GTM-focused SaaS Advisor and Board Member

I am a go-to-market-focused technology executive and board member with over 20 years experience leading SaaS companies.  

I have led product, marketing, sales, and customer success, and twice I have run companies as CEO.  Along the way I have served formally on 4 boards of directors (including one public company), 7 advisory boards and 3 non-profit boards.

As part of these roles, I have helped to:

* Sell 5 companies (to Oracle, Amazon, Aurea, Maritz, and NonProfitEZ)
* Secure over $100M in equity financing (series Seed, A, B, C)
* Acquire and integrate 5 companies
* Manage small and large quotas (up to $300M)
* Launch dozens of products
* Get two products to profitability on a pure PLG / self-serve basis
* Grow multiple companies at 50%+ growth rates
* Restructure / downsize multiple companies
* Hire hundreds of people
* Create over $1B of shareholder value

I am now 100% focused on teaching, writing, investing and advising.  

As the Executive Chairman of Winning by Design, I work with leadership teams to optimize go-to-market strategies, product development, and customer success.  As an active board member and advisor, I focus on product development and corporate strategy.  As a professor at BYU's Marriott School of Business I teach Product-led Growth, B2B Sales & Marketing, and Career Strategy.

I recently published my first book with Stanford University Press:  FREEMIUM, available from all book retailers.

I am proud to serve as a formal advisor to Mercato Partners, Pledge, Terrett, and ProAI, and an informal advisor to other entrepreneurs and business leaders changing the world.

My mission is to empower the next generation of software leaders and entrepreneurs to create value for their customers and for society.

Dave Boyce

The year was 2000.

➡️ I had never sold a company.
➡️ Never sat on a board.
➡️ Never sold a 7-figure deal (or 6, or 5)
➡️ I had raised funding and started two companies, both of which folded.

We lived in Boston--an expensive place, far away from family.  We had two kids (pictured), so I joined a company that could pay me a salary (ProfitLogic (Acquired by Oracle), and we buckled down.

25 years, 6 kids, 8 houses, 3 cities, and 7 exits later, and we are still doing it--life, career, faith, family, fun... 

Here's to those on the front end of the journey.  I see you. You are squinting, trying to see your successful future. The current circumstances seem impossible, and the road ahead is fuzzy. You will do it! Buckle down, work hard, take some calculated risks, pick yourself back up, put yourself back in the game, and you will do it! 

Don't do it for the rewards (they will come), do it for the journey. Do it for the adventure. Do it for the chance to make an impact. Care for the people in your life, keep your head up and eyes forward, and be grateful for the opportunities you have.

XOXO,

-db

It's almost 2026. Time to make a choice about how you kick off your year with your team:

▶️ "AI pilots are failing and sucking up a lot of time. We are sticking to the basics.  AI cannot replace what we do.  If you can use AI to help you in your individual job, great, but we are not going 'all in' on AI in 2026."

▶️ "The AI train is moving fast. The only thing worse than missing a train is missing a fast train--it's hard to catch up.  Based on our inititial AI pilots, here is what we are doing in 2026.  We will be the most AI-powered GTM team in our industry."

At Winning by Design we have chosen path B.  We spent all year launching AI pilots and agents.  Not all of them worked, but some of them now define how we work day to day. SiftHub is all in. Salesforce is all in. SAP is all in. Google, Meta, and Microsoft--all in. Also Winning by Design's certified partners:  SalesHood, Momentum.io, Fathom, Grain, Una Software, Vasco, Attention, PeopleAI-- all in.

Time to gut check.  What have you done, and what are you doing in AI GTM?  Are you ready to get on stage in January and launch your year with a clear AI strategy?

XOXO,

-db

25% of adults have a hole in their heart. 

It’s called a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO), and it occurs when a baby’s heart fails to completely close the opening in the atrial septum as the heart starts to beat independently. 

This week I had my PFO surgically closed. 

The doctors wanted to close it to prevent any future deoxygenated blood clots from passing through the hole and on to the brain (vs going first to the lungs, which tend to do a better job breaking up clots). 

The surgeon inserted a titanium mesh septal occluder, all done arthroscopically (entered through the groin). 

I’ve attached two videos here:

1) an animation of the procedure
2) a video of my device, now in place 

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?

It’s amazing to me what humans are able to innovate with precision science. Whenever I engage with innovation like this (or AI or robotics or pharmaceuticals), I realize how much room we have in GTM to tighten up our game. 

200 years ago, we didn’t understand the human body like we do now, and we practiced bloodletting via leeches. We amputated, we blistered, we lobotomized. 

But when you know better, you do better. Medicine has come a LONG way… so have engineering, manufacturing, space exploration…. 

Next up: GTM. We still have a surprising amount of “winging it” in GTM. But there are underlying principles of compounding and system-led growth that can help us do better. 

Today I’m grateful for modern medicine. And tomorrow I’ll continue working with Winning by Design  on modernizing GTM. 

