AI Will Change Everything: Insights from Zeta Global CEO | David Steinberg DSH #1182

Summary

Digital Social Hour Podcast Summary
Episode Title: AI Will Change Everything: Insights from Zeta Global CEO | David Steinberg DSH #1182
Release Date: February 15, 2025
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: David Steinberg, CEO of Zeta Global

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1. Introduction to AI and CES Highlights

The episode kicks off with Sean Kelly welcoming David Steinberg from Zeta Global at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Both hosts express their excitement about the event, with a particular focus on the explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) since the launch of ChatGPT last fall.

Notable Quote:

David Steinberg [01:00]: "Everything right now is about artificial intelligence. It sort of really exploded with the launch of ChatGPT last fall, and we're now seeing it ripple through every technology."

2. AI's Transformation of Learning and Personal Development

David and Sean delve into how AI tools like ChatGPT have revolutionized learning and personal development. David shares his method of summarizing over 50 books using AI, significantly accelerating his knowledge acquisition.

Notable Quotes:

David Steinberg [01:04]: "ChatGPT has made learning, like, 10 times faster."

David Steinberg [01:57]: "Summarize 50 books on ChatGPT that would have taken me a full year to read."

3. Zeta Global’s Pioneering Role in AI

David discusses Zeta Global's extensive experience in AI, having integrated it into their operations seven years ago. He emphasizes the company's focus on natural language processing to analyze vast data points and predict consumer intent.

Notable Quote:

David Steinberg [02:18]: "We were thinking about machine learning, deep learning, and we've always been sort of a big data platform."

4. The Renaissance of AI and Future Prospects

David views the launch of ChatGPT as a renaissance moment for AI, transitioning it from science fiction to mainstream business discussions. He anticipates AI’s continued evolution, including its integration with quantum computing.

Notable Quote:

David Steinberg [04:04]: "We're going to look back 10 years from now and say this was the renaissance moment for artificial intelligence."

5. AI’s Impact on Education

The conversation shifts to AI's transformative effects on education. David predicts a shift towards more complex and in-person assessments as automated tools make traditional essays obsolete.

Notable Quotes:

David Steinberg [06:11]: "AI is going to revolutionize the education industry."

David Steinberg [06:53]: "You're not in five years, as a professor going to be able to say, write me an essay on this, because the essay will all be automated."

6. Quantum Computing and AI Integration

David explores the future intersection of quantum computing and AI, predicting that it will exponentially enhance AI capabilities. He warns of the potential threats to current encryption methods, emphasizing the need for advanced protective algorithms.

Notable Quote:

David Steinberg [08:24]: "The creation of quantum computing coupled with artificial intelligence will get us 10 orders of magnitude greater than we are with AI today."

7. Zeta Global’s AI-Driven Marketing Solutions

David elaborates on Zeta Global's AI-driven marketing platform, which optimizes ad targeting to reduce costs and increase efficacy. The platform integrates a vast consumer data platform (CDP) and proprietary algorithms to enhance marketing precision.

Notable Quotes:

David Steinberg [12:01]: "We ingest all of their data and we match it to the 245 million people in our data cloud."

David Steinberg [12:59]: "Our platform ensures that doesn't happen and then by doing that, we're able to lower their marketing cost by about 50%."

8. Live Shopping, E-commerce, and the Metaverse

David discusses emerging trends like live shopping and its potential to reshape e-commerce. He highlights the role of influencers and the ongoing evolution towards more immersive virtual shopping experiences, possibly within the metaverse.

Notable Quote:

David Steinberg [20:39]: "Any platform that can get a product as close to the consumer as possible is going to win. And I think live shopping is a big part of that."

9. Blockchain’s Future Role in Transactions

The conversation turns to blockchain technology, where David envisions it becoming fundamental to various industries by ensuring transaction legitimacy and ownership verification, particularly in real estate and art.

Notable Quotes:

David Steinberg [24:35]: "Blockchain is creating providence from the beginning to the absolute moment in which we now exist."

David Steinberg [26:55]: "Ultimately, all transactions will move to the blockchain."

10. Entrepreneurship, Team Management, and Leadership

David shares his entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the importance of execution over ideas. He highlights his strategy of surrounding himself with top-tier operators who excel in their domains, allowing him to focus on his strengths.

Notable Quotes:

David Steinberg [15:37]: "The single biggest differentiator in what separates winning businesses from losing businesses... is execution."

David Steinberg [16:00]: "I bring in operators who can run their components of the business substantially better than I can."

11. Mentorship and Networking

David underscores the significance of mentorship and building genuine relationships. He credits his network of mentors for guiding his success and highlights the value of evolving one’s mentorship to stay ahead.

