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Dan Lee (Co-Founder & CEO of Nooks) joins GTMnow to give a behind the scenes on how Nooks is launching a new Agent Workspace and AI Sequencing layer designed to operate across the full action set of a rep’s day — calls, emails, research, prospecting, and strategy.
The conversation explores why top of funnel is changing the fastest, why traditional sequencing tools optimize the “move” but not the strategy, and how AI systems that learn from rep behavior can compound advantage over time. As adoption deepens, automation can move from ~40% of outbound execution toward 70% and beyond, while switching away resets that intelligence.
We also discuss the broader category shift: customers pushing AI-native tools to take on incumbents, the rise of agent workspaces as the new interface for GTM teams, and why calls remain the most data-rich channel in outbound compared to silent email non-responses.
Discussed in this episode
- Why AI is transforming sales workflows, not replacing sellers
- The launch of Nooks’ Agent Workspace and AI Sequencing
- Sales as chess: strategy first, moves second
- Why legacy sequencing tools optimize activity, not intelligence
- The shift from busywork automation to decision-layer augmentation
- Why calls generate richer feedback loops than email outbound
- How automation compounds from ~40% to 70%+ over time
- The emerging moat: learned workflow intelligence, not just CRM data
- “Do more with less” and how AI-native startups build leverage
- Why the future of GTM may hinge on who owns the intelligence layer
Episode highlights
00:00 – Announcing the Agent Workspace and AI sequencing product
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=0
01:25 – Why sales is fundamentally human (even in the AI era)
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=85
02:39 – The Agent Workspace as the human–AI interface
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=159
02:56 – Why legacy sequencing tools were built for a manual world
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=176
04:14 – The sales chess analogy: understand the board before making the move
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=254
05:02 – Reps spend too much time “making the move”
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=302
06:00 – Nooks as a simulation engine: suggesting the next best move
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=360
07:07 – The reason for the email isn’t in the email
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=427
07:45 – Signal vs. noise: reasoning like a rep
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=465
10:00 – Why calls are the most data-rich outbound channel
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=600
10:25 – Using calls to move up the org chart
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=625
13:12 – The sales iceberg analogy: what’s above vs. below the surface
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=792
13:38 – Don’t pay enterprise reps to find phone numbers
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=818
14:15 – Doing more with less vs. doing more with more
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=855
15:00 – Why sales remains competitive even with full automation
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=900
16:38 – Owning the end-to-end prospecting workflow
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=998
18:53 – How Nooks learns from rep decisions over time
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1133
19:15 – The path from 40% → 90% AI-written emails
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1155
19:58 – Reimagining sequences with org chart intelligence
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1198
22:17 – Evolution from virtual classroom to virtual sales floor
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1337
25:11 – Pivoting into the sales use case before ChatGPT
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1511
26:08 – Near-death experiences and surviving the pivot graveyard
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1568
27:03 – Nooks’ six core values
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1623
27:57 – “Ask why” as a core operating principle
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1677
28:39 – Ruthless prioritization as a startup advantage
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1719
29:25 – AI literacy as a hiring filter for GTM roles
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1765
30:07 – Making sales sexy for top engineers
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1807
31:31 – Hiring across the board in 2026
Watch: https://youtu.be/lYn0VUlUw5I?t=1891
Key takeaways
1. The shift is from systems of record to systems of intelligence.
CRMs capture structured data (accounts, contacts, activities). But they don’t capture how reps actually think (which accounts they prioritize, what signals they trust, and why they choose a strategy). The next layer encodes judgment and workflow behavior, not just fields.
2. AI disrupts the top of funnel first.
Research, list building, drafting emails, and prospecting are high-volume and process-driven… making them the most automatable parts of sales. Meanwhile, closing (trust, multi-threading, negotiation) remains deeply human, so pipeline generation is where AI creates the earliest leverage.
3. The winning wedge is the workspace.
Point tools optimize single steps (sequencing, enrichment, dialers). Owning the rep’s workspace — where they research, prioritize, call, and execute — creates a continuous feedback loop. Every action (calls, edits, prioritization decisions) trains the system and compounds intelligence over time.
4. First-party workflow data beats commoditized signals.
Job changes, funding alerts, and intent data are increasingly table stakes. In contrast, first-party data from calls, transcripts, objections, and engagement history provides richer context (budget, timing, org structure) that competitors can’t easily replicate.
5. Ruthless prioritization is a startup advantage.
“You can do anything, but not everything.” Winning a focused wedge (calling and top-of-funnel execution) before expanding horizontally enables depth, faster learning loops, and stronger differentiation against legacy, broad platforms built for a pre-AI workflow.
