How to Reposition Your B2B Brand Without Losing Trust, with Caitlin Allen

Caitlin Allen: The way that I summarize the strategic element of a repositioning exercise is you've got to create fomo and then you got to help people get past fomu, which is my acronym for Fear of Messing Up. Like, once it's natural, once we have a fear of missing out, if we're going to be doing something new, then we need to help people basically develop a proven path to success. And so that's been the repeatable motion, so to speak, that we've been in over the last three phases.

Lindsey Groper: Hi, and welcome back to SAS Half Full, the only show serving B2B marketers. I'm Lindsey Groper, EVP at Pan Blast, and I will be both your host and bartender. Today I had an awesome conversation with Caitlin Allen, who is the SVP of Market at Simbi Robotics. Caitlin and I met last year in person at an event, and I have been wanting her on the show ever since. She's going to talk us through some best practices as it relates to repositioning. I know all of you are trying to reposition slightly or change categories now, uh, with AI being part of your platforms or creating AI technologies of your own. So Caitlin has some good advice on how to work through that, both internally with your C suite and sales team as well. So if you care to grab a drink and join me as I speak with Caitlin. Hey, Caitlin, welcome to SaaS Half Full.

Caitlin Allen: Thank you, Lindsey. Good to be here with you.

Lindsey Groper: I am excited to have you. We met last year in person at, uh, an empowered CXO event, which is a killer event that I've talked about on this show many times before. Uh, but I tapped you to see if you'd have any interest in coming on and joining us. You've been very busy since you took on your role with Simbi, so we wanted to chat today. Um, but before we dive into our topic, want to understand if we got you a drink kit and if you're joining me for one today. We sure did.

Caitlin Allen: It is a bourbon, blueberry, um, without the blue bourbon, Sadly. But it's 9am on a Monday.

Lindsey Groper: That is fair. Cheers. I am drinking a screwdriver, fully loaded. Uh, but it is noon on a Monday, and for those that are regular listeners to this show, they know that I always stick to the process. I think the earliest I imbibed was, like, at 10am on a Monday.

Caitlin Allen: I, um, don't judge. That just sounds like.

Lindsey Groper: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. You know, this is my process. This is what I do, and, you know, it'll make for a really great Monday. It's fine. So cheers, thank you for joining me.

Caitlin Allen: Thank you for having me.

Lindsey Groper: So today's topic, what we're going to talk through is sort uh, of best practices around repositioning. And sometimes you, you have to reposition for all different types of reasons. Um, but Caitlyn has gone through now what is in the midst of her third, um, repositioning since she's been at Simbi. So definitely has some best practices to share with everyone. Uh, but before we dive into that, I do want to give our listeners an understanding of who you are a little bit. Caitlyn, uh, if you can give us, uh, just quick background into your, your role in B2B SaaS marketing, how you got into it, um, and then currently what you do at Simby, and then for those who don't know, quick elevator on why Simbi exists. Sure, sure.

Caitlin Allen: Sounds good. So I'll start with my background and then we can get into where I am today. So, um, got into B2B enterprise software by accident, I think. Like many of us, um, I started in the nonprofit world and then was the ghostwriter for John Miller at Marketo. Wrote a lot of the definitive guides with him.

Lindsey Groper: Did not know.

