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Justin Etkin

Justin Etkin works with Tropic and writes about software procurement, vendor negotiations, market pricing, and managing AI costs.

7.8K followersProcurementAI cost managementBased on 11 posts · latest Oct 2026
LinkedIn

At a glance

Justin Etkin is most useful for procurement and AI cost arguments backed by pricing evidence and negotiation examples.

Best for

A B2B SaaS procurement platform planning co-marketing webinars or authored pieces on benchmarking and negotiation.

Not for

A developer platform or cloud vendor seeking hands-on engineering cost-reduction walkthroughs, code, or labs.

Key takeaways

  • Vendors price each customer, not the market.
  • Snyk was quoted $30 per seat on renewal against a $10 market rate.
  • Carta found an incremental 21% savings after a vendor stopped moving.

Check first: Ask for audience survey results or demographics covering target regions, seniority, and recent engagement figures.

Main ideas
Vendors price each customer, not the market · Negotiation judgment means knowing when to push and when to stop · AI spending needs procurement discipline, not a yearly renewal calendar
Audience
7,754 LinkedIn followers
Read first
Software vendors don't have a price. They have a price for you.
Ways to work together
Co-hosted webinar or live session · Customer-story or benchmark feature · Event or community collaboration
Sources for this section

What they are known for

Justin Etkin writes about software procurement, vendor negotiations, and the changing costs of buying AI.

  • Their posts make a recurring argument: buyers need current market data to judge whether a vendor has room to move—and when a price is already fair.
  • They also argue that procurement should connect engineering’s AI usage, finance’s forecasts, and vendor pricing as costs change more quickly than traditional software renewals.

Etkin makes procurement decisions concrete with customer examples and practical distinctions.

  • In posts about Carta and Snyk, the point isn’t simply to negotiate harder: benchmark data can show when to change tactics, when to stop, and where a quoted price differs from the market.
  • In writing about AI, they apply the same focus on changing costs to token usage, forecasts, and gross margins.
  • A lighter conference post makes the case for proprietary market data as software becomes easier to commoditize.
  • Follow this work for specific arguments about pricing evidence and procurement’s role, not broad coverage of technology or AI.
Sources for this section

Ideas and priorities

Justin Etkin's recurring argument is that software and AI buying are not one-time renewal events.

Read more

Vendors price each customer differently, benchmark data now beats network memory, and procurement should own a continuous view of usage, forecast, and price.

  • The posts also stress judgment over pure pressure: knowing when a vendor is genuinely maxed out and when the buyer simply cannot see further.
  • A newer thread extends the case from software renewals to AI, where token spend and model pricing move fast enough to hit gross margin and require procurement, finance, and engineering to work from one picture.
  • Another priority is the strategic value of proprietary market data as AI commoditizes software.

Vendors price each customer, not the market

Justin Etkin argues that software vendors do not have one public price; they have a price for each customer.

Read more

Across the spend Tropic sees, one vendor's pricing can swing 200% from one customer to the next.

  • A buyer's network may reveal what someone paid years ago, but not what the market is paying now.
  • Chris Siwekk, who runs procurement at Snyk, says the world has changed: vendors repackage SKUs and add AI to renewals.

Snyk was quoted $30 per seat on a renewal, when the market rate was $10. The team pulled benchmark data, used it in negotiations, and got the price down.

Read original

Negotiation judgment means knowing when to push and when to stop

Justin Etkin separates two situations buyers often treat the same way: a vendor that has genuinely hit its limit, and a buyer that has only reached the edge of what it can see.

Read more

Pushing in the first case wastes time and goodwill.

  • Not pushing in the second leaves money on the table.
  • Benchmark data can also show when to stop: at Snyk, procurement uses it to decide when a deal is already priced fairly.
  • An hour spent squeezing that deal is an hour not spent on a vendor quoting three times the market rate.

Carta's procurement team had tried several tactics, but the vendor stopped moving.

  • Using Tropic's intelligence, the team concluded the vendor was digging in rather than out of leverage.
  • It shifted approach and found an incremental 21% savings.
  • Taylor Urbany, Carta's Head of Procurement, says capacity is finite and that Tropic's intelligence, technology, and experts help the team make stronger decisions across its supplier portfolio.

