#59: Early-Stage GTM And The Modern Growth Engine with Brendan Tolleson.

Yeah, one of the, the broader narratives that we're seeing is typically when you think about like a CRM, it's that there's this language like system of record. And what we're seeing is the shift from system of record to system of action, which gets from like a reactive to proactive, proactive motion. So how does it not just be a database, but how does it be a database that then informs the next action to take? And that example of like Slack overlay with agents is an example of, hey, like Salesforce is in the background, but Salesforce is, is that really where the data resides to inform what to do next? And that's what you're gonna see with a lot of applications. If they want to thrive in this, you know, agent-forward market that we're in now.

Welcome to Startups Decoded, the show that gets real about what it takes to build a successful startup. I'm Andy Walsh, 2x exited founder, strategist, and your host. Each week I talk with top founders, investors, and operators to unpack the plays that drive real traction, not just headlines. If you're building something bold, this is where you'll get the honest insights to scale with clarity and confidence. Let's keep growing together hit subscribe and share with your community. It would mean the world to me. Morrison Foster is the legal edge behind the world's boldest innovators. They go by Mofo and are the team behind Startups Decoded. For decades, Mofo has helped startups turn complexity into freedom. Learn more at mofo.com. Hello and welcome back to Startups Decoded. My name is Andy Walsh. If you're a founder, you're looking to grow. That's a given, but the world of growth has changed with the age of AI. But what has created is a new playing field in the sense of how you grow, the tools you use, and then how you actually get to market. And today I'm really fortunate to have Brendan Tollison, who has two hats. He's the CEO of Red Partners, but also the founder of Southbound, which we'll talk about more. Brendan, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Andy. I'm excited for the conversation.

It's, it's wild how much an industry can shift in a very short space of time. I mean, go-to-market as a catch-all term is something that is even new in itself, I would say, and how people approach sales and marketing, whatever they're doing can be wrapped up under one term, but what used to be a very manual job and it started in person, email and CRM work. Has now become really elaborate. And you look at products like Clay, which we'll touch on today, that have really automated that process. That rise of change, how do you even set the scene for what growth and go-to-market looks like today? Like, is there a way you can even define it?

If I could, I'd be a very rich man. It's funny because even when we started Rev Partners about 5 years ago, and you think about that, I mean, it was in the heart of COVID and we were like, hey, we really want to focus on this category called, this emerging category called revenue operations. And back 5 years ago, that wasn't even really a category. It was this really nebulous term. People knew sales ops, they knew marketing ops. It was very siloed and we were saying, hey, there's going to be this new movement. And thankfully we were at the forefront of that. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more on that. But then to your point, but that was before even AI like was a thing. And so now we're just living in this age of disruption where technology is far outpacing human knowledge and human capabilities. And so that naturally creates, what's the right word, anxiety, not from like, is AI going to take over the world, but more so from the sense of like, how do I How do I use this really powerful platform to actually win? Because it's like this whole paradigm of like either you can win faster or you can lose harder. And so we're trying to figure out how do we equip and enable these go-to-market leaders to harness the power of what they can do in a beneficial way as opposed to a detrimental way. And I'm excited to unpack that a little bit more.

Building operations is interesting. I was talking to a salesperson who works at Tracksuit, which is a brand health Um, Platform is out of New Zealand, um, but they've got a big office here now and they've had a lot of funding and he uses Clay in his sequencing. And it was fascinating just even his experience in that process from start to finish where there's whole consultancies exist now to help companies brief Clay and optimize Clay to make it work for them. So like getting systems and process around that makes a lot of sense because the tool can only do so much and that will continue to evolve and become more automated. But understanding that process of how what you're doing in one platform can then translate to others is a whole other thing too. Cause if you're testing A/B side by side, different messages, finding the right people, like having success in one platform is great, but then you need to take all of that and package it up and then translate it across to everything else that you're doing.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it, I think even just take a step back, it's helpful to look at like what, what has happened that's driving what you're just describing. And from, at least from like, from an overarching like meta narrative, I mean, the shift that we've seen is growth at all costs to how do we do more with less, meaning, you know, revenue was king and that's all people cared about. And now you see this balanced perspective, which is, hey, growth is still very important, but profitability, cash is king. And so like, how do we do How do we balance that? And you know, that, that's where you start seeing the whole systems component and what the rise of RevOps, because, you know, oftentimes we talk about sales, I mean, and your audience probably knows this, it's like this whole idea of like the, the art element. And so how do you balance the art with the science? And, and RevOps really provides a lot of the science, meaning the actual insights and the clarity by connecting these systems and providing the reporting to give that go-to-market leader insights on what's working, what's not. And that's why I think that that's become such a prominent role and you see the rise of even that, like the CFO even has gotten a lot more power just because that science or that data is critical to inform, you know, what's working and what's not to ultimately drive not only revenue, but growth in a, in a responsible fashion.