Thank you to our sponsors:
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Follow Dan Lee
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan9lee
- Nooks’ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nooksapp
- Nooks’ website: https://www.nooks.ai
Follow Sophie Buonassisi (Host)
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
- Website: https://gtmnow.com
- Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/
Where to Find GTMnow
- Website: https://gtmnow.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
- Podcast Directory: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast
GTM 180 Episode Transcript
00:00
Sophie Buonassisi: You come bearing big news?
00:01
Dan Lee: Yeah, we’re super excited for the new agent workspace and I sequences products.
00:05
Sophie Buonassisi: There’s a broader shift happening. AI native companies starting to challenge legacy incumbents. One of the big standouts of Nux is how just disciplined you’ve been with your go to market. What was the actual moment where you knew it was the right time to take on incumbents?
00:19
Dan Lee: Our customers kept asking for it.
00:21
Sophie Buonassisi: The best sign.
00:21
Dan Lee: Yeah.
00:22
Sophie Buonassisi: Dan Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Nux. Talk to me about your strategy of having a moat.
00:28
Dan Lee: From initially deploying. All right, like 40% of the emails without the reps having to edit them. And then over time, we’ve seen it go up to 70% and soon it’ll be 90%. And if you were to go switch back to something else, it’ll be back down to 40%. We think a lot about making sales sexy again.
00:42
Sophie Buonassisi: There you go. I can see it on a tote bag or something.
00:45
Dan Lee: This is a unique moment in time where top of funnel actually is the part of the job that is changing the most with AI. I can’t really close for you, at least not yet. Even if I could fully remove a rep from the sales process. If your competitor is using reps in building relationships and you’re not, guess who’s going to win?
01:08
Unknown: For the first.
01:14
Sophie Buonassisi: Dan, welcome to GTM now.
01:16
Dan Lee: Thanks for having me.
01:18
Sophie Buonassisi: Absolutely. And you come bearing big news. You’re announcing Agent workspace and AI sequencing. Tell us a little bit about the new product.
01:25
Dan Lee: Yeah, we’re super excited. For the new agent workspace and AI sequences products. I guess first off, can share a bit of context. On why we built these products. We believe sales is fundamentally human. If you look at all the jobs that AI is transforming, there are only a handful or changing how millions of people do their work.
01:45
Dan Lee: You know, in the US there are 6 million drivers, 5 million in sales, 3 million customer support, a million and a half software engineers and a million lawyers. And if you look across these sales is one of the most human as a passenger, the ideal experience is to be dropped off at your destination automatically, safer and faster, and customer support.
02:04
Dan Lee: You know, if I can resolve my ticket faster and more accurately. Same thing as a buyer. If you’re spending a lot of money in solving an important problem and you want to build trust in a relationship. So sales is one of the most human, but it’s also the one of the ones that’s changing the most with AI, where I can now read and write and reason like a rep.
02:22
Dan Lee: Reps will always be selling because if your competitor is using human reps and you’re not, guess who’s going to win. But they need an interface then to work with AI where they can delegate work. And they can, you know, as a result, uplevel, and be higher leverage. So the agent workspace for us is that interface.
02:39
Dan Lee: It can operate across all the full action set for reps, across emails, calls, research, list building, prospecting, and has all the basic functionality, of, say, legacy sequencing tools, but built for this new world where I can do a lot of the work and instead of most tasking manual, they can be AI assisted.
02:56
Sophie Buonassisi: And I have to ask, how does this compare with any kind of legacy tool like sales loft or outreach to?
03:03
Dan Lee: A lot of sales teams today have built outbound motions on, you know, legacy sequencing tools, that were built for a world where most tasks were manual, where you manually add prospects to sequence, or you manually write emails. Unfortunately, I think, a lot of these companies, the way to grow at the time, you know, because I wasn’t able to do work, was to go take budget from other sales tools to go down the funnel and as a result, have lost focus on generating pipeline, which was kind of their original goal.
03:31
Dan Lee: I think the opportunity for us is that I can now do a lot of this work, because, you know, I talk about this concept, what’s above the surface and what’s below the surface pipeline generation. A lot of the work historically has been below the surface, right? You don’t want to pay your best enterprise sellers to go find phone numbers and write emails all day when they could instead be closing big deals.
03:51
Dan Lee: So nooks is designed to really accelerate these top of funnel activities intelligently. It’s learning from your best reps. It’s kind of taking their best practices and scaling that across the team. Actually some some interesting key differences that we think about. Whereas coding has more of like a right answer right where it compiles and it passes tests. Sales doesn’t really have a right answer.
