. But what was it what was it that what was it that really had them, you know, eyes wide open on it?

Nick Mehta:
I think part of it, and now I see it too, part of it is, like, using AI to do the things that are the most critical for leaders. In CS, a lot of leadership value historically in in our Gainsight customer success product and other CSPs and Salesforce was all about a human entering data into a system, a CSP, a CRM, reports generating for management. Right? And that’s kinda like why management says, you gotta enter the data. You gotta enter the data. How come your data isn’t up to date? Right? Similar it’s same thing happens in sales. And this is more like it’s like magic. It’s like, no. Nobody entered any data as as you know.

Nick Mehta:
You can’t enter data in your case. Like, it’s not actually possible. And it’s, like, a few hours to set up and, like, literally a few hours and no admin. So it’s actually quite different from what people might think of as Gainsight’s core CS product, which is great, but definitely takes work and effort and ongoing management. And so the instant value and then for the leadership value. So I use it, like, religiously, nonstop. The team can all attest to this because I you can get alerts in Slack basically when you or teams when when there’s a customer related issue. And it’s amazing because number one, you can jump on the really big ones.

Nick Mehta:
Make sure the team is is assisted, particularly if the issue crosses different functions. But also you’re learning passively. I remember this is airing dirty lottery, but about a year ago, we had a release of, something in our core product or CS product called Journey Orchestrator, which you know that’s like our digital engine. And it was a buggy release. And I got to see firsthand that, like, we really screwed it up because it was, like, email, email. These weren’t emails that I was sent that were sent to me. And these are people sent to support or or a a Slack message. It also look at your meeting transcripts, etcetera.

Nick Mehta:
Right? And I was like, oh my gosh. All of a sudden, this thing blew up. By the way, Chuck had just joined at that point roughly, and he saw the same thing. He’s like, well, we gotta go fix this. So it’s interesting because it helps you make systemic changes and it helps you operate also on individual customers.

Josh Schachter:
It’s like a a pager duty for voice of the customer. It alerts you. Yeah. All everything that you need to know.

Nick Mehta:
Great great analogy.

Josh Schachter:
And and I think it’s important what you just to underscore what you said about the the instant value. Right? The time to value, meaning that being a big differentiator as well, showing that value to leaders and to end users, eliminating the busy work, right, immediately. %. Skilljar. Skilljar is the big one recently over the last month or so. Tell us a little bit about the the investment thesis into them.

Nick Mehta:
Yeah. Totally. So, you know, we we, have always believed that customer success in the broad sense of the word is more than just what the CSM team does. And we all know that CSMs, like many of you probably watching, are just the jack of all trades. And so you kinda have to, like, have a side hustle in training your customer and getting on a on a Zoom or Teams or whatever with them, and you have a side hustle in introducing to another company because they wanna, like, peer to peer reference. And you have a side hustle in, like, getting them to try the new feature and right. And so, like, if you get time at the end of the day, you work on driving value and, like, to understand their outcomes. But most people don’t have time.

Nick Mehta:
So we all knew that you had to kinda unbundle that role and say, can we use technology and specialized roles to help have everyone aligned around this customer journey? The thing that we’ve talked about forever. Right? That’s, like, something we’ve talked about for ten years. But one of those core pieces we always saw, even in our own business, was that customers that were enabled and trained are gonna be more successful. And that’s so obvious, like the DAW. Right? But people don’t always invest in it. And so actually, years ago, we we actually started using Skilljar and, into like, we had no idea where we can get in the space. And our we saw big results, like our NPS for customers that were certified. It was Double what it was when they weren’t certified.

Nick Mehta:
So we saw the the value. And actually, at that point, we were like, oh, we should get Sorry.

Josh Schachter:
Sorry. Go go oh, certified. Meaning that they had taken the the training and the education through Skilljar.

Nick Mehta:
The training and certification is that you have to come, like, take a test. Basically, I’m glad for kinda catching that in case people didn’t follow it. So they had to make sure they had taken the test, and they’ve been a certified Gainsight administrator. This is for our CS product. And they had double the NPS, more than double the NPS, of folks that had been certified. And so we saw that as a real opportunity. Back then, we were like, god. The skill chart company is pretty small, but it seems pretty good.

Nick Mehta:
A lot of people are talking about it. And we we actually were, like, you know, interested and see if they would wanna combine forces. And the stars didn’t align then. And actually a couple other times were almost happened. And, and then we, we we bought this company inside it for getting the customer community, and they had a partnership with Skilljar. And by the way, also with Erica Kool. So it’s kinda funny because all these worlds are are connected together. And they’re like, you guys should buy try to buy Skilljar and didn’t didn’t happen then either.