Caitlin Allen: He's incredible. Continues to be. Um, my career has shaped itself, Lindsay, around building markets for transformative tech. And over the past 10 years or so, um, I've been really focused on helping scale category defining companies and been across a variety of different sectors. Deep tech, enterprise software, consumer platforms. I was part of Lyft's IPO and Happy Returns acquisition by PayPal and also had the honor of being a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. I, um, am currently the senior vice president of market at Symby. About three years ago, an executive recruiter who I really respect, um, and who has become a friend and placed me a couple of times, called and said my favorite CEO of all time is hiring his first head of marketing. Do you want to talk to him? And I was like, joe, you say that to all the girls, but yes, I do. So that's how this ended up coming to be. Retail is one of the most critical systems in our economy. It's not just the world's largest employer, but it's how individuals access food, clothing, you know, how our homes get built and maintained every day. And yet for decades, retail's operated without a live understanding of what actually happens inside of their store. And what I mean by that is what is on the shelf, how is it priced and what's in the Right place. And the way that that's been traditionally approached is something called manual audits, where store teams walk up and down aisles. It is their least favorite task, and they're not great at it because it's hard to do repetitive and boring work well. So what Simbe does is digitize the shelf to give retailers real time visibility into shelf conditions and helps their data flow across store operations, the supply chain and digital channels, which is. Has been really fun to be a part of. Uh, we're now in 10 countries around the world and about half a dozen retail sectors. Um, and help stores everywhere from, like, year five to ten store chain that's local all the way up to Fortune. Um, 20 retailers that haven't been announced quite yet. But we're almost there.

Lindsey Groper: Getting close. But we're talking robots.

Caitlin Allen: Yeah.

Lindsey Groper: Yeah. Very cool. I have yet to see them in my grocer, but I'm sure that it's coming. Uh, and I suppose one other role, uh, that we both play that we should acknowledge is being mothers. Because yesterday was Mother's Day, and as our crazy lives would have it, I was explaining that I, I saw all of my kids, but not all three of them together. Uh, just in, in different parts and did different things. Uh, and you were traveling, but. And you celebrated with your mom last week. But, you know, we're all out here doing the best that we can. But shout out to all the moms, we love you. We do appreciate. Do it is our hardest and most fulfilling role, but we do it every day. We love it.

Caitlin Allen: It's the truth.

Lindsey Groper: It is rough. I actually had. I, uh, was at a concert on Friday night, and, um, one of my friends who was slightly overserved, paid me a. What I think was like, probably one of the best compliments of my life, which was, uh, because my, my teenage son was also at the concert, like, but like across the stadium. And she said, I really admire the relationship you have with your kids. I was like, that could be one of the top.

Caitlin Allen: I love that received.

Lindsey Groper: Right? Like, that's what we live for. We die for it. We want it so bad. Parents of teenagers, both of us, you know, it's like you just want them to like you so bad. Love me, like me, pay attention to me, like me.

Caitlin Allen: Love me. And make good decisions independently.

Lindsey Groper: Please.

Caitlin Allen: Yes, please, absolutely.

Lindsey Groper: Okay, we digress. Um, so excited to dive in today. Talk to us, uh, about sort of this journey, because when you came in semi focused on robotics, then you pretty quickly realized that you needed to pivot messaging and positioning into digital Shelf. And now you're in sort of the third wave, and it sounds. It sounds heavy. It sounds like a lot. But I would imagine that many folks that are listening, if they haven't already gone through one, they have to be going through it right now. Just given the AI landscape and how everyone's business is changing right now. I mean, old categories are being left in the dust and new categories being created, um, out of necessity that current categories are just no longer solving the new problems. So it sounds intense, but I imagine it's pretty relatable to our listeners as well. Um, so give us a little bit of context into where you were versus where you are.