Notable Quotes:

David Steinberg [39:00]: "Some of my mentors have been some of the world's most important people in business and politics."

David Steinberg [35:25]: "What probably drives me more than anything? It's intellectual curiosity."

12. Handling Failures and Team Evolution

Discussing the realities of entrepreneurship, David talks about embracing failures as learning opportunities. He describes Zeta Global’s approach to annually reviewing senior management to ensure the team evolves with the company's growth.

Notable Quotes:

David Steinberg [27:16]: "Entrepreneurship is very hard, and it is not easy. Very few entrepreneurs make it all the way."

David Steinberg [29:07]: "The people who are running the company when we were a $100 million company are not always the right people to be running the company when you're going to have $100 million month."

13. Final Thoughts and Future Directions

In closing, David reiterates Zeta Global’s commitment to dominating the marketing and technology ecosystem through innovative AI solutions. He encourages listeners to connect with him and explore Zeta’s offerings for enterprise-level marketing optimization.

Notable Quote:

David Steinberg [40:17]: "Our goal is to continue to help very large enterprises create, maintain, and monetize customers at a substantially lower cost than they can without our software, our data, and our AI."

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Conclusion

This episode of Digital Social Hour provides a comprehensive look into how AI is revolutionizing various industries, particularly through the lens of Zeta Global's innovative approaches. David Steinberg offers valuable insights into the future of AI, the importance of strategic execution in entrepreneurship, and the critical role of mentorship and networking in achieving sustained success. Listeners gain a deeper understanding of the transformative power of AI and the strategic initiatives driving one of the leading companies in the space.

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Connect with David Steinberg:

• Instagram: David A. Steinberg
• Zeta Global: [e-mail]
• Website: Zeta Global

Follow Digital Social Hour:
Stay updated with Sean Kelly's latest episodes for more in-depth conversations with influential leaders and innovators.

Transcript

[A]

What a brilliant marketing strategy that you send your people out or they leave to go to other companies and then they buy your product.

[B]

That's so smart.

[A]

So, to me, I learned from that. How do you release people and keep them close to you? You're generous, you're kind about it. You don't perplex them.

[B]

All right, guys, we got David Sternberg. Here we are out here in Vegas for ces. It's going to be a fun week.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You ready?

[A]

I am ready.

[B]

You go to CES every year?

[A]

I wouldn't say every year, but. But it's been a lot.

[B]

What are you looking at? What's your eye on this year? Any. Any trends? No.

[A]

You know, listen, everything right now is about artificial intelligence, right? You. It sort of really exploded with the launch of ChatGPT last fall, and we're now seeing it really ripple through every technology. And you're going to hear a lot about it this CES.

[B]

I'm excited because I love to learn, and ChatGPT has made learning, like, 10 times faster.

[A]

I agree. Well, it's certainly made getting answers 10 times faster.

[B]

Right. I'm summarizing books because books take a while to read, let's be honest. And, like, 80% of books are kind of fluff. There's really only, like, key messages within books, in my opinion.

[A]

I learned when I was a kid. Ready. The first paragraph of every chapter and the first sentence of every paragraph.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

And I just started reading books like that when I was much younger, which sped it up for me. The funny thing is, I would bet you that if you went into the average, you know, ChatGPT query and said, summarize this book, it will literally give you a lot of that.

[B]

Wow. I need to try that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, I took the last week off of work, and I was just doing personal development, and I summarized fifth.

[A]

Isn't everything you're doing here today personal development?

[B]

Pretty much, yeah.

[A]

I mean, we're developing together.

[B]

Yeah. But yeah, summarize 50 books on ChatGPT that would have taken me a full year to read.

[A]

Oh, I'm sure.

[B]

So I got all those key points, and I feel a lot smarter.

[A]

That's amazing. I. I love it. I'm using Gemini inside of my Google. I'm using ChatGPT on the regular.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

I mean, of course, our company develops, is one of the largest developer of artificial intelligence, and we started programming in AI seven years ago.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

Not seven months ago?

[B]

How do you have that foresight? Seven years ago?

[A]

So I read a lot. I, you know, I read hundreds of different things a month, and I do what I call triangulation. If you can take three separate points triangulated to a central theme, I believe that theme is going to change things. And about eight, nine years ago, I started reading. We were already working heavily in automation at Zeta, and we were thinking about machine learning, deep learning, and we'd always been sort of a big data platform. So all of this data, no human could process it anymore. And as we started thinking about the future, we really started focusing, Sean, on natural language processing, the ability to ingest trillions of data points and convert them into intent. You know, what do individuals intend to do next?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it was funny because when we took Zeta public In June of 2021, we had a big sign. You put a sign on the side of the New York Stock Exchange.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's a thing to do. And our sign said, data plus AI equals intent in June of 2021. Put it in perspective. People were asking me, who's Al and why is he in charge of your data strategy? Right. It was that foreign to people even three years ago.

