Dear friends,

In JC’s Newsletter, I share the articles, documentaries, and books I enjoyed the most in the last week, with some comments on how we relate to them at Alan. I do not endorse all the articles I share, they are up for debate. 

I’m doing it because a) I love reading, it is the way that I get most of my ideas, b) I’m already sharing those ideas with my team, and c) I would love to get your perspective on those. 

If you are not subscribed yet, it's right here! 

If you like it, please share it on social networks!

Share 💡JC's Newsletter

🔎 Some topics we will cover this week

• How AI can be used to upgrade sales, increase revenue, and improve SDR productivity.

• How to build deeper relationships with top-tier customers

• AI models that are personalized can provide significant value.

• Innovation and technology

👉 Thread by Spencer Scott on AI (PingThread)

❓Why am I sharing this article?

• I love the approach of upgrading Sales thanks to AI

• My buddy @umar482 runs software development shop in Pakistan. 

• Historically, some of his best customers are Shopify owners that he built custom apps for.

• @umar482 pulled a list of 100k Shopify sites with name, email, website, meta data, etc. Normally he would send some half baked shitty email that would result in a .01% reply rate.

• He built a tool that takes all the data in for each Shopify store, trains GPT-4 on what the site does/sells, then...HAS GPT-4 COME UP WITH AN IDEA FOR AN APP TO GENERATE MORE REVENUE FOR THE STORE, THEN PITCH THE APP IN A COLD EMAIL!!!!!

• The first email he showed me was GPT-4 pitching a Bath-Bomb company the idea of an app that allows users to build their own Bath-Bombs on the site... The email was insane!

• The owner RESPONDS with this!!!!

• @umar482 doesn't know shit about Bath-Bombs or Manufacturing... So he had GPT-4 respond to the follow up!!!!

• The most insane part... With 1 click he sent 3,000 emails just like this one TODAY!

• For the lest 30 minutes @umar482 has been DMing me the responses from TONs of Shopify owners who were just pitched APPs that DONT EXIST!!!!!!

👉 Thread by Sam Blond on SDR productivity (PingThread)

❓Why am I sharing this article?

• I think that focusing on ARR generated for everyone in the sales co’ is the way to go.

• How we 3x’d SDR productivity with 1 change at Brex

• SDR’s were incentivized 100% on opportunity creation

• They were generating a high quantity of low quality opportunities. They didn’t care about revenue

• We decided to try incentivizing SDR’s 100% on revenue generated from the opportunities they sourced. The next month we saw an immediate impact - conversion rates went up and deal sizes increased.

• Over the next few months the average productivity (revenue contribution) of each SDR increased by 3x.

👉 The Startup’s Guide to Customer Advocacy: How to Get Closer to Your Champions (First Round Review)

❓Why am I sharing this article?

• How to differentiate when you do events (or something else) vs. the competition? 

• I think we are building a kind of unique network with healthybusiness.org

• We have started an executive sponsorship program. 

• All of these programs are designed to touch top-tier customers — primarily focused on VPs and above who are decision-makers. We want to organically build a relationship with them and understand their needs, with hopes that it will enable them to fully utilize our product and to want to engage with us more.

• When customers feel more deeply involved in the direction of the product, when they see that their feedback is actually being leveraged, and when we can design experiences that add value instead of wasting their time, that’s when they’re more likely to become long-term partners.

• Executive sponsorship program: 

  • These pair your own executives with the top customers that you’re looking to develop deeper relationships with. This is about developing and deepening relationships for the long haul — it shouldn’t be seen as the latest quick-fix sales tactic. 

  • That means making sure the customer or prospect gets something meaningful out of it

• If you're hosting a roundtable and all your competitors are doing roundtables, then all your prospects are getting the same invitation. Why would that executive come to your round table versus the five other options they have?

• Can you offer up a network that your customers can't get anywhere else?

👉 LinkedIn Launches Ad Targeting (The Split)

• Wild to me this didn’t already exist. But if you run B2B-focused ads, probably worth giving LinkedIn’s new targeting a shot.

👉 OpenStore Drive: “Passive Income” for Shopify Brands (The Split)

❓Why am I sharing this article?

• As we use Zapier for some topics.

• Agreed on Youtube Shorts & Linkedin for B2B!

• Zapier’s New Natural Language Actions API: This one is pretty cool - it essentially uses LLMs to make LLM API's easier for developers to use. If you’re not familiar with Zapier, they create tools that enable their customers to build automations between various pieces of software. This new API allows developers to incorporate Zapier workflows into any text-based interface. Of all these recent launches, this probably opens up the most new use cases and most exciting for startups.

• YouTube Shorts Pulls Ahead of Reels: For content creators, I think Shorts (consumer) and LinkedIn (for B2B) will turn out to be the best channels of 2023. h/t Isaac for sharing.

👉 Planning for AGI and beyond (OpenAI)

• We have a nonprofit that governs us and lets us operate for the good of humanity (and can override any for-profit interests), including letting us do things like cancel our equity obligations to shareholders if needed for safety and sponsor the world’s most comprehensive UBI experiment.

👉 Winners and losers in the race to add AI (Platformer)

❓Why am I sharing this article?

• Our vision with journaling and what should be Alan

• There should also be real value in more personalized AI models. 

• I’ve spent the past year or so writing a daily journal in an app called Mem, which offers its own set of ChatGPT-based features to premium subscribers. 

• Eventually, I imagine I’ll be able to ask my journal all sorts of questions in natural language. What was I worried about last summer? When’s the last time I saw my friend Brian? A journal that gets good at that sort of thing could command a premium price, I think.

  ---

👉 Microsoft’s Latest AI Assistant Is Meant for Marketers, Customer Reps and Work Apps (Bloomberg)

❓Why am I sharing this article?

• All Incumbents will use AI too at some point.

• The question is how you innovate more thanks to the technology 

• The software giant is introducing an AI assistant—called Dynamics 365 Copilot — for applications that handle tasks such as sales, marketing and customer service.

  • Based on technology from OpenAI, the software can draft contextual chat and email answers to customer-service queries.

  • It can help marketers come up with customer categories to target, and write product listings for ecommerce. 

  • The new capabilities are being released in preview form on Monday and are being tested by hundreds of early customers. 

  • For example, Italian aperitif maker Campari is trying out the marketing tools to concoct targeted campaigns for events around the Negroni cocktail.

• Microsoft also said its next set of AI announcements, planned for March 16, will relate to “workplace productivity,” a term the software maker usually uses to mean Office software

• For customer service representatives, Microsoft says its copilot will comb through a company’s materials and a customer’s case history and can offer answers based on that knowledge. Nadella also noted that his company won’t use customer data for Microsoft’s own purposes.

👉 AI in 2023: The Application Layer Has Arrived (Digital Native)

❓Why am I sharing this article?

• “Explain like I’m 5” prompt could be really helpful for healthcare to understand documents. 

• Imagine a company that combs through your camera roll and—with stunning accuracy—recommends a new wardrobe for you. Or maybe the company simply asks you to link your Instagram account, and then it digests every like and follow you’ve ever made to deliver incredibly accurate, personalized fashion recommendations.

• Prompt: “What are wormholes? Explain like I am 5.”

It’s already over! Please share JC’s Newsletter with your friends, and subscribe 👇

Let’s talk about this together on LinkedIn or on Twitter. Have a good week!