ZINFI Technologies, Inc.

Building Scalable Companies via Venture Studios A venture studio acts as a central engine that simultaneously builds and scales multiple startups. Unlike traditional accelerators, it offers long-term, hands-on involvement by integrating the roles of entrepreneur, operator, and investor. According to Matt Burris, a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on Venture Studios and a partner at the 9point8 Collective and a Senior Director at the Venture Studio Forum, notes in a podcast with Sugata Sanyal (Founder & CEO of ZINFI), this model provides essential day-one capital and operational support, allowing founders to prioritize product-market fit over administrative tasks. By centralizing resources, studios function similarly to ZINFI’s Unified Partner Management platform, orchestrating complex variables into a streamlined infrastructure. As we move through 2026, the studio model has emerged as a powerful alternative to standard venture capital. It is particularly effective for corporate innovators and seasoned entrepreneurs seeking to minimize risk while launching high-growth, scalable companies. “The Venture Studio is a co-founder. They have a vote on how things are going down, just like any other co-founder… preliminary numbers show that a Venture Studio provides about a hundred times more hands-on support than an accelerator does. — Matt Burris. Related Guidebook Building Scalable Companies via Venture Studios How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of Building Scalable Companies via Venture Studios Best Practices Guidebook. How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Building Scalable Companies via Venture Studios ✔ Chapter 1: Defining the Venture Studio Asset Class How to automate scalable partner ecosystems via the venture studio model? A venture studio is defined as a company that builds other scalable companies by playing three core roles in every venture it creates: the entrepreneur, the operator, and the investor. This triple-threat involvement distinguishes the studio model from traditional venture capital or incubators, which typically only provide one or two of these elements in a fragmented manner. By integrating these functions, studios can move significantly faster through the "zero-to-one" phase, providing all the legal, financial, and operational support that a solo founder would otherwise have to source independently. The flexibility of the venture studio model allows it to leverage diverse capital sources beyond traditional venture capital, including private equity exits, public financing, and state-level debt vehicles. This versatility is one of the model’s most untapped aspects, as it allows studios to build scalable companies tailored to specific financing models. Matt Burris notes that this adaptability changes the economics of the studio and dictates the types of companies built, whether deep tech, biotech, or "boring" but profitable businesses. For entrepreneurs, the studio serves as a high-conviction partner, providing thousands of hours of hands-on support, compared to the minimal hours offered by standard accelerator programs. This level of involvement ensures that the venture undergoes a "pressure cooker" of validation before significant time is invested. By acting as a co-founder, the studio ensures that the unit economics are modeled appropriately and the business case is bulletproof before the company ever attempts to raise follow-on capital from the broader market. ✔ Chapter 2: Driving Revenue Through a Strategic Co-Selling Framework What are the best practices for partner lifecycle management in corporate studios in 2026? Successful venture building within a large corporation — often termed intrapreneurship — typically requires either a high-level champion in leadership or a founder willing to navigate a long, brutal internal journey. The roadmap in a large company is often rigid, with budgets and teams already accounted for, making it difficult to insert new, disruptive ideas for scalable companies. Matt Burris explains that the venture studio model solves this by fully encapsulating the skills needed to take an idea to market without relying on external corporate resources. One of the primary blockers in corporate innovation is “blindness” to true costs, which prevents accurate modeling of unit economics and often leads to project rejection by upper management. Outside the corporate structure, venture studios have a much clearer picture of these costs because they have to manage them directly to survive. This transparency enables more realistic business cases and better alignment with customer needs, as independent studios are not constrained by internal corporate politics or sales-deal sensitivities that often prevent intrapreneurs from speaking directly to customers. The studio model compensates for founder gaps by tailoring support based on the entrepreneur’s background, whether they are a serial founder or a career professional with decades of corporate experience. While a VC might provide introductions to its network, a studio provides the operational muscle to execute on those introductions and build scalable companies. This distinction is critical for corporate entities looking to innovate without disrupting their core operations, as the studio acts as a standalone engine for growth and experimentation. ✔ Chapter 3: The Future of AI and Human Connection in Partnerships How does AI-powered PRM infrastructure drive partner-led growth ROI? The future of venture building is increasingly data-driven, with top-tier studios utilizing custom AI to map opportunities and validate ideas for scalable companies with unprecedented speed. For example, some advanced studios in Europe maintain massive databases of thousands of transcribed customer discovery calls, which are then loaded into proprietary AI models. When a new idea is proposed, the AI can immediately cross-reference it against existing customer profiles and interviewer notes to identify potential pitfalls or overlooked market angles. This sophisticated process is what makes or breaks the "zero-to-one" phase in a venture studio. Unlike individual startups that may struggle to find a single valid opportunity, a studio’s ability to run multiple ideas through a data-rich validation engine increases the success rate for scalable companies. This level of infrastructure is rarely seen even in large corporations, where innovation teams are often siloed or prohibited from direct customer interaction. By building these processes into the studio’s core, they create a repeatable factory for high-quality company formation. As the venture studio category continues to build momentum — now with several thousand studios globally — the formalization of these best practices is essential. Organizations like the Venture Studio Forum are working to document these "stunning" internal processes to help entrepreneurs and investors identify the right partners. In the next 24 months, the integration of AI into deal assessment and portfolio management will likely become the standard, further widening the gap between traditional investment models and the high-touch, data-powered venture studio focused on scalable companies. Frequently Asked Questions What is a venture studio, and how is it different from an accelerator, incubator, or VC fund? A venture studio is a company that builds other scalable companies by simultaneously acting as an entrepreneur, operator, and investor in each startup it creates. Unlike accelerators or incubators that offer limited-duration programs—or VCs that primarily provide capital—a studio is a true co-founder with a vote, delivering day-one capital plus deep legal, financial, and operational support. How does the studio model reduce “zero-to-one” friction and de-risk early company formation? Studios centralize critical resources—capital, infrastructure, and strategic validation—so founders can focus on product–market fit instead of administrative overhead. Startups are run through a “pressure cooker” of validation where unit economics are modeled, and business cases are stress-tested before pursuing outside capital, ensuring the fundamentals for scalable companies are sound from day one. What capital sources can venture studios use, and how does that shape the companies they build? Beyond traditional venture capital, studios can leverage private equity exits, public financing, and state-level debt vehicles. This flexibility changes the studio’s unit economics and influences which ventures they pursue—ranging from deep tech and biotech to “boring” but profitable scalable companies—because each financing style aligns with different growth profiles. When should corporations consider a venture studio instead of intrapreneurship? Large organizations often face rigid roadmaps, internal politics, and “blindness” to true costs, which stall new ventures. A venture studio operates independently of these constraints, bringing transparent cost management, direct customer access, and the operational muscle to execute on scalable companies without disrupting core operations. How are AI and data reshaping venture studios—and what does that imply for partner-led growth? Leading studios use proprietary AI and large datasets to rapidly validate ideas and map opportunities, improving zero-to-one success rates for scalable companies. This mirrors how AI-powered partner relationship management (PRM) systems and platforms like ZINFI’s Unified Partner Management orchestrate complex ecosystem variables into a single, scalable infrastructure to drive better partner-led ROI.

Scaling Nonprofit Fundraising Through Strategic Partner Ecosystem Orchestration Partner Ecosystem Orchestration is the strategic alignment of diverse third-party entities to deliver integrated value to a specific market segment. In the nonprofit sector, this involves connecting donors, charitable organizations, and technology providers to ensure efficient mission fulfillment. According to Jamie Mueller, an industry leader at FundraiseUp, scaling these ecosystems requires a shift from transactional referrals to deeply integrated business partnerships. The nonprofit market represents approximately $1 trillion in annual global revenue. Managing this scale requires a sophisticated tech stack and a robust partner strategy. By leveraging ZINFI Unified Partner Management principles, organizations can automate the partner journey from recruitment to revenue influence. This approach ensures all stakeholders win while maximizing social impact through modern donation technologies. “When we had a partner involved in a deal, whether they sourced it or were assisting or influencing it, we saw double-digit improvements in closed win rates.” — Jamie Mueller, SME. Related Guidebook Scaling Nonprofit Fundraising Through Strategic Partner Ecosystem Orchestration How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of Scaling Nonprofit Fundraising Through Strategic Partner Ecosystem Orchestration Best Practices Guidebook. How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Scaling Nonprofit Fundraising Through Strategic Partner Ecosystem Orchestration ✔ Chapter 1: Understanding the Global Nonprofit Landscape The global nonprofit market operates with approximately $1 trillion in annual revenue influenced by diverse organizations. This ecosystem includes major players like United Way, UNICEF, and Greenpeace along with thousands of local community groups. Industry practitioner Jamie Mueller notes that the nonprofit tech sector often lags behind for-profit industries by five to ten years. This gap creates a significant opportunity for innovation through specialized SaaS solutions like Fundraise Up. Fundraising organizations range from medical research institutions to local food banks and social safety nets. Each entity requires secure ways to manage donor data and process financial contributions effectively. Technology partners must bridge the gap between legacy systems and modern e-commerce standards. Successful orchestration requires understanding these unique tax codes and regulatory environments across different global regions. Modern nonprofits increasingly rely on an ecosystem of consultants, marketing agencies, and software vendors. These partners help organizations move away from traditional direct mail toward digital-first fundraising strategies. The complexity of these interactions necessitates a unified approach to partner relationship management. Orchestrating these players ensures that funds are generated and stewarded with high ethical standards. ✔ Chapter 2: The Quadruple Win Partnership Model Strategic partnerships in the fundraising space must facilitate a “quadruple win” to remain sustainable and profitable. First, the individual donor must feel a personal connection and see the measurable impact of their gift. Second, the nonprofit organization must maximize its revenue while minimizing the friction associated with collecting donations. Third, the consulting or technology partners must find value in recommending specific solutions to their clients. Fundraise Up only succeeds when these three other stakeholders achieve their goals simultaneously. This transactional model creates a symbiotic cycle where program impact drives more donor engagement. Industry practitioner Jamie Mueller emphasizes that no company can thrive in the modern market without active collaboration. This model aligns business goals with social impact to create a scalable growth engine for all parties. The Quadruple Win requires moving beyond simple referral fees to true business alignment. Partners provide the localized expertise and implementation services that software vendors cannot offer alone. By integrating Fundraise Up into a larger tech stack including CRMs like Salesforce, partners deliver a complete solution. This collaborative approach builds long-term trust and ensures the nonprofit mission remains the central focus. ✔ Chapter 3: Restructuring Teams for Revenue Influence Scaling a partner program requires a transition from purely transactional activities to tracking total revenue influence. In 2024, Fundraise Up focused on analyzing partner performance and establishing clear performance standards. This analytical phase identified that partner involvement leads to a 10% or higher increase in closed-won rates. Consequently, the team shifted its focus from just sourcing leads to influencing the entire customer journey. The team structure now reflects a sophisticated partner journey model with specialized roles for success and hunting. A dedicated Partner Success Manager handles a small group of high-value partners that generate half of the channel revenue. This role provides white-glove service, including QBRs and direct access to the product roadmap. Meanwhile, Partner Managers act as hunters to recruit net-new partners in specific verticals like higher education. Successful orchestration involves rotating partners between tiers based on longevity and business behavior. Industry practitioner Jamie Mueller utilizes tools like Crossbeam for account mapping to align with the direct sales team. This alignment ensures that partners are focused on the highest-priority enterprise logos. By prioritizing influence over simple referrals, the organization maximizes the strategic value of the entire ecosystem.

