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Founder of Winter. We acquire and partner with founder-led service businesses.
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James Snider 💡 posted thisExciting news, Punch!—The Smart B2B Sales Agency has acquired Playbook Systems - the agentic AI company behind HotSauce. Punch! is now The Human-Agentic GTM Partner. Here's why this matters: The first wave of AI outbound is already failing. Companies went all-in on volume in 2024 - spray faster, automate more, scale sequences. The result? Burned inboxes, blacklisted domains, and buyers who've learned to ignore anything that smells automated. 2026 isn't about sending more. It's about knowing more. HotSauce builds unique-to-you buying signals - engineered from the ground up for each client's market. Not the same data your competitors are already acting on. Signals that are yours alone, that compound over time, and that get sharper with every campaign cycle. When a signal fires, our agentic system activates across email, LinkedIn, direct mail, and ads. Then our human SDRs - trained by one of the best programmes in B2B - step in to convert. AI identifies. Humans convert. That's the model. Early results: 50+ SQLs in the first 30 days. 300+ MQLs from targeted enterprise accounts. Stronger meeting quality. Better conversion. Alongside Pipeline Generation, we're also now offering GTM Modernisation - helping B2B revenue teams redesign their go-to-market architecture around signal-led, agentic workflows. Not just generating pipeline, but transforming how companies build it. Huge welcome to Ben Robinson, founder of Playbook Systems, who joins as our CCO and board member. And massive credit to Chris Muldoon for driving this forward as CEO. Excited to see where this goes!
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James Snider 💡 shared thisIn 1989, English football was dying. Stadiums were crumbling and fans were rioting. The Sunday Times called it "a slum sport played in slum stadiums." UEFA had banned every English club from Europe. Fast forward 35 years. The Premier League is worth £13.2 billion per broadcast cycle. Reaches 4.7 billion people globally. Generates £8 billion for the UK economy annually. This is one of the greatest turnarounds in business history. Here's exactly how they did it: The Crisis (1985-1989): Bradford fire killed 56 people. Heysel disaster killed 39. Hillsborough took 97 lives. After Hillsborough, the government forced English football to rebuild its stadiums: all-seater venues, removal of perimeter fences, and modern safety standards across the top divisions. The Breakaway (1991-1992): The Big Five clubs (Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Everton) were furious. They generated massive revenue but split it equally with all 92 Football League clubs. Halifax Town got the same TV money as Manchester United. So in 1992, all 22 top-flight clubs resigned from the Football League. They formed their own company with full commercial control. One club, one vote. Keep the revenue among themselves. The Sky Bet (1992): BSkyB was hemorrhaging £14 million per week. Drowning in £2 billion of debt. ITV offered £262 million for Premier League rights. Sky bid £304 million and won. Everyone thought it would fail. Live football behind a paywall? Insane. That £304M deal is now worth £6.7 billion domestically alone. Revenue split three ways: - 50% divided equally among all clubs - 25% based on league position - 25% based on TV appearances This means even last-place Southampton earned £106.7 million in broadcast rights. Compare that to La Liga where Real Madrid and Barcelona historically took everything. The Premier League's collective model created competitive balance. Mid-table clubs can afford world-class players. The league now generates over £6.35 billion per season across all clubs. Broadcast in 212 territories. Supports 90,000+ jobs. The business lessons here are clear: You can't fix a broken product with marketing. They rebuilt the infrastructure first - safe stadiums, professional facilities, fan experience. They aligned incentives properly. Revenue sharing kept it competitive while rewarding success. They bet on distribution when everyone said it wouldn't work. Sky was the right partner at the right time. They played the long game. Took 10+ years to see the full payoff. From a crisis that nearly killed the sport to the most valuable league on earth. That's what happens when you fix the fundamentals and build for scale.
