Boardroom Club

Exclusive: Bedrock Robotics just raised a $600 million at a staggering $4.1 billion valuation, and its Co-Founder & CEO, Boris Sofman, joins us for a fascinating conversation about the future of autonomous construction, Physical AI, and robotics.

From building consumer robots at Anki to developing autonomous cars at Waymo, Boris has spent his career pushing the boundaries of AI & robotics.

Now, he's bringing that experience to one of the world's largest and least automated industries: construction.

And his vision goes far beyond individual autonomous machines.

Topics We Covered:• How Bedrock Robotics can transform existing $600,000 construction machines into autonomous equipment in just 2.5 hours

• Why autonomous construction could fundamentally change how infrastructure, data centers, and other major projects are built

• Why Boris believes autonomous construction will expand the industry's capacity rather than replace human workers

• Why you can't simply put ChatGPT or Claude into a robot and expect it to operate autonomously

• How Bedrock develops proprietary AI models using real-world data, simulation, and lessons learned at Waymo

• What Boris learned from building consumer robots at Anki and developing autonomous technology at Waymo

• Why Boris believes humanoid robots will succeed in industrial applications long before becoming common in our homes

• How AI agents are changing cybersecurity and why Boris believes defensive AI will become increasingly important

• How immigrating from the Soviet Union to America shaped Boris's perspective on entrepreneurship, risk, and uncertainty

• How videos games influenced his career and his AI perspective
And Guess What Boris's All-Time Favorite Movie Is? 🚀🌌🪐Host: Yossi Garmazi
Register to our Newsletter:https://boardroomclub.substack.com/

Follow our LinkedIn

page:https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

Check our website:https://www.boardroomclub.net

#Robotics #Construction #autonomous #AI #machinelearning #waymo

Chapters:

00:00 Bedrock Vision

00:32 Intro

01:12 Building Consumer Robotics at Anki

07:01 Waymo Car

07:34 From Waymo to Bedrock Robotics

11:18 Retrofit Approach at Bedrock vs Waymo Approach

14:08 Bedrock: Intelligence & Proprietary data

16:08 Getting Data & Physical Sites

17:32 Bedrock Moat

20:35 Building Only Software in the AI era?

23:06 Raising $600M at $4.1B - What's next?

24:53 Stock Market & Chocolate

25:56 From Pilots to Paying Customers & Deployment

29:04 Bedrock: One AI Fleet

32:13 Construction Projects AI Upside

32:48 The Future of Humanoid Robots

35:25 Rouge Agents

37:25 From the Soviet Union to America

38:58 Video Games Influence on Boris

41:35 Computer Science & Genetics

43:12 Mentorship

44:42 Coffee Question

45:46 Favorite Movie: Making Interstellar

Exclusive: JD Sherman, Former President & COO of HubSpot joins us to discuss how HubSpot scaled from roughly $20 million to over $1 billion in revenue!

During his nearly decade-long tenure, JD helped lead HubSpot through its IPO, scaling the organization from approximately 200 to over 4,000 employees and transforming it into one of the world's leading software companies.

But the journey was far from smooth.

During an early fundraising meeting, legendary investor Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) turned to HubSpot co-founder & CEO Brian Halligan and asked:

“Why did you hire this guy?”

a16z ultimately pulled out of the funding round because it believed hiring JD as COO would slow HubSpot down.

JD took it personally.

“I'm going to prove these guys wrong.”

The rest is History!

