Roundtable Chapter 1 - The One Where the Algorithm Couldn't Sell Itself

The One Where the Algorithm Couldn’t Sell Itself

Ben Trombold

Published on: January 5th, 2026

I’d been up since four. The morning sun was just starting to burn off the morning fog, but for me, Claire Adams, the numbers on my smudged laptop screen were already crystal clear. The Q3 report from my CRO, David Kincaid, had landed in my inbox a few hours before the one from SensiTech’s PR team.

They told the same story, just in a different language. David’s report spoke of pipeline contraction and declining morale. The press release was a press release, all glossy photos and confident quotes, but its subtext was pure threat. SensiTech’s new wearable diagnostic, ‘Nexus,’ was officially entering clinical trials. It wasn’t just a new product; it was a new front in a war we were starting to lose.

For the past year, our own platform’s growth had flatlined, and as the CEO, I had been under significant pressure, not only from the board but from the shareholders, too. My VP of Software, Javier Vargas, kept telling me we were building a better house, but the market was only buying condos. Our competitors were shipping apps, cloud dashboards, and data-driven insights. They were building ecosystems. We were still just making world-class hardware with a really good algorithm buried inside.

My team arrived at 8:00 sharp, no small feat for a surprise meeting. It wasn’t a formal boardroom huddle; it was just my executive team, the five of us in my office. On the table was a copy of the SensiTech press release, a printout of our revenue projections, and a half-eaten box of donuts no one dared to touch.

Nia Washington, our VP of Quality & Regulatory, was flipping through the press release.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” I began, looking around the room from Omari, our CTO, to Priya, our CFO, and then to David and Nia. “This is an existential threat. This isn’t just about SensiTech. This is about whether we’re a relevant company five years from now.”

Priya was the first to speak, her voice calm and clipped. “The board wants to know what we’re doing about the stock price. The market’s reaction to our Q3 report was… anemic. SensiTech’s announcement is going to make it worse.” She tapped the revenue projection report. “If we can’t compete on value, we’ll have to compete on price. We’re already seeing downward pressure. We have become a budget option.”

Omari leaned back in his chair, a familiar smirk on his face. “With all due respect, Priya, the Nexus is a non-threat. It’s vaporware. They’ve got a slick marketing deck and a press release. Our algorithm, the core of our platform, still outperforms theirs by a significant margin. We have the better tech. That’s an objective fact.”

He was brilliant. Everyone knew it. He’d built a predictive analytics engine that was still the envy of the industry. It was so good, he believed it was all that mattered.

This was the old argument. David had been making a different case for months. “Technical superiority doesn’t sell itself, Omari. You can have the world’s best algorithm, but if it’s a black box, a customer doesn’t care.” David’s voice was tired, full of a frustration that had been building for the better part of a year. “SensiTech isn’t selling a device. They’re selling insights. They’re providing a dashboard, a patient-facing app, and a way to monetize their data. Our sales team is out there trying to sell our box. Their reps are selling a digital partner.”

Omari looked at him, confused. “The data is ours. We control it. We’re not giving it away for free to every customer with a laptop.”

“No,” David said, his voice rising, “you’re not giving it to them at all. And that’s the problem. Their model is all about the digital ecosystem, about making the device the hub, not the entire experience. They are generating more ROI from their data than we are. And they’re turning that into market share. We’ve been losing ground for 12 straight months. My team’s morale is shot. They’re fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.”

Priya cut in, her hands clasped tightly. “He’s right. When you present our quarterly earnings to the board, you have to talk about future value. I can’t quantify the ‘superiority’ of an algorithm. I can quantify what a digital subscription service looks like. I can tell them what the lifetime value of a customer is when they’re locked into a cloud platform. We’re leaving millions on the table. And we’re going to lose the board’s confidence if we don’t show a path forward.”

The room went silent. The weight of their arguments, technical superiority, financial reality, and market pressure hung in the air. This wasn’t an audit surprise or a bug in the code. It was a slow-motion car crash that had finally been made visible by a single press release.

“We’re a medical device company with no digital strategy,” I said, finally breaking the silence. “Omari, your algorithm is the engine. But we’ve been trying to sell the engine without a car. We have to start thinking differently.”

I pulled up a slide on my monitor, one Javier had sent me months ago. It was a simple diagram, a web of interconnected applications, cloud services, and APIs. Our current structure was a straight line. SensiTech’s was a network.

“This is where we need to be,” I said, pointing to the diagram. “This is how you get ROI from data. This is how you change the conversation from the device to the ecosystem. I don’t care how good the algorithm is if no one is using it. This is more than a press release. It’s a wake-up call. We have a lot of work to do.”