Caitlin Allen: Yeah, maybe to set the stage, too, in a couple different ways. We've gone through three phases of repositioning. We're in the midst of the third right now. To your point, Lindsey, because of the AI era that we're in, every business model is changing. I grew up in sas, like most of your listeners currently, in something that's called ras, which is robots as a service that's specific to physical AI. And, you know, we're. We're living through this moment. We probably all remember when we had our first smartphone or, you know, I remember logging onto the Internet for the first time. We're also in this moment where we're going to be sharing public physical space with robots, if we haven't already for the first time. You know, be that in Melrose with the delivery robots or, you know, in a store where Simbi's robot Tally is, et cetera. So our company was founded 10 years ago. Takes a couple of years to build a prototype and hardware. So we announced Tally, the world's first shelf inventory robot, in 2017. I joined in late 2023. And at the time, there wasn't high awareness of the issues that we solved. And so it was very hard to. To understand how to communicate the value prop. And so our first repositioning was around basically evolving the company from robotics to shelf digitization. And the core of that strategy, there were a couple different pillars. So the way that I summarized the strategic element of a repositioning exercise is you've got to create fomo, and then you got to help people get past fomo, which is. Which is my acronym for Fear of messing Up. Like, once it's natural, once we have a fear of missing out, if we're going to be doing something new, then we need to help people basically develop a proven path to success. And so that's been the repeatable motion, so to speak, that We've been in over the last three phases. So the first one, raising problem awareness for all the people that we influence. The people that we influence are several concentric in circles. There's retail, corporate, so typically we were starting in store operations and then also talking to supply chain and technology and IT and sometimes finance. Then there's also the store team, which are the folks that walk up and down the aisles and work with the robot every day, and then also the shoppers. So we needed to think about all three of those different audiences. As we thought about the repositioning, we focused on the core use case. There are many use cases that the robot can help with on shelf availability, which is basically like are the items where they should be? Which blew my mind when I started. 60% of items that grocers, for instance, think are out of stock are actually in the store in the wrong spot. Which is why when you order instacart or doordash and they tell you that like half the items weren't found or were substituted. That's the reason we needed to focus on our core audience and the core use case. And then a lot of our work was around developing third party proof and an ecosystem of credible voices. So the third party proof took the shape of a variety of reports from analyst firms that quantified the problem. We had a survey that surveyed store teams about whether they liked their jobs with or without the robot better. And the nine of 10 store team managers do prefer their job with tally around because they don't like doing the manual work that it takes away, um, which allows them to then focus on interacting with people. And then we also had some reports that focused on shopper preferences too. Um, and then of course, you have to amplify those messages to the different audiences that we talked about. And so we assembled a group of partners, strategic advisors, um, and by partners, I mean co marketing technology, all sorts of things to help us amplify the message. And we've focused on a go to market that leads with a monthly announcement and then has an omnichannel go to market that brings that to Life. Interestingly, about 25% of our net new business for the last two years has come from PR announcements, and then about 50% has come from events. So it's a really like physical based go to market strategy. Phase two was. So we started to notice, okay, the industry is starting to understand the problem. We see conversations about the problem. Uh, our competitors piled on and started talking about the same things. And I think that's one of the signals I watch for when I'm thinking about when it's time to start repositioning. So as we were going from being positioned as a robotics company to a shelf digitization company, we rebranded our platform as the store intelligence platform. And the thought at the time was, we offer more than robotics. Our business model is built on effectively, like, the data insights that we're selling, and that'll become increasingly part of our offering over time. And we knew that over time, if we digitized the shelf, then we would also be able to digitize the store, which is kind of the starting point for the entire supply chain. And so we branded the platform as the store intelligence platform, but focused on the category of shelf digitization. So then phase two was the industry started to have a debate around what hardware device type is the best way to digitize the shelf. Is it a fixed camera? Is it, you know, a phone? Somebody walks up and down the aisles and, like, takes pictures of the shelf. Is it a robot that moves around? And so we introduced some new technology and rebranded as the only retail technology platform to offer multiple modalities. And the thought was, let's take the conversation away from how do we do it, what do we do it with? Like, what's proving outcomes at scale.

Lindsey Groper: Right, right, right. Um, I I do feel I l just got off a call and said, this is that often, oftentimes people don't care how it works, just that it works. So, like, I Great. You're offering me three different ways. Awesome. I just as long as it works, I'll pick one of these ways. But a lot of times people just get caught up in the, like, explaining the how. And it's like, that it works.

Caitlin Allen: It's so true. And I think it's a very common misstep for those of us in tech. We want to talk about the things that get built all day because we're proud of them and they're disruptive. But it's the fastest way to make someone's eyes glaze over. If you don't contextualize with the why.