Topics We Covered:

• What JD had to unlearn after spending 15 years at IBM and serving as CFO of Akamai before joining and scaling HubSpot

• Why JD describes HubSpot's journey as a series of near catastrophes narrowly averted

• How HubSpot built a culture that encouraged autonomy, experimentation, and rapid recovery from mistakes

• How a major platform migration caused customers to revolt, churn to spike, and HubSpot to rethink customer success

• How HubSpot's agency partner ecosystem helped agencies transition from project-based work to recurring revenue businesses

• How HubSpot's shift toward product-led growth and its introduction of a free product helped reaccelerate revenue growth

• Why HubSpot prioritized inbound marketing over outbound sales, and how AI is changing the future of personalized customer outreach

• How introducing a free version of HubSpot and shifting toward product-led growth helped reaccelerate revenue growth

• Why leaders should focus on decisions that are both consequential and difficult to reverse rather than micromanaging employees

And Guess What JD Would Have Become If He Hadn't Pursued a Career in Tech? 🐟🏔️🏕️

Hosts: Yossi Garmazi & Amado Vargas

Register to our Newsletter:https://boardroomclub.substack.com/

Follow our LinkedIn

page:https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

Check our website:https://www.boardroomclub.net

#ai #SaaS #Startup #GTM #Sales #Entrepreneurship #crm #vc #BenHorowitz

Chapters:

00:00 The a16z Meeting

01:00 Intro

01:56 From IBM & Akamai to HubSpot

03:27 The Hard Things about Hard things

05:51 A Series of Nearly Catastrophes

08:09 HubSpot Customer Success

10:28 From Missionaries to Mercenaries

12:53 Lessons From Becoming a Public Company

14:56 Public Company: Easier to Get Customers?

15:58 From Inbound to Outbound

18:10 Outbound in the AI Era

19:39 Maintaining Culture when Scaling

22:46 Friction Between Sales & Marketing

25:05 Tokenmaxxing Future

26:34 HubSpot Agency Partner Model

28:31 Genie Question

28:48 Mentorship

32:04 Coffee Question

33:06 Hobbies: Flyfishing

33:34 Favorite Movie

Exclusive: Ron Gabrisko, Founding CRO of Databricks joins us to discuss how Databricks scaled from less than $1 Million to over $7 Billion in Revenue run rate, how AI is transforming enterprise sales, and what it takes to build a world-class go-to-market organization.

Databricks just raised a whopping $5 billion at a staggering $190 billion valuation, cementing its position as one of the world's most valuable private technology companies.

They are backed by legendary investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Thrive Capital, Insight Partners, Coatue Management, Blackstone and others.

But the story started very differently.

When Ron joined the company, it had less than $1 million in revenue and seven founders with a groundbreaking technology that had yet to be fully commercialized.

“Ben Horowitz from a16z told me, ‘It's smaller than any company you're looking at, but I think it has the most upside in my entire portfolio.’”

The rest is history.

Topics We Covered:

• How Databricks scaled from less than $1 million to over $7 billion in revenue run rate

• Why Ron believes companies must reinvent their leadership, strategy, and GTM playbook at every stage of growth

• Why the people who take a company from $0 to $20 million may not be the ones who take it to $1 billion

• How Databricks uses AI and Genie to automate sales forecasting, customer research, account planning, and churn prevention

• Why AI is transforming the role of BDRs and SDRs, enabling greater productivity and more personalized outreach

• Why human relationships and spending time with customers remain critical in the AI era

• Why enterprises are struggling to generate real ROI from AI despite massive investments

• How Databricks helps enterprises connect AI to their data while maintaining security, governance, and control

• Why 90% of Ron's customers are starting to use open-weight models and how proper model routing can reduce AI costs by 50–80%

• How Unity AI Gateway helps enterprises manage AI model selection, spending, security, and governance

• Why 80% of newly launched databases are being launched by AI agents rather than humans, and how Lakebase is designed for agentic applications

• How AI is transforming healthcare, from clinical research to improving patient outcomes

• Why forward-deployed engineering (FDE) and technical expertise are becoming increasingly important in enterprise sales

And Guess What Ron Originally Dreamed of Becoming Before Building Databricks? ⚾🧢🏆

Register to our Newsletter:

https://boardroomclub.substack.com/

Follow our LinkedIn page:https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

Check our website:

https://www.boardroomclub.net

#Databricks #AI #Sales #GTM #aiagents #MachineLearning #BigData #ApacheSpark #Lakebase #OpenSource #Startups

Chapters:

00:00 Ben Horowitz Intro to Databricks team

00:43 Intro

01:19 Ron' GTM Philosophy Development

03:13 Hiring When scaling from 1M to 7B

05:04 Managing Personal Dynamics in GTM Teams

06:03 Sales Environment when Flying all the time

08:02 AI Impact on Sales: Genie

09:30 The Future of BDRs and Outbound

11:21 BDR to AE Development

12:35 Ron Favorite KPI

13:48 How to Get real ROI from AI?

