Alper Yurder 🤝

Co-founder & CRO of Flowla, interactive deal rooms your buyers LOVE 👉 Follow our podcast #salestherapy by Flowla 🎙️ on spotify

I’m a former B2B SaaS founder with 10+ years of experience in sales, marketing, and go-to-market strategy.

I’ve built and scaled startups through the seed-to-Series A journey raising VC funding, leading sales teams, and turning unknown products into trusted brands.

Today, I work as a fractional CRO & CMO, helping B2B founders design and execute their go-to-market systems from message-market fit to scalable revenue.

I act as the founder’s right hand to:

- Build GTM strategy, positioning, and demand generation
- Turn your brand from unknown to known through founder-led content and sales
- Install repeatable sales and marketing systems that actually drive revenue

Alongside my client work, I advise and mentor founders at accelerators and VC programs across Europe, and lecture on founder-led growth and GTM strategy.

If you’ve built a great product but the market doesn’t quite see it yet or if you feel your growth stalled and can use some support, I help make it seen, understood, and bought.

👉 Feel free to DM me if you’d like to chat about your GTM or sales strategy.

Co-Founder

Hey there, I'm an ex-sales leader turned co-founder, and I spend all day sharing ideas, solving problems and having #salestherapy with sales professionals from every sector and level. If you're after sales and G2M advice, you've come to the right place! And believe me, I've been through it all - from building SDR teams to closing multi-million dollar deals and everything in between. So, let's have some fun and chat sales!

🙌 I'm a big fan of Gamma (AI presentation builder that hit $50M ARR in 2 years), so when HubSpot For Startups invited me to hear founder Grant speak, I cleared my calendar. One of the best events I've been lately. Key GTM insights below 👇

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👉 **The state of B2B SaaS investing**

AI funding VC Panel with Sitar Teli (Connect), Luke Smith (Molten), Will Wells:

Sitar: "We look for 70-80% margins in B2B SaaS. But with founders building on existing platforms, we're seeing 10-20% instead."

The democratization of building has a trade-off - easier to ship, but unit economics under pressure.

Luke: "At Series A, we need at least one founder who deeply understands the customer. That's where defensibility lives."

Will's focus on European deeptech: neo computing, AI inference challenging Nvidia, foundational businesses in defense and space.

Europe's deeptech moment feels real.

---

👉 **What's changing for technical founders**

The commercial co-founder requirement is softening.

VCs increasingly back product founders who partner with experienced operators early, then build commercial teams later.

The bar: Deep product understanding + customer empathy.

GTM can be layered on. Product vision can't be outsourced.

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👉 **AI agents are here**

HubSpot's new Breeze AI agents: prospecting, content generation, customer service.

What stood out: truly contextual outreach beyond templates.

We're past "AI tools." We're entering "AI agents that execute workflows."

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👉 **Building AI unicorns** (Husayn Kassai, Onfido)

His framework: 6-12-18 max team for speed.

Culture: "How are decisions made when you're not in the room?"

Product-led growth as foundation.

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👉 **Product always wins** (Grant Lee, Gamma)

"If people aren't talking about your product organically... you're in trouble."

This resonated deeply from our Flowla journey.

When product hits home, you scale to $50M ARR in 2 years like Gamma did.

I've seen founders try to scale without organic pull. It never works.

Marketing amplifies what exists. It can't create something from nothing.

When PMF is real, GTM pours fuel on fire.

When it's not, GTM is expensive noise.

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Two days of high-signal conversations with investors, founders, and operators.

Grateful to be part of these discussions.

