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.

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👉 **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.

Insider.

Our people experience team motto, "Our Passion, Your Experience," truly reflects our dedication to enhancing the lives of our team members and creating an environment where everyone grows in many areas, not just professionally but personally. I feel lucky that we will achieve these as a dynamic group of professionals. 

As the People Experience Team Lead, I am responsible for steering this exciting journey. Drawing from my experience in Global Sales Enablement, I'll be leveraging my expertise in coaching, stakeholder management, and enablement skills to empower our team members and drive a culture of excellence. By curating learning and growth opportunities, fostering collaboration, and creating an environment that values every individual, we're shaping the future of Insider.

People Experience Lead 

Insider is a technology company with offices in London, Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Sydney, Dubai, Moscow, Warsaw, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Istanbul, Kiev, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, and Taipei. Insider was listed as one of the 100 Hottest Startups by WIRED Magazine and won Red Herring Top 100 Europe in 2017. Crunchbase has recently ranked Insider’s co-founder and CEO Hande Cilingir as one of the top three women CEOs outside of the US.
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Responsibilities: 

•	Deliver sales onboarding, training, and enablement programs to the Insider Sales organization to drive comprehension and application of core Insider Sales Enablement initiatives.
•	Provide individualized and ongoing sales coaching to improve the sales team’s performance.
•	Run assessments and review evaluations to ensure proficiency adherence based on competency needs related to various sales roles.
•	Ensure collaboration among cross-functional teams and Subject-Matter-Experts for the rollout and delivery of new material including but not limited to; new marketing assets, product roll-outs and/or enhancements, and other sales supported initiatives.
•	Support the development of “train the trainer” program for Sales team members & managers to drive supplemental facilitation supporting the retention and application of released programs.
•	Run retrospectives and evaluations to continually assess and identify areas for improvement related to the sales enablement experience.
•	Manage the sales enablement content repository and ensure that all information is easily and readily accessible at the point of need.
•	Create and update playbooks based on seller feedback and shifting market demands.
•	Participate in the selection and implementation/deployment of technologies to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Global Sales Enablement Manager

Sicpa Turkey

•	Management of museum services sales through B2B and B2C channels as well as design develop and distribute museum and historic landmark tickets.  
•	Managed a sales team. 
•	Designed and executed a sales strategy called “Audio Guide Bundle Sale” in five museums increasing audio guide sales from 5% to 12%.
•	Created and executed an intensive sale development-training program called “Golden Guide", which ensured 400 operating sales teams among 60 museum kiosks have the necessary resources to perform efficiently. This was supported with individual incentive and training programs, which led to operational proficiency and better “Up Sale” success rate. 
•	Analyzed sales and operations performances and executed price-up for 60 museums located around Turkey to be in alignment with company’s revenue targets. 
•	Cultivated effective business relationships with decision makers inside the state structure in order to achieve the company’s global targets, objectives and protect interests. 
•	In cooperation with a vendor, launched an innovative AR based product called “MagneTalk” for B2C channel and successfully made it the second highest profitable product in the company’s entire portfolio. 
•	Developed and implemented a digital sales program, which led to a 30% increase in sales of digital products resulting in more efficient operations and lower costs. 
•	Developed an online sales and CRM program for “MüzeKart”, which doubled the digital product sales numbers. 
•	Decreased the number of products in “Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi” from five to two in order to offer a better “Choice Architecture” for visitors. This resulted in better customer experience, increased sales revenue by 60% and raised audio guide consumption from 10% to 75%.

Sales Marketing Manager

Pernod Ricard

•	Managed a customer and internal training team. 
•	Created and delivered inspirational brand stories and sales arguments tailored to market dynamics.
•	Created a training matrix and held executive training seminars to Pernod Ricard sales force on sales strategies and brand knowledge.
•	Designed, executed, and managed a social media account through an advertising agency to build relationships and loyalty programs with bartenders.
•	Traveled more than 30 cities to reach over 800 individual liquor store managers in order to explore customer needs, increase brand awareness and sales volume.
•	Created a customer development program which included sales & marketing strategies called “Train the Trainer”, aimed at giving insight of our brands to top liquor store owners, making them both brand ambassadors and sales specialists leading to higher sales.
•	In order to enhance customer loyalty, created a 20-minute feature film project together with prominent Turkish film director Tolga Karaçelik aiming at key account customers. The name of the movie is “Acayip” 
•	Cultivated effective business relationships with business owners both in on-trade and off-trade channels in order to achieve company’s global targets, objectives and protect interests.

