Jon Kerry-Tyerman

At Black Box Intelligence™, we've been closely monitoring California since the minimum wage increase in April, and the findings may surprise you! Explore the trends in sales, traffic, check growth, and staffing, particularly in comparison to the rest of the nation. https://lnkd.in/gkf2mVUf

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What (Management) lessons can we learn from Los Angeles' apocalypse fires, and why is it time for Californians to rise against professional politicians and ideologues... First and foremost, I am so sorry for the hard-working people of Los Angeles, the gardeners, construction workers, retail/services managers, and entrepreneurs. What happened was unfair and heartbreaking but mostly outrageous because it was so predictable and avoidable. I (legally) immigrated to this country 25 years ago. In exchange for an Eb1 visa, I had to produce a five-year plan, hire many people, and pay many taxes. This led to a green card and eventually US citizenship... Originally, from Europe, I always thought of my affiliation as progressive, squarely leaning toward democrats (the 80s and 90s version), although I was always fiscally conservative... After 2 decades of no changes, worse infrastructures, growing taxes (why are we paying $4.89 a gallon vs. the national average of $3 again?), exploding homelessness, and consistent deficits... California, the 5th largest economy with a budget of $322B, should LEAD THE WORLD FOR ITS INFRASTRUCTURES, have the most modern high-speed trains (LA to Seattle in 5 hours), quality and abundant water, and clean (nuclear) energy (France relies 75% on it). Modern buildings, with yearly preventive clean-ups and fire prevention strategies and equipment, and communities of tiny houses solving homelessness and addiction. Dream on... The Tenderloin (a dangerous San Francisco neighborhood) 25 years ago is the same as it is today, but some say it is probably more dangerous and dirtier...Homeless people have grown significantly over these last 5 years (~200,000 people), $24B has been spent on the problem, and there has been no progress... Why? Less than 20% goes to helping people, the rest and the vast majority in the hands of administrations and mindless bureaucrats...such a waste, such as shame... It does not matter if you lean right or left; the bottom line is that we should not support politicians who are incompetent and live only to protect ideologies... When will California change and recognize that politicians have failed us over the last thirty years? It's time to rally, rise, and shake up the status Quo. Let's remain civil and temper our (justified) anger, but man o man... Go to any city in Asia or Dubai, and you'll realize we are short-changed. As in any capitalistic corporation, how about demanding the following from our leaders: 🔥 Extreme transparency on budget allocation 🔥 One-time term 🔥 Enforce Lobbyist $ Caps 🔥 Enforce performance-based reviews 🔥 Streamline Recall mechanisms

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🚨 BREAKING NEWS FROM THE FLOOR! 🚨 Our CEO, Bernadette Nixon, just hit the big leagues with Judy Khan Shaw on #NYSEFloorTalk 🎤✨. They chatted about how our AI-powered tech is giving ecommerce a MAJOR glow-up 💅🛍️. ✨ Personalized shopping guides? ✔️ ✨ Smarter product comparisons? ✔️ ✨ Conversational experiences that feel human? ✔️ Basically, we’re making shopping so good, your cart will fill itself. 🛒🤖 Retailers, you bring the products—we'll bring the magic consumers crave. 🪄 Catch the highlights (and Bernadette rocking the floor) here: 🎥📈

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We’re working with several manufacturers, both existing and potentially new clients who are focused on user adoption of their B2B ecommerce platform. My usual response is to ask about their efforts to facilitate adoption. Even the most expensive platform won't sell itself. 1. If the benefits aren’t crystal clear, customers might not see why switching is better than sticking with their current processes. You can’t just hand them a new tool and say use this without highlighting the tangible improvements they’ll experience. 2. If your customers feel unsupported or overwhelmed by a new system, they’re likely to never to familiar methods. Adoption will depend heavily on your ability to provide thorough training and support - and if you lack the resources, be willing to pay for some assistance from an outside expert. 3. No one likes a clunky interface. If your platform isn’t intuitive and easy to navigate, frustration will lead to abandonment. They want to get in and out as quickly as possible to move onto their other tasks. Make that the priority. Consider your own experience adopting a new platform—what clicked and what frustrated you? Use those insights to simplify your approach with customers. It's often the straightforward actions that have the biggest impact. #b2becommerce #useradoption

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Check out the latest #TheGTMPack episode below 👇🏾 Al Sargent is a tenured #ProductMarketing leader who gives us leadership insights. It's never easy taking over an existing team as a new leader, figuring out how to measure PMM effectiveness, & creating an environment that gets the best out of your team. #gtm #b2b #pmm