Read original · Original 2

AI spending needs procurement discipline, not a yearly renewal calendar

Justin Etkin argues that buying AI has more in common with buying steel than with buying software.

Read more

Software has run on a two-to-three-year renewal cycle; AI offers no such breathing room.

  • Token spend moves daily, pricing changes every few months, and a model can be deprecated before the contract ends.
  • Because tokens land in COGS, a price change from OpenAI or Anthropic can show up in gross margin, bringing finance into the room.
  • Etkin reduces the recurring job to three questions: what are we consuming, what will we consume next quarter, and what should we be paying.

Justin Etkin says they have heard from over 20 customers that a new agent shipped by one engineering team can chew through an annual commit in three months. A session with James Meads and Michael Shields was promoted under the title How to Run Procurement When the Deal Is Never Closed.

Read original

Procurement should connect usage, forecast, and price

Justin Etkin's priority is for engineering to own usage, finance to own the forecast, and procurement to own the price, but almost nobody connects the three.

Read more

Procurement already knows the vendors, the contracts, and where pricing is heading, positioning it to become the team finance and engineering call first whenever AI costs move. That's a larger role than a renewal calendar ever gave procurement.

In the AI procurement post, Justin Etkin lays out a three-question framework and argues procurement is best positioned to answer it by connecting consumption, next-quarter demand, and price.

This extends the benchmarking argument from software renewals to AI, where the buying cycle is continuous rather than annual.

Read original

Benchmarking works best as an always-on process

Justin Etkin highlights procurement systems that continuously check themselves against market intelligence and internal standards, rather than looking at data once before a negotiation.

Read more

They describe Collibra as having built this kind of system so the team can be proactive and avoid overpaying. At Snyk, benchmarking became a standard step in every purchase, and teams now bring deals to procurement because an outside number can confirm or challenge the proposed price.

Justin Etkin promoted a vendor negotiations webinar with Collibra's procurement team and Michael Shields, framing it around using pricing data as real leverage, not something glanced at before a meeting.

Read original · Original 2

Proprietary data is the strategic asset as AI commoditizes software

Justin Etkin argues that it's a good time to offer a product built on a proprietary data asset.

Read more

As AI commoditizes software more broadly, demand for Tropic's market intelligence is at a high point. It's a strategic bet on the data layer rather than on software features alone.

A DPW Amsterdam wrap-up noted the density of procurement practitioners around Amsterdam and said demand for Tropic's market intelligence is at an all-time high because AI is commoditizing software.

Read original

Sources for this section

Start with their work

Software vendors don't have a price. They have a price for you.

Answers a newcomer's first question — what does this person actually argue? — in one post: pricing is customer-specific, and benchmark data now beats network anecdotes.

Read more

This is Justin Etkin's clearest statement of the problem they work on.

  • The example is Snyk, which was quoted $30 per seat on a renewal against a $10 market rate; across the spend Tropic sees, that vendor's pricing swings 200% between customers.
  • Snyk's procurement lead, Chris Siwekk, argues that an experienced negotiator with a good network is no longer enough: vendors repackage SKUs and add AI to renewals, so a contact's deal from two years ago says little about today's market.
  • Snyk's team pulled a benchmark, used it in the negotiation, and got the price down.
  • They also note the other half of the discipline: the same data tells you when a deal is already priced fairly and it's time to stop pushing.

For brands planning a campaign

Gives a benchmark-data business a ready-made framing and counterargument to network-based negotiation advice, suited to a co-authored piece or webinar hook.

Carta found 21% more savings after the vendor stopped moving

Shows the benchmark argument at work in a real deal, including the judgment call about when to stop negotiating.

Read more

A case narrative built around one negotiation decision.

  • Carta's procurement team had tried several tactics mid-negotiation, and the vendor had stopped moving.
  • Justin Etkin separates two situations buyers often treat the same way: a vendor who has genuinely hit a limit, and a buyer who has simply reached the edge of what they can see.
  • Pushing in the first case wastes time and goodwill; not pushing in the second leaves money on the table.
  • Using Tropic's intelligence, the team concluded the vendor was digging in rather than out of leverage, shifted approach, and found an incremental 21% savings.
  • Taylor Urbany, Carta's Head of Procurement, is quoted on finite team capacity and using outside intelligence and experts to negotiate across a supplier portfolio.

