The $2 Billion Question Facing Market Research

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AI is eating enterprise software from the inside out, and market research is either infrastructure or acquisition bait. In episode 147 of The Exchange, Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy dig into a $2 billion acquisition rumor, a fraud problem nobody wants to talk about, and why "AGI" might arrive with a shrug instead of a bang!

Thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Lenny Murphy: Are live. All right. Happy Friday, everybody. And Karen and I were just talking.

Karen Lynch: Let's acknowledge today is the 25th anniversary of 9-11.

Lenny Murphy: We know many in our audience, particularly on the East Coast, have very personal connections and acknowledge that. Today will, I hope, will always be a day of solemn remembrance. You're having a hard time, hug somebody. So, yeah.

Karen Lynch: And we're glad that we have things to talk about right now. Otherwise, it would be 45 minutes of you watching me weep, which nobody wants to do.

Lenny Murphy: So we're going to Love you, Karen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, guys. It's, you know, still a tough day for many people. So acknowledge that.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, we're not going to, we're not yeah, we're just acknowledging it. So thank you, Lenny, for that. And we are going to move quickly past it because I can't spend any more time here. But we have so much to talk about, and I want to get there. We do. We have big stuff to talk about, really big stuff to talk about. Really big stuff. But we are, absolutely, two weeks away from IIEX.AI. So we're throwing that up. We are at like 1500 registrants. So this is probably, you know, I think last year when we were saying, I don't know, maybe this will be the last year we do it. And then we had, you know, like 1300 registrants or 1400 registrants, we were like, I don't know. Are people going to show up next year? Let's just do it again. And now we've got more registrants than even last year. So I'm sure this will happen again. We'll have the conversation like our people over it, and then they show up in masses. So, uh, that's what's happening. So, it's coming up in two weeks. Talk about it one more time next week, but wow, it's going to be a good show.

Lenny Murphy: Um, whatever, and then followed. Run Out Teals by IX West. And if everybody saw today, we announced the winners of, or at least the finalists.

Karen Lynch: Oh, yeah, yeah, the five finalists.

Lenny Murphy: The five finalists for the competition. And I will say they were not all synthetic or workflow optimization or virtual quality there's really some real variety in there. So that was kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, IX West, hell of a line.

Karen Lynch: What's interesting is, and you know, I know, I know that we have spreadsheets tracking finalists and winners and all that, but now I want to start a new correlation because sometimes when I see these now, I'm like, oh, that's interesting. That they're a future list honoree. Um, and there's an interesting correlation, I think, um, between uh future list honorees and also some of these. Finalists that I would really like to play out. For example, Alfred of Liz and Labs a futurist honoree at one point. So, that's very interesting. And they are a title sponsor for IIEX West.

Lenny Murphy: And winner of the competition.

Karen Lynch: And winner of the competition.

Lenny Murphy: And maybe we should talk about that company today.

Karen Lynch: Our segue. That's our segue.

Lenny Murphy: Let's do that. So, unless you've been in Iraq, yeah.

Karen Lynch: Well, close up. They may, people may not know this because. Not everybody follows financial news, also. True. Right. And this is financial news. This hasn't necessarily become mainstream industry news yet because it is in, this is being taught, this is news being talked about in investment circles right now. So, Lenny and I, it's on our radars because we follow some MA activity. And this is a big MA activity. And we will share it here. It is not confirmed, but it is there.

Lenny Murphy: So I think it's pretty, I mean, so here's the thing. Yes, absolutely. Remember a few weeks ago, the rumor was that they were doing another race and at a 1.5 billion valuation. Menlo Ventures was leading. Et cetera, et cetera. Two pieces of information came out this week.

Karen Lynch: Yes. Let's start with the fact. Let's start with the second piece of news, which is that they turned that deal.

Lenny Murphy: They turned down the 1.5 billion valuation, 153 million raise down. The reporting is, the reporting is in the financial news, they had a signed term sheet. And they walked away from it, which is barely unheard of

Karen Lynch: And what's interesting to us that came our way second to this other story. So it was interesting because I don't know the sequence out there in that world, right? But it came our way second to we're fascinating. So, um, but the story that hit us first is that we, it's hard to say this out loud, Salesforce. Is reportedly in talks to acquire Listen Labs for roughly $2 billion.

Lenny Murphy: For $2 billion. And there's lots of different numbers out there on valuation, right? Based on revenue. I mean, we don't even get into it, right? Because some of that is not public. It's somewhere between 20X, which is fairly reasonable. Up to 67x based upon which number they're using of top line revenue versus ARR. And, you know, anyway. So, one, boy, I'm almost off Defbomb again. I mean, hats off, right?

