Abbas Haider Ali is Vice President of Customer Success at GitHub, where he leads a 550+ person post-sales organization supporting a $2B+ ARR business serving over 150 million developers, including more than 90% of the Fortune 100.

Previously, Abbas was VP of Customer & Partner Success at Twilio following its acquisition of Segment, and has held executive roles at xMatters, Opnet Technologies, Managed Objects, and IBM. He is also a General Partner at GTM Operators Network, investing from seed through growth, and is deeply committed to mentorship and advancing underrepresented leaders in tech.

Discussed in this episode:

• Why “AI-led growth” can hide churn and value erosion
• Lagging vs leading indicators for retention endurance
• Why the CS investment benchmark is shifting from 10% → ~7%
• A simple “waterfall” for allocating post-sales budget: support → onboarding → outcomes
• How to “lever up” the envelope with premium support + professional services
• Why expansion (not renewals) is the early signal of product-market fit
• The rise of AI-powered specialized generalists in post-sales
• When forward deployed engineers make sense (and when they’re just a fad)

Episode highlights

00:00 — Why customer expansion is the real signal of product-market fit

00:50 — Lagging revenue vs. leading indicators of endurance

04:11 — Why the CS benchmark dropped from 10% to 7%

08:41 — How AI moved from internal efficiency to customer-facing leverage

11:41 — Why retention cost matters more than CAC in the AI era

14:17 — The simplest framework for allocating the 7% CS budget

18:53 — Founder-led CS, design partners, and early-stage PMF myths

23:16 — The rise of AI-powered specialized generalists

30:00 — When forward-deployed engineers actually make sense

49:31 — The one rule for building a durable SaaS company

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: HockeyStack

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Follow Abbas Haider Ali

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbashaiderali
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/abbashaiderali
• GitHub: https://github.com/AbbasHaiderAli

Follow Sophie Buonassisi (Host)

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
• Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

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.

Adam Carr is the Chief Revenue Officer at Apollo, where he’s scaling revenue by layering sales on top of a $150M+ ARR product-led growth engine. Previously, Adam helped scale Miro from a PLG-led company into a global sales organization, contributing to its growth into a $17.5B business. He’s known for building systems-driven GTM teams that turn product signals into durable revenue.

Discussed in this episode

• Why PLG is gravity (signals + acquisition) and sales is the monetization layer
• The “one-team” model to prevent PLG vs. sales cannibalization
• Building talent density (and why slowing hiring can be the fastest path)
• Hiring for curiosity, coachability, ownership, and team-first execution
• The “architect / systems thinker” profile for modern sellers
• A new post-sales model: CSMs → technical GTM Engineers + intervention-led journey
• Using customer journey milestones to drive expansion and prevent churn proactively
• AI in GTM: streamlining manual work so humans focus on better conversations

Episode highlights

00:00 — PLG is about signaling + acquisition (not monetization)

01:30 — “PLG isn’t the monetization way… it’s layering sales.”

02:41 — Talent density: hire for the next 12–18 months, not just “today”

04:50 — The soft skills that scaled Miro: curiosity, coachability, ownership

08:38 — Why Adam hires “architects” (system thinkers) instead of just sellers

10:41 — The mindset shift: celebrate value realized, not contracts signed

15:41 — Replacing CSMs with “go-to-market engineers” + an intervention model

19:14 — Turning PLG signals into PQA/PQL routing (and reducing the “noise”)

29:26 — “100M ARR is late” — when to start layering sales into PLG

Guest links

• LinkedIn (Adam Carr):https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamhcarr

Follow Sophie Buonassisi (Host)

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
• Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

Where to Find GTMnow

• Website: https://gtmnow.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
• Podcast Directory: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast

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.

Cassie Young is a General Partner at Primary Venture Partners, a $1B AUM early-stage firm in New York backing category-defining SaaS, fintech, and vertical software companies. Before investing, she spent 15 years as a GTM operator, serving as Chief Revenue Officer at Sailthru and later Chief Customer & Commercial Officer at Marigold (Campaign Monitor, Sailthru, and other martech brands), where she scaled global sales, marketing, and customer success organizations.

Today, Cassie leads investments while also running Primary’s Impact program, giving founders access to a 30-person team across talent, GTM, and strategic finance, and she continues to teach operators through programs like Pavilion and Duke’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship board.

Discussed in this episode:

• How Cassie “accidentally” became a VC after 15 years in GTM leadership.
• The career advice Bill Gurley gave her that changed her trajectory.
• Why Primary refuses to say “platform” and instead built a 30-person Impact team.
• How she actually sources pre-seed/seed founders before they leave their jobs.
• Primary’s 5-part Founder Outcomes Framework (vision, talent, JDCE, and more).
• The difference between real traction vs. “happy ears” and fake design partners.
• Why she’s picky on GTM/AI tools and looks for step-change, not incremental gains.
• How operators can actually break into VC (hint: it’s all about doing the work).

Episode highlights

00:35 — Clay, usage-based pricing, and the $100M ARR rocketship

09:10 — The real story on AISDR: where AI reps actually work (and where they really don’t)

14:02 — Inside “The Gross Retention Apocalypse” and why AI experimental budgets are a ticking time bomb

22:46 — How Cassie accidentally became a VC and the Bill Gurley advice that changed her career path

27:17 — Why Primary hates the word “platform” and how Cassie built a 30-person Impact team for founders

36:10 — Cassie breaks down her 5-part founder outcomes framework (including “jaw-dropping customer experience”)

46:01 — Avoiding “happy ears”: how founders should really use design partners and MedPick-style rigor

57:48 — Time to value as the new north star and why nailing a tight wedge beats peanut-buttering features

1:01:29 — So you want to be a VC: Cassie’s playbook for operators to break into venture (without delusion)

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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.