Responsible in the sense of effectiveness as far as return on what you're putting down. Is it also measured as far as team bandwidth and revenue per person? Like how broad does that go?

Uh, yeah, I think it depends how mature the organization is. Cause I think where you're getting in it, like You know, productivity per rep, for example, which I think is a really good thing to look at, uh, that's going to get more as you're in that scale mode. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's even if you're a bootstrap company or you are a Series A, that cash is just as important. It's just, uh, who is really assessing and analyzing that? Um, and so you do want to make sure you're understanding, hey, what are my reps doing? What tools am I investing in? Where am I seeing effective ROI? You know, those type of, and then set, if you set the system up, meaning in this example, the CRM, which is that core database for the customer lifecycle, it really helps you understand, you know, what, what should we be investing in further or what do we actually need to retire for one reason or another?

The insights around that, I think back to old media days where I came from a while back and the allocation of budgets to sales teams for spending and and most of it had no quantification whatsoever. It was a lot of entertainment and a lot of late nights, I'll call it. Um, and, and that was the way the deals got done. It was very much personal relationships and the age of CRM and email campaigns changed that and owning first-party data became critical. And then the third-party platforms came in. If you look at even something like LinkedIn, where you don't have the person's data, but you can still target them and reach people directly. It's different. And I feel like we've almost gone full circle now where having first-party data is actually not only an asset that you have from a commercial point of view with the value of your business, but it's also an advantage against your competitors.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of, yeah, it's like what, what's old is new. And there's a lot of fatigue to your point on the flooding your inbox, flooding LinkedIn. Things like, I mean, I, I, well, personally I hate phone calls, but I, but I hear it's being effective. Things like direct mail, but also to your point, in person. I mean, I think it's really, what it's more a reflection of in my mind is it's more about the, I hate to use the word authenticity because that's such a buzzword, but the idea of like the true like connection with people and that, you know, it's not AI generated and you know it's a real person. There's, I think it's more of a reaction to that. And those are just tactics that are manifestation of it. So yeah, I think it's working. And then also to your point, I think it's— it also there's an element of who's your buyer. And if you are upmarket and you are enterprise and those like they're long sales cycles, they're high touch, they're experience-led and they're relationship-driven. And those things like in-person are really important.

The life. Time value that you get from customers is foundational data, right? As far as the cost to retain and grow someone's business versus finding new business is an old school sales metric from way back. But to be able to do that, you also need to have time in market. And if you're a young startup and you've been live for a year or two, you just don't have that data yet. So it's, it feels like it's just an optimization that's in constant motion in finding enough feedback. To be able to do that. What are some of the things from a strategic standpoint that if you are early stage, say you're doing a million annual revenue as a business, what are some of the things that you would look at from a strategy point of view to help set up a framework to start quantifying investment and return?

Yeah, I think there, I mean the maturity, it's almost like you're asking about maturity curve of like what to prioritize for. Yeah, right. Early-stage company. And I mean, it quite— regardless of what business type you are, meaning like non-recurring, recurring, etc., to me, when you're still in that phase, it's all about— it really is all about new bookings. Because to your point, retention— it's not that retention isn't important, it's just not the priority at that stage. And so I look a lot at, you know, the top of funnel and then conversion metrics, because to me, that's a signal of is there traction in the market that do we have you know, product market fit, meaning we have a solution. Do the buyers see that there's a need for said solution? And that's where we put a lot of our investments. So this is like, you know, if you think about like we call the revenue performance model. So before they become a customer on the left side or the right side. So if you're familiar with Winning by Design, the idea of this bowtie, so left side, right side. So pre-customer activation, we're looking at all those signals around the lead to customer to understand, you know, what's happening from a volume and conversion perspective. Are they generating enough leads and then are they converting from lead to what we call you know, an MQL, marketing qualified lead, to an SQL, sales qualified lead, and then from an SQL to close one. So it's really just setting up that foundation to understand, hey, what are those levers that we should be monitoring to determine if we have, you know, product, in this example, product market fit.

Yeah, it's even understanding that from a simple level as a founder and how you're structuring that user journey, because a lot of the frameworks from a funnel perspective They still exist, but they've changed dramatically. And one of the big changes that I've observed is the intersection of sales and marketing. Quite often they would live almost in parallel, but sometimes not even talk to each other and would see their roles very different. And if anything, sometimes compete for the same budget because they felt that what they could do would be more impactful than their colleagues sitting on the desk adjacent to them. And the sales cycle now, it feels like that there's different stages that you need to hit people and that needs to be strategically thought through between sales and marketing.

