IRL - Joseph Miller
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Innovative Revenue Leader Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Mars. Join me as we deliver practical insights to help B2B CROs Find new and innovative ways to grow in this fast changing environment. The Innovative Revenue Leader is sponsored by Sandler, a triad company, empowering sales professionals and leaders to master the craft of selling at all levels.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Welcome everybody. I'm really excited to, to have this guest on the show. He's an AI executive, quantitative finance expert, and, and startup founder. He is develops AI agents and, and casual in or causal inference systems applied across finance, SaaS, biotech, all, all, all, all sorts of different segments.
He's led venture spanning, uh, venture spanning AI driven sales, quantitative trading and autonomous learning systems, while advising on, on innovative tech and global impact initiatives. His background includes advanced research and nuclear fusion [00:01:00] cancer dynamics and, and medic and, and medical physics. I mean that it is a broad reach of, of expertise and intelligence.
I have a co-founder and chief AI officer at Vivin, Joseph Miller, so glad to have you on.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So let's, let's, let's jump in. Um, the, the first question that I, that, that I wanted to ask you is just, it is a standard question that I ask to all guests is what, what's the most innovative thing that you've seen in B2B right now?
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: I, I'd say that the most innovative thing happening is, um. It's just part of the, uh, of a larger trend that's gone on for the last couple years since LLM started, took the scene and everybody has had to pivot and dynamics and all of this type of stuff that everybody's, You know, um, refocused their product lines and et cetera, to, um, to focus on the AI initiatives.
It's really starting to come to a head here and I think that the most, um, innovative things that you see are ais that are joining us. In the moments, um, that we need to make [00:02:00] decisions. So they're starting to join the, the round tables, if you will. Um, and they're joining the meetings that you're making, these decisions, they're joining, they're whispering in your ear.
They're doing all kinds of things that they're now starting to be at the forefront of, um, You know, where. It was previously just humans. Um, so, You know, there's always been a, before the call, sort of preps after the call, sort of, uh, uh, You know, diagnosis and things like that. Um, and now the most innovative things are happening on the call in the moments.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah, it's kind of a disorienting thing, right? Like you used to be that technology was about supporting the human and making their process better and their ways of working better. Now it's this amplification where you have this agent next to you that's literally doing work without you telling, because you're both aligned, right?
It's a, yeah, very. It's exciting, scary. A little bit crazy, but, but, um, very cool.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: I like to, I like to give like a, a framing that I think will help people like sort of [00:03:00] reconcile what's going on, uh, with, with that space. Um, I'll try to be brief about it, but if, if you sort of imagine like a, a, like a big circle that, that represents all value that can be had. Generated in the world, and then inside of that circle is like another smaller circle that was like the value that humans could deliver. Themselves. Um, and now, and then now there's like this new circle that is like the value that agents can deliver and they overlap with the human circle, like kinda like a Venn diagram and, and all the things that are getting the tension is that shaded space in between the things that agents are starting to do that overlap with humans that are sort of taking the jobs away and et cetera.
And like, oh, I'm worried about, You know, I, I'm not gonna have a job and all this sort of thing. But if you just step back for a second, there's a really interesting dynamic that's happening. One, there's a whole bunch of stuff that only agents can do now. there's a whole bunch of value that they can generate that we couldn't generate before because they're able to work, You know, around the clock because they're able to scan large, uh, [00:04:00] like large spaces of data and et cetera. And, and then there's like the part that is infringing upon our space. And yeah, that's an, that, that's, there's contention, there's real issue there. But then there is this also interesting space that is just human. And I think that what's going on is that you'll realize the space that is could be offloaded to the agents, will get offloaded to the agents.
You just can't compete on the labor dynamics there. But the things that are remaining for humans actually become like more and more important. So like the premier that of, of a human touch, if you will. And then there's the question of like. As an agent starts to, to capture this value, um, this additional value that was never had before.
There's like the overall circle is growing very quickly. So there's just more value that can be had and captured in the world. And, um, I think that those are like the sort of dynamics that are at play that help people sort of understand what's going on.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: I think this is a really good way to phrase it because if you, if you think about like great situations where you're doing cool things that you want to do more of, you can almost never get all of that [00:05:00] done. All the conversations that I wish I had more time to do XI wish I had more time to do y. This kind of enables that to actually, yeah, well we are not doing that anymore, so spend more time on x, spend more time on, on y.
