Will AI Destroy Outbound?
Plus, a personal update
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Yo!
A lot has happened since the last time I hit “publish” here ~3 months ago — I had a second kid, I did a 48-hour fast, I signed up for my first marathon, I used Claude+Replit to code a meal planning app for me and my wife (AI is wiiiild, y’all), and last week I resigned from Apollo (no hard feelings! and still excited for Apollo’s future), and plan to do some consulting while I figure out what’s next (reach out if you want to chat about working together!).
Anyway, I hope a few of y’all still remember that you subscribed to this little newsletter. :)
I am going to be writing here more. I miss it.
Writing helps me clarify my thinking.
To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.
- David McCullough
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Today’s topic is a controversial one. But, I believe, incredibly important to consider. So, grab a cup of coffee and picture yourself in this (a)imaginary scene:
Okay, let’s get into it…
Will AI Destroy Outbound?
Last week, Jason Lemkin—one of the Godfathers of SaaS sales—put up a post that I keep coming back to:
Outbound is broken
Everyone is struggling to generate pipeline (The “Predictable Revenue Playbook” is Dead).
The headwinds in outbound today include:
Prospects flooded with emails and notifications
Competitive more rampant than ever before
XDR productivity at an all-time low
Email Deliverability Apocalypse
ZIRP-era behind us
Tighter budgets
Leaner teams
AI is here to stay
At this point, it’s not contrarian to say that AI is going to play a huge part in outbound over the next couple of years. But, I think it’s important to think deeply about how we implement it.
Companies like Clay (generalized ai for gtm), 11x.ai (AI SDRs), and Instantly (mass-outreach) are ripping right now. Because of the headwinds I listed above, and the need for more pipeline.
But what will happen in 18 months when every SaaS company has implemented these tools? What happens when companies like Apollo, HubSpot, Salesforce, and others make these features universally accessible and incredibly easy to use?
The hot take that Godfather Lemkin presents is an existential threat to outbound:
AI is going to kill outbound.
As his LinkedIn post says:
Run an AI-powered outbound set of campaigns. It’s just endless cadences, 2.0, but even more of them. Even more emails that won’t really work. Slightly better than pre-AI for sure. But 100x more of them.
I don’t want to live in a world of even more noise. Do you?
Recently, I saw someone say the phrase “clay and spray” (btw - I think Clay is awesome, if used correctly; no shade to them). But, this phrase highlights the fact that AI tools have the potential to either amplify/scale “best practices” (thoughtful, relevant, valuable outbound) or amplify/scale “bad practices” (spammy, icky, nonsensical outbound).
Companies that are thoughtful in their AI strategy will have staying power. The ones who just use AI to send slightly better emails, at scale, will see a bump in performance in the short-term, but struggle long-term.
In my opinion, the best outcome of AI would be fewer outbound emails, not more.
Where do we go from here?
I don’t know the answer. I’m simply asking the question. And hope to start finding the answer(s) over time.
Like any new technology, AI is a tool. And can be used for “good or evil.” Meaning, you can use AI to send a bunch of spammy emails. Or, you can use it in thoughtful ways - to scale an email campaign that you would actually send if you spent 20 minutes researching and writing a 1:1 email, or with account scoring, or with account research, or many other ways.
With great power, comes great responsibility.
I’ll be watching, and participating, very closely. As always, I want to find the best playbooks out there and participate in the future of go-to-market machines that are built to create more efficiency in the marketplace. That means, better for the seller and for the buyer.
Reply to this email and let me know if you think AI is going to kill outbound. I’m curious to hear the arguments for both sides!
Featured product of the week: Kondo → Superhuman for LinkedIn inbox
As a Superhuman user for many years, I was excited when I heard Mitchell was going to build this product (my LI inbox is a mess 95% of the time). A month later, he had shipped the v1 and onboarded me! Watch a 2-minute demo.
You can grab time with Mitchell to get a personal onboarding, for free! (Let him know I sent you!)
PS: Mitchell is not paying me, nor am I an investor or advisor. It's just a cool tool I recently started using and wanted to share.Portals to interesting corners of the internet that I explored this week:
Leopold Aschenbrenner, formerly of OpenAI's Superalignment team, now founder of an investment firm focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI) – posted a massive, provocative essay putting a long lens on AI's future. It’s a useful, eye-opening synthesis of high-level Silicon Valley conversations. Here are 10 takeaways from the 50,000-word, five-chapter, 165-page paper, "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" (I did not read that behemoth).
Peter Thiel is unconventional. PayPal and Palantir founder. Early to Bitcoin. Libertarian. Gay, Christian, VC. A “contrarian” thinker. In a podcast this month, he and Bro Jogan talk AI, conspiracies, aliens, Epstein, and the Egyptian pyramids. It’s worth a listen.
Amjad Masad (founder of Replit) was recently on Tucker Carlson’s Show (don’t cancel me for occasionally listening to Tucker). It was a really deep and fascinating conversation: The Cults of Silicon Valley, Woke AI, and Tech Billionaires Turning to Trump.
Salesforce announced autonomous sales agents earlier this month. I think this is massive and indicates where the industry is going over the next few years.
Indie hacker, Pieter Levels, was on Lex Friedman’s podcast this week. It’s a refreshing anti-take on VC culture that many of us (at least, I’ll speak for myself) get caught up in and put on a pedestal. This is a hilarious and incredible TLDR if you don’t have 4 hours to spare.
That’s all for this week!
See you next time,
Brendan
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