Hi — Asad here! Today, Kyle Lacy’s words are going to hit hard in a way that only great writing can. But first, we need to talk about Jude Law. Yes, Jude Law.

I’m assuming everyone has seen his ad for legal AI firm Legora by now. Even my mother, who (we guess) is 75+ and has no idea what Legora is, saw it.

Together, Legora and rival firm Harvey — who both have celebrity spokespeople — are worth more than the entire legal tech market in the U.S. They clearly believe AI is going to eat into labor budgets and expand the market. And their investors, who keep writing them new checks every two quarters, seem to agree. The result is a real war for market share, and they’re spending heavily to win it.

Some version of this fight is playing out across our ecosystem. Competition is making deals harder to win, and “harder” is just a fancy way of saying “more expensive.” We’re also having to do more just to close — FDEs are now needed to help customers actually use the tech. That expense sits in R&D today, but it’s obviously a GTM spend and should be showing up in your CAC.

That’s the job in a lot of ways. Find the gap. Find the risk. Find the missing number before it becomes a larger one. God forbid we surprise anyone. Push. Move. Respond.

If you stay in this world long enough, that pace starts to feel normal. You get rewarded for it early, too. The people who move fast get noticed. The people who have an answer in the meeting get promoted. The people who can see around corners become the ones everyone depends on.

There is a real advantage in that. It matters. I’m not pretending it doesn’t.

But I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about the cost of living like that for too long, because there’s a difference between ambition and restlessness — and, from the outside, they can look like the exact same thing.

They both work hard. They both move fast. They both produce. Both can look impressive from a distance.

But they are not the same.

That’s the cleanest way I know how to say it.

Ambition has an element of patience to it. It has direction. It’s willing to stay with something long enough to see what it can become. To do the boring middle part. It can hold tension without immediately trying to escape it.

Restlessness is different. It wants the next hit of momentum. A new initiative, a new role, a new title, a new plan, a new problem to solve. It confuses motion with progress because motion feels productive, and in GTM, productive-looking motion is easy to celebrate.

That’s where this gets tricky. A lot of us are professionally trained to be restless.

We’re taught to scan constantly. We’re rewarded for urgency. We work in systems that praise responsiveness and visible action: Investors like movement. Boards like confidence. Teams like leaders who seem one step ahead. And eventually we’re apt to absorb a simple message: if something feels uncertain, move faster.

Do that for 15 years and it becomes hard to know what’s actually driving you.

You may be asking why I’m writing about this right now.

I’ve felt this pretty clearly in my own career. I’ve been part of acquisitions. I’ve had the moments that, on paper, are supposed to feel like a massive celebration. And initially, they were. The first meaningful one for me was Seismic acquiring Lessonly in 2021 for $300M. We’d built something real, and it was the kind of milestone that, when you’re younger in your career, you imagine will create some lasting sense of completion. 

Like, there it is! You did it. Good job, you! 

And for a minute, it did feel that way. Then maybe two days passed, and my brain started scanning again.

What’s next? What now? 

I should have known this earlier, but the win doesn’t settle the deeper question. If restlessness is what’s driving you, it shifts, finds a new target, and tells you that that next one will finally do it.

That’s part of what makes restlessness so deceptive: It borrows from ambition. It tells you you’re hungry. And sometimes that’s true. Sometimes you are hungry in all the right ways.

But sometimes you’re just uncomfortable with stillness.

“Fine” can feel weirdly distant when you’ve trained yourself to live in the hunt.

So, you create more things. You start rethinking things that probably need more time to come into their own, and jump toward the next idea before the current one has had a real chance to grow. You leave roles too early. 

I think a lot of leaders do this without realizing it — I know I have. The question that’s helped me most is very simple: Why am I chasing this particular thing?

Not “What am I chasing?” But “Why this? Why now? Why does this feel so important in this moment?”

Is it because it matters to the team, the company, the customer, or the kind of work I want to be known for?

Or is it because motion feels better than uncertainty? Because I’m uncomfortable when there isn’t a fire? Because some old wiring is telling me that if I’m not pushing, I’m falling behind?

That question is important because it has significant implications on hiring decisions, how you manage a team, and whether you’re building an organization with focus or just passing anxiety down the chain.

The hunting instinct is useful. It’s served me well. The ability to sense movement in the market, to respond early, to push through inertia, to create momentum when momentum is needed — all of that matters. A lot of careers are built on it.

But there has to be some discernment about what’s underneath it.

Because ambition leaves something behind. A team. Better systems. Better people. Better work. It compounds.

Whereas restlessness just keeps moving. Burning energy. Creating noise.

I think that’s the tension a lot of us are living in, especially in GTM. We’ve gotten very good at the hunt. The harder thing is figuring out whether the hunt is in service of something real or has become the point.

That’s a worthwhile question for a career, for your quarter — and if we’re being honest, for this week. Because once you can tell the difference, a lot of other decisions get easier.

Kyle Lacy is the CMO of Docebo, an AI-powered learning platform. He’s spent 15 years building marketing teams inside high-growth software companies, including ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce), Lessonly (acquired by Seismic for $300M), Seismic, and Jellyfish, before landing at Docebo. He writes Revenue Diaries, a weekly newsletter on marketing leadership, GTM strategy, and all the harder questions that live underneath both. Kyle is based in Indianapolis with his family.

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