For brands planning a campaign

A concrete customer story for a cost-management campaign, with a quotable customer and a measurable result.

Buying AI has more in common with buying steel than buying software

The clearest entry point to the AI-cost side of the work: it explains why AI procurement behaves differently and what role Justin Etkin thinks procurement should play.

Read more

Software's two-to-three-year renewal rhythm doesn't fit AI.

  • Token spend moves daily, pricing changes every few months, and a model can be deprecated before a contract ends; Justin Etkin says they have heard from over 20 customers that a new agent can consume an annual commit in three months.
  • Because tokens land in COGS, a price change from OpenAI or Anthropic shows up in gross margin, bringing finance into the room.
  • The post reduces the job to three recurring questions — what are we consuming, what will we consume next quarter, and what should we be paying? — and observes that engineering owns usage, finance owns the forecast, and procurement owns the price, with almost nobody connecting the three.
  • They argue procurement is best positioned to connect them.
  • The post promotes an October 8 session with James Meads and Michael Shields.

For brands planning a campaign

A strong hook for an AI and software cost-management brief: procurement as the connective function across usage, forecast, and price. A webinar format is already in use.

Vendor negotiations webinar with Collibra

Shows the teaching and community side of the work, and reiterates the idea that benchmarking should be continuous, not a pre-meeting ritual.

Read more

A webinar announcement for a September 23 session on vendor negotiations with Collibra's procurement team and Michael Shields.

  • Justin Etkin highlights Collibra's procurement system, which continuously checks itself against market intelligence and internal standards so the team can act proactively rather than react at renewal.
  • The session focuses on using pricing data as real leverage during negotiation, not just glancing at it beforehand.

For brands planning a campaign

Shows Justin Etkin co-presenting with customer procurement teams, offering a practical template for a co-marketing webinar with a procurement platform.

DPW Amsterdam takeaways

A lighter, more situational post showing how Justin Etkin frames the strategic bet on proprietary data and engages with the broader procurement community.

Read more

A conference wrap-up with three observations: a particular piece of conference swag was absent in Europe; procurement practitioners were out in force around Amsterdam; and now is a good time to sell a product built on a proprietary data asset because AI is commoditizing software while demand for Tropic's market intelligence is at a high point.

For brands planning a campaign

Supports a data-asset differentiation angle, though it applies less directly to a negotiation or cost-management brief than the other four posts.

Sources for this section

Topics and approach

Vendor pricing is customer-specific

Justin Etkin argues that software vendors do not have one public price; they have a price for each customer.

Read more

In one example, Snyk was quoted $30 per seat on renewal while the market rate was $10.

  • Using Tropic's spend data, they say the vendor's pricing swings 200% from one customer to the next.
  • The practical move is to pull benchmark data before negotiating rather than rely on what peers paid years ago.

Customer case study with a named procurement lead and a specific pricing gap.

For brands planning a campaign

A procurement platform can build benchmark-first negotiation content around this idea. A webinar or authored piece can show buyers how to find the market price for a renewal before accepting a vendor quote.

Examples: Source 1

Negotiation judgment: when to push and when to stop

Justin Etkin describes two outcomes from using market intelligence.

Read more

With Carta, the vendor had stopped moving; the team used Tropic's intelligence to determine the vendor was digging in rather than out of leverage, shifted approach, and found 21% additional savings. With Snyk, procurement lead Chris Siwekk uses benchmarks to decide when not to push, because some deals are already priced fairly.

Compares a hard negotiation win with a disciplined stop decision.

The benchmark is not only a tool for extracting more; it can also justify spending no more time on a fairly priced deal.

For brands planning a campaign

This gives a brand a nuanced content angle: procurement technology helps teams allocate negotiation effort as well as reduce spend. A co-marketing piece can feature both finding hidden savings and knowing when to stop.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

AI spend behaves like a commodity

Justin Etkin writes that buying AI has more in common with buying steel than buying software.

Read more

Token spend moves daily, pricing changes every few months, and a model can be deprecated before the contract ends.

