Kyle Parrish joined Figma as the first-ever sales hire when the company was doing $2M in ARR and helped scale it to $950M ARR. Figma then went on to IPO (FIG).

But the path there was anything but smooth.

In this episode, Kyle breaks down what it actually took to build Figma's enterprise sales motion from scratch, including the no-discount rule that made procurement teams furious, the 40-hour interview weeks when hiring felt impossible to keep up with, and what it was like to lead a 300-person team through a failed $20B Adobe acquisition, and then have their best year immediately after.

We cover:

- Why Figma refused to discount, even when Microsoft pushed back

- How to hire the right first sales rep as a founder

- The PLG to enterprise transition most companies get wrong

- What the Adobe deal collapse actually felt like from the inside

- How Figma went from 3 products to 8 overnight and launched into an IPO

- What great sales look like in the AI era

Timestamp:

0:00 – Intro

1:02 – Guest intro: Kyle Parrish

1:35 – Joining Figma at $2M ARR in 2018

5:01 – First meeting with Dylan (Figma CEO)

6:13 – How to find your first sales hire

9:05 – Stage alignment in early hiring

11:43 – Early-stage operators need "scar tissue"

13:19 – Northstar metric at Figma

14:13 – Obsessing over customer conversations

16:44 – Building Figma's brand through community

17:31 – Scaling the "unscalable"

20:08 – In-person GTM vs. digital

22:47 – Was there a moment Figma might not make it?

24:48 – Pivoting after the Adobe deal collapsed

28:10 – Figma's no-discount rule

31:05 – Enterprise ELAs replacing discounting

34:47 – What makes a great salesperson in the AI era

36:56 – Missionaries vs. mercenaries in AI-era GTM

39:47 – Spotting the next Dropbox or Figma

43:46 – Kyle's post-Figma investing focus

45:58 – Family, travel & what's next

Guest: Kyle Parrish, former VP Sales at Figma

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kparrish8/

X: https://x.com/KyleHParrish

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP Marketing at GTMnow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow

Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now

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Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/

Sponsors:

Nooks - the AI workspace for outbound teams: https://www.nooks.ai/gtmfund

.Tech - Domains, where the next generation of builders is planting their flag. Secure your .tech domain today from any registrar of your choice.

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

Subscribe to GTMnow for the latest episodes! https://gtmnow.com

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/

AI isn't just changing how we sell. It's changing how buyers make decisions before they ever talk to you.

Sam, Founder and CEO of Test Box, joins Sophie on GTMnow to break down exactly what's happening to the B2B software buying process right now, and what go-to-market leaders need to do about it immediately.

If you're a founder, CRO, or AE wondering why your pipeline feels different, this conversation will give you a clear framework for what's happening and what to do next.

What we cover:

• Why 70-80% of purchase decisions are already made before the first call (and it's accelerating)
• The shift from discovery calls to validation calls, and how to prepare
• CEO (AI-version of SEO): how LLMs are shaping what buyers believe about your product
• The "day one shortlist" shrinking from 3-4 vendors to 1-2 vendors
• Agent-to-agent procurement: Sam's timeline for when AI agents fully take over buying
• Why the mid-funnel is actually getting longer, not shorter
• The "Fake Nothing, Prove Everything" campaign that went viral post-Series A
• How Test Box runs 15 AI experiments per week across the entire company
• Using Google Vertex video analysis to read prospect body language on sales calls
• How to build an AI-first culture without burning out your team
• Books: The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, No Ego, Courageous Marketing, Good to Great

Timestamps:0:00 - Cold open

1:09 - What Test Box does

2:43 - How buying has changed

5:48 - What founders/CROs should do now

7:05 - GEO: AI version of SEO

9:02 - Why mid-funnel is expanding

21:17 - Agent-to-agent procurement

26:02 - All procurement by agents in 3-5 years

29:09 - How vendors differentiate beyond product

33:30 - The croissant campaign breakdown

45:50 - 15 AI experiments per week

47:10 - Analyzing prospects via video AI

48:29 - Building AI culture in your team

52:39 - Book recommendations

Guest: Sam Senior, Founder and CEO TestBox

Linkedin: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuelsenior/⁠

Test Box:⁠ https://www.testbox.com⁠

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP Marketing at GTMnow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

