Topline

Peter Walker, Head of Insights at OpenRouter, joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman with a view few people have: 210 trillion tokens a week flowing across 600 AI models, from Anthropic and OpenAI to dozens of open weight inference providers. Topics include Peter's move from Carta to OpenRouter just 10 days before Stripe agreed to acquire it, what a token actually is and why cached tokens now shape AI pricing, and why CFOs struggle to tie fast-rising AI spend to ROI. Plus, whether AI labs can hold on to enterprise customers when switching costs are close to zero, what investors are really betting on with the Anthropic IPO, and whether Peter would buy it on day one.
Key Takeaways:
- AI labs have almost nothing locking customers in. "I've never seen a part of tech where two things are true. One, there's very, very, very, very, very small switching costs. Almost none," said Peter. The second is the clock: "75% of the tokens on OpenRouter go to models released in the last 60 days. It's planned obsolescence." Even a lab on top knows that no matter how good a model is, "it will be out of date" within months, so it has to keep winning the next release.
- Most companies are paying for more intelligence than they need. Peter hears it from CFOs all the time: "my whole company is using Opus and Fable and I know they don't need it." For a task like reading a PDF, "if I find a model that reads the PDF 98% as well as Opus, but costs me literally 10% as much, I'm gonna use that model." Public benchmarks only go so far. OpenRouter's stance: "usage is the benchmark. You have to be doing this on your own company usage to understand what models work for you."
- AI spend is heading for a showdown with payroll. Token prices have fallen, but usage has grown much faster, and Peter expects 2027 budgets to feel it: "if your AI usage bill grew 500% this year, thinking that it's gonna grow another 500% is really scary." His view: "at some point, you cannot continually increase AI spend and not compare it to your payroll spend." Asad's recruiting firm already spends six figures a year on Anthropic, and AJ is seeing QuotaPath customers set AI costs against commission costs.
- Buying the Anthropic IPO is a bet that the frontier stays won. Investors are betting that "the best model has within it pricing power that is close to permanent," said Peter, and that the lab keeps its people and doesn't stumble. "To date, it's worked really well. But will it work in the future? I think is a speculative bet for sure." Asked by Sam to buy or sell, his answer was simple: "sure, I'll buy day one. Why not?"
Connect with the Hosts & Guests:
Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/
Host: AJ Bruno, CEO at QuotaPath - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/
Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at STA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/
Guest: Peter Walker, Head of Insights at OpenRouter - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjameswalker
Topline is more than a podcast:
Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/
Check us out on YouTube for the #1 video podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.youtube.com/@TOPLINE-Media
Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack
Chapters:
00:00 Introducing Peter Walker
02:07 From Carta to OpenRouter and Stripe
04:12 How OpenRouter Works
09:30 Anthropic's IPO and Token Economics
14:43 Agents and the Rise of Cached Tokens
19:30 The CFO's AI ROI Problem
25:41 Why Coding Is AI's Best Use Case
27:36 Peter on AI Alignment Risk
30:28 Are We Overbuilding AI Compute?
33:15 Why Peter Wants a Little Crash
39:39 Can AI Labs Keep Their Customers?
44:56 Model Quality Versus Price
50:49 What the Anthropic IPO Bets On
56:01 Will IPO Wealth Slow the Labs?
59:05 Buy or Sell the Anthropic IPO

More marketing spend doesn't always mean more growth. And having the right people doesn't necessarily mean you have the right structure.
As customer acquisition costs rise and traditional B2B channels become increasingly competitive, companies need to rethink how they approach performance marketing, demand generation, and team structure.
John Short, CEO of Compound Growth Marketing, spent more than a decade building performance marketing teams at companies like Workable, Monster.com, and LogMeIn before launching his own agency eight years ago. Today, he helps high-growth B2B companies build more predictable and efficient growth engines.
In this episode of Topline Spotlight, Sam Jacobs sits down with John to discuss the changing B2B marketing landscape, the opportunities beyond LinkedIn and Google, and the operational lessons he's learned while scaling his own business.
What we get into:
- Why B2B companies need to diversify beyond LinkedIn and Google
- The growing opportunity in CTV, Meta, Reddit, and other channels
- How to find more efficient customer acquisition opportunities
- Why specialization gives marketing agencies a competitive advantage
- Why roles and responsibilities matter more than traditional org charts
- How marketing teams can connect individual KPIs to company-wide growth
Chapters:
00:45 Intro to John Short and Compound Growth Marketing
03:10 The Power of Specialization in B2B Marketing
04:27 Why B2B Companies Need to Look Beyond LinkedIn
06:19 The Opportunity in Connected TV Advertising
08:15 Customer Acquisition Costs and Finding Efficiency
09:20 Lessons From Building a Marketing Agency
10:57 Why Roles and Responsibilities Beat Traditional Org Charts
15:06 Connecting Marketing KPIs to Business Growth
20:02 The Books and Ideas That Influenced John
21:00 Where to Find John Short
Try Compound Growth Marketing: compoundgrowthmarketing.com