Future of B2B Marketing: AI & Trust Redefining the Journey The world of B2B Marketing is undergoing a seismic shift, driven by rapid advancements in technology and a fundamental change in how buyers engage. In this insightful discussion, Sugata Sanyal, Founder & CEO of ZINFI, sits down with industry veteran Rick Wootten to dissect the forces shaping the future. They explore the journey of demand generation from its roots in Web 1.0 to the complexities of today’s multi-touch, multi-channel environment. Key topics include the disruptive impact of AI Marketing on content strategy, the critical challenge of building and maintaining trust with increasingly skeptical buyers, and the strategies marketers must adopt to navigate this new, decentralized B2B Buyer Journey. Tune in to learn how a multi-touch playbook can secure your success in the Future of Marketing and pipeline generation. Related Guidebook Hybrid Cloud and Edge AI Computing Impacting the Future of PRM How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of Hybrid Cloud and Edge AI Computing Impacting the Future of PRM Best Practices Guidebook. How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Future of B2B Marketing: AI & Trust Redefining the Journey ✔ Chapter 1: The Historical Arc of Demand Generation: From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 The genesis of digital B2B Marketing was a far cry from the complex, data-driven systems of today. The early Web 1.0 era saw marketing websites primarily serving as little more than online brochures—a static catalog that users could browse, but not truly interact with. Demand generation at the time was predominantly manual and personal, relying heavily on in-person events and cold-calling. The shift began with pioneers who introduced the novel idea of a web form, allowing companies to capture customer interest and respond almost in real-time, effectively getting over the buyer’s challenge of having to call and listen to a sales pitch. This consumerization of IT, as it was called, marked a pivotal moment in which decision-making began to move online, providing a massive new opportunity for companies to capitalize on digital channels. This foundational change in how the buyer received information set the stage for the next phase of digital evolution. The transition to Web 2.0 fundamentally reshaped B2B Marketing strategies by shifting the focus from simple online presence to building dynamic e-commerce businesses and, critically, customer relationships. This era saw the advent of marketing automation tools, such as Eloqua, which provided the first glimpses of intelligence—the ability to send personalized communications and track email opens or purchases. This increased sophistication enabled marketers to move beyond simple database emails and leverage new insights into buyer behavior, allowing them to tailor content and target individuals based on the problems they were trying to solve. The intelligence, though primitive by today’s standards, offered marketers a distinct advantage in improving conversion rates and revenue generation, even leading to aggressive promotional tactics that created channel conflicts that were common in 2005-2006. The key lesson learned was the critical need to adapt quickly and develop effective techniques for scaling campaigns. The evolution from a static online brochure to an interactive online experience introduced the concept of the B2B Buyer Journey, a notion previously reserved for consumer-centric marketing. This period was characterized by a rapid, shared innovation where marketers constantly reviewed and copied the source code of interesting websites to build upon each other’s techniques, drastically accelerating the sophistication of platforms. By the late 2000s, this collective knowledge had laid the groundwork for advanced capabilities, such as lead scoring, which became a centerpiece of inbound methodologies promoted by companies like HubSpot. This trajectory confirmed that the B2B Marketing playbook was no longer a matter of a single interaction, but an increasingly intelligent sequence of engagements, moving the industry decisively away from purely manual demand generation methods. ✔ Chapter 2: Navigating the Multi-Touch, Multi-Channel B2B Buyer Journey With the arrival of the iPhone era around 2007, the marketing landscape splintered, demanding a fundamentally different approach to the B2B Buyer Journey. The security-centric trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) meant that employees were now interacting with B2B content across laptops and personal phones, presenting a profound challenge for marketers who could not easily track one individual across multiple devices. This cross-device gap was partially filled by leveraging ideas and brand-building concepts from B2C, which had already invested heavily in digital channels. While initial ROI on tactics like in-app and mobile advertising was often underwhelming due to poor data and targeting, the core shift was clear: the buyer was now reachable on exponentially more platforms, from SMS and various social networks to targeted ads seen while shopping on Amazon. The central challenge in contemporary B2B Marketing is that the playbook is no longer a simple single-touch conversion, such as a web form lead, but a complex, multi-touch engagement model. Marketers must accept that a successful pipeline is often the result of a coordinated sequence of interactions across multiple channels. A company’s ideal playbook might involve seeing a person at an event, following up with content syndication, and then guiding them to a private executive dinner. Crucially, the effectiveness of any given channel is constantly in flux, making strategic re-evaluation essential. Channels previously considered obsolete, such as direct mail and radio, are now experiencing a resurgence in effectiveness precisely because they are not saturated, demonstrating that marketers must continually refine their tactics to maximize reach. Despite the explosion of channels and tactics, the tooling for B2B Marketing has also advanced dramatically to manage this complexity, particularly with orchestration platforms. Modern tools from companies like Adobe, Sixth Sense, and Demandbase enable marketers to view all these touchpoints and gather signals they previously couldn’t. For instance, these platforms can indicate that a target buyer is in a purchase cycle by revealing they downloaded a case study from a third-party site. This capability means that while the buyer’s journey is much more complicated, the technological ability to manage, track, and optimize campaigns across a multi-touch B2B Buyer Journey has also evolved, moving far beyond the “stone tools” of early marketing automation. ✔ Chapter 3: AI, the Trust Deficit, and the Future of B2B Marketing Skills The rise of generative AI introduces polarizing elements and a significant trust deficit into the already complex world of B2B Marketing. With AI capable of writing content and creating videos, the challenge lies in the current lack of trust that buyers, particularly Gen Z, have for media and advertising. This distrust is leading to a profound shift in information validation, signaling a potential return to the most fundamental source of influence: peer-to-peer networks and personal relationships. It is projected that as this new generation of budget owners advances in their careers, their network of knowledgeable peers will become the primary source for information, referrals, and validation, making the “human element” of marketing more critical than ever. The long-term outlook is optimistic, as transparency mechanisms, such as tagging AI-generated content, will eventually help to rebuild that foundational trust. Beyond content creation, AI is enabling practical B2B Marketing applications that fundamentally change the planning process and go-to-market engineering. AI’s real power lies in its ability to pull in and cross-reference massive, disparate datasets—such as census information, competitor office locations, and industry data—to generate actionable insights on which markets to enter quickly. This capacity for mass data analysis and orchestration is built into virtually every modern marketing tool, from Marketo to Sixth Sense, meaning that all future marketers must have a concept-level understanding of AI literacy. This analytical capability facilitates the ongoing convergence of marketing stacks and tactics between mid-market and enterprise organizations, where the complexity of the problems being solved remains the same. In building out a modern B2B Marketing team, a CMO’s focus must shift from pure technical skills to foundational soft skills, which are the only constants in an ever-changing landscape. The three critical non-negotiables for a successful modern marketer are Aptitude (raw ability), Passion (loving the job you do), and Self-Awareness (commitment to lifelong learning and constant self-improvement). Combined with AI literacy and an unrelenting commitment to consuming industry content, these traits will determine who succeeds in the future. The volatility of channels, the power of AI, and the buyer’s demand for trust ensure that continuous learning and core human qualities will drive the success of the Future of Marketing.