16:07 Operational Friction Point With AI

17:57 Databricks Different Verticals

20:01 Unity AI Gateway: Solving AI Cost Problem

23:08 Databricks & System Integrators (SI) - FDEs

25:45 Unity AI Gateway & Lakebase

27:40 How to be a Great CRO?

28:50 What Ron looks for when Hiring?

30:00 Which Account Executives (AEs) to Hire?

31:39 Why Ron Joined Databricks?

33:11 Mentorship

34:02 Hobbies

34:54 Coffee Question

35:33 Alternate Universe Profession

36:13 Ron & Ali Future MLB Career?

36:59 Favorite Movie

Exclusive: Dheeraj Pandey, Co-Founder and CEO of DevRev and Co-Founder and Former CEO of Nutanix, joins us to discuss how AI is transforming enterprise software and the future of programming.

In 2016, he took Nutanix public in the largest U.S. venture-backed IPO of the year.

Now, he’s building again with DevRev, valued at $1.15B after a $100M Series A, backed by Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures) Navin Chaddha (Mayfield) and others.

“The iPhone moment for the enterprise is here. The LLM is the new compiler."

From machine code and assembly to high-level languages and now AI-powered natural language programming, Dhiraj explains how programming has evolved and why he believes the LLM is the new compiler, changing the way we build software.

Topics We Covered:

• Why Dheeraj believes the iPhone moment for enterprise software is here

• Why the evolution of programming languages reminds him of previous technological shifts

• How AI will make building products cheaper, create more companies, and shorten product lifecycles

• Why the future of enterprise AI is about self-service, combining search, answers, and actions

• How DevRev brings developers, employees, and customers together through AI-native software

• Why integrating enterprise data and building an enterprise memory are critical for accurate AI

• Why reliability, latency, and self-service are the three key priorities for product builders

• How AI is transforming product management, software engineering, and quality assurance

• What Dheeraj learned from building Nutanix and why he decided to start DevRev

• Why grit, curiosity, and engineering fundamentals matter in the AI era

• Why Dheeraj is bullish on quantum computing and the future of biology and computing

And Guess Dheeraj's Favorite Movie? 🇮🇳🕵️‍♂️🎬

Host: Yossi Garmazi

Register to our Newsletter: https://boardroomclub.substack.com/

Follow our LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

Check our website: https://www.boardroomclub.net

#ai #tech #programing #coding #agents #startups #entrepreneur

Chapters:

00:00 iPhone Moment for the Enterprise

00:15 Intro

00:51 Advice for people in the AI era

03:30 From Oracle to Building Companies

06:41 Building Nutanix: Critical Bets

09:25 From Nutanix to Building DevRev

11:08 Lessons from Nutanix

14:28 DevRev Mission

19:25 The Relation between Dev and Rev

25:05 How to Decide Which Features to Build?

29:20 The Future of Developers and Computer Science

33:50 Other Verticals Dheeraj Follow: Biotech & Quantum

36:57 Mentorship

37:56 Favorite Book

38:09 Favorite Movie

Exclusive: Jon Addison, CRO of Okta joins us to discuss how AI agents are reshaping identity, security, and the future of enterprise GTM.

By 2028, Every Fortune500 would have 150,000, Agents to manage!

What happens when companies go from having thousands of human identities to potentially hundreds of thousands of AI agents operating across the organization?

We sat down with Jon to discuss  @OktaInc 's role in the agentic era, the growing governance gap around AI agents, and how AI is transforming the way enterprise companies sell, scale, and engage with customers.