04:14
Dan Lee: It’s more like a complex human game of chess where first you need to understand the board, understand what’s, you know, what is the buyer’s problems? Who is involved in the decision? What’s their tool stack? What’s our relationship? How do they influence each other? And you never have this perfect view of the board. You’re piecing it together with conversations, with information from your CRM, research on the web.
04:36
Dan Lee: And then once you understand the board, then you have to evaluate strategies. Do I go top down and do I go bottoms up. Do I go directly for the meeting or build some champions first? Do I lead with messaging around, you know, the competitors or do I lead with messaging more around, you know, social proof? This is what separates the best reps apart, from the average where they are putting themselves in the prospect shoes and, empathizing, understanding how they’re going to react.
05:02
Dan Lee: And once you pick that strategy finally, then you make the move. You write the email, you make the call. And these legacy tools are focused completely on making the move. Right on just writing the email and making the call. The opportunity now with AI is I can help a lot with this whole process, with understanding the board, helping evaluate and suggest strategies, and actually making the moves for you, such that reps instead of, you know, focusing on this, these labor intensive kind of just, you know, writing emails, they can be a lot higher leverage, thinking more, you know, more deeply about what are their problems.
05:35
Dan Lee: And, you know, can we come up with creative strategies to solve them?
05:38
Sophie Buonassisi: I love the chess analogy. That’s incredible. And one thing that you said that really stuck was we don’t have the same kind of clarity on the go to market side that the engineering side does. And that’s where there’s just been a lot of ambiguity to date. You talked about how you can potentially help make some of those decisions, or decide whether it’s top down or bottom up.
05:58
Sophie Buonassisi: Is that in the platform itself?
06:00
Dan Lee: Yeah. So the idea, you know, I guess playing off this chess analogy, Nook’s is built to play alongside you, right? To help you understand the board. Right. And accelerate the research or, when you’re evaluating decisions, right, you can think like, kind of like, like a simulation engine. We’ll suggest, hey, here, like, you know, three possible, moves.
06:19
Dan Lee: Which one do you want to take? Right? And by playing alongside you, you’re actually able to learn faster then. But just by watching, you know, observing them passively. It’s called active learning, where, you know, Netflix, for example, it learns faster by recommending you movies and seeing which one you pick, rather than just seeing which which movies you pick by yourself.
06:36
Dan Lee: Because you’re able to kind of narrow ambiguity. Yeah. The way we’ve built nooks, we think a lot about really ergonomic human to AI and back to human hand offs, such that the AI is able to learn over time how you think. Because right now, the challenge, you know, code has all the context, right? You know, you could look at a file of code and see exactly what it’s going to do, and you can train a model on that.
06:56
Dan Lee: And then, you know, models are good at that. The challenges in email, you can train a model on tons of emails, but it’s not going to be good at writing emails for you. And the reason is because the reason for the email is not in the email itself. It’s actually behind the email, the context. Right? What’s the situation behind sending the email?
07:14
Dan Lee: You know, what were the people involved? What were their problems? What did they care about? What were my interactions with them? You know, how did they influence each other? All right. And that’s what goes behind the email. And right now that’s in the rep’s head. You know, they’re thinking through this stuff. The only way you can learn that is actually by owning the surface where they work to get the feedback from them.
07:32
Sophie Buonassisi: One area I’d love to hear more about is around the signaling. Yeah, because that’s something that we’ve seen with a lot of solutions that have I’ve tried to really lean into signaling is the differentiation between what signal is and noise.
07:45
Dan Lee:
07:46
Sophie Buonassisi: And so how are you designing the product so that it’s really picking up the true buying signals as opposed to any kind of online activity?
07:53
Dan Lee: Totally. A lot of signals tools today are builds completely independently from the the action, like both evaluating, what strategy should we take and then actually taking action on it. And as a result, it’s a lot less useful because ideally the whole point is understanding the board. Right. And like the signal, like, is now a good time, you know, who who at the, you know, company cares about my product and it’s going to be a good fit.
08:18
Dan Lee: So by building, this signal, by building kind of this, research and understanding of, you know, each account, and tying it directly to, how reps think about the strategy, and actually writing the email and making the call and then taking that feedback loop where, every call, and every, you know, piece of information you learn on a call should feedback in.