Many thanks to Anna Gordon and HubSpot For Startups for curating such a strong lineup and for the invitation. Great inspiration for my upcoming workshops and speaking events! And why looking so serious in the pic Richard Lee 😉

Alper Yurder

Founder at Forte | We build scalable GTM systems for B2B startups with founder brand, AI-led inbound-outbound and scalable sales process | Exited B2B SaaS Founder | Angel Investor | Fractional GTM leader to +20 startups

🙂 Great pleasure being with the founders of Tenitys latest cohort last week for the series of Sales Masterclasses. We workshopped on founder brand, how to grow on LinkedIn, finding scalable growth loops, and building trust with early customers to get to your first 100.

these are late-seed and pre-Series A founders - making the move from £500K or £1M ARR to what's beyond, and figuring a scalable growth loop! love it!

And honestly? The challenges are similar to what I see in general:

"How do I make this repeatable?"
"How do I build trust with new clients fast?"
"How do I get more visibility without spending millions?

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We went through real examples from founders in the room and I gave examples from recent work on building trust, expanding beyond first network and trying different gtm motions such as:

-> building trust for a fintech app through private dinners with CFOs, one is a happy customer, let them evangelize you in a private setting,

-> Another is an edtech - now truly beyond founder-led sales so doing paid search, retargeting, and cold calls all at once in a sequence that makes sense.

Each founder's business is unique.

But there's still a playbook 👇

Finding and recording signs of:
→ Faster sales cycles (who closes in 2 weeks vs 2 months?)
→ Good ICP fit (who converts easily vs who ghosts you?)
→ The one scalable motion that's unique to YOUR business

Then doubling down on what works for you.

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Always a pleasure working with founders who are in the thick of it, building real businesses.

Thanks for having me Tenity 🙌 

And special thanks to Eda Taskin, Wiktoria (Victoria) Przybylska, and the team for organizing. And great pleasure to meet Mehnaaz Maleta who're doing wonderful work helping create the new Nordic unicorns! Looking forward to collabing more on that too...

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👉 If you're a founder cracking these things right now (£500K-£2M ARR, trying to make founder-led sales repeatable) - DM me, happy to share my playbooks and presentations from these events

👉 If you're a VC or accelerator looking for someone who's actually built this to share real practical tips with your portfolio - hit me up too.

✈️ Many are heading to Slush and wanted to drop my real-talk GTM stack before wheels up for you to up your GTM game on the go.

These aren't bookmarks I never opened. These are resources that actually built my knowledge on sales, AI workflows, and founder-led growth.

Playbooks & Books That Moved the Needle:
- SaaStock sessions with Adam Robinson, zero fluff, all systems
- Balderton's B2B Sales Guide, best advice for technical founders
- Predictable Revenue, still the outbound essentials
- The Qualified Sales Leader by John McMahon, hire sales or close deals better
- Founder Brand by Dave Gerhardt, your personal brand IS your GTM 
- Series A Benchmarking Report, know your numbers before you raise

Podcasts Worth the Flight:
- 20VC, Harry Stebbings bringing founder + investor truth weekly
- Lenny's Podcast: product, growth, GTM from operators who've done it
- Balderton Podcast: European founder focus
- Startup Sales: Adam Springer's early-stage B2B playbook
- How I Built This: for when you need founder energy
- My own "Sales Therapy": shameless plug but listeners say it helps

GTM + AI Stack I'm Using Now:
-Brian Balfour's essays, growth loops + systems thinking
-Holloway's GTM Playbook, comprehensive, not surface-level
-My AI workflow: Fathom → Claude → 10 LinkedIn posts per sales call (will share the prompts soon)

Tools I actually use: Clay, Gamma, Napkin, Replit, Claude (enterprise version is fire!) Relevance.ai tests, Empler.ai, Ujji.ai

Founders/Operators I Follow:
davegerhardt - founder brand + content harrystebbings — founder + VC mindset 
pierreherubel - B2B positioning frameworks
justinkan - raw founder perspective 
lennysan - product-led growth 
alexgarcia - distribution tactics
and me (obviously) - sharing how I help founders build systems starting with their own founder brand -> trust building -> linkedin -> outbound -> sales process -> inbound engine -> scale creator marketing and referrals

Drop a 🔥 if you find this useful!

