Burn the Playbook

B2B growth used to mean one thing: throw enough bodies and bad data at the wall until something sticks.

SDRs dialing from spreadsheets. Marketing teams guarding “demo request” forms like state secrets.

And then wondering why nothing scales.

Michael Heiberg, CEO of Ocean.io, has a simpler philosophy:

Burn the playbook.

Because when your entire go-to-market strategy is built on 2005 logic, it doesn’t matter how much AI you sprinkle on top… you’re still automating the wrong things.

On The Business Growth Spotlight, Michael explained how Ocean is flipping the script on everything from lead generation to data ownership. And why the future of B2B belongs to the companies brave enough to let go of what used to work.

Michael doesn’t sugarcoat it:

“Eighty percent of SDRs are gone in the next 18 months,” he says, matter-of-factly.

Why? Because the SDR role was a symptom of a broken system,  a human patch for bad data.

“If you introduce intelligent data, you have accuracy. Half of your SDRs disappear overnight.”

Ocean’s technology doesn’t just replace people; it removes the need for cleanup in the first place. Intelligent datasets, vectoring, and microtargeting mean AI can find your exact ICP, start the conversation, and book the meeting-  without a 50-person team reading from the same tired script.

Automation isn’t the enemy.

It’s just that, until now, most of B2B was automating chaos.

“Contact data is cheap,” Michael says. “Intelligent data - data in context - isn’t.”

Ocean’s advantage lies in normalization. Every company and person in its database is represented mathematically, a kind of image recognition for business.

Feed in your best customer, and Ocean finds every other company that behaves like it.

Precision targeting, not guesswork.

“Why would I care about intent or contact data before I even know who my audience is?”

It’s the kind of statement that makes marketers clutch their dashboards.

But he’s right. The market has shifted from lead generation to accurate targeting, and Ocean is quietly building the infrastructure for that shift.

At one point, Michael made a move that most CEOs wouldn’t dare: he blew up traditional marketing.

No ad spend. No gated content. No “thought leadership” echo chamber.

Instead, Ocean turned outward… toward the people actually shaping B2B. Real operators. Builders. Influencers with an audience that trusts them because they’ve earned it.

Michael gave them access to the platform, told them to play with it, and let curiosity do the rest.

It worked. According to him, Ocean now sees 97% organic traffic. No paid campaigns. No funnels. Just genuine attention from people who care about what the product can do, not how it’s marketed.

Ocean didn’t kill marketing. It just rebuilt it from scratch.

Inspired by OpenAI, Ocean stripped away the last sacred cow of SaaS: gated demos.

“We put the entire backend on the landing page,” Michael says. “No forms. No friction. Just type in your best customer and see your lookalikes instantly.”

The result was immediate.

Prospects understood the value in seconds… no sales call required.

“Marketing wants your dog’s name and your mother’s birthday before you can try the product. It’s ridiculous. If people see the value, they’ll engage.”

Ocean’s radical transparency flipped the old funnel inside out. Instead of explaining why their product is different, they just show it.

When asked about fear around AI replacing jobs, Michael didn’t bother with corporate empathy.

“When we went from coal to diesel, the guy shoveling coal became obsolete. Why do people think AI will be different?”

He’s not wrong.

The shift is already happening. SDRs, RevOps, even traditional marketing roles are morphing into GTM engineers - builders of automated systems that sell themselves.

Ocean’s normalized data is what makes that automation possible. And it’s already embedded in over 50 applications, powering AI SDRs, data enrichment tools, and next-generation CRM layers.

This isn’t hype. It’s infrastructure.

Ocean’s next act is aimed straight at the CRMs of the world.

Michael calls it “intelligent layering” - building AI systems that sit on top of traditional CRM data, clustering closed-won deals, dynamically scoring leads, and surfacing unseen opportunities.

“Anyone who’s used HubSpot’s lead scoring knows how bad it can be,” he says. “We’re building something that actually learns.”

The mission hasn’t changed: replace noise with precision.

Ocean isn’t trying to be another application.

They’re building the engine that will power all of them.

Michael Heiberg doesn’t want to fix B2B sales.

He wants to burn it down and start over.

No SDR armies. No gated demos. No contact lists masquerading as intelligence.

Just smart data, instant insight, and a belief that if you’re still running the old playbook, you’re already behind.

As Michael put it best:

“Either embrace the change… or get rolled over.”