Nick Mehta:
Now it happened that there was another company that some folks know called Northpass, which is another education tool. A little bit more kinda small business oriented, but a very good product as well. And And so we actually bought that, and it was pretty interesting because we bought it. It’s like, wow. There’s something here. But our larger clients wanted a different set of functionality, and Skilljar was still out there. And thankfully for us, Sandy and Jason, the founders, were open to, like, having a more serious conversation. And so then and they had amazing clients, you know, Okta, DocuSign, LinkedIn, all clients with Gainsight, CS product as well.

Nick Mehta:
So there was this real synergy, Autodesk. And so, yes, one thing led to another. And so now we have two education products, but, obviously, we’re converging them over time together.

Josh Schachter:
Alright. So staircase, we’re helping to eliminate busy work. We’re giving immediate value to leaders and and all the insights that they can glean. Skilljar, we’re helping to level up our customers and and make that an easier, more scalable lift for for our CSMs as well, who you’ve now equated to to being hustlers. And then moderate kit kit is the next one. Now moderate kit, it sounds a little bit more like, you know, Erica’s the all star. It was a tool that she had built and she was using. Right? So it’s maybe not as commercial.

Josh Schachter:
But what what is moderate kit? I mean, should we know about moderate kit? It sounds pretty cool when I went on their landing page.

Nick Mehta:
It’s like a it’s AI for helping moderators. You can be when you’re doing community, it’s like another thankless job. Right? So important. But there’s a lot of minutia involved running a community. And especially the bigger the community, the more work. And we all know that one part of running community, you can imagine, is moderating, making sure the posts are appropriate, all that kind of stuff. And so having we’ve actually already built a little bit of AI around that, but ModerateKit had built a much more full AI solution. And so it was actually kind of almost in parallel to us talking to Erica and Skilljar.

Nick Mehta:
And so it was definitely unique that we bought Erica had a consulting company. We acquired her company, and we acquired moderate kit and we acquired skill during, like, four weeks literally in four weeks. And, that’s why Jeff Binger, who’s our head of corp dev, didn’t sleep for at least, like, seven days. So thank you, Jeff, if you’re watching.

Josh Schachter:
And thank you for correcting me on the the pronunciation of that as well because I was saying moderate kid. That sounds more like a political action

Nick Mehta:
of the Yeah. It does suck. It’s okay. Moderate. Moderate. Exactly. Liberal kid. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Exactly. Alright. AI agents. I’m not gonna ask you to say anything about AI agents. There’s nothing to say there. That’s that’s just kind of a small piece. Right? Okay.

Josh Schachter:
No. But but I actually I I want to, I wanna I wanna save the the stage for your own stage in Vegas on that. That’s deserving of the lights. Yeah. So you’ll talk all about AI agents and the amazing things in the future of that. AgenTic gainsite ahead next week. The last p is process. And so I wanna know if there’s been any changes in processes over the past year, and and maybe that incorporates a little bit of AI.

Josh Schachter:
We talk about all the the commercialization of AI in the Gainsight side, but how has AI affected things internally as well?

Nick Mehta:
Yeah. Absolutely. So much. And I think that there’s kinda like what you might think of as bottoms up and top down. And so I’ll describe both because I think they’re relevant for everyone else going through the same transformation. So bottoms up, you know, no surprise, like, this is the difference between being a 10 x CSM or education person or community or prior to any other role and a one x. Right? It’s AI. And so what we’re seeing is people internally, just organically, are doing so much just on their own.

Nick Mehta:
Like, you know, like, I was we there was this big customer that was a big renewal and it was it was at risk because they’re trying to decide if they wanna consolidate everything into their CRM or keep a stand alone kind of Gainsight CS. Obviously, you know, thing we know about, but every customer situation is different. So what this very, entrepreneurial CSM did is they took all the history, which is all in Gainsight about this client, all the notes and all that, and then took the presentations the clients had given us in their documents about the requirements going forward, and then took all the web information of this client, put it into Chachi Media Deep Research, and said build a presentation where we map what we can do and what we’ve done to their needs. And it was really good. Right? And there’s all these other examples. Another another CSM who, built this awesome presentation, using Gamma. Some folks probably might know Gamma. It’s like a presentation creation tool using AI.

Nick Mehta:
And he built this great presentation where he, had the AI build a SWOT analysis for how they were using Gainsight products. And what I liked about that was the AI created the SWOT and looked at how they’re using it. It was very cool. But the CSM had, like, the confidence to be willing to challenge a customer to say, like, you’re not like a slot. Like, there was a slot on how they use Gatesight. Like, that’s cool. I thought it was a very innovative idea. And so I think that’s an example where the bottoms up stuff can bring innovation out of people.

