RevOps After Dark: Dec. 7, 2023

Welcome to the world of #RevOps After Dark, where we get straight to the revenue news you (hopefully, probably) wanna know, adding in just a twinkle of that Rattle-brand twankle.

Now... on LinkedIn!

This week… before we get into anything actually valuable... some goofy, long-necked-dino company ( Commsor ?? ) came at us hard and we are humbly requesting your support.

Now let's get to it! #Rawr!

Business, Tools & Software News

?? OpenView? More like ClosedView Amiright?

In what some might say is the most shocking event to happen to a Boston company since the Tea Party, OpenView Venture Partners suspended new investments and laid off half its staff including every last VP and Associate, following the departure of two key leaders. The move comes amidst uncertainties about its future after raising a new $570 mill fund and "only" drawing $80 mill since their March raise. The Boston-based firm says they're now exploring options including supporting existing portfolio companies, potentially restructuring under a new leadership team. And that's some strong tea, no matter how you take it. ??

?? Your A.I. / Revenue Robot Rundown

As we approach the "terrifying ascent" portion of our parabolic curve toward the gray goo apocalypse, it's important to remember this New Yorker Cartoon from a few years ago:

Now, in the meantime, let's talk about the growing... always growing... state of A.I.

• Hype vs. reality: While A.I. is clearly a frequent topic of discussion among S&P 500 companies (nearly half mentioning have mentioned in their earnings calls since May), the actual implementation part of this whole thing is STRIKINGLY low, with only 4.4% of U.S. businesses reportedly using it . The gap between discussion and deployment could be attributed to A.I.'s early stages (say, with data privacy concerns), some lack of internal resources, or even the complexity of integrating new tech into established business models. Still, it's pretty hard to imagine a world where this % of businesses will remain this low, right? RIGHT? ??
• Fans of data unite! This week, DataCebo dropped an enterprise version of their popular open-source synthetic data library, which could be a valuable tool for those of you dealing with the pains and joys of data management and analysis.
• AI's multipurpose multitool: From Google's release of Gemini to Meta's new A.I. features , this week has been like a tech magic show where A.I. is the magician pulling non-cute rabbits out of hats... and those rabbits can do tricks like recognize a rubber ducky's best interests . Indeed, this is a disturbing universe.

?? Google on Spam: Jay Kay El Oh El

Remember the fated Outreach email from a few weeks ago warning us all of the coming spam-pocalypse? Yeah so... uh... psyche! Google recently reversed its stance on all those new bulk email delivery rules, clarifying that these changes apply only to personal Gmail addresses, not Google Workspace emails. Hehe. Silly them.

?? AWS: Fake it till you break it!

This week, everybody's favorite cloud provider, Amazon Web Services, introduced a new feature — which we're calling internally "Salt N Prepper" — allowing customers to simulate major outages in their environs. The development is particularly cool to us revenue-focused folks as anybody who has suffered such an outage knows... it directly impacts customer experience, operational alignment, data security, and more. We're excited about the feature ourselves, mainly to see where we can AHH - TSS push it.

?? New Salesforce Tower opens in Chi-town

Salesforce officially opened its new tower in The Windy City. The sustainable and state-of-the-art facility is apparently specifically designed to enhance employee collaboration and comfort —?shockingly unlike, among other things, the Salesforce U.I. ??? After you stop laughing at that amazing joke, you actualy should check out some pictures here . It does look real nice.

Strategy & Tactic News

?? Dating and Cold Outreach: Strikingly Similar

Regular readers may recall.... we here at the RAD have a soft spot in our cold-blooded heart for a metaphor, and this week, the one and only Jen Allen-Knuth AKA DemandJen had a lovely post linking getting dates on Bumble and unsolicited email. Turns out, literally and figuratively "swiping right" on every profile and sending a generic message to secure a date? Yeah, doesn't work. (Trust me. I've already tried.) She does a better job than we could ever .

?? New RevOps Trends Report Who Dis

BoostUp.ai 's 2024 RevOps Trends Report dished some solid insights into the evolution of RevOps this week, highlighting a need for efficient growth and evolution for the coming year. Key findings indicated the trend towards maintaining or reducing budgets (yeah, no kidding ??) and the need for the function to focus on operational challenges like process alignment and data quality. They've got a presser here for more. Nice work to the team over there.

Wanna tell *us* what *you're* seeing from the field? Good news! We *just* dropped our own survey today (fill 'er out here now and we'll send you the report a week earlier the rest of the public so you can act all sneaky and cool).

?? Make RevOps Leader a Chief of Staff?

An SME we frequently fawn over, Max Maeder , recently wrote a post that shook us to our core: What if CEOs, who often have a bit of blind spot in Go-To-Market strategies (uhh not here though ??) due to their background in Engineering, Product, or Finance — are the problem in terms of underinvesting in Revenue Operations? Max has many-a good point in arguing for appointing a RevOps leader as Chief of Staff, giving them far more visibility and ability to effectively bridge this knowledge gap. As usual for Max, this one is a real banger .

A Good Read

?? Did you know that it's National Pipeline Management Awareness Month?!

Well, it's not! But for some reason, bullsh*t occasions make people really excited so we decided to make it up and "celebrate" it anyway!

And to do that, we're actually offering REAL help: Here's how you can make pipeline management easy, and not suck: by making it easy and not suck for the whole team.

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And that's it for this week!

Keep and eye out next Thursnight, when we'll be bringing back more news and tips, and hopefully conclusive proof that we are more beloved than a stanky brontosaurus. Thanks for reading — remember you can always reach out to us at [email protected] for any questions, comments, concerns, or sonnets dedicated to the greatness of the T. Rex.