[B]

That's fascinating. Well, they were probably working on OpenAI for years, right before it dropped.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, they. They'd been working on OpenAI for many years. But. And listen, AI has been around for a long time. The biggest leap was truly the launch of ChatGPT.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I look at it and I think we're going to look back 10 years from now and say this was the renaissance moment for artificial intelligence. It's when AI went from science fiction to boardroom conversation.

[B]

Yeah. I'm very excited about it. I get companies offer to buy my. My raw podcast episodes because they're training their models to learn from podcasts. Think about Joe Rogan's episodes. If you could learn in like 20 minutes all the key takeaways from it.

[A]

Oh, yeah. And then, by the way, it's not just that 20 minutes, it's the themes. So a true algorithm two, three years from now will not just say, here's a summary of Joe Rogan's podcast. It'll be over the last 10 years. Here are the five podcasts you need to listen to to become an expert on this topic.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And it'll topic ties it. It'll ingest all of the information from 10 years by way of shout out.

[B]

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[A]

Example. It'll sort through all of it and it'll build themes from a curation perspective that will allow the algorithm to not just curate one episode. It will ultimately be able to put together the same theme from large numbers of episodes with one output that you can ingest in 20 or 30 minutes.

[B]

Wow. So AI is going to revolutionize the education industry.

[A]

Oh, without question.

[B]

So where do you see that changing to over the years?

[A]

Well, I, I mean, listen, education is complex because people learn differently. When I was a kid, to date myself, you weren't allowed to bring an HP calculator to class. You don't even know what an HP calculator is. I say that not a pejorative way, but because of your age versus mine, it was like the first sort of computer. It was a calculator that could build formulas. I come from a technical background, so sort of like that. When I was a kid, my kids, my older kids, I have three older kids, two younger. My older kids bring their laptops to class now.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And it's just the evolution of education. You're not in five years, as a professor going to be able to say, write me an essay on this, because the essay will all be automated. They're going to have to come up with more complex learning and more testing, which will be in person so the person can prove they're actually taking the test versus using.

[B]

Yeah. A lot of teachers are dealing with cheaters now, right?

[A]

Well, there was this kid in Princeton, at Princeton University. Did you see this story?

[B]

No.

[A]

So my theory on AI is you're going to have people using it for stuff they shouldn't use it for. My counter theory is we're going to have algorithms that protect us and algorithms that say whether something started its creation process with AI or with a human, it's all coming this young person at Princeton. I shouldn't say kid, wrote an algorithm that allows a professor to figure out if a paper began its creation with OpenAI. Wow. He's now left Princeton, raised a bunch of money, and he's turning it into a business. And, you know, somebody asked me the other day, how is AI going to affect encryption? Right. Because one day, quantitative computing is going to match with AI. In fact, not to sound like a total name dropper, recently, I was talking to Elon Musk about this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I was. Elon and I were sort of riffing on how is quantum and AI going to come together. And I believe that the creation of quantum computing coupled with artificial intelligence will get us 10 orders of magnitude greater than we are with AI today.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

But what's going to happen is, as soon as that launches, every single piece of encryption, every passcode you have today is crackable in seconds because quantum computing, which will think on a nonlinear basis, will allow it to crack any code. So we're going to need to create algorithms that protect us, and it's going to be sort of a. A. If. Then. If this happens, then you're going to have to have that.

[B]

That's scary. As someone in the crypto space, if your seed phrase gets leaked, that's your whole bank account. They could send it in a second.

[A]

Well, once again, you're going to have an algorithm that will protect your crypto.

[B]

Yeah. So platforms need to start looking into. Into that. Right.

[A]

They're already. Yeah, they're. They're already doing it. It's interesting because so often technology is adopted by people who want to do stuff with it that we might not like. Right. More nefarious stuff. And often it takes a while for the tech to protect us to. To come out. I think we're going to see a bit of a paradigm shift here, because I'm already seeing organizations building algorithms to say whether something started with AI or not. And I think you'll see a very similar thing with encryption.

[B]

Elon's very concerned. AI Michael Haywire. Right. Were you talking to him about that?

[A]

We. We got into it a little bit. The. The truth is we were talking more about, you know, getting to space and the election and really focused on AI, which is what I'm really focused on and what we do at Zeta. But, you know, we. He certainly has spent meaningful time talking about how he believes that if we don't have Gates on it, we're going to have a challenge. Now, of course, he's got X. AI and then you've got OpenAI and you've got, you know, sort of everybody out there.

[B]

He's got Grok too, right?

[A]

Correct.

