The GTMnow Podcast

GTMnow

The GTMnow Podcast interviews well-known tech executive, VC, and founders - the expert operators in the trenches who have ‘been there, done that’ to build some of the fastest-growing software companies. Every week, a guest joins Sophie Buonassisi to dissect their stories, revealing expert insights around what worked, what didn’t, and how things actually went down. This podcast is produced by GTMnow, the media brand of GTMfund - sharing insight on go-to-market from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by over 350 of the best go-to-market executives. GTMfund is an early-stage VC fund focused on investing in the most exciting, up-and-coming B2B SaaS companies across the world. The LP network consists of VP and C-level Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success leaders from companies like DocuSign, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Snowflake, Okta, Zoom, and many more. Visit gtmnow.com for more details and to sign up for our newsletter and other content resources.

  1. 5日前

    Inside Electric's AI Relaunch, from a 3X Founder | Ryan Denehy (Founder & CEO, Electric)

    The founder and CEO of Electric, Ryan Denehy joins GTMnow to explain why and how he rebuilt Electric as an AI-native software company. Ryan gets specific on why he split the business in half, how the pivot forced a total change in distribution (from direct sales to embedded channel partnerships with payroll platforms), and why a new product doesn't just need a new channel, it can unlock ones that were impossible before.  He also shares the ADP partnership that put Electric behind 1,700 reps, the near-death moments (including the night he almost wired his seed round back to investors), how to actually get acquired by a public company, and the cold-outreach framework he's used since making extreme-sports videos at 17. What you'll learn: - Why he rebuilt a working company AI-native, and the five-step playbook for a "total reinvention" - Why product-market fit is as much about distribution as the product, and the Sirius XM lesson behind it - How going AI-native collapsed his unit price and made channel-led growth possible for the first time - Why the winner-take-all gap between AI companies is so much wider than in classic SaaS - The embedded-partnership motion behind ADP, Justworks, and TriNet deals (300+ customers onboarded in a day) - How to actually get acquired by a public company (hint: people buy companies, corp dev doesn't) - Why the quietest near-death threat is a splashy senior mis-hire, not a market crash - The cold-outreach framework he's run since cold-emailing pro athletes at 17 Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:04 A 3x founder who sold two companies to public acquirers 01:33 What Electric is, and why "AI" was in the name in 2016 04:40 What a "wholesale rewrite" meant 06:38 Why go AI-native 08:12 The reinvention playbook 13:08 Why they blew the whole thing up 13:48 Distribution as product-market fit: the Sirius XM lesson 15:37 How AI collapsed the price and unlocked channel sales 18:19 The winner-take-all gap between AI companies 20:35 From direct sales to channel 23:00 The three-year channel payoff 25:17 Rebuilding the product and signing the payroll platforms 26:27 The new-category pitch 29:29 Behind the scenes for ADP, Justworks, and TriNet 30:02 Almost wiring the seed money back 32:00 The day everything changed at once 33:52 The quiet damage of a senior mis-hire 35:48 Two prior companies: go-to-market above all 38:18 How to get acquired by a public company 42:55 Extreme-sports videos at 17, and the outreach framework 44:47 Where to find Ryan and Electric Connect with Ryan Denehy: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryandenehy/  X: https://x.com/DenehyXXL Electric: https://electric.ai Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuona About the guest: Ryan Denehy is the founder and CEO of Electric, an AI-native IT management platform now embedded in payroll and HR products including ADP Team Management, Justworks, and TriNet. A three-time founder, he previously built and sold companies to USA Today and Groupon. Electric is backed by investors including Notable Capital and Slack. About GTMnow: GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market. Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/ The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

    Inside Electric's AI Relaunch, from a 3X Founder | Ryan Denehy (Founder & CEO, Electric)
  2. 8月25日

    What the Top 1% of Sellers Do Differently | Ross Rich (CEO, Accord)

