Adrian McDermott

💡 AI doesn’t just change how code is written – it changes expectations and outcomes. In the final section of Jellyfish’s AI Adoption Guide, we explore how expectations for engineering leaders are evolving as AI becomes embedded across the SDLC. Because the organizations pulling ahead are treating AI as a transformation, not a tooling upgrade. Inside, you’ll explore: - Why AI adoption is quickly becoming a leadership mandate, not an option - How to balance ambitious goals with realistic expectations - What cultural investments are required to sustain long-term gains - How data can be used to align executives and engineering teams The teams that win in the AI era won’t just have better tools – they’ll have leaders who know how to guide change. Download today: https://lnkd.in/dut_6WpQ

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Limp tech stacks and siloed GTM teams? That’s the #1 post-holiday bottleneck SaaS leaders are refusing to bring into 2026. This is the season of courageous audits. The best teams are diving deep: mapping every tool, every integration, every bit of product data. Not just for clarity, but for competitive edge. What emerges isn’t just a cleaner stack, but an AI-powered RevOps engine built for scale (and surprise growth spurts) in the new year. The momentum? Only just beginning. Because in 2026, speed and connection beat clutter and legacy. Who's ready for the real transformation? #GTM #RevOps #AIAudits #SaaSLeadership #FusedLabs

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Commerce & Revenue Optimization ​ Today, recommendations are the default in commerce—guests expect relevant options, not generic offers. Onboard is no different. ​ ​ Ascendion helps cruise lines use AI-driven personalization to make it easy for guests to discover, explore, and buy—whether it’s dining, retail, or excursions. With predictive offers and tailored recommendations, every interaction has the potential to increase spend and satisfaction. ​ ​ When commerce feels natural and helpful, it becomes part of the experience, rather than a distraction. ​ ​ Learn more: https://lnkd.in/guDUnmNc ​ ​ #CruiseLine #Ascendion #FutureOfWork #EngineeringAI #DigitalCommerce ​

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🌟 The SaaS world moves fast, and scaling efficiently requires strategic alignment, operational rigor, and cross-functional coordination. Fractional COOs are helping early- and mid-stage SaaS companies grow seamlessly while maintaining agility. At 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲, we’re committed to 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆—spotlighting leaders who combine operational expertise with strategic insight to drive measurable results. 👋 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁 Dawn Strobel, 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗢𝗢 Dawn helps SaaS companies align strategic objectives with day-to-day execution, ensuring scalable growth without sacrificing agility. She specializes in operational strategy, cross-functional alignment, process optimization, and efficiency audits. Here’s what she’s known for: ✅ Operational strategy for scaling 🏷️ Cross-functional alignment 🌟 SaaS process optimization 🔎 Operational efficiency audits Dawn empowers SaaS teams to scale smarter, improve performance, and operate with clarity—turning strategy into action at every level. 🔗 Learn more about Dawn Strobel and other Fractional COO professionals for SaaS companies here: https://lnkd.in/dSzCuv-R

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🚀 Excited to share that today Vantage is launching a native integration with Vercel! This gives customers the ability to see their Vercel usage and costs in Vantage alongside all other providers they use to run their infrastructure. All the same great Vantage features now work for Vercel costs: cost allocation, anomaly detection, budgeting and more. I've known Guillermo Rauch for over a decade at this point and have followed the Vercel story closely - it's been amazing to see all the work the company has done over the years. Vercel has also won the hearts and minds of millions of developers. Vercel has done things TheRight™ way by shipping a FinOps Foundation FOCUS-compatible endpoint to allow their customers to easily export cost and usage data. If you're a Vercel customer, this integration is now included in the Vantage integration library by default. Login to the Vantage console to integrate Vercel or read the full blog post with all the details in the link below.