It's kind of almost, it, it, it can almost be perceived as an age of abundance in that you're doing more of the truly great work and less of the work that you're kind of muddling along. 'cause you have to do it.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Yep, that's exactly right. I mean, there's a lot of like, there's a dark side to all of that, but we don't have to get into that here. But
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: No.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: A, there is, You know, there's a flip side of like. Human, like there's more, there's this age of abundance, but humans as a percentage are actually controlling a smaller and smaller portion of it. Um, and then of course there's only so much human touch value that can be derived, period.
So You obviously need less humans to be able to capture all of that value. So there's all these kinds of, You know, complicated dynamics at play, but, um, certainly interesting times to be alive.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: no, no [00:06:00] doubt. So another thing that comes up is like, there's a lot of talk about how every company should have a, a Chief AI officer. You're a Chief AI officer at an AI company. So I would think you're the best person to ask this question. Like, do you see this role as, as incremental? Or is it kind of a transition of other roles, like the chief technology Officer will eventually be the Chief AI officer, or do you see this as separate?
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: I, uh, I think that there's, I've never been one, one for titles really, to be honest. I think that, especially at startups. Everybody kind of wears a lot of hats. So you have to
do a lot of Things, and particularly as a founder, you have to do a lot of things like, um, the things that I think are important that an ai, uh, a chief AI officer would do is certainly you have to be opinionated about architecture and product and like strategy of where the technology's gonna go. Um, you should be opinionated about. Things like, You know, for example at at Vivin, um, we have a very opinionated [00:07:00] architecture that's unique that has to do with knowledge graphs and ontologies and representation. And like, you don't have to build things that way. Um, but we do at vivin because I believe that that's the right way to do it. Um, I think I've been right about that. And so that's given us some edge, which I'd say is the second thing that regardless of whatever the title is, somebody has to be doing, um, or multiple people have to be doing. At at least the executive level at every company, which is seen around the corner and starting to say,
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Hey, You know, um, like two, You know, two years ago when, um, when GBT started to perform well, um, like the first thing I did was go to Matt that was just on your show and, and John and uh, the other founders and say like, Hey, I think we're way out of position. I don't think our product is, is going to survive in this world in five years. And if we want to be competitive in that time, we need to start making moves now when it wasn't so obvious that, You know, what were the right moves to make, you
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: [00:08:00] Sets. But I think that those are the roles of, You know, a chief AI officer or a chief strategy officer, or a chief product, or a chief technology or chief executive is like, you have to, you have to somehow see through the fog, um, and make some bets, and you're not gonna get 'em all right.
But it's your job to make the bet.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Do this as informed as you can, and your job is to be the informed one,
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: That's a, it's a really great way to put it. You've gotta, you gotta make the play and make the decision, like the bet and the decision is, is kind of what it feels like. And you're betting on how you're, can you, can you double click a little bit more about the evolution? Like maybe talk a little bit about why you started Vivin and then kind of how, 'cause I think there's a really interesting pathway that you guys have gone down around how you've come to where you are with ai.
Doing some really cool things, and you're right, you guys were on the front end of doing stuff that people weren't talking about yet. You made decisions that were the right decisions that led to a better product. Can you, can you take us through that arc a little bit?
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: I mean, I, I think we had a lot of advantages getting started. Um, You know, [00:09:00] Matt and Dom, um, started this thing, I think, I think in, in 2017 or 18. They ran it for about a year by themselves, I believe. And then they got John and Claire who were, um, the, the, uh, other co-founders to join. And then about six months later. Um, John and I are, were very close and we've built a bunch of companies before, um, together and all kinds of ventures, and John called me up and says, Hey, do you want to be our like fifth wheel co-founder here? Um, we're gonna go raise a seed round. um, and I was, And so I talked to Matt. I didn't know anything about.
You know, pre-sales or any of that stuff. That's where we started originally was, uh, a product for the sales engineer and both John and Matt have had, You know, decades of experience as sales engineers um, and I sort of heard the idea, I was at Bridgewater Associates at the time running an AI team that is, was working building expert systems.