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James Snider 💡 posted thisEveryone is obsessed with building the next frontier AI model, but the biggest wealth generation in the next decade won't come from building AI. It will come from applying it to the physical economy. Plumbers, dentists, local services, still running their businesses like it's 2010. 82% of “micro-businesses” think AI isn't relevant to them. Meanwhile: → Dental clinics are using AI to analyze X-rays and reduce missed calls by 50% → Home service businesses are using AI for predictive maintenance → Smart dispatching is cutting wasted drive time in half The tools exist. But nobody's shown traditional operators how to use them. The biggest winners won't be the first arrivals who built the tech, they’ll go to the operators who master the gap between the tech and the real world.
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James Snider 💡 shared thisThe default reaction to failure? Blame someone else. I've done it. We all have. Lost a client? Their fault for not understanding the value. Lost a team member? They weren't committed enough. Lost money? The market shifted. It's a protection mechanism, as it feels safer to point outward. When you blame others, you hand over your power to change the outcome next time. Instead of blaming, it's best to ask 'what could I have done differently?' The best leaders I've worked with all share this trait: They flip the default response. They ask 'what could I have done better?' And then they actually change something. That's the difference between cycling through the same problems and breaking through them. Loss is part of the entrepreneurial cycle. The question is whether you learn from it or just carry the weight.
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James Snider 💡 shared thisMy wife runs an ecom brand while I run a holdco. People ask if it’s weird that we’re both founders. What makes it work: There’s zero guilt about working until 1 a.m. 💀 She gets it when I’m grinding through the weekend. I get it when she’s testing ads at midnight. This doesn’t stop us from hanging out, watching the new Game of Thrones, or going for walks along the beach. (Although our Friday nights are currently spent setting up OpenClaw…) It just means there’s no resentment if one of us has to say no to dinner. The other cool part: → She’s strong in brand, marketing, automation, and AI → I’m strong in commercial decisions, scaling systems, and leadership We both get free consulting in our weak areas. 🙃 Check out my wife’s business, Bodology™, if you’re in the market for inositol powder. And if you’re a founder looking for love...from my experience, date another founder...it works well!
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James Snider 💡 shared thisIf you're scaling a service business, here are six questions you should be asking yourself every day: 1 - If I were starting again, who would I recruit? If there's anyone you wouldn't re-recruit....they're likely holding you back. Either provide them more coaching and see if they improve, or, more likely, it's time to part ways. 2 - What would I do if I wasn't afraid of failing? There’s probably a decision you’ve been circling for weeks, maybe months. You know it would move the business forward, but you keep finding reasons to delay it. Most of the time it’s not logic holding you back, it’s fear. If failure genuinely wasn’t a concern, what would you change today? 3 - Which task am I resisting most? There’s always one thing sitting on your list that you keep pushing to tomorrow. Do that one first. It will free up mental space...the longer you avoid it, the heavier it feels. 4 - Am I listening twice as much as I'm speaking? When you’re scaling, it’s easy to feel like you need to have all the answers. So you talk more. You direct more. You jump in quickly. But the best operators I know spend more time asking questions and properly listening. Your team will show you where the friction is. Your clients will tell you what really matters. You just have to give them the space to say it. 5 - Am I open to others' input? As you grow, your conviction has to be strong. But conviction can easily turn into stubbornness. If you’ve already decided you’re right before the conversation starts, you’re not really asking for input. This is why I love the whole EOS model - it allows space for leadership teams to discuss and solve issues collaboratively. 6 - Did I respond to every email today? Whilst cold sales emails don't count, fast communication is such underrated leverage. When you reply quickly, decisions move. Projects move. Revenue moves. When you don’t, everything stalls quietly in the background. Individually, these look small. but compounded daily, they change the trajectory of a business. Better people decisions. Faster action. Less ego. More clarity. That’s how service businesses scale.