Future of Managed Service Providers: Automation, Security, and AI In this insightful episode, Sugata Sanyal, Founder & CEO of ZINFI, welcomes Michelle Accardi, CEO of Liongard, for a deep dive into the evolving world of channel partnerships and cybersecurity. Michelle shares her journey through significant scale-ups, offering critical insights on how managed service providers (MSPs) can maximize their business valuation. The discussion highlights the shift from one-time sales to recurring revenue, emphasizing the need for efficiency, automation, and a clearly monetized tech stack. They explore the impact of AI automation on service delivery and talent, concluding with a focus on human skills, curiosity, and the critical importance of a strong network in the channel ecosystem. Listen now to understand the future path for profitable MSP growth. Related Guidebook Hybrid Cloud and Edge AI Computing Impacting the Future of PRM How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of Hybrid Cloud and Edge AI Computing Impacting the Future of PRM Best Practices Guidebook. How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Future of Managed Service Providers: Automation, Security, and AI ✔ Chapter 1: Evolution of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Business Valuation The role of managed service providers (MSPs) has undergone a fundamental transformation over the last two decades. Starting as simple value-added resellers (VARs) focused on moving hardware, they evolved by adding services and, eventually, a software layer, creating new categories of service offerings. The key differentiator for success became the ability to capture recurring revenue, rather than relying on one-time sales. This transformation is critical because the central metric for valuing an MSP business today is its EBITDA (profit margin). Companies looking to be acquired for a reasonable multiple must establish strong fundamentals, focusing on growth and robust profit margins. Michelle Accardi, with her experience running roll-up MSP Logically, stresses that a healthy business is defined by its ability to generate revenue and maintain profitability. A crucial financial benchmark discussed for these service businesses is the “Rule of 40,” a metric commonly used in the SaaS world. This rule suggests that the sum of a company’s growth rate and its profit margin (EBITDA percentage) should roughly equal forty percent. Many MSPs, however, struggle to meet both growth and profitability goals simultaneously. To achieve this level of performance, MSPs must focus on driving profit through either growth (by adding new services) or improving efficiency (through cost-cutting/automation). Ultimately, businesses aiming for the highest returns should target an EBITDA margin of 15% to 20% combined with a growth engine of 15% to 20%. This strategic focus on financial health is crucial for achieving long-term success and a favorable business valuation. Driving efficiency is the cornerstone of a successful modern managed service provider (MSP) business. Outside of the Rule of 40 metric, core success attributes for an MSP include automation, a strong toolset, and the ability to leverage resources nearshore or offshore. However, the foundational element is having the right people in place who align with the core value proposition. Beyond operational efficiency, the most critical factor is the ability to monetize the technology stack. MSPs often experiment with new technology but fail to develop offerings around it to sell to their customer base. Every dollar spent on the tech stack must be viewed as an investment intended to generate more revenue and provide additional value to the end customer. This approach ensures that the business is not just technically capable, but fundamentally profitable and scalable for the future. ✔ Chapter 2: Cybersecurity, Asset Management, and AI Automation For growing managed service providers (MSPs), especially those with several hundred customers and a team of ten to twenty people, identifying areas for growth can be challenging in a brownfield environment where they must displace a competitor. Michelle Accardi suggests that the most critical first step, which sounds rudimentary, is for the MSP to understand what their customers truly have. This means taking a comprehensive inventory of all assets. From this inventory, MSPs can discover a wealth of information that informs them about what new, high-value services, particularly in security and IT automation, they should be selling. By understanding how a customer’s environment changes on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis, an MSP can help them rationalize their existing IT and security spending. This focus on a source of truth for assets, though unsexy, is where the real money is found in the services business. Liongard’s core offering aligns perfectly with this need for a source of truth, establishing itself as a cybersecurity SaaS platform. Their platform automates asset discovery, inventory, and monitoring of configuration changes to identify vulnerabilities and risks preemptively. The company targets MSPs and MSSPs with more than twenty customers, as complexity in asset inventory and risk management increases with customer count. A key feature is the use of AI to generate asset summaries for account managers, enabling them to discuss customer environments intelligently without requiring a technical background. By integrating with over 90 different IT systems, Liongard becomes a reliable, central source of truth for MSPs, enabling them to build their own automation on top, whether through RPA or agent-based AI. The discussion extends into the emerging concern of Shadow AI—users bringing their own unmanaged AI tools into the workplace, similar to the “bring your own device” trend. Managing these tools is complicated as they don’t fit into traditional hardware or human resource management systems. Michelle Accardi argues that the core focus for security shouldn’t be the AI tools themselves, but rather identities. Security must focus on identifying which identities have access to critical systems and underlying data and ensuring that access is properly tracked and controlled. Liongard is also integrating generative AI directly into its platform with the upcoming Answer IQ feature. This will enable partners to utilize natural language search to query the massive data lake for immediate insights, such as identifying which customers lack MFA-enabled accounts or determining which ports on a firewall pose a risk, thereby democratizing technical data for non-technical account managers. ✔ Chapter 3: AI in Service Delivery and the Future of Talent The immediate focus for managed service providers (MSPs) in adopting AI is two-fold: first, helping customers leverage available tools, such as Microsoft Copilot. Second, and more importantly for sophisticated MSPs, is utilizing AI internally to enhance their own service delivery and achieve efficiency. This internal automation, often achieved by mining data from a source of truth to identify new service offerings, must precede external services. Horizontal use cases, such as Copilot, are the current primary offerings, although some niche players are developing vertical-specific applications for industries like legal and hospitality. Ultimately, the goal is for MSPs to leverage AI to increase their efficiency before creating new bundled offers for their customers. A significant area of transformation is the use of AI agents to handle basic, high-volume customer requests. Instead of logging a traditional ticket, customers can use a self-service interface, such as a ChatGPT-like bot, to resolve simple problems and escalate to a human technician only when necessary. This shift is already evident in margin-constrained businesses, such as the hospitality and retail industries. For MSPs, this means the first line of defense—solving common, simple issues like Wi-Fi connectivity problems—can be automated. While this automation helps drive necessary profit margins, it also presents a risk to entry-level engineers. The changing landscape of service delivery has a direct impact on the talent pool. Historically, MSPs recruited frontline support from community colleges and trade schools. While new automation in the PSA (Professional Services Automation) industry created new categories and jobs in the past, the rise of AI agents means the path forward is complex. Michelle Accardi suggests a bifurcated path: some systems will utilize agentic AI to replace lower-skilled talent. In contrast, others will create new paradigms where talent focuses on roles such as training AI models. The consensus is that lower-skilled workers are most at risk. However, top-tier talent with critical thinking skills will remain indispensable for solving edge cases and complex problems that an AI model cannot efficiently address. The core skill set for future success encompasses not only technical knowledge but also curiosity, building a strong network, and understanding the economics of business.

Modernizing Channel Marketing: AI and Ecosystem Enablement This episode explores the transformative landscape of the IT industry, focusing on how companies are modernizing their approach to the channel. Host Sugata Sanyal, Founder & CEO of ZINFI, is joined by Anthony Graziano, Senior Vice President, Marketing at D&H Distributing. With over two decades of experience in distribution and vendor partnerships, Graziano discusses the evolution from traditional "channel" strategies to dynamic "channel ecosystems." He highlights D&H’s investment in platforms like MKT+SHIFT to meet the changing needs of solution providers. The conversation delves into critical areas, including the impactful role of AI in channel marketing, strategies for engaging new talent amidst demographic shifts, and the essential lessons learned in aligning marketing, sales, and vendor alliances. Tune in to gain actionable insights into defining success in the evolving partner ecosystem. Related Guidebook Modernizing Channel Marketing: AI and Ecosystem Enablement How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of Modernizing Channel Marketing: AI and Ecosystem Enablement Best Practices Guidebook. How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Modernizing Channel Marketing: AI and Ecosystem Enablement ✔ Chapter 1: The Evolution from Channel to Ecosystems Anthony Graziano’s career has been at the forefront of distribution and channel marketing, providing a front-row seat to one of the industry’s most significant transitions: the shift from a traditional ‘channel’ approach to sophisticated, integrated ‘ecosystems’. This evolution is driven by the necessity for solution providers to deliver more comprehensive, consumption-based services and engage with a broader set of influencers beyond the traditional reseller. The modern channel marketing strategy must now support this complex web of relationships, recognizing that technology sales involve co-selling and co-innovating across multiple partners, rather than a simple, linear transaction. Graziano’s perspective, having moved from a global vendor role at Logitech back into distribution leadership at D&H, offers unique insights into how expectations for marketing have undergone drastic changes. Vendors now demand more quantifiable return on investment and broader market penetration from distributors, while partners require high-level enablement and accessible, modern tools. D&H Distributing’s investments, such as the rollout of the MKT+SHIFT self-service marketing platform, are a direct reflection of these changing needs and the move toward an ecosystem-driven environment. This platform empowers partners to modernize their go-to-market strategies by providing scalable, integrated digital campaigns and tools they can execute independently. It moves beyond basic content syndication to offer a true self-service capability that is critical for a diverse partner base with varying levels of marketing maturity and resource availability. In an ecosystem where speed and relevance are paramount, the ability to quickly deploy professional, vendor-compliant marketing assets is not just an advantage; it is a fundamental requirement for solution providers competing in the digital age. The platform’s success demonstrates D&H’s commitment to reinforcing its position as a trusted enabler, directly addressing the pain points of modern channel marketing. The transformation in the Information Technology landscape also necessitates a complete rethinking of how vendors and distributors collaborate on marketing initiatives. The old model of simply pushing products has given way to a focus on joint solution selling and value creation, requiring a deeper alignment of marketing efforts. Graziano’s experience underscores that distribution is no longer just logistics; it is an enablement engine that bridges the gap between vendor innovation and partner execution. This shift requires that distribution channel marketing not only drive demand generation but also provide the strategic guidance and technological infrastructure necessary for partners to thrive in specialized markets. The evolving landscape demands a blend of high-touch strategic support with high-scale, automated tools, ensuring partners, regardless of size, can effectively capitalize on growth opportunities. ✔ Chapter 2: Marketing Alignment and Avoiding Common Pitfalls A core component of D&H’s strategy is the successful deployment of self-service marketing automation, exemplified by MKT+SHIFT, while maintaining a crucial element of high-touch support. The most significant adoption and success in these self-service models are often seen with partners who are already digitally mature and understand the value of automated outreach and integrated campaigns. They leverage these tools to rapidly scale their outreach and capitalize on time-sensitive vendor promotions and emerging market trends. However, driving partner engagement can be more challenging with smaller or less digitally savvy partners, who may lack the internal marketing expertise or the time to integrate and utilize self-service platforms fully. For these partners, the high-touch support remains essential, focusing on education, co-development, and demonstrating the tangible return on investment of modern channel marketing practices. The lesson here is that technology adoption is accelerated when paired with accessible human guidance. Graziano’s decades of experience across major distributors, including Tech Data, SYNNEX, and now D&H, highlight critical lessons regarding the alignment of marketing with sales and vendor alliances. A key takeaway is the need for complete transparency and shared metrics across these internal and external groups. Marketing must be measured not just by leads, but also by its contribution to the pipeline and revenue, directly aligning with sales’ objectives. Furthermore, successful vendor alliances require marketing efforts that clearly communicate the value proposition of the joint solution, not just the individual components. The most successful channel marketing organizations are those that break down traditional departmental silos, ensuring that the marketing strategy directly informs and enables the activities of the sales team and reinforces the vendor partnership ecosystem. A common pitfall companies encounter when trying to modernize channel marketing is focusing exclusively on the technology platform without addressing the foundational issues of process and human capability. Another misstep is creating marketing programs that are too complex, too generic, or not specifically designed for the partner’s unique customer base, leading to low adoption rates. At D&H, the approach to avoiding these pitfalls involves three strategies. First, simplicity and ease of use are prioritized in the MKT+SHIFT platform to encourage broad adoption. Second, the focus is on providing highly customizable, regionally relevant content that partners can immediately leverage. Third, there is a continuous investment in training and communication to ensure partners understand how to use the modern tools to achieve their specific business outcomes, blending strategy with execution. ✔ Chapter 3: The Future: AI, Generational Shifts, and Ecosystem Success The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to fundamentally reshape both marketing execution and customer engagement across the channel. Anthony Graziano envisions AI as a powerful tool in refining channel marketing by enabling hyper-personalization at scale. This involves using AI to analyze vast datasets of partner and end-customer behavior, delivering highly targeted content, and optimizing campaign timing to achieve maximum effectiveness. For partner enablement, AI will accelerate the creation of localized and customized marketing assets, drastically reducing the time and resources required for partners to launch sophisticated campaigns. AI also promises to improve sales-marketing alignment by providing predictive analytics on which leads are most likely to convert, ensuring sales teams are focused on the highest-value opportunities within the channel ecosystem. The future success of channel ecosystems will depend on the ability to integrate AI responsibly and effectively into the entire partner journey. The IT channel is also confronting a significant demographic challenge, characterized by an aging partner base and a pressing need to attract and retain new, young talent. D&H is actively approaching this generational transition by ensuring its platforms and communication methods appeal to a new, digitally native audience. This means moving away from legacy marketing tactics and embracing integrated digital campaigns, social media engagement, and modern, accessible self-service tools. Channel marketing plays a vital role in engaging the next wave of solution providers by emphasizing speed, transparency, and a focus on emerging, high-growth technologies, such as cloud and security. By promoting a culture of inclusion, D&H aims to position the channel not as a traditional industry but as a dynamic, technologically advanced career path for the next generation. Looking ahead, success for channel ecosystems in the next five years will be defined by agility and the ability to drive co-innovation and consumption models. The winning distributors and partners will be those who can seamlessly adapt to rapid technological change, especially the integration of AI, and effectively manage the transition to subscription and as-a-Service models. D&H is positioning itself to stay ahead of these shifts by continuing to invest in platforms that support sophisticated digital engagement, strengthening its partner enablement programs, and fostering a deep understanding of evolving vendor and solution provider needs. This holistic approach—combining strategic vision with the execution of modern channel marketing tools—ensures D&H remains an essential enabler in the perpetually evolving IT channel landscape.