[B]

Yeah. I haven't used Grok yet. Have you used Grok?

[A]

Not personally. We've, we've played around with it. We do a lot with OpenAI. We do a lot with, with Gemini and with a number of the other algorithms. We, we at Zeta have our own algorithms. Oh yeah, we built on top of Python. Although, I joke, they're mid sized language models. What I mean, I'll tell you what that means. So a lot of people talk about large language models, which is effectively the whole Internet. Then you get into small language models, which a lot of people are talking about as the future. Right. The ability to really hyper build and allow the algorithm to explore. At Zeta, because 245 million people in the United States are in our data cloud and because we're ingesting a trillion pages of content a day, I joke, that's a mid sized model. We're not ingesting the whole world every moment of every day. Because quite frankly, for our enterprise clients, what we're really focused on is helping them more efficiently run their marketing. The way we do that is by making sure that we only show their ads to people that are interested in their products, but also will have a propensity to want to buy their products and, or be able to be credit approved.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, you know, companies show ads all the time to people who won't get credit approved for the products. It's a waste of money and it's going to piss off the customer. So we try to eliminate that prior to our software deploying their marketing for them. We do that by ingesting all of this information. We build what's called a CDP or consumer data platform. We ingest all of their data and we match it to the 245 million people in our data cloud.

[B]

Brilliant.

[A]

We then ingest between 5 and 7,000 incremental data elements in addition to pulling in a trillion pages of available content into the algorithm. And then there's no data exhaust. So by way of example, all of this stays proprietary to our enterprise clients. Enterprises are very worried about their information sharing back to other models.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Our platform ensures that doesn't happen and then by doing that, we're able to lower their marketing cost by about 50%. Damn.

[B]

Yeah, I think huge. It's big for big companies.

[A]

40% of the Fortune 100 largest companies use our platform today.

[B]

That speaks to the product, right?

[A]

We like to think so.

[B]

That's a great product. Especially with all the strict regulation on marketing with Facebook and Apple now.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

You solved a really big problem.

[A]

We do. And we plug into both those guys. So we. We think they're both amazing companies. And our Zeta ID number matches to pretty much available ID for walled gardens and the open web.

[B]

Wow. I need to start using your products.

[A]

Well, we primarily focus on very large enterprises at this point.

[B]

That makes sense. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

People that are spending millions a day, right?

[A]

Correct.

[B]

You might have to hit up Gary V. If you're not working with him yet.

[A]

I know Gary.

[B]

Gary's a great guy.

[A]

Gary. Gary runs a really great agency, and they're doing really interesting things.

[B]

Yeah. Damn, that's super exciting. So Zeta's public?

[A]

Zeta's public yet. We trade on the New York Stock Exchange, and it's been an interesting journey.

[B]

Nice. And that's your second big company.

[A]

Right. You've had my seventh company. I've sold for taken to public, and then I'm chairman of another four. It is the second company I've taken public.

[B]

Wow. Taken to public, sold 4. How old were you on the first one?

[A]

I started the first company when I was 21. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know any better.

[B]

Yeah. Right out of college, right?

[A]

Yeah. Right. I came out of school. I did. I went to work on the Hill for about eight months. I read about this whole new thing called wireless back in 1990, and I started a series of wireless companies.

[B]

Wow. So you attribute a lot of your success to reading.

[A]

You know, I would tell you that reading is a very important component of how I've built the strategy for the businesses that I've wanted to start. And then, you know, the single biggest differentiator in what separates winning businesses from losing businesses, in my opinion, is execution. It's probably the most undervalued and most important component of any business. So, you know, the good news is, for an ADD dyslexic like me, I've been able to surround myself with some of the world's greatest people. And I bring in operators who can run their components of the business substantially better than I can. And I do something that's hard for a lot of entrepreneurs. I let them do their jobs.

[B]

You're not a micromanager.

[A]

You know, there's this whole founder mode thing. And there are times I go into founder mode. I'll go very deep if there's an issue on something, but, you know, and I know the metrics of our business as well as anybody, but I try to focus on the Things I'm really good at. And then I try to hire the world's greatest people to do what they do best.

[B]

Yeah. When you study the top companies, it seems like they got a visionary like an Elon, A Bezos, someone like you, and then they have operators around them.

[A]

Yeah. And my partner Steve Gerber, who's our president and chief operating officer, is the best operator I've ever been with. My cfo, Chris Greiner is the best CFO I've ever worked with. My general counsel, Steve vine, my, you know, cto, Chris Monberg, our chief data officer, Nish Gore. These guys, each one of them could run their own companies at this point, but they choose to be a part of our collective.

[B]

I love it. Did you self fund at first?