Together. Yeah, there's a lot of finger-pointing, right? Of like, hey, it's a marketing problem or it's a sales problem. And I think that's one of the beauties of when you get the data set up properly, it's not a he said, she said, it's, it's a very, it's, it's objective. So it's no longer a subjective thing. So that's one component of it. And then to where you're going is, you know, what we're seeing is the, you know, depending on how like a founder wants to set up their go-to-market motion, but when we talk about go-to-market leader, we're just seeing a lot more coordination, whether it's like through through accountability at, from a leadership perspective, or the way that they are setting up incentives to ensure that the sales and marketing teams are working effectively together. That's what we are seeing is like, how do we move from finger-pointing to the, the objective, hey, let's solve a problem, not have a team issue. And it could be a team issue, but oftentimes if we can create that feedback loop by having the objective measurement, uh, we can understand that problem and solve said problem very quickly if you have the right team members in place.

And the way that each are incentivized as well can be quite different. I mean, in your textbook sales model, it can generally be a lower base and higher commission, and that changes motivation. And even though they're both fighting for the same team and, and collective success is success individually, it still creates a divide. So the ability to quantify things and understand your data as far as touchpoints and moving through what you talked about with MQL and SQL and to close. And that linear journey, that tracking that and understanding that data, would you say that that is something that is important to try and set as a foundation in a business pretty early on? So like, what are some of the key markers? Because when you're early stage and you're growth hacking, you're trying to find money any way that you can, any which way. It's a lot of active test and learn. Sometimes it's just like throwing things at a wall. Other times it can be more thought through, but what stage in the business should you start to put some benchmarks down? As far as what you've observed on outreach and conversion, some of those numbers, so you can really understand what's working and what's not working.

Yeah, I think for founders, it's like, guys, don't over-engineer things. Like, it's totally fine not to have a robust system on day one. Like, that would be a fool's errand because ultimately adoption is what you want. And so how do you ensure— because adoption drives— if you have the right adoption, that means you have good data, and good data drives good reporting so that you don't have the whole garbage in, garbage out. Um, and so, you know, from an early stage perspective, I think if you can have some of those foundational pieces, that's great. And what I mean by that is like pipeline stages. So like, hey, what did we think about, like from a, whatever it is, like discovery call booked or meeting set to closed one, there's likely stages that a customer goes through in a journey to buy from you. And so if you can document that to understand that progression, what that will allow you over time to understand is, hey, where am I having leakage in the journey? Do I have a, like, cause if they got to stage 0, what's going to tell you is if they're just dropping off, then you're, then you have you know, you have a bad— the leads aren't good, meaning they're not qualified for whatever reason. It could be they don't have budget. It could be they're not looking for the solution that you offer. There's a litany of reasons, but that's what allows you to see that visibility. And then when you get into like a stage, let's just call it stage 1, which could be like a discovery— not a discovery call, but like a solution where you're demoing the product. It will help you understand, okay, do I have— do I not have product-market fit for my solution? Like, why are my conversion rates so low? You may also be able to see from that, like, actually our conversion rates are awesome. And then you go, okay, I really need to juice up my marketing spend and add more sales reps because we've got, we got fire here and we need to go put some more, put the gas on the, on the fire. So that's one thing I would just say is like sales stages is pretty an easy one to set up. And then I'd probably, the other, the other thing, if I'm very early is I probably, I look at like lifecycle stages on the, at the, at the contact level, because that will also help you on the lead side. So you'll understand, okay, where are my leads in the journey and so that I know what to be, to be reaching out to them and what message should I be creating. But I wouldn't go crazy on a lot of other stuff in the early phases. It's just, it just becomes noise and your team, especially if it's a very small team, they're just gonna, it's gonna become something that sits on a shelf that no one uses.

The last thing you want to do is have a system that takes so much time to manage that you're not in market and selling because that early stage money is everything.

Yeah. And then, and then I know like, look, to your point about being bootstrapped or not having a big budget, I mean, there, I'm sure there are other programs, but like HubSpot has something for startups and it's like, you can get access to these tools at a very affordable, I mean, when I say very affordable, I mean, it's like up to 50% off on the software. Uh, and so there they make ways to lower the bar or the barrier so that you can actually grow with these solutions, which I think is a pretty cool way that they've structured it.