Newsletter:⁠ https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com⁠

Visit us on:⁠ https://gtmnow.com⁠

Follow us on LinkedIn: / gtmnow

Follow us on X (Twitter):⁠ https://x.com/GTMnow_⁠ 

Follow us on YouTube: / @gtm_now 

Follow us on TikTok: / gtmnow_ 

Follow us on Instagram: / gtmnow_  

Auren Hoffman (Flex Capital) joins the GTMnow podcast to share some of the most contrarian takes in tech today, from why AI moats are gone, to why your next VC meeting will be with a bot, to why AI is secretly going to trigger a baby boom.

In this episode:
- Why Auren runs 500+ AI agents to source deals, and what that means for founders raising capital
- The "agent-to-agent" meeting prediction: by end of 2026, first VC conversations will be fully automated
- Why every software moat has been "blown up" and what Salesforce, LinkedIn & DocuSign need to do to survive
- The OpenAI x The Hustle acquisition breakdown: why it's the smartest (and cheapest) distribution play in AI
- Why missing a great deal is 10x more painful than making a bad one, Auren's honest VC mistake framework
- The baby boom thesis: why AI, IVF, self-driving cars & cheaper energy could reverse the fertility decline
- Why companies won't sign yearly SaaS contracts anymore, and what that means for every B2B founder

Auren Hoffman is the founder of Flex Capital, SafeGraph, and LiveRamp. He's an early backer of Replit, Perplexity, Rippling, Vercel, Coinbase, Chime, and AppLovin.

Connect with Max: 
https://x.com/hackitmax
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler

Connect with Auren:
https://x.com/auren
https://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/
https://www.youtube.com/@summationpod

GTMnow shares how the best in tech build, scale and invest.
Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes, The GTMnow Newsletter editions, and other content.

GTMnow is run by GTMfund - we are an early-stage venture firm made up of 350+ go-to-market executives from the fastest-growing companies.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:05 - GTMfund Q1 recap 
02:38 - OpenAI x The Hustle breakdown 
06:18 - Redpoint's optimal VC deployment period 
11:24 - Auren Hoffman intro 
13:04 - Why am I seeing this deal? 
26:26 - Sizing up founders at Replit, Perplexity & Rippling 
28:49 - What separates great founders 
32:10 - 500+ AI agents for deal sourcing 
33:40 - Agent-to-agent VC meetings by 2026 
45:13 - Every software moat is blown up 
49:09 - Who kills Salesforce next? 
51:30 - Why no one signs yearly SaaS contracts anymore 
51:50 - AI will trigger a baby boom 
56:22 - Thinking generationally

#AI #VentureCapital #GTM #StartupFunding #AurenHoffman #FlexCapital #SaaS #ArtificialIntelligence #Founders #Sales

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. 

Wade Foster is the CEO of Zapier, a company that sits between 7,000+ apps and runs millions of automations every single day. That gives him a front-row seat to how companies are actually adopting AI, not just talking about it.

In this episode, Wade breaks down the exact decisions he made at Zapier to go from 10% AI usage to 97% company-wide, why agents and workflows are not the same thing, and what most leaders are getting completely wrong about AI fluency.

What you'll learn:

• The difference between agents and workflows (and when to use which)

• What triggered Zapier's internal "Code Red" after GPT-4 launched

• The one-week hackathon that took AI adoption from 10% to 50% overnight

• The AI fluency rubric Zapier built: Unacceptable, Acceptable, Adaptive, Transformative

• Why leaders who aren't using AI are the biggest bottleneck in their companies

• How to measure AI ROI: floor raisers vs ceiling raisers

• How AI now handles 50% of Zapier's customer support tickets

• Wade's personal "advisory council" of AI sub-agents he uses for every major decision

• Why building a company today is 10x cheaper but distribution is 10x harder

• The truth about fundraising: you're selling your company, not raising money

• How Zapier stayed profitable by only hiring when it hurt

  
  

Guest: Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadefoster/

Company - Zapier: https://zapier.com

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP Marketing at GTMnow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

Episode highlights
0:00 - Intro

1:13 - The Seinfeld Quote & Kanye Text story

3:16 - Workflows vs. Agents: What's the difference?