Topics we covered:

• Why 90% of businesses already have AI agents in production, but only 10% have well-documented policies governing them

• The challenge of managing and securing thousands of AI agents across the enterprise

• Why every Fortune 500 company could have 150,000+ agents in production

• The three fundamental questions companies need to ask about their AI agents

• How AI is changing enterprise sales and go-to-market strategies

• Why sales teams are becoming more specialized and focused on domain expertise

• The shift from selling products to selling platforms

• How Okta is building a partner-led growth model

• The importance of leading indicators and using AI to get ahead of customer problems

• What separates great salespeople from great sales leaders

• Why ambition and curiosity are essential in the AI era

And guess who Jon would love to grab a coffee with? 🎩🗣️ 🇬🇧

Hosts: Yossi Garmazi & Jason Woolf

Filmed: August 2026

Register to our Newsletter:https://boardroomclub.substack.com/

Follow our LinkedIn page:https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

#ai #tech #identity #agents #cybersecurity #GTM #Sales

Chapters:

00:00 AI is On, but no Policy

00:33 Intro

01:18 Identities Space Evolution

04:15 90% Use AI, 10% have Policy

07:55 CISO role in AI

09:16 Apex Methodology: From Discovery to Validation

13:40 The Future of Outbounds sales

17:49 Okta transition to Partner Led Growth

21:05 Forward Deployed Engineers in Cyber (FDE)

23:19 New Sales Process in Okta

27:33 The Future of Account Executives (AEs)

29:11 Higher Quotes for AES with AI?

31:30 Land Vs Expand Accounts

33:36 Lessons from Sales Career

34:58 Who is a Great Sales Leader?

36:33 Coffee Question

37:08 Favorite Movie

Exclusive: Omer Kaplan, Co-Founder & CEO of ZyG, joins us to discuss how AI is reshaping the future of e-commerce.

What happens when an e-commerce company can leverage hundreds of AI agents to handle everything around the product?

We sat down with Omer to discuss his journey from building IronSource and it's acquisition by Unity to founding ZyG and creating an AI-powered operating system designed to help consumer brands scale.

Topics we covered:

• Building ZyG from lessons learned at IronSource

• The vision for an end-to-end AI operating system for e-commerce

• How hundreds of AI agents can transform marketing, creative, customer support, and more

• What is the ZyG Score and how it can predict which products can become successful brands

• What separates winning brands from losing brands in the AI era

• How AI will reshape marketing teams and make organizations smaller

• Preserving creativity and differentiation in an AI-generated world

• What makes a winning brand, and could Paul McCartney succeed if he started his career today?

And guess what Omer's favorite movie is? 🎶💃🕺

Register to our Newsletter:https://boardroomclub.substack.com/

Follow our LinkedIn page:https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

Check our website:https://www.boardroomclub.net

Hosts: Yossi Garmazi & Álvaro Jiménez Cabello de los Cobos

Chapters:

00:00 ZyG Mission

00:22 Intro

01:04 From IronSource to Building ZyG

03:32 The Vision: An AI Operating System for E-commerce

06:09 Why Investors Backed ZyG's $118M Raise

08:12 Building an End-to-End Agentic Platform

10:28 The ZyG Score: Predicting Brand Success

15:47 What Separates Winning Brands in the AI Era

18:50 How AI Will Transform Marketing Teams

20:34 Can AI Kill Creativity and Iconic Brands?

24:47 AI Shopping Agents and the Future of Commerce

27:08 Which Marketing Functions AI Will Disrupt Next?

28:48 Advice for Founders: Think Big

31:04 Mentors, Leadership, and Entrepreneurial Lessons

34:32 Music, Movies, and Final Thoughts

Exclusive: Mirko Novakovic, Founder & CEO of Dash0, joins us to discuss how AI agents are changing the way we build, monitor, and interact with software.

What happens when your users are no longer humans - but AI agents?

We sat down with Mirko, to discuss his journey from building and selling Instana to IBM, taking a break from operating, and eventually returning to the trenches to build Dash0, an observability platform built for the next generation of software.

