Ready, Fire, Aim

🚀 What if your AI could THINK like a C-suite executive — not just follow instructions?

In this episode of Ready, Fire, Aim, host Thad sits down with Victor Kovalev, AI scientist, 3x IPO veteran, and co-founder of Scale-Agentic, to unpack a completely new approach to go-to-market strategy. Victor reveals why the secret sauce behind his AI platform ISN'T a large language model — and breaks down the 5 levels of AI that most founders, marketers, and business leaders have never heard of.

Whether you're a startup founder drowning in GTM tools, a sales leader trying to scale outbound, or just curious about where AI is ACTUALLY heading — this conversation will change how you think about artificial intelligence in business.

🔥 In this episode you'll learn: ✅ Why tool adoption fails — and what actually works instead ✅ The CFO lunch story that changed everything at Redbubble ✅ How Scale-Agentic's "Agent Scout" operates like a human GTM executive ✅ The difference between agentic AI and true strategic AI ✅ Victor's 5 levels of AI framework — and why most companies are stuck at level 1 ✅ How to get BCG-level market intelligence in 1 week instead of 3 months

💡 If you're building with AI, leading a GTM team, or exploring how to hire your first AI executive — don't miss this one.

👇 Connect with Victor Kovalev & Scale-Agentic: 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/kovalevvictor/

👇 Connect with Thad Barnes: 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/thadbarnes/

📩 Want to be a guest on Ready, Fire, Aim? Reach out!

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 — Intro & Victor's background: from robotic search-and-rescue to Silicon Valley

01:29 — Running Yelp's mobile teams to a top-10 app in the world

02:18 — Moving to Australia to CTO a unicorn through IPO

03:15 — Why smart teams still fail at adopting technology

05:19 — The Redbubble story: tools failed, lunch meetings succeeded

06:18 — Aligning personal KPIs with company goals

07:46 — How a CTO bridges the gap between tech and business

08:29 — A tale of failure and success at Redbubble

10:10 — Embedding data scientists in teams instead of pushing tools

12:52 — The overlooked power of listening UP to your boss

14:06 — What Scale-Agentic is and why it exists

15:30 — Why people are drowning in GTM tools

17:11 — Building an AI executive, not another AI tool

18:01 — Meet Agent Scout: the AI GTM executive

20:27 — What's under the hood: LLMs vs. the real secret sauce

21:59 — How humans make high-stakes decisions with crappy data

22:28 — The evolutionary heuristics engine explained

23:36 — Your brain's "task scheduler" and why AI needs one too

27:28 — The 5 levels of AI: from copilots to superintelligence

30:18 — Why Scale-Agentic is two steps ahead of the industry

33:55 — Why single agents should do single tasks

36:12 — The founder spending half his time duct-taping GTM tools

38:35 — Iterative change: 6 months with a human vs. days with AI

40:01 — 24 research pieces in one week vs. 3 months from consultants

40:38 — What onboarding Agent Scout looks like

44:17 — Scale-Agentic's ideal customer profile

46:00 — Funding plans and what's next

48:31 — Final thoughts and where to connect

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIStartup #GoToMarket #GTMStrategy #AgenticAI #SalesAutomation #B2BSales #StartupFounder #AIExecutive #ScaleAgentic #LLM #AITools #GrowthHacking #TechStartup #SaaS #AIinBusiness #Entrepreneurship #ReadyFireAim #Podcast #VictorKovalev #Leadership #CTO #ProductLedGrowth #FutureOfAI #AIStrategy

Jazib Ahmad is a serial founder who's been deep in the AI trenches — from tackling the context window problem with his tool Open Context, to launching his newest startup Scouty in real time. In this conversation, Thad and Jazib dig into why bigger context windows aren't the real solution, how vibe coding is changing what one person can build, and why the best version of your product should probably embarrass you a little.

Jazib shares how he went from struggling to find the right industry events for his first startup to building an AI-powered tool that finds them for you — and why distribution, not development, is the real bottleneck in 2026.