    Ross Rich is the co-founder and CEO of Accord and spent five years leading go-to-market and partnerships at Stripe. He talks to hundreds of CROs and serves thousands of reps, so he has an unusually clear view of what the top performers actually do differently. His starting point: roughly the top 20%, often closer to 10%, of any sales team drives most of the revenue. Every leader says they want to move the middle 60%, and Ross doesn't think AI is doing it. Tools like Claude and Codex make the people who already have the taste and judgment far more efficient, and the gap widens from there. What closes it is unglamorous and human: a leader with a point of view, a shared language simple enough to stick, a field-friendly process, and only then the technology to reinforce it. Ross gets specific on what "best" means for a seller (trust and EQ first, then frameworks learned so cold they run subconsciously), the disconnect between what CROs think they're buying and what reps actually receive, the "no-ask note" for multithreading into a CRO, why he sells through his own executives instead of around them, and the biggest lesson of his founder journey: market beats product. What you'll learn: - What separates the top 10% of reps from everyone else, and why AI is widening that gap instead of closing it - The two ingredients of a great seller: the "give a shit factor" you can't fake, then plays run so subconsciously you can get creative - The waiter analogy that explains great salesmanship in one sentence - Why the people, process, technology order is the one most teams get backwards in the AI rush - The disconnect between a CRO's multimillion-dollar investment in the field and what reps actually receive: a 76-page laminate, more Salesforce fields, none of it touching the customer - Why the best methodology is simply the one that gets used, and why debating how many Ps are in MEDDPICC is optimizing the fringes - "Unavoidable excellence": how to take what your top performers do organically and make it standard across the team - The "no-ask note" for multithreading into a CRO by showing respect instead of asking for time - Why CROs own revenue and not tools, and how to sell through their rev-ops and enablement leaders - "Show, don't tell": leading with peer references at stage two when everyone can sound the same and ship a surface-level solution - The founder-led sales handoff mistake Ross has made twice, and the curse of knowledge behind it - Why market beats product, via April Dunford's positioning and the surfer, surfboard, wave framing Connect with Ross Rich: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossrich/  Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuona About the guest: Ross Rich is the founder and CEO of Accord, a platform that operationalizes value selling (quantified business cases, mutual action plans, stakeholder mapping, account planning) in a field-friendly way. Before founding Accord, he spent over five years at Stripe leading go-to-market and partnerships. Accord's customers include Freshworks and Samsara. About GTMnow: GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing how the best in tech build, scale and invest. Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/ The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

    What the Top 1% of Sellers Do Differently | Ross Rich (CEO, Accord)
  3. 8月11日

    Will Salesforce Win the AI Era Like It Won Cloud? | Kris Billmaier

    Is Salesforce the dominant player in the AI platform shift, or the incumbent about to be disrupted? Kris Billmaier, EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales and Growth Products, sat down with Sophie Buonassisi at Salesforce Tower to answer that directly. Kris runs the business behind Sales Cloud's 26-year run and its rebrand into Agentforce Sales. He makes the case that CRM is becoming "agentic revenue orchestration," that the category needs a new name, and that the future is headless. For Salesforce, that means surfaced inside Slack, ChatGPT, Gemini, and wherever sellers actually work. He also shares the internal numbers, including an engagement agent that worked the leads Salesforce had always ignored and generated over $100M in pipeline in eight months. What you'll learn: - Why 60% of a seller's time goes to non-selling work, and which agents remove it - The case for renaming the category from CRM to agentic revenue orchestration - What "headless CRM" means, and why Salesforce integrated with ChatGPT and Gemini - How one leader manages 100 reps plus the equivalent of 400 agents - Why the Momentum acquisition matters: "memory fragments" that cut an 8,000-word meeting to the 800 words that count - Why Salesforce is hiring more sellers, not fewer - How hiring shifted from "what did you do" to "how do you build" (and why a PowerPoint is now a red flag) - Pricing in the agent era: seats, flex credits, and a coming leads-worked outcome metric - Why Kris says we're not in a SaaSpocalypse, and how a 70,000-person company still ships weekly Thank you to our sponsor: Primer unlocks B2C ad channels for B2B marketers with precision targeting and next-gen measurement. GTMnow Network exclusive offer: Extended 45 day trial and 15% off with code GTM15 - just apply the code when you go to upgrade from the free trial. See who’s really in your funnel: sayprimer.com Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:12 Welcome, and the Salesforce platform-shift question 02:25 How Salesforce adapted across cloud, mobile, social, and AI 03:32 Why Sales Cloud became Agentforce Sales 05:17 Renaming the category: from CRM to agentic revenue orchestration 06:56 Will anyone log into a CRM again? 08:09 Agentforce in one line, and the seller's Monday morning 09:08 Build vs. buy, vibe coding, and the context moat 11:01 The Momentum acquisition and memory fragments 13:04 Sellers managing teams of agents, and the $100M pipeline story 15:03 The agent stack: prospecting, engagement, pipeline, quoting 16:27 Efficiency, accuracy, and auto-generated forecasts 18:03 Why Salesforce is hiring more sellers 19:16 What the modern sales role looks like 20:08 Sponsor: Primer 21:34 How AI changed hiring: from "what" to "how" 23:48 The window: shipping weekly, not on three annual releases 25:13 What product-market fit means now 26:05 Software vs. services, and the $10T question 28:10 The complexity problem: easy by default, advanced by choice 30:07 Go-to-market evolution and consolidating the stack 32:07 Leading as a player-coach 33:16 Being "chief repetition officer" and educating the field 35:00 How a 70,000-person company stays agile 36:48 The biggest lesson from Marc Benioff 37:57 Pricing: seats, flex credits, and outcome-based metrics 40:53 Are we in a SaaSpocalypse? The full answer 42:08 Where Kris gets his learnings 43:07 World Cup picks Kris Billmaier (EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales, Salesforce) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisbillmaier/ Salesforce Agentforce: https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce Sophie Buonassisi (Host, SVP at GTMnow/GTMfund) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuona About Kris Billmaier: Kris Billmaier is EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales and Growth Products at Salesforce, where he leads the business formerly known as Sales Cloud. He oversees the company's agentic sales portfolio, including its prospecting, engagement, pipeline, and quoting agents, and the Momentum acquisition that powers its conversational data layer. About GTMnow:  GTMnow shares how the best in tech build, scale and invest. The media brand is owned and operated by venture firm, GTMfund. Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/ The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