6:09 - Zapier's Code Red moment

8:55 - The hackathon that moved AI adoption from 10% to 50%

12:06 - Making AI fluency a hiring requirement

13:47 - Building the AI fluency rubric

16:40 - Why leaders are the biggest AI bottleneck

18:12 - Revenue impact of going AI-first

22:09 - Would Wade build Zapier differently today?

23:20 - Is Zapier's moat at risk from agents?

24:59 - Staying profitable with minimal capital

28:37 - The riskiest contrarian bet that paid off

31:52 - Wade's 3 personal AI workflows

36:53 - Favorite books for founders

GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund, sharing go-to-market insights from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by 350+ of the best GTM executives.

Subscribe for weekly episodes with the operators, founders, and investors behind the fastest-growing software companies.

Ed Sim has been a VC for 30 years. He's backed companies like Clay, Front, BigID, and Snyk. He writes What's Hot in Enterprise IT every single Saturday, 489 weeks in a row. And right now, he says this is the most exciting and terrifying moment he's ever seen in his career.

In this episode, Max and Ed break down what's actually happening inside startups and boards right now, why the old playbooks are dead, and what separates the companies that will survive this AI shift from the ones quietly getting killed by it.

Discussed in this episode

• Why engineering is no longer your bottleneck (and what is)

• The 5 P's Ed uses to evaluate every inception-stage investment

• The autonomous enterprise thesis and what it means for how companies are built

• Why AI-native leadership is now a survival reqxtuirement, not a nice to have

• The full Clay story: $600K to $100M ARR, how they stayed lean, and what actually unlocked growth

• The 3 CH's framework for being a great board partner to founders

• Why the best founders today are inside the AI jet stream, not chasing it

• What every board meeting sounds like right now

Episode highlights0:00 Intro & 

1:05 Episode Preview: Ed Sim & Key Takeaways

3:10 The Jet Stream Analogy: Two Types of Companies

5:43 How GTM Operators Should Evaluate Companies Like Angel Investors

7:20 The Collapsing of Moats & AI-Native Business Opportunities

10:00 Rebuilding Industries vs. Selling Software to Them

15:00 Why Old GTM Playbooks Are Dead

17:46 Ed Sim's Background: From Cutco to 30 Years in VC

21:43 The Five P's of Inception Investing

23:04 How to Evaluate Potential & TAM in a Fast-Changing Market

25:40 Staying Ahead of the Jet Stream as a Founder

26:32 The Autonomous Enterprise Thesis

28:44 Agent of the Week: How Companies Should Adopt AI Agents

29:10 How Agents Are Changing Engineering Bottlenecks

31:15 What Incumbents Must Do to Survive the AI Wave

32:53 Intercom, Snowflake & How Legacy Companies Are Adapting

36:43 The Clay Story: How They Found Their Footing

38:33 The Three C's of Working With Founders (Cheer, Challenge, Chill)

40:07 Clay's Growth Trajectory: $600K to $100M+ ARR

41:10 Clay's Agency GTM Model & Community Moat

43:50 Ed's Fund Model: $500K to $15M Checks at Inception

46:57 What's Hot in Enterprise IT & Venture Right Now

48:03 Closing Remarks

Key takeaways1. Engineering is no longer your bottleneck. Your people are. Code is shipping faster than your sales, marketing, and customers can absorb it. The constraint has flipped completely and most companies haven't noticed yet.

2. Painkillers beat vitamins every time. The only startups worth backing at inception are solving a hair-on-fire problem someone desperately needs fixed, not a nice-to-have they can live without.

3. The 3 CH's of being a great board partner. Know when to Cheer (when founders are getting beaten up), when to Challenge (when they feel invincible), and when to Chill (when they just need breathing room to figure it out). Elliot used all three with Clay to perfection.