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Last Friday, Vinay Hiremath, founder of Loom (USD 900M exit to Atlassian), shared on his blog about leaving Loom, leaving $60M payout, breaking up with his girlfriend, dealing with insecurities, a brief stint at DOGE, and how he is now in Hawaii self-studying physics. I, along with a few founders I know who had substantial exits at a fairly young age (late 20s to early 30s), experienced something similar. Post-acquisition, most of us underwent—and many are still going through—a self-discovery phase largely centered on finding a 'purpose' and determining the best possible use of our time at this point in life. Does it mean taking risks that nobody else can, building more companies, accumulating more wealth, reaching the pinnacle of mental and physical health, building a family, getting involved in social impact, or leaving everything behind to sit on an isolated island? Capital does give you freedom and excessive optionality in life choices, especially if you're still unmarried. However, it is difficult to find your anchor, and most of the time, the abundance of choices becomes overwhelming. I was fortunate to meet a few exited founders who had gone through the acquisition process, and they were kind enough to share what worked for them. In one of my conversations with David Haber, he said: "As entrepreneurs, we build companies, but while we do that, we can't discount life. And life is what happens outside our companies." That thought has stuck with me. Today, three years after exiting Recko | A Stripe company to Stripe, I feel there are multiple ways to make life more fulfilling. It is not just the single-minded, unidirectional professional pursuit, which more often than not is driven by a chase for external validation rather than an internal desire to become better at your craft or to do something that uplifts people around you. Until the time you find that burning desire, restlessness, or drive to pick up the shovel again, take that family trip, get in shape, try something that you always wanted but never could, embrace the nothingness, enjoy the boredom, and keep exploring!

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Big changes are coming with the California AI Transparency Act! 🚨 Companies with over 1M monthly users will need to embed digital watermarks in AI-generated content. Fines for non-compliance? $5,000 a day. Time to start prepping! Learn more: https://lnkd.in/ek_cnNu7 ​

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“Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, in an episode of The Wall Street Journal's ‘Future of Everything’ podcast, said he thinks the future of AI advancement lies in autonomous agents — not the large language models used to train bots like ChatGPT.” https://lnkd.in/eRh8gz2A

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🚨 The cracks are showing, and this is just the beginning. A Bay Area tech giant, once valued at $12B, has now plummeted to $159M, laying off hundreds in its wake. What went wrong? The inability to adapt to AI’s transformative potential. AI isn’t just a tool; it’s a revolution reshaping industries at lightning speed. Organizations that harness AI for process productivity—streamlining operations, automating workflows, and scaling efficiency—are thriving. Those who don’t? They risk being left behind. 👉 Here’s the takeaway: Evolve now, or risk irrelevance in the next few years. AI-driven process optimization isn’t just a competitive edge; it’s survival. From predictive analytics to operational automation, the potential for innovation is limitless—but only if you act now. 💡 How are you future-proofing your organization against AI disruption? Let’s discuss in the comments!

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I was going to write an article about the biggest source of waste in Product Development: Product Waste. Fortunately, Rich Mironov's take on this is perfect. Rich and I chatted about this article recently and my key take away is that product managers must be talking to end customers (not just internal stakeholders) and then using those conversations as their compass. https://lnkd.in/ggevum7E #productwaste #productdevelopment #softwareengineering #productmanagement #softwareleadership

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Last month, the FTC provided an important perspective on data clean rooms, highlighting that many existing services in this space fail to prioritize privacy preservation. https://lnkd.in/ghzNSg3s We couldn’t agree more. That’s why we built Anonym from the ground up with privacy-preserving approaches at the core of how we enable measurement and audience creation. The Anonym team will be at CES—reach out if you’re interested in learning more!

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About twenty years ago, I was a doctoral candidate at Caltech during an “AI winter,” struggling with basic feature engineering. Today at Salesforce, we're developing autonomous systems that can understand, act, and continuously learn—a fundamental shift from where we began. Our vision extends beyond large language models to Large Action Models—AI systems that don't just process language, but take meaningful actions and improve through environmental feedback. These agents have the ability to make day-to-day business decisions for us, and over time will surely help the human-at-the-helm inform the very trajectory of business as we know it.  I recently discussed this evolution with my favorite futurist @Peter Schwartz at Dreamforce, exploring how we got here and where we're headed. From the early days of neural networks to today's transformer architecture, the acceleration of innovation never ceases to amaze me. What once took decades now happens in months. What takes months today will take days in the future.  Read our conversation on the future of autonomous AI and its implications for enterprise transformation here: https://sforce.co/40bwcX3. And thanks for your great facilitation, @Itai Asseo! #AIResearch #HistoryofAI #FutureofAI