So that's why I care so much about the proper representation of domain specific knowledge and domain expertise and all of that. All of our engineering team, um, or most of our engineering leadership at, at, at the very least, [00:10:00] um, was actually reporting to me at Bridgewater and then came along for this ride.
And now they're the guys that have shaped and built all of this. So, um, the team's been working on this sort of pro this, these sorts of problems of like, how do you represent expert knowledge? Which is particularly relevant in sales, um, particularly sales engineering, where you kind of sit between technical product and the field and have to be this translation layer.
And, and, You know, you have to navigate people, but you have to navigate it armed with a bunch of technical facts. And so there's a lot of domain expertise that, um, that can be modeled there. And so when we started Vivin, um. John John Bruce, um, called me up and said, Hey, like, will you join this team? We needed an AR expert on this thing. I talked to Matt, I understood what the problem was immediately, and I got excited by the, the point of this intersection between these two fields being so interesting because the, they sort of this group of people that have so much important data,
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yep.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Was no enterprise software to support it. And the irony is, is that, that the [00:11:00] whole company, the technology companies. Um, which we, You know, ultimately software eats the world and all companies are technology companies. These companies make decisions about the evolution of their products based on the data that sits in this small group of people
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: So true.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: So I loved this, so I was like, this is, this is a very cool field, very cool, interesting space, interesting problems. Sign me up. And so then, then we went out, we raised our seed round and uh, and we kicked it off from there. Now, right away we did very well. We, uh, You know, we're one of the darlings of Silicon Valley for a while, and then. You know, then you have, and then you have, uh, uh, COVID obviously, um, caused a big shock. But then you have, You know, the, the money printer comes on and all the valuations are high and
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Within everybody's buying software. Everybody's expanding and things are going great. And then at the end of 2020, you sort of go into this SAS recession space. And things get a lot, a lot harder. For a while there I was like sort of, Hey, hands off and like the world is our oyster. The products that we built and the technology that that [00:12:00] we had built in the early days was just feeding us. And then it started to get really hard and then we had to start thinking, okay, well we need to keep up.
We need to do more. We need to get better. And so we started innovating there around that period of time. And then when GPT-3 five came out. was, I, I, I think I'm on the record a number of times saying that I definitely did not see the transformer models doing what they were doing. We were working with Transformers and LLMs at Bridgewater in 2017, and they sucked. So, uh, You know, all the guys, all the guys that, uh, have built it with Vivid, uh, up with Vivid, now we're also on that team, and we, You know, this thing couldn't get plurals, right? It like, You know, you can maybe get a few words out of it, but it wasn't particularly good. then, um, it, and, and it turns out if you just stack transformers, that it magic occurs. And as soon as we saw that, that was when I said, Hey, we're way out of position. Like the old SaaS world is dead. Um, we are not gonna come out of this hole. Uh, the SaaS recession that, that is going on, not just to vivid, but to everybody at the time. We're not gonna come out of [00:13:00] that, um, in the same way if we don't pivot the product now. And so. It took a few demos, a few, uh, You know, we like, You know, skunk work type projects to kind of show what was possible. But as soon as soon as you saw it, you were like, oh my God, yes. We gotta, we gotta move. So we, we carved out a little team and um, and we did like a little skunk works and we, and, and the rules were like, you can't touch the old databases, you can't touch the old stack. We're gonna build the coal company all over, zero to one all over again with this new paradigm. And uh, and that's how we did it. And it was, and we made a, and we had to make a lot of bets. I had a whole thing, uh, whole theme. I would call, like building into the fog and trying to comfort people, because the reality was there's so much uncertainty, and it was so unclear if this was gonna be hype, if it was just gonna, You know, it wasn't great at the time.
Like, it's
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: You know, it's not like LLMs aren't perfect, right? They hallucinate all the time, but they really
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yep.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: A lot then. The memory, the, the context windows were very small. There's just a lot of limitations. And you had to believe [00:14:00] that like, hey, the token costs were gonna come down. The memory, uh, um, the memories, uh, memory structure was gonna work.
