All episodes

An SE leader scaling from five to twenty SEs stopped hiring from the presales talent pool. His last six hires were former controllers and accountants — and they ramped faster than his traditional SE hires.

When demos commoditize and AI-first competitors look better on paper, what wins deals? Nate makes the case that accountability is now the durable moat — and explains how SE leaders need to retrain teams to sell it.

Ava walks through how she now evaluates every vendor — and why the way she buys software today is exactly how her customers will buy from her tomorrow.

SaaS vendors are still hiding their API behind the Enterprise tier — and your customers are about to start asking for it. Nate breaks down what API maturity now means for SE leaders, both as buyers of software and as builders of their own product story.

Ava sent twelve SEs to a leadership course; six finished. The vendor wasn't the problem — she was. Nate and Ava unpack why training dies without manager reinforcement, and the one move that flips completion from 30% to 80%.

Nate shares an experiment: two SE teams, same AI demo tool, wildly different results. The difference? A fifteen-minute discovery gate that most teams skip.

Ava's team runs on agent orchestration that one of her SEs built on weekends. Nate pushes on the hard leadership questions this raises.

Your SE ran a dry run, sent a strategy reminder, and built a tight agenda. Five minutes into the demo, an AE went off-script and the whole flow collapsed. Nate and Ava break down why prepping the content isn't enough — and what SE leaders should do instead.

Before you can optimize the pre-demo huddle between your AE and SE, you need to make sure it actually happens. Nate and Ava discuss habit-first, quality-second.

What happens when your most experienced SE has been running demos for seven years with zero coaching? Nate and Ava discuss how to start that conversation without breaking trust.