[A]

Yeah, I did. So for this company, I put up the first capital, which is one of the reasons I think I'm the control investor in the company that.

[B]

Wow. Yeah, a lot of people are quick to raise these days.

[A]

Yeah. You know, listen, it sounds great to raise a lot of money and there's a big benefit in it because you can go fast. I would tell you that if you looked at a chart of entrepreneurs who raised substantially more money than they needed, not only did they get diluted faster than they might have wanted to, but what happens is there's this sort of intrinsic pressure to spend the money. And at Zeta, we've been very profitable for many years. And listen, we are growing the business very rapidly. You know, they talk about the rule of 40 for software. If you're growing 20%, you have a 20% operating margin. Last quarter, Zeta at scale hit the rule of 60.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

We grew the business over 40% to do that. It's a credit to our team because we've been programming in AI for so long. People keep asking me, why are we growing faster this year at scale than we did last year? And I think a lot of it goes back to the AI revolution because so Chachi PT comes out. Every board of directors starts going to every CEO and saying, what's our AI strategy? And every CEO is going to their cmo, their cto, their CIO and saying, what's our AI strategy? The good news is we were there. We have a working product that focuses on efficiency and revenue growth. If you look at enterprises and the promise of artificial intelligence, it's a two sided promise. One side of the promise is will make you more efficient. You can do more business with less employees.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The other side is will help you grow your revenue faster. The Zeta marketing platform does both.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So it's really been a very powerful offering to our clients over the last couple years.

[B]

Yeah. I've never heard of a product or service being able to do both actually. That's impressive.

[A]

Well, thank you. I'm very proud of the team and I'm proud of the products we've built.

[B]

Yeah. And it sounds like the timing really played a role here too.

[A]

It did. Well, listen, we've been doing this for 16 years, Sean. So as I like to Joke, we're a 16 year overnight sensation. Like we were programming in AI. People are like, huh, you want to do what? You're going to spend all this money building a platform just to put data and AI as native to the application layer. It's like, yeah, is that bad?

[B]

Yeah. Well, you're always looked at as crazy at first, right?

[A]

We were. And, and by the way, we, we took a business that was very profitable seven years ago and made the decision to plow 100% of our profit for the next three years. This was seven years ago, six years ago, five years ago. Into building out a best of breed AI architecture. We developed our own models. We were able to buy the chip sets and the storage sets we needed before the price exploded.

[B]

Where do you see? This is an interesting one. Live shopping seems like it's blowing up. Have you had your eye on that?

[A]

Yeah, you know, I'm seeing what's happening with it. A lot of it is sort of running through TikTok and Shopify and what's happening there is really exciting and there's going to be some big questions over the next few weeks as to what happens to TikTok in this country, in the United States. But I think that, listen, any platform that can get a product as close to the consumer as possible is going to win. And I think live shopping is a big part of that. I don't think it's good going anywhere. You know, it's primarily a younger generation that are consuming that way. It'll be interesting because every young generation at some point becomes the next big spending generation. Right, right. It might take 10 years, might take 15 years. But what they start with is what really accelerates and grows.

[B]

Yeah. It seems like every X amount of years there's a new form of shopping. Like E commerce was big when I was coming up. Yep. For you as retail, right?

[A]

Yeah, I was going to say for me it was actually, it was pre big box retail. That's how old.

[B]

I don't even know that is.

[A]

No, no, it's, it's back when you had stores that sold toys.

[B]

Oh, God, Toys R Us, right?

[A]

Well, no, no, I went to a little toy store like. Like this was before Toys R Us blew up. But you know that you, you at one point in this country, you had mom and pops that sold toys, they sold groceries, they sold meat. We used to have these things called butchers. You would go to the butcher shop and you'd buy your hamburger meat.

[B]

Yeah, I still go to a butcher shop.

[A]

Well, by the way, so do I. But, but, but they're fewer and further between, you know, then it became big box retail, you know, Walmart, Target, those guys. Then it became, you know, with. With Amazon, really became E Commerce. And then Shopify really democratized E commerce. Right, right. It allowed individuals and smaller operations. Just so happens some of Shopify's biggest clients are very large enterprises. But it's most well known for having tens of thousands of individual E commerce, you know, stores that are out there. You've got ebay trying to help individual retailers. You've got, obviously, Amazon trying to help individual retailers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, it remains to be seen whether live shopping will overtake E commerce. I think it's going to be a big part of it.

[B]

I think so too.

[A]

You know, and if you see sort of how influencers have begun to really change the way brands interact with consumers, I think influencers will lead to live shopping as well.

[B]

Yeah. I was big on the metaverse. That obviously flopped, but do you think it can make a comeback?