💪 I'm always in awe of technical founders who hit £1-2M ARR with almost no marketing. Just pure product. Deep expertise. Word of mouth. Which honestly is gold. But not enough 👇

Yesterday I spoke with a founder who:
- Built IoT security for 20M devices
- Grew to £1M+ ARR in 14 months  
- Has only ONE salesperson
- Posts on LinkedIn "only when there's really valuable content"

Here's what always happens at this stage

👉 The Pattern:

→ Revenue plateaus around £1.5M
→ Sales is 100% founder-led (doesn't scale)  
→ Pipeline is unpredictable
→ Competitors with worse products but better marketing start winning

👉 The breakthrough isn't working harder

It's adding structure to what already works

If you're at £1-2M ARR with minimal GTM, here's what to fix:

1️⃣ Document your customer language

Interview 5 customers: "How did you describe us internally?"

That's your messaging. Not your features.

2️⃣ Make the founder visible

You close deals in the room. Get in more rooms.

LinkedIn: 2 posts/week sharing what you see in the market + 1 for credibility and social proof

3️⃣ Create repeatable outbound

You've proven the product works. Now prove you can find customers systematically.

Target → Message → Test → Scale 

Record tests somewhere, review every month to hit message-market fit

4️⃣ Build forecastable pipeline

Stop hoping referrals arrive. Build a system that generates 20 qualified conversations/month. Either an inbound engine with a content hire,

AIO, founder brand

or trust building activities like webinars and private dinners

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👉 The founders who scale past £2M don't have better products

✅ They have better distribution

You've done the hard part (building something people need)

Now do the uncomfortable part (telling people it exists)

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DM me "GTM" if you're at this stage and would like a chat - I'll send you the full diagnostic I use with founders.

Influ2

Influ2 helps to align marketing & sales teams with contact-level intent data.*
From prospecting to upselling. 

*Buyers who engage with Influ2’s contact-level ads convert to the sales pipeline 2.26x better.

Growth Sales

Try Everything: Creative outbound

Corporate Company Trainings
LinkedIn Cohort
1-1 Coaching

Founder/Mentor

SDR Leaders of USA

Member

SDR Leaders of EMEA

SDR Leaders of EMEA is an invite only community whose goal is to make SDR Leaders in EMEA the best in the world

Women in Sales

RevGenius

Jooble

Business development, lead generation, and sales.

Business Development Manager (Jooble Venture Studio)

Heep

Heep helps you create landing pages, set up automation, AI-features, and develop apps fast & cheaply.

Business Development Manager

WLNC

Led an effective business development team with an eye on fostering relationships and boosting revenue. As an account manager, I worked closely with clients to help them meet their business goals and strategized with the marketing team to build a robust marketing plan.

Business Development Team Lead

Looking for potential partners and clients 
Work closely with current clients to achieve their business goals 
Building marketing strategy together with marketing team

Business Development Account Manager

EPC Network, LLC.

Head of SMM
Lead generation 
Communication

Human-to-human sales ads mean 1.54x more meetings | Sales girl 💅🏻 @Supercadence.ai

You know what?? No AI here anymore! 

I’m Dariia, a super-creative salesperson.
I bring emotions so people react to my content and outreach. 🤗

Within my experience, I truly believe that psychology means a lot. 
I took it as the rule when I reached out to people and created my own strategy based on creative and human-centric outreach.

I hit 100% (Q4 2024), 127% (Q1 2025), 113% (Q2 2025), 100% (Q3 2025) of my quota by applying it.
NOW, I'm ready to help you with this approach!


At this point, you're going to ask me: 


Hey! So, how is it connected to contact-level intent?

My passion is to provide value—with Influ2—it's just tons of value for marketing and sales people. Now, we are letting you know who's clicking ads, searching what keywords on Google, reading what content, changing jobs, and posting on LinkedIn with specific keywords you care about the most—on the individual level.

So let's talk!

