In this episode of the Full Throttle Leaders Podcast, host Michael Falato interviews Elio Narciso, co‑founder and CEO of Scalestack.ai (also known as Skillstack). Elio shares his background growing up in Puglia, Italy, moving to New York for an MBA, and spending five years at AWS where he built a global partner go‑to‑market program. Observing that even large, well‑funded companies struggle with poor, untrusted CRM data, he founded Skillstack four years ago to act as a middleware "infrastructure clay" that sits between raw data sources (e.g., ZoomInfo, Apollo) and activation tools (CRMs, sales engagement platforms). The platform cleans, enriches, and prioritizes data at scale, making it AI‑ready for sales, marketing, RevOps, and even AI agents. Elio emphasizes that speed disproportionately matters in business, citing AWS’s lag on AI as a cautionary tale, and stresses that rapid development and deployment are core to Skillstack’s strategy. He discusses recent and upcoming events—SaaStr, an AI agent conference, and his own Revenue Engine Masters gatherings—highlighting the importance of community and face‑to‑face networking. Finally, he provides contact details (elio@skillstack.ai) and describes his accessible leadership style, positioning himself as the public face of the company who readily engages with prospects and partners.
Chapters
All right, everybody. I got a treat for you today. The co-CEO, co-founder of Scalestack.ai, Elio Narciso, straight from. Italy, but now in New York.
Yes.
How you doing, paisano?
I'm good, thank you. Uh, yeah, born and raised in Italy, in Puglia, uh, and then moved here now 18 years ago to do my MBA, and then I stayed. So yeah, um, thank you for having me. And yes, I'm the co-founder and CEO at Scalestack, um, which we started about 4 years ago now.
And tell me a little bit about your journey, how you built this company. What did you do before this and why Skillstack now?
Just before starting Skillstack, I spent almost 5 years at AWS here in New York and I had a great time. I built a global program to support the go-to-market of like partners built on AWS that wanted more support from AWS in their go-to-market. And by doing that, was a global program, it still exists actually. So it's my legacy there. We realized that even large companies like AWS or well-funded, you know, mid to late stage startups struggle dearly with all of their go-to-market motions, particularly around data. And so I saw at AWS hundreds or thousands of reps not trusting the CRM, at AWS because the data was poor and bad, managing prioritization of accounts on spreadsheets or marketing teams, like being like kind of lost in translation when having to prioritize leads and score them and all of that. And so this idea got formed about 4 years ago that actually larger companies need a lot of help to orchestrate, unify, and then clean and enrich, prioritize a lot of data before they activate that data for people like sales and marketing. And so that's how the idea of the company was born. And so we are middleware layer in between the data layer and the activation layer that has evolved over the past few years to be like a system of intelligence that lays on top of the system of record. so that sales, marketing, humans, and agents can have like, you know, great data they can rely on and use to prioritize all of their efforts.
Did you get a chance to work with Jeff Bezos?
Jeff Bezos. It's a funny story because, you know, that he acquired the Washington Post. And so I have never met him as part of the Amazon side, But the Washington Post started a tech company when after Jeff bought the you know the Washington Post called Arc, and they they built I don't know how they're doing now, but like they built a technology platform, and so they were partners in my global program. And so as part of that, in one occasion, like he was leaving the meeting room that we were gonna use, and so we crossed paths. But like you know just said hi and. You know, he was escorted by bodyguards and stuff. So it was very brief, but it was funny that I met him in DC as part of his like involvement with the Washington Post. By the time I was there, this was, I was there between 2018 and 2022. I mean, AWS CEO and founder basically, Andy Jassy, was still there as the CEO of AWS. And now he's the CEO of Amazon. And he is like, you know, very important, of course. And he was even then. And AWS was very independent of Jeff Bezos already then. And so Andy Jassy was really the core founder and CEO that, you know, we met and discussed stuff with.
What's the biggest life lesson as far as, hey, I'm glad I did this, but I didn't win it? I lost, but I learned. Or you won something by either a strategy or tech. You're like, I'm gonna repeat that. I want other people to know about it.
Uh, you mean something that I've learned while doing sales primarily, or—
Yeah, in business, yes. But, um, in the last, you know, couple years, that's a really good learning from you won or you lost.
I think speed disproportionately matters in business and more and more so.
Mm.
And so I think that like at AWS, I mean, you know, I've done other stuff before AWS, including starting other companies, but it was at AWS, Amazon, that I really learned that like if you don't inject speed, even as the company grows, then things quickly atrophy and become dormant. And then the next thing you know is that your competitor is much faster than you and you've lost. And I mean, AWS was king of the game for a good 10 years. And then AI flew by them, even though they were doing AI and ML investments for a decade plus. And so I think that that's the biggest lesson. And we are trying to apply this at Scalestack as much as we can. Speed disproportionately matters. Like the way like we develop, improve, and, you know, move fast to support and service customers is very important. And I think it disproportionately matters. And especially now in the world of AI, I mean, the speed at which this is going, it's crazy. I mean, like, Things that we're doing now, 6 months ago were like, you know, not even ideas. And that's pretty remarkable. So I think that that's the learning. I mean, there are like broad, like, examples, like, you know, AWS missing the boat in some way, like on AI and having to play catch up. I mean, yeah, I think that that's the biggest uh, thing that I've learned over time. Speed really matters.
