In this conversation, host Johannes Deubener sits down with serial founder Russ Fradin, CEO of Larridin (backed by Andreessen Horowitz). He shares what 30 years of building enterprise companies teaches you about AI adoption, vendor survival, and long-term customer relationships.

We cover the real #1 driver of enterprise churn, why 85% of leaders fear falling behind in the next 18 months, what shadow AI really signals about enterprise adoption, and why teams that build with AI dramatically outperform teams that only summarize.

We go deep on what it actually takes to win in the enterprise - not just to get in the door, but to be one of the AI vendors still standing when the inevitable AI vendor consolidation hits.

Chapters
00:41 - Russ Fradin intro
02:28 - The repeat founder trap
06:01 - The $5M ARR pivot
09:25 - 30 years of enterprise lessons: what AI founders need to know right now
09:30 - The #1 driver of enterprise churn
13:07 - Radical honesty as your competitive moat
15:45 - First-time founder playbook
16:02 - Why free pilots fail - and how to create the right friction from day one
19:09 - How to close the gap from pilot to production
22:53 - The 2026 Enterprise AI Report
26:28 - The coming AI vendor culling
29:30 - What the AI leaders do differently
31:54 - Why IT teams get 10x more from AI
32:11 - The global knowledge workforce retraining experiment
35:27 - Shadow AI: 45% of AI adoption happens outside procurement
38:54 - When tool sprawl becomes organizational waste
41:05 - The power user gap
44:03 - Why HR needs to own AI enablement - not just IT
48:10 - What Larridin actually does: measuring AI productivity across the enterprise
54:27 - "Software eating labor": is AI substituting or augmenting work?
54:42 - Why AI will create more jobs
59:06 - Where to find Russ
59:29 - Outro

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Connect with Johannes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannesdeubener/

Follow Russ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rfradin/

Check out Larridin: https://larridin.com/

Read the 2026 Enterprise AI Report: https://larridin.com/state-of-enterprise-ai

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