Dariia Gerasymova

During the blackout, Ukrainian parents turned their car headlights into floodlights, so their kids can still play football. 

Can you imagine the reality in Ukraine?

2x pipeline generation with contact-level intent @Influ2 | Creative outbound trainings. 💅🏻 | 100 Powerful Women in Sales 2025 | Sales Karaoke Creator 🎶 (currently in Ukraine)

The secret of my outreach is the following:
Send the message you would respond to personally.

People buy from people.

Especially in the era when there are so many vendors whose sets of features are almost equal. So it's making it harder to decide which tool to buy. (No major difference there.)

But decision-makers remember faces behind brands.

Your active multithreading, jokes, and focus on what matters to them pay off. 

So, every next time you want to copy and paste something, think twice. As it actually steps you away from their reply, interest, and a booked call.

What do I use?

1) buying signals on the personal level
2) personalization
3) creative images/gifs, videos, VMs
4) educational materials
5) e-gifts (usually costs $0)
6) screenshots of chats with their colleagues
7) chit-chatting 

I do not have a strict rule set. 
I just listen to my inner gut and be myself.

What worked for you the previous time you booked a call?

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I'm a hater of robots doing our jobs.

Not really. I hate it when salespeople are using it wrongly!

But when you can save tons of time from doing something manually—I'm going all-in. 😂 🙌 

Like, for example, an automation tool for summarizing and transcribing your calls - Bluedot - AI Meeting Assistant (created by Ukrainian founders, btw).

It works perfectly with zoom meetings (even for webinars for 40+ people), with google meets and microsoft teams. Also, it can do its job even if you're not the host (which is extremely helpful when the host needs to jump off the next call.)

If you like desktop apps like me (I take my MacBook for literally every trip), you can download their app and test for up to 5 recordings!!!

Let me know what you think.
I am going to share your feedback with the founders! 🥰

Today you can be the kindest version of yourself by helping others. 🥹 

1. Jen Allen-Knuth is sharing how you can support dog shelters.
2. Henry Clayton is collecting donations for Movember.
3. I help with donations for Ukrainian humanitarian aid.
4. Please put others who collect money for help ⤵️ 

P.S. Start thinking of Christmas gifts for children from orphanages. They are waiting for miracles you can do for them! ❤️

15 hours out of 24 hours Ukrainians are without electricity now.
The hardest period for civilians from the beginning of the war.

Now, never ever ask a question if the war continues. 

Just don't.

The hardest buyer you can have is...


A kiddo. 

Now go pitch why they need to eat healthy food and stop playing aggressively, why parents need their own space, why cats and dogs do not love those too-strong hugs, and why money does not fall down from the sky.

The majority of sales reps are using buying signals. 
They care about right timing. 👍 There is only 1 problem, which is the following:

Most of those buying signals are on the account level.

Why is it not ideal?

🙈 Lack of understanding of who you need to reach out to.

I mean, let's be honest. It's hard to identify your buyer from the mid-market/enterprise. But once you know they are reading specific articles or googling something, you know it's your green light to outreach—they are in the education stage, so it's much easier to convert them.

🙈 Lack of understanding of what content attracts their attention.

When you target a specific person with a variety of different ads and you're able to check their clicks... Well, it's just way easier to understand which specific message attracted them. So, you refer to that message in your outreach and...BOOM. You got them.

🙈 Lack of understanding of where your buyer is in the buying journey.

So if we know that all of the buyers are on the different stages of the buying journey, how do we make sure we deliver the right message based on it? I think it's a more complex and deeper level rather than just the whole org's stage. 

I agree that Sales Nav is still there, and you can track some intent, like recent posts, job changes, following pages, etc. 

However, it's still extremely limited, so that's why we are focusing on more contact-level intent for sales reps at Influ2.

Do you use buyer signals on the contact level? Which ones? 👀

taplio

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Dariia Gerasymova

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taplio

The Battle

Alper Yurder 🤝

Dariia Gerasymova

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