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James Snider 💡 shared thisI joined Hampton a few years ago and it's genuinely been life changing. When I relocated from London to Miami, I didn't know a single person. Within a few months of joining, I'd built real friendships with some of the most incredible entrepreneurs. Hampton made moving to a new city not just manageable, but one of the best decisions I've ever made. Hampton has 1,000+ members and is bootstrapped with around 20 employees. Sam Parr says this will be a $100M/year business. Here's why he's probably right: Sam didn't start from zero. He built The Hustle (sold to HubSpot for 8 figures+), co-hosted My First Million (tens of millions of downloads), ran Trends.co (millions in ARR). Hampton's "overnight success" was 10 years of audience building. Hampton's strength is in its business model and pricing strategy. Most community builders price low to grow fast. Hampton priced high to grow deliberately. Sam learned from Trends.co that $300/year was too cheap, it attracted too many people and made a premium experience impossible. What I love about Hampton is that we have 'Core Groups' of 8 matched founders that meet each month, face to face, with a trained facilitator. It's group therapy for CEOs and founders. Add strict vetting ($3M revenue minimum, every application reviewed, members can veto applicants), a no-solicitation policy aggressively enforced, and you get a self-reinforcing quality cycle: Better members → better experience → stronger reputation → more quality applicants. The long-term vision is 50,000 members over 20 years. Never taking funding. Never selling. Building for 100 years. The opposite of VC-backed growth-at-all-costs. Three takeaways for any service business: 1 — Build your audience before your product (10+ years beats launching first) 2 — Price for the experience you want to deliver (low pricing limits what you can do) 3 — Create structures that build genuine relationships (the deepest moat in any business)
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James Snider 💡 posted thisMost founders try to negotiate supplier discounts...but they still end up paying 20% more than they would if they just used this technique: Rather than asking for a lower fee without offering anything in return, offer your supplier something of value, that costs you near to nothing. For example: → Written testimonial within 30 days → Video case study after 90 days → LinkedIn post endorsing their product / service → Permission to use your logo on their site → Feature their team on your podcast Why does this work? Their marketing team is desperate for real case studies. Their sales team needs social proof to close deals. Their boss measures them on testimonials collected. What might cost you an hour is worth more to your supplier than the discount you're asking for. You're also getting better support, faster responses, early access to new features. The supplier's internal team now has a vested interest in your success, they need you to win so your testimonial looks good. Price negotiation is zero-sum. Value exchange is how you both win.
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James Snider 💡 shared thisIf a business has been profitable for 20 years, the Lindy Effect suggests it should expect another 20. Each additional year of survival doesn't decrease its life expectancy, it increases it. This concept comes from Taleb's Antifragile, named after Lindy's Deli in NYC where comedians noticed: the longer a show had been running, the longer it was likely to keep running. At Winter, we're obsessed with this principle. While everyone chases disruption and 'the next big thing,' we deliberately look for businesses that have already proven resilience. A business that has survived 15+ years has demonstrated something no pitch deck can promise: durability. Consider the real Lindy businesses: Hermès (founded 1837, 65% family-owned) WD-40 (founded 1953, same CEO since 1987) McCormick & Company (founded 1889) Buffett invested $1B in Coca-Cola in 1988, when the company was already 96 years old. Longevity was the proof of the moat. For service businesses, this matters even more. The best ones we look at have survived founder transitions, recessions, and competitive threats. Their survival IS their competitive advantage. Every additional year doubles their credibility. Most buyers focus on growth rate and recent momentum. We focus on what has already endured. At Winter, we aren't trying to predict the future. We're looking for businesses where the past has already done the predicting for us.
James Snider 💡 replied to a comment
3mo
Thank you Andrew Day !
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James Snider 💡 liked thisJames Snider 💡 liked thisMost sales development reps (SDRs) treat the calendar invite as the finish line. That's where the real work starts. Between "yes, let's talk" and the actual call, a prospect's urgency has time to cool. Left unattended, that meeting on the books turns into a meeting that goes nowhere. Our SDR team stays in that gap. They keep the original pain point front of mind and flag anything new that surfaces before the call, so the person who shows up is still the person who said yes. A full calendar means nothing if half of it shows up for a different conversation. #B2BSales #SalesStrategy #GTM
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James Snider 💡 liked thisJames Snider 💡 liked thisI've joined Punch! as Principal GTM Strategist, where I will be leading agentic GTM and GTM Strategy. When people hear "agentic GTM," they assume the AI handles everything. It doesn't. The revenue still comes from the fundamentals. A tight ICP. Real pain. Clean copy. A grand slam offer. A crappy system, even automated, is still a crappy system. Just faster. The job isn't to point AI at the market and hope. It's to build the fundamentals to a point of perfection, then let the agents run them at volume. Shoutout to Ben Robinson for the mandate and for trusting me to build this properly. AI generates the output, but it is discernment that makes it truly useful. This is the way.
