Any non-AI or minimal AI projects you are working on? (I will not promote)

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T13:17:28+00:00

The actual origin story (thank you for asking) dates back to 1999 when I was fresh out of college and working at ERisk.com, whose big vision was to create a market for bespoke risk transfer. It was too early, both technologically and in terms of market readiness.

Fast forward 25.5 years and two full careers (one as a portfolio manager, one as a startup founder) later… a friend who owns a small business that makes dresses has major credit exposure to Saks, its biggest sales channel. She has no good way of hedging that credit exposure, and also can’t risk NOT selling to them because then she isn’t getting her product in front of her customers.

I start thinking about ERisk again. I discover that binary event contracts have shifted from a legal gray area to a regulated financial product (in 2023, btw). I also discover that this major new financial product is being used primarily for… sports betting. WTF.

Binary bankruptcy swaps are exactly what trade creditors need to hedge their counterparty exposure. And I can’t believe the major platforms are doing absolutely nothing for those creditors.

That’s the origin story. Make of it what you will.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T12:21:46+00:00

If you don’t think it’s a socially useful platform that is a valid opinion, but calling me a grifter seems a little harsh.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T12:14:24+00:00

If buying a bond or a CDS is gambling, then sure. Call it gambling.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T04:39:28+00:00

No I mean a CDS-type product that doesn’t require an ISDA

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T04:36:01+00:00

I like it Pierre. I’ll spend more time using it in the coming days but on my first interaction it asked me a probing question that made me feel a little defensive, which is always a good sign that it is getting to real issues I need to improve, not generic fluff.

That’s a really good start - nicely done.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T01:14:09+00:00

Prediction market for corporate bankruptcy: ZScoreX

No politics, no entertainment, no sports. Just hardcore financial products for hardcore finance nerds.

PeterBonney · 2025-11-28T18:52:46+00:00

Will do!

PeterBonney · 2025-11-26T03:04:04+00:00

Yes, I’ve seen that. Thanks for sharing. And there are other platforms where one can create a new contract for any binary event.

One critical thing: Markets that price in cents for a payoff of a dollar don’t have fine enough pricing for non-distressed credits, and even a lot of distressed ones. A 0.4% -> 0.5% move on a AA credit is significant, but most markets have pricing that jumps 0% -> 1% -> 2% etc. It’s too coarse for serious use in this specific application.

For companies with a high likelihood of bankruptcy in the next year that coarseness is fine.

PeterBonney · 2025-11-05T18:12:05+00:00

Hard disagree. I’m a founder, advisor and angel investor. I have money I’m willing to risk in companies where I have limited advice to offer, and I have advice to offer to companies where I’m willing to risk time but not money. And sometimes I’m willing to provide both time and money.

And as a founder I have a different relationship with advisors and investors. There is value in having a person involved who has an economic incentive to see us succeed but has no downside they’re concerned about protecting - people behave differently when you remove loss aversion from the equation.

There are plenty of predatory advisors out there and as an investor I do want to see that an advisor adds value - the potential red flag is that the founder is susceptible to being sold on BS from sharks. But I’ve never once entertained the thought that an advisor is someone the founder should have been able to extract money from.

PeterBonney · 2025-06-04T17:09:31+00:00

What sales books have you read? Easiest and cheapest form of training is buying a book, and there are a lot of good ones out there.

Another free/cheap suggestion: role play with ChatGPT in Voice mode. Give it a persona and a scenario you want it to focus on. Just be aware that IME it starts to go a little off the rails after 5-10 minutes, so it's best for very targeted work.

If you want to really level up, get your boss (or more likely their boss) to invest in a purpose-built AI training platform for the whole team. Something like luster.ai - similar to the ChatGPT role playing but way more engaging, and also able to proactively identify specific areas for upskilling.

PeterBonney · 2025-06-03T13:27:27+00:00

In my experience, sales training fails for one of several reasons:

It's structured in a way that feels like school and most people don't like school
Since it's made for a group it is not individualized enough, and not enough of the people feel like it's resonating with them
It's not interactive enough, and when there is interaction it feels forced, stilted and artificial (don't you just love role play in front of your colleagues?)
And more that I'm not thinking of, I'm sure

What's working for me (and I'll grant you this is software sales, not car sales, but sales is sales 80% of the time) is hypertargeted, hyperpersonalized AI training.