And what's your, uh, how would you describe your company and what you do? I know you, before we started the podcast, you're talking about a little bit of clay and you're the clay mixed with this, mixed with that. So dumb it down for my audience.
So I think it's, uh, I mean, if you want like the easy shortcut, since everybody knows clay, like, you know, we are like an infrastructural clay for like larger go-to-market motion. What that means is that we're really like, uh, again, tech infrastructure, a middleware layer invisible to like most people in the companies that we serve to because we typically work with RevOps, SalesOps, MarketingOps, sometimes CIO office to deploy this infrastructural layer that sits in between the data that these companies buy. You know, you think about like ZoomInfo, Apollo, or Lusha, or any of this type of data and the activation layer. So you're going to use the data, which is typically the layer that, say, a rep would see, which is like the CRM or a Salesloft or an Outreach or now Glean, Gong, et cetera, et cetera. And so we are in between those. And in between, a very important job needs to happen, which has become very strategic in the age of AI, which is your data needs to be AI ready. And so it needs to be clean. Needs to be constantly updated, enriched, prioritized at large scale, the scale of our customers. And so that's why like the shortcut is like we are an infrastructure Clay. Some of our customers use both Clay and Skillstack. Clay is more as an individual productivity tool, Skillstack to create at the system level, at the org level, the clarity and intelligence that you need to inject in your system.
What, uh, what, what events are you going to the next 12, 12 months where people can meet up with you in person?
Uh, I just went to SaaStr a couple of, uh, weeks ago. I think it was very good. Uh, so I'm definitely gonna go, um, back to their events and maybe next time even sponsor. It was funny because, um, I didn't know, but like by filling the form, um, you know, to pay the ticket, we were also applying, uh, to like, you know, see if Gemini from Google would select us to go on stage and present Skillstack. Uh, and we got lucky that Gemini, so an agent that Google built, uh, decided that Skillstack was one of the most interesting companies.
Now I remember you there talking on stage because—
Yes.
There's something that was, uh, Like déjà vu. Now I remember I was—you were at the one right closest to the door, right? Yes, yes.
And so we presented there. It was super fun. But also I saw a lot of people, customers and prospects. So yeah, Saster is definitely going to be there. I tend to do a lot of conferences here in New York. There is a ton of stuff around AI. We presented at an AI agent conference about a month ago. We do a lot of our own events. We have this brand sort of like parallel. To Skillstack, which is called the Revenue Engine Masters, which is the name of my podcast, but also the name of the events that we run. Tomorrow we have a dinner here in New York for RevOps. So we do a lot of our events. I think it's a great way to meet people. I mean, I'm Italian, so like breaking bread is very important to me.
So Breaking Bad was a good show too.
Breaking Bad was also a very good show, man. Yes, I've watched that probably 4 times end to end.
I watched it twice at least because of COVID Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, it's, it's definitely great to meet you, and, uh, I think we're gonna run into each other, 2 paisanos. And then, you know, obviously in New York we say forget about it as part of the Italian culture too.
But yeah, where are you from originally? In Chicago. Chicago.
And then my family's from Benevento, which is above Naples.
Yes, yes.
I'm half Italian, then I'm like Ukrainian and Irish and French. So I'm half, only half Italian.
Okay, very good, very good. So do you go back to Italy or sometimes? I've not been there yet.
I wanna go to Amalfi Coast.
Oh wow, okay. No, you definitely have to go. I, you know, I go every summer for sure. And then like we have some, a couple of investors there. The tech system and ecosystem in Italy is getting better. And so I do go there for work also, like maybe once or twice a year.
So what's the best way for someone to reach out to spend some time with your company, with either you or your sales team?
Uh, well, I, I think our website, skillstack.ai, you can play with the platform, you can, uh, book a meeting. I still take a lot of, uh, first calls, uh, so like, you know, maybe if they book on the website, they will find me along with others. Um, and then I'm very open. I love talking. I mean, this is how I see my role. I, I'm the CEO of the company and co-founder But I see my role as like, you know, the face of the company and also like a very— A very accessible person. A very accessible person. So it's not easy to find me and book time with me because that's what I see my job is to explain the vision and to explain also the market. The market, I mean, you asked me about like, you know, differences with Clay and other tools. And, you know, as I shared, you know, off the recording, what we see is that the more we explain with clarity, where we fit in the ecosystem, which is a very complex ecosystem. There is data, there is tools, there is individual productivity stuff, there is platforms, there is data lakes. The more we inject that clarity from our perspective that we have learned by working with customers, that's how we sell. We're not selling by telling people that Skillstack is, you know, the best thing since, I don't know.
What's your email address so people can email you?
It's very easy. elio@skillstack.ai.
Well, thanks for your time, my friend. Thank you, Michael.
