Keynotes, panels, podcasts.
I talk about the parts of scaling software that the playbooks leave out. Operator's view, real numbers, no theory. Everything below is ready to use for event programs and press.
What I speak about
Enterprise AI video: the wrong race
Every AI video tool is competing on visuals. The enterprise buyer is not. What actually moves conversion, from 50,000+ personalized videos shipped to Fortune 100 audiences.
Zero to $1B ARR inside a hardware company
How Cisco built CX Cloud from nothing to $250M in 2.5 years and past $1B after. The retraining of 20,000 sellers mattered more than the platform.
The turnaround CEO
Taking over a 115-person, four-office, three-country AI company that had never had a profitable quarter. What to cut, what to keep, and how to get to an exit.
Agentic AI in education and L&D
Twenty years across K-12, higher ed, government education systems, and enterprise L&D. Why AI is the first wave to change the economics of content, what governance has to look like, and what it still does not fix. Panelist, "Agentic AI in US Higher Education," California Community Colleges Future Summit 2026.
Go-to-market for pre-revenue AI companies
What I see across a venture portfolio: the five questions to answer before quoting a price, and the kill rules that save founders a year.
Talks, podcasts, and press, 2006 to today
Bios
Zak Zielezinski is Founder and CEO of GLX Studio, an enterprise AI video personalization platform, and Operating Partner at Outhink Venture Studio. He has built six ventures, led three through acquisition, and took Cisco's CX Cloud from zero to $1B+ ARR.
Zak Zielezinski is an enterprise software operator with 20 years of building and scaling SaaS and AI companies. He is Founder and CEO of GLX Studio, an applied-AI platform whose agent workflows turn source documents into personalized, multilingual video in production for Fortune 100 customers, and Operating Partner at Outhink Venture Studio, advising portfolio CEOs and boards. At Cisco he built and led a 100-person organization that scaled CX Cloud from zero to $250M ARR in 2.5 years, stood up the company's AI governance program, and won the 2021 TSIA STAR Award. He previously served as CEO of Declara, an AI learning platform serving government education systems and universities on five continents, leading it to its first profitable quarter and through acquisition.
Zak Zielezinski builds and scales enterprise software businesses. Over 20 years he has founded or led six ventures, three of which were acquired, and built one business line from zero past $1B in annual recurring revenue.
He is Founder and CEO of GLX Studio, an enterprise AI video personalization platform that turns documents, decks, and prompts into finished video at scale. Fortune 100 customers use it to drive 4x conversion lifts and millions in incremental revenue. He is also Operating Partner at Outhink Venture Studio, working directly with portfolio company CEOs and boards on strategy, product-market fit, and revenue growth.
From 2020 to 2022 Zak led Adoption and Growth, then Insights and Innovation, for Cisco's Customer Experience organization, where his team built Cisco's first cloud-native AI platforms and retrained 20,000+ sellers to sell subscriptions. The work won the 2021 TSIA STAR Award. Earlier he was CEO of Declara, a VC-backed AI SaaS company, delivering its first profitable quarter and leading it through acquisition.
He lives in Menlo Park, California.
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