Karen Lynch: Seriously, in teams.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, two-year-old company, guys.

Karen Lynch: Two-year-old company. What? I mean, remember, we. We will always have this fondness in our hearts for them. When they went on stage in North America and they, you know, had, you know, up on that stage and with their lab coats, and we remember it well, and they won the competition. We knew, I knew they were going to win. I remember, you know, sitting next to Mimi Sherlock and whispering in her ear, like, I was like, oh yeah, they're winning. Like, you know, I could just tell right away because they had this charisma on stage, and it was very novel at that moment because we hadn't seen that yet. It became very clear to me. And at that point, you know, that was definitely crowdsourced. All of it was crowdsource voting at that point. And, you know, and they get the 10,000 and they're walking around with this $10,000 check like it was. I think about it and I'm like, it's just adorable to think about now when they're in talks, you know, with this $2 billion acquisition. And for us, that feels like a big part of the story, right? Because they feel very important to us. There is a bigger part of this story, which is what Salesforce is doing. And that is really the big, that is really the bigger story. Although, this is definitely a signal, and there's more to talk about. Like, we'll talk about what Conveo is doing. We'll talk about all of these players, right? I don't know what this class is, I don't know what we should call these companies at the outset, the ARU, the simile. Like, I don't know what we call them. What is this class of companies? Because we keep talking about them.

Lenny Murphy: Well, I thought they'd want to be called the infrastructure class. I think that's what they are.

Karen Lynch: I mean, we have to label them. We have to label them as something. We, you and I, let's call them something. The AI infrastructure class of research companies.

Lenny Murphy: That's a mathematical flow. I mean, they're all. Well, so let's step back. You're right. Cause the yes, in my no way taking away from the accomplishment of being in that conversation for Listen Labs, that's fantastic. And hats off to them. The more interesting thing is whether it means Salesforce.

Karen Lynch: Yes, we will get back to Salesforce in a minute. Let's get hung up on the research companies for a minute. It is our field.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, yeah. All of these companies have been developing. All this new generation of companies. Well, when you look at them, they've all been from the get-go MCP compliant, which means they're embedding into workflows. They're embedding into other companies, right? And the systems that run businesses in a variety of ways. All of them have been doing that. And all of them have focused on where insights fit within a workflow, a broad enterprise workflow of information. So they've all done an incredibly good job of that. And now we're seeing that that was not posturing. So Salesforce. And I think we will see, well, there's more news. We will see more of these large enterprise players who are already trying to own infrastructure. Right. And that's in Salesforce, great. We've mentioned him often as being one of those players. And now they're potentially buying. This is not a done deal. I want to reiterate that. No deal. But, talking about it pretty openly in the financial markets, enough that it affected Salesforce's stock price.

Karen Lynch: So enough that it also, enough that, well, even if, you know, because. Listen lads also, you know, walked away from this other deal, even if this Salesforce one doesn't go through, their evaluations now bumped up quite a bit, right? Because this is out there. This information is out there. And this isn't, this is, anyway, but it's definitely putting a seal of approval on these AI native research companies.

Lenny Murphy: ...and setting a baseline for them.

Karen Lynch: So, yes. But, you know, Salesforce, if we, if we will come back to that, I mean, this could take up the whole time, friends. Like, we have a lot to cover, but this is, this is the, this is why Lenny and I, like, on Wednesday, I literally, I think our messages were like, yeah, we're slacking back and forth in the evening. Should we go live right now?

Lenny Murphy: Like, just going live out.

Karen Lynch: Yes. Like 8 p.m. On Wednesday night or something. Do we just go out? It was very funny. So, yeah. So, but but Salesforce, in this, in brief, they, they, or, some of this, this rabbit trail that you went down, they earlier this year, they bought momentum, they, or they acquired, they bought momentum and simulate. And maybe we talked about this and I have forgotten, whatever, but they are definitely getting it. They are adding to their suite these tools to build these customer feedback mechanisms to enhance the customer experience feedback loop. You know, with agentic workflows built into it. And anyway, it's just a very interesting play that they're doing, which is, you know, the way of the future.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And so here's what'll be interesting now. I mean, you know, a few months ago the SAS apocalypse, right? It's like, oh, SANS is doomed. Well, you know how they're not doomed? Is to lean into what makes them irreplaceable. And part of that is the pain in the ass factor, right? Of their infrastructure. So, you know, so they're leaning into, you've already invested a bajillion dollars, you know, whatever company and implementing Salesforce. Oh, you have these gaps. Well, we're just going to address those gaps. Right. And so they become even more irreplaceable overall. And that's a perfect strategy for these companies. And so now we will see who HubSpot is going to buy.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You know, who's because this is, this will be the wave of building. You're either going to build infrastructure through modularity and connections, MCP connections, or you want to own the alpha, so to speak, and the, and own that revenue. Salesforce, the builder, Salesforce to upsell and cross-sell, uh, listen. Yeah. Okay. People oh, my God, how does this make sense from a valuation standpoint? So because they have, you know, a million customers that they're not going to sell this to. So it's almost guaranteed revenue. So, um, and they reinforce their position. So now everybody else can be thinking the same thing. So conveyor, who just raised money. Right? 50 million, if I remember correctly, the number, yeah, yeah. Uh, I'm quite sure that uh, that Hendrick and team are going, Oh, yeah, yeah, I know, I know.