Before today's conversation, Sam, AJ and Asad share a few words in memory of Adam Robinson.
Rajeev Dham, Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures (a $10 billion venture firm), joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman to make sense of the recent tech selloff and what it means for AI investing. Topics include why Rajeev sees a "duration mismatch" as a core challenge, how the funding bar has changed after months of $50 to $100 million decisions made in days, and why AI application companies are growing from $15 to $100 million in revenue even as steady-state gross margins may settle closer to 30%. Plus, advice for pre-AI SaaS companies, why private equity is still frozen, a data company that went from zero to a $900 million run rate, whether the models will eat the harness, what the Anthropic IPO means for everyone else, and whether go-to-market AI can ever be more than a spam cannon.
Key Takeaways:
- The selloff is about timing, not the technology. The AI buildout is expensive, and Wall Street now wants to see it in S&P 500 earnings, not just in Anthropic's run rate. "I'm a believer. I think there's just a duration mismatch," said Rajeev, who compares it to Amazon's AWS buildout rather than the dot-com crash: "I think it could be a 6-month, 9-month period… when this mismatch needs to be reconciled."
- AI margins may never look like SaaS, and that can be fine. "I don't know if we're going to have the 78% margin businesses. It could very well be you have a 30% gross margin business," said Rajeev. What matters is gross profit dollars: "if you could charge 30 to 40% of $10,000 per person per year versus $1,000 versus 80% of $1,000, your gross profit dollars are a lot bigger." His bet: "I think ASPs will grow by 10x."
- When everything grows fast, growth stops being the signal. "I don't even look at growth rates," said Rajeev. The founder used to be maybe a 30 to 50% weight in a growth-stage decision; "Now it's an 80, 90% weight, even at sometimes a billion of run rate." He looks for founders who rebuilt their product "after the Opus 4.5 moment in December" to keep winning share.
- For pre-AI SaaS companies, the advice is to burn the boats. Rajeev told one founder running a cash flow breakeven $300 million business that "whether you grow 24% or 18%, it doesn't matter," and to "hire a COO, a private equity-like COO just to run that business" while the founder builds the AI products and eventually merges the two.
Connect with the Hosts & Guests:
Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/
Host: AJ Bruno, CEO at QuotaPath - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/
Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at STA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/
Guest: Rajeev Dham, Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeev-dham-79332812/
Topline is more than a podcast:
Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/
Check us out on YouTube for the #1 video podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.youtube.com/@TOPLINE-Media
Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack
Chapters:
00:00 Introducing Rajeev Dham
01:04 In memory of Adam Robinson
05:51 The Great Tech Selloff
10:35 How the Funding Bar Has Changed
12:46 Why AI Apps Grow So Fast
15:47 The 30% Gross Margin Future
21:28 When Does the AI Land Grab End?
24:38 Advice for Pre-AI SaaS Companies
26:53 Why Private Equity Is Still Frozen
35:11 What Gets a VC Excited Now
39:12 The Unfundable $9M to $38M Company
45:17 Founders Who Pivot at Warp Speed
49:43 Will the Models Eat the Harness?
57:50 Anthropic and the New IPO Bar
59:44 Is Go-to-Market AI a Spam Cannon?
Sources & Attribution:
Clip: https://youtu.be/TNq79c8QNlg
Clip: https://youtu.be/lgMTA5GU7TE
Article: https://www.axios.com/2026/10/26/anthropic-ipo