0:00 Welcome & Intro

0:22 The context window problem: why bigger isn't always better

2:12 Managing long conversations with AI

3:13 Open Context and visual conversation branching

5:14 Using GitHub repos to manage prompt context

6:25 Reinforcement learning agents that learn which context matters

7:26 AI startups raising millions on potential alone

9:10 Vibe coding vs. the hybrid approach

11:04 How AI changed frontend development overnight

12:53 Prompting strategies: examples, branching & experimentation

14:27 Branching conversations across AI platforms

16:13 The leap in AI coding tools recently

17:29 Simple language prompting finally works

19:33 What's next: physical AI, robotics & LLM limits

22:51 Why top AI scientists are leaving big companies

23:47 AI-powered startups transforming every industry

24:43 Introducing Scouty: AI event discovery for founders

28:29 How Scouty differs from Borty and Luma

33:01 The engineering challenge of scraping events at scale

36:22 Building a website in a day and an MVP in a week

37:34 Distribution is the new bottleneck

38:39 Habituation, attention & the evolving marketing landscape

44:24 Launch fast and let users guide you

45:48 Overcoming the fear of public failure

47:07 The obstacle is the path

49:28 Wrap-up & what's next for Jazib

🔗 Connect with Jazib: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jazib-ahmad-450/

Scouty: https://www.meetscouty.com/

🔗 Connect with Thad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thadbarnes/

💬 Like this episode? Let us know!

#AI #Startups #VibeCoding #ContextWindow #AItools #Founders #ReadyFireAim #Podcast

🔥 Welcome back to the Ready Fire, Aim Podcast!
In this episode, Thad Barnes sits down with long-time technologist, AI pioneer, and founder of Redshift Labs, David Siegel — a man who was taking AI classes at Stanford back in 1983… before most people even knew what a computer was.

This conversation goes deep into:

• The early days of AI (yes, before the internet)
• Why today’s LLMs work the way they do
• How hallucinations really happen — and how to reduce them
• Why attention is the “secret sauce” behind modern AI
• The future of agents, the death of websites, and the agentic economy
• What business owners must do to survive the coming shift
• Why offers matter more than marketing
• How AI will replace apps, OS’s, and how we buy/sell everything
• The rise of wearables, personal assistants, and on-the-fly agentic commerce

David also explains why your business model, not your marketing, is what AI will judge…
…and how the companies who adapt their offers (not their keywords) will win the next decade.

If you care about business, AI, or the future at all — this is one of those conversations that hits hard.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-siegel-9786582a7/
Website (Redshift Labs): https://www.redshiftlabs.io/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thadbarnes/
Website (Epoch Digital Media): https://epochdm.com

Ready Fire Aim is where business owners, operators, and builders come to understand the evolving world of AI, marketing, and growth — without the fluff. Real conversations with real experts who are shaping the future.

AI Balancing, Fine-Tuning & Catastrophic Forgetting

In this episode of Ready, Fire, Aim, host Thad Barnes sits down with Ruth Birman, founder of Dysrupt Digital, to talk about navigating the rapidly evolving world of AI — and how businesses can thrive rather than freeze in fear.

Ruth shares her journey from service design and UX to building modular AI workflows that help companies modernize legacy systems without being locked into vendors or unpredictable token pricing.

We dive into:

• 🤖 AI & Legacy Systems – Why companies must re-think workflows, not just bolt on AI
• 🏢 Getting Team Buy-In – Avoiding "AI top-down mandates" that fail
• 💻 Open-Source LLMs & Self-Hosting – When it makes sense to roll your own model
• 🔒 Security & Privacy – Anonymizers, compliance, and protecting business IP
• ⚡ Faster Iteration – How AI can cut product cycles from months to days
• 🔮 The Future of AI – Ruth’s take on whether we’re heading for an “AI winter”

This conversation is packed with practical insights for business leaders, developers, and anyone trying to figure out how to responsibly (and profitably) integrate AI into their company.

🔗 Connect with Ruth Birman
🌐 Website: https://dysrupt.digital
🌐 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthbirman

🔗 Connect with Thad Barnes
🌐 Website: https://epochdm.com
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thadbarnes

In this episode of Ready, Fire, Aim, host Thad Barnes sits down with Troy Stange, founder of Brandpop and longtime design strategist, to explore a life and career full of unexpected turns.