And the, the, the tracking of that and not making it too cumbersome is important, but the, the lifecycle part is interesting as well. And going back to the sales and marketing and the way that you generate customers, particularly say it's a SaaS business and if it's a highly cluttered category and you can choose between 10 people, it's a lot of the time brand awareness and repetition. So from a sales perspective, if you're creating a lot of leads, but you're not closing, the marketing team can also start to retarget in simple terms, those folks with the right message that shows case studies or aspirational things you can do with the product. And, and the brand actually plays a really strong role in separating you from the pack. You can't just have repetition in the sense of trying to close. You also need to inspire people a little bit to differentiate yourself in market.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I was, I was at a, um, it was a conference this morning and it was with Webflow. Which is like on the CMS side, so website. And this like gets in like on the marketer side, but it's like the disruption. We talk about disruption and it's like, hey, SEO, everyone's like pursuing the blue link, which is Google. And now all of a sudden we gotta look at AEO and answer engine optimization and going to ChatGPT and which is just like a whole different ballgame. We'll get to that later. But where I was going with this is the idea of what marketers for creating content, they need to create content at different stages of the buyer journey to what you're describing. And it's like, hey, questions like, hey, what are, What are CMS options in the market is a different question in a funnel versus what's the difference between or comparison between Webflow and WordPress. Like that's more middle. Like I'm actually thinking about solutions versus, hey, like what should I be thinking for an implementation of Webflow? Those are all different content assets based off of different points in the buyer journey. So to your point about like inspiring action, the content being created must fit that lifecycle stage. And if you don't have those stages set up, you're really just, you know, you're blind throwing darts and that's a really dangerous spot to be in because you can really break trust with the buyer.

Yeah, the contextual element of that, serving that right story at the right time, knowing what that person understands and, and how intentional they are with buying or spending at that point is critical. But the, the other side of that though too is what's happening now and, and you could make a joke out of it, but it's almost real where you're having an AI platform targeting and hitting a lot of people, but then those people getting hit so much that they have their own AI agent that's actually traffic managing inbound as well on their behalf so they don't have to filter through it. So you have these two agents behind the scenes going at each other trying to find ways through and that, and it's a, it's a reality of what we're facing. So from a digital outreach, and you could almost go as far as saying 2026 cold outreach is going to die. And I've seen a lot of debate about it, but what you're seeing, what are some of the patterns that you've seen where the ability to find someone who is in your ICP is a good lead, you can find through automation a way to connect with that person where it doesn't feel like you're just more noise in the system. Like, where are you seeing that tension play out at the moment?

Yeah, I think there's a, well, gosh, there's a lot of, I would, I would just like all the people that say things like prospecting is dead, SEO is dead. I mean, it's a lot of clickbait. I think to your point, right message, right time is really what it's about. And I think that there are ways that, like, how do you make the human the hero and leveraging AI to put that person in that position? Like AI, for example, I mean, if we have American football, I'll use American football for you. But like, if like, how do we put the human in the red zone? Meaning like, hey, they, they are in, like they are in the 20-yard line, touchdown. And so like AI can do that. Like it can put you, you know, with the right buyer at the right time. Now you own the message. And so what we look at, things that I think are working, you know, for these founders, this word intent has become a buzzword, but really all intent is trying to, it's they're doing something to indicate interest in your product or service and ways that can get experienced is, um, you may have somebody go on your website, uh, as an example, you may, and you can now de-anonymize that contact and you can do outreach to said contact. You can see what page on your website they were on. So it's contextual, as we talked about earlier. That's a great way, if you do it right, to not like pitch slap somebody, but to know that they are looking at it. They could be on a G2 page for your product or service, and you could use that. There's ways to automate that to then, you know, do outreach to the buyer. Paid campaigns is another one. They could be engaging with a paid campaign you have on LinkedIn that you're able to now do some interaction with. Those are more like, uh, ways that are, I think, really can be effective. There are other like ones that we've seen do really well, like on social, for example, um, where people are engaging or commenting on your, if you're active on LinkedIn, so if you're a founder, I would highly encourage you to to have a personal brand on whatever platform that is for you. I mean, it could be, could be, you know, Meta, could be Twitter or X, I should say, or LinkedIn, but pick your platform and have a point of view and be active because that will create a following and that following you start to engage with, that will be automated in the background, but it'll allow you to like show up as a human in that one-to-one interaction. So that's a lot, but just a few things that we're starting to see be effective. And I can even give you examples that we've used for Southbound, which is an event we're having a little bit later that that I'm sure we'll touch on in the end of the show.

If you're building the future, you deserve a legal partner built for it. Morrison Foster, the legal edge behind the world's boldest innovators. They go by MoFo and are the team behind Startups Decoded. For decades, MoFo has helped startups turn complexity into freedom. They combine deep market insight, tailored legal strategy, and a Mofo passion. Discover how Mofo can support you. mofo.com. The ability to build brand, and it comes up quite regularly in episodes now with me, is that personal brand is definitely a differentiator for early stage startups. When your company brand means nothing to a lot of people, then your own personal brand has depth and history to it. So you're able to tell stories of what you've observed. What you want to be able to solve and articulate that in a way that has a human element to it. And it's the way that you show up in rooms and it should be the same way you show up digitally now as well, or it actually has an element of personalization to their understanding who you are because trust is king now. And with automation where it's like, I use the example of programmatic ads and we went from TV, radio, print into ads in websites to programmatic, just retargeting you everywhere you show up where you feel like you couldn't escape them. Like when you get into that point, the effectiveness goes down the line as well. So trust is everything because if you have trust and you have context, all of a sudden it's not spam, right? It's, it allows you to actually have a, some form of interaction digitally or in person that allows you to get closer to closing that deal.