Nick Mehta:
And we just see so much happening bottoms up in the company. But then top down, so the other way what’s happening, we’re seeing, like

Josh Schachter:
But by the way, that I mean, this is nuance, and this might be obvious to you. But, you know, I know people that work in other industries, and they don’t have that latitude to be bottoms up and have the creative outlet. So, I mean, you’re not gonna go ahead and restrict ChatGPT on your webs you know, in in your browsers. But, like, the fact that you give them that that’s a cultural thing too. Right? The ability for them to think outside the box and use those tools.

Nick Mehta:
Let me tell you a couple of things that are interesting. Like, they’re, we we bought Chuck I we went to one of the early OpenAI, CEO events and Chuck and I. And and I left the event, and I was like, well, that’s the highest ROI event ever for them. Because we left the event and we’re like, let’s buy enterprise licenses, which is like their expensive version for, like, a sub subset of our employees. It was like 6 figure purchase, like instant, like add to cart checkout purchase. Crazy. That’s never happened. And so we bought their that for our employees.

Nick Mehta:
And then some other employees have you know, we’ve paid for some other AI tools. And then some other employees just, like, found stuff online. And they, like, I I heard, hey. Somebody put their you know, their credit card. I’m like, okay. We’ll just expense that. Like, that’s fine. Like, but, like, it’s so cool to see the bottoms up.

Nick Mehta:
Now the top down is not just about AI. It’s really, like, starts with a strategy. Right? So for example, Merrily, our new CRO, and Brent, our CCO, working together. They’re gonna present a pulse. Like, what they’re doing to take CS to the in the whole customer journey to the next level. Again, we’ve had some great CCOs over the years of amazing people. So it’s building on the kind of backs of all these other folks who’ve done great things. So some of that is more what you might call classic process stuff.

Nick Mehta:
Right? Like, rethinking when, like, when sales exits the kinda customer journey or if they exit. And so as an example, making the sales engineer be involved deeply in onboarding versus, like, one call. That’s like a process thing. Really nothing to do about AI. Right? But then some of it was possible because they started using Staircase. And this is this is a commercial, but it’s not intended to be a commercial. They started Brent started using it when he took the job. Because he, you know, he just took this job over.

Nick Mehta:
Right? It’s a huge job. And he was just like, wow. I didn’t really know where people are spending their time. And now it shows me which customers are spending time on and which CSMs are the most active and all these interesting stats. And so using AI to get visibility into what’s happening and then drive action off of it. Yeah. So AI kind of became part of the story, but it really started with the strategy at the top and then bottoms up innovation as well.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. That’s very powerful using AI. I mean, it might just be more analytics, but understanding where people are spending their time and where that efficiency curve is, I guess that’s AI. But

Nick Mehta:
Well, AI in that so great question. It’s AI in that before you can do analytics by having structured data. Right? You could have structure. Like, let’s say you add some Right. Structured data, time time tracking would be a good example. Right? But it just you never get good data. And so instead, if it’s just like, you know what? Let’s just infer it by looking at what we think they’re working on using, in this case, staircase. And so I actually think that what’s cool is most analytics projects fail because the underlying data was human entry.

Nick Mehta:
The underlying data was something you put into Salesforce or whatever. Right?

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Nick Mehta:
Or Gainsight, CS product. Now the underlying data is just the conversation, which obviously you know a little bit about, and it’s like you’re extracting stuff natively from what people are already doing.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. Lots of power in that. Okay. Alright. Last piece here, Nick. Not a p, but strategy. So I wanna know the big rock right now that you’re pushing up the hill.

Josh Schachter:
You can take that as either a challenging type of thing that you’re pushing up or just the biggest priority right now for you and the company.

Nick Mehta:
Yeah. So, so strategy, we’ll we’ll say there’s a silent p in the beginning of strategy. So p alright. I’ll make I’ll make I’ll make you fit your framework. So I think there’s there are two. One is, like, very specific to Gainsight. One is more like a meta, like, CEO thing that I wrestle with a lot of people a lot of leaders probably wrestle with, like, they’re not. So the specific one, no surprises, like, AI, but, like, within AI, how do you create durable value? Because I think what all of us are seeing, and I think you probably see as well is, like, the pace is insane.