    Will Salesforce Win the AI Era Like It Won Cloud? | Kris Billmaier
  4. 8月3日

    Inside Deel's $1M → $1.5B Sales Machine | Chris Lee

    Chris Lee joined Deel at $1M in revenue. Now, it just hit $1.5B. He joined GTMnow to walk through the pivotal decisions behind that run, including the ones he's never discussed publicly. Chris (Head of Sales, Americas at Deel) breaks down the "five-star sales experience" framework he built by studying luxury hotels, why speed itself became a reason customers bought, how he's had zero regrettable director-level attrition in 5.5 years, and why they hire people with the job title "Ghostbuster" to keep a 7,000-person company moving like a 30-person startup.  What you'll learn: - The five-star sales experience framework, and how to map your own process from three-star to five - Why every new sales leader at Deel spends their first 30 days taking inbound and selling - How speed became the reason Coinbase chose Deel over a legacy vendor with no references to show - The hire-slow, fire-fast principle behind zero regrettable director attrition in 5.5 years - Why "tell me about a time" interview questions optimize for the best liar, and the scenario-based alternative - What a "Ghostbuster" is, and how the role fights operational decay as you scale - Leading a sales team through public crisis: cry, quit, or fight - The trillion-dollar thesis: why 95% of the world's workers sit outside the US market - Why Chris went back to first-principles systems thinking instead of fiddling with AI tools Thank you to our sponsor: Primer unlocks B2C ad channels for B2B marketers with precision targeting and next-gen measurement. GTMnow Network exclusive offer: Extended 45 day trial and 15% off with code GTM15 - just apply the code when you go to upgrade from the free trial. See who’s really in your funnel: sayprimer.com Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:58 Welcome to GTMnow 01:33 From Granular (agtech, employee #11) to a DuPont acquisition 05:30 The failed recruiting startup he launched in January 2020 07:17 How he found Deel, and applying to the wrong role on purpose 09:48 The first-30-days lesson from CEO Alex Bouazizi: go sell 11:44 What Deel actually does today 13:14 Scaling a distributed sales org remotely 15:41 Building rapport on a global remote team 17:35 From transactional SMB to multi-product enterprise 20:16 Sales-led, not product-led, and why consolidation wins 22:45 "Deel speed," and why speed is a reason people buy 25:31 Sponsor: Primer 26:57 Frank Slootman, Amp It Up, and outpacing competitors 29:12 How he got Slootman to open the sales kickoff 30:28 Zero director attrition in 5.5 years, and hire slow, fire fast 33:54 Why "tell me about a time" fails, and the scenario-based alternative 37:46 The five-star sales experience framework 41:54 Bringing enterprise-grade experience to SMB with AI 45:49 The trillion-dollar thesis: 95% of workers are outside the US 47:22 Building 60+ payroll engines: the Amazon Prime parallel 53:02 First-principles systems thinking for sales 59:38 The problem-framing framework he gives his team 01:01:09 The "Ghostbuster" role and fighting operational decay 01:05:25 Where to find Chris Chris Lee (Head of Sales, Americas at Deel): LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/techcontrarian/ X: https://x.com/TechContrarian Sophie Buonassisi (Host, SVP at GTMnow/GTMfund): LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuona About Chris Lee: Chris Lee is Head of Sales, Americas at Deel, which he joined as one of its first sales hires at $1M in revenue and helped scale to $1.5B. Previously he was employee number 11 at Granular, an agricultural tech company acquired by DuPont for $300M. About GTMnow:  GTMnow shares how the best in tech build, scale and invest. The media brand is owned and operated by venture firm, GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund. Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/ The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