08:40
Dan Lee: We have built our signals to reason like reps. Right. So it’s not just a simple, you know, did they change jobs? Right. But like, actually understanding when a rep is looking at it. It’s what position do they take now? You know, who do we think is on their team from our conversations, with, you know, the team all, you know, with the team that they’re joining already, like, what is this role supposed to do?
09:04
Dan Lee: Right. You’re you’re actually need to marry both third party data that everyone has access to with your own first party data. Because if you’re just looking at what stuff that’s available on the web, they’re getting outreach from everyone, you know, saying, oh, I saw you change jobs. But if you actually understand the context behind it, right? Oh, like, you know, they change, you change jobs.
09:20
Dan Lee: But I talked with your team all, you know, with the team that you just joined already. And they said, you know, you’re they brought you in to fill, you know, to go solve this problem for them, right? Yeah. Like, actually, by bringing in this unique insight, you’re able to get a lot more signal and actually deliver more value.
09:35
Sophie Buonassisi: Well, that’s incredibly powerful because what we’ve seen companies have success with is when you have your own proprietary data mix and you are essentially creating a proprietary data mix for each company that you’re prospecting, marrying that third party and first party data.
09:49
Dan Lee: Yeah, I think one of the really powerful things in starting with the calling channel, is that is actually the most data rich, because even a no on a call, you get information. No, I don’t have budget. No. This other person makes a decision. No, we’re thinking about that in Q2. Whereas a no on an email is no response.
10:06
Dan Lee: Yeah. You can actually use calls not just to go book a meeting, but to gather information. Right. And to build champions. Most next customer is using UX to, go start talking to individual contributors to understand their problems and then take that up the org chart to go talk to the manager and say, hey, Joe just started, you know, started onboarding, and he’s facing these issues.
10:25
Dan Lee: How are you thinking about it? Right. Yeah. And then you can use that to write a really tailored email to the VP, you know, at the end. But yeah, actually using the call as our wedge has been really helpful because it’s able to help, not just with, you know, the taking, making the move and taking action, but also, you know, at the top with gathering more information.
10:43
Dan Lee: And it’s, you know, this really great feedback loop, a.
10:45
Sophie Buonassisi: Quick pause for a company where a huge fan of yours, if you run, go to market, you already know the problem. Your data lives everywhere spreadsheets, CRM, sales, calls, ad platforms. Yet you’re still guessing what to do next. Hockey stack is the AI platform for modern go to market teams, unifies all your sales and marketing data into a single system of action.
11:05
Sophie Buonassisi: Built in AI agents help teams prospect the right accounts, improve conversions, close and expand deals, and scale it works. That’s why teams like RingCentral outreach, Active Campaign, and fortune 100 companies rely on hockey stack to eliminate wasted spend, take better decisions and make space to think. Learn more at Hockey stack.com. That’s hockey y esta SI.com one of the big stand ups of books is how just disciplined you’ve been with your go to market.
11:33
Sophie Buonassisi: You really did win that calling wedge before expanding. What was the actual moment where you knew it was the right time to expand, go more horizontal and really take on incumbents?
11:45
Dan Lee: Our customers kept asking for it.
11:46
Sophie Buonassisi: The best sign?
11:47
Dan Lee: Yeah, 70% of our customers, have said that they want to use our sequences product. And the reason is because they generate most of their pipeline with knocks. You know, they’re using these legacy tools that you know, they feel have kind of let them down and logically make sense. I think, if I’m one of these legacy sequencing tools in a pre AI world, the opportunity, at the top of funnel is just limited, right?
12:13
Dan Lee: The way you have, you know, you grew historically as a sales tool is by taking other sales tools budget. Right, right. The top of the funnel, the SDR, it’s like easy to kind of lose sight of, that initial, you know, persona and go after gong and go after clarity and kind of, you know, go, try, try to do these other jobs.
12:33
Dan Lee: Yeah. And it’s kind of logical because they’re trying to get closer to the CRO because that’s where the budget is, and that’s how you go to replace other sales tools. I think the opportunity we have, though, is this is a unique moment in time where top of funnel actually is the part of the job, that is changing the most, with AI, right?
12:52
Dan Lee: Because I can’t really close for you, right? At least not yet. Part of the way I think about it is this iceberg analogy. What’s above the surface is, you know, talking, you know, building relationships, you know, being consultative, solving problems, being creative. Right. This is the human stuff. And then what’s below the surface, is like just making the moves, writing the email.
13:12
Dan Lee: It’s like doing research and building a list and, you know, finding the phone number. And I should be doing a lot of this stuff beneath the surface. And in closing, a lot of the work is above the surface, actually. Right. Because, you know, in closing, it’s it is more human and more problem solving, in relationship building.