4. If your CEO came from sales, you are in trouble. Surviving this AI shift requires product-driven, agent-native leadership at the top. The companies that adapted, Snowflake, Intercom, Atlassian, all changed leadership first.

5. The best founders are inside the AI jet stream, not chasing it. The question Ed asks every founder today: are you struggling to keep up, or are you the one constantly shipping and adapting faster than anyone can copy you?

Thank you to our sponsor

Connect with Ed: https://x.com/edsim  / edsim  Connect with Max: https://x.com/hackitmax  / maxaltschuler  Connect with Paul:https://x.com/PaulGTM  / paulsirving  

GTM Now is the media extension of GTM Fund, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage B2B companies. Every episode features the operators, investors, and founders defining what modern go-to-market looks like.GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/

This episode was recorded prior to Teresa Anania’s move to Chief Customer Officer at Verint. At the time of recording, she was SVP of Customer Experience at Sophos.

Teresa Anania (CCO at Verint, formerly CCO at Sophos) joins GTMnow to share how she's built customer success into a true revenue engine at a company serving 600,000 customers across over $1 billion in annual revenue, and why the old reactive, relationship-based CS model is no longer cutting it.

At Sophos, the threat landscape is compounding fast. AI is accelerating the speed and sophistication of attacks, which means response times, customer journeys, and success motions all have to evolve in lockstep in order to keep up. Teresa has spent her career at companies like Zendesk, Autodesk, and ON24 building the operational frameworks that make that possible at scale.Mentioned Resources: Cleverbridge: Merchant of Record for Software & SaaS​Guest links:

Teresa Anania - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresa-anania/

Sophos - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sophos/

Sophos - Website: https://www.sophos.com/

Host links:

Sophie Buonassisi - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

Sophie Buonassisi - X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona

Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

Sponsors:

- HockeyStack - the AI platform that unifies GTM data to help teams convert, expand, and scale. Learn more at https://www.hockeystack.com/

- Nooks - the AI workspace for outbound teams, where AI agents handle prospecting, research, and sequencing so reps can focus on conversations. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/

- Cleverbridge – the digital commerce platform helping enterprises optimize post-sale revenue through renewals, winbacks, and add-ons with buyer-friendly purchasing experiences. Learn more at https://grow.cleverbridge.com/lp/digital-commerce

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

Subscribe to GTMnow for the latest episodes! https://gtmnow.com/

Highlights:

00:00 – Sophos at a glance: 600K customers, $1B+ in revenue, and why cybersecurity keeps growing when everything else slows down01:51 – AI vs. AI: how threat actors are using the same tools Sophos is building against03:02 – The 2026 Active Adversary Report: why attackers are logging in, not breaking in04:20 – Attackers move in 3-4 hours and how Sophos structures CS to respond before the customer even knows there's a problem06:05 – Connecting CS activity directly to retention and expansion: the attribution model08:45 – Advice for early-stage companies that want this kind of rigor but don't have perfect data yet10:06 – Automation as a scale lever: crawl, walk, run and why you should start at the end of the renewal cycle13:43 – The future of go-to-market: self-serve from first touch through win-back, powered by AI18:20 – "The customer should never feel your org chart": building a digital journey that meets people where they are20:39 – Going from legacy manual to digital without blowing up the business22:00 – Dynamic segmentation: why hard lines on ACV are the wrong way to assign CS coverage26:02 – The two-by-two that actually matters: risk, spend, and growth potential32:08 – The humble confidence hire: why Teresa looks for this specific combination across her entire org34:15 – The 5-to-1 scorecard and what Teresa has learned about earning customer trust over time36:14 – Inner and outer feedback loops: how Sophos turns NPS data into cross-functional action38:11 – Why retention has to be an all-company meeting, not a CS slide

