Episodes

  • Inside LinkedIn: buyer behavior, how to social sell, why warm intros get 3x the response, why only 45% of sellers are seen as trustworthy and the 4 behaviors that separate top sellers | Catherine Flynn (LinkedIn Sales Navigator)

    Inside LinkedIn: buyer behavior, how to social sell, why warm intros get 3x the response, why only 45% of sellers are seen as trustworthy and the 4 behaviors that separate top sellers | Catherine Flynn (LinkedIn Sales Navigator)
    Sep 23 2026

    Information has never been more abundant, and trust has never been harder to earn. That's the tension at the heart of LinkedIn's new research, "The Trust Advantage," and Catherine, who leads marketing for LinkedIn's Sales Solutions business (Sales Navigator), joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to unpack it. The headline gap: 86% of B2B buyers say expertise is what builds trust, but only 45% describe the sellers they meet as trustworthy.

    Catherine has spent 25+ years in marketing, including 13 at Meta, and now runs a global team out of Singapore. She argues AI has made "spray and pray" easier than ever, which is exactly why the winning move is doing less, more relevant outreach. She breaks down the four behaviors that separate top sellers, why warm introductions convert so much better, what a seller's LinkedIn profile should actually say, and how putting your expertise out publicly now helps both you and your company rank in AI search.

    What you'll learn:
    - The trust gap: why 86% of buyers want expertise but only 45% find sellers trustworthy, and how to close it
    - Why expertise in a first conversation means leading with their problem, not your product
    - The case for less outreach: more signal means you can be far more selective
    - The four top-seller behaviors: signal-based selling, early multithreading, timely engagement (hours not weeks), and genuinely personalized outreach
    - Why warm intros win: ~3x higher email response and ~2x higher connection-acceptance than cold
    - The most underrated entry point: executive sponsors and former customers who moved companies
    - What a seller's LinkedIn profile should be (a point of view, not a resume), and why profile views are a top buying signal
    - The algorithm and discoverability: how posting even once a week, and engaging on others' posts, compounds
    - Why LinkedIn is now the most-cited domain for professional queries in AI search, and what that means for you
    - Hiring in the AI era: adaptability and generalists over specialists, and "throw your hat over the wall"

    Connect with Catherine:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineflynn/

    Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
    X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

    About the guest: Catherine leads marketing for LinkedIn's Sales Solutions business, home of Sales Navigator. She has 25+ years in marketing, including consumer and agency roots and roughly 13 years at Meta/Facebook, and is based in Singapore, where much of the Sales Solutions business is being built across APAC.

    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.

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    42 mins
  • Why More AI Won't Grow Your Revenue (and What Will) | Loreal Lynch (CMO, Nooks)

    Why More AI Won't Grow Your Revenue (and What Will) | Loreal Lynch (CMO, Nooks)
    Sep 15 2026

    The CMO of Nooks (and former CMO of Jasper) joins GTMnow to explain why buying more agents won't grow revenue unless you rebuild the process underneath, and what the human-plus-agent revenue team truly looks like.

    Loreal has had a front-row seat to two AI waves: first at Jasper, where AI reshaped marketing content, and now at Nooks, building toward what she calls the revenue agents category. She breaks down why the tools in today's GTM stack were built for humans to click through, not for agents to execute; why the org chart and the process both have to be rethought from the ground up; and why the real shift isn't reps prompting AI, but AI prompting reps. She also gets into the misconception that agents are easy to build, the CMO-CRO alignment model she runs with her counterpart Hannah, and why the marketing pendulum is swinging back from pure performance to brand.

    What you'll learn:
    - Why bolting AI tools onto pre-AI processes fails, and what a real revenue operating system requires
    - The iceberg model of human vs. agent work, and why the waterline keeps rising
    - Why the future flips: AI stops waiting for prompts and starts prompting the rep
    - Augmentation over replacement: if an agent makes a rep 10x, you hire more reps, not fewer
    - The results some teams see: ~3x meetings booked and ~2x pipeline on the same headcount
    - Why "agents are easy to build" is a trap once you need shared data, governance, and calling/email infrastructure at scale
    - What stays human: judgment, narrative, and reading the room (the surf-small-talk story)
    - The CMO-CRO alignment model: shared pipeline goals instead of fighting over sourced-lead credit
    - Why marketing's pendulum is swinging back from performance to brand in the AI era
    - Why starting with a wedge (the dialer) and its conversational data beats selling a broad platform

