Perplexity's CBO Dmitry Shevelenko joined Sam Blond ex-CEO of Brex at 2025 SaaStr + AI Summit for a deep dive on AI and Sales. More on the full session coming soon but this deep dive on being prepared for meeting prospects in the Age of AI was super interesting.
The 90-Minute Meeting Prep is Dead
Here's a hard truth every CRO, VP of Sales, AE and founder needs to hear: You have no excuse to not be moving faster.
While you're spending 2+ hours researching prospects, reading through LinkedIn profiles, and manually preparing for sales calls, your competitors are using AI to compress that same preparation into minutes. The result? They're having more conversations, closing deals faster, and scaling their businesses while you're still stuck in research mode.
Perplexity's CBO shared how AI is revolutionizing meeting preparation—and it's not just about efficiency. It's about unlocking what he calls "superpowers" that transform how founders approach every customer interaction.
The AI Meeting Prep Framework That Changed Everything
The framework is deceptively simple but devastatingly effective:
Step 1: Front-load Your Intelligence Gathering Every question you would typically ask during a discovery call should be asked of AI before the meeting. Think about it—why are you learning basic information about a company's challenges, their industry, or their recent moves in real-time during a precious 30-minute slot with a decision-maker?
Step 2: Use the Time You Save to Go Deeper Here's where most founders get it wrong. They think AI prep is about asking fewer questions. It's actually about asking better questions. When you're not burning meeting time on basic discovery, you can dig into the nuanced challenges, explore specific pain points, and have the kind of strategic conversation that actually moves deals forward.
Step 3: Show Your Work in Real-Time This is the power move that separates great founders from good ones. During the actual meeting, share your screen and ask AI questions about the prospect's company live. "What are the biggest challenges Company X is facing right now? How have they tried to solve them?"
Why This Approach is Pure Gold for B2B Sales
Authenticity Through Transparency: When you're using AI to research their challenges in real-time, and your solution naturally emerges as a fit, that's not scripted—that's authentic. The prospect sees the discovery happening organically.
Credibility Through Intelligence: You're not just another vendor with a pitch deck. You're a strategic partner who comes prepared with deep insights about their business, industry, and specific challenges.
Efficiency Through Preparation: You're maximizing every minute of face-time with prospects by focusing on high-value strategic discussions rather than basic fact-finding.
The Timing Lesson Every Founder Must Learn
Perplexity's success story offers a crucial lesson about market timing and execution speed. Their CBO revealed something fascinating: if they had started six months earlier, GPT-3 wouldn't have been good enough to create their magical AI + internet experience. Six months later, and someone else would be on stage talking about their success.
The window for competitive advantage is narrower than ever. In today's market, timing isn't just about having the right product at the right moment—it's about executing at the right speed when that moment arrives.
Beyond Meeting Prep: The Acceleration Mindset
The meeting prep framework is just the beginning. The real transformation happens when you apply this acceleration mindset to every aspect of your startup:
Prototyping and Concept Development: The rate at which you can prototype, test concepts, and gather feedback has been "dramatically accelerated." What used to take weeks now takes hours.
Product Validation: Instead of spending months building something you think the market wants, you can rapidly test and iterate on concepts before committing significant resources.
Strategic Planning: Tools like Cursor for rapid development and emerging AI-powered project visualization tools mean you can explore multiple strategic directions simultaneously rather than sequentially.
The Mental Model That Changes Everything
Here's the framework every founder should be running through their head constantly:
How can I do in one hour what used to take a day?
How can I do in one day what used to take a week?
How can I do in one week what used to take a month?
This isn't about working more hours—it's about leveraging AI to compress time-to-insight and time-to-action across every business function.
The Competitive Reality Check
Your competitors are already doing this. While you're debating whether AI tools are worth the investment or learning curve, founders who embrace these superpowers are:
Having more qualified conversations per week
Closing deals faster with better preparation
Iterating on product concepts at unprecedented speed
Building deeper relationships through more strategic interactions
The question isn't whether you should adopt AI-powered meeting prep and business acceleration—it's whether you can afford not to.
Getting Started: Your AI Meeting Prep Playbook
For Your Next Sales Call:
Prompt AI with: who you are, what your company does, who you're meeting with, their role
Ask: "How should we structure this call? What should I know going into this meeting?"
Follow up with deeper questions about their specific challenges and recent company developments
Prepare 3-5 strategic questions that go beyond basic discovery
For Your Next Product Decision:
Use AI to rapidly prototype and visualize different concepts
Generate multiple approaches to the same problem
Get quick feedback on concepts before committing development resources
Compress your concept-to-feedback loop from weeks to hours
The Bottom Line
Speed is the new moat, and AI is the tool that builds it. Every founder now has access to superpowers that compress research time, accelerate decision-making, and enable deeper strategic thinking.
The founders who win in this new landscape won't be the ones with the most resources or the biggest teams—they'll be the ones who move fastest while maintaining the highest quality of strategic thinking.
The tools are at your fingertips. Your competitors are already using them.
Share this post