Alright, so I just finished listening to this fantastic podcast episode with Dave Boyce, and let me tell you—it was like a masterclass in modern go-to-market strategy, systems thinking, and how AI is flipping the game. Imagine sitting with a smart, laid-back friend who’s figured out how to scale SaaS, sell a company to Oracle, and now spends his time thinking deeply about how to make GTM systems work smarter, not just harder. That’s this convo in a nutshell.

So, here’s the vibe: Dave’s hanging out in Provo, Utah, with the mountains behind him and a fresh breeze coming through his office window. And yeah, you can’t help but feel a little jealous. But the real sunshine is in the insights he drops.

We start off with his journey—Dave’s been a founder a few times over, sold his last company, and instead of jumping into another build-from-scratch grind, he wanted to pause. Reflect. You know, zoom out and figure out what worked, what didn’t, and what patterns kept showing up. That led him to Winning by Design (WbD), where he didn’t just join a consulting firm—he joined a team of systems thinkers who speak his language.

Now, if you’ve heard about the “bow tie” model and wondered why everyone’s obsessed with it—Dave breaks it down beautifully. Basically, most companies obsess over the left side of the funnel: acquisition. Pipeline. Bookings. Then they hit the gong and call it a day. But in SaaS, that’s not the win—it’s just the start. The bow tie model maps out the full customer lifecycle—acquisition on one side, but then post-sale? You’ve got onboarding, renewal, expansion, and if you do it right, compound growth. That’s the right side of the bow tie. That’s where the money and retention magic happens.

One thing I loved—Dave draws a clear line between “systems thinking” and “framework thinking.” They’re not that different, really. It’s about poking one part of your GTM system and knowing how it’ll ripple downstream. Lowering price might get you more deals… but what happens to profitability? Widening the top of your funnel might sound sexy, but what happens when your sales team spends their time chasing unqualified leads? Systems thinking helps you see those second- and third-order effects.

Now enter AI.

Dave talks about how AI is just jet fuel for the self-service motion. At WbD, they’re embracing what he calls Assistive, Agentic, and Orchestrative AI. Think of Assistive as your AI-powered intern—summarizing documents, writing drafts, doing research. Agentic AI takes that up a notch—it’s trained to do a job. And Orchestrative? That’s the C-suite bot. It’s making calls, triggering workflows, handling real-deal ops.

They’ve even named their agents—Celeste (internal GTM intelligence) and Jack (inbound SDR)—because we still think in human terms. Celeste attends every call, reads every email, taps into CRM data, and can brief anyone on the full context of an account. Jack qualifies inbound leads right on their site and directs them toward the right path—self-serve or human.

And Dave makes this point that really stuck with me: AI-native companies are just wired differently than SaaS-native ones. In SaaS-native, you sign 12-month contracts, and you get your renewal chat once a year. In AI-native, like with tools we all use now—Replit, Cursor, ChatGPT—you upgrade or downgrade based on value, not contract cycles. If you’re not delivering impact every day, your users are gone. That means the mindset needs to shift from “sell once” to “deliver value continuously.” Renewals are monthly, even daily.

Even the way we think about a “customer” is changing. Dave says: think of a customer as a collection of users, each with their own trust networks. If you deliver impact to one, they’ll recruit others. The virality becomes product-led and AI-assisted.

For marketing agencies—and this part is gold—Dave suggests they’ll need to evolve into GTM agencies. Why? Because recurring revenue depends on recurring impact, and the only way to sustain that is to bake systems thinking into your DNA. Tips and tricks won’t cut it anymore. The agency of the future is empathic, metrics-driven, and deeply attuned to the customer’s business goals.

Oh, and about the naming of AI agents? Dave laughs, but he’s clear—it’s partly because humans need to personify things to build trust. Plus, when you’re onboarding or managing AI agents like team members, giving them a name helps you slot them into your org just like a human hire.

The whole convo wraps with Dave and Mukund reflecting on how the ground has shifted under our feet. Higher cost of capital, AI reshaping user behavior, the rise of DIY SaaS… you can’t just do what worked in 2018 and expect magic. If you’re not re-earning your customers’ trust and business every month, you’re toast.

Anyway, this one was a ride—part therapy session for GTM leaders, part AI strategy briefing, and all heart. Highly recommend.