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California Governor Gavin Newsom just vetoed the “AI Kill Switch Bill” (SB 1047). Some say it’s a win for innovation, others warn it opens Pandora’s box. Both are right. On one side, letting AI develop without strangling it in red tape accelerates progress—especially for open-source projects. On the other, unchecked AI poses real risks: bias, harmful outputs, regulatory breaches, and eroding public trust. So how do we approach this? 1. Understand the stakes – Overregulation could kill innovation. No regulation? We risk AI running unchecked and causing real damage. 2. Consider the long-term – Strangling AI early on stunts progress. But ignoring the risks could lead to outcomes we can’t undo. 3. Balance innovation with accountability – We need guardrails that evolve with the tech, not blanket bans or free-for-alls. Here’s the reality no one is talking about: Any regulation without personal accountability is just noise. Fines don’t matter to companies with deep pockets and big ambitions. They’ll pay the cost and keep going. In fact, it creates an even bigger moat for the giants. If the only stakes are fines, there’s always someone with enough capital and enough motivation to push the limits—and go bigger than anyone ever imagined. The bigger the penalties, the bigger the incentive to play recklessly at scale. If we’re serious about preventing AI from spiraling out of control, we need regulations that hold people, not just companies, accountable. What’s your take? Let’s discuss.

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Bret Taylor is flat out wrong about the differences in customer experience: "There's not a huge difference between a B2B company and a B2C company except for the volume of customers you have." I see so many misconceptions about how AI will impact customer operations after spending over a decade working in cloud andschine learning here. Fundamentally, a B2B account often represents many more customers than its decision maker, for instance group insurance. What's even more important to predicting AI's impact is understanding root causes for complexity in the servicing you are attempting to automate. For instance: 📦 End customer product knowledge - B2C customers go through the product research and selection process themselves while B2B often inherit what is chosen for them. As a result, they might be less knowledgeable. 📃 Sales-driven product & service customization - in B2B, the form factor of every contract may look very similar but the details are often quite different because the salesperson customizes it to "make the sale." Within B2C, products and services are generally WYSIWYG "what you see is what you get." 🤝 Human relationships - in order to acquire and retain accounts, there is a greater emphasis on individual relationships to the buyer across the B2B operating footprint making customers more likely to reject or go around automated interactions to work directly with the people they know. In B2C, there is a stronger relationship with the overall brand than any individual employee. 📐 Lack of standard business rules - because of the more personalized environment of B2B, the exact same servicing process and rules can be extremely different for different accounts. This difference creates a much thicker "long tail" of processes and rules to automate compared to B2C where customers segments can vary but are generally defined by the company, not the account. 💻 Systems & information complexity - companies have incredibly complex technology stacks and data and, in a B2B context, it needs to integrate with other companies' also complex stacks and data. A lot of people seem to believe AI-driven customer experience is a low hanging fruit. To be successful, it will take more than technology starting with deep understanding of customers in different markets segments. #ai #customer #generativeai #agents #customerexperience #cx (quote around the 7:45 mark)

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This week's #retail pulse report: five big things that happened in 2024 and what they mean for 2025. #Consumerconfidence wavered, #GenAI ambitions faltered, and #retailstores emerged as a vital hub. Of course, all bets are off as to what will happen in 2025! #retailtrends #GenAIinRetail #omnichannel #softlanding #economicuncertainty

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Move over, Taylor Swift's Eras Tour - there's a new Era in town, and it's all about AI Production! Weaviate is ushering in the Production Era of AI with our groundbreaking release 1.26! This isn't just another tour stop - it's a game-changer for AI deployments. Our setlist includes: 1. Intelligent Cost Optimization: Hot, Warm, and Cold storage tiers that will have your infrastructure costs dropping faster than the beat in "Shake It Off". 2. Weaviate Cloud Tools: We have new Queries and Collections tools in our Cloud Console because managing your AI should be as smooth as Taylor's key changes. 3. AI-Native Applications: Our Recommender Service (in private beta) is just the opening act. We've got a whole album of AI-native apps coming to amplify your AI journey. These chart-toppers were inspired by our collaboration with thousands of developers. We know you need flexibility in this ever-changing AI landscape, and we're here to be your backstage pass to success. Ready to be the headliner of your own AI Production Era? Don't miss our upcoming webinar: https://lnkd.in/gN9cyuAb Let's make your AI projects go platinum! 🎤🚀 #WeaviateEra #AIProduction #FutureOfAI

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I'll be attending and speaking today! Let's meet in person if you're in Seattle and attending Retail Summits Seattle's eCommerce Summit! PANEL TOPIC: OMNICHANNEL, SOCIAL, & DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR BRAND AMPLIFICATION. Feedonomics/ BigCommerce has a lovely HH to follow the event. #Feedonomics #SeattleeCommerceSummit #Omnichannel #Strategy

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The retail data market continues to expand. DoorDash announced this week at CES that they're partnering with The Trade Desk to make their data available in a privacy-safe way to CPGs and other companies...all to drive more ad precision and closed-loop measurement.

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