    Inside Deel's $1M → $1.5B Sales Machine | Chris Lee
  5. 7月22日

    Inside Merge: The $75M Bet on Open Source AI (Powering OpenAI, Netflix & Uber) | Shensi Ding, CEO

    The Co-Founder & CEO of Merge joins GTMnow to break down how she built a company that now powers integrations for OpenAI, Perplexity, Netflix, Uber, Mistral, and enterprise logos like Mastercard, JP Morgan, and Amex, backed by $75M from Accel and NEA. Shensi gets tactical on the GTM decisions behind that growth: why she went enterprise-first into greenfield, why she's now layering a self-serve motion back on top (20,000+ self-serve orgs, 400+ enterprise customers), how forward-deployed engineers turned a 1% edge case into 5 to 10x usage growth, and why she rebuilt marketing to run like an engineering team. She also gets candid on founder-led sales, the mercenaries-versus-missionaries hiring trap, the open-source model shift and the China question, and why every founder who started pre-AI should build one product 0-to-1 themselves. What you'll learn: - Why she reversed the standard GTM playbook (enterprise first, then PLG) and how to run both motions at once - How forward-deployed engineers close the 1% edge case that unlocks 5 to 10x enterprise usage - Why marketing now runs like an engineering function at Merge, and how it took her from 1 to 2 dinners a quarter to 3 to 5 a month - Why product got fast and go-to-market became the new bottleneck - How to know when to hire your first salesperson (hint: you should be "dying" first) - The mercenaries-vs-missionaries test, and the "anti-sell" she uses in hiring - The 2026 shift away from "token-maxing," and how model routing cuts AI spend - The truth about open-source (often Chinese) models: where they're built vs. where your data actually lives - Why founders who started pre-AI should build one product 0-to-1 to understand what's now possible Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:14 What Merge does: products, workforce, and three core offerings 02:05 Agent Handler, Gateway, and the new Embedded Routing Stack 04:52 The 2026 shift away from "token-maxing" 07:29 Open-source models, the China question, and where data really lives 10:14 How Merge works with open-source model providers 12:00 What she's learned as a first-time founder: get over your ego 13:22 Reversing the GTM playbook: enterprise-first, then PLG 15:50 Running both motions: 20,000+ self-serve, 400+ enterprise 17:31 Why buyer behavior moved to Twitter and brand 19:06 Founder-led sales, and what a real sales process taught her 22:27 When to hire your first salesperson 23:49 Forward-deployed engineers and 5 to 10x usage growth 27:00 Keeping go-to-market up to speed with product 28:33 Rebuilding marketing as an engineering function 30:45 The dinner agent: 1 to 2 a quarter to 3 to 5 a month 31:24 How AI buying reshaped the marketing org 33:54 Maintaining agents: prompts over legacy builders 35:02 Mercenaries vs. missionaries, and the "anti-sell" 40:25 The market view: from hostility to collaboration 42:06 Is a valuation reckoning coming? 43:07 Why she stayed hands-on building Agent Handler and Gateway 45:18 What's next: training your own models off open-source 46:52 Where to find Shensi and Merge Connect with Shensi Ding: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shensiding/ X: https://x.com/shensi Merge: https://merge.dev Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuona About the guest: Shensi Ding is the co-founder and CEO of Merge, a unified API platform that now spans product integrations, agent tooling, and LLM routing/governance. Merge powers companies including OpenAI, Perplexity, Netflix, Uber, and Mistral, and enterprise customers like Mastercard, JP Morgan, and Amex. The company has raised $75M from Accel and NEA. Thank you to our sponsor: Primer unlocks B2C ad channels for B2B marketers with precision targeting and next-gen measurement. GTMnow Network exclusive offer: Extended 45 day trial and 15% off with code GTM15 - just apply the code when you go to upgrade from the free trial. See who’s really in your funnel: sayprimer.com About GTMnow: GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market. Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/ The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