From creating keynote decks for Fortune 500 executives, Richard Branson, and even Barack Obama, to competing on the world stage in Olympic weightlifting at age 57, Troy’s story is one of reinvention, resilience, and curiosity.

We dive into:

• 🎨 How a failed college start led to a 30-year design career with Microsoft, Google, and Adobe
• 🏋️ Why CrossFit revived Olympic weightlifting and how Troy qualified for the World Championships
• 🤖 How AI (and tools like Brandpop) are transforming stale lead databases into real revenue
• 🍷 Stories from his family’s Oregon vineyard and lessons in business (and butter!)
• 🔗 Why LinkedIn is still powerful—if you know how to use it

This conversation blends design, fitness, AI, and business growth with humor and storytelling you won’t want to miss.

🔗 Connect with Troy Stange
Website: https://brandpop.ai
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/troystange

🔗 Connect with Thad Barnes
Website: https://epochdm.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thadbarnes

What does it really take to build a startup that blends AI innovation, leadership, and resilience in today’s fast-changing world?

In this episode of the Ready, Fire, Aim Podcast, I sit down with Matt Farmer, founder of Moment 37, to unpack his journey from the early days of bootstrapping to building a business that thrives in uncertainty. Matt shares how he’s leveraged Artificial Intelligence, culture-driven leadership, and sheer grit to push through the roadblocks that take down most startups.

👉 If you’re an entrepreneur, innovator, or leader trying to navigate growth in the AI era, this conversation is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why resilience beats strategy in the first years of a startup
• How AI is shaping smarter, leaner companies
• The leadership lessons Matt wishes he knew at the start
• The role of culture in surviving downturns
• Practical tips for founders building from zero
  

🔗 Connect with Matt Farmer
Website: https://www.cloud37.ai/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfarmerai

🔗 Connect with Thad Barnes
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thad.e.barnes
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thadbarnes/

📅 Want to be a guest on the Ready, Fire, Aim Podcast?
Schedule here → https://calendly.com/thad_barnes/pre-podcast-chat

🎧 Listen on Spotify: Here
🎧 Apple Podcasts: Here

Join host Thad Barnes on the Ready Fire Aim Podcast as he sits down with John Fontenot, co-founder and chief product officer of Path2Product.io.

John shares his journey from struggling to break into product management to creating a platform that helps aspiring PMs gain hands-on experience and land their dream roles.

Discover how Path2Product cuts through the noise with a practical curriculum, portfolio projects, and AI-driven tools to bridge the experience gap.

Whether you’re pivoting careers or starting fresh, this episode is packed with insights to kickstart your product management journey!

Connect with John on LinkedIn or at [email protected]. #ProductManagement #CareerChange #Path2Product

Subscribe for more entrepreneurial insights and stay ready to fire and aim!

Get to know a little about the host Thad Barnes.

From Near Bankruptcy to $125M: Trev Muir’s Leadership & Resilience Story | Ready, Fire, Aim Podcast Ep. 001

What happens when your company is on the brink of collapse, your personal life is falling apart, and the future is uncertain? For Trev Muir, co-founder and former CEO of Surepoint Group, the answer was radical transparency, vulnerability, and a culture of caring. In this episode of the Ready, Fire, Aim Podcast, Trev shares how he helped steer Surepoint from the edge of bankruptcy to $125M in revenue—not once, but twice.
From navigating oil crashes and private equity buyouts to leading through the COVID-19 pandemic without layoffs, Trev’s story is an inspiring blueprint for resilient leadership.

We also dive into his personal battle with mental health, the life-changing moment that pulled him back from the brink, and why he believes vulnerability is one of the most underutilized strengths in leadership today. You’ll learn: How a “gift of forbearance” changed his company’s fate in 2013 Why caring can be a competitive advantage in business How to lead through crisis without losing your people—or your soul

The parallels between personal recovery and business turnaround Why healthy leaders build healthy teams, families, and communities

📌 Connect with Trev Muir LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-muir-b7231356/

Want to be a guest on the show?
📅 Book a call with Thad to see if we'd be a good match: https://calendly.com/thad_barnes/pre-podcast-chat