In this episode of The Revenue Room™, host Heather Holst-Knudsen welcomes back Matt Yorke, CEO of The Channel Company (parent of CRN and the leading platform for the global IT channel), for his third appearance on the show. Since his standout session at RevvedUP, Matt has accelerated The Channel Company's AI transformation from a handful of pilots to 27 deployed agents, a governance-first operating model, and a public mandate to become an AI-native company within two years. Matt shares candidly what's worked, what flopped, and how he's now leveraging nearly 50 years of proprietary data—awards entries, behavioral data, campaign data, and 61 annual research studies—to execute a "once-in-a-lifetime pivot" into a predictive growth platform for the channel.

In his third appearance on The Revenue Room™ Podcast, Matt Yorke, CEO of The Channel Company and parent of CRN, explains why incumbents lost ground the last time technology rewrote B2B media and why he is running the opposite play now. With 27 AI agents deployed and a plan to reach insights at scale by early next year, The Channel Company is turning content, awards, research, and partner data into a platform that matches vendor demand to the partners best suited to serve it. This post distills his approach into five management moves, a 90-day focus plan, and the questions every media, events, and data CEO should take to their leadership team.

After more than three decades building specialized media brands serving the life sciences industry, from drug discovery through commercial manufacturing, Jon took on private equity backing from Latticework Capital Management in late 2024 and hasn't slowed down since: building a powerhouse board with operators like Doug Emslie, Sean Griffey, and Don Hawk, and closing two acquisitions in roughly 30 days, including Life Science Networks (PharmaSource, CDMO Live, External Manufacturing Leaders) and the Precision Medicine World Conference. Jon shares his "first do no harm" integration philosophy, why he acquires founders rather than just products, and how a 30-year "follow your reader" discipline became the foundation for a purchase-intent data strategy in the AI era.