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Who we sat down with
Adam Liska is the Co-Founder & CEO of Airspeed (formerly Glyphic), the AI revenue execution platform.
Adam left DeepMind's Gemini team in 2022, pre-ChatGPT, to build a native revenue execution platform now serving 200 customers across 20 countries (recently rebranded and fresh off a $20M Series A). In this conversation, he gets specific on what is actually changing in the sales role, what should be automated, and why he thinks this is about to be the golden age for sales reps.
Discussed in this episode
Why “I’ll follow up on that” is the most expensive promise in revenue, and how the execution gap compounds from rep to manager to CRO
What parts of the rep workflow to automate now (research, CRM updates, business cases, follow-ups) and what stays human
Why AI is squeezing middle management, not reps, and flattening GTM orgs
How per-rep coaching changes when every call is recorded, shared, and analyzed for patterns
The “corrective action” approach to coaching deals on the job, in real time
How to sell globally when borders disappear but local-language talent still matters
Why in-person events drove 70% of early pipeline, and how that compounds with cold calling
How to keep your team at the AI frontier by never locking into a single model
Adam’s #1 piece of advice for first-time founders (hint: it starts with your co-founder)
Episode highlights
0:00 - Why AI won’t replace sales reps
0:22 - Leaving DeepMind’s Gemini team pre-ChatGPT
1:18 - What Airspeed does and the “execution gap”
2:07 - “I’ll follow up on that”: the most expensive promise in sales
3:28 - The $20M Series A and the rebrand from Glyphic
5:30 - Why walk away from frontier AI research at DeepMind
7:17 - Leading when the frontier models keep changing
8:39 - Buy vs. build, and keeping customers at the AI frontier
11:03 - Landing the first 200 customers across 20 countries
12:41 - Advice for first-time founders
14:04 - Selling globally and what AI changes about language
17:07 - What the sales rep role looks like in an AI-first world
19:24 - How reps and leaders should start automating today
20:51 - The channels driving results right now
22:41 - How AI makes per-rep coaching actually work
25:14 - Building an execution-first culture
27:10 - The DeepMind departure story
28:51 - Building in London vs. selling in the US
30:43 - Adam’s favorite AI use case as a busy CEO
31:26 - The biggest misconception about AI in sales
Key takeaways
1. "I'll follow up on that" is where deals go to die.
It sounds responsible, but the follow-up sinks to the bottom of an inbox and three days later the prospect's urgency is gone (happens all too often). The deal still shows live in the CRM, so the manager forecasts it and the CRO presents it to the board, all on a promise nobody executed. Airspeed calls this the execution gap: the distance between knowing what to do and doing it.
2. Middle management gets squeezed before frontline reps.
Same pattern as engineering, where AI is furthest ahead: companies aren't cutting engineers, they're slowing junior hiring and keeping the team that executes. Orgs get flatter, reps get stronger, the layer above them gets thinner.
3. In-person events drove 70% of early deals.
At the half-year mark, 70% of Airspeed's deals traced back to dinners, breakfasts, and hackathons. Cold outbound still works, but an in-person first touch shortens the cycle and lifts win rates. One early deal started by meeting at a random lunch table at a conference.
4. Keep customers as close to the AI frontier as possible.
Buyers now pick vendors on who can carry them forward, not just today's product. Airspeed runs multiple models behind the scenes with eval frameworks that pick the best one per workflow, and has re-architected repeatedly to always swap in the best model available.
5. Make every rep's calls visible to the whole team.
The unlock is openness, not just analysis. Adam pushes customers to make all recorded conversations accessible across the GTM org so the best patterns stop living in one rep's head and become shared property.
6. Run hackathons where people automate themselves.
An Airspeed customer runs 2-3 day hackathons where everyone automates as much of their own job as possible. Adam's advice to leaders: pick a piece of your workflow, automate it, measure the gain. And then repeat.
7. Your most important founder decision is your co-founder.
Everything else is downstream. It's a long journey, and you need someone to carry momentum when you're down. Adam and his co-founder Devang Agrawal started meeting outside DeepMind during Covid, realized they were both pulled toward building and selling, and the rest is history.
Follow Adam Liska
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adliska
X (Twitter): https://x.com/adliska
Follow Sophie Buonassisi (Host)
X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
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