How CS teams are evolving from AI assistants to analysts by letting agents surface insights while humans drive action. Why strategic CSMs remain while AI handles CRM, nudges, and renewals. Inside the new model: data first systems, agentic execution, and outcome driven performance.
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So, interesting question for you. You've seen these emails. See the recent one from Fiverr. You saw the one from Duolingo. You saw these CEO emails. Have you sent a CEO email out like that yet?
No, I think those are great. They set the tone and help people understand. I actually shared those emails. I was like, 'Yeah, this is what's happening.' I think people just know it. I say it a slightly different way. I'm like, look, I care a lot about your career long term and it's not just about Gainsight. Long term what I care about is you guys being employable way past Gainsight. It makes me super happy when somebody gets a great job after working here. And the truth is, when people can judge whether it's right or wrong, you're not going to be employable. As a knowledge worker, you will be unemployable very soon. And I even have a friend who runs another company, similar sized to Gainsight, a few hundred million revenue. And he's like, when we do an interview for engineers, they have two interviews. One is write some algorithm without AI, and they probably have some way to verify that or they trust them. And then the other one is write an algorithm with AI. And if you don't pass both tests, you can't get a job. So if you don't know how to use, in the case of engineering, Cursor or GitHub Copilot or whatever, you will not be able to get a job at that company. And I think that's why I tell our employees, look, I care about it for Gainsight. We're going to be successful if you guys know how to use AI. I care about it even more for your future employability. And I don't think it's exaggeration at all. And in some ways, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Companies start doing those memos and they freeze headcount and then they're like, 'Only the best of the best.' And then the people that are the quote-unquote best of the best are the ones who know how to use AI. It's just a fundamental thing, as fundamental as knowing how to use email.
Right. So you also mentioned in the last what you just said there was something I really want to kind of dig on. You are releasing or you've got some alpha stuff that's coming, right? Lots of it I would imagine because that's what AI enables you to start prototypes and things really fast. So, one of the problems that's happening in the gaming industry is slop. So, all this AI generated slop coming out. So, like games after game after game, you can see Steam is just filling up with just slop because people can vibe code whatever they want and throw it up there, right? I really feel like that's happening in AI right now. And I think Google is the biggest victim or biggest person that's doing this wrong. And that they're releasing stuff every day that is pre-alpha. So we used to, right back, you went to computer science school and you remember it used to be alpha, beta, gold master, release candidate, and then we print the thing. And now it's pre-pre-alpha, just throw it out there, put an 'experimental' tag and get somebody to say that they just vibe coded the Declaration of Independence or whatever. Do you... I see this as a risk factor at least, especially for early adopters. Particularly in my world where I'm working with companies that are working in real businesses, is that they're like, okay, they hear this, they're scared to death and they want to adopt AI as fast as they can because they want to survive and they want to compete, but then they do it with this half-baked stuff and it kind of hurts their mentality and they're going to take a step back. Right now after the DeepSeek moment, there's been a very big exponential path of releases and everything. Now everyone's kind of taking a step back here and looking at how this matters. How would you advise other CEOs that are getting burned on these things at this point? Just stay the course, keep going, keep trying new things, wait until things are more baked before you implement it or what is your advice?
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Mehta, N. (2025, August 1). Nick Mehta & Jason Napieralski • Where the Human Versus AI Sits 2 [Interview transcript]. Hard Skill Exchange. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/861474/
MLA
Nick Mehta. "Nick Mehta & Jason Napieralski • Where the Human Versus AI Sits 2." Hard Skill Exchange, 1 Aug. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/861474/.
BibTeX
@misc{mehta2025_861474,
author = {Nick Mehta},
title = {Nick Mehta \& Jason Napieralski • Where the Human Versus AI Sits 2},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Hard Skill Exchange. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/861474/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