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/

Jason Demant just joined GTMfund as Partner, Head of Networks after 6 years at Foundation Capital where he reviewed over 1,000 emerging manager funds and invested in 100+.In this episode, Max (GP), Paul (GP), and Jason break down what separates the VC firms that survive from the ones that quietly die, why the best founders today are skipping mega funds at pre-seed, and what LPs are excited in about emerging managers.What we cover:

• The real reason raising from mega funds at pre-seed can backfire
• Why less than 10% of VC firms ever make it to Fund 3
• What makes an emerging manager fundable (sourcing, founder support, durability)
• The media flywheel that gives certain funds an unfair advantage
• How LPs should think about mega funds vs. emerging platforms (the barbell approach)
• Why founders are the ones now choosing their investors, not the other way around

Connect with Jason:   / jasondemant  

Connect with Max:   / maxaltschuler  

Connect with Paul:   / paulsirving  

GTMnow is the media extension of GTMfund, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage B2B companies. Every episode features operators, investors, and founders on the front lines of go-to-market.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

1:54 Jason's Background at Foundation Capital

3:07 Why Jason Chose GTMfund

4:35 How Media Has Evolved in the VC Ecosystem

6:20 What Separates Winning Emerging Managers from the Rest

8:28 GTM Fund's Flywheel: Fund, Community & Media

10:41 Building a VC Firm Is Like Building a Startup

12:31 Emerging Managers vs. Mega Funds (a16z, Lightspeed)

14:01 Why Top Founders Are Picking Emerging Managers for Early Rounds

16:36 The LP Perspective: Emerging Managers vs. Platform Funds

18:39 The Barbell Strategy for LP Portfolio Construction

19:14 Early Stage vs. Growth Stage: Risk, Return & Why Early Stage Wins

20:18 Closing Thoughts & Welcome to the Team

Visit us and subscribe: https://gtmnow.com

Follow us on LinkedIn:   / gtmnow  

Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_

Follow us on YouTube:    / @gtm_now  

Follow us on TikTok:   / gtmnow_  

Follow us on Instagram:   / gtmnow_ 

 Sign up for the Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

NEW: @Paul Fipps (President of Global Customer Operations at @ServiceNow) joins GTMnow to break down how ServiceNow built the customer engine behind $10B+ in revenue and 20%+ growth for five consecutive years.

From CIO at Under Armour overseeing a 300 million-member connected fitness ecosystem, to now leading global sales, customer success, field marketing, and partners at one of the most disciplined GTM organizations in enterprise software, Paul has seen what it takes to scale from both sides of the table.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

- Why complacency is a bigger threat than competition at scale

- How to detect churn long before it shows up in a report

- What a CIO cancelling 900 AI pilots tells you about where enterprise AI is actually headed

- How ServiceNow unified sales, customer success, field marketing, and partners into one GTM motion so customers never feel the org chart

- Why ServiceNow monitors customer health daily — and what signals their teams actually track

- How community became a core GTM advantage, not just a marketing channel

- How ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower governs agents across the enterprise stack

- Inside “Now on Now”: how ServiceNow generated $335M in annualized AI productivity gains using its own platform

- How integrating Claude into the GTM workflow cut account planning from days to minutes

- What DTC product thinking from Under Armour unlocked in enterprise GTM

- How ServiceNow shifted from 6-month product releases to monthly innovation cycles

- Paul’s advice for building a world-class GTM organization: put the best people in the right seats

Guest links:

Guest - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulfipps/

Guest company - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicenow/

Guest company website: https://www.servicenow.com/

Host links:

Sophie Buonassisi - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

Sophie Buonassisi - X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona

Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

Sponsors:

HockeyStack - the AI platform that unifies GTM data to help teams convert, expand, and scale. Learn more at https://www.hockeystack.com/

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

Subscribe to GTMnow for the latest episodes! https://gtmnow.com/

Highlights:

