Overview of Practical Founders Podcast — #201 with Jerry Alderman
Greg Head interviews Jerry Alderman, co-founder and CEO of Valkyrie Solutions, a SaaS company built for key account managers—the people responsible for a company’s most important, highest-value customers. The conversation focuses on how Valkyrie is creating a new category of software for account planning and strategic customer management, why this work has traditionally lived in spreadsheets and PowerPoints, and how AI is accelerating adoption by making these workflows more structured, searchable, and actionable.
What Valkyrie Does
Valkyrie is a key account management platform designed for teams managing strategic enterprise accounts that contribute a disproportionate share of revenue.
Core purpose
- Replace fragmented Excel, PowerPoint, and manual account planning
- Help teams manage:
- account plans
- stakeholder maps
- white space analysis
- SWOT analysis
- financial planning
- initiatives and projects
- deal flow into CRM
Who it’s for
- Key account managers
- Strategic account managers
- National account managers
- Enterprise sales and customer teams managing major accounts
- Industries like:
- healthcare
- pharma
- medtech
- manufacturing
- industrials
Why Key Account Management Is Different from CRM
Jerry argues that key account management is not just “sales with bigger accounts” — it’s a fundamentally different job.
Key distinctions
- It is relationship- and trust-driven
- It requires cross-functional coordination
- It involves creative problem solving and co-creation
- It focuses on mutual business value, not just pipeline tracking
- It often involves managing customers that drive 80% of revenue in B2B businesses
His framing
He describes key account managers as the “general managers” of major customer relationships.
The Workflow Valkyrie Supports
The software centers on the account plan, which Jerry says is built around three core elements:
- Customer goals
- Mutual objectives
- Initiatives/projects that create value
From there, the platform supports dozens of related functions, including:
- stakeholder analysis
- white space analysis
- financial planning
- account execution
- QBR preparation
- deal creation and handoff to CRM
The idea is to make strategic account work more structured and more useful to both the customer and the vendor.
Why the Category Is Growing Now
Jerry says the market is changing quickly for three reasons:
1. AI is raising the stakes
- Companies realize their most important account data is trapped in documents AI can’t use
- They want structured data so AI can analyze patterns, opportunities, and risk
2. COVID changed the sales motion
- Key account managers used to rely on travel and in-person meetings
- During COVID, companies had to rethink how they managed large accounts remotely
- That exposed how little structured data existed around their most strategic customers
3. A new generation expects software
- Younger account leaders expect digital tools
- Older “spreadsheet-and-PowerPoint” methods are losing ground
AI’s Role in Valkyrie
Jerry sees AI as an accelerator, not a replacement.
What AI already helps with
- Faster SWOT analysis
- Faster account plan creation
- Suggesting stakeholders and next steps
- Helping teams spot patterns across top accounts
What AI cannot replace
Jerry’s view is that key account management still requires:
- trust
- relationship management
- judgment
- coordination across people
- creative direction
He says AI can support the work, but not fully take over the role.
Current AI approach
Valkyrie is using a “human-in-the-middle” model:
- AI suggests
- the key account manager reviews and approves
- the manager decides what belongs in the plan
Business Traction and Scale
Jerry shared that Valkyrie is now doing just over $4 million in ARR and is seeing accelerating demand.
Customer pricing
- Typical annual deal size: $100K–$200K
- Larger enterprise deals exist as well
Market size
- Jerry estimates there are 500,000+ key account managers in the U.S.
- The niche is large enough to build a meaningful category company, even if it’s not a broad CRM play
Funding and Why They Raised
After years of bootstrapping, Valkyrie raised over $5 million in practical funding from Golden Section.
Why Jerry chose to raise
- To go faster without giving up control
- To keep a minority-capital structure
- To find a culturally aligned partner
- To invest in both go-to-market and product development
Use of funds
- Sales and marketing
- Advanced technology
- AI features and agents
- More robust infrastructure
- MCP/server-based integrations with other databases
Founder Journey: From Consulting to SaaS
Jerry’s path to Valkyrie came through consulting and customer value work.
Origin story
- Began with customer value and value proposition consulting
- Worked with Owens Corning during the housing crisis
- Built an Access database to track customer value insights
- The customer wanted “more of that,” which became the seed for the software product
Evolution of the company
- Started as SaaS, not consulting
- First real customer era began around 2012
- Product-market clarity sharpened around 2016
- Eventually the team recognized the category as key account management, not just customer value software
What Makes the Product Hard to Sell
Jerry is candid that the biggest challenge has been adoption.
Main hurdles
- The target users are often senior, experienced salespeople
- They are accustomed to doing things their own way
- Many organizations still rely heavily on spreadsheets and PowerPoint
- Large companies often have no budget for “new category” software
- IT can be an obstacle because it defaults to “no”
Why that matters
He says selling a product that companies don’t already know they need is much harder than selling an upgrade to an existing system.
Practical Founder Advice from Jerry
Jerry closes with advice for founders building in uncertain categories.
His key advice
- Take the risk — it’s worth it whether you fail or succeed
- Start with people you trust deeply
- Get a customer involved early
- Don’t build in a vacuum
- Product-market fit is the hardest part
- A trusted feedback mechanism is essential
Biggest lesson
He believes companies should not try to “build it and they will come” unless they already have extremely strong market pull. Instead, founders should start with a real customer collaborator and use that feedback to shape the product.
Key Takeaways
- Key account management is an overlooked but massive B2B category.
- Valkyrie is building software for the strategic, human, and collaborative side of sales.
- The product is replacing spreadsheet-heavy account planning with structured workflows.
- AI is making the category more urgent by exposing how much valuable data is still trapped in documents.
- The company has reached real traction, with over $4M ARR and growing category awareness.
- Jerry’s long game, customer-led product development, and bootstrapped discipline are central to the story.
Notable Quotes
- “Key account management is the last sales role standing.”
- “Sales’ best friend” — how Jerry describes key account management.
- “AI is very much an accelerator.”
- “We’re moving the average.”
- “It’s criminal that we’ve had key account managers use the systems they’ve been using.”