Vista Equity Partners' Monti Saroya - "harnessing" the power of AI in the enterprise: AGM Live at SuperReturn

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

We sat down with Vista Equity Partners’ Senior Managing Director, Co-Head of Flagship Fund, Monti Saroya. 

We were live from Berlin, which becomes the “capital of private capital” in June as private equity industry leaders make the annual pilgrimage to the city for one of the marquee private equity conferences, SuperReturn Berlin.

With Prosek Partners and former Bloomberg TV journalist Deirdre Bolton as my producer, along with her team, we took over a Tiny Space cabin to hold big conversations with some of the industry’s leading alternative asset managers.

Vista Equity Partners has been a pioneer in enterprise software investing. They have been at the forefront of every major technology platform shift, whether it was on-prem to cloud, the adoption of enterprise software, and now the agentification of the enterprise with AI.

The $103B AUM scaled specialist software investor has dedicated its efforts to building “mission critical” enterprise software companies that organizations can’t live without.

Monti has had a front-row seat in building and developing both infrastructure and software that the technology industry can’t live without. He brings to bear the perspective of someone who lived through the early days of the internet from his time at Cisco Systems and Siebel Systems. Through this lens, and drawing on his experience investing in enterprise software companies since joining Vista in 2008, Monti is able to make sense of where, how, and why AI will be adopted within the enterprise, and what it means for both operators and investors.

This conversation with Monti was one of the most illuminating conversations I’ve had on AI recently. He pieced together so much of what is happening in AI today, covering:

The different layers of AI adoption.Why “harness” companies can be valuable.Where AI agents are having the most impact on a business.Why open source is the next wave of the AI buildout.The Linux lesson for AI.Why Monti is so excited about the firm’s investment in SambaNova.Do “harness” companies have a moat?Why the moats for many AI companies might surprise you.Why sovereign AI is the next big thing.

Bio

Monti Saroya joined Vista Equity Partners in 2008 and is Co-Head of the Vista Flagship Fund and sits on its Investment Committee.

Additionally, Monti serves as a member of Vista’s Executive Committee, the firm’s governing and decision- making body for matters affecting its overall management and strategic direction, and Vista’s Private Equity Management Committee, the firm’s decision-making body for matters affecting Vista’s overall private equity platform.

Monti is also the Co-Chief Executive Officer of VistaOne, Vista’s evergreen private equity vehicle, and serves on the Investment Committee. Monti helps lead Vista’s artificial intelligence initiatives, driving the firm’s approach to AI adoption through strategic partnerships and the deployment of AI-enabled infrastructure and capabilities across the platform and portfolio ecosystem.

He currently sits on the boards of Acumatica, Allvue Systems, Avalara, Cloud Software Group, Duck Creek, Finastra, Infoblox, Playlist, Smartsheet, Solera, among others. Monti was actively involved in the firm’s investments in Apptio, Cvent (NASDAQ: CVT), Datto (formerly NYSE: MSP), Marketo, PowerSchool (formerly NYSE: PWSC), SumTotal, The ACTIVENetwork, and Transfirst, among others.

Prior to Vista, Monti worked as a Senior Research Analyst for JMP Securities, where he provided research for buy-side clients on public on-demand (SaaS) companies. Monti previously worked as an Associate on the enterprise software/applications team. Before JMP, Monti worked at Siebel Systems in a sales capacity for the CRM On Demand division. Prior to Siebel, Monti worked for Cisco Systems in various operations roles.

Thanks, Monti, for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about AI, enterprise software, and technology transformations.

Show Notes
00:00 Intro: Live from SuperReturn

00:10 Meet Monti Saroya

00:20 Why AI Matters Now

00:41 Career Origins Cisco

00:57 Building Internet 1.0 

01:21 Infrastructure Before Apps

01:25 From Compute to Giants

01:38 AI as New Buildout

01:56 Internet 1.0 Lessons

02:17 Change Slower Then Bigger

02:48 Consumer Adoption First

03:08 What We Underestimate

03:26 AI Like Electricity

03:41 Three Layer AI Stack

04:03 Cloud Providers Layer

04:15 App Layer Value Capture

04:26 What Is the App Layer

04:41 Software Needs Humans

05:25 Agents System of Action

05:53 Where Agents Impact Today

06:20 Engineering Productivity Gains

07:29 Augment Not Replace

07:51 Rearchitecting With AI

08:16 Harnesses Around Intelligence

09:17 Routing Cuts Compute Cost

09:26 Model Choice and Governance

10:55 Enterprise Goals Drive AI

11:51 Workflow Context Is Key

12:47 SambaNova Compute Economics

14:27 Token Subsidies Ending

15:39 Open Source Next Wave

16:02 Linux Lesson for AI

17:03 Deploying Is the Hard Part

17:40 Vista Agentic Factory

18:42 Avoiding Services Trap

19:05 Where Value Gets Created

19:32 NeoCloud Inference Centers

20:21 Harness Companies and Moats

21:05 Enterprise Software Reality Check

21:51 CFOs Demand ROI Metrics

22:44 Word Association Game

23:15 Workflow Specific Future

23:48 Sovereign AI Is Coming

24:24 Wrap Up and Thanks