Context windows were gonna get bigger, just build as if that was
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: And that's what we did. And um, and You know, obviously it gave us a, a big headstart and it worked out for us. But, um, but at the time, You know, that's, who knows. You have to make big bets.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Well, I mean, you got companies that you're talking about that made that bet last year and they're getting hailed as like, oh, they really pivoted and did it. But the way that you're talking about is you pivoted almost immediately and you completely disrupted yourself. Separate off, disrupt myself, I'm gonna compete against my old product with a different product.
And then it, it almost even, you're at a position now where you are an AI first company. You had a SaaS product. It's this, but now we have this and this is where Yeah, it's, it's a really fascinating change and.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: we made, I mean we made, we made bets on obviously the, [00:15:00] that this was gonna be the right move. Um, but also we built it in a unique way. Um, at the time, nobody was talking about knowledge graphs and grounding LLMs, like that wasn't a thing at all. Um, we were building, we were, but because of my time at Bridgewater, I got to work with a very famous AI researcher named Dave Ferucci that really impressed upon me. importance of knowledge, representation and, and, and, You know, graph definitions and ontologies and this kind of thing. And, um, And so I sort of looked at LLMs and the transformer model and just, I, it's kind of like, You know, you're interpreting the mathematics, you're kind of reading the tea leaves of is this going to. Be able to do proper reasoning. Is it going to be able to do what we call like multi hop reasoning or complex reasoning? And I, I, our bet was like, no, this is actually not going to work that way. However, it could work if we can ground it in the domain in more explicit domain knowledge. And so, You know, two years ago. Uh, the first thing we built was actually, uh, actually we were always, [00:16:00] we always had an ontology all along, but the first thing we built was the ontology that was built for an LLM to consume and be grounded in. And now people are even, I mean, just now people are starting to come around to the realization that, oh yeah, if you ground these things in knowledge graphs, they do a lot, lot better. Um, but even still, not everybody is doing that, You
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Salesforce didn't start that way. Um, You know, I, I think Gong is now doing a, um, claiming that they have a graph and
et cetera.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Well, they're calling it, so they're calling it a revenue graph, so it's
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: exactly. So now, now everybody is, uh, is real savvy on graphs. But, um, You know, two years ago, literally nobody was talking about that, which is, which is crazy because we didn't invent that concept.
That concept is as old as, You know, as old as dust. Like is the early seventies of people thinking about like, how do you do knowledge engineering and, and, and graph constructs and ontology design and such. Um, we were just. It to the forefront and bringing it to the, um, You know, to modern technology.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: I mean, this has to be like kid in a candy store for you, right? Like you came [00:17:00] into Vivid and you're like, okay, I'm doing some stuff. It's kind of cool. The business is successful and then this hits, and you're like, this must be like, you must have looked at it and like, this is amazing. I get to do even more than I've done before.
And I mean, is that how it felt for you going through this?
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: I mean, I'd love to say yes. That sounds, it sounds lovely. I mean, it's fun. I mean, what we, what we like. I like this work. Right. I like what I do. Um, I, I, I like it. I liked it before LLMs. I liked it. Um, I liked it. Now it's, it's all interesting. Very interesting work. We live in very interesting times and, um, and AI's at the crux of is getting a moment right now.
Right. And that's, that's pretty exciting to, to be in, to be part of. But no, like, um, the pivot was not fun. It was more of like a existential crisis. You were like, Hey, we are out of position. And by that I mean we are a startup.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Know, you don't, you don't get many, you don't get a shot to be out of position in a market turn. Um, you just won't raise capital. You won't survive. So, I mean, and there were layoffs and there were
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: To, You know, these are my [00:18:00] friends, like these were people that, um, I care about. And, but you, the company cannot survive if you aren't willing to make the hard decisions to, to shake things up.
And, and it does not appear to anybody. That anybody knows what's going on. And so when you have to do layoffs or you have to, um, You know, convince everybody that, Hey, we're, we're not gonna work on this anymore. We're gonna work on this brand new crazy thing. It feels like we're chasing shiny objects. It feels like we're distracted or we're not focused. And, and I think it also might feel a little bit nonchalant to folks and I, and I'm like, what's really going on in my head is like. Existential dread. You're like, it is, if we don't pull this off, we won't survive. If you, if I'm wrong about this bet, like we'll waste a bunch of time and resources and then we won't be competitive, et cetera, et cetera, right?
