Ep # 177: AI for Post-Sales: The Quiet Effort Behind Data Modeling and Context ft. Jon Finegold (CEO, Precog)

In this episode of Across The Funnel, Adil Saleh sits down with Jon Finegold, CEO of Precog, to explore why enterprise AI remains bottlenecked by data readiness and what Go-To-Market leaders can do about it. Jon shares his journey from software engineer to MIT Sloan graduate to scaling Signiant from $5M to $50M ARR before stepping in as CEO at Precog, an AI-native ELT platform that connects SaaS APIs to data warehouses like Snowflake and Databricks with full semantic context so LLMs can actually answer business-critical questions. The conversation digs into why dumping raw data into models doesn't work, how Precog uses metadata and semantic layers to make AI understand enterprise data without exposing it directly, and why data teams are positioned to become either the heroes or the villains of the AI transformation story. Jon also reveals how his own team uses Precog, Snowflake, and Claude connected via MCP to proactively identify churn risks and expansion opportunities, and shares his philosophy on building customer-first culture, introducing just enough operational discipline at the growth stage, and keeping startup teams energized by making customer wins visible across the entire organization.