Nick Mehta:
Right? Like, it’s Yeah. Absolute crazy. Right? Like that, you know, the week before Pulse, it’s like Microsoft’s NL web and new Agent Foundry and Google, all the innovations and AI mode and, you know, OpenAI Acquire’s Johnny Ives company, which is the guy who created all the designs of everything we use day to day, every device you use. Right? Like, it’s absolutely nuts. And it’s just like it’s this pace is crazy. So, therefore, how do you create durable value that is sustainable? This is why I think agents versus, like, copalots, copalots

Josh Schachter:
Because you you can’t it’s a bullwhip effect. Right? Like, for a company a company like mine, right, we can probably afford to to just kinda go with, like, the the immediate reactionary type of, like, the the hot trend of the moment. No. But you can’t. Right? Like, you you’ve got more responsibilities for that. So it’s more of a challenge for you, I suppose.

Nick Mehta:
Yes. You’re right. The bigger you are, the more you have to have, like, sustainable value because you have the, fortune of being able to just pivot on a dime. Right? Like, you’re like, hey. Okay. Yes. This feature is not built into some other thing. But you know what? We can do this other thing, and we’re gonna do it tomorrow.

Nick Mehta:
Right? And that’s, like, amazing. Right? The larger you get and it’s not even just the larger you get, the more the more customers you have, the hardest for them to change too. So if you create, like, more durable value. This is where I think agents really do change the game. I think Copilot’s, you know, in other words, like, chat based interfaces for AI are great. But eventually, I think that the chat based interface for AI is just going to be chat GPT or Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini or whatever. Right? I think that, like, the long term, that is the interface. But what’s cool is agents allow all vendors to be able to have their little slice of the pie by saying, look.

Nick Mehta:
I’m not the UI, but I’m the the process engine that’s an expert in this one thing. You know, in our case, it could be renewals or adoption or training or whatever. Right? So that’s what I’m excited about. But at a at a CEO level, what’s really interesting is it you also have to pay the bills and you got your existing business. We have our CS business, which is great and still growing and super profitable with tons of large customers and tons of small and midsize customers. And and so that’s like, you gotta keep investing. We’re gonna show a lot of stuff we’re doing there. Right? And then you gotta, like, invest in these, like what I, like, I almost think of as like your you can think of it in, like, in in sort of, like, investment phases.

Nick Mehta:
Our CS business is a little more like a private equity type business. No surprise. Right? Where it’s, like, profitable and very stable and growing. And then we’ve got these kind of you might call them growth stage businesses like Skilljar and our community product and our p x technology. They’re like they’re growing. They’re not gonna be, you know, billions of dollars. Right? But they’re growing and they’re growing nicely. And then you got things like the agents, which have unbounded upside, and they’re totally just like a seed funded investment.

Nick Mehta:
And so the question is, as a CEO, how do you decide how many dollars to put into one bucket versus the other versus the other? And that’s what’s been really fascinating to me is, like, people call that capital allocation. How do you think about that? And that even if you’re an individual contributor, you end up doing that in your day every day. How much time do you put into those crazy ideas versus just, like, the next customer meeting? And you need a balance of all.

Josh Schachter:
Sounds fun. Sounds fun. What I miss? What I miss? What do we wanna talk about?

Nick Mehta:
I kinda feel like you always come in so prepared. I think the thing that, I’m hoping people leave Pulse with is not just like, you know, we’ve got some awesome technology. Obviously, we’d love to help people with that and all that. But I hope they leave if if they left with one thing. It’s like, this is the time that you need to go fast, not just for your company’s sake, but for your own. And I that’s my, like, that’s my hobby horse is just, hey. Look. This is really important for all of us as individuals, as humans.

Nick Mehta:
And it’s scary, and it’s uncertain. It’s hard to keep up with. Right? All the things. But all those things don’t help you. The only thing that helps you is saying, like, how can I innovate my job and the way I work and maybe the way I do things outside of work?

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. It is scary. But I think the the people that do lean in will benefit. The people that don’t lean in, that’s another story. Right? But the people that do lean in lean in, I think, fits a benefit to there. And the way I like to look at it is is I could do so many things to help you augment your current role. It can also help you to expand to other responsibilities of things that you weren’t doing before.

Josh Schachter:
You know, and and and unblock previous gates and blockers like some of the examples you showed of your ICs. So exciting times ahead. Alright, man. Well, listen. Looking forward to seeing the ruby red slippers on Wednesday morning, and, can’t wait, man. There is. Diva Las Vegas. We’ll see you there.

Nick Mehta:
Won’t be in Kansas anymore. We’ll be in Vegas.

Josh Schachter:
That’s right. There you go.

Nick Mehta:
We are.

Josh Schachter:
Thanks, Nick.

Nick Mehta:
Thanks, buddy.

Josh Schachter:
Bye.