Ultimate Partner®
Vince Menzione - Technology Industry Sales and Partner Executive
Podcast
Episodes
Listen, download, subscribe
315 – Stop Losing Deals: How to Make Your Software Visible to AI Agents
Will AI buy your software next? Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this discussion, Vinod Nair and Michael Levy explore how product-led growth (PLG) and agentic AI are fundamentally reshaping the AWS Marketplace. They detail why relying on traditional sales-led motions is becoming obsolete as AI agents increasingly take over software discovery and procurement. The conversation provides actionable insights on auditing API strategies, adopting outcome-based commercial models, and removing setup friction to capture the growing wave of machine-driven B2B buying. https://youtu.be/enLOuppFYq0?si=A1uPSJ9ioXO7zbTS Key Takeaways Product-led growth (PLG) allows users to discover, try, and buy solutions without relying on direct sales interactions. A successful free trial must deliver immediate value rather than forcing customers to spend time on complex setup processes. AI agents prioritize technical availability, structured metadata, and API access over traditional brand identity during procurement. The Marketplace MCP server acts as an official connector for Claude, driving a significant increase in AI-based search and evaluation traffic. Sellers looking to monetize agentic AI should transition their commercial models toward usage and outcome-based billing. Over 90% of surveyed global sellers are expected to transition to product-led growth within the next three years. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags product-led growth, AWS marketplace, agentic AI, software procurement, Claude connector, API strategy, outcome-based billing, SaaS transformation, technical availability, structured metadata, AWS seller prime, agent core payments Transcript Vinod Nair and Michael Levy AUDIO Podcast [00:00:00] Michael Levy: Humans, for the most part, care about brand and brand identity and all of that. Agents don’t care about that, right? It’s about the technical availability. It’s about the structured metadata. It’s about evaluating whether it’s the right tool to accomplish that task. [00:00:15] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi. Own your host. And each week I sit down with leaders at the [00:00:33] Vince Menzione: intersection of technology, partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:48] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. Let’s start. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: All right. Thank you. All right, [00:01:01] Vince Menzione: so we talked about product led earlier today with that, um. Agent powered. And then marketplace growth is, uh, is part, part of your, your mandate. You’ve got a lot of mandates though, from what I remember. Um, why don’t we just go through like introductions and tell, take us through your mandate, your individual mandates and roles at AWS. [00:01:20] Vinod Nair: Okay, thank you. Uh, my name’s Vinod Nier. I’ve been with AWS marketplace close to eight years now. Uh, I started off as a category lead and worked with. Elastic, uh, MongoDB Databricks. Uh, and that’s where I kind of learned that one of the big missed opportunities in marketplace is helping ISVs grow through product led growth. [00:01:43] Vinod Nair: So, literally wrote a paper, got it approved, and this launched AWS marketplace Sell a Prime about three and a half years ago. [00:01:51] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:01:52] Vinod Nair: Elastic was one of our founding partners. Grateful for their support and it’s. It’s grown, and that’s kind of my charter. How do I help ISVs activate product-led growth in marketplace? [00:02:03] Vince Menzione: I love it. I wanna dive in. [00:02:04] Vince Menzione: Vinod is the godfather of product led growth. I love it on marketplace. [00:02:08] Michael Levy: Um, I’m, uh, Mike Levy. Uh, I’m from our marketplace business development team. So my team focuses on feature launch and go to market. So for across the features, uh, in Matt Wise org. For partners and for customers. [00:02:21] Michael Levy: And I’m also, I’ve also been the BD lead for our AI agents and tools category within Marketplace. So we formally launched that as a category last year and we’ve seen tremendous growth. And along with the category, we’ve also launched like new deployment mechanisms that many of our partners and customers are taking advantage of. [00:02:37] Michael Levy: Basically to make it easier for partners to go to market with ag agentic solutions specifically, uh, and for customers to procure those solutions on marketplace. [00:02:46] Michael Levy: Unbelievable. So I think