13:28
Dan Lee: Whereas at the top of funnel, the reason the SDR role has existed historically, is because you don’t want your best enterprise sellers spending all their you know, all their time finding phone numbers and writing emails.
13:38
Sophie Buonassisi: That make sense. And like you said, I can now do a lot of the things below the surface and write emails and enrich and outreach. So what does that role above the iceberg surface look like a couple years down the line, even as I just continues to expand what that bottom looks like?
13:55
Dan Lee: Yeah, I think it really varies. I guess first is, you know, what’s happening now is we’re taking human intelligence and learning that in models like I mentioned, you know, our agent workspace playing the game alongside you to learn how you make the moves, automate more and more of that over time. And this creates a bunch of opportunities, right?
14:15
Dan Lee: When you can do more with less. What do you do as a company? Some companies do the same with less, right? They cut, and they focus on efficiency. Some people do more with the same. Right. I can keep the same team and do even more. And some companies will actually even do more with more. Right. Like when you can make the function more efficient and say, hey, per, you know, per sales rep, I get this much.
14:38
Dan Lee: You know, if, this much more efficiency gain, I might want more sales reps. Right. And I think, you know, there’s this question of growth versus efficiency, this question of like, you know, a transactional versus strategic sale. Do you, you know, expands, reps book size, or do you actually, you know, keep the same book size and say go for each, account, go even deeper and, you know, add more value upfront.
15:00
Dan Lee: I think another, important dynamic is that sales are competitive. Right. And even if I could fully remove a rep from the sales process, if your competitor is using reps and building relationships and you’re not, guess who’s going to win, right? Yeah. A lot of people will say, oh, if I can help automate writing emails or help automate making calls.
15:21
Dan Lee: You know, isn’t that kind of zero sum? I just get more emails and get more calls and, you know, there’s not more value created, but whoever wins is the one who delivers more value up front. And it drives everyone to be more consultative and to focus on these higher leverage problems of, you know, actually deeply understanding customer problems and solving them.
15:37
Sophie Buonassisi: Well, let’s say, I mean, a very promising future. And what you said is exactly why we believe from our lines at GTM fund go to market, just gets ever so much more complicated and in a beautiful, complex way. But there’s now more than ever options to automate parts of go to market. So you’d think at a surface level it might get actually easier, but you just touch on the variety of different things that it actually unlocks and it becomes a more, complex problem where if you think about it like a maze, there’s just a lot more pathways you can take one.
16:08
Dan Lee: Hundred percent, I think, like when, information went from libraries to the internet, it’s not like just one thing happened, right? Right. It’s an explosion of opportunities when you can make something of that much more efficient.
16:18
Sophie Buonassisi: Really. Well said. Can we walk through an example like, let’s say I am my company, I’m prospecting. Nux yeah. And I’m using Nexus platform to prospect next. Yeah. What happens, what are the steps that it looks like and how does that compare to a traditional process? If we were to just make it really concrete. In case anyone’s curious, I love demos.
16:38
Dan Lee: I wish I could pull up a demo here. We own kind of the end to end prospecting workflow. Okay, so first off, as a rep, you know, you have your book of business and you’re going to want to understand, you know, I can’t sell to all 100 companies at once, right? Yeah. So I want to figure out which ones do I focus on.
16:54
Dan Lee: So first you do research and often you’ll do that research both across first and third party sources. So across your CRM process like call transcripts, you know if we’ve had interactions with them. Look at previous emails that we’ve sent. Maybe you did it. Maybe another rep did it because it changed territories as well as like like web research.
17:12
Dan Lee: So you know who’s changing jobs? Did they hit their, you know, annual, hit? Did they hit their quarterly revenue goals? Because, you know, based on their 10-K report.
17:20
Sophie Buonassisi: Any podcast transcripts?
17:22
Dan Lee: Yeah. Podcast product launches, all sorts of things. And ideally, you’re marrying these, right? You’re trying to understand. Okay. They told me this in a conversation. They announced this, you know, two months later. Like what? What does that mean? Right? Or this person joined this job that they had mentioned they were hiring for. So you want like, not just the surface level signal, but you need to synthesize across them to understand, you know, why now?
17:46
Dan Lee: Why is it a good fit? And then once you actually, you know, decide, hey, this is an account that I want to go after, then you need to figure out the people, and actually go deeper and like, understanding, like the the engagement history.
17:57
Sophie Buonassisi: And does it show you all that engagement history?