100% agree. Yeah. Trust is the currency and that, that's the, that's very fragile and it can get broken very, very fast and people can sniff that stuff out very, very quickly. And so, yeah, I couldn't agree more with what you just said.

There's the other side of that too, which I want to explore a little bit is around the friction tax. And it's something that's come up again as a, as a pretty new term as far as it kind of builds off that AI noise, right? As far as the tech stack you're using, how you automate, et cetera. And there's a term, the hubolution, which has also come to life. If everyone is using the same tools and the same tech stack to harvest ultimately the same people, then again, differentiating yourself is hard. So is your choice of tech stack as important as the strategy you use on that tool?

Yeah, this is a fun, fun debate. I mean, when you, When you said friction tax, I was thinking like historically what we've talked about friction tax is you can either, you can grow one of, one of two ways. You just increase force or you reduce friction. But I think what you're at in the idea of the friction tax in that example, like I think you're, you can create a lot of debt, I think is where you're going. If you either, and so yeah, the idea, the, there's this been this proliferation of tools. And so, hey, there, I mean, there are tens of thousands of tools now. And so, and they just keep coming. And to your point with the advent of AI and vibe coding and now agents, it can only get worse. And so how do we think through a simplified approach that is one, I think, not only easy to administer because there is an administration because these are tools that someone needs to own within the— you have a product owner almost. Think about it like you have a, you have your own software, but then think about your tools as software and someone needs to own that system. That's kind of what the RevOps function, the one of the purposes of the RevOps function. But yeah, we would always say less is more. And so how do we think through fewer tools to drive adoption within the teams? Because like if you're, if If you're a high-growth organization, um, or if you're looking to be a high-growth organization, like, you're going to have turnover in your organization or just adding people, whether it's bringing people on or they move up or they move out. If you have, you know, 20+ tools in your stack, it's going to be— think about trying to drive 100% adoption without it. It's just going to get really, really hard and really, really messy. But we have a very, like, I want to say rigid— we have a toolbox that we say, hey, here's what we use. It's to serve. Yes, it helps us in terms of how do we standardize our delivery, but it also serves the customer. And so we can talk a little bit more. I think the challenge you're seeing though is people— going back to trust, actually, uh, is it used to be like, I pick Salesforce or I pick HubSpot or whatever that is. Like, I have my own tech ecosystem. And I just think that that mindset has shifted. And it's very like, the barrier to change is so low now. And so it's like, how the trust is like, can you create recurring impact, recurring value for me, the customer? And if you can't, I am no longer loyal to you and I will move. And that's a big shift. I mean, It used to be like getting off of Salesforce or getting off Dynamics or, you know, getting off of HubSpot. It's like, that's a big, big, big initiative. It doesn't mean it's not still, but it's just people are more open to it because they need results and they need results fast.

And it's, it is cluttered and it's also fragmented and the breadth of your tech stack can become such a hot mess to manage. So consolidating that, I mean, that's going to happen by default anyway in the next 2 years. There's going to be so much. M&A activity and where people just become the same company. It's the nature of the capitalist world that we live, but people will just disappear because they can't sustain revenue because it is so cluttered as well. And I had Adam Robinson on as a guest who's got a company RB2B, and he talked about in his category, he literally has had two businesses that have ripped him off 100%, like his messaging, his website design, et cetera, selling the same thing. And when you have tools like Lovable to do that, like it's a really cluttered competitive market. So backing the right horse as far as your tech stack is also important because if you're putting time from a RevOps perspective to manage it and then all of a sudden that disappears, like you're not back to scratch, but it can really hurt you and slow you down.

Yeah. And I think with, you know, with Adam or just that example, I mean, what really, what that, I think the lesson there too is just in the advent of Everyone can, like, everyone can either steal or build very quickly, or they can answer the how. It's like, what, what truly is the sustainable competitive advantage is really your story, your brand. Uh, but also like where I think you're going to is just like the, the product differentiation. But on the topic of like consolidation, yeah, I mean, consolidation's happening. And if you look at the HubSpot piece, it used to be like a feature issue, like take the CRM versus Salesforce. Now, now it's just an education issue. Like everyone wants to be the platform that the go-to-market team uses. So like everyone's going there and you've seen consolidation and to your earlier point in a lot of different categories. And so everyone's, there's that race to make sure that they can be that platform. It's an interesting time. It's a lot of fun to watch it, but it makes sense for the reasons you just described.