Lindsey Groper: Yeah, yeah. Um, you had mentioned the word signal. And so I want to go back to that. Um, for our listeners is what are some of the other signals that indicate that? Whether that is your whether it's a current category, maybe it's your current positioning, but that that is starting to hold you back and may need a change. What are some of those signals?

Caitlin Allen: Yeah, so definitely competitive landscape. Follow on, pile on, which is a a compliment implicitly. It also creates messaging homogeny where it's hard to stand out. So that is, that's the biggest thing. Um, I also just because, particularly because of how long our sales cycle is, Lindsey. Uh, you know, it's anywhere from, depends on the size of the retailer, but anywhere from six months to like three years just to land a client. And then we have pilots that then lead to an expansion which is actually where you start to make money in our business. So effectively, as soon as I start hearing the sales team, our clients are the analysts in the space, start to use our language, that's when I start to straddle to also bring in the next wave because it's going to take so long to shape and influence the next stage. So it's really a lot about just the listening piece of hearing what competitors, what advisors, what analysts. And, and the sales team is starting to say. It's also, um, that signal comes from pipeline, like what are the blockers? And that was where the choice to reposition as a multimodal platform came from. We were getting way too many um, stalls in the sales cycle around the question of well, do I need this device or this device? And so just to take it away, not uh, admit, resolve the issue was kind of the solution there.

Lindsey Groper: Um, you mentioned long sales cycles and I, I had a question around that. So thank you for bringing that up. How do you reposition without maybe putting fear or uncertainty into some of these in market deals or in progress deals or how do you put reposition congruently or in a way that maybe doesn't seem like it, because that does seem like it could create some friction with in progress deals.

Caitlin Allen: So it to me, storytelling that builds intuitively and creates a concentric circles that create a larger and larger vision. They're additive for the most part. So it's, there's a lot of focus that we have and a lot of team training on how does this just build on the thing that our clients have already said yes, yes to. Now there are some nuances. I mean you can imagine. For instance, so before we positioned as a multimodal tech company company where we were just selling robots, we often positioned against some of the kind of hardware that we now offer. And so that one had a lot of nuance. So the way that we handled that was to really emphasize the remaining foundation, which is the robot. Like our, our platform, um, functions on top of that data because it's got the most, the highest frequency and fidelity of data that's captured of any technology. But then there are like specific use cases like the Rotisserie chickens or the high value jewelry where you know, you either want to make sure there's not theft in that area or it has super high turnover. And so you want, you know, a robot like traverses a store like three times a day sometimes may want more focus on a uh, rotisserie chicken section than three times a day. You might want it continuously. So in that case a fixed camera is really valuable. So it's just, it was really just focusing on how that's valuable for the client and emphasizing that it's really not that big of a change. It's just an evolution of the vision we've all had all along.

Lindsey Groper: You talk about robotics being the core and then going multimodal. How did you determine like what parts of the brand to protect and hold onto, even if maybe it wasn't necessarily serving you today to keep that trust amongst your stakeholders?

Caitlin Allen: It's such a good question and I actually really changed my mind on this. So at first, because Simbi Robotics is our website and when I joined and we were repositioning around shelf digitization, my thought was get rid of the robot. Like get rid, uh, we took some robotics out of Symbi's name. I've thought about taking it off the website. And so what I realized over time is people love the robot. Like people have a relationship with the robot. It's cute. Tally is like, it makes little boo beep noises and kids want to come to the store to visit it. We have like a swag store that shoppers buy all sorts of stuff from. Kids love their stuffed robots. And so what we made the decision to do was to personify Tally. So Tally became our brand mascot so to speak. That and so that was like, it was a way of, of holding on to the robotics idea, keeping the website but still repositioning around self digitization. So you know we uh, we were talking about this a little bit earlier like we were focusing from the positioning perspective on the outcomes but the how was still part of the brand and that was, that was, it was very different for me in terms of what I felt like was good for the business over time as, as we learned what, what mattered