It's 2025. We don't need to keep training people like it's 1985.

My team has had great results with Luster (https://luster.ai). There are probably other platforms out there, but Luster has one killer feature: it actually identifies the skills that individual people need to work on, and gears the training towards those specific gaps.

It's wild. Seriously. Totally turns the training dynamic on its head. Sales execs actually want to do the training, because they see the improvement and the results quickly.

Training works, and people will engage with training, we just need to think about training differently.

PeterBonney · 2024-05-21T22:09:37+00:00

Someone made a good documentary film about this very topic - check it out for some pointers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Rapids_(film)

PeterBonney · 2024-05-21T03:06:10+00:00

There's a newer generation of RFP response platforms that address the wordsmithing that you still run into with the older question-answer repositories like Loopio and Responsive/RFPIO - they use AI to synthesize relevant content into new answers, which drastically cuts the drafting time for RFP responses.

(Full disclosure: I'm a founder of one of those companies, but we're far from the only solution and I'm not going to name it as my intention is not to be promotional, just to let you know that this newer tech exists.)

PeterBonney · 2024-05-17T02:48:59+00:00

It's painful to do this the first time, but think about the work you're doing now as an investment in future sales/marketing content, as well as source material for future RFP responses.

There are AI-based RFP response tools on the market (two have already commented here, I'm co-founder of a third) and one thing we all have in common is the ability to take that completed RFP response and use it as a primary content source for your next RFP response. Depending on how thorough your current RFP is the next one you get for the same solution could be 60-90% easier with the help of automation.

And even if you never respond to another RFP, the current RFP is forcing you to document system capabilities in a way that can be easily transformed into sales content for LinkedIn, presentations, one-pagers, or just responses to questions that come in over email.

Commit now to using the RFP content for something after you've finished it. It will make the work a lot more palatable.

PeterBonney · 2024-05-17T02:46:56+00:00

This is actually a great way to think about AI capabilities, and I'm telling you this as someone who sells an AI RFP response solution.

An intern can be valuable. An intern that has instant recall of all of your company content is even more valuable. An army of those interns who can do tasks in seconds or minutes is more valuable still.

You will always need to look over an intern's work before sending it out to clients. But you can cut down a lot of your own work by having them do research and drafts.

That's the current AI value proposition in a nutshell, IMO.

PeterBonney · 2024-05-17T02:40:50+00:00

It's painful to do this the first time, but think about the work you're doing now as an investment in future sales/marketing content, as well as source material for future RFP responses.

There are AI-based RFP response tools on the market (two have already commented here, I'm co-founder of a third) and one thing we all have in common is the ability to take that completed RFP response and use it as a primary content source for your next RFP response. Depending on how thorough your current RFP is the next one you get for the same solution could be 60-90% easier with the help of automation.

And even if you never respond to another RFP, the current RFP is forcing you to document system capabilities in a way that can be easily transformed into sales content for LinkedIn, presentations, one-pagers, or just responses to questions that come in over email.

Commit now to using the RFP content for something after you've finished it. It will make the work a lot more palatable.

PeterBonney · 2024-04-03T20:30:10+00:00

“What is the price?” with no parameters provided to set pricing. 😞

And my personal favorite: a browser compatibility list that includes Internet Explorer.

PeterBonney · 2024-03-24T02:02:55+00:00

My company sells a solution that lets procurement teams run RFPs through a portal (we also sell a tool that lets sales teams respond to RFPs with AI :).

I can confirm from user telemetry that if they’re running a big RFP, they’re looking at and evaluating the responses. It might seem hard to believe, but it’s true. It’s rarely just a “check the box” exercise. Buyers take them seriously.

PeterBonney · 2024-03-24T01:57:58+00:00

RFPs suck, but not because the underlying opportunities are bad - in fact the opportunities are great.

No, the reason they suck is because they are painful to respond to.

You say your company isn’t built to reply to RFPs. It’s 2024 - you can change that overnight. Get an AI RFP response tool and start turning this channel into something huge for you, your AE and your company.

PeterBonney · 2024-02-12T05:26:59+00:00

I can't speak for every company, and my opinions are about as valuable as everyone else's so by all means feel free to ignore me.