    Chapters:
    00:00 Cold open: augmentation not replacement, and AI that prompts the rep
    01:14 Welcome, and why she left Jasper's AI wave for Nooks
    03:26 Seeing AI from every side: customer, board, now operator
    04:27 The iceberg: human work above the water, agent work below
    05:13 What humans do best vs. what agents do best
    07:14 The real question isn't how many agents, it's who prompts whom
    07:31 Augmentation over replacement: make a rep 10x, hire more
    08:37 The results some teams see, and what's next
    09:56 Why bolting AI onto old processes fails|12:06 The misconception that agents are easy to build
    13:58 Going AI-native inside her own marketing org
    15:10 The framework for what goes to headcount vs. agents
    16:19 What stays human: judgment, context, and the naming story
    17:32 CMO-CRO alignment: shared systems and shared metrics
    19:43 How she and her CRO run pipeline without sourced-lead targets
    21:40 What's changed, and what still works: the pendulum back to brand
    23:42 What she's excited to build at Nooks
    25:10 Who's winning with Nooks: the AI-native early adopters
    27:06 Rapid fire: leadership, impact over activity, no time for bad wine
    28:25 Who Nooks is hiring, and where to find Loreal

    Connect with Loreal Lynch:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorealesque/

    Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
    X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

    About the guest: Loreal Lynch is the Chief Marketing Officer of Nooks, a revenue agents platform that started with an AI dialer and expanded across the sales engagement stack. She was previously CMO of Jasper, and earlier held marketing leadership roles at Salesforce, Tableau, and Stripe. Nooks' customers include Cursor, Replicate, Deel, and HubSpot.

    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.

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    29 mins
  • Building an AI-Era Sales Machine | Chris McDonough (VP Sales, Campfire)

    Building an AI-Era Sales Machine | Chris McDonough (VP Sales, Campfire)
    Sep 10 2026
    Chris McDonough has joined four companies right before they exploded. At the first, Motive, he was employee 40 and watched revenue go from $800K to $30M in about 100 days. The VP of Sales at Campfire joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to break down what he learned riding hypergrowth over and over, and why he thinks AI is about to split the sales profession in two.Chris gets tactical on the whole arc: how a two-week decision to sign a lease and move to SF changed his trajectory, what a federal mandate taught him about compelling events, why your career growth is tied directly to how fast your company grows, and how he now builds an AI-native sales org from scratch at Campfire (an AI-native ERP taking on the legacy giants). He also makes the contrarian case that AI won't replace reps but will widen the gap between them, why AI outbound is mostly spam for complex B2B, and why a strong SDR bench is existential.What you'll learn:The $800K-to-$30M-in-100-days story, and what a compelling event really looks likeWhy your career trajectory is tied to your company's growth rate ("you can't be a VP if there's no one to be VP of")The contrarian AI take: not labor replacement, but a top 30% worth triple and a bottom 20% that's hard to employWhat he hires for now: not just skill, but whether you can self-learn from AI on day oneHow to build an AI-native sales org with no tech debt (the deal dashboard that grades every call against every win and loss)Why AI outbound mostly becomes a spam tool in complex B2B, and why the SDR bench matters moreWhy he leaves once a company is big enough to run Workday, and goes back downmarketHow to sell into the "real economy," where nobody cares about your hot VC and references are hyper-localRegrettable churn: the retention metric behind Samsara's run, and why top reps compoundOne-way vs. two-way doors: how to make fast decisions at 70-80% of the dataChapters:00:00 Intro01:17 Welcome, and a career of joining companies right before they explode01:51 Employee 40 at Motive, and the two-week decision that changed everything04:19 The federal mandate, and the hiring class that got promoted in 30 days05:33 Why career growth is tied to company growth rate07:12 The mandate story: from selling nothing to 70 demos a week10:19 Was it the wrong decision? Believing through the objection10:56 What 800-900 demos in 3 months does to a seller12:11 Samsara: scaling an office 0 to 100, and 250 interviews in 90 days13:42 The contrarian hiring philosophy: the 10x seller and the widening gap15:59 Why he left Verkada for Campfire, and the "Workday rule"18:41 Building an AI-native sales org with no tech debt21:14 What Campfire is: AI-native ERP and one of software's last moats25:25 Expanding the TAM and the recession-proof case26:12 Selling into the real economy: hyper-local references, not hot logos28:26 His honest take on AI outbound and AI SDRs30:49 The SDR org as your existential talent bench31:56 The metric he obsesses over: regrettable churn33:45 Who Campfire is hiring, and "will Claude kill this company?"35:33 Rapid fire: leadership, execution over competitors, one-way vs. two-way doors40:19 Where to find Chris, and how to actually DM your way into a jobConnect with Chris McDonough:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-mcdonough-94546626/Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnowLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuonaAbout the guest: Chris McDonough is VP of Sales at Campfire, an AI-native ERP company competing with legacy incumbents like NetSuite. He was previously at Verkada, and earlier helped scale Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) from $800K to roughly $100M in revenue and Samsara through hyperscale, opening new-market offices in Nashville and Atlanta.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: https://gtmnow.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow X: https://x.com/GTMnow_ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_nowThe 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.
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    42 mins
  • Inside Electric's AI Relaunch, from a 3X Founder | Ryan Denehy (Founder & CEO, Electric)

    Inside Electric's AI Relaunch, from a 3X Founder | Ryan Denehy (Founder & CEO, Electric)
    Aug 27 2026

    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.