First Principles Drive Modern Partner Ecosystem Success In this insightful episode, Sugata Sanyal, Founder & CEO of ZINFI, sits down with Nelson Wang, Founder of Partner Principles, to discuss the critical evolution of the partnerships landscape. Nelson Wang, who brings over 20 years of operating experience at fast-growth and large public companies, explains why today’s Partner Leaders need to move beyond old playbooks and embrace First Principles Thinking. The conversation highlights that the modern Partner Ecosystem is more nuanced and complex, requiring a customer-centric view and strong cross-functional alignment to drive successful business outcomes. The discussion also covers the essential need for Data-Driven Partnering and Automation with AI to Simplify Complex Workflows and Achieve Massive Productivity Gains. Key Takeaways include understanding how to apply core principles, such as customer centricity and "one team," across any organization, as well as the essential need for data-driven orchestration and automation with AI. The discussion contrasts the channel-heavy hardware approach of two decades ago with the multi-touch, complex nature of B2B SaaS and AI partnerships today. Listen now to gain the strategic frameworks needed to lead a thriving Partner Ecosystem. Related Guidebook First Principles Drive Modern Partner Ecosystem Success Mastering the Nuance, AI, and Cross-Functional Orchestration Required by Today’s CPO Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of First Principles Drive Modern Partner Ecosystem Success Best Practices Guidebook. Mastering the Nuance, AI, and Cross-Functional Orchestration Required by Today’s CPO. Download for FREE Video Podcast: First Principles Drive Modern Partner Ecosystem Success ✔ Chapter 1: The Critical Shift to First Principles Thinking in the Partner Ecosystem Nelson Wang founded his consulting business, Partner Principles, to ensure Partner Leaders have the lessons, principles, and frameworks they need to be successful. He observed that many leaders rely on tactics and playbooks that often fail to translate successfully from one company to the next. The significant “light bulb moment” for him came from mentors who taught him about First Principles Thinking and frameworks, which radically improved the quality and outcomes of his work. This approach allows leaders to apply universal principles to any company, regardless of the ideal customer or partner profile. The core goal is to share lessons from 20 years of operating in partnerships, enabling people to achieve success more quickly and effectively, ultimately reducing stress and long hours. The most important of these first principles is Customer Centricity. When consulting, Wang anchors companies on the customer by asking critical questions: Who is your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)? What is their customer journey? What specific pain are you solving, and what are the business implications of not solving that pain? Only by deeply understanding the customer problem can a company then determine the right partner types and strategy to put in place. A customer-centric view provides a clear focus on where to go, what resources to allocate, and where to invest energy, which yields a much better answer compared to testing multiple partner types and spreading resources too thin. This principle remains vital across the entire Partner Ecosystem and guides strategic decision-making. Another foundational first principle is operating as One Team. Far too often, partnership teams operate in silos and do not work cross-functionally with other teams to augment and amplify their efforts. Integrating partnerships into the core workflows of these teams, such as marketing initiatives, can significantly amplify efforts. For example, if a partner is included in a webinar, they might double the attendance among their customer base, thereby immediately doubling the business impact. This strategic alignment ensures that the collective impact on the industry is magnified because teams worked together toward a common core principle, demonstrating how partnership success can be supercharged through a one-team approach. ✔ Chapter 2: The Nuance and Complexity of the Modern Partner Ecosystem The ecosystem has undergone fundamental changes over the last two decades, evolving from the clear-cut “channel” of 20 years ago to a much more complex and nuanced model today. Companies like Cisco and VMware once scaled by routing a massive percentage (80-90%) of their business through resellers using distinct “swim lanes” for a simple resale motion. Today, many B2B SaaS and AI companies employ a direct, Product-Led Growth (PLG) approach with customers, making it significantly harder to decide on a comprehensive sales channel approach with a resale motion. This has led to the development of more granular and tailored swim lanes based on specific customer needs, making the approach more nuanced and compelling. The new swim lanes are often broken down by region, segment, capability, or vertical. For example, a region like APAC may be much more partner-led than the Americas. Segmentation can carve out services for the internal team that are upmarket, leaving all other services to partners, and targeting the mid-market and commercial segments. Capability-based swim lanes route customers to partners when there is a gap in a necessary capability that the vendor does not deliver. This deep understanding of the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and the pain points they are experiencing is required to map the right partners, making the current ecosystem much more complex, as a company could potentially have multiple swim lanes. Despite the complexity, the core principles of partnerships still apply: the outcome of what the partner needs to do remains the same—to make customers massively successful and tied to those business outcomes. However, the skill set required has evolved dramatically. While 20 years ago partners focused on reselling and implementation services (e.g., data center virtualization), today partners in the B2B SaaS and AI space must provide services on how to deploy AI within an organization 31 effectively. This requires guiding customers on a framework to identify AI use cases based on feasibility, resourcing, and business impact. Partner organizations must continually adapt their skill sets to serve customers better and achieve the desired business outcomes. ✔ Chapter 3: Data-Driven Orchestration and the Future of Partner Leaders The biggest challenge facing the modern Partner Ecosystem is the massive operational difficulty of managing partnerships through manual, repetitive workflows, often using unstructured content in Excel or Sheets 34. This approach suffers from poor data integrity, siloed processes, and a significant expenditure of time on low-value work to achieve higher-value insights. The opportunity to transform the business lies in embracing. Data-driven partnering and automation, specifically through AI, unlock a huge opportunity to accelerate automation and insights that were previously too time-consuming or overwhelming to tackle. Embracing this requires a new mindset for Partner Leaders to identify and automate all repetitive manual tasks, thereby achieving higher value. For example, manually building Statements of Work (SOWs) and proposals for Service Partners (SIs) can take a whole week. With AI, a recording can be ingested, the transcript analyzed, and an SOW and a fully customized proposal can be created in one to two hours, often 80% complete. This massive. A 10x productivity lift for the partnership company leads to high-value outcomes, including higher conversion rates, larger deal sizes, and improved customer satisfaction during the sales process. Today’s Chief Partner Officer (CPO) needs to be a highly proactive, cross-functional leader —a significant shift from the more rear-view, fulfillment-driven channel chief of the past. Because modern partner motions often account for smaller, more nuanced percentages of the overall business, the CPO cannot rely on default resourcing or organic alignment. They must proactively establish an operating cadence with cross-functional teams, such as Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. The CPO’s role is to examine the entire customer journey—from awareness to purchase to retention—and identify where partners fill the gaps, providing a much broader view than a leader focused on a single partner type. This requires winning the hearts and minds of internal teams and getting them to agree to resource and prioritize partner-led initiatives as a unified “One Team” effort.