Karen Lynch: Well, everybody else, exactly, exactly. And I don't know now, I'm I've lost track of where and here it is, but somewhere in our brief is the fact that they were where I don't know where they are, I can't find it anymore, but they were uh, they were also in an article. Where is it? Where is it in here? Did I lose it? Is it here? Yeah, yeah. It's right. It's right in here somewhere. But they were in, what is it, Yahoo Finance? So now they're getting some press, right? In this financial world. And I think the headline is talking about Steve Jobs didn't trust focus groups to inform product design. These AI entrepreneurs believe they've solved the problem. Okay. So it's now talking about them in a very, very familiar way, like, yes, we've all heard that story, right? But they're talking about the same thing. This is AI native AI entrepreneurs solving this problem. It may not be the first time that these Silicon Valley investors have heard it, but if they're not in on the listening conversation, guess what? That's right. There's another one. That's right. Right. And who's interested in them? So I'm telling you, like, pay attention. Let's pay attention to what Conveo is doing. Congratulations for getting the press. It's good press and we'll be paying attention. We're very proud of our customers.

Lenny Murphy: We are. And we've had a good relationship with them from the get-go as well. All these guys were kind of a class of 24.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. I know. Well, that's what I'm saying.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Now let's put it in perspective because there were two other stories like people like, well, why is this important? Native CRM startup Lightfield. Raised 47 million to build an agent-ready alternative to Salesforce. So, so Salesforce is, just because they're Salesforce, like they have competition too. So, they can be disrupted. And the market is betting that they can be disrupted.

Karen Lynch: So, by an AI-native company. So, that's what's really interesting to me is because we all see how these AI-native research companies are disrupting, you know, these. Longwithstanding and getting all this funding, longwithstanding companies, it's very interesting to think about what Lightfield can do, right, as an AI-native CRM.

Lenny Murphy: Okay, all right, probably lighter, cheaper, right? I mean, Salesforce is not an inexpensive option, right? No companies exist just to manage Salesforce.

Karen Lynch: So, yeah.

Lenny Murphy: But then the other side, and I just thought, boy, what elegant timing. Uh qualtrix yeah uh previewed their xm data and ai arriving in 2027 yeah which uh is to simulate predict and deliver trusted outcomes now that is a very different thing for a qualtrix qualtrix now looks a whole lot more yeah like salesforce at least in terms of what you know, where they fit in a workflow, yeah, to manage customer data, yeah, get to the why, et cetera, et cetera, focus on outcomes. So, there's a lot of competitive pressure out here from very big companies that are all moving for that whole thing to own that you said the feedback cycle, right?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so interesting.

Lenny Murphy: It really is. And we've been talking about this for a long time, right? This shift towards infrastructure and all of the MCP announcements that that's all part of this idea of being embedded into the workflow. Who owns the workflow ultimately? What's the interface? Salesforce just announced two weeks ago, CloudForce, right? Integration natively into Cloud. So I still think it's probably likely to be the LLMs that own the eyeball, right?

Karen Lynch: The UX.

Lenny Murphy: But all of these will be embedded in one form or fashion. So, this is going to be the big consolidation thesis for the next, I expect, 12 months. We're going to see more of these stories.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. I'm here because I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to see it. Tracking what all this stuff is doing.

Lenny Murphy: So, yeah. A few more. Select your thing really quickly. We mentioned the rumor a few weeks ago that Nvidia Vine hugged face for $12.93 billion. And they confirmed, yes, they did. Why? Yes, infrastructure. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Infrastructure.

Lenny Murphy: This go-to-market AI platform, Clay. Raised $115 million at a $7.1 billion valuation. And yeah, so kind of, my understanding, I wasn't really very aware of them, kind of purchased intent signals. They pull all that and they manage all that.