Lindsey Groper: before we hit record. I'm just talking through sort of the flow of the show. One of the questions that I had was around sales enablement. And you had mentioned earlier in this conversation too because. Right. A lot of this repositioning is driven by you in charge of market marketing team. Obviously with C suite buy in all this work gets done but then you still have your sales team that is responsible. Responsible for closing deals, um, in pretty much however they see fit. How do you then take something that is like, ready to go Polish? Not. I'm not saying the sales team hasn't been involved, but I would imagine there's some friction there of, uh, not only what are you saying, but how are you presenting it visually? What decks are we still using that need to be retired? Um, are there Franken decks that are being used all over the place? How do you have that? Um, how was that conversation look like? How are they involved in the process? Um, and what are some, I guess, things you've seen to not do any story, any sort of, like, war stories about some things to not do that you could share? Uh, and also some successes.

Caitlin Allen: Yeah, I can share some of both. Um, and yes, Frankenstein decks are always going to be part of the marketing job. So I've just made peace with that. Um, you know, we have an incredible sales leader, and I also, I work extremely closely with him, and I also work very closely with our head of strategy and client success. It's basically like a, um, Accenture team that works alongside sales to help sell the. The technology and then make pilots successful. And so I think it starts with. Well, it probably starts with my CEO having hired collaborative people because we get along and have a lot of fun working together. So, you know, sales, marketing, client strategy, customer success, they see their leaders working hand in hand and affirming each other in public. And so I think that's step one or pillar one. The second is we do a lot of the work together. I think about marketing internally or content marketing internally, like breadcrumbing. And I've put as much time into marketing internally and to my investors as I do out in the market. And so it's, you know, like, if, for instance, if something came up in a sales call, I'll call it out in the commercial weekly because, like, uh, of what worked or what was, what didn't and how that ties with what we're thinking about. So I take them along the process and then we have reviews as a team where I solicit input around the positioning as well as just holistically, like, what is, you know, what's marketing doing well and what's not. So having them be part of the launch and making it super incremental so that we're all on the journey together rather than having this milestone moment where we announce the new positioning, I think is probably really important. I will say, like last year, for instance, this is a total flop. We had a Chief Commercial Officer at the time. And I rolled out a training for sales where they were given the new positioning, the new pitch deck, the new script. And then they had to perform like they had to do it in front of us and their peers. And we had a scorecard. And I've done this in previous roles and it went over fabulously well. Well, it went over fabulously. Awful. In this particular case, they felt really critiqued. They felt like, you know, they were being treated like little kids, et cetera, et cetera. My language, not theirs. And so we realized we'd made a big misstep and we stopped doing that. And so we had to take a much more bespoke one on one approach of coaching, which has been slower. Um, but because of the violent reactions, I think it was important to shift what we're doing now in terms of training is like. So for instance, I gave our new repositioning at an investor conference last week that I co founded with our, our investor Goldman Sachs and has a bunch of executives in the room. And it went over really well. One of the C level executives we've been trying to get to for three years asked for a copy of the deck because he said it was the best articulation of our value prop that he'd ever heard.

Lindsey Groper: Thank you.

Caitlin Allen: Thank you. Um, so, you know, you kind of. So last week we mentioned it to sales. That was the breadcrumb. Then they asked for me to give it the presentation today. So I'll be giving that later today where they're going to be hearing how I did it. So it's. They don't even necessarily, and I'm not hiding it, but they don't even necessarily know we're repositioning yet. But it's part m of my way of like taking them along a process where they have, are concluding that they should want to learn about this because it's already worked. Um, and I'm, I'm giving a long answer. So the last thing I'll say quickly is we also talked before the recording about the Strategic Advisory Board that, that I chair. And it's a group of eight different individuals. Some are influencers, some are analysts, some are retail operators and executives. And I also take them through a process of responding to and giving feedback on the messaging. And they are people that the sales team respects. So you know that that's also another way of saying to them, like, hey, people in the market that are, have credible opinions have uh, bought into this too. But I mean, I wouldn't be lying if like there's, there's still, there's still folks that say we're a robot company and it's, you know, it's just how it's going to be.