    Inside Merge: The $75M Bet on Open Source AI (Powering OpenAI, Netflix & Uber) | Shensi Ding, CEO
  6. 7月9日

    The Blueprint for a High-Performing Sales Team | Brian Le, Notion

    Are your sales compensation plans driving the right behaviors or causing your best reps to quit? In this episode of GTMnow, Brian Le (Global Sales Compensation Partner at Notion) breaks down how to build a scalable sales comp operating system. Brian shares his firsthand experience scaling Notion's sales comp from 80 to over 400 employees and explains why trust is the ultimate currency in revenue operations. If you are a founder, revenue leader, or sales professional, this breakdown covers everything from structuring pay mix to identifying the earliest signs of comp plan degradation. You will even hear what it takes for top AEs to pull in upwards of $1 million in a single quarter. In this episode, we cover: 00:00 Intro 01:15 Brian Le's journey through Salesforce, Carta, and Notion 04:33 Why sales comp is the operating system for go-to-market 07:07 Phase 1: Building a scalable comp foundation at Notion 13:50 Transitioning from seat-based to usage-based pricing models 18:15 The 3 core pillars of a successful sales commission plan 22:09 Early warning signs your quota and comp structures are breaking 31:41 The real cost of losing sales reps over bad commission payouts 39:35 How to structure compensation for your first early-stage sales hires 42:39 Will AI agents replace SDRs and sales compensation? Connect with Brian Le, : LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhoangle/ Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuona Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/ The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

    The Blueprint for a High-Performing Sales Team | Brian Le, Notion
  7. 7月8日

    VC: How a 2-Person Fund Runs Like a Startup (Memos, KPIs, R&D) | Vanessa Larco, Premise (ex-NEA)

    "Investing in companies that OpenAI won't kill." That's Vanessa Larco's thesis, and in this VC bonus episode of GTMnow she breaks down exactly how she decides what survives. Vanessa, founder and GP at Premise (formerly a longtime partner at NEA, where she backed Robinhood from seed to IPO), joins Max to get into the nitty gritty of how AI is rewriting venture, distribution, and the entire go-to-market playbook. She makes the case for why "it's just a wrapper" got a lot of VCs in trouble, why she only backs technical founding teams, and why the old GTM playbook is breaking fastest exactly where you'd least expect it. She also opens up about leaving a big platform to build a two-person fund from a blank canvas, and why she treats the fund itself like a startup. What you'll learn: - The "OpenAI won't kill it" framework for spotting durable AI companies (and why not everything OpenAI ships actually wins) - Why the "it's just a wrapper" dismissal cost VCs real deals, and the kayak/AWS parallels that explain why - Why Premise only backs technical founding teams, and the shipping speed that becomes the real early moat - How the old go-to-market playbook is breaking, especially in DevTools, and what replaces it - Why someone on the founding team has to "nerd out" on distribution, and why no-playbook moments are where you growth hack - How to run a conviction-based investment committee, and why big funds drift toward consensus whether they like it or not - Why running a fund is just running a startup: fundraising, product, and customer success by another name - The unanswered question Vanessa keeps circling: how to give experienced GTM talent space to rewrite the playbook Chapters: 00:00 Intro & OpenAI Moats 01:12 GTMnow Intro 01:51 Technical vs. Non-Technical AI Founders 04:37 The Bottleneck of Hiring AI Talent 05:15 Do Old Moats Still Exist? 06:36 Cloud Era Lessons vs. Today's AI Layer 09:18 The Shift to the Distribution Era 11:38 Interview: Vanessa Larco (Premise VC) 12:40 Companies OpenAI Won't Kill 13:37 Consumer Habits vs. Enterprise AI 15:05 Moving Beyond the "Wrapper" Stigma 17:39 Thesis Building vs. Founder Curiosities 20:11 Sourcing & The "Surreal" Community 22:26 Learnings From NEA & Lightspeed 24:06 Rethinking the Investment Memo 26:43 Consensus vs. Conviction Investing 31:26 Running a VC Fund Like a Startup 35:04 Building Internal Automation Tools 37:35 Distribution Moats & DevTools 39:38 Sourcing New GTM Playbooks 41:12 Parallel to the AWS Boom 43:55 Human Psychology vs. AI Tools 47:06 SF's Best Cookie Spots 48:32 Outro Connect with Vanessa Larco: About the guest: Vanessa Larco is the founder and GP at Premise. Previously a partner at NEA, she backed consumer and fintech companies including Robinhood from seed through IPO. She started her career in product and engineering, was a computer science undergrad, and founded and sold her own startup before moving into venture. Connect with Max:  https://x.com/hackitmax https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/ Connect with Vanessa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessalarco/ https://x.com/veelarco About GTMnow: GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market. This is the VC bonus series, where we host VCs and get into the VC ecosystem. Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/ The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

