Brett Queener (Partner at Bonfire Ventures) joins GTMnow to share what three decades across Siebel, early Salesforce, co-founding, and seed-stage investing has taught him about what actually wins now that software is cheaper and faster than he ever imagined.

Brett was one of the earliest GTM hires at Salesforce when it had seven employees. He helped build the go-to-market playbook that defined a generation of SaaS: enterprise segmentation, sales motion design, product marketing, the whole works. He then co-founded SmartRecruiters, angel invested in companies like Outreach and Pando, and eventually joined Bonfire Ventures as a Partner to do early-stage investing the way he thinks it should be done: hands-on, operator-led, and built around founders who are ruthless about execution.

Guest links:

Brett Queener - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettqueener/Bonfire Ventures - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bonfire-ventures/Guest company website: https://www.bonfirevc.com/Host links:Max - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/Max - X: https://x.com/HackItMaxPaul - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulsirving/Paul - X: https://x.com/PaulGTMNewsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

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Transcript available under the episode here: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/

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Highlights:

00:00 – Brett's career: Siebel, Salesforce employee #7, co-founder, angel investor, seed-stage VC06:58 – The big shift: from passive CRUD apps to agentic software that does the wo

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.

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