Lindsey Groper: Yeah, for sure. You bring up an interesting point about announcing that we are no longer this, we're now that. And it seems like you, you uh, traditionally don't do that. You don't make it this like hard launch of, you know, we were, now we were robotics. Now we're, you know, shelf digitization or we were shelf. Now we're going to be into store intelligence. Talk to me about just your thoughts around that. When do you think that makes sense, if ever? And when doesn't it? And why?

Caitlin Allen: You know, it's a good question. I, I tend to not. Because I think people learn in bite sized pieces and change takes a long time. So that's why I lean away from announcing in a single moment. I also, as much as I'm proud of the work that we've done as a company or a marketing team to get to that point, I'm not sure other people like, I'm not sure that it like changes their life the way that it shaped mine. And so we try to make it more intuitive. And so I typically use things like company product announcements or client news as moments of, you know, again, breadcrumbing, like these bites of information. So when we announced our fixed camera at an industry event last year, that was when we started using the language about being a multimodal camera retail technology platform and you know, started and kept using the shelf digitization language. Um, you know, and there are different moments. Like I think that right after this podcast gets announced, we'll have another report that's going to launch that is also part of that and will help kind of usher us into the third repositioning wave that we've been starting. So I try to make it intuitive where you're like, oh, that's been happening and I haven't realized it until now.

Lindsey Groper: Yeah, tell us more about that report. This will be dropping. Uh, I'm gonna say it out loud so if it doesn't come on this date, that's on me. The 26th. May 26th. So will the report be out at that point?

Caitlin Allen: It'll be almost out. Um, I think it comes out on the 29th. Right now we're competing as a tech company for store technology budget that does not just include digitizing the shelf, it includes anything in the store. And so, you know, one of the challenges I've been thinking through with my peers over the last couple of months is how do we make sure that we get to the top priority of that list. So what the report is going to show is that the retailers that don't invest in shelf digitization first are actually losing revenue versus their tech investments. And the ones that start with shelf digitization are getting roi. They are accelerating their, their, their value. So that report is, you know, it's going to be the foundation of probably the next 12 months or so, uh, of what we're, what we're focused on. And it will launch new positioning around how a digitized shelf is the foundation of global commerce. Meaning if you know what's happening on your shelf, all of a sudden instacart orders are correct. Things that shoppers want to find in the store are, um, in the right place. If you happen to get an ad, which is retail media that tells you that the peanut butter you like is in the store and you show up and it's not there, like that's a problem. So it helps with all of those things. And you know, if this is getting a little bit technical, but a store can be intelligent and a supply chain can be self optimizing if the shelf is accurate. And so we're going to be focused on store intelligence as the next kind of category as we retain some of the shelf digitization language. We're still going to have Telly the Robot, but it's this next concentric circle of having an intelligent store that can best serve the people that retail is there to serve. Love it.

Lindsey Groper: Okay, well, in three days people go to Simbi website, get the report. I was happy to hear you say, Caitlin, that you don't believe people really care that you position rebranded. Because at, um, Pan blast we do PR for B2B Sass and AI companies and we have a lot of repositioning, a lot of rebrands and sometimes it's a, you know, there's a new logo, color, website, positioning all the things. And more often than not, our clients do want us to write a release about it and announce it. And we're always saying like we absolutely we can, but this is not newsworthy. Like no one really cares about this. Yeah, um, to your point. And yet I wrote down that this term breadcrumbing is, that is a moment in time. And what we want to ensure is when that moment in time happens, that we have done enough breadcrumbing leading up to that moment that when that announcement is made to your customers. For example, if you do choose to announce that, they say Ah, uh, that makes sense. They had a report that came out that says this. They just, uh, you know, onboarded a new head of whatever. They have a customer in this use case. They've been doing a lot more thought leadership around this particular topic. Like that moment in time makes sense. Whereas if you just say all of a sudden we're this. And people are like, the what? You know, it's like, where did that come from? That's what you don't want to have happen. And I, I like your approach of like, does it even make sense to announce it at all? Like, what, what's the goal to announce it? Because if it's to communicate to customers, you don't need to do that. You don't need to do, you know, press release and try and pitch the media with that. Uh, you've now repositioned because that is a what thing? It's really more around like the why, what's the market dictating the need for it, which is not going to be communicated in the first release. So I double, double underline that. Then you said, like, who cares? Yes, I know.