[A]

Don't sit on the metaverse. Don't sleep on the metaverse. You know, the technology to make the metaverse work is just not universally and cheaply available yet. Right. And, you know, you look at what Mark is doing, Zuckerberg at Facebook with the glasses, and I got a pair when they first came out and I'd had the Google Glass. I've had all that different stuff. I love technology. Like, I've always been into it. And I'm telling you, the future of the metaverse is in the glasses you're wearing on your face. Face.

[B]

Yeah. They partnered with Ray Ban, right?

[A]

Correct. And they are hot. They're really great. Yeah. I'm using them for video now. You got to tell the people you're wearing.

[B]

Right. Because it's. I'm recording you.

[A]

Right. It's just, it's. But ultimately the vision is that becomes your computer screen. And when that becomes your computer screen, I think the. The metaverse will really begin to take over. Gosh, I forget the movie.

[B]

Ready, player one?

[A]

Yes. God, I love you. See, you know, Ready Player One. You know, let's hope we're not in a dystopian world where he's doing it in a van in his aunt's aunt's backyard. But the truth of the matter is, I think you're going to see video game play that's going to be at that level, which is going to be really interesting for how commerce translates to that.

[B]

Yeah. Well, a lot of video games have evolved and they have these in game items now like Fortnite and even Call of Duty now. It's changed a lot.

[A]

And with the communication capabilities, you're talking to your friends, you're playing next to them, just like in Ready Player One. It's not as immersive as the vision of that game. But, you know, I think at one point, you know, we're going to begin to see e commerce gaming and transactions really begin to come together in a virtual way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Whether it's the metaverse that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Packy originally envisioned, or if it's something else, that's just a very immersive experience.

[B]

Yeah. Do you think the blockchain will play a role in the future?

[A]

I think the blockchain plays amongst the biggest roles in the future of humanity out there. Now, we might disagree on cryptocurrency. We will never disagree on the blockchain. And if you think about the blockchain, most people don't understand. I know you do. Blockchain is a totally different technology than the cryptocurrencies that sit on top of it. Effectively, the way I look at it is the operating system is the blockchain and different cryptocurrencies are the application layer. Now, if you look at what the blockchain can do, it's effectively creating providence from the beginning to the absolute moment in which we now exist. What industries are trillion dollar industries that require that? How about real estate? When you buy a house, you got to spend a fortune on title insurance. You got to pay a title company just to make sure you have a clean ownership. Blockchain fixes that. How about art? I've seen people by tens of millions of dollars worth of art. That was fake.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Now, this is widely reported. It happens. Stolen. They have to give it back. That would suck.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the blockchain fixes that problem. Right. All collectibles, all art, real estate. I think ultimately all transactions will move to the blockchain. And I think the blockchain will be very, very important in the future of humanity.

[B]

I think so too. Because if you could track where exp first originated, that way, you know, it's legit. Even a watch, like, of course people are buying fake Rolex.

[A]

Well, but that's a collectible, right? So if you look at wine, watches, art, cars, you know, everybody now is talking about how all of those things are different asset classes. Right. Whether they are or not, I'm not going to argue they've appreciated greatly over the last 10 years. And, you know, they're. They'll continue to appreciate as per the law of supply and demand. You know, the. The less the supply, the greater the demand, the higher the price goes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Just. Just that simple. The blockchain would solve all of the problems inside all of those collectibles industries.

[B]

So is that something you're going to focus on in the future of the blockchain?

[A]

Maybe. I mean, I. I also am chairman of an investment fund that invests in startup technology, and we've invested in some really cool stuff there. But. But I'm definitely not the expert on.

[B]

I love it. I love how you recognize your strength.

[A]

Yeah, no, you got it. You got to know to know what you know, and you got to know what you don't know.

[B]

Yeah. We've talked a lot about success. Let's talk some failures.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I like to keep it real on the show because we are glorifying entrepreneurship, but it's not easy.

[A]

No, entrepreneurship is very hard, and it is not easy. Very few entrepreneurs make it all the way. I would tell you I have failed more often than I have succeeded. I sort of. My advice is, if you're going to fail, fail fast. I've seen a lot of people hang on when they should let go. And to me, every time you fail, it's, how do you pivot? And I, I jokingly. So you use the word fail. I hate that word.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

I sort of say you either win or you learn. Sometimes those learnings are very, very painful. Oh, yeah, very painful. But when you've had a failure, it's mission critical to learn from it. And for me, I've taken great lessons out of the things that I failed at, and I've tried to move on to using those lessons. Some of the best lessons I've learned are, you know, the people who get you to where you are as a company are not always the people to take you where you want to go. And that can sound heartless, but I actually think it's in their best interest if you release them into the universe so that they can go find something they can be really good at.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And help the next organization. And it's something that I messed up at my last company. I didn't do that. And we ended up getting into a tough situation because of that. In this company, we look at everybody every year we do an honest review of our senior management and say who's capped out? And by the way, can we move them into another role or can we restructure around them? But we restructure our business almost every year.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

From a management perspective, that's impressive.