Customer Development & Training Manager

Training Specialist

•	Maximized brand penetration and visibility in leading and iconic venues by implementing sales incentives, organizing marketing activations and managing customer relationships.
•	Prepared weekly reports on business, popularity, customer portfolio and other significant issues that could affect company’s interests.
•	Designed and executed a training program –Shake Your Future- of 15 weeks in cooperation with Boğaziçi University for prominent bartenders.
•	Managed several social media accounts to increase visibility of brands and expand our company’s influence.
•	Succeeded to reach exclusivity of Pernod Ricard brands in 15+ high-end clubs and bars by organizing events and using negotiation skills. Lead to higher sales and 100% visibility.
•	Cultivated effective business relationships with on-trade business owners and managers in order to achieve company’s objectives. 
•	Supported sales team for penetration by establishing strong customer relationships

On Trade Business Development Executive

QT Holding

Started as part of the founding team of a restaurant in Bebek and helped grow it to three branches.
Managed daily operations, ensuring everything ran smoothly and customers were happy.

- Delivered excellent service and handled customer complaints, making necessary adjustments when needed.
- Organized team shifts and supported employees to stay productive and motivated.
- Planned special events and campaigns to promote the brand, such as collaborations with local businesses, features in lifestyle magazines, and exclusive offers for loyal customers. Partnered with Yemeksepeti to reach online customers and grow delivery orders.
- Kept costs under control by managing inventory and estimating food and supply needs.
- Learned hands-on about running a business, team management, and providing great customer experiences.

Co-Founder & Restaurant Manager 

Doğan TV Holding

Worked as a TV content producer and reporter at Doğan Media, the owner of Kanal D and one of Turkey’s largest media companies.

- Produced and hosted web TV shows, working with the creative team to develop fresh and engaging content.
- Managed tasks like finding shooting locations, organizing the shooting team, briefing agencies for casting, and keeping projects on budget and on time.
- Improved my skills in TV broadcasting, focusing on shooting, editing, and presentation.
- Reported and presented a street interview show, learning storytelling and connecting with audiences.
- Built on my experience from H-TV, growing my knowledge of content production and web TV broadcasting.
- Learned teamwork, production management, and creative storytelling while working in a fast-paced media environment.

TV Content Producer & Reporter 

Chantier Films

Worked as a sales representative, distributing imported films to cinemas in Turkey.
Visited cinema salons to understand their audience, make sales agreements, and promote films.

- Gained experience in sales, film distribution, and on-site film marketing through activities like setting up billboards and film posters in cinemas.
- Developed skills in communication, relationship building, and time management while supporting box-office performance.

Film Programming & Sales

HTV Turkiye / MEDIKO A.S

Program Assistant Producer | Kırmızı Nokta & Dostlarımız (2011)

Worked as a program assistant producer right after college, contributing to Kırmızı Nokta, a daily show on sexual health hosted by Billur Kalkavan, and Dostlarımız, a weekly pet care program hosted by Vet. Dr. Çağlar Kondu and Vet. Dr. Hekim Oktay Deprem.

- Gained valuable communication skills, time management expertise, and experience in TV production techniques like editing and shooting.
- Managed the fast-paced demands of TV broadcasting, ensuring programs were delivered on time for airing.
- Learned the fundamentals of program editing and the end-to-end production process for TV shows, while working closely with known personalities in the industry.

Tv Program Assistant Producer 

I build high-performance teams and unforgettable experiences—on stage, in the field, and behind the scenes. I turn training into storytelling, stakeholder alignment into trust, and culture into action.

My career began in TV and film, where I learned how to ask the right questions, create meaningful content, and deliver under pressure. The experience shaped how I communicate and lead to this day.

I later moved into sales and marketing at Pernod Ricard and SICPA, spending most of my time in the field with customers, partners, stakeholders, and competitors. It taught me that ideas only matter when they meet real-world execution.

At Insider, a global martech SaaS company, I focus on onboarding, learning & development, and company culture. I continued to grow and scale key initiatives like our Sales University, and built onboarding sessions on our LMS, learning videos, and a mentoring program for newcomers—all designed to accelerate ramp-up, build early connection, and spark long-term growth. These foundations continue to shape how I create high-performing teams and a culture people want to grow in.

I now lead programs like:
Quarterly Growth Kick-Offs
Customer sessions and Insider retreats
Leadership University
Code Academy 
Family Days 
How Did I Achieve It? sessions
Roses & Thorns: Cross-functional sessions, where teams surface tensions and collaborate better, especially when KPIs clash. 

Over time, one principle has stayed with me:
If content is king, distribution and adoption are the keys to real impact.

👉 Scroll down to my recommendations to hear what my colleagues and managers say about my leadership, creativity, and ownership.

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