Karen Lynch: What's cool about this play? If you go in there, they also announced in this announcement, they announced $1 million in scholarship funding to train the next generation of GTM engineers. And I like when I read that because it's sort of like they're funding their own, you know, their own hacking system, like their own, let's. Stay on top of things by funding the people helping us. You know, we're on top right now, we're doing great, but let's keep let's keep the cycle going. I love that idea for them anyway.

Lenny Murphy: It's cool. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Karen Lynch: Good move, good move.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, so a lot, which is infrastructure, too.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Right. And you're investing in the human capital infrastructure that's necessary for all of this. So, yeah.

Karen Lynch: It's yeah, I forget who it was, but somebody else did that last week. And I'm like, yes, bake it right in. Bake in the investments in the future. Yes, yes, yes, that's right. Good memory.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. So for anybody, all of our listeners, everybody, you think, oh, you know, Lenny, Karen are on the bleeding edge and they're, they're not, you know, they're, they're, we're, we still have time. When you type capital moving within these companies, it's not an early signal. It is a maturity signal. Yeah. So time's out. So you better catch up if you haven't yet. Yeah. Yeah. And then Focus Crossroads acquired Zintro, the expert network. So I thought that was pretty another era of consolidation, human data. Access to humans to feed all So let's not make that may not have been multi-billion dollars, but right.

Karen Lynch: But still, that consolidation that we were talking about, we started talking about and seeing that, much earlier this year, but another signal. So, you know, just because you might not be in the millions and billions of dollars, you know, it's still worth it, it's still worth looking at to make your own business smaller, I mean, stronger. So just because you've got a small business and you're not playing in that big sandbox doesn't mean you can't play in those other sandboxes. Like, get on out there and see how you can partner up to strengthen what you've got.

Lenny Murphy: I think that's it. Yeah. Yeah. So for our next one, should we resurrect the horse? It kind of feels like every time either of these companies are mentioned, right, we should beat the dead horse.

Karen Lynch: Well, we should, by the way, we should also say there was an NIQ story that I'm like, no, I'm not talking about NIQ. But instead, instead, we'll talk about Nielsen. So I just want to say that. And also, there was another MCP story. And I'm like, no, we said last week we're not talking about it.

Lenny Murphy: ...more MCPs.

Karen Lynch: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you said you take these because I feel like you're much closer to the kind of media measurement stories always.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Nielsen and well, of course, this really kind of is an MCP story, even though they didn't necessarily use that language. But Nielsen and MediaOcean, which is owned by IBM, integrate audience measurement into their Prisma media workflows, which is media buying, right? MediaOcean is fundamentally a media buying and placement. Solution, one of the big ones. So, just integrating, just integrating the data all together. So, you can look at the Nielsen data and say, All right, here's where we need to place our commercial based on this audience. It's all about integration and workflow simplification. Just one more example. So, hats off, Nielsen. I think they looked at their cousins and said, Why are they getting all the press? We're doing cool stuff, too. And they are.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. Let's maybe, yeah, let's imagine that they're saying, we want Karen and Lenny to talk about us this week.

Lenny Murphy: So, right, every week. I don't think they pay that much attention, but close enough.

Karen Lynch: It's nice to imagine.

Lenny Murphy: It is. Variation on a theme, though, Sir Khanna. Added Google's open source Meridian marketing mix modeling framework into their liquid mix, which is kind of their solution of taking all their purchase data, etc., etc., and helping to optimize. So, again, it's another integration story. So, the Reese's cups, right? So, yeah, it's one thing to dip the chocolate in the peanut butter. It's better when it's all you know put there together and easy, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

Karen Lynch: So, uh, all right, so Stravito, let's talk about these, you know, two, two, you know, uh, you know, close, closer into the insights industry, um, specifically product launches. Stravito introduced the AI persona builder. Um, it's funny, they announced it last week too, or they sent us embargoes. Um news last week that we held on to it, but they're creating interactive personas from companies' own research. If he, you know, kind of reading this one, digging into Thor, the founder and CEO of Thor, he's saying in here, they built an AI persona builder to be a glass box, not a black box, where you can see the research behind every answer, how strong one gets backed. And where it leaves room for interpretation. So it's basically like a persona that you can challenge, that you can say, hmm, like, is that all right? Is there enough data to back up what this persona is saying? You know, kind of acknowledging that there might be gaps in the AI persona. It's almost like they went into it saying, I'm not sure I trust personas. So let's test it on an ongoing basis. So it feels like a really credible way to go about debunking your own product. I don't know. I really, really liked it. I liked what I saw because it's not putting blind faith in the persona. It's saying, all right, let's go down this path together and be really transparent about your persona that we're, that we're, that you're kind of building, we're building it together. I don't know, I really like the strategy. I think it's cool.

