Jon Stead

speaker

382 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 7 Jul

Jon Stead’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Unlocking Value · Part 2: Jon Stead – Nobody's Paying for the Slides Anymore · 7 Jul 2026 podcast

So I think often AI is the label that is sort of smeared across whatever is going on in the market.

If I sort of contrast that through the lens of what we see in the SMU market, so you go onto LinkedIn, you think the pyramid is destroyed, you think the end is nigh.

So we've got 700 clients, nearly 50,000 users contracted across our platform.

So we're in a pretty unique position, I think, to actually get a pulse on sentiment, growth rates, headcounts, because...

Headcount growth means more users for SEMA and conversely.

And what we see across our data is that the growth rate of consulting firms has actually been pretty consistent over the last 24 months.

We index to SMA mid-market, so typically 10 to 500 or up to 1,000 staff.

So we don't serve the big four and the like.

And I think that data is very much contrary to what you see out there in the industry.

And for me, that speaks to the fact that

Those businesses never relied on the pyramid structure to that extent anyway.

Yes, they will have had it to some extent, but ultimately the success of those firms is often on being narrower, a bit deeper.

The partners get involved to a larger extent.

It's a little bit scrappier.

You don't have that same labor arbitrage model.

And so I don't think they're getting hit anywhere near as much as the wider press that we would make you believe.

Yeah, and I think that the nature of

The requirements for those people might be different.

It might be that once upon a time you'd index to junior staff, but we're outstanding at sort of analysis.

Whereas now I think we're seeing from more indexed towards EQ, soft skills, communication skills, actually who can sit in front of a client and deliver a message.

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