17:59
Dan Lee: Yeah, it shows it sites like, you know, you can, go in and see previous deals and call transcripts. We have this chat assistant that’s you can think a little bit like, chat about what built, like, specifically for this. You know, you can ask it. Hey, like, you know, what are our interactions been? Or you could ask about a specific prospect.
18:17
Dan Lee: Hey, you know, for for this prospect, what were the things that they cared about? And, you know, even. Hey, if I were to go after, you know, try to get their attention, you know, in previous calls, what personal things did they mention where I should send them a gift? Yeah. Like, you know, it’s actually very flexible. And for each of these things is really important to build trust.
18:35
Dan Lee: So we set our sources from here. You, will suggest which prospects to go after. You know, we’ll give a reason kind of for each and directly from, you know, within this chat interface, you can add them to sequences. You can call them, email them. And we learn from this over time because when we make a suggestion and you action it, that was probably useful.
18:53
Dan Lee: And if we make a suggestion and you don’t lessees will. So over time actually we’re able to kind of, you know, this is the playing the game with you, right. And suggesting moves, learning which ones you take. Same with emails. Right. We’ll suggest several versions of emails for you. And and instead of manually writing emails or even instead of, you know, us, we write one email and then, you know, you try to go, prompted a lot to go change it.
19:15
Dan Lee: Right. We’ll, give you several versions to kind of, explore the solution space for you. And instead you can use that judgment. Right. And just pick which one you want, and then you can give some suggestions on top. And these are all kind of designed in order, in order to learn from the rep, right, to understand how they think.
19:33
Dan Lee: And, you know, which prospect do you go after in this scenario? Which email do you write in this scenario? And over time, we’re actually able to automate that.
19:41
Sophie Buonassisi: Super cool. And one of the classic features of, let’s say, incumbents or any legacy sequencing platforms is that you pre build a sequence and then you drop your contact in and they go through all the steps. Yeah. Do you still pre build your sequence. And then how does that shift.
19:58
Dan Lee: We support all the core functionality of like legacy tools. So like you know you can you can build the same exact sequences and steps. But we have an understanding of the org chart. We know hey this person reports to that person right. And we can suggest, hey actually go after this person first right? Yeah. Basically a historical sequence.
20:16
Dan Lee: Maybe you call someone and she says she’s going on Matt leave and then you go put them in some state, okay? Like, you know, we’ll follow up on them later. But actually probably you want to you probably want to send her a gift, right. And understand who else is involved in the decision and call some of the people that you know, are now, reporting to her.
20:32
Dan Lee: You can think it has like the core functions of, like, you know, sequence steps and messaging and templates and, you know, all, all the core things that that you’d expect, but kind of reimagined, you know, for for the world where AI is, is, actually able to understand, the sales process. Yeah.
20:48
Sophie Buonassisi: And intelligence just layered on top.
20:50
Dan Lee: Exactly.
20:51
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21:21
Sophie Buonassisi: It’s actually the same technology we used to create the notes for this very podcast. Once you try it on the first meeting, it’s hard to go without it. Head to granola I forgot GTM fund to get three months free with the code GTM fund all capitals and that will be in the show. Notes. Back to the episode and Dan today Nixes the agent workspace and AI sequencing product.
21:44
Sophie Buonassisi: But it didn’t always start that way. Now, like most startups, you went through pivots and iterations. What was the origin of Nux? What was the original idea and why did you set down that path to actually build it?
21:56
Dan Lee: My background before Noakes, was in AI, I studied AI at Stanford. I worked at scale AI on their machine learning team before starting nukes. Nukes actually started with related idea, but like executed very differently. It was, like mid 2020. Early in the pandemic, when I started hacking on nukes. Yeah, I was interested in virtual collaboration.
22:17
Dan Lee: Right. Everyone is switched to zoom. All my friends said, you know, we’re at Stanford and, you know, now now going to classes online. And I was interested in one. Can you get this, you know, virtual collaboration, virtual office, virtual workspace to work and to if you get that working, you have a lot of data on how people work.
22:34
Dan Lee: And can you start making it smart, right. Can you automate some of that work? Can you help learn best practices and share them across the team? I didn’t know anything about sales at the time. This was a very broad, abstract concept.
22:46
Sophie Buonassisi: Right.
22:47
Dan Lee: And was first focus on getting that virtual collaboration working. So I was on the ice hockey team, the club ice hockey team at Stanford, and some of my friends were Tas in the computer science department. And when I showed them the early versions of Nook’s, they were like, oh, this seems useful for office hours. So actually, our first users, were Stanford classes.