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James Snider 💡 liked thisJames Snider 💡 liked this5 things people still believe about AI in outbound that aren't true. MYTH 1: 'AI personalisation is real personalisation.' It's variable substitution dressed up as research. Buyers can tell within two lines. 'Noticed you're growing fast' is not insight... It's a mail merge with better vocabulary. MYTH 2: 'AI SDRs will replace human SDRs.' Not even the AI companies are doing this. Anthropic is hiring human SDRs right now. So is OpenAI. The people telling you to replace your team are usually selling you the replacement. MYTH 3: 'More volume + AI = more pipeline.' More volume + AI = faster domain damage and quicker TAM burn. Volume was already the wrong lever before AI made it cheap. AI just made the wrong lever cheaper to pull. MYTH 4: 'AI removes the need for ICP work.' AI does ICP work badly. It optimises for what's easy to measure, not what's easy to close. Without sharp targeting on the front end, you're scaling noise with better tools. MYTH 5: 'AI is a strategy.' AI is plumbing. Strategy is deciding what to point it at. The teams winning right now have a clear GTM thesis and use AI to execute faster. The teams losing started with the tools and worked backwards.
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James Snider 💡 liked thisJames Snider 💡 liked thisMost intent data tools sell the same signals to every company in your category. So when you spot a buying signal, your competitors already have it too. You're not targeting, you're queueing. HotSauce builds signals specific to your business. Your ICP, your market, your definition of what ready to buy actually looks like. No competitor can see them. Intent data was a competitive advantage in 2022. In 2026, everyone has it. HotSauce gives you signals nobody else does. #B2BSales #IntentData #AIOutbound #PunchAgency #OutboundSales
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James Snider 💡 liked thisJames Snider 💡 liked thisMost AI outbound does one thing, it sends more. More emails, more sequences, and more of the same message to the same people who are already ignoring it. We built something different. Agentic GTM is five specialised agents, each operating across a different channel. They sit idle until one thing happens, a real signal flares. A hiring surge, a decision maker starts researching a problem, or a prospect swaps out a tool your client directly replaces Not because a sequence said so, but because something in the market moved. Swipe through to meet each agent. 👇 #AgenticGTM #B2BSales #PunchAgency #AIOutbound #SalesStrategy
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James Snider 💡 liked thisJames Snider 💡 liked this16 years ago, we were getting ready to open our first business in Nashville. Then the rains came, devastating floods hit the region, and Lower Broadway ended up underwater. We learned patience and how to expect the unexpected much earlier than most entrepreneurs ever do. Nothing in entrepreneurship is easy. Some days it will leave you feeling completely helpless. Stay positive, keep moving forward, and find a way.
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James Snider 💡 liked thisJames Snider 💡 liked thisPadel + Play has officially landed in Stratford-upon-Avon and it was a weekend to remember. Opening our second club has been a labour of love but seeing the community show up with such warmth made every bit of it worth it. We’re also incredibly proud to be partnering with two local businesses who share the same passion for community and wellbeing The Steamhouse and Rise & Reform If you’re ever in Stratford, come find us!