Let’s go!!!

XOXO

-db

https://lnkd.in/g72_jZhB

AI-Native companies run on PLG Rails.

We see the breakout success of some select AI-native companies (Cursor, Replit, Lovable, Mistral, OpenAI...) and assume there must be something special about their GTM.

Yes, they are in a hot space with wind at their backs.

But no, they are not using agents to sell to you.  It's just #PLG.  And if you dive deeper, you can see how and why.  

I wrote about this in the October issue of GROWTH, and I've now published that article to my Substack (linked below). You can get a free digital subscription to GROWTH by following the link at the end of the article.

XOXO,

-db

Winning by Design

GirlsWhoClay

GirlsWhoClay aims to foster the adoption of #Clay among female engineers, RevOps, and GTM practitioners, empowering women in these roles to leverage the platform's flexibility.

Founder

dealsup.io

Partner - Pipeline generation

SDR Leaders of EMEA

Member

SalesCaptain

GTM Strategist

Clay Bootcamp 🥾

• Mastered Clay with bespoke 1:1 training and tailored mentorship at Clay Bootcamp 🥾
• Developed advanced expertise in automation, AI-driven business solutions, and workflow optimization

Elite Clay Training Program Student

Talkwalker

Director, Global SDR team

EMEA SDR Manager

UK SDR Manager

Virtuoso

SDR Manager

Aurachain

Account Development Manager

Automation Anywhere

Business Development Representative

Nimble Storage

Inside Sales Team Lead

Global SDR director at Talkwalker I Pipeline generator I Cold call aficionado | Top 20 SDR Leaders in the UK |

Founder of #GirlsWhoClay, an avid supporter of process automation, common sense and proactive pipeline generation. Global SDR leader, ex banker. Know a thing or two about how to get leads globally.

Scaling pipeline generation through sustainable cost-effective execution. Top 20 SDR leaders in the UK. Cold call aficionado. Proactive member of SDR Leaders of EMEA community. 

Core skills
Pipeline generation - Clay - Strategic leadership and vision - Coaching - KPIs - Scaling SDR teams - Operational process design - Global and cross-cultural management - Mentorship

Marina Ghilchik

Clay shenanigans in Amsterdam last night 😸 

Patrick Spychalski is every bit as charming in person as he is on screen, and Varun Anand? Still one of the most brilliant minds in SaaS...a person who's basically living in 2035. 

Awesome evening - thank you, Wesley van Duin and Jack for organising Clay Club Amsterdam!

GTM Engineer @ mgsh. | GTM Strategy + Systems That Turn Your Data Into A Growth Goldmine | Clay Solutions Partner | UK + EMEA

Why VCs should check Clay instances during due diligence.

Ok, this is a long one...

Ditch the pitch deck. Show me your Clay instance. I can tell you more about a company's scalability in 10 minutes of Clay archaeology than any 50-slide presentation.

Here's what I'm looking for:

Red Flags (They're not ready to scale):

- 50+ tables with no naming convention
- "Test_final_FINAL_v2_actually_final" everywhere
- Manual CSV uploads dated 6 months ago
- 10,000 rows, 3 actually processed
- API keys to 8 different enrichment tools (hello, desperation)
- No documentation, no owner, no idea who built it

Green Flags (They can actually 10x):

- Clear data flow architecture
- Suppression lists BEFORE enrichment tables
- Automated refresh cycles
- Single source of trut: all syncs with the CRM
- Qualification logic that matches their ICP doc
- Someone who can explain why each table exists

Last month, a VC friend asked me to look at two portfolios companies:
Company A: Beautiful deck. Hockey stick projections. Clay instance: Chaos. 47 abandoned tables. Manual uploads. No workflows. 

Company B: Decent deck. Realistic growth. Clay instance: Poetry. Automated lead scoring. Signal detection. Self-healing workflows. Every dollar in = predictable pipe out.

Guess which one hit their Series B targets? 😸 

Your Clay architecture is your GTM architecture. If it's a mess, your scaling motion is a mess. If it's disciplined, you can actually deliver those projections.

VCs love to check:
Burn rate ✓
CAC:LTV ✓
Runway ✓
Product-market fit ✓

But they miss the operational truth: Can this company actually execute their GTM at 10x volume?

The answer is sitting in their Clay instance.

Your Clay instance is your GTM autobiography. It shows how you think, how you operate, and how you'll perform under pressure:

Clean Clay = Clean execution = Believable projections
Messy Clay = Messy execution = Fantasy projections

To the VCs reading this:
Next due diligence, ask to see their Clay. If they say "we don't use Clay," ask what they use instead. If they can't explain their data flow, discount their ARR projections by 40%.

To the founders reading this:
Your Clay instance is showing. Fix it before your next raise.


P.S. - We've cleaned up Clay instances that would make VCs weep. One had 247 tables. No joke. They're now at 12 workbooks and laughing. Architecture matters.

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