[B]

Well, those are the tough conversations you have to have because personally you want to be loyal to your friends. Right. But it's tough.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

If they're not performing, you know, it's.

[A]

Not even not performing. They're performing, they're just not performing to go where you want to go. To put it in perspective, we took Zeta, I mean, at the middle of our range will be just below a billion dollars in sales this year, up from 700 and some odd million in sales last year, up from whatever it was the year before that. But I remember back to a number of years ago. We now do a quarter what we used to do a year. We had a month in the third quarter that we did more revenue that month than we did in a year seven or eight years ago.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So, you know, the people who are running the company when we were $100 million company are not always the right people to be running the company when you're going to have $100 million month, you know.

[B]

Yeah, that's phenomenal advice because I think a lot of people get into business with their friends or with acquaintances at first and then they become friends and they want to keep them the whole way.

[A]

And it's. And by the way, it's. It's not a popular thing to talk about. Right. And now what do we do? We massively overpay them on the exit. We let them take their stock. We get along really well with these people. We try to help them get their next gig and then they become proponents of ours. You know, the company IBM, which is not really talked about nowadays the way they used to be, but they used to have this famous thing. They wanted IBM people to join their clients. They called them IBMers. And the reason they would do that is because then they would only buy IBM products forever. And it just became this like huge constituency of people who loved IBM. Like my CFO was at IBM for many years. His dad was at IBM for many years. And they talk about it like it. They're still IBMers. Many many years later. My CFO hasn't been there for a long time and was not there for, you know, that long. But my point is, what a brilliant marketing strategy that you send your people out or they leave to go to other companies and then they buy your product.

[B]

So smart.

[A]

So to me, I learned from that. How do you release people and keep them close to you? You're generous, you're kind about it. You don't perp. Walk them out, you know, so to speak. You know, you, you, you do the right thing and you give them time and you help them find their next gigs and you let them keep their stock. And you, you do all of the things that make people really feel as good as they can about the circumstance.

[B]

Yeah. Because word of mouth is huge these days, especially with social media. One negative post about the cyber truck and you got all these PR articles now.

[A]

Yep. It's crazy.

[B]

Yeah. And you've adapted well because our parents, they would work at the same company their whole life.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But times have changed. My dad did same with mine.

[A]

Yeah. My dad worked at the same company for his whole career.

[B]

And that doesn't happen anymore.

[A]

No.

[B]

There's no, like, loyalty.

[A]

Well, I, I, there's not as much loyalty either way. You know, I, I think, you know, people see that companies are sort of in it for themselves. We, we definitely care about our people, and we take very good care of our people. And I don't want to sound like I'm heartless. Like, we, we. We've had the same senior executive team for many years now. We've added people to it. But the truth of the matter is the people who we've got have done an exceptional job bringing in that next layer of young people to help us go to the next level.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, you know, listen, Sean. A players hire A players. B players hire C players. C players hire D players. A players want to work with people that evolve them, teach them, grow with them, and go to the next level because A players are highly confident. Wow. B players, C players, D players hire people below them that do not threaten them. This is a generalization. I'm sure there's some B players who have hired A players, but my point is, if you build a team of A players, you've got to make sure that you keep bringing A players in.

[B]

Yeah, I love that. That's good to know. How much do you care about, like, college resumes and, like, education, you know.

[A]

So once again, I'm old, so I care about it.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You know what I would tell you Is it's not a prerequisite for working at Zeta. And I have, you know, people who work with us who, you know, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and we have people who have dropped out of schools. What I would tell you is a college degree is not as important as it was when I was coming up. But if you can get into an elite college, I think it's important.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think, you know, it's like people ask me all the time more about grad school, should I go to grad school? If you want to be an entrepreneur, going to grad school is a waste of time. My opinion, unless you're going to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, you know, go through the list of the top 10. Not because you're going to learn anything that's going to help you be a better entrepreneur. Like learning how to read a balance sheet is important. Learning how to build a balance sheet is not. You can hire someone for that. It's the network. If you come out of hbs, you come out of, you know, Wharton Business School, you come out of Stanford Business School, you are going to be coming out with people who are going to be running this country.

[B]

Good point.

[A]

So you get to know they're your friends. Don't discount how incredibly important networking and relationship management is to your success as an individual. Whether you're working in a company or you're an entrepreneur. I would say for me, it's probably my most valuable personal asset.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Other than my wife and children.

[B]

Your network.