  • One engineering team can launch a new agent and consume an annual commit in three months.
  • The questions are what the team is consuming, what it will consume next quarter, and what it should be paying.

Uses a commodity-procurement analogy to explain why AI needs continuous forecasting and price monitoring.

For brands planning a campaign

A B2B SaaS procurement platform can position AI cost management as an operational discipline, not a renewal event. Content can target procurement, finance, and engineering leaders who need a shared view of token consumption and COGS impact.

Examples: Source 1

Procurement owns the AI cost conversation

Justin Etkin argues that engineering owns usage, finance owns the forecast, and procurement owns the price, but almost nobody connects the three.

Read more

Procurement already knows vendors, contracts, and pricing direction, so it is positioned to become the team finance and engineering call first when AI costs move. They also note CFOs care because model price changes from OpenAI or Anthropic show up in gross margin when AI is built into a product.

For brands planning a campaign

A platform can publish content aimed at elevating procurement's role in AI cost governance. A webinar or report could use the three-question framework to help teams align usage, forecast, and price.

Examples: Source 1

Embedding benchmarks into procurement process

Justin Etkin highlights Collibra's procurement system, which continuously checks itself against market intelligence and internal standards so the team is proactive rather than reactive.

Read more

At Snyk, benchmarking became a standard step in every purchase, and teams now bring deals to procurement because an outside number can confirm or challenge the proposed price.

Process example rather than a one-off negotiation story.

For brands planning a campaign

A procurement platform can market workflow integration and repeatable benchmarks. Content can show how a benchmark step changes internal behavior and helps procurement earn trust across teams.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Practitioner community and event formats

Etkin's posts mix case studies with event takeaways and webinar promotion.

Read more

At DPW Amsterdam, they noted a high concentration of procurement practitioners and said demand for Tropic's market intelligence is at an all-time high as AI commoditizes software. They also promoted a vendor negotiations webinar with Collibra's procurement team alongside Michael Shields.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand can evaluate Etkin for live webinars, event recaps, and practitioner-facing case-study content. The format fits a co-marketing webinar or authored piece that pairs Tropic's market data with a customer or community voice.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Sources for this section

Brands and businesses

Justin Etkin’s posts promote Tropic’s procurement intelligence and discuss customer examples and procurement events.

Read more

Ask about their formal role at Tropic and which named companies are clients.

Tropic

Disclosed partnership

Etkin discusses Tropic’s procurement intelligence, market benchmarks, and AI cost management, and promotes a Tropic webinar.

Read more

Ask about their formal relationship with Tropic.

View example

Carta

Disclosed partnership

A post describes a negotiation involving Carta’s procurement team and Tropic’s intelligence, including a Carta leader’s account of the partnership with Tropic.

Read more

Ask whether Carta has a separate relationship with Etkin.

View example

Snyk

Mention

Etkin discusses Snyk’s use of pricing benchmarks in a procurement negotiation.

Read more

Ask whether Snyk has a commercial relationship with them.

View example

Sources for this section

Topics and similar creators

Justin Etkin's posts offer a practical guide to software and AI procurement.

Read more

Start with the customer examples — Snyk on seat pricing and Carta on a deal that looked maxed out — then read the argument that token spend behaves more like a commodity than annual software.

  • The webinar and event posts bring the same ideas into practitioner conversations.
  • The through-line is benchmarking as an always-on habit and procurement as the function connecting usage, forecast, and price.
  • Readers seeking adjacent perspectives can compare the finance-operator view, the company-building view, and the scaled-process view in the similar creators.
Procurement Vendor negotiation Software pricing AI cost management Procurement benchmarking SaaS spend management Procurement strategy LinkedIn posts Case-study commentary Webinars and events Procurement leaders Finance leaders B2B SaaS buyers

David Campbell

Campbell's posts also sit at the intersection of AI, procurement, and software spend.

Read more

One announces an event about AI's impact on software pricing, headcount planning, and ROI; another discusses a shift toward an AI-powered procurement solution.

Campbell writes from a company-building and workforce-decision angle, covering a reduction in force, automation versus hiring, and event hosting. Etkin focuses on buyer-side negotiation, benchmark data, and procurement's role in connecting usage, forecast, and price.

