inflection.io - product-integrated b2b marketing automation

Andy Turman

Emir Atli

CRO, HockeyStack

Hiring across all functions in San Francisco. Send an email to emir@hockeystack.com with proof of extraordinary talent.

Co-founder and CRO of HockeyStack

Co-Founder & CRO

The Command Center for B2B Revenue Teams. Backed YC, General Catalyst, Soma, and Madrona as well as founders of Citus, Lambda School, and Golden and the first investors of Rippling, Cruise, Ramp, Deel, Brex, Stripe, Scale AI, and others.

2025 was the year HockeyStack stopped being a startup and started acting like a real company. Here’s the investor update from our biggest year yet:
Last January, we had 20 ish FTEs, no sales engineering, no Revops, and a small Enterprise footprint.

In 2025, we:

- Closed more revenue in Q4 than than all of 2024 combined
- 3x’d the team to 70+
- Landed our first Fortune 10 account
- Shipped over 100 new features
- Built 4 entirely new teams from scratch
- Raised $26M Series A

And for me personally, I went from a mediocre IC stretched across 10 different functions with a fancy title to an actual operator. A real CRO.

Which allowed us to build repeatability in pretty much all areas of HockeyStack and hire exceptional Sales leaders (like Miran 'Miki' Cisic, James Hong, Albert W.).

We’re entering 2026 with momentum, repeatability, and conviction.

With 2 of our biggest launches coming in January.

Same ambition. Better execution. Much higher bar.

Always day 1.

Thanks for following along.

Let’s build.

Emir Atli 

CRO @ HockeyStack | AI Agents For SDRs, AEs, Marketing, and Post-sales

Today HockeyStack is launching BLUEPRINTS. Our biggest product release to date. Here’s how it works:

Pipeline isn’t random. Each segment has millions of different paths to different stages of your funnel. HockeyStack’s BLUEPRINTS gives you the map to what is generating pipeline and what to do next.

For the last 3 years, our customers have been describing this feature in different ways like Recipes, Golden Paths or Blueprints.

They all wanted to see what are the patterns across millions of journeys in different segments and know what to do next to reliably build pipeline.

Starting today, they can with Blueprints.

If you struggled with understanding your Blueprints in 2025, Blueprints can help you retroactively figure it out for 2026.

Here’s how it works:

1. Map your Business segments
2. Map your scoring models
3. Start getting Blueprint data completed with actionable next steps for each Segment
4. Take action on all next steps automatically with HockeyStack Workflows

Check out the launch video 👇

CRO @ HockeyStack | AI Agents for Account Intelligence and Marketing Reporting

Q4 started as one of our worst quarters ever. Then we hit 60% the first month, 120% the second and 250% the third. Closing more revenue than all of 2024. Here are 5 hard won GTM lessons I’m bringing into 2026:

1. Speed and a good sales experience > obsessing over sales process

Responding fast and giving a really good sales experience is almost always more helpful than obsessing over process details. 95% of our win/loss interviews say we were the best in sales process, and it made a difference in prospects’ decision.

2. Senior hires expose more problems than they solved (at first)

Founders (including me) think they will hire an exec, and their 30-60-90 will be all about solving urgent problems. But hiring execs expose 10x more problems than they solve, slow you down, and make you uncomfortable for at least a quarter. 

That’s why you hired them. You need to find a way to keep the momentum high while fixing the problems that you weren’t aware of. You can’ just go solve problems for a quarter and hope the momentum is there when you get back.

3. Maintaining a high bar is a daily struggle

With AI changing shit so fast, you cannot rely on monthly/quarterly performance reviews, win/loss analysis, or business review. You need maintain an extremely high bar across talent, product, GTM, etc. EVERY SINGLE DAY to win in 2026.

4. A top 3 priority for the GTM team is keeping up the company momentum

GTM teams don’t just build pipeline and close deals. They fire up the entire team. GTM leaders need to focus on consistent wins and have top-tier internal comms (sharing as much as possible on Slack about wins, allowing ICs to showcase how they won deals against competitors) to keep all teams motivated and fired up at all times. If the GTM team loses momentum, all teams lose momentum.