[A]

Yes, the people. And I don't even think of it as my network. I think of it as my friends. You know, I don't think of it as sales. I think of it as relationship management. You build relationships with people, they like you, you like them, they're real.

[B]

Right.

[A]

If you can do business together, fabulous. If you can't, okay. Like the people who build relationships solely because they want to sell someone that doesn't work.

[B]

Yeah. It's transactional.

[A]

Right. But people see it 100. It's. Can I say that?

[B]

Yeah, sorry.

[A]

Normally I'm on CNBC, you can't say that. But the truth of the matter is that you build relationships with people who are like minded. What is the thing that probably drives me more than anything? It's intellectual curiosity. And the great thing about running Zeta is if you look at our 475 global enterprise clients, they're in every industry imaginable. I get to learn about all of it. I get to learn about tech, AI, engineering, marketing, business intelligence, all of these things. I get to interact and work with some of the world's smartest and most interesting people. You just naturally become friends with them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And by the way, if you can do business with a friend, you're always going to do that versus somebody can provide a competitive product that's not as good, but they're not a friend.

[B]

It's a tougher sell, right? I think so, yeah. Mixing business and friendship is tough sometimes too.

[A]

It can be. It can be. But you know what? When you're, you know, an adult about it, meaning you're both rational about it. One of my closest friends who I love didn't pick us on a project. He didn't make the decision, runs a very large company. Somebody on his team felt that another company would do a better job. He and I went out drinking that Saturday night. He asked me about it and I looked at him and said, what are you talking about?

[B]

Wow. You didn't take it personally.

[A]

That was. It had nothing to do with me. If they had picked me just because we were friends and we couldn't do the right job for them, then that would have been a mistake for their company. Now it's such a rarity that I remember it very well because I would say more often than not, if we have a relationship at the top of a company and they're going out to bid, we went, we also won. We publicly announced 50% of the RFPs we got invited to participate in last quarter. An average of 8 to 10 companies pitch on every RFP we compete on, and we won greater than 50% of the ones we participated in.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

Yeah. Well, we have, we have. Because we started in AI seven years ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're on the third generation of our AI agent studio. Our competitors are still talking about launching AI, and it's just been really interesting to be that far out in front.

[B]

Yeah, it's giving you a huge advantage. I know that's. Those are really good numbers because my mother works at AWS and they're not winning 50 of their RFP.

[A]

Well, they win a lot. And we, we spend a lot of money with aws. I mean, fans of theirs, they're.

[B]

They're the. Similar to you. They were the mover in that industry.

[A]

They were the first mover. You know, our goal is to, you know, emulate what they've done.

[B]

I love him. And we've talked about the networking. What about mentorship? Did you have a mentor guiding you?

[A]

I have a series of mentors, you know, and I have been. I joke in many ways Part of my life has been like Forrest Gumps. Remember that movie Forrest Gump, where he just finds himself in the world's most incredible situations by accident?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Some of my mentors have been some of the world's most important people in business and politics, and I have just been so blessed to learn from them and have them be so generous with helping me. It's interesting, though, much like we talked about earlier, the people who get you to where you are are not always the people that take you where you want to go. I've sort of changed out my mentors.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Every, you know, five to 10 years where I've had new mentors, and it's been really exciting for me.

[B]

I think you have to. I remember my first one I met at the mall. He was running an iPhone repair kiosk. He was doing a million a year. I thought, oh, my gosh, that's all.

[A]

The money in the world.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

As Gordon Gekko said as he's driving in the movie Wall street, and Buddy sitting next to him, he said, see that building, Buddy? When I bought that building and sold that building, I made $800,000. At the time, I thought it was all the money in the world. Now it's a day's pay.

[B]

Right. Perspective. Right, Right. Yeah. And you got to level up your goals.

[A]

We're always evolving. You know, I. I would tell you, the average entrepreneur moves the goal post every year.

[B]

You have to. I make vision boards every single year.

[A]

It's great.

[B]

Yeah, it's great. David, this has been real fun, man. What's next for you? What's next for Zeta? Where can people find you?

[A]

Well, we. You can find me at Zeta. Oh, well, I'm on Instagram, you know, David A. Steinberg on Instagram, and I'm focused from a company perspective. You know, we. Zeta trades on the New York Stock Exchange, and you can find zeta@zeta global.com. we're going to continue to dominate the marketing and technology ecosystem. We continue to win in the marketplace, and our goal is to continue to help very large enterprises create, maintain, and monetize customers at a substantially lower cost than they can without our software, our data, and our AI.

[B]

Love it, man. We'll link everything below. Thanks for coming on.

[A]

Thank you so much for having me, Sean, I love listening to your stuff.

[B]

Thank you. Thanks for watching, guys, check out his stuff. I'll see you next time.