Read original · Original 2

Russell Lester

Lester also interprets vendor pricing changes for finance and procurement audiences.

Read more

The Stripe authorization-boost post asks whether a bundle is better for buyers or revenue protection, while the AI-spend post describes a bill swinging from $2K to $20K a month.

Lester takes the CFO and finance-operator view, including product launches for AI consumption management and redundancy analysis. Etkin focuses on procurement-led benchmarking and negotiation, with customer stories about savings and when to stop pushing.

Read original · Original 2

Matt Barnard

Barnard also addresses AI cost oversight and the process gap between a team needing a tool and the company paying for it, describing a system that ties AI spend to teams and commitments in real time.

Read more

Barnard focuses on finance leadership and internal workflow design at different company scales, from 50-person bottlenecks to 500-person approval failures. Etkin focuses on external vendor pricing, market benchmarks, and procurement as the cross-functional owner of the AI cost conversation.

Read original · Original 2

Sources for this section

Audience

Justin Etkin's posts cover software pricing benchmarks, vendor negotiation, and AI token cost management inside procurement—strong subject matter for a B2B SaaS procurement platform planning a co-marketing webinar or authored piece on benchmarking and negotiation.

Read more

LinkedIn currently shows 7,754 followers, indicating reach but not whether they are procurement or finance decision-makers. Before committing, ask Etkin for audience survey results or a platform demographics report covering the campaign's target regions and seniority levels, plus recent engagement figures for comparable post or webinar formats.

LinkedIn followers

7,754

LinkedIn profile justintropic · 2026-10-08

Sources for this section

Partnership options

Justin Etkin's public partnership work appears through Tropic's procurement content: co-hosted webinars and live sessions with procurement teams and community organizers, plus customer-story features built around disclosed negotiation outcomes.

Read more

For a B2B SaaS procurement platform seeking a practitioner voice on AI and software vendor cost management, practical formats include a co-marketing webinar or authored piece with Justin Etkin and a named procurement counterpart, or a case-study feature with a real benchmark and negotiation result. Ask for an official sponsor policy, rate card, or partnership inquiry route.

Co-hosted webinar or live session

Buyer requirement

Name a procurement-team counterpart and choose a concrete topic, such as vendor negotiations, benchmarking, or deals that never close.

  • Justin Etkin has appeared with Collibra's procurement team and Michael Shields in a KonnectHouse-run webinar, and with James Meads and Michael Shields in a session on running procurement when the deal is never closed.
  • Be ready to co-present and share the registration route.

Customer-story or benchmark feature

Buyer requirement

Bring in a procurement lead who can discuss a specific negotiation outcome and supporting numbers.

  • The reviewed examples include Carta's 21% incremental savings after a vendor stopped moving, and Snyk's benchmark comparison, which found a $30-per-seat renewal quote against a $10 market rate.
  • Bring an authentic example and permission to cite it.

Event or community collaboration

Buyer requirement

Bring access to a procurement audience through a conference or community group.

  • Justin Etkin's posts point to DPW Amsterdam and a webinar hosted by KonnectHouse as settings for this kind of content.
  • Identify the event or community channel and a focused practitioner topic.
Sources for this section

Campaign fit

A campaign to shortlist

Good fit: a B2B SaaS procurement platform seeking a practitioner voice on AI and software vendor cost management, delivered as a co-marketing webinar or an authored piece on benchmarking and negotiation strategy.

Read more

Justin Etkin makes the case with named negotiation outcomes, not general commentary.

  • One post reports that Snyk was quoted $30 per seat on a renewal against a $10 market rate, and that the vendor's pricing swings about 200% between customers in the spend they can see.
  • Another describes Carta's procurement team finding an incremental 21% savings after a vendor stopped moving, with Carta's Head of Procurement quoted on the limits of internal team capacity.
  • Both stories name the procurement lead involved, giving a benchmarking product useful raw material.
  • The AI-cost material offers a second, less crowded track: buying AI behaves more like buying a commodity than buying software, because token spend moves daily, pricing changes every few months, and a model can be deprecated inside a contract term, while tokens land in COGS and show up in gross margin.
  • Etkin boils that down to three questions a platform can build content around: what are we consuming, what will we consume next quarter, and what should we be paying.
  • The co-marketing format is already demonstrated in their practice, through a September 23 webinar on vendor negotiations with Collibra's procurement team alongside Michael Shields, and an October 8 session on running procurement when the deal is never closed with James Meads and Michael Shields.
  • The fit is strongest when the platform supplies pricing data and a customer willing to go on record, while Etkin supplies the practitioner framing, negotiation judgment, and teaching voice.
  • Before committing to webinar promotion or paid distribution, ask for audience composition data: LinkedIn shows 7,754 followers, but no platform demographics or engagement data are published in the posts here.