The Channel’s Shift to Partner-Led With AI In this episode, Sugata Sanyal Founder & CEO of ZINFI, sits down with Raegan Wilson, VP of Ecosystem Innovation and Solutions at Spur Reply. They delve into the dramatic transformation of the channel ecosystem over the last two decades. The discussion focuses on how the traditional model of “box builders” has given way to a partner-led approach, where partners now drive the go-to-market strategy for vendors. Reagan shares her unique perspective, having been in the channel for over 20 years, and offers insights into how new technologies, including AI, are further changing the landscape. The conversation touches on the importance of readiness and maturity for brands looking to build an ecosystem and the key role of automation in making the process more efficient. Related Guidebook The Channel’s Shift to Partner-Led With AI Best Practices How a new go-to-market strategy is transforming the partner ecosystem Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of The Channel’s Shift to Partner-Led With AI Best Practices Guidebook. How a new go-to-market strategy is transforming the partner ecosystem. Download for FREE Video Podcast: The Channel’s Shift to Partner-Led With AI ✔ Chapter 1: The Evolution of the Partner Ecosystem: From Box Builders to Partner-Led Raegan Wilson describes her experience with the evolution of the channel over more than two decades, starting from the era of “Box Builders”. Back then, partners were primarily value-added resellers who would build computers and servers by assembling various components. Raegan recalls visiting partner offices and seeing their framed certifications and branded swag from different vendors. This was when vendors were in the driver’s seat, pulling partners along, and partners were seen as an extension of the vendor’s go-to-market efforts. The market has changed dramatically since then. Partners who failed to adapt to new technologies, like wireless networking, often went out of business. This shift highlights a critical lesson in the channel’s history: partners must continuously morph their business models to survive and thrive. This same pressure appeared with the change to cloud services and is now a factor with AI. The most significant change Raegan notes is the shift in power, with partners now driving the solution for the end customer. Instead of vendors leading, the partner-led model puts the partner in the proverbial driver’s seat, loading up their solution with vendors that fit the tech stack. This fundamental shift requires brands to change how they engage with their channel, acknowledging the partner’s central role in the solution delivery. The modern channel is more complex than ever, moving beyond traditional reseller models to include various services, solutions, and integrations. The days of simply building a box are replaced by a focus on value-added services that solve complex customer problems. Raegan points out that this evolution has led to a higher barrier to entry for entrepreneurs in this space, as the risks and necessary security checks are much steeper than they were in the past. She also notes a trend towards consolidation, with larger organizations growing even bigger as they deliver value across the entire ecosystem. This environment demands that brands provide a clear value proposition to partners, making it easy for them to understand where they fit in, how they can make money, and where the opportunities are. The success of a partner-led strategy depends on the brand’s ability to communicate value and follow the partner’s go-to-market strategy rather than imposing its own. Sugata and Raegan also discuss the differing maturity levels between IT and traditional manufacturing industries. While newer IT companies quickly adopt ecosystem strategies because they don’t have legacy tech debt, many conventional manufacturers struggle with antiquated systems and processes. This often makes it harder for them to get modernized and optimized. The interview highlights that even well-established enterprise companies, which one might expect to be well-oiled machines, often face significant challenges in implementing simple changes. Raegan reassures that this struggle is common and not unique to a single large player. The conversation also touches on the convergence of IT and OT (operational technology), particularly in manufacturing. It introduces new challenges like cybersecurity and data centralization that require a more comprehensive, leadership-level approach to automation. This complexity underscores the need for expert guidance in navigating the modern ecosystem. ✔ Chapter 2: Technology and the New Go-to-Market: Marketplaces and AI The discussion then pivots to the role of technology in the new partner-led reality, focusing on marketplaces as a critical go-to-market channel. Raegan explains that once seen as just a place to list an app, marketplaces have evolved into a channel with significant velocity. Partners are now instrumental in helping end customers manage their marketplace spend and private offers, making it easier for them to acquire technology and access budgets they might not have known were available. The challenge for vendors is understanding their partners’ readiness and maturity level before jumping into marketplaces. A brand might be four steps behind a competitor and should therefore consider other routes to market where they have higher partner engagement or readiness. Prioritizing a marketplace strategy should be based on looking at internal capabilities and resources, not just what a competitor does. It is also essential for brands to understand their position in the tech stack—are they the “burger” or the “ketchup”? Understanding where a solution fits the customer’s overall stack helps a vendor identify the right partners and opportunities for an attach play. Raegan emphasizes that while finding complementary partners in the new ecosystem has become easier, the sheer volume of vendors also makes it harder to rise above the noise. A strong story and clear value proposition are essential to capture a partner’s attention. This is where the strategic use of AI comes into play. AI can be leveraged to find the right partners by analyzing data and creating detailed profiles. Using the right prompts, brands can get a list of potential partners, build value propositions, and tailor their recruitment messaging. This automation helps the recruitment process, but Raegan stresses that the following steps must also be automated to handle the influx of prospective partners. She also notes that the methods for reaching partners have changed, with phone calls being less effective and LinkedIn and email becoming more critical. Looking at the technology platforms themselves, Raegan acknowledges that they have made significant strides over the past decade. However, she notes that the channel has always been a bit behind in adopting technology and that vendors often need to understand their customers’ specific needs better. Many companies are tempted to put the platform first, but Raegan argues that a solid foundation of people, processes, and programs is necessary to leverage technology successfully. Without this foundation, automating a flawed process can lead to problems. Raegan’s five P’s—People, Process, Programs, Partners, and Platform—provide a clear roadmap for success. ✔ Chapter 3: Optimizing Go-to-Market with AI and Partner Programs Raegan highlights key areas where AI is already significantly impacting partner-led strategies, starting with content. She calls content the “Achilles heel of channel” and explains that Gen AI is a game-changer for content creation and partnerization. One of the most powerful use cases is localization and translation. In the past, translating content into multiple languages was a costly and time-consuming process. Still, Gen AI has made it faster and more cost-effective, allowing companies to meet their global partners in their local language. Another key use case is making content more useful for partners. Gen AI can take internally facing training materials and shorten them to be more concise and practical for partners with limited time. The content can be tailored to acknowledge the partner’s expertise, a key element often overlooked in traditional training materials. Beyond content, Raegan sees a massive opportunity for internal-facing AI agents to improve efficiency for channel account managers. These agents can help with various tasks, from aligning partners with specific opportunities to tracking compliance and identifying underperforming partners. For example, an internal agent can look across a CRM and other data sets to find the best partner in a region, check their performance, and even draft an email about relevant promotions. This is much faster than a human manually digging for this information. The ultimate goal is for these agents to become more partner-facing, providing real-time insights to partners about promotions, new products, and customer renewal opportunities across their entire vendor ecosystem. However, Raegan notes that this will require better data governance, as the channel has long struggled with data quality. Raegan also discusses the evolution of partner compensation, which has shifted away from being tied to partner types or tiers. Instead, some brands reward partners based on the number of customers they touch rather than the size of a single deal. This incentivizes a broader reach and rewards behavior that aligns with the brand’s goals. This change reflects that many partners, like Raegan’s own firm, prefer to be compensated for their services and expertise rather than through vendor referral fees or incentives. This allows them to maintain a trusted advisor relationship with their customers. The conversation concludes with a forward-looking view, where AI’s most valuable application will help partners navigate the complex multi-vendor universe, making their jobs easier and their businesses more successful.

Tech Mahindra’s Ecosystem: Driving Outcome-Driven AI Transformations In this episode, Sugata Sanyal Founder & CEO of ZINFI, sits down with Mayank Shekhar Choudhary, Senior Vice President of the Partner Ecosystem at Tech Mahindra in Europe. They discuss how Tech Mahindra is revolutionizing industries with its unique approach to digital and AI transformations. The conversation highlights the company’s focus on building a strong ecosystem of partners and delivering outcome-driven solutions rather than just focusing on traditional IT metrics. Mayank shares compelling examples from the manufacturing, telecom, and banking sectors, detailing how this strategy helps customers modernize legacy systems, reduce capital expenditure, and free up resources for further innovation. This discussion provides valuable insights into the power of collaborative ecosystems and the strategic use of technology to drive real business value. Related Guidebook The Partner-Led Digital and AI Transformation Best Practices Your comprehensive guide to building a modern, outcome-driven ecosystem Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of The Partner-Led Digital and AI Transformation Best Practices Guidebook. Your comprehensive guide to building a modern, outcome-driven ecosystem. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Tech Mahindra’s Ecosystem: Driving Outcome-Driven AI Transformations ✔ Chapter 1: The Converged IT, OT, and Network Environment Mayank explains that Tech Mahindra’s services go beyond traditional IT and Operations Technology (OT) to create a converged environment that includes the network. He emphasizes that this three-pronged approach is crucial for achieving seamless digital transformation. Tech Mahindra works across various verticals as a system integrator, with a strong focus on telecom, banking and financial services, and manufacturing. The company aims to be a trusted, consultative partner in the manufacturing sector, providing an end-to-end journey from creating a future roadmap to real-world execution. The ultimate goal is to evolve the customer’s landscape while keeping the end customer at the center of every decision. This comprehensive strategy is exemplified by Tech Mahindra’s work with a global chemical manufacturer, BASF, where they are transforming the company’s enterprise network across 600 sites in 72 countries. They implemented a “network as a service” model to achieve this massive project without disrupting business. This model allows the customer to pay for the service they consume rather than making a substantial upfront capital investment, a significant industry trend. By utilizing an ecosystem of partners, Tech Mahindra successfully re-engineered processes, managed people, and brought new technologies to transform the client’s infrastructure. This focus on outcome-driven solutions ensures that the customer realizes tangible business benefits. The concept of a converged environment extends to the telecom space, where Tech Mahindra is helping a premier Dutch telco, KPN, to achieve autonomous operations. By bringing in process changes and innovative technology, the objective is to take the telco from a level three to a level five of autonomy. This doesn’t lead to job losses; instead, it frees employees to be utilized more effectively. This is a clear example of how Tech Mahindra’s digital transformation efforts are designed to create a single pane of glass for visibility, helping telcos manage their IT, OT, and network systems in a unified way and reduce their mean time to repair (MTTR). ✔ Chapter 2: The Power of Innovative Financial Models and Ecosystems A significant trend in the technology and services industry is the shift towards flexible financial models, such as pay-as-you-go. This approach is driven by customers’ desire to avoid tying up capital expenditure and to access specialized expertise that is constantly evolving. Tech Mahindra leverages its ecosystem of partners, including technology vendors and financing arms, to deliver these models. The financing arm often plays a critical role by taking ownership of the physical assets, like hardware, and managing their lifecycle, including refresh cycles and repurposing. This allows Tech Mahindra to focus on its core strength: delivering an outcome. It’s a win-win for everyone involved, as the customer gets the desired business outcome without the burden of heavy capital investment. The recycling and repurposing of used assets, which used to end up in junkyards, is now a more structured process, driven by both financing and sustainability. This trend has accelerated in recent years, with much funding available to support it. For example, technology partners like Lenovo, HPE, and Dell are now seeing their equipment repurposed for data centers, as long as it meets quality standards. The rise of cloud computing and data residency regulations has also widened the scope for these arrangements. This evolution in the financial model of IT services is an integral part of the broader digital transformation that Tech Mahindra facilitates. The discussion also explores how this convergence of technology and financial models impacts the banking and finance sector. Banks, the backbone of any economy, have been at the forefront of transformation and are not shy about investing. However, their capital is limited. Tech Mahindra helps them modernize legacy systems, such as mainframes, to free up cash. This freed-up cash can be reinvested in further transformation, such as implementing robotic process automation or enhancing anti-money laundering systems. By offering platforms like Temenos on a cloud-based, consumption-based model, Tech Mahindra enables banks to achieve their transformation goals without a massive upfront expenditure, reinforcing the importance of outcome-driven solutions in the finance sector. ✔ Chapter 3: Orchestrating a Complex Ecosystem and a People-First Approach Tech Mahindra prides itself on a culture of “drinking our own champagne” to deliver on these complex projects. This means they implement technologies and solutions internally before offering them to customers. For example, they transformed their internal service management system with ServiceNow and implemented SAP S/4HANA before bringing these solutions to their clients. This internal experimentation provides a crucial learning ground and builds confidence in their solutions. The company operates with a philosophy of “fail fast, recover faster” and uses lab setups to test new ideas. This approach to internal AI transformation ensures their readiness to help others. Mayank describes his role in Europe as running the partner ecosystem and details how his team orchestrates a complex network of alliances. A key mantra is transparency, with a clear understanding that they either “sail together or fail together” with their partners. Before an RFP is even released, Tech Mahindra collaborates with its partners to strategize a win, as they know that without a pre-formed alliance, they have a 50% lower chance of success. They also engage in “co-opetition,” working alongside other system integrators on complex projects where each partner serves a different part of the solution. This model is gaining traction because it provides a flexible approach to delivering complex projects as long as the roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. At the heart of Tech Mahindra’s success is its people-first approach. Recognizing that talent is a valuable and scarce resource, they prioritize a diverse workforce and focus on grooming internal talent. The company invests in making its people “future-ready” by providing certifications in new technologies. Mayank notes that they are not afraid of AI, but rather embrace it. They have a company-wide initiative to train the entire organization in AI transformation, from sales to delivery, and they have used AI to create a foundational large language model, therapeutic molecules, and apps for farmers, among other things. The goal is not to eliminate jobs, but to free up people to be utilized more effectively. Mayank Shekhar Choudhary’s interview with Sugata Sanyal provides valuable insights into how Tech Mahindra builds partnerships, drives digital and AI transformations, and maintains a people-first culture.