And I look at a great example of Salesforce acquisition of Slack and Slack's latest release with agents across the board that are basically integrating across all of your files, history, sales documents, and automating that. It feels like Slack's becoming the new front end of Salesforce and Salesforce will start to become not redundant, but it definitely won't live and breathe the way that it was because it's so old as a legacy sales tool and it just doesn't feel anywhere near as effective. Compared to like a clay, and it's not to say it doesn't work, but you've just got legacy technology versus brand new technology going head to head.

Yeah, I think there's this, one of the broader narratives that we're seeing is this, I mean, typically when you think about like a CRM, it's that there's this language like system of record. And what we're seeing is this shift from system of record to system of action, which gets from like a reactive to proactive motion. So how does it not just be a database, but how does it be a database that then informs the next action to take? And that example of like Slack, overlay with agents as an example of, hey, like Salesforce is in the background, but Salesforce is, is that really where the data resides to inform what to do next? And I mean, I think that's what you're going to see with a lot of applications if they want to thrive in this, you know, agent-forward market that we're in now.

It's fascinating to watch that. Yeah, this year is going to be big on, on that activity where everyone's trying to work out how they retain their place as a market leader. Or continue to drive and eat market share out of the legacy competition.

Yeah. And I think anyone tells you that they know what's going to happen is lying, candidly. I mean, it's so much, there's just a lot of unknowns. So like, and I think with what's going on in the market with all these applications, doesn't matter who you are, Salesforce, Monday, HubSpot, Figma. I mean, they're all getting hit hard right now. And I don't think it's, you know, when I say hit hard, I mean like 50 to 70% of their market share. That's, that's a lot of money gone in a very short period of time. And I don't think it's an indictment on, because most of them, like from, if you look at their quarterly reports, is they're hitting their numbers. It's more of like the future is just really uncertain. And so it's more about, hey, you're being measured at 15x as opposed to 2x. And so we, we're just trying to figure out where the, like, the puck is going. And I don't think many people, I would say 99% of people or 99.9% of people have no idea what that is. And That's okay, but it does feel uncomfortable as a result of that.

Because the categories are being completely redefined and there's new ones being built as well. So it's impossible to forecast because you don't, and you can't, it's impossible to predict human behavior. And that's the test, right? You can forecast tech evolution, but how we utilize the tech and the way we do it, like in person versus digitally, there's so many things there that will play out. Out. And the adoption of certain tech stack will also drive that as well. Like the survival of the fittest type mentality is very much where it is. It's like you may be forced to choose a certain path because it's the biggest market player and you just need to be on there. And that's the Salesforce legacy ultimately of what they have with such large enterprise clients. And the next generation, if you're a young founder, flipping it back to the start of our conversation, using Salesforce would feel very cumbersome and would feel so like out of touch with what you're trying to achieve. And in a world where you assume that automation and effectiveness is the default, it's not just a nice to have anymore. It's just a standard.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's also like, you know, I talk to like investors and they'll call it the Salesforce tax. And I think that that's changed a little bit. I do think it's important for founders as you're growing, it's like, not to start with the end in mind, but like know what you're trying to build. And it's like if you really are trying to build a— when I say build, meaning, hey, I want to make this a really large business, I'm going to have a really mature go-to-market team over time. Start— I say start with the end, be like, okay, I know that's where I'm going. And so have a platform that can grow with you. And so I think oftentimes what we see is they'll start in a, you know, Pipedrive's fine. I don't have a lot of issues with Pipedrive, but it's just not a platform. And so when you're trying to think through how do I I want to, you know, have my go-to-market team on one platform and I want to continue to grow with it. I just would caution folks to think about what, you know, have that right perspective. Yes, you have to have a budget and I totally get that, but, um, you know, just, just be careful when you're thinking through how do I, how do I invest in the right things?

Great call out. And to open this up a little bit, a part of the reason we're talking today is to talk about Southbound, which is happening in Atlanta at the amazing Roxy Theater on April 16th. And that is going to be basically living, breathing day of what we're talking about now, but bringing in some experts and you've got such a premium list of people. What were some of the things that you observed that made you realize that this is a conversation that needs to turn into a full event format?

