# Paid proofs of concept filter out AI tourism

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/paid-proofs-of-concept-filter-out-ai-tourism/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Bret Taylor](https://realalpha.app/builders/bret-taylor/) · Bret Taylor is co-founder of Sierra. · Co-founded and leads Sierra, an enterprise AI agent company; chairs OpenAI's board and co-created Google Maps.
- Host: [Joubin Mirzadegan](https://realalpha.app/people/joubin-mirzadegan/) · Partner, Kleiner Perkins · Took Palo Alto Networks' cloud business from $2M to $50M+ ARR in a year.
- Show: Grit
- Episode: [How Sierra Is Pulling Ahead in the AI Race | Co-founder Bret Taylor](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/), Mar 9, 2026
- Moment: 52:40 to 58:18 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/paid-proofs-of-concept-filter-out-ai-tourism/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3160

## Takeaways

1. Paid POCs help identify customers who intend to deploy.
2. Some customers need technical help; others need change management.
3. Sierra aims to be a partner accountable for outcomes.

## About this segment

Sierra usually charges for proofs of concept to screen for customers with a real business mandate. Its team then shares responsibility for getting the agent into production.

From “How Sierra Is Pulling Ahead in the AI Race | Co-founder Bret Taylor”, Mar 9, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[52:44](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3164) appetizers are served eat that's right yeah that's right um uh you uh you guys do paid pocs is that right? Like you, like maybe the question behind the question is that every CIO, every large company, maybe it's not the same voracious demand as a year and a half, two years ago, where their boards are telling their CEOs that they have to go use AI, but they are looking for wins. And then that like trickles all the way down. Right. And then what do they do? They like go online or they start asking their peers. And then they usually do like a bottoms up market first like what are the good markets okay like what are the projects that we should start in then they'll usually start in coding they probably already doing something with microsoft then they'll make their way to you know whatever windsurf and then they'll go straight to clod or codex or

[53:35](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3215) whatever right then they'll probably look at legal you know and then they'll probably look hopefully give us a call that's right they'll probably look at uh support right so like there's like a few buckets yeah and you're in one of those buckets okay and the the the good news is like you're in one of those buckets. And so you're like, you have more demand than supply in some ways. The bad news is, I don't know, but like, I'm just parroting this back to you.

[54:01](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3241) There's probably a lot of tire kicking. Like there's probably like, it's not that your software can't scale. It's like you have a forward deployed engineering model where I suspect the reason you do it is because the underlying technology is nascent. The LLMs are nascent. Sierra is early and you want to it's prerogative on your it's your prerogative to basically give these large enterprises a bear hug a brett taylor sized bear hug to make sure that like they are successful and so you want to invest a bunch of resources in making sure that they're successful and in order to do that like you need great people that can partner with them and so like uh maybe not to put words in your mouth but i'm curious like do you then have to raise the bar of like when you are supply, not demand constrained, who you choose to work with and how those engagements

[54:53](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3293) go? Because that's a very caviar, but interesting problem right now. Yeah, I think you're right. So just talking about the kicking times, we have a name for it. We call it AI tourism. And so there are companies often, as you said, due to board and CEO pressure where you're trying to show AI momentum, but without necessarily like a business mandate. And that's where you have, there was that MIT study that got sent around like everywhere about failed AI projects.

[55:23](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3323) I think a lot of that is AI tourism, where people sort of start ostensibly POCs, but they're essentially, they're like POCs marching into the void. Like they never were, there was no path to production for any of them, but they were, you know, showing motion or trying to learn about the technology. And so we, with our proof of concept, uh, more often than not, you know, we're, we're essentially always paid. Um, and the reason for that is we want companies that are serious about doing this. We don't want, you know, the companies that are doing AI tourism.

[55:57](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3357) Um, and, uh, but it's. modest it's a little bit more just like hey like you're you're for real you know you actually want to to deploy this project at the end going to your point on the bear hug um you know more often than not our product can fix itself and it's pretty easy to use so the ford deployed part of it is uh is different than just being uh having a seat at the table with our clients um sometimes it's change management. We work with one large scale medical device company that had 40 call centers and they're consolidating it into one with AI. Some of it's technical, right? There's 40 different stacks and that's where sort of a, maybe a forward deployed motion helps, but they also need help with that transformation as well. And so, you know, part of the benefit we provide at Sierra is we can, whether you're small or big, by the way, it's not really a size thing, but the hard

[56:50](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3410) part of AI is like, how do you successfully deploy it? And some of it's human, some of it's technical. And what we want to do is actually be accountable for that, that outcome. It's why we have outcomes-based pricing. It's why we have, we call it agent development, that sort of forward deployed team, but it's not, you know, we can, we have a lot of clients who's like, Hey, I want to do this all myself. And that's great. And we'll just say, here's the product, go to town. We have some who really need a lot of help, but our best are sort of, you know, co-innovation, you know, We're there helping you consult, if you will, on sort of like the right way to do it.

[57:25](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3445) And I think it's the way a lot of companies want to work in AI because they want to know best practices. They want to know, hey, I noticed you went live with this healthcare insurance company in two months, and that's really impressive. That's almost unbelievable. How did that? Tell me how to do that. That's actually kind of the thing that we can do at Sierra that's really unique, is we can kind of come in and say, we have experience with the largest banks. We have experience with largest healthcare companies. We have experience with the world's largest telcos. And if you want to move faster, we can help you do that. And that's not always technology. It's often a lot of other things. And so that's really been our sweet spot. So, and it does though, it is a higher touch model, if you will, and it's not all engineering, but what we want to be as a partner,

[58:13](https://realalpha.app/v/6v9q6k8aF6E/?t=3493) not a vendor. That's how we want to show up with our clients. Yeah, that makes sense.