Storytelling: The Heart of Partner Ecosystem Marketing In this episode, Sugata Sanyal, Founder & CEO of ZINFI, is joined by Ffjorren Zolfaghar, VP of Alliances at IDMWORKS. Ffjorren shares her unique career journey from journalism to the forefront of technology alliances, highlighting how the art of storytelling remains a critical skill in B2B marketing. The discussion explores the rapidly evolving identity management landscape, the role of partners in navigating complex cybersecurity challenges, and the criteria for building successful, trust-based technology alliances. Listeners will better understand why focusing on business outcomes over technical specifications is key to engaging customers and partners. Tune in to learn how to cut through the noise and create a partner marketing strategy that resonates, drives value, and builds lasting relationships in a dynamic tech ecosystem. Related Guidebook Hybrid Cloud and Edge AI Computing Impacting the Future of PRM How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of Hybrid Cloud and Edge AI Computing Impacting the Future of PRM Best Practices Guidebook. How AI, Hybrid Cloud, and Edge Computing Are Transforming Partner Relationship Management. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Storytelling: The Heart of Partner Ecosystem Marketing ✔ Chapter 1: The Journey from Journalism to Tech Alliances Ffjorren Zolfaghar begins the conversation by introducing herself as the VP of Alliances for IDMWORKS, a services-led organization that handles reselling and managed services. She reveals that her tech career spans over a decade and is actually a second career. Her first was in journalism, a field she entered after studying at the University of Minnesota. She started in radio, TV, and newspaper, covering general news with an initial aspiration to become a reporter for the nightly news. Her journey then took a different turn, leading her to become a content editor and director for a publishing house, where she focused on alternative healthcare and lifestyle topics. The transition into technology was initially driven by a practical need for a more lucrative career, a decision influenced by her younger brother, who made key introductions for her. Ffjorren acknowledges the irony of her current role. As a self-proclaimed lover of pen and paper who enjoys unplugging from all devices, she admits that many people would find her unlikely to work in the technology sector. Despite this, she quickly rose, leveraging her foundational skills. She believes that the communication and writing skills honed in journalism are a “lost art” that has been tremendously helpful in her career, first in marketing and then in partner sales and management. This unique background gives her a distinctive perspective on the power of clear and compelling communication in a technical and often jargon-filled industry. She discusses the core principle that connects her two careers: storytelling. She explains that the objective remained the same whether she was writing a news story for an audience or creating marketing content for a consumer. The goal is to gain attention, provide information, and make the content relatable and digestible so the audience understands the message. From her perspective, everyone is telling a story and “selling something” every day, whether it’s themselves in a job interview or a company’s vision to a customer. She sees marketing and sales as interconnected, working hand-in-hand. This foundational understanding of narrative and audience engagement allowed her to pivot into marketing seamlessly and, eventually, into her current role in alliances, where she focuses on communicating value and building trusted relationships. ✔ Chapter 2: The Evolving Landscape of Identity Management and AI Ffjorren provides a comprehensive overview of the identity management space, noting the significant shifts over the last decade. She explains that identity, which dates back to the 1960s, has steadily evolved from being a standalone concept to an integral part of the security and cybersecurity world. Citing a common industry phrase, she states that “identity is the new perimeter,” a concept she advocated for years ago and which is now more relevant than ever. She highlights that over 85% of security breaches begin with a compromised identity. These breaches are not just about gaining access but about getting to the ultimate target: data. This underscores the critical importance of identity as the core of any robust cybersecurity strategy. She further breaks down the core components of an identity program into three main pillars: Identity and Access Management (IAM), Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), and Privileged Access Management (PAM). While traditional vendors like Okta, SailPoint, and CyberArk dominate these spaces, Ffjorren points out that the market is now seeing an influx of new startups. These newer players often come in to “augment” or “overlay” existing solutions, filling gaps that traditional providers might have. While providing new solutions, this influx also increases complexity and confusion for the end consumer. The technology is rapidly moving to the cloud, and more SaaS offerings are entering the market, but legacy on-premise technology still exists, particularly in large enterprise companies. This creates a complex, fragmented environment where service providers like IDMWORKS play a crucial role in structuring a cohesive solution. Ffjorren identifies the mid-market and SMB space as the most fertile ground for new opportunities. Unlike large enterprises burdened by legacy technology and still having many on-premise systems, smaller businesses often start their IT journey in a cloud-first, SaaS-driven environment. This makes them more receptive to adopting new technologies quickly. While IDM serves a broad range of clients, from SMBs to Fortune 500 companies, she notes that their sweet spot is generally low-enterprise to strategic-level accounts, focusing on specific verticals like financial services, healthcare, and education. The needs of these verticals can vary, especially concerning compliance requirements, with industries like healthcare and government needing to adhere to stricter regulations. This complexity further highlights the need for expert guidance in navigating the identity management landscape. ✔ Chapter 3: The Critical Role of Partner Alliances in a Fragmented World Ffjorren addresses the profound impact of AI on the technology landscape, noting that every vendor, from established leaders to new startups, is scrambling to incorporate AI into their messaging and solutions. She observes that this looks like adding an AI functionality to a pre-existing solution for many existing vendors, rather than being a core AI-native company. She contrasts this with a few new startups she has spoken with, whose entire existence is built on an AI platform. She believes this is just the beginning and that the next phase will see AI-native solutions that not only augment current offerings but have the potential to completely “rip and replace” the technology offered by top-tier incumbents. She also anticipates the emergence of new security technologies specifically designed to protect AI platforms themselves, a critical need as AI continues to grow and learn. The discussion shifts to the role of a service provider like IDMWORKS in this chaotic market. Ffjorren explains her strategic approach to building alliances. While they maintain strong relationships with their current top-tier vendors, she is actively expanding their capacity to engage with and vet new startups. Her philosophy is that companies risk becoming stagnant if they don’t stay on the cutting edge and keep their senses “aware of everything happening around you”. She looks at market trends to identify gaps and potential growth areas, always seeking solutions that can either fortify existing offerings or, if necessary, replace them. This forward-looking approach is a key part of the value they provide to customers, as it ensures they are recommending not just a trusted solution, but an innovative one. Compelling storytelling is the core challenge for vendors and service providers in this fragmented, noisy environment. To stand out, Ffjorren advises new vendors to do their research and understand their audience. For a company like IDMWORKS, this means knowing they are a services-driven organization and tailoring the message to what matters most to them—business outcomes, not just product features. This is also a challenge within large organizations, where she has observed a tendency for different departments—marketing, sales, alliances, product—to work in silos. She stresses the importance of breaking down these barriers and ensuring everyone is aligned with a consistent message. Ffjorren’s journey, driven by persistence and a desire for continuous learning, reflects this principle of adaptation and innovation, which she believes is the key to success in any industry.