Topics we covered:

• Why AI agents don't need dashboards, and what they actually need?

• The exponential growth of telemetry data, and why companies may need to filter out 95–99% of their data.

• Dash0's transparent telemetry-based pricing model.

• Dash0's Agent Zero• Dash0's acquisition of Lumigo

• AI inference costs & LLM proxies

• Building a moat in the AI era

And guess what Mirko's favorite movie is? 🕺🍔💼

Register to our Newsletter:https://boardroomclub.substack.com/

Follow our LinkedIn page:https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

Check our website:https://www.boardroomclub.net

Hosts: Yossi Garmazi & Jason Woolf

#ai #tech #obervability #software #dashboard #token #pulpfiction

Chapters:

00:00 Dashboards for Agents?

00:29 Intro

01:08 Coming back from Mallorca

02:41 Learning from being an Investor

04:18 Being Open Telemetry Native

06:36 Billing by Telemetry points

08:49 Agent's philosophy in Dash0

10:38 The end of Dashboards?

13:00 Acquiring Lumigo

14:40 Building a moat in the AI e

16:43 Exponential growth of Telemetry points

19:37 AI inference costs & LLM proxies

21:38 Quantum technology

24:00 Hiring in Startups & Culture

27:06 Advice for Entrepreneurs

28:15 Mirko & Deep Tech

29:41 Mentorship

30:38 GTM in Startups

31:29 Hobbies

32:20 Coffee Question

32:59 Alternate Universe

33:41 Favorite Movie

Exclusive: Eliot Pence , Founder & CEO of Dominion Dynamics, join us to discuss how they revolutionize the defense tech ecosystem.

What does it take to build defense technology for one of the hardest environments on Earth - the Arctic?

We sat down with Eliot Pence, Founder and CEO of Dominion Dynamics ( @defendthedominion ) a company developing autonomous command-and-control systems for defense, national security, and critical infrastructure.

Elliot shares why Dominion chose the Arctic as its starting point, how extreme environments shape the company's technology, and why his philosophy is to “do the hardest thing” and build around the needs of the user.

We also discussed how they're developing Canada's first sovereign Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP), named Dominion Scout, to act as an uncrewed "loyal wingman" alongside fighter jets like the F-35.

Other topics we covered:

• Eliot Career journey at Africa and at  @Anduril  working with Palmer Luckey and Trae Stephens.

• Resilient communications and tactical mesh networks

• The future of defense technology

• Canada's history of defense innovation

• Quantum technology and quantum sensing (Eliot is a board member at Xanadu  @XanaduAI )

• Entrepreneurship, leadership, and mentorship

Register to our Newsletter:

https://boardroomclub.substack.com/

Follow our LinkedIn page:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

Check our website:

https://www.boardroomclub.net

Hosts: Yossi Garmazi

#ai #tech #defensetech #canada #arctic #anduril #africa

Chapters:

00:00 Building at the Arctic

00:29 Intro

01:02 Lessons from Africa

03:03 Building Anduril GTM

05:33 Defense Tech in Canada

08:17 Communications at the Arctic

10:56 Space industry & Satellites & Defense Tech

12:29 Building the ACP - Unmanned Aircraft

16:05 Building Software & Hardware at the same time

18:04 Deploying Dominion not in the Arctic

20:44 Dominion on the Moon?

21:10 Selling to NATO Allies

22:35 Defense Companies & Quantum & Xanadu

24:51 What keeps you at night?

25:34 Advice for Entrepreneurs

26:17 Mentorship

27:09 Coffee Question

28:15 Alternate Universe Profession

29:34 Genie Question

30:04 Favorite Movie

Exclusive: Sean D'Arcy is the Chief Solutions Officer at Kahoot! - the app we all know, whether from the classroom or the workplace!

Sean shares his journey from Opera to Kahoot!, and explains how technology can democratize access to information and create more engaging learning experiences.

We also discuss Kahoot!’s evolution from a classroom quiz platform into an increasingly important tool for enterprise learning and engagement.