AI has transformed software engineering. It's changing nearly every knowledge-based profession.
So why hasn't sales changed at the same pace?
Dan Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of Nooks, is building what he believes will power the next generation of go-to-market teams: AI agents and revenue infrastructure that execute across the entire revenue lifecycle.
In this episode of Topline Spotlight, Sam Jacobs sits down with Dan to unpack how Nooks evolved from a virtual collaboration platform into an AI-powered revenue platform and why the future of sales will look fundamentally different.
What we get into:
- Why sales is the next profession to be transformed by AI
- How AI is changing software development and product velocity
- Why sales reps need to become revenue AI consultants
- Serving demand vs. generating demand
- What AI agents can automate—and where humans still matter
- Why the future belongs to highly consultative, 10X sales reps
Chapters:
00:36 Intro to Dan Lee and Nooks
01:23 Why Sales Is the Next Job AI Will Transform
03:01 The Evolution of Nooks
05:55 The Future of Software: The Barbell Effect
08:01 Why Customer Outcomes Matter
10:22 How AI Is Changing Software Engineering
12:08 Retraining Sales Teams for the AI Era
13:22 Serving Demand vs. Generating Demand
14:36 The Future of Human Salespeople vs. AI Agents
17:01 How to Be the Right CEO for the Moment
19:06 Building Proactive AI Agents for Sales
19:46 Where to Find Nooks
Try Nooks: nooks.ai

Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm (over 1 million copies sold) and Zone to Win, and an advisor to the CEOs of Microsoft, Salesforce, and Cisco, joins Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno, and Asad Zaman for a first appearance on Topline. Topics include whether agentic AI has crossed the chasm, why there's "zero chance" the AI bubble doesn't pop (and who will make it out the other side!), how startups win in a downturn, and how the Zone to Win framework is useful to help move AI pilots out of incubation and into the core business. Plus, a closer look at the SaaS-pocalypse and Salesforce's platform play, trapped value as the only durable moat, the hierarchy of powers behind today's valuations, whether AI has to eat the labor budget to pay off, and whether Geoffrey would buy the Anthropic IPO at a $2 trillion valuation.
Key Takeaways:
- The AI bubble will pop, but the category leaders will be fine. "There is zero chance that this bubble doesn't pop. We're so far over our skis in terms of valuations, it's crazy," said Geoffrey, pointing to circular financing that echoes the dot-com era. The survivors are the number 1 and number 2 players: "The winners are actually gonna win… But 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? No."
- Most AI initiatives are stuck in the incubation zone. "People were piloting like crazy and having great success" said of the last two years of enterprise AI pilots... but then they got stuck. The Zone to Win fix is to make the productivity zone customer zero, re-engineering internal shared services first, then bring the new technology to the sales team use case by use case rather than all at once.
- Where are moats today? Geoffrey points to trapped value as one type of moat. Trapped value analysis is a method to continually discover the new ways you can be irreplaceable to your customers, and stay ahead of the market.
- The ROI from AI won't come mainly from cutting headcount. "I think they're coming from quality improvement and latency reduction, not from labor reduction," said Geoffrey. For the next decade, probabilistic agents will sit in front of deterministic systems of record with a human checking in between, because "AI can be accountable, but it cannot be responsible."
Connect with the Hosts & Guests:
Host: Sam Jacobs, CEO at Pavilion - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/
Host: AJ Bruno, CEO at QuotaPath - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/
Host: Asad Zaman, CEO at STA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/
Guest: Geoffrey Moore, Board Member, Venture Partner, Author - https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreyamoore/
Topline is more than a podcast:
Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/
Check us out on YouTube for the #1 video podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.youtube.com/@TOPLINE-Media
Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack
Chapters:
00:00 Introducing Geoffrey Moore
02:01 Has Agentic AI Crossed the Chasm?
03:59 Will the AI Bubble Pop?
08:59 Startups That Win in a Downturn
12:00 The Zone to Win Framework
17:51 Getting AI Pilots Out of Incubation
19:21 Is Every SaaS Company Under Threat?
21:35 Zone Offense vs. Zone Defense
25:12 Salesforce, Headless and Platforms
33:34 Trapped Value Is the Real Moat
43:00 The Hierarchy of Powers
49:14 Can OpenAI and Anthropic Stay on Top?
53:13 Will AI Eat the Labor Budget?
01:02:07 Speed of Adoption vs. Innovation
01:04:57 Bulls and Bears