Lenny Murphy: Um, I agree.

Karen Lynch: That they called it their glass box, so yeah, the glass box, not a black box. Yeah, I really liked this idea of full transparency, um, you know, acknowledging the fact that there's some cynicism, skepticism around these personas, and um, that you can go in and there, maybe flag something that might be contradictory and kind of acknowledge that there might be some issues and let's kind of build it together. I just really like this concept.

Lenny Murphy: So, I do. Well, what else do you expect? You know, the god of research thunder, right? Yes, Thor. Which, by the way, I did, I actually interviewed Thor a couple of years back, probably a couple of years ago on the CEO series, when we listened to it, but super smart and a cool element. Story. They were fundamentally a knowledge management platform. And then they evolved more into analytics. And now they keep layering on more tools to unlock more use cases of the data. And I do, I agree with you. I loved the validation model of this. Yeah, it too. Yeah, very cool.

Karen Lynch: Very yeah yeah by the way even if you just think about what you just said like isn't that a great isn't that a great model to look at like talking about you know kind of evolving um evolving with the times and not you know not letting not letting kind of changing times and disruption really disrupt your business but evolving a business so um I love that I like that too so so hats off hats off uh you know we uh drink mead in your honor. Sorry. I'll stop. We don't drink mead in your honor. You drink mead. You don't drink mead either.

Lenny Murphy: Let's drink anything, but you know, coffee, coffee and tea. But all right. So, well, you talk about Sego.

Karen Lynch: Well, I just, I mean, near and dear to your heart. Yes. I, you know, and I really want to start off by just saying it was really good to see Melanie. Courtwright's name in print in this context. I think this is like the time I saw her quoted for Sego launching Sego Verify. I mean, I just like that it's, they've built in kind of an end-to-end data quality system all about, you know, kind of tackling fraud and other threats to research integrity. It's called Sego Verify. So it's a great system built into the Sego network. So I like it. I'm glad that Melanie's there. As the chief strategy officer. Good for her. And again, I want more companies doing this exact thing, like coming up with: okay, what is our approach to verify responded data? And to just show people, putting money where their mouth is, that we are on top of fraud. It doesn't surprise me because we've had conversations with them before. Webinars about fraud, that doesn't surprise me.

Lenny Murphy: So I liked here that it wasn't one, multiple solutions through the workflow. Again, sorry, I keep using that word, but from identity validation and all the way through their, you know, their participation within research. So there are multiple points that they're measuring and a real focus on this core thing.

Karen Lynch: You don't get it.

Lenny Murphy: It gets really wonky, but it's not a reconciliation, which is basically: hey, we recruited for a survey, it was 500 people, we had to throw away, you know, 100 of them because they were bots or whatever, right? They're reducing that, and that's called the reconciliation rate. And the industry measure has been 5%, and they're trying to get lower than that, meaning that 95% plus. Of our respondents are validated as real humans and et cetera. So, yeah, hats off to them.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: All right. The big tech?

Karen Lynch: The big tech.

Lenny Murphy: Although it comes, we're already flirting about talking about some of those topics anyway, but yeah. Oh, well, should you know, should we talk about Bernice's LinkedIn post now?

Karen Lynch: We should. You know, I was just going to say, I feel like I had, I moved it around a whole lot, but and because the microsoft story is also related to it so um so while we're talking let's let's talk about bernice's post then let's talk about the microsoft story okay so as we as I as I design exactly how we talk about what so bernice um plauson uh senior director at rsb insights and analytics shared on linkedin um a good Read actually especially in the world of qualitative so speaking of of sego how ai assisted fraud is really um kind of a new this challenge for online qual, right? Let me just click on it. Different ways that AI is helping respondents fabricate answers kind of in real time. So, whether it's as they're trying to qualify for a study or kind of as they're, you know, again, being recruited or as they are actually in live interviewing, and it's using tools. And he calls some out like WhisperFlow or something called locked-in AI, which I didn't get to check, but it's like using voice translation and transcription technology all at the same time.  Like the ability to kind of translate what the recruiter might be saying and then type in a response thanks to the AI. And it all is happening really rapidly, which is a really big problem. So it's like data quality, like fraud is becoming easier. It's easier, it's easier to commit fraud thanks to AI at the very same time that the reason I paired it here is like we get a new tool like this Microsoft release, this new transcription tool, which is really great for this kind of voice. This voice transcription, and the ability to, you know, really improve workflows, um, potentially with qualitative research. So, it's like we get these, we get these great advancements thanks to technology. At the same time, we get an increase in fraud. So, we're putting all of this together, and you know, thus, even more of a need for, you know. Like Seiko Verify. So, anyway, so check out Bernice's article because it's a critical time to really ponder this issue of the possibilities of all the different ways and the new challenges. And what's cool about Bernice is that there's also sources cited at the end. I love it. As you know, kind of the editorial side of me loves the fact that there's some sources cited in there, too. So it's like you can, like, you can go down that rabbit hole of saying, oh, that's cool. I can, at the very beginning of this article, go and click on some other sources and read some more. But if this fraud is being kind of committed in stealth, thanks to the AI tools that are available, the very AI tools that can help a qualitative researcher can really be detrimental to a qualitative researcher. And it's concerning. I mean, discouraging.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. So Bernice and well, we get the shout out. Adrian Vermeers from Enlightened. Who's Enlightened? Thank you very much. And also one of our future list honorees was one of the finalists for the competition. My point being, like Adrian and Bernice, if you don't follow them on LinkedIn, you really should because they are both approaching. They are on and not the only ones, of course.

