Sam Jacobs

CEO @ Pavilion | Helping revenue executives navigate their careers through community-powered education and support | Host TOPLINE Podcast | WSJ Bestseller

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

These are my favorite conditions.

[Josh Wolfe @wolfejosh]

DHLTFM

Dems. Have. Lost. Their. Fucking. Minds.

[Arsen Ostrovsky @Ostrov_A]

This is one of the most jaw-dropping, chilling interviews I have seen. Watch this Rabbi from London, respond to question about the terror stabbing in Golders Green!

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

@wolfejosh I’ll fund it as well. Count me in. Happy to help support.

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

Team Elon

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

@grok @DaveNadig Explain it to me like I’m an idiot and walk me through the specific terms. “. Closed-end and explain the classic illiquidity and fee drag.

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

@denk_tweets @MediaKing Right. So what’s an owed audience then? Your email list? Google won’t let you reach them. At some point it’s semantics. The best audience is the one you’re allowed to talk to.

[David Lange @Israellycool]

Nepo baby @Casablancas_J of @thestrokes says that American Zionists get the benefits of white privileged people but talk like they are Black people during slavery. A horrid take from someone who truly gets the benefits of white privilege - and uses it to sh*t on Jews.

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

@thesamparr Not quite assassination but In Cold Blood is the original true crime excellence.

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

"We need to be an AI-first organization."

You've read this in CEO letters. You've heard it in all-hands meetings.

And it's absurd.

Because the next sentence is almost always: "I can't tell you what that means or how to implement it, but goddamn, you need to figure it out."

That's not leadership. That's a mandate without a map.

Jordan Crawford said it best to Asad on Topline this week: You can't delegate AI strategy to RevOps if you don't know what's possible.

Here's the problem:

RevOps can use AI to do their existing job faster. But they're not going to reinvent your strategy. That's not their job. That's yours.

And you can't set a different strategy if you've never been in the tools.

You won't know to ask: "Can we identify every single user of our competitor's software?"

Because Jordan did exactly that. Overnight. 103,000 users. Segmented by tier.

You wouldn't even know that question exists unless you've gone down the rabbit hole yourself.

The CRO can't be a yellow belt at AI.

You need to be a real thought partner to RevOps. Not just someone who says "make it more AI" and waits for a dashboard.

The best go-to-market leaders right now?

They're working bottoms-up. Starting from the capabilities of the tools. Using that to inform the strategy.

Not the other way around.

If you want to lead in this era, you need to use the tools. Not just talk about them.

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

@wolfejosh Great prediction and would be a great outcome. I don’t think Sama will be CEO by EOY

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

The zero CAC CEO isn't enough anymore.

Great network. Every CRO takes the call. Gets you in the door.

But it won't keep the share you win.

Cassie Young (Primary Ventures): the technical co-founder question is now table stakes.

The question at every finish line: would we bet against this person?

New Top Line: https://t.co/xdwPVyylYV

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

https://t.co/ahQv0GbvK9

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

Cassie Young predicted the gross retention apocalypse last fall.

Kyle Poyar's data just validated it.

AI-native SaaS has structurally lower GRR than legacy counterparts.

Her words: "I still very much live in fear of this."

It's not just a startup problem. It's a terminal value problem.

Her answer: the customer success renaissance. Agentic, proactive, not reactive.

New Topline with Cassie Young: https://t.co/HMZzx028RW

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

Here’s a big red flag I look for in executives:

A person that is a self-described “contrarian” on your leadership team.

Someone who proudly talks about how much they publicly disagree either with you directly or with the leadership team in general.

These people have lost the thread and inevitably end up being toxic.

We don’t need “contrarians.”

We don’t need “disagreement” for its own sake.

This is not personal.

Defining yourself as someone who is simply in default opposition, regardless of the issue, makes you a narcissist.

You’re making it about you.

It’s not about you.

We’re trying to get to the best possible answer for the customer and business.

- That will often take debate
- That will often take data
- That will often take judgment

But we’re not specifically *against* anything.

We’re not looking for a fight.

We’re looking for the answer.

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

$3.8B in tender offer volume in 2023. $16.5B in 2025.

57% of those deals had an investor selling too.

The tender offer is how late-stage equity math gets fixed now.

https://t.co/jfncoWZG3H

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

OpenClaw is amazing until it does something funny like alter its own config file because you asked to try the new dream mode and then it can’t restart because of invalid config with the wrong version. This happened to me yesterday morning.

I had to go ssh in with Claude Code to get it fixed.

But the sheer fact all of these can happen shows you we are at Apple I stage: assemble your own motherboard stage.

But the Apple II personal computer moment (where anyone can go to the store and buy a PC and it works) is coming for OpenClaw

We are so early and this is the worst it will ever be

[Yossi Farro @FarroYossi]

Reid Wiseman, a proud American Jew, is leading the United States’ Artemis II mission around the Moon, the first human journey there since 1972.

While others spread hate and noise, the Jewish people continue to build, lead, and achieve at the highest levels.

Am Yisrael Chai.

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

In 1980, Julian Simon made one of the most famous bets in intellectual history.

His opponent: Paul Ehrlich, biologist and author of The Population Bomb.

Ehrlich's thesis: humans are destroying the planet. Do less. Consume less. Be less.

Simon's counter: humans are not just consumers. We are creators. More people means more ideas, more substitutions, more progress.

The bet: pick five metals. If Ehrlich was right, scarcity would drive up inflation-adjusted prices over ten years. If Simon was right, prices would fall.

Ten years later, all five had fallen in real price.

Simon won.

For forty years, that logic held. Ingenuity, trade, and substitution kept expanding the frontier.

But Simon's model assumed one thing we can no longer take for granted.

More people.

Fertility rates across the developed world are now well below the 2.1 births per woman required for replacement.

South Korea: 1.0.
Japan: 1.3.
Italy: 1.2.
United States: historic lows.

More than half of all countries are now below replacement.

A shrinking population means fewer workers, fewer consumers, and slower demand.

There is a word for what happens when demand persistently disappears.

Deflation.

Japan has been living this preview for thirty years.

You can print money. You cannot print people.

Now everything depends on AI filling the gap. McKinsey projects generative AI could add $2.6 to $4.4 trillion in annual value. Goldman says 15 percent labor productivity gains in developed markets.

AI is not just being asked to improve workflows.

It is being asked to replace a missing engine of civilization.

The full essay, titled 'Anthropocenic', can be read here: https://t.co/mkFeVVETvS

[Sam Jacobs @samfjacobs]

How we used to think about scarcity: oil, copper, tin.

The fear was we'd run out.

Julian Simon proved them wrong in 1980. More people meant more ideas, more substitutes, more ingenuity.

How we should be thinking about scarcity now:

Us.

Fertility has collapsed. Half of all countries are below replacement.

The resource we are running out of is the one that solved every other scarcity problem.

https://t.co/mkFeVVETvS