Why the Next Generation of Enterprise Software Looks Nothing Like Salesforce

Summary

Keith Peiris, co-founder and CEO of Lightfield, joins a16z partners Joe Schmidt and Alex Rampell to discuss his pivot from Tome to Lightfield, an AI-native CRM built around a business world model. The conversation covers why traditional CRMs are stale repositories, Lightfield's activity-log architecture, greenfield versus brownfield go-to-market strategy, AI-era pricing, and operating with generalists. It also touches on SaaS durability, customer stickiness, and advice for founders navigating pivots.

• Keith Peiris pivoted from Tome to Lightfield after concluding Tome's technology could not capture enough presenter and audience context.
• Lightfield ingests emails, calls, meetings, CRM, and product data into a canonical activity log to create a business world model for AI agents.
• The company bets that intelligence can replace rigid CRM schemas and manual data entry, aiming to move from greenfield startups to brownfield enterprise CRM.
• Pricing experimentation moved from seat-based to pure consumption before settling on a platform fee plus seats for core CRM and consumption for enrichment, automation, and forecasting.
• Keith emphasizes company culture with generalists, continuous planning, and rapid shipping as a response to AI-era velocity.
• Alex Rampell argues the software-is-dead narrative is overblown because DIY systems of record and company brains are hard to build and customers return to vendors.
• The discussion covers customer stickiness, referenceability, and why CRM may be harder to replace than a bank.