Industry 4.0 Roadmap: Modernize, Optimize, Transform In this episode, Sugata Sanyal Founder & CEO of ZINFI, is joined by Jeff Winter, Vice President of Business Strategy for Critical Manufacturing and a leading Industry 4.0 influencer. They dive deep into the core of the Industry 4.0 transformation, moving beyond the hype to discuss practical realities. Jeff explains that this new industrial revolution is not just about technology but requires a fundamental shift in people, culture, and leadership. Listeners will gain a clear understanding of what makes this era unique, with a focus on bridging the long-standing gap between IT and OT teams. The discussion explores the real-world application of AI and IoT in manufacturing. It provides a clear roadmap for any organization looking to navigate its digital transformation journey through the essential steps of modernizing, optimizing, and ultimately achieving true business transformation. Tune in to learn how to build a resilient and agile operation for the future. Related Guidebook The Smart Manufacturing Playbook: Your Guide to Industry 4.0 Transformation A leader’s roadmap to leveraging people, technology, and strategy for competitive advantage Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of The Smart Manufacturing Playbook: Your Guide to Industry 4.0 Transformation Best Practices Guidebook. A leader’s roadmap to leveraging people, technology, and strategy for competitive advantage. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Industry 4.0 Roadmap: Modernize, Optimize, Transform ✔ Chapter 1: The People-First Mandate for Industry 4.0 The journey into Industry 4.0 is frequently mischaracterized as a purely technological endeavor. While advanced tools are a catalyst, the ultimate success of this industrial revolution hinges on a more complex and crucial element: people. The most formidable challenge in any digital transformation is not the deployment of new software or the installation of sophisticated sensors; it is the cultivation of a new mindset across the entire organization. Technology can be purchased, but a culture of innovation and adaptability cannot be. This essential cultural evolution must be championed from the highest levels of leadership. Executives must perceive Industry 4.0 not as a series of siloed IT projects but as a comprehensive business evolution that fundamentally reshapes how value is created, delivered, and measured. This strategic imperative shifts the focus from merely proving a technology works to demonstrating how that technology moves the entire business forward, delivering tangible results and a sustainable competitive advantage. This transformation requires the broader workforce to embrace a new professional paradigm of continuous learning and cross-disciplinary thinking. The very nature of manufacturing work is evolving. An employee’s role is no longer confined to the repetitive operation of a single machine. Instead, they are becoming the managers of a connected, data-driven process that is constantly refined and improved. This demands newfound agility and a comfort with ambiguity, as change is the only constant in this new environment. The days of mastering and repeating a single task for years are over; future workers must be adaptable problem-solvers who can leverage data to make informed decisions. Organizations that invest in upskilling and reskilling their employees will be the ones that thrive, as they recognize that their human capital is the actual engine of innovation in the digital age. This people-first mandate is not an abstract concept but a practical necessity for survival and growth. Without buy-in from the leadership team down to the plant floor, even the most promising technological initiatives will fail to achieve their full potential. Resistance to change, fear of the unknown, and a lack of necessary skills can immobilize a transformation project before it begins. Therefore, a successful Industry 4.0 strategy must include a robust change management component that addresses the human side of the transition. This involves clear communication, transparent goal-setting, and employee empowerment. By placing people at the center of the transformation, companies can build a resilient, engaged, and forward-thinking organization that is not just equipped to handle the challenges of today but is prepared to seize tomorrow’s opportunities. ✔ Chapter 2: Bridging the IT/OT Divide A critical and specific cultural hurdle in the Industry 4.0 journey is bridging the historical divide between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). These two domains have operated separately for decades, governed by different priorities, metrics, and vocabularies. IT teams, responsible for enterprise systems, networks, and data, have traditionally prioritized confidentiality, security, and scalability. In contrast, OT teams, who manage the control systems and machinery on the plant floor, have focused relentlessly on availability, safety, and operational reliability. In the past, this separation was manageable. Still, in an era where data from the factory floor must seamlessly integrate with enterprise systems, this siloed approach has become a significant impediment to progress. The convergence of IT and OT is no longer an option; it is the foundational backbone of any successful, brilliant manufacturing initiative. To dismantle these long-standing barriers, organizations must move beyond simply mandating cooperation. The goal is to forge a new, unified operational model built on shared objectives and mutual respect. This begins by aligning IT and OT teams to the same overarching business outcomes, rather than separate departmental KPIs. When an OT engineer’s success is measured not just by machine uptime but also by the successful implementation of a data analytics platform, and an IT professional’s success is tied to reducing production line downtime, their incentives become aligned. This fosters a collaborative environment where decisions are made for the good of the entire business, not just one department. This alignment ensures that IT’s expertise in data governance and security is applied in a way that respects OT’s non-negotiable requirements for operational stability and safety. Achieving this integration requires deliberate structural changes. One highly effective strategy is the creation of embedded teams, where IT and OT professionals work side-by-side on the plant floor and in planning sessions. This proximity builds trust and fosters a deeper understanding of each other’s worlds. Another key role is that of the “translator”—individuals fluent in both the language of technology and business operations. These translators can articulate the business impact of a new security protocol or explain the operational requirements for a cloud migration, ensuring that conversations are productive and focused. Ultimately, a successful IT/OT convergence results in a cohesive team leveraging its combined expertise to build a secure, scalable, and highly efficient production environment, turning a historic source of friction into a powerful transformation engine. ✔ Chapter 3: The Intelligence Layer: AI and IoT in Practice The transition from Industry 3.0 to 4.0 is defined by the infusion of intelligence into manufacturing, driven by two transformative technologies: the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Industry 3.0 was centered on the PLC, which brought automation to individual machines. IoT took the next step by enabling mass connectivity, allowing machines, sensors, and systems to communicate with each other and generate an unprecedented volume of data. This created the digital nervous system of the modern factory. However, collecting data is only the first step. The actual value is unlocked when that data is turned into actionable insight, which is the role of AI. AI, particularly its subfield of machine learning, acts as the brain of the smart factory, analyzing the torrent of data from IoT devices to identify patterns, predict outcomes, and optimize processes in real time. This harmony between IoT and AI creates tangible value across the manufacturing landscape, with predictive maintenance as a prime example. In the past, maintenance was either reactive (fixing things after they broke) or preventive (performing scheduled service whether needed or not). By deploying IoT sensors to monitor variables like temperature, vibration, and energy consumption, machine learning algorithms can analyze historical data to predict when a component is likely to fail. This allows maintenance teams to intervene proactively, scheduling repairs conveniently and avoiding costly unplanned downtime. This same principle extends to other areas, such as quality control, where AI-powered visual inspection systems can identify defects faster and more accurately than the human eye, and demand forecasting, where AI can analyze market trends to optimize production schedules and inventory levels. The evolution of this intelligence layer is now moving toward its next frontier: autonomous operations. While predictive systems provide valuable guidance, the future lies in agentic AI systems that can automatically predict an issue and take corrective action. These “self-driving” processes can self-optimize and self-configure, learning from their environment and making real-time adjustments to maximize efficiency, quality, and output without human intervention. This represents the ultimate goal of the Industry 4.0 transformation—a fully autonomous, intelligent, and adaptive manufacturing ecosystem. While this vision is still emerging, implementing robust IoT and AI strategies today will enable companies to compete in the more autonomous landscape of tomorrow, turning their operations from a cost center into a strategic weapon. ✔ Chapter 4: Strategic Framework: Modernize, Optimize, Transform Many organizations use “digital transformation” as a catch-all for any technology-related initiative, which often leads to confusion and misaligned expectations. To bring clarity and strategic focus to the Industry 4.0 journey, it is essential to categorize projects into a clear framework: Modernize, Optimize, and Transform. Understanding the distinction between these three types of initiatives is crucial because they have different goals, require different resources, and, most importantly, should be graded with various metrics. Confusing them is why many transformation projects are perceived as failures, even when delivering value. The first stage, Modernize, is about building a solid foundation. This involves replacing outdated legacy systems, upgrading network infrastructure, and digitizing paper-based processes. Modernization projects are enablers; they might not deliver a dramatic, immediate ROI, but they are essential for future progress. Once a modern digital foundation is in place, the focus can shift to the second stage: Optimize. Optimization is using technology to improve existing processes and get the most out of what you already have. This is where many AI and machine learning projects fit in, as they are applied to make processes faster, more efficient, and of higher quality. Unlike modernization, optimization projects are typically easy to measure with clear before-and-after KPIs, such as scrap rate reductions, cycle time improvements, or increases in overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). This is where companies can achieve significant incremental gains and build momentum for more ambitious initiatives. Many organizations spend the majority of their time and resources in the optimization phase, as it delivers predictable returns without fundamentally disrupting the existing business model. The final and most ambitious stage is Transform. This is not about doing the same things better; it is about doing fundamentally new things. Transformation uses technology to create new business models, value propositions, and working methods. Examples include shifting from selling a physical product to selling the outcome it delivers as a service (e.g., “power by the hour” in the aerospace industry) or using data to create new digital services for customers. Because transformation is, by definition, creating something new, it cannot be measured against a historical baseline. Success metrics, such as market share expansion or new revenue growth, are longer-term and more strategic. By distinguishing between modernizing, optimizing, and transforming, leaders can allocate resources more effectively, set the right expectations, and build a balanced portfolio of initiatives that ensures short-term stability and long-term, game-changing growth.

Talent Recruitment for Startup: Missionaries & Mercenaries In this episode, Sugata Sanyal Founder & CEO of ZINFI sits down with Mark Bartlett, Co-founder and CRO of HireClarity, to explore the powerful parallels between military discipline and startup recruitment. Mark, a former naval officer, shares his unique journey and the transferable skills he gained, from clear communication to decisive leadership. The discussion dives into the critical distinction between hiring “missionaries” driven by purpose and “mercenaries” motivated by financial gain. They discuss how a mission-based approach to building a team can lead to greater success and a stronger company culture. This is essential for any founder looking to make a resilient and dedicated team. Related Guidebook Startup Founder’s Guide to Talent Recruitment: Hiring Missionaries, Not Mercenaries Best Practices Your blueprint for building a resilient, mission-driven team. Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of Startup Founder’s Guide to Talent Recruitment: Hiring Missionaries, Not Mercenaries Best Practices Guidebook. Your blueprint for building a resilient, mission-driven team. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Talent Recruitment for Startup: Missionaries & Mercenaries ✔ Chapter 1: The Foundation of Leadership and Military Discipline The initial segment of the podcast lays the groundwork for Mark Bartlett’s unique perspective on leadership, drawing heavily from his 13 years of service in the Australian military. He describes his decision to join the military as an almost whimsical choice made during a period of uncertainty as a university student. This experience, however, proved to be formative, instilling in him skills that are “transferable to the commercial world”. His journey from an enlisted soldier to a naval officer gave him a structured environment emphasizing discipline and clear, concise communication. He highlights that military leadership isn’t just about giving orders and influencing people to achieve a common goal. This early discussion sets the stage for understanding his core belief that effective leadership is rooted in a structured approach to communication and teamwork. Mark’s military career, particularly his time with the United Nations peacekeeping force in East Timor, is a crucial case study in diverse collaboration. He recounts working at a headquarters with 75 members from 27 countries, forcing him to navigate cultural differences and communication styles. A key anecdote involves an Australian colonel who advised him to slow his speech because only “half the people understood half of what you said”. This experience taught him the importance of adapting and embracing different perspectives, a lesson he found invaluable. This segment emphasizes that true partnership and collaboration require more than just clear communication; they demand an understanding of cultural nuances and a willingness to be open-minded. The discussion transitions to a specific moment of conflict during his last tour, highlighting the importance of a leader’s ability to adapt quickly under pressure. He describes a situation where his and his Thai friend’s interpretations of the same event differed due to their contextual backgrounds. This experience reinforced his understanding that people see the same situation through “separate sets of eyes” and that a leader’s role is to help the team understand each other’s viewpoints to find common ground. This intense, high-stakes environment helped him break down communication barriers and make quick, informed decisions. This section of the podcast showcases how Mark’s military experience shaped his understanding of situational leadership and the importance of fostering a unified perspective despite disagreement. ✔ Chapter 2: Navigating Civilian Life: Transition & Leadership in the Corporate World Mark’s transition from the military to the civilian corporate world was challenging, requiring him to adapt his direct communication style. He explains that leaving the military and moving countries simultaneously made the change even more difficult. He found that the “curt” and “too direct” communication effective in a life-or-death military environment was not always appropriate in a corporate office setting. This necessitated a significant pivot in his approach, learning to moderate his communication and slow down. This adaptation wasn’t a “binary switch” but a gradual process that took him “two, three years to adapt” and embrace the corporate way of doing things. This segment provides a compelling look at the hurdles of career transition and the need for self-awareness and practice to succeed in a new professional landscape. Despite the challenges, Mark found that specific skills from his military background were highly transferable to the corporate environment. He highlights the importance of being transparent and succinct with written communication and having the confidence to present in front of large groups. These skills, honed in a regimented environment, were directly applicable and practical. However, he found that the “regimentation” and intense military structure were not transferable. He had to learn to be more open-minded, take his time with decisions, and embrace the thought leadership of others. This part of the discussion underscores the idea that a successful transition isn’t about discarding past experiences but rather about selectively applying and adapting them to new contexts. The podcast also touches on how Mark’s leadership style evolved in his role as a father, further illustrating the continuum of control and influence. He jokingly refers to his early parenting style as a “drill instructor, military type way of doing things” that wasn’t very effective. This realization made him adapt and become “much more relaxed” as a parent. This analogy extends to his corporate leadership, where he learned that people are volunteers who need to be motivated and developed rather than simply ordered. He stresses the importance of understanding individual motivations and being vulnerable as a leader, sharing successes and mistakes to help others learn. This section shows how his personal life and leadership experiences are deeply intertwined, reinforcing his belief that effective leadership is fundamentally about understanding and connecting with people. ✔ Chapter 3: Future of Talent Recruitment and Hiring with AI The final section of the podcast focuses on the intersection of Mark’s leadership philosophy and his current work at Higher Clarity, a company designed to solve “selection challenges” in recruiting. Mark explains the company’s product uses generative AI to synthesize all available information about a candidate—including resumes, interview transcripts, and LinkedIn profiles—to provide deep insights to hiring managers. This technology helps to overcome the problem of limited information when making a hiring decision, providing a “full picture” of a candidate. The tool’s primary purpose is to make the talent acquisition process more efficient and data-driven, enabling a hiring manager to quickly determine a candidate’s fit for the job and culture. Mark introduces the “missionary versus mercenary” analogy, arguing that for a startup, missionaries are crucial. He believes these individuals must “believe in the cause” and the company’s mission, especially during the early stages before product-market fit is established. He acknowledges the difficulty of screening for these qualities. Still, he asserts that gathering as much information as possible with a candidate’s consent is the best way to determine if they are a “fit for the mission”. This part of the conversation directly links his military experience of intelligence gathering with his current work in recruitment, highlighting that both processes are about building a comprehensive picture to inform a critical decision. The podcast concludes with a thought-provoking discussion on the role of AI versus the human element in recruitment. Mark believes that the future of talent acquisition is a combination of both. He posits that AI is excellent for analyzing data and increasing efficiency, but it lacks intuition and the ability to build rapport. He suggests that as AI becomes more sophisticated, there’s a risk of an “arms race” where bots interview bots, leaving humans to step in at the end to assess things like body language and genuine connection. Mark ultimately asserts that humans will always better understand the “nuances” of other humans. This final segment of the podcast emphasizes that while technology can streamline processes, the human touch remains an indispensable part of the hiring journey.