a lot of people get PLG wrong and we’ll start there. And you, you’ve had, you mentioned some market leaders [00:02:53] Vinod Nair: Yeah. [00:02:54] Vince Menzione: Like outstanding organizations. [00:02:55] Vince Menzione: So take, take us through, I mean, I’m not expecting you to go through all six pages Sure. Of the document you wrote, but we know it’s a six pager usually. Right. Uh, but with the pen. But take us through the thesis of what, what you had to solve. Why, why partners need to get this right. [00:03:09] Vinod Nair: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll start with just kind of defining product led growth because it’s. [00:03:13] Vinod Nair: It’s, it’s, it’s still ambiguous to a lot. Yeah. And so have a product that basically a user can discover, try and buy without talking to a salesperson. So that’s kind of the key element that it looks, sounds simple, but it is incredibly complex behind the scenes. So there’s a, like the duck swimming very fast. [00:03:36] Vinod Nair: You think everything is fine. So. It incorporates free trial. That same, because that’s how a customer actually sees the value, but the free trial needs to have some value. It’s delivering. Otherwise, if the customer is just spending most of their time trying to start your product, then free trial’s a waste. [00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:57] Vinod Nair: Then, then it is kind of monitoring them through their journey. And so this includes support from marketing. It includes support from sales because sales needs to, sales can now become more of a customer success because they can, they have a very qualified lead. Here’s a customer that’s actually using my product. [00:04:16] Vinod Nair: They’ve seen the value. So I, when I have that conversation with the CTO, it’s like I’ve already won the technical battle. I need to do now is show you the commercials for a, for a bigger deal. [00:04:28] Vince Menzione: What are you doing to help them? Are you helping them embed any technology into their solutions so that you can get the real time feedback you need to on their usage? [00:04:38] Vince Menzione: And [00:04:38] Vinod Nair: so [00:04:39] Vince Menzione: where they’re [00:04:39] Vinod Nair: seeing what, what AWS marketplace has done is a few things. One, we have, uh. Like currently we have, IM delegation and quick, uh, it used to be called moonwalk. What that does is it removes the friction of setting things up. That’s a complex task. So that’s, that’s where we are trying to bring that down to as close to one click as possible. [00:05:02] Vinod Nair: Databricks is a great example where we started off and that hockey stick analogy, they saw a tremendous growth in conversion. Once they did that, [00:05:11] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:05:11] Vinod Nair: Another one is buy with AWS. So free trial has ended. Don’t let them disappear. Hey, you can continue and buy with AWS so they stay within your product. [00:05:24] Vinod Nair: Complete the free trial and start going down the paid journey. [00:05:30] Vince Menzione: So Mike, 2,700 agent. [00:05:33] Michael Levy: Uh, [00:05:33] Michael Levy: no, I think that’s when we spoke in, uh [00:05:35] Vince Menzione: oh, it’s, oh, okay. [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: I think it’s over 4,000. [00:05:37] Vince Menzione: Wow. It’s over four. Okay. [00:05:38] Michael Levy: And let, let’s be clear, I think Matt cleared this up a little bit, but it’s AG agentic solutions, right? Right. So a lot of that is professional services, uh, which have you tuned in recently. [00:05:47] Michael Levy: There there’s, uh, much more economic incentives to transacting professional services, including agentic professional services, um, and SaaS solutions that have agents embedded within it. So there’s a couple different models with ISVs that we’ve seen on. How they’re going to market with agentic solutions. [00:06:04] Michael Levy: Um, and it’s kind of a, a, a spectrum that I can get into detail, if that’s helpful. [00:06:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Well, um, I’m, I’m interested in how your two, uh, wheelhouses your remits, uh, kind of, they, they converge and they diverge, right? In many respects. [00:06:18] Vince Menzione: Definitely. [00:06:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:18] Michael Levy: Um, I think product-led growth has been a story of how humans can procure something, a product without friction and without talking to another human. [00:06:28] Michael Levy: I think agent led growth maybe is the the next evolution of that, where [00:06:31] Michael Levy: sounds like it [00:06:32] Michael Levy: today. If a human can
Ultimate Partner® RSS Feed
