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Uncapped · 3 min · Jul 14, 2026

Salesforce is constrained by its pre-AI architecture

Sam Blond · Co-founder & CEO, Monaco

Sam Blond says Salesforce faces an innovator’s dilemma: serve its existing platform or disrupt itself.

The episode’s best minutes

Full analysis
  1. 9:38Pipeline volume matters more than small conversion gains5 min
  2. 28:50Salesforce is constrained by its pre-AI architecture3 min
  3. 1:02:35Give buyers a clear path to getting valuePro pick 4 min
  4. 5 more moments in the full episode
“they are overlaying AI on top of a pre-AI system architected platform, which is better than no AI, but less good than being truly AI native”
Sam Blondat 30:11 · Uncapped
30:11

Takeaways

  1. Incumbents have to balance existing customers with platform shifts.
  2. Adding AI to a pre-AI platform is not the same as building AI-native.
  3. Start in a narrow market, then expand as the product matures.

About this segment

Sam Blond says Salesforce faces an innovator’s dilemma: serve its existing platform or disrupt itself. AI-native competitors can start with smaller markets and build toward category leadership.

Sam Blond

Sam Blond is cofounder and CEO of Monaco.

Former Brex and Zenefits CRO who co-founded Monaco, the AI-native revenue engine for startups.

  • Jack Altman, Host · General partner, Benchmark

    Co-founded Lattice and ran it until 2023, then started his fund, Alt Capital.

From “Sam Blond on the Future of Sales in an AI-Native World | Ep. 54”, Jul 14, 2026. Watch the full episode

Answers “Is SaaS dead?” See all 36 answers

Transcript

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

  1. 29:03

    I think you articulated it perfectly. These platform shifts rhyme where Siebel, that was maybe the incumbent or market leader in this category that Monaco is building in, which is go to market or sales, was the market leader. There was nothing inherently wrong with the business. In fact, like one of the most incredible businesses at the time in history. The same thing is true with the market leader today, which is Salesforce. Just incredible business. And I think that they are, any market leader, and you can pattern match to other functions within enterprise software, they're faced with an innovator's dilemma where they have an existing set of customers on a platform that was architected pre-AI.

  2. 29:52

    And so they can either continue serving the needs of those customers and focusing on where they are generating revenue and building on top of this existing platform, or they can disrupt themselves. And seemingly every time businesses are faced with this innovator's dilemma during a platform shift, they gravitate towards the former, which I think for us equates to opportunity, where we can, and by the way, I think like what Salesforce and what other companies are doing, they are overlaying AI on top of a pre-AI system architected platform, which is better than no AI, but less good than being truly AI native, which is what a company like Monaco is. And so for us, we can go after a sort of narrow segment of the market today, which is startups. And if you think about Salesforce's revenue, how much of Salesforce's revenue is concentrated in early stage

  3. 30:51

    technology startups? Less than 1%. Certainly less than 1%. And so we can go after that market. We can build a better platform. We can build a platform that's truly AI native. We can get close to monopoly market share there. And then we start to move up market and we start to organically expand outside of startups and hopefully eventually evolve into the market leader. But whether it's us or somebody else, it seems a foregone conclusion that the category leader, the platform of record in sales in, let's call it five years, will be a platform that is architected with AI in mind and not one that was architected 20 years prior. You had a choice to make, which was obviously what you're selling is like work outcomes and you're selling sort of like revenue in some sense, you chose to also be a system of