Like there's all kinds of irreversible decisions that founders have to make during those times, and they're [00:19:00] not easy and they're difficult and 'cause you don't know, you literally don't know. You're, you're like throwing, You know, throwing your bed on the table. And you're doing the best you can, but meanwhile, like the world's on fire, right?
So it's, uh, no, it's not fun. Um, it is, it is very unlike a candy store. It is interesting. It's interesting. So I can appreciate the sentiment. But yeah, it is, uh, when the money is raining down, that's much, much better time. That's a lot more
like a candy store.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: A lot more fun. Well, let's turn this a little bit, right, because what you just talked about and what you're going through to a certain extent, I, I think you would say your customers should be, or people who would be, who should be buying into and building these agents or buying vivin or getting these tools, should have that same sense of urgency.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: I think the best ones do. Like, yeah, we have customers that, I mean we're, we're like a DP is one of our, one of our big customers, and like. Uh, to give a DP their flowers. They're one of the most, um, like forward[00:20:00]
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Totally,
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: and they're a huge company. So it's, it's unbelievable that they can move a ship that big so quickly.
So, uh, kudos to
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: totally.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: That. There's a number of 'em that are like this though. Um, and, and it's, and then of course there are a bunch of laggards, right? There's a bunch of companies that are fearful of making changes because whatever they had was working. And, um, You know, sometimes you have to be disrupted until you realize that. You needed to change.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Well, what's the case? Right? Like what's the business case for them to make that change? Because right now it seems like they're gonna be on if they don't make a change. It seems like agents, the moment is now to be like in the middle. What's the case? To make that change for them to not be left behind, where they now have a dead, they have a dead process, basically that's costing them money because in Go-to-market, if you have someone that's doing better than you, they're gonna beat you in deals.
Like what's the case that you would make around, Hey, this is why you need to make this change now, or it's gonna be impactful for [00:21:00] you in a very negative, a very unfun way in the future.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah, I mean, I, I think that there's the, the mistake that people. I hear, I hear people making is more like it. The longer you wait, the faster you can adopt it because it's like the cost of these things are coming way
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Um, You know, the cost to build a a solution yourself is coming way down. So like every company is, um, is, is somewhat like their largest competitor is now the customer.
Um, the customer's own IT team or, or tech team, You know,
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Team. um, and I'd say like the, the main thing, the, the main thing is that. Uh, these things are not good. Out of the box.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Mm.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: You, you do need to find people that have spent time to think about, like, how do we make this thing productive in the real world environment?
How does it actually deliver value to your customers or to your own business? But then what you realize also is that, like, that is gonna take some time. But the bigger thing is, is that even if that works, let's assume that you can, You know, disrupt yourself or [00:22:00] get these agents to be, um, value generated in your company. Um, what you'll realize very quickly is that all your other business processes need to be reimagined as well. Like it doesn't make like, I kind of like, the easiest way I would say is like, imagine that I can give you a thousand employees right now. If, if
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah,
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: thousand employees, you would work very, very differently than you do right
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: so true.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: And the problem is, is that because you don't have a thousand employees, you're not thinking about how you should be working if you did. it will take you some time to adapt all those other processes that actually have nothing to do with the agents. Work that they're doing, but more about your ability to manage the work, the amount of work that is going to be done now, um, that, that just changes the whole business.
Uh, the business. All your business processes have to be rethought that way. And also the company cultures have to be rethought. All of that sort of thing. All those, those sorts of things need to be, you need to be getting on them now because, uh, um, You know, if you wait until thinking, oh, I'll just plug this in later.
It's not like that. It's not that kind of technology. It's really [00:23:00] disruptive to the way you do work, um, not just the work that you do.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: It's almost like a wake that it leaves as you're going through, you get this hyper efficient thing that you've built and it's also not, it, it seems like even more so than SAS products. It's not something you. It's not like you buy it and it starts delivering value. It's like you buy it and you start teaching it how to deliver value and it gets better and better and better.