Yeah, it's our, so it's our third year doing it. I'll answer that first point. And I think, you know, part of it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is the idea of like trust. And it's like, how do, how do people experience your brand and how do you create value for the community? Not like transactional, but it's also with, with the idea of like open hand of like, hey, how do we serve that go-to-market leader? Because it, that's ultimately like our mission statement. We engineer revenue outcomes for the go-to-market leader. And so how do we serve them? Not just with our services, but also with education. And so that we, we figured, hey, there's no better way for us to do that than that, to have an event and to bring in speakers to equip them and enable them to thrive, not only survive, but thrive in, in this world. And that's just become more and more relevant. On over the last 3 years with what's been going on in the market. And so like the theme this year is all about time. It's this, it's this play on words, it's timeless and timely. And so what are those timeless principles that, that, that don't change, that go-to-market leaders need to be investing in through the growth of their, their, their team and their business? And then what are those timely practices that they should be incorporating? And so we talk about AI, for example, like going back to even that Webflow example of What is, what is AEO and how do I do AEO effectively as a, you know, marketer? What is, what is Clay? Like, how do I do outbound prospecting at scale with this personalization intent triggers? And so we want to be able to kind of balance those two concepts and equip them with strategy and application in a one-day setting. So that's the intent of the, of the event.

So good. And if you think about some of the players as well, you've got HubSpot CEO Yavnir Rangan, who is amazing as a leader. She's, I love her thoughtfulness in what she's doing for such a large organization. She seems very grounded, which is, I think, important in the world that we live today.

She, yeah, she's amazing. I mean, I, I was very fortunate to get to know her. We first met when she was the chief customer officer at HubSpot. And so she, we were growing within the HubSpot ecosystem pretty quickly. And she was, she said, hey, I want to meet and just learn what you guys are doing differently. And I can remember that first meeting. I mean, I, very nervous. I mean, we were probably 5 months in the business and I remember our, my first slide was, was so stupid, but it was like, it was, we look different, we act different, we smell different. And, and, and it just, and it just was a really good meeting and it was one of those ones where we, we built good rapport and lo and behold, she becomes the CEO of HubSpot like 3 months after that because, you know, Brian had been in a, he had a skiing accident back, like this is probably 5 years ago. And she just assumed the role of CEO and we kept a quarterly cadence. Uh, I think, you know, what Yamini, one of the things I really respect and appreciate about her, yes, is her humility, but it's, she makes herself available and she listens before she speaks and she is constantly learning, whether it's through the partner community, whether it's through the customer community. There's just a lot to be said for that. And then I think what she deserves a ton of credit for is, um, like the AI push and like everyone's, of course, done an AI push, but the way that they've approached it where it's like platform-centric versus point solution, we're not going to charge for it. Like we're going to figure out, hey, what does a customer want? What are they liking? And then we can monetize it over time. And so I just think that the way that they've gone about it has been really smart and they're starting to see those early signals of success that are going to position them well for, for HubSpot going forward.

And it's nice to hear that. And that's my impression of her as far as what you just described. It seems to be like she presents the same as she is in person, which is, I always respect that in a leader.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, who else are you excited about?

Varun from Clay, of course. Like for me, it was, I openly, I think it was hard to use, but that's to be expected at the start because it was doing very complex work in understanding your business, your message, your audience. And trying to streamline that. If you look at a business like Zapier, which is basically finding a way to piecemeal a bunch of products side by side that work, Clay was a way to throughline that in one platform. So I'm fascinated here from Varun on where they're at currently, but also more around how they see the future. They're obviously on the bleeding edge of effectiveness from a go-to-market perspective and how they stay contemporary in a world that changes so rapidly.

Andy Walsh: Yeah, I mean, they've been on just quite a ride, right? And like, if you think, if you go back to what we talked about earlier of brand, I mean, I think they've done a, Varun's done a great job of leveraging a personal brand to grow a professional brand because people trust people, not brands. I mean, that's coming back to like that. There's like a, what happened in B2C is happening in B2B. And so that personal brand becomes really important. And I think Varun does a really good job of like being true to who he is. And that that and it resonates with people. Yeah, Clay, to your point, is a super powerful tool. It's also, it's like that blank canvas concept of like what you can do with it. So there's a lot of power, but you also need to know what the heck you're doing. And so it takes somebody that's, you know, more technical. Like if you put SDR in there, I mean, feel free to put SDR in there, but they better be, they better know what they're doing. But yeah, I think he'll be great. And we're gonna have Sangram Vajri doing that Q&A. And so Sangram was one of the co-founders of Terminus in Atlanta and has run, he runs Go-To-Market Partners now. And so I think it'll be a really, really good conversation between the two of them.

Amazing. And it's a one-day event in Atlanta, as I mentioned, April 16th. I am, as part of Startups Decoded, on ground. I'm a media partner for the event, which I'm super excited about. And on the day, I'm going to get the little side chats. So talking to some of the speakers, finding out about what they talked about on stage, but then what happens next. And it's one of the great things about events that I love is One, connecting with colleagues and sometimes competitors even as well and understanding where they're at and challenges they're facing. But also as far as like almost passing the baton on in the sense of what happens there in conversation, how do you package that up and let people share that knowledge, which is part of what we are working on and collaborating together. As far as the format, um, we've covered a couple of the speakers. Like how does the, like big picture, how does the day flow? What could people expect?