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The average organization underestimates its SaaS footprint by 2-3x. That’s a lot of surprise renewals, shadow IT, and wasted spend hiding in plain sight. The solution? Continuous SaaS discovery. Not a one-time audit. Not a spreadsheet exercise. ✅ Real-time visibility into every app ✅ Automated tracking (no more chasing down departments) ✅ Insights to take action before waste piles up Bottom line: You can’t manage what you can’t see. Dive deeper into why SaaS discovery is the foundation of effective SaaS Management: https://lnkd.in/gYyczEHu

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AirOps is live in the Claude Directory today and I am pumped. Marketing teams can now access their complete AI search performance data, competitive intelligence, and content visibility metrics directly inside Claude. Ask a question, get the data, see the charts, and take action - all in one conversation. No switching between tabs. No export, upload, copy-paste. Just ask like you normally would and the data appears with charts, analysis, everything. What really excites me, though, is the partnerships angle: we didn't need months of build time to make this happen. No integration backlog. No debates. Just immediate interoperability that lets us innovate with partners at lightning speed. This is the golden age of partnerships. We can test joint value, tell stories together, and get into real co-selling conversations in weeks instead of quarters. Every major platform is moving toward MCP support (ChatGPT and other clients coming soon) which means we're just getting started. If you're thinking about how to activate your actual business context with AI instead of just pumping out generic content, let's talk. Huge shoutout to the Anthropic team for being incredible partners on this. Let's go! Available now in the Claude Connector Directory: https://lnkd.in/eH3tnwG4

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How can you make sure orchestrating agents across many frameworks doesn't cost you a fortune? Today, Caelum Forder and I look into agent sessions from Coral Protocol.

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Modernization without visibility is just wishful thinking. Yelp shows another way. I just finished an in-depth article about how Yelp engineering introduced EE Metrics, a platform that tracks org-wide health checks, technical debt, and migrations and turns them into actionable priorities for every team. Here’s what stood out to me: ➡️ Team Health Reports: daily-refreshed dashboards and monthly rollups showing each team’s velocity, quality, reliability, and security gaps. ➡️ Audits & Migrations: infrastructure teams define audits (e.g. test reliability thresholds, library deprecations), which then surface as prioritized action items. ➡️ Some become Required Migrations: initiatives every team must commit to in roadmap planning. ➡️ Scoring & accountability: not all audits are equal. Weights (HIGH/MED/LOW) keep focus on what truly matters. Ownership is explicit, and overdue work gets surfaced. Impact: beyond debt tracking, EE Metrics became a communication channel, bridging infra teams who define standards with product teams who need clarity on what to prioritize. My takeaway: If technical debt is invisible, you're already losing. Building the visibility layer is the first step. Thank you, Mitali Parthasarathy, for sharing this with me. Article below 👇

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Seth Levine nailed it! The concentration problem isn't just a GP pain point... it's choking innovation. When capital pools around the same 20 funds, emerging managers and founders get shut out. Love that he's using his platform to call this out. Foundry has backed 50+ emerging managers. That's the diversification the ecosystem needs. This is exactly why Carta exists — making capital allocation visible and accessible. Capital Evolution hits at exactly the right moment. Thanks for having us Daniel Dart. Team Carta loves the community of FUTURE TITANS you have built 🚀

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If you’re a CEO/founder or PE operator and your tech org is: ❌ Shipping late ❌ Stuck in reactive mode ❌ Struggling through the Series A/B jump, or post-acquisition integration or after a major release It’s not “a delivery problem.” It’s an operating model problem. At the inflection point, the old playbook breaks: what worked at 10 engineers fails at 40… and breaks again across multiple products/teams. That’s where I come in as a fractional CTO: - Spot platform and delivery risks before they hit revenue and retention - Rebuild execution rituals (prioritization, ownership, release confidence) without derailing the roadmap - Align architecture + team structure to your value-creation plan (growth, margin, or exit timeline) If you’re feeling the strain of growth, I can help you turn “busy and reactive” into predictable shipping, and a platform that scales. #CTO #SaaS #StartupScale #PrivateEquity #TechStrategy

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Every PMM team needs to do this now! Get access to the source code repo. Here is why: 1. Ask questions in Claude or Cursor 2. Uncover how the product works 3. Answer technical and high level questions quick 4. Format outputs by audience 5. Even draw flow diagrams Now there is never a new question you can’t answer in minutes. No need to ask a PM. No need to wait.

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Kicking off Planet Nix with Kelsey Hightower and Ron Efroni talking about how the industry is changing with AI and what it means for technologies like Nix.

