Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Mirzadegan: Enterprise AI sales require forward-deployed engineers for technical hand-holding

Joubin Mirzadegan · AI to AE's: Grit, Glean, and Kleiner Perkins' next Enterprise AI hit — Joubin Mirzadegan, Roadrunner · Dec 12, 2025 · at 21:21

Kleiner Perkins partner Joubin Mirzadegan discusses go-to-market strategies for enterprise AI companies selling to organizations navigating LLM adoption.

0:00 / 0:38exact quote · 38.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Which is why you see so many companies doing like this forward deployed engineer motion where what they're going in and doing is saying, okay, number one, like here's how we think about LLMs and where you can get best use of it. Number two, here's this engineer that we're going to forward deploy into your environment that we're going to like Basically, like, co-develop this solution, custom fit for this org. So you have to do, like, a lot of hand-holding. And the reason is because, like, we're just so early to AI right now that, like, of course you have to do a lot of hand-holding. Like, of course you have to, like, surround these customers with a bunch of technical resources to, like, make it successful.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Joubin Mirzadegan

Opinion
Mirzadegan: Salesforce's new CPQ replacement product is non-existent or flimsy
“Salesforce, which is like the gorilla in the room, they have like 95% market share. They have end of life, their CPQ solution, and they're making everybody move to a new product. Okay. So they are trying to do this. That product does not exist yet. If it does,…”
Joubin Mirzadegan Dec 12, 2025 ▶ 45:54 AI to AE's: Grit, Glean, and Kleiner Perkins' next Enterprise AI hit — Joubin Mirzadegan, Roadrunner
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mirzadegan: 38 of 40 top Kleiner Perkins portfolio executives are first-timers
“Inside the KP portfolio, ok, are top eight companies. Let's take five exec roles across the top eight companies. Companies like Rippling and Glean, ok. 38 out of 40 of those roles, ok, those executives report to the CEO for the first time in their career.”
Joubin Mirzadegan Dec 12, 2025 ▶ 33:03 AI to AE's: Grit, Glean, and Kleiner Perkins' next Enterprise AI hit — Joubin Mirzadegan, Roadrunner
Opinion
Mirzadegan: Most venture capital podcasts are 'pretty cringe'
“There's definitely like other venture podcasts. Most of them are like pretty cringe from being honest.”
Joubin Mirzadegan Dec 12, 2025 ▶ 8:44 AI to AE's: Grit, Glean, and Kleiner Perkins' next Enterprise AI hit — Joubin Mirzadegan, Roadrunner
Opinion
Mirzadegan: Windsurf had the fastest growth of any Kleiner Perkins company
“It was the most torrential growth I think I've ever seen in a KP company. It was insane.”
Joubin Mirzadegan Dec 12, 2025 ▶ 26:22 AI to AE's: Grit, Glean, and Kleiner Perkins' next Enterprise AI hit — Joubin Mirzadegan, Roadrunner
Insight
Mirzadegan: Hiring $50M+ ARR Sales Reps at Seed/Series A Usually Fails
“If you're a seed or series A founder, and you're evaluating sales leaders and AEs that have only been at companies that have done like, fifty million or more of ARR when they joined, it's probably going to be really difficult for them.”
Joubin Mirzadegan Dec 12, 2025 ▶ 36:16 AI to AE's: Grit, Glean, and Kleiner Perkins' next Enterprise AI hit — Joubin Mirzadegan, Roadrunner
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mirzadegan: AI will make all software pricing models consumption-based
“With AI, all of these pricing models are minimally going to start to look like consumption based pricing, right?”
Joubin Mirzadegan Dec 12, 2025 ▶ 41:27 AI to AE's: Grit, Glean, and Kleiner Perkins' next Enterprise AI hit — Joubin Mirzadegan, Roadrunner
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.