When to choose a specialist

Poor fit: a developer platform or cloud infrastructure vendor seeking an engineering-level cost-reduction series, with hands-on walkthroughs of cutting inference and cloud spend inside running code, repository examples, and a labs component for developers and platform engineers.

Read more

Etkin treats AI cost as a buyer and governance problem, not an implementation problem.

  • The closest post to the technical side argues that engineering owns usage, finance owns the forecast, and procurement owns the price, and that procurement is positioned to connect the three.
  • It makes a case for putting procurement in the room, not for teaching engineers how to tune a workload.
  • The posts include no code, benchmark harness, architectural teardown of a model or platform, or indication of a developer-facing audience.
  • A brand buying hands-on walkthroughs, repository examples, and labs for developers and platform engineers needs implementation credibility; a procurement-practitioner voice would have to be carried by the vendor's own engineers, defeating the purpose of the partnership.
  • The series also mismatches the audience reflected in the posts, which are written for procurement, finance, and vendor-management readers.
  • Ask for audience composition data before assuming developer reach.
  • The partnership formats shown in the posts are co-hosted sessions, customer-story features, and event or community collaborations; none is a technical tutorial series or training curriculum.
  • If hands-on walkthroughs, repository examples, and labs are the campaign, the platform should source an engineer who publishes build-level work and treat Etkin as an optional voice on the buying side rather than as the creator leading it.
A worked campaign example

Campaign angle for the good-fit brief: a joint webinar plus an anchored authored piece called "The price they gave you," built on the claim that a vendor's renewal quote is a starting position rather than a market rate.

  • The webinar runs 45 minutes: Etkin opens with the distinction between a vendor who has genuinely hit a limit and a buyer who has only reached the edge of what they can see, then walks one negotiation in slow motion, then hands the audience a repeatable pre-renewal routine.
  • The authored piece takes the same structure in text so it can be forwarded inside a buying team.

Segment one, the case, uses the examples already in Etkin's material: the Snyk renewal quoted at $30 per seat against a $10 market rate, and the Carta deal where the vendor had stopped moving and outside intelligence showed the vendor was digging in rather than out of leverage, after which the team found 21% more savings. Attribute the numbers to those procurement teams as reported, and get written permission before naming either company; an anonymized version, "a security vendor" and "a fintech cap-table provider," works if permission is slow.

Segment two, the AI half, is where the platform's data carries the session.

  • Panel includes Etkin, one customer procurement lead, and a platform analyst.
  • The argument: buying AI behaves like buying steel, because token spend moves daily, model pricing changes within a contract term, and a model can be deprecated before renewal.
  • Tokens land in COGS, so a price change from a model provider lands in gross margin.
  • Panelists answer the three questions Etkin uses, what are we consuming, what will we consume next quarter, what should we be paying, and show what a benchmark looks like for a vendor whose price varies between customers.

Segment three, the takeaway, is a one-page routine the audience can run without the platform: pull the market number before the first call, decide in advance what evidence would justify stopping, and re-benchmark at each contract change rather than at renewal. The page names the judgment call, not just the tactic, which is the part a competitor webinar usually skips.

Distribution: the webinar is co-hosted through a procurement community or a customer event channel, the way Etkin's Collibra session was run through a community organizer, with the authored piece published on the platform's site and an excerpt posted under Etkin's own account.

  • Measure registrations from procurement and finance titles, attendance rate, the number of attendees who download the routine page, and benchmark or demo requests attributable to the session, not impressions.
  • Success test: a procurement lead who watched the session can explain to a colleague when to push a vendor and when to stop, and can name one number they should have pulled before their last renewal.