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The biggest lesson? You don’t scale by building more tech. You scale by solving the right problem. 💡🚀 In this clip, Jie Feng, Ph.D, CEO of KELLS shares how delegating technical ownership allowed the team to shift from bottom-up tech thinking to working backwards from the customer’s real needs. 🎯 From building the first prototype himself to leading a 10-person team, this is the mindset shift that changes everything. #UglyTalk #FounderLife #StartupLeadership #ScalingAStartup #TechFounders #AIStartups #DelegationSkills #ProblemFirstMindset #CustomerDriven #LeadershipShift #BuildInPublic #EarlyStageStartups #TeamManagement #ProductLeadership #EntrepreneurLife #StartupTips #BusinessGrowth #OperationalExcellence #StartupReels #SpeakerReels #FoundersInNYC

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Not every customer requires the same motion, and treating them that way can quietly erode both GRR and NRR. The best SaaS operators use intentional segmentation and coverage models to align the right resources, engagement cadence, and value conversations to the right accounts. When segmentation is done well, it strengthens retention while unlocking smarter expansion opportunities. The best SaaS operators use intentional segmentation and coverage models to align the right resources, engagement cadence, and value conversations to the right accounts. When segmentation is done well, it strengthens retention while unlocking smarter expansion opportunities. • Derisk GRR by prioritizing high-touch engagement and proactive risk monitoring for strategic accounts. • Accelerate NRR by identifying which segments have the highest expansion potential and aligning coverage to growth moments. • Enable save plays by spotting adoption gaps, stakeholder changes, or value misalignment earlier within each segment. Segmentation isn’t just an operational exercise, it’s a revenue strategy. The companies that grow the fastest don’t treat every customer the same; they design coverage models that protect retention while creating expansion momentum. #SaaS #NRR #EspeutConsulting #CustomerSuccess #RevenueLeadership #ExpansionStrategy

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Most teams don’t have a delivery problem. They have a portfolio visibility problem. Your execs ask: “Where are we on the strategic initiatives?” “Why are 12 projects red?” “What did we actually commit to this quarter?” “Why didn’t we see this risk coming?” And suddenly everyone is scrambling through: ❌ 47 Jira boards ❌ 12 spreadsheets ❌ 3 disconnected roadmaps ❌ Slides built at midnight Jira works beautifully at the team level. But when you try to use it for portfolio project management without the right structure? It becomes noise. Initiatives don’t roll up correctly. Roadmaps aren’t trusted. Dependencies are invisible. Capacity is guesswork. Leadership loses confidence in the data. And here’s the hard truth: Most Jira admins and PMs were never actually taught how to design Jira for portfolio-level thinking. They were taught tickets. Not strategy alignment. Not funding models. Not cross-program visibility. Not executive reporting architecture. That’s exactly why I’m hosting a 1-Day Portfolio Project Management Workshop right before Team ’26. This is not: 🚫 “Here’s how to create an Epic” 🚫 “Here’s what a board does” This is: ✔ How to architect hierarchy for strategic initiatives ✔ How to structure Advanced Roadmaps for true portfolio visibility ✔ How to manage cross-team dependencies without chaos ✔ How to track planned vs. unplanned work at scale ✔ How to design executive-ready dashboards people actually trust ✔ How to govern portfolio data so it doesn’t decay in 3 months If you’re: • A Jira Admin being pulled into portfolio conversations • A PM expected to report at the initiative level • A Portfolio Lead struggling with visibility • A Leader tired of “slide engineering” every quarter This workshop will change how you think about Jira. Before Team ’26. One full day. Deep dive. Practical architecture. No fluff. If you want Jira to move from “task tracker” to “strategic system of record”, sign up for our conference -> https://lnkd.in/gK8FGx96 Let’s build systems executives can actually trust.

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John's message is crucial. SaaS businesses, especially those targeting enterprise clients, often spend excessive time on non-differentiators such as security, identity management, and observability. This focus detracts from their unique value propositions, allowing competitors to catch up or surpass them. Launchpad's vision is to empower companies to concentrate on their differentiators by providing a platform that handles non-differentiators at enterprise scale and quality. What excites me most is seeing firsthand how this strategy can revolutionize the way enterprise SaaS solutions are developed and deployed.

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Excited to share Decagon's $250M Series D at a $4.5B valuation, led by Coatue Management and Index Ventures! 🚀 Democratizing agent building is how concierge experiences will scale. For too long, great customer experiences required specialized teams, custom systems, or one-off implementations. Every team should be able give their users a true concierge experience without giving up control, quality, or trust. This approach is why teams at Avis Budget Group, Grubhub, 1-800-Flowers.com, and Mercado Libre are partnering with us to rethink how customer experience should work at scale. Proud of our team for keeping product craft at the center, and grateful to our customers helping shape what we build. We're just getting started! 🔥 Read our blog post here! 👇

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