Caitlin Allen: It's amazing how timeless Simon Sinek start with Y is. I think he came out with that, ah, ted talk, like 20 years ago or something. And it's, it's still true. The only time I could ever see a rebranding making sense to announce would potentially be if you're marketing to marketers. Because then you could maybe explain the why in a way that they would care. But like, um, I'm marketing to supply chain people, store technology, they don't care.

Lindsey Groper: Yes, yes, and you could. Because then marketers want to understand like, what we're talking about, like what went into the rebrand.

Caitlin Allen: What did you learn about me that is.

Lindsey Groper: Yeah, yeah, totally. So glad to hear you say that. Um, my last, uh, question is. Well, it's basically every company right now is trying to reposition to be whether that's AI, first, AI forward, gentic, whatever. Um, that is on the docket for every marketer right now. What advice do you have on repositioning around AI in a way that is going to build trust rather than dilute? Because that, uh, everyone is having to do that right now and many saying the same things.

Caitlin Allen: Well, and that probably says it right. If, if rebranding around AI is going to create messaging homogeny, then why, like, what value does it actually add? I think it probably gets to the core question of why do you feel the need to do that? So for instance, like, is your board pushing you to do so, or is there actually a reason in your pipeline that it will help you, a problem that it will help you solve, or a competitive white space that it will help you capture? Um, this seems to be a theme of the conversation, but what's the why? If you do it? I mean, probably best to try to emphasize that it's something you've been focused on for the lifetime of your company, where it's kind of an iteration of the same thing your clients have already bought from you. But, um, I don't know. I think we've seen so many pendulum swings in SaaS and in physical AI robotics as a service, where if people pile on too much, then it's just a faster way to have a lot of people that miss out on the trend. So I would tread lightly.

Lindsey Groper: Yeah. Good advice. Um, okay, Lan, is there anything that we didn't cover on this topic that you wanted to make sure that we tackle today?

Caitlin Allen: I don't think so. We did not drop an F bomb or swear. Um, this is.

Lindsey Groper: That's just the first episode in a while for me. Honestly, it's Monday, and it's early. I don't know. I'm not, like, super jaded yet. It's too early. I don't know.

Caitlin Allen: I should have actually had alcohol in my drink.

Lindsey Groper: Yeah, you're right. We haven't. That's good. That's a win. Well, I end every episode the same way with my guest, which is I asked if you have a signature or favorite toast to send us out.

Caitlin Allen: I love that. My husband and I have a date night every Friday, and we always open a bottle of wine. I love wine. Uh, my first job was in IT At a nonprofit where I had to run a wine auction. And then I turned 40 last year and got a master's of French wine. As a way to celebrate, we have a very simple, um, toast, which is just to good company. So that's. That's mine.

Lindsey Groper: Oh, that means you think each other are good company. Love it. Love it. 2. Good company. You're a great company. Thanks so much, Caitlin.

Caitlin Allen: Thank you, Lindsay.

Lindsey Groper: Thanks again to Caitlin for joining me on Sas Half Full. That was indeed good company. Hopefully you took a couple of things away today. If you're thinking about repositioning or entering a new category, we always appreciate the listen. And until next time, bottoms up.