00:00 – How ServiceNow built one of the most disciplined GTM engines in enterprise software01:22 – 80B workflows, $10B+ revenue: what gets harder and easier at scale02:05 – Why complacency is the real threat at scale05:49 – Why ServiceNow unified sales, customer success, field marketing, and partners under one motion06:49 – The post-sale handoff problem: signing on Friday, new team showing up Monday08:22 – How to spot churn before it shows up in a report09:55 – How often ServiceNow teams check customer health12:25 – If you took away the dashboards, how would you know a customer is truly winning?15:35 – Why Paul blocks calendar time every week for direct customer conversations (and responds within 24 hours)17:53 – From Under Armour to ServiceNow: what DTC product thinking unlocks in enterprise B2B21:06 – The personalization gap in B2B enterprise software and how ServiceNow is closing it25:18 – The CIO with 900 AI pilots who cancelled every single one26:03 – How embedding agentic AI inside existing workflows drives measurable ROI32:39 – "Now on Now": $335M in productivity gains running on their own platform34:18 – Integrating Claude into the GTM motion for all 10,000 go-to-market team members36:44 – The AI control tower: governing every agent across the entire enterprise39:15 – Paul's one piece of advice for every GTM leader: get the best people in the right seats40:21 – The book that shaped Paul's career: Execution by Bossidy & Charan

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/

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

Brought to you by: AngelList

From starting as a small, operator-led rolling fund, to evolving to an institutional platform, AngelList has been a core partner in every phase of GTMfund’s growth. Their software-first fund admin infrastructure allowed us to scale without sacrificing agility — from onboarding hundreds of LPs seamlessly to handling compliance, capital calls, and reporting as our fund size evolved.

As we expanded from Fund I to Fund II, AngelList took care of the back-office operations, allowing us to stay focused on what matters most: investing in world-class founders and building the strongest go-to-market network in venture.

They’ve scaled with us across funds and into the future.

If your fund is growing in size or complexity, check them out at https://angellist.com/gtmfund.

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

Subscribe to GTMnow for the latest episodes! https://gtmnow.com/

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 work for you08:07 – "Failing upwards" and what the fastest-growing companies taught Brett about investing in people10:58 – Why Brett moved into VC: 25 years of operators whose collective worth hit $25B16:50 – What Brett looks for in founders now and how it's changed over 6-7 years18:05 – Why anybody can build anything: Brett builds a fully functional travel app in 15 minutes19:20 – The last remaining moat in software26:20 – The real threat to Salesforce and HubSpot and why their ecosystem might be the boat anchor34:20 – How the entire GTM motion changes when the product does the job instead of just enabling it38:30 – Why communicating the right problem to the right ICP hasn't changed in 30 years39:20 – Deploy first, close later40:20 – Why face-to-face matters more now, not less41:00 – Why events are driving 75%+ of pipeline at Brett's early-stage portfolio companies42:10 – Pricing and packaging: the most important GTM lever nobody talks about enough46:35 – The death of the smooth-talking GTM leader47:25 – What happens to VC when software is no longer scarce to build52:00 – Why vertical software wins in the AI era: context, workflow, and the non-tech buyer55:20 – The rep who drove 65 miles to drop off donuts and closed an $80K deal

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/

Dan Wright (Co-founder & CEO of Armada) joins GTMnow to unpack what it actually takes to bring AI infrastructure to the places the cloud was never built to reach.

The cloud covers about 30% of the world. The other 70% (think: oil rigs, the Arctic tundra, military ships, remote mines) is where some of the most critical decisions happen, making latency a life-or-death and billions of dollars difference. Armada is building the infrastructure for that part of the world: modular, ruggedized AI data centers that go to the data, instead of the other way around.

From the first offshore edge computing deployment with the US Navy, to cutting avalanche response times in Alaska from over a day to real time, to sovereign AI installations in Saudi Arabia with Aramco and Microsoft, Armada is redefining what operating at the edge even means.

