Doug Regner

Enterprise logos are real revenue and real credibility. I'm not saying don't pursue them. But if you're pre-product-market-fit, chasing enterprise is a great way to burn 6 months of runway on a deal that never closes. Better to focus on smaller companies with desperate pain that can move faster.

Most deals stall because there's no internal champion. Someone was interested. Their boss wasn't prioritizing it. The budget got frozen. A reorg happened. The deal just... stops. No rejection. No feedback. Just silence.

Every early-stage founder wants big enterprise logos. Few are ready for what it actually takes to get one. Here's what they don't tell you:

Well done Team Qdrant!

@TrentSiggard @GovCox @DeptofWar @TealDrones @ARK_Electr0nics @RainmakerCorp Great call on Ark. Unsung hero

@GovCox @DeptofWar Lots of Vector in this video. Let’s not forget about @TealDrones , Fortem Technologies counter UAS, @ARK_Electr0nics - the component backbone of the US drone industry, Aeroviornment’s 200,000 sq foot FreedomWerx factory, @RainmakerCorp making water abundant, etc. Go Utah!

Utah is answering the call to build America’s drone industrial base — with domestic manufacturing, vertical integration, and rapid delivery. Our growing drone industry strengthens our economy and supports those who defend our nation. 🇺🇸 More: whitehouse.gov/presidential-a… @DeptofWar @USCTO47 @mkratsios47

@nikillinit LinkedIn still works but it’s getting harder and harder. It will eventually choke with volume

Been having a bunch of convos with founders about marketing/sales. One common thing that’s come up is that cold outreach for startups (linkedin, email, etc.) seems to effectively be a completely dead channel now unless you have a large existing brand. This includes performance marketing through these channels Honestly seems like the ONLY way to get customers for B2B now -events - warm intros from advisor/venture firms - prosumer where employees are already using a free tier of the tool - Some form of channel partnership with a company that already has distribution (dicey depending on their reputation with customers)

@chandlerjward @bryce Utah is in business when there are 3k top engineers

@bryce Utah is a small ecosystem. There are probably ~400 engineers and ~3K AEs and 93 Founder who created all the value.

Something about this doesn’t add up. Utah doesn’t have a single public “tech” company with a billion dollar market cap. And every company that did went private when the ZIRP money ran out. I love Utah but something here is fundamentally broken.

Sales has a few more years left!

Major life hack: Be optimistic. The way you choose to perceive the world impacts every single area of your life. Choose wisely.

The biggest challenge for GTM automation companies: The product alpha weakens the more market share they have.

@MrRazzi17 They are mostly shortcuts. And once enough people know the shortcut…

quite bearish on some of these new AI GTM tools. Sent 200 LinkedIn messages, personalized each one manually, hit rate was excellent. Feels like buyers can smell synthetic effort instantly. The tools mostly just automate your way to being ignored.

Unpopular take in age of AI: You don’t need hyper personalized messaging for successful sales prospecting Instead: -Focus on an extremely narrow persona that you know for certain feels the pain your product solves. -Be concise and clear how your solution will help -Reference customers that persona knows -Offer proof as a next step. Don’t ask for time.

@leveredvlad Don’t let the AI SDR/GTM Engineering Industrial Complex hear this! :)

all gtm channels will be competed out with AI: - cold email - organic blogs / video /seo - paid ads (CPCs blow out) what remains is what can't be scaled with AI: - in person events - partnerships - endorsements i call it "the return of the salesman".

@StuffLiamTweets Tech’s quiet contempt for sales is its most expensive delusion

“Do we really need someone with a sales background to sell? Can’t we just hire a smart person from consulting or banking? How hard could it be?” “Well, do we really need more engineers to build the product? Isn’t Claude / Cursor doing most of the work anyway?” 🙂 I don’t agree we either statement, but hear the first one a lot. Engineering is a craft. Sales is a craft. Don’t make simple things hard, recruit people who are great at their craft.

@JoshuaKushner Congrats @JoshuaKushner and @YashodaClark!

We are pleased to announce the close of Thrive X. Exceeding $10 billion, Thrive X comprises $1 billion designated for early-stage investments and $9 billion designated for growth-stage investments. We do not view this as a milestone, but as a commitment to the long work ahead. We view Thrive as a company. Our product is partnership - the willingness to commit deeply to a small number of founders, and to stand with them through momentum and adversity. This is the discipline we bring to our work, and the responsibility we accept when founders partner with Thrive. We do not hedge. Concentration demands loyalty to the founders and missions we back. In this moment, exposure alone is not a strategy. Judgment without commitment is not enough. Advantage will accrue to those who choose deliberately, commit deeply, and endure through difficult moments. Thrive was founded to be an enabling technology for the world we want to see. We are deeply aware that we are not the main character. The founders that we are fortunate enough to partner with are the artists. Our role is to help create the conditions where great work can come to life. We take a long view grounded in the belief that category-defining companies tend to create structural compounding advantages over long arcs. This fund reflects the continuity of our approach and the ways our work has deepened alongside the founders we support. We are grateful for the trust our Limited Partners place in us, and for the opportunity to work alongside those who are building with purpose, integrity, and courage. thrivecap.com/thrive-x

@morganlinton All this work to still have Gmail or MSFT quarantine the emails.

Show this to your sales team.

Top tier discussion on scaling robotics in reality

Last night, @Unusual_VC & @roboto_ai hosted our 2nd dinner on Scaling Reliability in High-Stakes Robotics🤖 From surgical robots to autonomous forklifts, industrial arms to flying taxis, we saw different domains but the same reality: As robots scale from pilots → fleets, the long tail of edge cases + operational complexity become the problem. We dug into: 1️⃣ End-to-end learning in regulated, safety-critical systems 2️⃣ Detecting out-of-distribution events at massive scale 3️⃣ How connectivity tailwinds (e.g., Starlink) are unlocking reliable edge data Grateful to the incredible group of robotics leaders who made it such a rich conversation.