Yeah, I think, you know, people I would say like the idea of like come for the, come for the speaker, stay for the community type of kind of, that would be the way to think about it. And so to your point, we have some, you know, I think some really exciting speakers. I think what makes this a really unique event that we hear a lot about is like the experience that they, that we create. And so it's gonna be a lot, I mean, it's gonna be educational, yes, but it's gonna be a lot of fun. And there's gonna be opportunities for people to interact with one another. And so we just found that to be a recipe for success where if it's just a stale constant speaker drip, no matter who the speakers are, it's not going to land as well. And so how you make people feel is just as important. And so we're trying to create that like Southern hospitality, if you will, where people just walk away saying that was like, I felt like a guest. I didn't feel like I was an attendee. If we do that, then we're successful. Fortunately, we've done it the last 2 years and this is bigger. So it's a bit of a challenge, but we're excited about creating that experience for our guests.

And the curation element of connecting people is critical. Like listening and consuming. You can get information from folks, but the ability to feel like it's been curated in a way that is intentional for what you're trying to understand, where you're going next, what you're facing, and it sort of feels like there's someone is speaking to you personally. And that's the sign for me of a good event and walking away with that knowledge plus new folks that you've met as well. For me, this is my first time to Atlanta as well. So looking forward to some of that Southern hospitality. I've been asking friends for some hot tips on places to eat. And I, I love local food and so I need to, I won't chew your time up on the podcast for this, but I, I definitely need some hotspots.

Well, we, uh, it's like the perfect, like, I mean, Atlanta does get really hot, but it's like April, so it's, it's like the perfect time of year. The Masters is the week before, the weekend before. It's like the best time to be in Atlanta from a weather perspective. Yeah. I mean, barbecue, fried chicken, like we got, southern food's great. Uh, you, you, I can definitely give you guys some recommendations, but I think, yeah, I mean, going back to like like the point about like that it was designed for you, like that's how you should experience it. And just to give you, like, I had a call with a speaker yesterday and he's like, hey, what's on the mind of the buyer? Want to do just a canned presentation. And so just even hearing, his name's John Acuff, um, and he'll be talking about the mindset shift that we talk about, like this old playbook, new playbook, like how do you change your mindset to, you know, succeed in this world? It was just cool to hear like that's the perspective he's taking. Or for Yamini, like, hey, I want to hear questions from the crowd, so can we get some, like, what's on their mind that I can speak to? Varun with the same thing, like, hey, Can we bring somebody up to, to talk about like a question they have? Or Don Miller, who talks about StoryBrand and soundbites, like, can I do a live example with one of the guests? Like, how can they create a soundbite for their company? Those are just moments that are really powerful, but are just more signals of, hey, this has been to serve that, that guest as opposed to a platform for these speakers just to make their name known.

No one wants to hear a press release read out, right? It needs to be immersive and that interactivity is perfect. And someone like Donald Miller, as you called out, like that, the ability to see someone who's so talented at their craft, turn something around so quickly, like in person is always going to be impressive. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it, Brendan. Is there anything else we should know about the event tickets? Like, is there, can we, can I put you on the spot and say that we can give my people some kind of special deal? Cause I like, I like the hookups.

I would love to help you and your community up. So we would love to have your community be a part of it. The one thing we didn't talk about that I think is actually a fun close is we're gonna have a mentalist slash magician, uh, uh, in the show before a happy hour. And I, I experienced him at, uh, Clay as a Sculpt, uh, their event. And he, he was a closer and I was like, if I can get him, that will be like the best thing ever. 'Cause I, I walked in as a skeptic to that guy's performance and I I was in the front row, not by design. I just ended up being in the front row and I was part of his magic. So I can tell you it is legitimate and I'm excited to see him wow our customers, or excuse me, our guests at the event, 'cause that'll be a fun close. So I would love for your community to be a part of it. There will be a discount code that your team can use to promote this and we'd love to have them there on April 16th.

Well, I call it mates rates where I'm from in Australia and I always love the hookups. But yeah, the magician part, I didn't catch that one actually on the list. So they're always fun, but I definitely won't be in the front row. I'm not sure I want to be the one that is up on stage.

Yeah, it's a hit. I mean, it's, it's legit, man. It's, it's wild. So I may have to tell them to find you in the audience.

Spot 2, the guy with the bald guy with the glasses and the mustache. Nice. All right. We, I know we're at time. Uh, we'll be down there excited to be a part of it. And yeah, again, thanks for the time.

Thanks, Andy. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to Startups Decoded. If today's conversation helped you think differently, share it with a founder in your network and don't forget to subscribe for real-world startup insights every week. We really value your support. If you're interested in interested in partnering with us, email hello@startupsdecoded.com. I'm Andy Walsh. I'll see you next week.