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

    What the Top 1% of Sellers Do Differently | Ross Rich (CEO, Accord)
    Aug 25 2026

    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.

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

    Will Salesforce Win the AI Era Like It Won Cloud? | Kris Billmaier
    Aug 11 2026
    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 weeklyThank 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.comChapters:00:00 Intro01:12 Welcome, and the Salesforce platform-shift question02:25 How Salesforce adapted across cloud, mobile, social, and AI03:32 Why Sales Cloud became Agentforce Sales05:17 Renaming the category: from CRM to agentic revenue orchestration06:56 Will anyone log into a CRM again?08:09 Agentforce in one line, and the seller's Monday morning09:08 Build vs. buy, vibe coding, and the context moat11:01 The Momentum acquisition and memory fragments13:04 Sellers managing teams of agents, and the $100M pipeline story15:03 The agent stack: prospecting, engagement, pipeline, quoting16:27 Efficiency, accuracy, and auto-generated forecasts18:03 Why Salesforce is hiring more sellers19:16 What the modern sales role looks like20:08 Sponsor: Primer21:34 How AI changed hiring: from "what" to "how"23:48 The window: shipping weekly, not on three annual releases25:13 What product-market fit means now26:05 Software vs. services, and the $10T question28:10 The complexity problem: easy by default, advanced by choice30:07 Go-to-market evolution and consolidating the stack32:07 Leading as a player-coach33:16 Being "chief repetition officer" and educating the field35:00 How a 70,000-person company stays agile36:48 The biggest lesson from Marc Benioff37:57 Pricing: seats, flex credits, and outcome-based metrics40:53 Are we in a SaaSpocalypse? The full answer42:08 Where Kris gets his learnings43:07 World Cup picksKris Billmaier (EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales, Salesforce)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisbillmaier/Salesforce Agentforce: https://www.salesforce.com/agentforceSophie Buonassisi (Host, SVP at GTMnow/GTMfund)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/X: https://x.com/sophiebuonaAbout 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.comFollow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnowFollow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_nowFollow 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.
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    44 mins
  • Inside Deel's $1M → $1.5B Sales Machine | Chris Lee

    Inside Deel's $1M → $1.5B Sales Machine | Chris Lee
    Aug 3 2026

    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
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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.

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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Inside Merge: The $75M Bet on Open Source AI (Powering OpenAI, Netflix & Uber) | Shensi Ding, CEO

    Inside Merge: The $75M Bet on Open Source AI (Powering OpenAI, Netflix & Uber) | Shensi Ding, CEO
    Jul 22 2026
    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 possibleChapters:00:00 Intro01:14 What Merge does: products, workforce, and three core offerings02:05 Agent Handler, Gateway, and the new Embedded Routing Stack04:52 The 2026 shift away from "token-maxing"07:29 Open-source models, the China question, and where data really lives10:14 How Merge works with open-source model providers12:00 What she's learned as a first-time founder: get over your ego13:22 Reversing the GTM playbook: enterprise-first, then PLG15:50 Running both motions: 20,000+ self-serve, 400+ enterprise17:31 Why buyer behavior moved to Twitter and brand19:06 Founder-led sales, and what a real sales process taught her22:27 When to hire your first salesperson23:49 Forward-deployed engineers and 5 to 10x usage growth27:00 Keeping go-to-market up to speed with product28:33 Rebuilding marketing as an engineering function30:45 The dinner agent: 1 to 2 a quarter to 3 to 5 a month31:24 How AI buying reshaped the marketing org33:54 Maintaining agents: prompts over legacy builders35:02 Mercenaries vs. missionaries, and the "anti-sell"40:25 The market view: from hostility to collaboration42:06 Is a valuation reckoning coming?43:07 Why she stayed hands-on building Agent Handler and Gateway45:18 What's next: training your own models off open-source46:52 Where to find Shensi and MergeConnect with Shensi Ding:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shensiding/X: https://x.com/shensiMerge: https://merge.devHost: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnowLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/X: https://x.com/sophiebuonaAbout 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.comAbout 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.comFollow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnowFollow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_nowFollow 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.
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    47 mins