    VC: How a 2-Person Fund Runs Like a Startup (Memos, KPIs, R&D) | Vanessa Larco, Premise (ex-NEA)
  8. 7月2日

    Why a $1.2B exit felt like his biggest failure, and the customer-obsession thesis behind Agency

    A $1.2 billion exit is the dream. Elias Torres calls it his biggest failure. The Drift co-founder joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to unpack why the headline number felt hollow, what he learned in the quiet stretch afterward, and why he jumped straight back in to build Agency, an AI company that runs your entire customer organization. Elias gets honest about identity after the exit, the difference between chasing a title and building something enduring, and the operating thesis behind Agency: a billion-dollar company with fewer than 100 people, where 80 to 90% of the team are engineers and everyone talks to customers. He also gets into distribution as the hardest problem in the AI era, why he only takes money from investors who lead with value (Pat Grady and Brian Halligan back the company), and the two decades he's spent building alongside David Cancel. What you'll learn: - Why a $1.2B exit can still feel like a failure, and what "enduring" actually means - How to rebuild your identity when the title goes away - The Agency thesis: $1B with under 100 people, and how AI agents make it possible - Why Elias runs the whole company on Agency itself, with no CRM - Why sales may be the last role AI eliminates, and what that means for GTM - How to spot investors who lead with value instead of a pitch deck - Why distribution, not product, is the hardest problem in the AI era - What 20+ years building with David Cancel (Performable, HubSpot, Drift) taught him about partnership Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:25 Time off, slowing down, and losing the title 04:00 The inflection point and what comes after a big exit 07:00 What Agency is and the problem it solves 11:00 Why he brought people he's known for years 11:40 Investors who lead with value (Pat Grady and Brian Halligan) 17:30 Building with David Cancel for 20+ years 23:00 The bold claim: $1B with under 100 people 26:00 The go-to-market motion behind it 28:30 "Sales is the last role AI will eliminate" 36:00 High-agency people and how Agency runs itself 42:00 Building distribution in the AI era 51:00 Where to find Elias and Agency About the guest: Elias Torres is the founder and CEO of Agency, an AI company that provides agents to run a company's customer organization. He previously co-founded Drift (acquired in a $1.2B deal) and held senior roles at HubSpot and Performable, building alongside David Cancel for over two decades. Agency is backed by Pat Grady (Sequoia) and Brian Halligan. Connect with Elias Torres: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliast/ X: https://x.com/eliast Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuona About GTMnow: GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market. Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/ The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

    Why a $1.2B exit felt like his biggest failure, and the customer-obsession thesis behind Agency

番組について

The GTMnow Podcast interviews well-known tech executive, VC, and founders - the expert operators in the trenches who have ‘been there, done that’ to build some of the fastest-growing software companies. Every week, a guest joins Sophie Buonassisi to dissect their stories, revealing expert insights around what worked, what didn’t, and how things actually went down. This podcast is produced by GTMnow, the media brand of GTMfund - sharing insight on go-to-market from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by over 350 of the best go-to-market executives. GTMfund is an early-stage VC fund focused on investing in the most exciting, up-and-coming B2B SaaS companies across the world. The LP network consists of VP and C-level Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success leaders from companies like DocuSign, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Snowflake, Okta, Zoom, and many more. Visit gtmnow.com for more details and to sign up for our newsletter and other content resources.

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