Karen Lynch: On this topic of fraud.

Lenny Murphy: And between them, they're looking at the issues from two different lenses and different angles and continue to point out that we still have this issue. To your point, and it's getting better because we're getting better at identifying it, but it's getting worse because they're getting better at using the tools to avoid identification.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, crazy times, crazy times. So, yeah. So, writing. Thanks for putting it out there. And I encourage everybody, we encourage everybody to go check them out and add to the commentary. Put your thoughts in there, put your thoughts, fears in there, and hopes for the future. Let's balance those fears with some hopes.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. And we will. We will get through it. So let's.

Karen Lynch: Let's bounce back up to this quick little piece on model fatigue, because I feel like fatigue can cover all of these things. And really, it's just a Read. This is just something to read and make everybody just say, oh, few, right? Because even people at a much higher tech level are feeling the fatigue of the rapid releases from leading AI labs. What they're basically saying, and this is a quote: every release is so damn good that it's hard to tell a step change anymore. And it's well understood that when you're on an exponential curve, you don't realize it till you can take a step back and look where you were and where you landed. So, the way everybody feels right now is this like fatigue of, wait a minute, what this new release, what does this even mean? How come I can't even tell how it feels so incrementally? Is that a big deal? And then you look back and you're like, Oh, if you're feeling that, like, totally normal, even the big guys are feeling it.

Lenny Murphy: So, yeah, well, and you know, it's really interesting because we have all these big guys saying, All right, AGI's here with these new models, right? Yeah, and I don't know, we that seemed like somehow where there would be some, you know. You know, angels on high and the cloud party or something, right? And it's like, no, to your point, the step changes. Now it's like, oh, sure, more capable, more functional. I've noticed it. I'm sure everybody's noticed it. You know, that there's, there's, you know, whatever. But now we just kind of slipped into AGI, according to the people, you know, in the field. And it's kind of, meh, okay. Yeah, um, which is just, you know, it's, it's weird. It's a weird place to be, um, yeah, so and so on, that you know we, uh, the meta, which actually don't, don't count meta out. Um, don't count meta out, don't count the two two people, you don't, don't bet against Zuckerberg and don't bet against Musk, right? Um, doesn't mean they're always going to win, but it's stupid to bet against them.

Karen Lynch: And you don't have to like it.

Lenny Murphy: And you don't have to like it.

Karen Lynch: There's nothing to do with that. You got to just stay aware of it.

Lenny Murphy: So be aware. Yep. And Meta, particularly, they lost an AI agent. Now, what struck me is like, this is the consumer play. Yeah. Yeah. Right. This is the consumer play.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. So, uh, and the thing about it is, well. Let's explain it first, and then I'll say the thing about it: they've launched these AI agents capable of apps, sending emails, making payments, etc., etc. So it's taking kind of conversational AI, but a consumer workflow is involved basically, you know, so it's working across the kind of consumer system. Um, and it might not seem like a big deal, but um. But in a consumer's hands, it's kind of like it's figuring out how to factor it into a consumer's daily life. And it will be a convenience play. It'll become easy to do. So it's going to force the thing it says in here, the quote I grabbed, despite their usefulness, these powerful agents have forced consumers to wrestle with difficult questions about how much of their privacy they're willing to give up. Consumers, this isn't something they are, we think about it, but this isn't something they necessarily think about in the overall scheme of things. They are not, they are not where we are in these conversations.

