# The Two Ways to Sell AI: Lighthouse or Landgrab? > Source: > Published: 2026-08-13 10:00:00+00:00 - Lighthouse strategy - A go-to-market approach where a startup wins a small number of high-profile, credible customers whose endorsement travels through an industry and unlocks broader adoption. - Land grab strategy - A go-to-market approach where a startup moves quickly across a broad market by demonstrating clear ROI math, rather than relying on social proof from marquee logos. - ACV - Annual Contract Value — the annualized revenue from a single customer contract, used to evaluate deal size and sales team unit economics. - PLG - Product-Led Growth — a go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives user acquisition and expansion, typically through free trials or self-serve adoption, rather than a direct sales force. - ELD mandate - Electronic Logging Device mandate — a US regulation phased in between 2016 and 2019 requiring commercial trucks to replace paper logbooks with electronic devices that automatically track driving hours and rest periods. - POC - Proof of Concept — a time-limited trial deployment of a product, typically with predefined success criteria, used to validate that a solution works for a specific customer before a full purchase commitment. - Forward deployed - A sales or engineering model where team members are embedded directly with a customer during implementation, providing hands-on support to ensure successful deployment and adoption. - Unit economics - The revenue and cost metrics associated with a single business unit — in SaaS sales, typically the ratio of customer acquisition cost to lifetime value, used to determine whether a deal or sales motion is financially sustainable. - Verticalize - To organize a sales team or strategy around specific industry verticals (e.g., transportation, public sector) rather than a broad horizontal market, enabling targeted messaging and deeper domain expertise. - Sales constitution - As used by Andy McCall, the foundational rules and norms governing a sales organization — including territory alignment, compensation structures, and operating principles — established early to prevent confusion at scale. - Telematics - Technology that combines telecommunications and informatics to monitor and transmit data from vehicles or equipment — including location, speed, fuel usage, and driver behavior — used in fleet management. - ARR - Annual Recurring Revenue — the annualized value of all active subscription contracts, the primary growth metric for SaaS businesses. - Skeuomorphic - Designed to mimic the appearance or function of an older, familiar object. Used here by Joe Schmidt to describe SaaS replacements that replicate existing workflows rather than fundamentally reimagining them — 'changing the button from green to blue.' - Land and expand - A sales model where a company wins a small initial deal with a customer and then grows the relationship by expanding usage, seats, or products over time, rather than attempting a large initial sale. - Buyer exposure - The degree of risk a buyer faces when purchasing a product — encompassing the risk of regulatory consequences, reputational damage, or negative impact on their own customers if the product fails. - Missionary work - In sales, the effort required to educate a market that doesn't yet have a budget or awareness of a problem — as opposed to a more transactional sale where the buyer already understands their need. - ITSM - IT Service Management — the set of policies and practices for managing and delivering IT services within an organization, supported by software platforms like ServiceNow. - Analysis paralysis - The state of over-thinking or over-analyzing a decision to the point of inaction; used here to describe founders who spend too much time deliberating on GTM strategy instead of simply executing.