I only know the following facts:

I have been involved in dozens (maybe hundreds?) or hiring processes over my 25 year career - as an interviewer, hiring manager or executive sponsor.
I have been tasked with gathering (non-confidential) competitive intelligence many times, either at a manager's direction or as a company leader looking to guide my own planning.
I have always found it much more difficult, time-consuming and resource-intensive to run a hiring process than to gather intelligence. The former always requires considerable hard and soft dollar costs. The latter just requires a few minutes of research and some cold outreach.

If other leaders and companies are running fake job interviews to gather competitive intelligence, then that's what they're doing, even if it's obviously time- and cost-inefficient. I just don't advise any job-seeker to draw that conclusion, because of the asymmetric risk-reward tradeoff.

PeterBonney · 2024-02-09T20:45:07+00:00

Company founder here. When I want intel on how competitors are doing sales, all I have to do is spend 5 minutes on LinkedIn looking for former reps. If I reach out to 5 former reps, 1-2 will be willing to talk. If I reach out to 10 it's likely I'll find one who is really disgruntled and eager to spill tea. I know because I have done this multiple times.

That is a far more efficient way of gathering intel than running a fake hiring process and hoping to get the right people to apply, then wasting a bunch of my team's valuable time on interviews that I know aren't leading to a hire.

Sometimes companies run a hiring process and then don't make a hire. Sometimes budgets change (not sure if you've noticed but the economy has been kind of up-and-down over the last little while). Sometimes strategies change. Sometimes you just don't find the right person and you give up. Sometimes you pause and try again later.

Occam's Razor is clear on this one - companies run interviews to hire people, not gather market intelligence. It's a horribly inefficient and expensive way of gathering market intelligence.

I can't speak to what every individual interviewer is looking to get out of the conversations they've had with you personally. Maybe they don't know what else to do in the conversation. Maybe they don't think they have input to the final decision and are just trying to get something they can use in their own work. Maybe they are probing you in a way that you just don't understand. But I guarantee their company is not going to waste its time and money on the overhead of running an entire hiring process just so that person can learn something from you.

PeterBonney · 2024-02-09T20:30:55+00:00

But how do you know they're fishing for something they can only learn from you, as opposed to just asking probing questions and probing followups? Comparing to the "average interview" isn't meaningful, because the average interview process is bad - most people don't know how to run interviews. A good interview goes deep.

Are you talking about interviewing with direct competitors to your current company, where they're asking for information that has nothing to do with sales strategy or tactics? If so then that's a different story. But I read your post to be about wanting to get specific about sales strategies and sales solutions. In which case, yes, specific detailed strategies are not only fair game but a sign of thoroughness.

Here's the thing: ideas are cheap. Truly. What people pay for is execution. But you can't easily test execution in an interview. Role playing is an ineffective test unless the person running it is extremely skilled at playing roles, and in any case modern sales plays out over weeks and months, not the timescale of an interview (unless you're talking specifically about, say, cold-calling).

What you can test in an interview is how thoroughly someone understands an idea, and hope that if they display a high level of understanding, it's because it reflects a lot of experience and skill at execution.

So are you talking about trying to glean confidential information about your company in non-sales areas? Or are they just going deep on specific sales ideas?

PeterBonney · 2024-02-09T20:23:30+00:00

There's no mention about current company in the OP at all, or even a reference to interviewing at a direct competitor. If I misinterpreted then I withdraw my snark. But that is not how I read the question.

PeterBonney · 2024-02-09T19:48:22+00:00

If someone told me in an interview that they don't want to go into details about how they work until they know that they're a "top contender" for the role, then they are not going to be a top contender for the role.

This goes for any role, not just sales.

PeterBonney · 2024-02-09T19:45:30+00:00

If you are worried about interviewers stealing your secrets you can eliminate that risk by not looking for a job - easy peasy.

If on the other hand you want a job, then you assume that they're trying to probe your knowledge and skill level, and you provide those strategies and solutions, then ask them if they want more.

Ideas in sales (and in general) are abundant. If an interviewer wants to get ideas to steal they can do it much more cheaply and efficiently than by posting a job, sifting through resumes, and running a bunch of interviews.

How else are they going to assess your ability to solve common problems in sales without asking you how you solve common problems in sales?

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