Lenny Murphy: And if you're on meta on Facebook, you've given away a buttload of your privacy already.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And like, I feel like that, like, for me, um, you know, my husband and on TikTok. We love TikTok, and you know, first to admit we love TikTok, and like that TikTok shop, like it, they made it so easy to buy things on the TikTok shop. And then I was like, hold up, I do not want to be purchasing at the TikTok shop. Like, you know, I was like, I don't think I want that, but the convenience of it at first was so easy. I was like, sure, I'll do that. But then I had to take a step back. And I'm thinking about that kind of across a different type of consumer, you know, and I'm thinking about if they like if I enter purchase information in meta, for example, and then it's like they want my email, because that's how you confirm purchases. So I'm making a purchase, and now they have all my purchase information, and I'm adding my email because that's how you confirm purchases. And now I've given access to all this information. All in of purchasing something, which seems so easy because I do it on Amazon all the time, right? Like it's the whole different thing that I'm so used to doing or Google, like it's so easy. I don't know. It's really, consumers are going to have to wrestle with this, but they don't know what they're, they don't even know what they're wrestling with.

Lenny Murphy: I know. Well, so, so, uh, you know, guys, I was out Monday through. Yesterday at a family wedding in Atlanta. And there was stuff I did not guess to be kidding. But Sunday night, I scramble to clear my plate. And I saw on my Grok account a free Grokbot, which is setting up. A series of agents. And there's some stuff I want to get done from a work standpoint. And I thought, hmm, all right. Well, maybe I can just, I'll experiment with this and I'll go grock bot to do the specific thing, you know, while I'm off enjoying doing whatever. And so I did. And then, like, okay, well, I got permission to get permission for this. I got permission to get permission for that. I got to get permission, you know, access to this, you know, in order to do these things. And so here's the slope. So I now have a chief of staff, and I already, that's how it's set up, right? And it's already established. Here's the things I'm interested in, I want to do. And it's, there's like six other bots, you know, and they're all. They have access to things like render and all of this type of stuff. Access Google Drive because there's, you files to pull from So, this slope that you're talking about, right? It's kind of the same thing because I cannot deny the efficiency gains. I cannot like, okay, this is cool. You can make my life better and easier from a work standpoint to do these things on my behalf. The trade-off is: I have to give you access to some aspects of my life that I've been resistant to giving access to at this point. Resistance is futile, for Star Trek fans out there. It's just that's the price you pay, is the trade-offs. So, and I'm right there too. I don't. I'm a happily recovering Facebook addict. So, you know, Metas, you're not going to get any of this. And for those who have known me for a long time, like Karen, Karen, Karen understands exactly why I'm not on Facebook anymore.

Karen Lynch: So I just need to smile. I'm just sitting here smiling.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, it's like, yes. And I'm so glad that you're not on Facebook anymore, Lenny. Because you piss me off all the time. Anyway, point being, yeah, it's, you get whatever the decision point is, to make this specific thing easier. Once you cross that line. Then everything else gets easier. And it's a steady progression of, moving into this world of, yeah, how do I deny the benefits of this? So, yeah.

Karen Lynch: So, thanks to this story because it wraps it all up together. It does. Target has hired their first chief AI officer, which, on the one hand, when I read that, I'm like, their first? That surprised me. And I started to really think about that. I'm like, I don't know, it just surprised me that they didn't do this a few years ago, or that they didn't already have one in place as a retail organization as large as they are, but they hadn't. And now was the time, right? Looking at it and I'm thinking, okay, why now? Like, why now? Right. And one of the things that they're. Into, obviously, is enterprise organization, large retail organization. They're talking about acknowledging that agentic commerce is coming, right? So they're going to need to get a handle on that. They know it. But also, they're talking there about target trend brain, helping the retailer get ahead of trends. Identifying styles and colors and materials that customers will be searching for. They've launched a conversational AI program to help customers find the right gifts. So their app will be heavily conversational AI assisted moving forward. If you have a target app, which I do, it's going to be more than just AI recommendations. There's going to be conversational AI built into that. So they're basically, you know, kind of recognizing what the future of retail is going to involve. And it says in this piece, like Walmart's been there, you know, Walmart's been there. And I'm surprised it took Charger this long to get there, but all of them will be going there, right? They just sort of like, speaking of like resistance is futile, like, like, okay, like, they're like, oh, yeah, resistance is futile. So, um, so anyway, you know. If you think that agentic commerce isn't coming for all of us, it is. is. This is what's happening. This will be the future. This is the way we will be shopping.

Lenny Murphy: There's no way around it. And if the, yeah, there's a lot of noise. There's just tons of conflicting noise. People were grappling with this as a species. Right? Yes. Truly, right now. You know, we haven't said these words in a long time, but we could still go into a dystopian hellscape, right? That could still.