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James Snider 💡 liked thisJames Snider 💡 liked thisAn AI SDR company just shut down—at $4.3M ARR. This was one of the hottest AI sales startups out there. They raised $2.5M, scaled to $4.3M in ARR in just 90 days… (Which is insane.) And then—shut it all down. ---Customers refunded. ---Website wiped. ---Company up for sale. ---Founders moving on. On paper, it looked like a rocket ship. In three months, they went from $0 to what could’ve easily been a $20M+ valuation. So why walk away? The founder, Stephen, didn’t sugarcoat it. His take: the entire AI SDR space is fundamentally broken—and companies are “digging their own graves.” In a long interview, he pulled back the curtain: Everyone’s selling the dream of a fully automated pipeline—leads, meetings, revenue on autopilot. But the reality? Massive churn. Disappointed customers. Little to no real pipeline. And they’re not alone: Ramp shut down its AI outbound motion Anthropic (the company behind Claude) is actively hiring human SDRs AI-driven outbound works when the BDR is the operator, which is how we do it at Lead Generation Hubs Jack Porter, need to shout out because this was his post originally. I changed it slightly, but not very much. Jack I won't copy you again, but I'm also do not normally get this much engagement.
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Walker Deibel
You can turn $100,000 into a $50 million business through acquisitions. This is closer to capital allocation than traditional entrepreneurship. Here's the deal structure. First, the capital stack. You buy a business the same way you buy a house. Equity in, bank covers the rest. With SBA loans: 90% loan, 10% equity. A million dollar business might require $100K to $200K down. Target companies with $1 to $3 million in earnings. Go to sellers that are NOT at market. Brokered deals are competitive and sellers want cash at close. This only works off-market. Here's what you propose: Seller keeps 20% equity in a new entity. Asset sale, their company moves into newco, they keep running it at fair market salary. You write them a check for 60% via bank loan. Remaining 20% is a seller's note: 10% straight note, 10% performance earnout. From the bank's perspective, you created 40% equity. The truth? It's really only 20%, and it's the seller's. Your money in? Approaching zero. But you own 80% of Enterprise Value. Why would a seller agree? Tell them: my goal is to make your 20% as valuable as the 80% we're giving you today. What are the odds you double the value on your own in 3 to 5 years? Now stack earnings. $2 million average per company. Buy 10 just like this. $20 million combined earnings under one entity. Centralize marketing, accounting, HR, governance at HQ. You bought each at 4 to 4.5x. A $20 million earnings business sells for 7 to 7.5x or more. That's multiple expansion, just by combining them. Close the first one. Negotiate the next $100K for the next business. Then newco sells to PE for 7, 8, 9x your $20 million in earnings. That's the path from $100K to $50 million. If you're considering buying a business in the next 12 to 24 months, we built Acquisition Lab for exactly this. walkerdeibel.com
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Thomas Smale
Cvent just acquired Goldcast for $300M. All cash deal that shows the massive bet on AI-led event marketing👇 For context: Cvent is a major B2B platform for events, meetings, and hospitality. B2B buying is seeing a change... It's now video-first and digital-led. And events are slowly turning into always-on content engines. So what's in it for Cvent? Simple: the best way to capture and grow their webinar arm. This is why the Goldcast deal comes in. An AI-first webinars and event platform that turns recordings into usable video content across marketing, sales, and social channels. This strategic acquisition is Cvent's clear bet on AI-led growth. > Cvent brings scale: ~30,000 customers and deep enterprise relationships. > Goldcast brings speed: AI that turns live events into clips, summaries & recaps. And the video/audio industry is moving in the same direction: - Hume AI raised $50M for developing AI podcasting tools - Riverside.fm is investing in AI for short form video + podcasting - Synthesia raised $200M to build AI-native video creation infrastructure Even Oscar Hamilton Podcasting (acquired via FE International) grew 45% before its acquisition. The data is clear. AI-powered podcasting, webinars, and video content are growing fast. Events are shifting from single experiences to reusable media assets that support websites, email, social, and sales without adding manual work or new tools. The future of events is still human connection delivered at AI scale. News source: Cvent Press Release
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David Jorba
Game changer! The Emergent AI-Enhanced platform growing with tools that help you produce content way more efficiently. Fusion is a long time coming for us. We always wanted to build a tool our clients could use to build their own storytelling apps without us having to integrate data or make html graphics on the backend. Now they can!
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