5. I’m stupid for not building out Revops properly 1 year early

I never truly understood RevOps’ daily impact on revenue until we hired Albert W.. We were brute forcing our way to revenue without a foundation for so long it just started feeling normal to have all types of operational problems. We are starting 2026, with a much cleaner foundation than last quarter. And now with Alex Choi joining the RevOp team we are unstoppable.

Q4 was unlike anything I’ve experienced. It was a roller coaster.

Everything from hitting our annual target a month early to closing our largest customer, it was truly exceptional.

Pumped for 2026!

We are hiring our second Product Marketer to join HockeyStack. And we don’t care if you have Product Marketing experience! Looking to switch careers? Read this.

Here’s the role and why it’s the BEST time to join us:

Amulya joined HockeyStack almost a year ago with no background in Product Marketing to build the function. And she is incredible!

Instead, she has a background in Enterprise Sales and a unique set of creative skills, which allows her to be the favorite team member for our AEs while also thriving in brand/positioning work.

She was a HUGE reason why we overachieved all of our targets last year and had a massive Q4.

We are looking for a Product Marketer (or someone with no experience in product marketing and want to switch careers) who will work across customer marketing, product marketing, and sales enablement.

We work very well with people who are:

- System thinkers (think in systems, write well, and communicate effectively)
- Creative
- Extraordinary Outsiders (you just can’t fit into most environments and want to go above and beyond to get things done)
- Not using ChatGPT for everything and can still think by themselves
- This is the best time to join HockeyStack because we are shifting our entire brand to rebuild Enterprise Software for the AI Era.

If it sounds interesting, DM me or Amulya Vadrevu.

Our Head of Sales Engineering James Hong has done 1M LinkedIn impressions in 6 months posting thoughts on Sales Engineering on top of his hip hop dance videos. AND IT’S GENERATING PIPELINE.

Everyone says they want their employees to build personal brands on LinkedIn but then force them to repost their white papers or boring ass ChatGPT slop written by their marketing team.

James did a million views by posting dance videos.

This was not some grand strategy, it was just James being himself.

Let your people post!

James’s goal is 10M in 2026. Go follow him to help :)

Today, we are taking a HUGE step forward in Self-Executing GTM. Introducing the First GTM Agent Builder that works across all members of the revenue team with our new AI model:

2 years ago, we applied to YC with a hypothesis: In 5 years, all GTM applications will run outside of the CRM, and teams will need a single platform to ingest and transform their data and build applications on it.

We first changed the way GTM data is captured with our Data Platform, then the way Marketing data is used with our Marketing Intelligence platform, and finally how it’s actioned with our Account Intelligence and Workflows products.

HockeyStack is managing 200+ companies’ GTM, we raised $26M+ last year, and today we’re announcing what we have been preparing for the last 2 years.
HockeyStack Agents turn Natural language “Contracts” into multi-step execution with Enterprise-grade governance and reliability.

Whether you want a AE deal next-step generator, customer expansion radar, or a sales enablement coach Agent, you can build them all with our Agent Builder.
Together with the Agent builder, we are also introducing 14 out-of-the-box agents and Nex-LM: HockeyStack’s AI Model built for GTM.

Nex-LM understands how your business actually runs — pipeline, deals, patterns between top-performers, your product, upsells, and more.

So teams don’t have to explain, coordinate, or chase execution.

The agents just work.

This is GTM that runs itself.

And finally Makes Space To Think.

We have been working with Yext (NYSE:YEXT) for over a year now, and the results have been nuts!

Before HockeyStack, the team at Yext was tagging all opportunities as a single source, relying on gated assets, and wasn’t clear on the path to goals.

“Before HockeyStack, we were optimizing around the wrong goals. HockeyStack helped us align our goals to the outcomes we actually wanted to achieve, and made the impact believable by letting us drill into the exact deals behind the numbers.” — Johnathon Cherry Senior Manager, Marketing Operations & Insights, Yext

Now, they are also expanding to our Account Intelligence product to act on the intelligence and complete the loop with a single system of intelligence and action.

Grateful to be working with such a great team and excited for 2026!

taplio

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Andy Turman

Emir Atli

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The Battle

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Emir Atli

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Emir Atli's LinkedIn Performance

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