Karen Lynch: The New York Times wrote about it this week. I kept saying, should I put the New York Times article about it this week? Or, you know, and then I think Anderson Cooper had it on CNN this week. And I'm like, let's not share the articles. Let's try to stay above doomsday scenarios. Let's not.

Lenny Murphy: Well, there's agendas at play and all that too.

Karen Lynch: We won't go Of course, of course. Of course. So that's why we're not talking about that. But, it's unnerving. It's all a little unnerving when we think about all of this. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: 100%. Well, there's an article to make it about all the robots at the show.

Karen Lynch: Right uh this consumer electronics show it was all robots and oh but did you also Read I'm sorry this is when this is when lenny and I just talked did you also Read that the the robot in china that that company's stock prices just just have gone down because like all of that the excitement about those robots they're not they're not all that you know so um so with every advancement comes a reality check you know these things are really cool but you know they're not ready for prime time yet so you know, two steps, one step forward, two maybe. You know, we're slow to progress, but we are definitely progressing.

Lenny Murphy: We're definitely progressing. And the money, but the business applications to bring it all back around, right? I mean, these, the stuff that we talk about here, it really is kind of no-brainer. Yeah. So, I mean, the benefits truly, you know, I don't think that the Salesforce. Is going to take over the world. So, I mean, maybe, you know, Mark Beniol might be going, well, what do you think my plan is? But the jokey, Mark, if you're happening. But the applications are just, the efficiencies.

Karen Lynch: Just like me using the grock pot right is the business application things are just yeah they're too too impactful too yeah so we'll keep on covering it yeah and you know one more plug for ix west if you are on the fence about coming to ix west I am going to be I don't know if I talked about this last I'm definitely going to be moderating a panel before the competition of past competition winners including alfred including Dana Kim from Highlight, including Ange from Ad Maple, including Andy from Riveter. And everybody is at a different phase of their journey, right? Dana Kim is still actively involved. Andy has stepped away from running the company, right? So the company, she's still, you know, she's still present, but she's not running it anymore. So the company is running without her. And, you know, Ange at Ad Maple is still in the thicket of the weeds. And then there's Alfred where he is. So, four founders, all at very different phases, all competition winners. It's a kick-ass panel because of that very reason alone. Alone, I'm really excited for that. So, if you are in it to win it, show up for that panel alone. It should be fantastic. I can't wait. Agreed wholeheartedly.

Lenny Murphy: Let's call it a wrap. We'll next time.

Karen Lynch: Thank you guys so much on my birthday. Oh, is it? Actually, fun fact: me and Bridget share the same birthday.

Lenny Murphy: I did not, I'm so bad at keeping up with those things.

Karen Lynch: I barely know, isn't that cool though? It, um. Yeah, that is cool. No, the 18th, the 18th is my birthday, it'll be a very exciting day, and um, yeah, Bridget and I share birthday, which is really fun for us all of the time, which is part of why we always say that's why we get on so well is because the stars were aligned.

Lenny Murphy: So, um, very cool. Well, uh, then, listeners, make sure that you tune in for a very special treat.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. There should be party apps, there should definitely be party apps or tiara.

Lenny Murphy: You can wear the tiara.

Karen Lynch: Karley, there should be a tiara. Can you put Karley?

Lenny Murphy: Can you do effects? Can you put a tiara, a digital tiara on both of us?

Karen Lynch: All right. Anyway, all right, friends. Yep. Signing off. We'll talk to you next week.

Lenny Murphy: Everybody, take care. Bye.

Links from the episode:

Salesforce in talks to acquire AI platform Listen Labs for $2 billion 

AI research startup Listen Labs scrubbed a $1.5B funding round for Salesforce talks 

Conveo’s AI-led approach to customer research received mainstream attention 

AI-native CRM startup Lightfield raised $47 million 

Qualtrics previewed XM Data & AI, arriving in 2027 

Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion 

GTM AI platform Clay raised $115 million at a $7.1 billion valuation 

Focus Crossroads has acquired expert-network and knowledge-services platform Zintro 

Nielsen and Mediaocean are integrating advanced-audience measurement into Prisma Media workflows 

Circana added Google’s open-source Meridian marketing-mix modeling framework to Liquid Mix

Stravito introduced AI Persona Builder 

Sago launched SagoVerify 

AI-assisted fraud is creating a new challenge for online qualitative research 

Rapid releases from leading AI labs are producing “model fatigue” for enterprise teams 

Meta launched an AI agent capable of accessing other apps, sending emails and making payments 

Microsoft released MAI-Transcribe-2 

Target hired its first chief AI officer