Before committing budget or a date: confirm audience composition with platform demographics or an audience survey, secure one named customer procurement lead and a quotable outcome, agree a disclosure line for any benchmark figures the platform supplies, and settle the citation permissions for the case examples. If a named customer cannot be secured and the platform's own data cannot be shown publicly, the session becomes a general webinar with no proprietary evidence, which is the outcome this angle exists to avoid.

Sources for this section

Who else to consider

David Campbell

A better choice for a campaign aimed at an audience seeking an operator's view of how AI is changing software pricing, headcount planning and ROI—and what it costs to run a procurement organization through that shift.

Read more

Justin Etkin's posts show a public decision to cut 40 roles while moving from a services business to an AI-powered procurement solution, with the reasoning stated plainly.

  • They also promote an event built around the live tension boards face: when to automate and when to hire.
  • Choose this voice when the session is about structure and leadership—where AI belongs, where people still matter and how to move responsibly—and the audience is executives seeking a peer who has made the call, not a tactic.

It gives up the negotiation-level detail that anchors the shared campaign.

  • There is no per-seat benchmark, named procurement lead or walkthrough of a stalled renewal.
  • Justin Etkin's posts are a company announcement and event promotion, so the session's substance is not captured in the text.
  • If the campaign's proof point is a number a buyer can take into a vendor conversation, this voice supplies the frame, not the number.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Russell Lester

A better choice when the buying decision is aimed at finance and the argument should run from vendor pricing behavior to budget control.

Read more

Justin Etkin's posts examine a payments vendor's move to bundle previously separate services, adding up to 20 basis points to processing costs, and ask whether discount reductions, SKU consolidations and acquisitions reflect genuine product logic or revenue protection.

  • They draw on prior CFO experience at a B2B payments company.
  • Another post describes an AI vendor bill swinging from $2K one month to $20K the next, framing it as a faster version of the zombie renewal and naming the two contradictory mandates boards give CFOs: cut software costs and invest more in AI.
  • Choose this voice when the task is helping finance leaders see why AI spend needs oversight and what to ask a vendor, rather than teaching procurement how to run a negotiation.

The posts lean toward market behavior and product commentary: two of Justin Etkin's posts carry a launch announcement for AI consumption management and redundancy analysis and point to a free market-intelligence resource.

  • They show neither a negotiation won nor a savings figure tied to a named procurement team, so a session built on them would need the platform's own benchmark data to make the case.
  • This material explains the conditions that make pricing volatile and the pressure on the buyer's finance seat, but not the play-by-play of a specific deal.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Matt Barnard

A better choice when the audience is finance leadership and the task is AI spend visibility and the purchase process: knowing what is being consumed before the invoice arrives and designing approvals that do not turn one person into a bottleneck.

Read more

Justin Etkin's posts open with the CFO question of the year—what our AI spend is and what to do about it—and report that the usual answer is more than expected, discovered too late to act on.

  • Another traces the problem across company size: at 50 people, every software purchase passed through one person; at 500, a $50k commitment reached a corporate card before finance knew.
  • Choose this voice when the campaign is about control at scale—routing low-risk requests automatically, flagging high-value contracts to the right person with context and running compliance checks inline—and the platform wants a buyer who has felt the problem from the finance seat.

The posts introduce a specific product's capabilities, including AI cost optimization drawing on data across $1bn in processed AI spend, making the argument hard to separate from the offer.

  • They show no external negotiation information, such as a vendor quote set against a market rate.
  • If a campaign needs a practitioner willing to discuss a specific deal with a named partner, ask for that; this voice provides the finance framing and scale story, not the deal.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Sources for this section

Build your campaign brief

Editable Markdown templates for planning a campaign with this creator.

Worked example: procurement and AI vendor costs

Sources for this section

Research methodology

  • Five LinkedIn posts by Justin Etkin are covered here.
  • The account snapshot was observed on 8 October 2026; the posts do not include individual publication dates.
  • This profile covers full post text only.
  • The posts here do not include webinar recordings or transcripts, long-form articles, platform demographics, engagement data, or post publication dates.
  • The posts discuss Tropic's procurement intelligence but do not state Etkin's formal role at any organization.
  • The posts do not establish earlier work, signature books, or shows; that remains an open gap.