And then once it gets really good, now it starts running faster than you and it leaves this wake of process problems that you've gotta fix.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah, exactly. And like, and, and while you are teaching it, you need to be learning how you should be, you should be adapting. You know, if I, if I put you in a Formula One car, like you don't drive it like you would your daily beater, You know,
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Learn how to be a different driver in that kind of vehicle.
And that's exactly the situation we're in. Like this is high tech. Stuff that has become all of a sudden, uh, very accessible and it's like now everyone has a F1 car and you're like, oh man, we gotta learn how to drive these things.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: It's a really important point because I don't think a [00:24:00] lot of people think that way, right? Like they, they're thinking in terms of, I'm just gonna buy the software and it's gonna make me better, and that's the way it works. And it's like, no, you're gonna buy it and if you don't know how to drive it, it's going into a wall
somewhere.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: or it's gonna waste away, it's like hiring like a great employee. You know? It's
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: You bring a rockstar in and you give them like some menial job, and then you're like, Hey, why isn't this person excelling? And you're like, because you are, you are the problem, You know, the management is the problem.
If you have a, a world class employee that's like stuck in the trenches doing some nonsense,
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Like, it's actually a you issue then, uh, not them.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes sense. Let's, let's shift a little bit and talk about you a little. Um. Uh, one of the questions I ask is, is like, when you were a kid was like, w this be, uh, but I've looked at your background in like biomedical. I, I'm assuming that you had a different vision of yourself as a kid than where you ended up, or was it kind of like, what did you see yourself in some doing [00:25:00] something like this?
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: I mean, I, I'd say, um, I'd say as a kid I've always been very, like, I'm a very curious person. I've always been, I was born that way. I'm sort of like a explorer type of mentality, archetype type of person. And um, and, And so in some sense, like, did I envision, like this is what, I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted to be.
I, the only thing I ever wanted to be was a scientist and I am a scientist. Like that's what I feel. That's how I approach the world. That's how I think about everything. obviously I did formal training in, in, in being a scientist and such, publish papers and do experiments and all of that. But like in general, this is like, like my handle, uh, on all my social media is a, is, is like a scientist and it's for that reason.
It's like I just. You just approach all of life like a scientist. It's like, You know, when people look at my resume, they're like, oh, you did some nuclear fusion, some weird cancer stuff, and then you're in sales and you got trading and all that. Like it's, it seems random and disperse, but if you think about [00:26:00] things like a scientist, you'll just realize that everything is sort of the same thing.
You're really doing the same sorts of stuff. You're getting into a field regardless of what the field is, and you're. Trying to understand how it works. You're building hypotheses, building experiments, testing them, running them, seeing what the outcome is, comparing it to what you expected it to be, adapting it, learning that way.
Figuring out what the machine works. That's true for running a company, um, where the machine is mostly people, technology and processes or running experiments that, You know, if the, if the, uh, elements are more like atoms and particle accelerators. It's the same stuff, so you're just doing the same thing over and over again.
You're just trying to understand how the world works.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: And so it sounds like, yeah, you wanted to be a scientist as a kid. You're a scientist now, so it's just you didn't know what type it would be, but yeah, there you. That's awesome.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: all types.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: So when you graduated college, if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice, what, what advice would that be?
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: I'd, I'd say, I'd [00:27:00] say that the exploration, like the, the, the drive to explore is, um, to, to just stick to that. Um, I, I, I was doing that when I, when I was in, was in college, um, just trying to explore, trying to touch a lot of different fields, trying to just before I went deep in anything, I just wanted to like. See what the whole landscape is like. And, and I, the advice I give myself is that that is a good thing to have done. That was a, that was the right decision, but it won't always feel like it. often it will not feel like it, it will feel like you are falling behind all of your friends that are going deep in things.
Um, but actually. When you explore a lot of things, um, and then you go deep in selective things, you are a lot more likely to be innovative in any of the things that you do because you draw upon the transfer learning from the other fields, you can see the world through different lenses, and that really helps your ability to innovate, to see around corners, to strategize, um, and those [00:28:00] things end up being really, really valuable later on.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: And it seems like that's, that, that, that breadth is even more important with AI these days because the depth piece can be, you can be assisted in a lot. It's kind of, I mean, it's kind of what you started vivin for, right? The sales engineer to be able to do that stuff. Fantastic.