Other topics we cover:

• AI and the future of learning - Why Kahoot! sees AI not simply as a way to automate content creation, but as a tool to augment learning and improve outcomes.

• From engagement to measurable learning - How Kahoot! is moving beyond quizzes and gamification toward assessment, learning gaps, proficiency, and personalized learning journeys.

• The evolution of Kahoot! - How a concept originally called “Lecture Quiz” became one of the world’s most recognizable learning platforms.

• Going private - Sean explains how becoming a private company has allowed Kahoot! to focus more deeply on the opportunities ahead.

• Re-onboarding after layoffs - Why organizations often underestimate the importance of rebuilding trust, connection, alignment, and skills after major organizational change.

• Advice for founders and builders - Sean shares why maintaining a “Day One” mentality, moving quickly, staying resilient, and being willing to pivot are more important than ever.

And guess what Sean’s favorite movie is? 🐺🌲⚔️Register to our Newsletter:https://boardroomclub.substack.com/Follow

our LinkedIn page:https://www.linkedin.com/company/boardroom-club

Check our website:https://www.boardroomclub.net

Hosts: Yossi Garmazi & Amado Vargas

#ai #tech #quiz #game #learning #norway #oslo #PrincessMononoke

Chapters:

00:00 Kahoot! Evolution

00:14 Intro

00:55 From Browser Wars to Kahoot!

03:24 Kahoot! ICP Evolution

05:50 Kahoot! Name meaning

07:37 Going Private

09:18 AI Impact on Kahoot!

12:23 What does Success look like at Kahoot?

14:18 Surprise in Kahoot Usage

16:11 Kahoot Partnerships with Educators

17:52 Gamification & Remediation in Kahoot!

19:21 Onboarding, Layoffs & Kahoot 360

21:56 Kahoot! Game Advice

23:41 Advice for Founders

25:08 Mentorship

26:41 Coffee Questions

27:39 Alternate Career

28:19 Favorite Travel Location

29:12 Favorite Movie

Exclusive: Ben Cefalo, Chief Product Officer at  @MongoDB  joins us to discuss how AI is fundamentally changing the way companies build, manage, and access data.

Benjamin joins us to discuss how AI is fundamentally changing the way companies build, manage, and access #data.

From why “Agents speak #JSON” to whether better data retrieval can actually reduce #LLM costs, Ben shares MongoDB’s vision for the AI era and explains why the database is becoming an increasingly important part of the AI stack.

Topics we cover:

• Why AI agents speak JSON and what that means for databases

• How better data retrieval can reduce LLM costs and token usage

• Why MongoDB built #Vector Search directly into its database

• How AI agents can use databases as their long-term #memory

• Why hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure is here to stay

• How MongoDB evolved from an #OpenSource project into an enterprise cloud platform

• The biggest challenge facing #CIOs: balancing AI adoption, speed, security, and governance

Benjamin also shares his #advice for entrepreneurs and who he would love to grab a #coffee with!

And What is Benjamin’s favorite #movie? 🎬🗽🍕

Register for our newsletter:

https://boardroomclub.substack.com

Check our new website:

https://www.boardroomclub.net

Hosts: Yossi Garmazi & Sanat Mouli

#ai #agents #database #coding #opensource

Chapters:

00:00 Agents & MongoDB

00:35 Intro

01:04 Tokenmaxxing

02:39 MongoDB: Less tokens

04:38 Incumbents needs to reshape their database?

06:45 Building Vector Search

09:09 Managing Memory at Database level

10:29 Acquiring Voyage AI

11:31 MongoDB Evolution & Open Source

15:02 Companies moving to On Premise

17:35 On Premise effect on product development

19:20 Product development strategy at MongoDB

21:04 What keeps CIOs at Night?

24:38 Indie developers Vs Enterprise

25:30 Advice for Entrepreneurs

27:04 Hobbies

27:37 Mentorship

30:08 Coffee Question

31:04 Alternate Universe profession

32:30 Favorite Movie