Menlo Ventures on Developer Technology, M&A, AI

“The average enterprise has over 360 applications running in the cloud today,” Boomi Chairman and CEO Steve Lucas notes to Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. “Then, on top of that, the average enterprise is dealing with anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 difference sources of data.” In this episode of Tech Disruptors, the two take a deep dive into the complexities that frequently require integration platforms such as Boomi. Additionally, Lucas explains the differences between Boomi and its competitors, how agentic AI is creating opportunities for the market and what becomes of software-as-a-service (SaaS) at the end of the day.

Corporate efforts to harness unstructured data to drive business intelligence could keep growing. Enterprises deploying more AI-infused applications and pushing more of their workflows through the technology appear likely to boost demand for platforms like Elastic, which enable users to index, search and update large swaths of data, monitor the health of digital applications and infrastructure and analyze data for threat detection and resolution. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Elastic CEO Ashutosh Kulkarni joins Sunil Rajgopal, BI’s senior software analyst, to discuss the evolving search, observability and security landscape amid rising AI capabilities, use cases and deployment. They also talk about Elastic’s product ambitions, competition landscape and M&A philosophy.

“More or less, the data strategy will inform the AI effectiveness,” SAP President and Chief Product Officer of Data and Analytics Irfan Khan explains to Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. In this episode of Tech Disruptors, Khan and Rana delve into the three archetypes of data management, how zero copy sharing enables greater flexibility and how SAP’s new Business Data Cloud product can optimize customer data inside and outside of the SAP ecosystem.

Verizon is the biggest wireless-service provider in the US, with its business largely centered on the consumer segment. Wireless is a high-touch business, which has prompted the company and peers to deploy AI across its customer-care operations to drive greater efficiencies and higher cross-selling. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Sowmyanarayan Sampath, CEO of Verizon’s Consumer Group, speaks with Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and John Butler about the company’s current deployment of AI and plans to further improve its operations with the technology. Sampath discusses AI’s use in customer care and provides some thoughts on what the future holds for its broader deployment in network operations, software development and the radio-access network. He also offers insight on the AI ecosystem today, where it’s headed and how AI models are quickly commoditizing.

Delivering a comprehensive software platform for the construction industry that bridges project to financial management remains Procore’s central focus. Tooey Courtemanche, Procore’s founder and CEO, tells Bloomberg Intelligence that the platform has broad appeal for the various stakeholders, owners, general and specialty contractors. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Courtemanche sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Niraj Patel to discuss what a unified platform means to Procore and how macroeconomic factors like tariffs, labor costs and cyclical trends could impact its 17,000-plus customers. Courtemanche also offers insights on Procore’s unified data set, its unique pricing model, international opportunities and the leverage of gen AI.

World Wide Technology (WWT) has evolved from a value-added reseller to a global systems integrator with $20 billion in annual sales and 10,000 employees that today identifies itself as an “AI First” company. WWT CEO and co-founder Jim Kavanaugh joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Woo Jin Ho on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss the company’s journey, building AI capabilities for customers and its effort to train the entire staff in AI. Kavanaugh, whose company does 80% of business in North America, says he sees “huge” growth opportunities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Costs for generative AI are coming down, with some of the leading models massively lower than they were a year ago, says Citigroup Chief Technology Officer David Griffiths. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, he chats about gen-AI deployment at his company with Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Alison Williams and Mandeep Singh. From back-end use cases to the impact on the product side, they discuss the opportunities and challenges with AI agents, large language models and the ripple effects on hiring and talent in a big financial institution.

Contentful’s platform, built on an API-first architecture, provides differentiated technology for marketers and developers in creating landing pages, blogs, campaigns and other personalized content. CEO Karthik Rau talks about customer choices across the marketing-tech landscape and the company’s evolution to a broader platform from a composable content-management system (CMS). In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Rau sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Niraj Patel to discuss the state of so-called headless solutions in CMS, AI disruptions in digital agency, customers’ buying criteria, the marketing-tech stack, machine-generated content volume and more. Will generative AI disrupt the trillions of dollars spent on digital-agency services? Tune in to hear Rau’s insights and the potential shifts ahead.

Automating email marketing with top-quality design and user experience is Flodesk’s central strategy. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Martha Bitar, CEO and founder of Flodesk, speaks with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Niraj Patel about empowering entrepreneurs and small businesses to reach their target customers more effectively. She discusses why 85,000 customers choose Flodesk, its position in the software ecosystem with e-commerce providers like Shopify, the convergence of decision makers and end users, and gives insight on the company’s ability to navigate a fragmented competitive landscape. Bitar also offers her insight on AI email marketing content generation, customer changes since the introduction of gen AI and the upcoming wave of authentic connection.

Creating an ever-changing knowledge-graph relational database isn’t a small thing. But then connecting it to all the end points (to publishers and social media publishers) and managing the distribution workflow through channels is extremely important. Yext CEO Michael Walrath talks to Mandeep Singh, senior technology analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, about the changes to traditional search and the potential for more competition. Building knowledge graphs for businesses to manage their online presence could be a key differentiator in the world of large-language-model-powered searches.