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Marketing is hard. I think the biggest argument I've seen between sales people is "Do you sell something that will increase the customer's revenue or reduce th

Marketing is hard. I think the biggest argument I've seen between sales people is "Do you sell something that will increase the customer's revenue or reduce their costs?" For a well established business saving $1 in costs adds $1 to the bottom line whereas adding $1 in revenue also adds some cost of revenue so maybe it just ends 20 cents to the bottom line or something. I think every business using AI is different but right now many users are in a "gold rush" phase where they don't have a rational economic model for the whole thing: they might be happy to have GPUs at all and not be worried that they have 30% utilization. Internal politics plays a big role, say my unit has a GPU cluster, I might be really possessive of it and resist sharing it with other units. For that matter I might get a big Mac Studio for my desk because then I can run any model I want that fits on it and never have to have a talk with anyone about model licenses and data privacy and token costs, none of that. From that point of view I could care less about utilization fraction and the one thing I care about is having my head. I guess there is somebody who can say GPU compute is part of their cost of revenue and increasing the utilization fraction has a clear impact on the bottom line. That somebody probably knows a lot about cost optimization already (or thinks they know!) and might think you are bringing a tic-tac-toe master to a chess tournament! Might still be the kind of person you want to talk to just to talk to.

samikama 14d ago
Thank you Paul, That is the problem I am having. What we built is addressing all the points you mentioned, reduces costs as well as adds revenue at the same time. There is no issues with model licenses and privacy because it is still your machine. Whenever you need it, it is available to you. It should be attractive to people. But you are making a very good point which I may have missed and in hindsight it matches some of the observations we have. `That somebody probably knows a lot about cost optimization already (or thinks they know!) and might think you are bringing a tic-tac-toe master to a chess tournament! ` I don't believe it is true but I can see people may think that and that may be my issue. What would be the best way to overcome this? Would it be data? if so what kind of data? Thank you Paul, your comment is great help!
- PaulHoule 13d ago
  It's been more than a decade since I've done sales or BD, and I'd say many people today report an experience different from I've had but... I had a lot of luck talking to prospects on LinkedIn. I had a really good profile, an impressive academic pedigree, a good CV and backstory, built out a network of 10,000+ connections, had heavy participation in groups, started my own group, did a lot of research on prospects, wrote messages that had a high response rate, etc. My memory has to be a little selective but I can't think of anyone I wanted an audience with that I wasn't able to get. I was in a different situation in that I was pitching something that was 10 years ahead of its time, not quite ready, something that I knew there was a hunger for in some of the largest industries and just the glimmerings of competition.

samikama 14d ago

Thank you Paul, That is the problem I am having. What we built is addressing all the points you mentioned, reduces costs as well as adds revenue at the same time. There is no issues with model licenses and privacy because it is still your machine. Whenever you need it, it is available to you. It should be attractive to people. But you are making a very good point which I may have missed and in hindsight it matches some of the observations we have. `That somebody probably knows a lot about cost optimization already (or thinks they know!) and might think you are bringing a tic-tac-toe master to a chess tournament! ` I don't believe it is true but I can see people may think that and that may be my issue. What would be the best way to overcome this? Would it be data? if so what kind of data? Thank you Paul, your comment is great help!

PaulHoule 13d ago
It's been more than a decade since I've done sales or BD, and I'd say many people today report an experience different from I've had but... I had a lot of luck talking to prospects on LinkedIn. I had a really good profile, an impressive academic pedigree, a good CV and backstory, built out a network of 10,000+ connections, had heavy participation in groups, started my own group, did a lot of research on prospects, wrote messages that had a high response rate, etc. My memory has to be a little selective but I can't think of anyone I wanted an audience with that I wasn't able to get. I was in a different situation in that I was pitching something that was 10 years ahead of its time, not quite ready, something that I knew there was a hunger for in some of the largest industries and just the glimmerings of competition.