Darius Contractor

The other week I sat down with Krish Ramineni Co-founder & CEO of Fireflies.ai We were in person, that helped produce one of my fav SaaS Revolution show podcasts of the year. And it also created a full circle moment. More on that in a bit. Krish started building Fireflies.ai 9 years ago. Being too early in AI and building a meetings note taker came with it's challenges. He was on podcasts talking about his journey and AI before Chat GPT was released and gave us all an AHA moment. Since then Fireflies has gone on to Unicorn valuation. It's riding the wave very well and the guy is a workaholic. 996 culture and then some. The podcast covers: ✅ Why AI is the worst place to be complacent ✅ Building AI businesses ✅ AI Automations ✅Worklife balance and more. Back to the full circle moment. Krish shared on the podcast that when he was starting out building fireflies.ai he used to watch SaaStock videos on youtube to help him learn and one in particular, I think it was 'How to build a massive SaaS business selling to SMBs' by Mark MacLeod, helped Krish maintain the SMB focus, whilst everyone else was telling him to be successful he needed to move upmarket. Now Krish is running a Unicorn AI company and will be speaking at next years SaaStock USA conference, that will help the next wave of builders. I love that. You can listen or watch the podcast 'Building an AI Native company before LLM's on all podcast players or our youtube channel. Here's to more full circle moments and helping founders like Krish through SaaStock events and content and to more in person podcast episodes. Here's a clip from the podcast around complacency (in the AI era)

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The hottest role in AI startups right now isn’t Forward Deployed Engineers. It isn't GTM Engineers. It’s Deployment Strategists. Decagon calls it an “Agent Product Manager.” Harvey calls it a “Solutions Architect.” Palantir Technologies has had versions of this role for years. And the salaries are climbing fast: - Decagon: $200k–$285k - Palantir Technologies: $120k–$200k - Figma: $150k–$260k - Ramp: $100k–$180k - Harvey: $190k–$260k So who are these people? They are usually pseudo-technical -- CS or engineering majors, or folks with technical work experience. Many come from 2 years in consulting, IB, or PE, then jump into startups to get their hands dirty. They are young, hungry, polished, and comfortable being in front of customers. What do they actually do? They make sure enterprise AI deployments succeed. A $100k+ deal does not survive on a nice pitch or a self-serve onboarding flow. It survives if the customer sees value in the pilot. That means: - Embedding directly with the customer - Designing prompt logic for specific workflows - Working with engineering to align integrations and data flow - Helping exec teams define their AI roadmap - Running feedback loops into product and GTM Why does this role matter so much? Because enterprise AI is messy. Integrations, data transfer, and adoption make or break a deal. Most buyers are using AI for the first time, and each has unique workflows. Deployment Strategists bridge that gap. They own the outcome. They are accountable for making pilots successful, which often means millions in revenue down the line. At Conversion, Sam Bochner has been leading this work for us. We are now thinking about scaling it into a full team. Because a few successful pilots can fund an entire department, and the cost of failed deployments is too high to ignore. Is this just a rebrand of customer success? Not really. Success is about answering tickets and renewals. Deployment Strategy is about going deep with a few enterprise accounts, extracting maximum value, and ensuring the pilot closes into a multi-year contract. Call it Agent PM, Solutions Architect, or Deployment Strategist. Whatever the title, this is becoming one of the most important roles in AI SaaS.

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The Headline family is experiencing incredible momentum, and today our portfolio company DeepIP is announcing a $25M Series B, bringing total funding to $40M.  This is the kind of company that doesn’t just add AI to a workflow, but it sets the standard for an entire category. The momentum speaks for itself: 1️⃣ 10x ARR growth in < 18 months 2️⃣ Trusted by 400+ law firms and leading corporate IP teams globally 3️⃣ 2M+ chats on the DeepIP platform We’ve had the chance to back FX (Francois-Xavier) L. and Edouard D., leading their Seed round with Headline. Watching them take on a problem as complex and high-stakes as patent work has been genuinely impressive. And working with them has been an absolute pleasure: these 2 are coupling very high ambition and humility. Tech built in Europe, but opening the US office very early and FX starting a life in NYC with his family with 0 hesitation in order to build a global category leader in the IP industry. What convinced me early is still what stands out today: patent teams don’t need another standalone AI tool. They need something that fits the way the work actually happens: documents, long-running matters, multiple stakeholders, and zero room for sloppy context handoffs. Big congrats to the whole DeepIP team + Korelya Capital, Balderton & Serena Proud that we’re doubling down at Headline and continuing the support for what’s next!

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Seth Levine nailed it! The concentration problem isn't just a GP pain point... it's choking innovation. When capital pools around the same 20 funds, emerging managers and founders get shut out. Love that he's using his platform to call this out. Foundry has backed 50+ emerging managers. That's the diversification the ecosystem needs. This is exactly why Carta exists — making capital allocation visible and accessible. Capital Evolution hits at exactly the right moment. Thanks for having us Daniel Dart. Team Carta loves the community of FUTURE TITANS you have built 🚀

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the best lever to generate pipeline with outbound is literally to just have a strong offer this frustrates people in the modern leadgen space because they want modern AI-native tools to be the best lever. a strong offer seems too simple and underwhelming

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📣 Female Tech Founders in NYC — New Accelerator Alert! Scale Ready Studio is a new 12-week, revenue-focused growth program for women building tech startups in NYC, created by Women.NYC in partnership with Get Sh!t Done. This program is designed to help founders scale sustainably through: - Revenue and profit growth - Strong systems and operations - Weekly strategy labs - Hybrid coaching (1:1 + group) - Technical assistance - In-person Founder Days The program culminates in a Deal Day, where participants pitch to a curated group of investors. 🗓 Applications close January 12

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