23:06
Dan Lee: A lot of, you know, the whole computer science department use nukes for office hours, during the pandemic, instead of zoom, because we had easier ways to, you know, work on a problem, set together and then switch groups since, you know, basically, like this more interactive zoom. Stanford wanted to pay us, like $2 of students a quarter or something like that.
23:26
Dan Lee: And we were super excited. Yeah. But then we realized that, oh, this probably isn’t going to work long term because everyone wants to go back in person. We kind of broadened, to general remote work. So then we started having, startup teams like sales, product marketing, engineering teams using Nook’s. We found that sales teams were actually the most engaged, using the product.
23:50
Dan Lee: They were all using it to make calls together. Did you watch The Wolf of Wall Street? Yes. Yeah. You know that scene where Leonardo DiCaprio is making calls and everyone huddles around and listens? Yes.
23:57
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, that was quite literally nuts.
24:00
Dan Lee: Yeah, yeah. Like in a virtual sense. And probably, you know, that’s a little exaggerated. They don’t party as hard after they might.
24:07
Sophie Buonassisi: You never know. That’s not what happens off the clock. Yeah.
24:11
Dan Lee: Yeah. Really understanding what works and replicating that across the team. We were intrigued. Right. Because coming from engineering backgrounds, like we didn’t know much about sales. Honestly, if you had asked me, you know, five years ago, I would have said sales. Isn’t that like a dirty job? Like, shouldn’t you build a product that sells itself?
24:25
Dan Lee: But then we spent a bunch of time with them and realized one, okay, it’s not a dirty job. They’re actually adding a lot of value. And this is really interesting problem solving. This is kind of where we, you know, when we started thinking of this, this chess analogy, right. To there this great fit not only for collaboration, because they all want to work together and, you know, they need to learn from each other rather than, you know, listening to your gong calls once a week from your manager.
24:46
Dan Lee: There’s so much room for automation. They’re writing emails, they’re making calls, they’re doing research. And we started focusing on on the sales use case, actually, in 2022, before ChatGPT came out. But given our background in AI, we knew that I was going to be doing a lot of this. We didn’t know how soon. Yeah, it’s been kind of a fun journey from from there evolving from, you know, virtual classroom to virtual office to virtual sales floor to now, the Asian workspace for sales.
25:11
Sophie Buonassisi: And how long was it between the first three iterations?
25:14
Dan Lee: So between so 2020 was the virtual classroom. 2021 was when we started thinking about virtual office. And then 2022 beginning of 2022 was when we when when you started thinking about the virtual sales floor.
25:27
Sophie Buonassisi: Fast forward to 2026 and we’re now the agent workspace and AI sequencing tool. So it’s been quite the progression and journey.
25:34
Dan Lee: We’re seeing a dialer coaching so like sequences is the newest product that we’re launching. Yeah. But thousands of companies use notes for, for calling coaching. Yeah.
25:44
Sophie Buonassisi: A common thing that we hear is just around all of the different moments throughout the journey. You know, Christina in was the first sales hire at snowflake. He stayed for 11 years and went through the IPO, and he sat down on the podcast here and shared how an outage actually almost put them out of business. So these kind of near-death experiences, did you experience a near-death experience along the journey?
26:08
Dan Lee: In the early days, we were kind of in the wilderness. Yeah. Where those are probably the closest to to death. And it wasn’t acute. Right. Because we were kind of just, you know, figuring things out and started as a project, not as a company. So I didn’t actually, you know, when I started hacking on it, I was more actually interested in building, then in starting a company.
26:27
Dan Lee: And then eventually some investors approached us. And this was for the virtual classroom idea. Right. There’s a graveyard of virtual classrooms. There’s a graveyard of virtual offices. Those were probably, like, the nearest death experiences. It, you know, we probably didn’t even feel it at the time. Yeah, yeah. And I’m sure plenty more.
26:45
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah. You’ve got the hindsight perspective of being able to see those graveyards now. Yeah. Having pivoted away from it. Yeah. And as the product progressed, inevitably so did the company. Were there any through lines, any values or systems that stayed with you throughout those pivots?
27:02
Dan Lee: We have six core values I think are really fundamental to, you know, how we hire to how we build culture. You know, how we prioritize the first two we wouldn’t have a company without, those are earned customer love and extreme ownership. The next two describe how we do it, do more with less and ask why.
27:22
Dan Lee: And then the last two are kind of how we do it working together. And this is energize and support the team and be a good person. You know, I think each of the values is really important in his own sense. Right. We exist to serve our customers. We wouldn’t be able to execute without, you know, really strong and clear ownership.
