AI startups stall when they hit restaurant operators, K-12 administrators, and facilities managers. Those buyers don't care about your model. They care about labor cost, procurement risk, and not getting fired for picking the wrong vendor.
Book a 30-minute callEvery other AI-sales consultant came from the seller's side. Anthropic, Scale, OpenAI, big SaaS. They know process. They don't know what a restaurant ops director thinks at 4pm on a Friday when one of 47 vendor pitches lands in her inbox.
I came from the other side of the table. I sold to those buyers (restaurant operators, K-12 administrators, workplace and HR managers) for years. I know what gets ignored, what kills a deal in procurement, and what makes a non-technical buyer override their own internal champion to say no.
Your tech works. Your pipeline doesn't.
I'm Tom Loebenstein. I scaled Glacier Grid (now Therma), an energy management platform, into restaurants and K-12 school districts. Before that, I sold consumer brands into corporate workplaces — beverage programs, perks, the whole office stack — to HR, workplace, and office managers.
Ten years sitting across the table from the operational, admin, and facilities buyers your AI product is trying to reach. None of them read TechCrunch.
You're a fit if:
You're not a fit if you sell to developers, engineering leaders, CTOs, or other AI companies. There are 50 better people for that work.
A focused 60–90 day engagement on one non-tech vertical you want to crack. We pick the vertical, define the ICP at a level your team has never had to think at (the operator who actually signs, the one who blocks deals, the language each one uses), build a sales playbook that runs without you in the room, and put real pipeline through it.
After that, most founders move to a monthly advisory retainer. Some don't need me again. Both are fine.
No retainer minimums. No 12-month contracts. Pricing on the call.
If you're a Series A or earlier vertical AI startup with stuck pipeline in a non-tech industry, the call is free and direct. We'll know in 30 minutes if there's a fit.