In this episode, we cover:

- Why cloud infrastructure was built for a pre-AI world and what that gap costs

- How Starlink turned every remote location into a potential AI cluster

- What "distributed intelligence" means and why it's the founding principle behind Armada

- The global race for AI sovereignty and why modular compute is the linchpin

- How Armada goes to market when a product demo involves shipping a 40-foot container to a desert (yes, really)

- Why customer champions are better than any sales rep

- The Microsoft partnership and how Armada extends Azure to places Azure could never go on its own

- Category creation lessons from building a company before the market had a name for the industry

- What's next: SpaceX, sovereign AI, and why Dan thinks humans are on the moon in two years (yes, REALLY)

Guest links:

Dan Wright - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wrightdh/, h

Dan Wright - X: https://x.com/danwrightSF

Armada - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/armadaai/

Armada - Website: https://www.armada.ai/

Host links:

Sophie Buonassisi - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

Sophie Buonassisi - X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

Sponsors:

HockeyStack - the AI platform that unifies GTM data to help teams convert, expand, and scale. Learn more at https://www.hockeystack.com/

Nooks - the AI workspace for outbound teams, where AI agents handle prospecting, research, and sequencing so reps can focus on conversations. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/

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

Subscribe to GTMnow for the latest episodes! https://gtmnow.com/

Highlights:

00:00 – Why the cloud only reaches 30% of the world and what Armada actually builds

03:11 – From Saudi Arabia to the Arctic: recent deployments that redefine the edge

04:12 – AI's physics problem: why distance from data breaks everything

05:31 – How Starlink turned every remote location into a potential AI cluster

07:14 – What distributed intelligence means and why it's Armada's founding principle

08:14 – The global AI race: sovereign compute as a national security strategy

09:00 – The Genesis Mission, the White House, and Davos: why sovereign AI is mainstream

12:49 – GTM for a hardware company when the demo involves shipping a 40-foot container

15:18 – Why Armada's customers do the selling for them (and do a better job than some reps)

17:35 – The Microsoft partnership and extending Azure to the places it can't reach on its own

18:51 – Category creation: the lesson Dan learned about specificity and business value

21:02 – What's next for Armada, SpaceX, and why Dan thinks we're two years from the moon

25:34 – The founder advice Dan wishes more people took seriously

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/

NEW: @Sheila Vashee (CMO of @Figma) joins GTMnow to share how she thinks about brand building across every stage. From selling brownies at age eight, to second marketing hire at Dropbox scaling to $1B+ in annualized revenue, to now leading marketing at one of the most beloved software brands in the world, Sheila has seen it all.

In this conversation, you’ll learn what brand actually means (hint: it's not your logo), how PLG companies make the leap to enterprise, why being obsessively close to your customers is a compounding advantage, and how AI is reshaping the marketing playbook without replacing the human craft that sets great brands apart.

Guest links:- Guest - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilavashee/

- Guest company - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/figma/

- Guest company website: https://www.figma.com/

Host links:

- Sophie Buonassisi - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

- Sophie Buonassisi - X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona

- Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com

Sponsors:

- HockeyStack - the AI platform that unifies GTM data to help teams convert, expand, and scale. Learn more at https://www.hockeystack.com/

- Granola - the AI notepad that turns meetings into action by capturing context, decisions, and next steps automatically. Head to https://www.granola.ai/gtmfund  and get three months free with the code GTMFUND.

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

Subscribe to GTMnow for the latest episodes! https://gtmnow.com/

Highlights:

00:00 – The brownie stand: why brand building started at age eight

03:55 – How Sheila defines brand: it's what people say when you're not in the room

05:08 – Joining Dropbox as the second marketing hire

06:07 – Space Race: the campaign that defined Dropbox's early strategy

06:56 – What consumer marketing taught her about driving revenue

08:29 – Measuring brand ROI through match market testing

09:15 – How Figma thinks about brand building at a macro level

11:21 – The PLG-to-enterprise equation: what Figma did early that Dropbox waited too long on

15:02 – Why building the enterprise team is both operational and optical

17:12 – How Figma ingests customer feedback at scale

18:26 – AI at Figma: enabling human creativity, not replacing it

21:13 – What the venture side taught her about staying sharp as an operator

22:33 – Why the shift from SEO to GEO is inevitable and what to do about it

23:24 – Why Reddit is back and social is a core growth lever

24:51 – The mentors that changed her trajectory

28:59 – One piece of advice: make good $h!t

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/