27:37
Dan Lee: I think some of our more unique ones, one of my favorites is ask why we hire deeply curious people who are truth seeking and really seek to deeply understand the why behind anything they’re doing. I tell everyone, if you’re working on something but you don’t understand, why stop immediately before you get started again? First understand why?
27:57
Dan Lee: Because otherwise you’re probably doing it wrong. Even if you’re not doing it wrong, you might realize that there’s actually a better way. We are building a new type of company, right? Where historically software has enabled work, and now it can do work for people. And as a result, we need everyone to think from first principles. And to really, you know, question the why.
28:17
Dan Lee: And then another I think critical one is do more with less. We can do anything but not everything. And ruthless prioritization is our key advantage in like I mean ruthless. Yeah. You know, I tell everyone if it’s not important, don’t do it right. Only do. The most important thing is be lazy. Because as a startup competing with much, much larger players, that that prioritization is actually our key advantage.
28:39
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah. And you have to be ruthless around prioritization as a startup or you do become, you know, one of the tombstones in a graveyard usually, there’s a lot of frameworks that say, you know, pick your top three things, for example, for the day. And it seems like there’s a billion things going on. There’s so many different things to do.
28:56
Sophie Buonassisi: But if you actually just pick three and I’ve been doing this for probably about nine months now, and it’s helped tremendously because there’s always important fires and things to do. Those three things, if they get done, the rest starts to kind of evolve and move, and it just allows you to prioritize more greatly.
29:12
Dan Lee: Exactly.
29:12
Sophie Buonassisi: And I can extrapolate from what you shared there that you’re hiring curious people. They’re asking questions why?
29:19
Dan Lee: Yeah.
29:20
Sophie Buonassisi: What other kind of either traits or type of person and hire are you.
29:25
Dan Lee: Making for a long time? Actually, for our go to market hires, for example, we have had like, kind of AI literacy, kind of, interview question, basically learning this new AI tool and seeing how they approach that. Right. Can they think through it and problem solve, like the most basic is can they actually use this new, you know, like, keep up with the tools?
29:47
Dan Lee: Because it obviously changes their productivity. But also just like, how do they think, right. Can, can they reason through problems? Are they logical? Everyone on the team, needs to kind of have this level of problem solving. Another thing that I think about a lot is our engineering hiring. I think our engineering team, you know, every team is important.
30:07
Dan Lee: Our engineering team is one of the most important because today, the product defines how successful you’ll be, how much value you can add to customers. Right? Your long term differentiation. Working at scale. Before, actually, Alex was great at turning an unsexy problem of data labeling. Sexy for the best engineers and as a result, did really well, as a company.
30:28
Dan Lee: And I think sales is a problem that the best engineers are not naturally attracted to, but by kind of understanding the problem myself, by by feeling that myself to you. Right. Where five years ago, I would have said, hey, sales like that seemed like a dirty job. You know, kind of having gone on this journey and understanding why it’s such an interesting problem, and the huge opportunity in the space, and the value that you can create from, you know, just millions of people, has helped us attract the best engineering team and as a result, then has helped us build the best, you know, the best product.
30:57
Dan Lee: And the reason why we win is probably because, you know, because of the products, which ties back then to the.
31:02
Sophie Buonassisi: Engineering team that, I mean, you can have the best product in the world, but if you’re not selling it and getting in the hands of customers, then they don’t get that value. So I can see how you’re flipping it on its head for engineers and really bringing them in through that recruiting process. It feels like we should have a slogan like making sales sexy.
31:17
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, or something like that.
31:18
Dan Lee: But that’s funny. Yeah. Making sales sexy again. Yeah, we might see a lot from you.
31:23
Sophie Buonassisi: There you go. I can see it on a tote bag or something. And, Dan, are there any roles that you’re hiring for right now and books that you’d want to shout out?
31:31
Dan Lee: Yeah, where you are hiring across the board, across engineering, product design, sales, marketing, customer success. If you’re interested, come check out our website, nooks that I, and come to the careers page, you know, also, feel free to connect with me. We’re we’re always looking for top talent across the board.
31:49
Sophie Buonassisi: Incredible. Well, both the careers page and your LinkedIn profile that’s best place will be in the show notes for anyone listening.
31:55
Dan Lee: Yeah. Excited chat.
31:56
Sophie Buonassisi: Awesome Dan has been wonderful. Thank you for joining GTM now. Thank you for sharing all the insight.
32:00
Dan Lee: Thanks so much for having me.