Can you tell the audience just a little bit about vivin, the product, what it is, um, and, and what, what your customers do, do with it?
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: So we have, so we've built, um, so we've always been an AI company. We originally started as like a SaaS company that was trying to do sales intelligence sort of things, technical sales intelligence, um, identifying product gaps, trying to understand like, You know, how do we, how do we, You know, get this deal through?
What are the trappings and all of that sort of thing. And then when we pivoted the company to. or pivoted the product to, um, a pure, uh, agentic AI product. We call it hero and heroes. Um, You know, uh, an agent like, uh, like, You know, lots of people have agents, but, um, like it's kind of like a full feature agent.
Like it is more [00:29:00] like we build this thing to be as human as possible. So it has, um, it has memory structures about that. It represent the domain specific knowledge of a salesperson. So instead of just, uh, technical sales. Now we look at, You know, like, um, AEs and, and these and sales leaders and folks. And the idea is really like, you want this thing to be a teammate.
You want this thing to be able to ride alongside you, join a call with you, not just prep you, help you prep for the call ahead of it. Not just do the the postmortem type of stuff. But like I said, on the top of the call, like, join the call with you. Join like, ha, see an avatar, have it know all of the technical. Details and answers. And um, and then what, what you realize is that if you really want to be able to do that, bring an avatar or bring an agent onto a call and have it talk to a prospect. Um, it's an insane amount of, uh, liability. And so you have to, the bar for that thing to talk
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: So true.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Really high.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yep.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: You don't, [00:30:00] nobody like the the first stupid thing it says, you're gonna be like.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yep.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: No, the deal's dead, right? the bar for, for this kind of, this kind of technology and just the domain knowledge and its ability to not hallucinate, not say crazy things, not, not make nuts, promises, and, and really be like a teammate that you can trust on a call is just really enormously high. Um, but. I think that we've achieved that and, and what happens is that all of the things that used to take call many calls, You know, like, oh, they ask you a technical question about some compliance or some security protocol, or whatever it might be, and you're like, your usual answer would be like, oh, lemme get back to you on it.
Right. you have to schedule a second date and it's just like dating. And you're like, well, You know, second date's, third dates, You know, they
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Yeah.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Not come. And so you really wanna be able to deliver all of that value within, You know, that was usually 3, 4, 5 meetings into that first meeting. Um, and that's what really what everybody's starting to expect now anyways.
[00:31:00] Like
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Mm-hmm.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Don't have time to reschedule calls and do a bunch of stuff. They're just like. Give me the answers. I just want the transactional aspect of this thing. I don't wanna go play golf with you. I just want to like know I get to the point in which you deliver me value. That's it. And so, like, if we could do that all in a 20 minute call, you're much more likely to close that deal than if I have to stretch this like, relationship out over five or six calls over the next, You know, month and a half. So that's really what, uh, hero's all about, is just bringing those answers to bear in the moment that you're, that you need them the most so that you can. Truncate all of that time.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Give the customer what they need upfront so they can make a decision faster. Shorter deal cycles, higher win rates. That's, that's a good thing.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: That's it. Yep.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Awesome. So how can people, if people wanted to, to follow you or learn more, where, where should they, where should they reach out to you?
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Well, if they wanna follow me, I only have one social media space, so you can find me on LinkedIn at like a scientist. Um, otherwise we'll go to vivin.com. Um, and we'll be [00:32:00] actually, um, I think we're actually rebranding, uh uh, um, meet hero.com soon, so you'll be able to see that as well. Um, but if you go to vivin.com, uh, you'll be able to be redirected to wherever you want.
seth-marrs_18_03-25-2026_160407: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining. This was really great having you.
joseph-miller_1_03-25-2026_160407: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
And that wraps up another episode. Thank you for joining. For show notes and other episodes, visit us@innovativerevenueleader.ai. The Innovative Revenue Leader is sponsored by Sandler, a Trilia company. Sandler provides top corporate sales and business development training while empowering sales professionals and leaders to master the graph of selling at all levels.