Debunking the Entrepreneurship Myth: Entrepreneurship’s Past, Present, and Future In this episode, Sugata Sanyal Founder & CEO of ZINFI speak with Michael Gerber, the legendary author of the E-Myth, and Richard Chambers, a channel sales expert, about the foundational principles of business success. The conversation explores the crucial differences between being a technician and an entrepreneur, revealing why 90% of startups fail within ten years. They highlight the universal need for a business system and a compelling vision, regardless of industry or scale. The guests also discuss how timeless principles apply to today’s rapidly changing, AI-driven world. Tune in to discover the critical mindset shift required to move from working in your business to working on it. Related Guidebook Debunking the Entrepreneurship Myth: Entrepreneurship’s Past, Present, and Future Best Practices Your Guide to Building a Scalable and Purpose-Driven Enterprise. Download your COMPLIMENTARY COPY of Debunking the Entrepreneurship Myth: Entrepreneurship’s Past, Present, and Future Best Practices Guidebook. Your Guide to Building a Scalable and Purpose-Driven Enterprise. Download for FREE Video Podcast: Debunking the Entrepreneurship Myth: Entrepreneurship’s Past, Present, and Future ✔ Chapter 1: The Origin Story of the Entrepreneurship Myth The concept of the E-Myth did not begin as a formal theory but as a practical observation of a real-world problem. Michael Gerber recounts his early experience assisting his brother-in-law, Ace Remus, whose clients could not convert the leads created for them. When Michael met with one of these clients, he discovered that the business owner, a brilliant technician, did not understand what a business was. The client had no “selling system,” leading to the realization that many startups are founded by technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure, not true entrepreneurs. This initial discovery led Gerber to uncover the missing piece in the small business picture, culminating in his influential methodology. Gerber’s exploration revealed a fundamental truth: the business itself is a product that must be designed, built, and launched with a clear system, much like a product or a service. The entrepreneur’s role is to act as the “imagineer,” creating the foundational vision and structure for the enterprise. This vision is not just about the product but about creating a predictable and repeatable system that can be replicated successfully. The model for this, as Gerber explains, is a business format franchise, or a prototype, that can scale from a company of one to a company of a thousand. As articulated by the E-Myth, this system-level thinking became the core principle for his business development firm and all his subsequent work. Richard Chambers’ journey was intertwined with Gerber’s. Richard worked for Gerber’s start-up for 7 years, starting as a technical consultant and ultimately running the client services organization responsible for the customer success of hundreds of small business programs. With a background in psycholinguistics, Richard later went on to start his own company, creating a “selling system” that used a common language for collaboration and co-selling. “The S.A.L.E.S.® System” has become an important standard in the IT partner ecosystem. ✔ Chapter 2: The Evolving Sales System and Entrepreneurship Myth The conversation shifted to the specific context of the technology channel, where Richard Chambers has spent most of his career. He notes that this vertical is predominantly driven by entrepreneurs who are, at their core, technicians. While highly skilled in their craft, they often close their eyes to the necessity of building a scalable business system. He shares that as technology evolved from PCs to client-server networking to cloud computing, and to AI, the sales process became increasingly collaborative, requiring multiple specialists—salespeople, engineers, and marketers—to sell a solution. This collaboration created a new challenge: the need for a common language and a simple, repeatable process to prevent mistakes and ensure alignment among all parties. Richard’s S.A.L.E.S. model was designed to be that common language, a simple framework the human mind could contain and follow. He observed that businesses that succeeded were the ones that pivoted from a transactional mindset to a solutions-oriented one. They learned to charge for assessment, configuration, deployment, and support services, rather than relying on hardware margins. This shift was a direct result of adapting to the changing needs of the end user, who was no longer just a buyer but a client seeking a complete solution. Smart partners recognized the need to develop these specialized in-house service capabilities to stay relevant and grow. Further, they learned to collaborate with complementary specialized partners in co-sell motions, where S.A.L.E.S. provides a common language. Today, this evolution continues with the rise of “customer success” as a critical function. The old sales model focused on the transaction, but the new reality demands a focus on the entire customer lifecycle. Richard emphasizes that true customer success goes beyond Customer Lifetime Value, a measure of cash flow during the life of a customer relationship. You must also flip that to measure the long-term impact on your customers’ lives, aimed at helping them achieve their desired outcomes. He notes that the truly successful partners are the ones who consistently return to this fundamental question: “What is the customer after?” By doing so, they build long-term value not just for the customer’s business, but also for their personal lives, yielding “raving testimonials” that speed revenue from new customers. ✔ Chapter 3: Roles and the Journey from Infancy to Maturity Michael Gerber clarifies the distinction between the three essential roles within a business: the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur. The technician is the doer, the one who performs the work, whether a salesperson, a bookkeeper, or a janitor. The manager is the one who oversees the work of the technician, and the entrepreneur is the creator of the overall system that the manager oversees. The vast majority of business failures occur because the technician, in a moment of “entrepreneurial seizure,” starts a business to escape a boss, only to find they have created a job for themselves where they are both the boss and the technician. This lack of understanding of the distinct roles and the need for a system prevents the business from progressing beyond its infancy. Gerber highlights that the journey from one company to a company of a thousand depends not on the roles or the systems themselves, but on the entrepreneur’s perspective and understanding of their purpose. The key to overcoming systemic failures is to constantly “go back to the beginning” and reconnect with the core dream, vision, purpose, and mission that inspired the business in the first place. This process awakens the “entrepreneur within” the founder and provides a living foundation for growth. Without this spiritual and soulful connection to the business’s purpose, the systems, no matter how sophisticated, will remain artificial and lifeless, unable to sustain proper growth. The framework that Gerber outlines for this journey consists of eight distinct personalities of an entrepreneur: the dreamer, the thinker, the storyteller, the leader, the designer, the builder, the launcher, and the grower. Each personality is responsible for a specific phase of business development, from having a dream to building a turnkey enterprise. The failure to nurture these different personalities or to understand their roles in the business’s life cycle leads to stagnation. The companies that leap from infancy to maturity are those where the entrepreneur intentionally and consciously embraces these roles, building a company that is not dependent on their labor but operates as a fully functional, self-sufficient system. ✔ Chapter 4: The Timeless Principles in a Changing World A recurring theme in the discussion is whether the principles of entrepreneurship have changed in a world of rapid technological advancement and AI. Michael Gerber asserts that the core principles remain “eternally true” and that the bar for success is no different today than it was 40 years ago. He believes the essential journey begins with a “blank piece of paper and beginner’s mind.” The challenge, as it was then, is to approach business with a teachable spirit, to be a student of the process rather than a technician who believes they already know how to do the work. This fundamental mindset separates those who build great, lasting enterprises from those who remain stuck in a job they created for themselves. Richard Chambers supports this view, drawing from his experience adapting to technology shifts like from PCs to client-server networking to cloud computing and now AI with new distribution ecosystem models. He observes that the resilient businesses could “turn on a dime” and remain agile in the face of change. The constant thread of their success was their ability to help other companies succeed, which he now defines as positively impacting their customers’ lives, not just their bottom line. This focus on a deeper purpose aligns with Gerber’s philosophy. It demonstrates that the most successful entrepreneurs prioritize the human element and a customer-centric vision above all else. The conversation concludes with a reflection on the foundational entrepreneurial spirit of America’s founding fathers, whom Gerber calls the “quintessential entrepreneurs.” They created a new enterprise from scratch, a system that had never been conceived before, and provided the rules of the game in the Constitution. This story is the ultimate metaphor for what an entrepreneur should strive for: to create a world, or a business, that is built on a grand, inspiring vision. It is a reminder that the greatest enterprises are not just about profit but about a purpose that transcends the day-to-day challenges, and in doing so, they inspire others to join in their mission.