Ballast
A podcast on enterprise AI Hosted by Hans Long-form · unscripted

Ballast

The enterprise AI decisions CIOs are actually making, while everything else moves.

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The premise

Ballast is the weight below the waterline that keeps a ship upright when everything above it is moving.

Enterprise AI has plenty of sail. This show is about the weight: the budgets, the infrastructure that makes an enterprise run, and now the AI controls and governance that decide whether any of it holds.

Guests have run technology at
  • Fortune 500 Co.
  • Global Manufacturer
  • Regional Bank
  • Your company
What we talk about

The questions in every CIO's staff meeting right now.

01Agents

Agentic AI in the enterprise

Where agents are shipping real work, where they're demos, and who's accountable when one goes sideways.

02Build / Buy

Build vs. buy in the AI era

The model layer commoditized. What do you own, and what do you rent from a vendor rebuilding its roadmap quarterly?

03Budget

AI budgets and ROI

Where the money comes from, what the CFO wants to see, and the honest payback math on the first wave.

04Governance

Security and governance

Data boundaries, model risk, shadow AI, and the policies that survive contact with an actual sales team.

05SaaS

The future of enterprise SaaS

Seat pricing, vendor sprawl, consolidation, and whether your incumbents are a platform or a liability.

06Org

Leading tech teams through AI

Org design, skills, hiring profiles, and keeping senior engineers engaged when the job changes under them.

Log

Latest conversations.

About the host

Hosted by Hans.

A GTM strategy leader in enterprise B2B SaaS who has spent the better part of a decade on the other side of the table from CIOs and CFOs: selling, building teams, and watching which technology decisions actually hold up a year later. He started Ballast because the best conversations about enterprise AI were happening off the record.

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Be a guest

Come tell us what actually happened.

We talk with CIOs and tech leaders who are making real AI decisions.

  • 0145–60 minutes, remote, recorded once. No prep deck required.
  • 02You review before anything ships. Off the record stays off the record.
  • 03Operators only. If your title has "evangelist" in it, we'll pass.