Eric Lay

founder & ceo | b2b gtm for vertical saas

Building virio.ai

A done-for-you content service and AI coworker for B2B companies to turn LinkedIn into their #1 GTM channel.

Founding Partner

Hosting private dinners, socials & events for Toronto's top VC backed founders. Partnerships with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Collision, Elevate, Inovia VC, Forum VC & many more!

MrBeast just raised $200M at a $5B valuation.

They hit $400M+ revenue, and are about to triple down on something big:

For context:

2012: Jimmy Donaldson uploaded his first video from a bedroom in Greenville, North Carolina
2026: $5B valuation, 400M+ subscribers, 450+ employees.

They built verticals:
- chocolate
- burgers
- games
- analytics
- creator marketing platforms.

Each one becoming a distribution channel.

Here is the ops team behind all the hype:

Jeffrey Housenbold (CEO): SoftBank MD bringing institutional discipline to viral scale - projecting $700M across media, consumer products, and technology.

Noah Wieseneck (VP Brand Partnerships): 18+ years in creator-advertiser infrastructure. Now scaling Fortune 1000 partnerships.

Kelly Calabrese (VP Global Media): Ex-TikTok. Building cross-platform distribution legacy media can't replicate.

Sinan Deriş (Head of Marketing): Turned cultural moments into repeatable revenue at a multi-million dollar lifestyle brand.

Beau Avril (SVP Global Head of Media): Ex-TikTok/Meta/Google. Monetization across every platform, every format.

Corie Henson (President, Studio): Ex-NBCUniversal. Building scripted/unscripted pipelines that rival traditional studios.

Byron Kendal (VP Talent & Tech): The infrastructure guy making viral repeatable at 450+ employees.

Tia Silas (Chief People Officer): Building the operating rhythm for a "Disney-style entertainment colossus."

The pattern:

Feastables doesn't sponsor videos. It IS the product.
Beast Games isn't a YouTube series. It's a Prime Video production.

The analytics tool, the brand partnerships platform, the merch: each vertical's distribution compounding the brand.

So here's my prediction:

They've conquered consumer platforms. Next is professional.

LinkedIn is the last major distribution channel Beast doesn't own. And it's where decision-makers controlling millions of $$ live.

When Beast horizontalizes into B2B, creator marketing for enterprises, content infrastructure for brands, talent systems for scale, they'll need to reach B2B buyers directly.

That's LinkedIn content. That's your feed.

The B2B content playbook is next.

Founder & CEO @ Virio | The AI Marketer for Enterprise

I made $100k at 16 while failing high school and eating cup ramen.

Here is my story:

0: Born

5–15: Gifted program, skipped grades, was a straight-A student 

(Friend introduced me to League of Legends at 13 and was instantly hooked)

16: 
- Went pro and was top 30 in North America (0.001%)
- Made my first $100k
- Skipped all my classes senior year
- Failed highschool (had to take grade 13)

17:
- Almost failed grade 13 (would have without summer school)
- Dad bribed me with a gaming PC (got straight A's in the summer and graduated)

21: Top 3 highest grossing esports coach in NA & Europe

23: Consumer content agency ($50K MRR)

25: Co-founded largest startup community in Canada

27: Built more stealth startup ideas (failed, failed, and failed again)

28: Met Emmett, started Virio

29: Virio now adds over $1M+ ARR per month, building with a team of 15. You guys are seriously the best <3. I'm feeling more grounded than ever and I take my responsibilities very seriously.

Looking back, I'm grateful for the struggle.

Without failing alone, I wouldn't know I could survive it.
Without losing to addiction, I wouldn't understand what integrity actually costs.
Without twelve failed startups, I wouldn't have recognized Virio when the opportunity showed up.

I stopped running away and started building something that truly meant something to me. Fourteen years and probably 10,000+ hours of games played before work became intrinsic instead of just another distraction.

Took a long time to figure things out.
But weirdly, worth it all.

Grateful for you <3

Major milestone, just crossed 40k followers!

Here's the growth framework you can use at each stage:

0–1K: Look like a real person
- Maxed out connection requests (500/month)
- Connected with everyone I knew IRL
- Cleaned up headshot and banner (this is your digital handshake)
- Simple goal: have more than 500 connections so you are credible when someone checks your profile.

1–5K: Document, don't create
- Posted personal updates tied to founder-life (in this phase, you are the moat, people will follow you for you)
- Hosted 3 dinners / week and shared results publicly. Attendance numbers, what went wrong, what surprised me.

5–10K: Study patterns obsessively
- Started researching what actually goes viral in startup content
- Experimented beyond my own events: broader industry/cultural trends, storytelling frameworks, capitalizing on news cycles
- Heavy TOFU to cast wide and learn fast

10–20K: Capture intent with lead magnets
- Introduced comment-to-receive frameworks and playbooks
- Turned passive scrollers into active leads by giving away real value upfront instead of just building awareness

20–30K: Build in public + announce loudly
- Shared our launch out of stealth through storytelling rather than product pitches.
- Big announcements tied company milestones to broader market narratives: why this matters for B2B GTM, not just what we shipped.

30–40K: Go niche AND go big simultaneously
- Pipeline-generating ABM posts targeting specific accounts led to meetings booked directly from content.
- Viral authority posts on major trends happened from a position of credibility, not just chasing noise.

Here's what will make this work for YOU:

You need A/B testing discipline and enough volume to either find and/or create your own formats. 

It's become a cliche at this point, but just click the post button. There's a quality aspect to volume. Put up the shots and you'll develop intuition for what great content looks like.

– some additional notes:

1. I invested in support early. As we scaled, it was became more difficult to handle ops without a dedicated team.

2. 90/10 rule: content generally works on power laws - one format will get you 90% of your results. For example: one post hit 7,900 comments and ~1 million views. Drove about 10,000 followers in a single week.

Can't replicate that week on demand but I can replicate what created it.

Grateful for all your support :)

What stage / type of content are you posting?

Most people didn't believe our $500k-$1.5M TC Head of CEO Content role.

We filled that position 12 weeks ago. Today, we're quadrupling down.

Virio is hiring Content Engineers to join us in our San Francisco office, immediately.

Max Rascher (124k followers) joined Virio 12 weeks ago. Since then:
→ $50M+ in pipeline generated for clients
→ 3 Content Engineers already hired
→ $1M ARR added in 30 days

Our clients are B2B Founders and executives at the fastest-growing companies in the world. They need content that drives pipeline and we need more people to keep up with demand.

That's where you come in.

Writers, liberal arts majors, because with the amount of AI slop...

Taste matters more than ever.
We're looking for someone who has an instinct for what looks "right". 
Someone who deeply understands the art of storytelling.

What you'll do:
- Write daily for founders and executives who need to drive revenue, not just engagement
- Operate systems that turn thought leadership into meetings and pipeline
- Grow Virio from $XM - $100M

Who we're looking for...
• you have the "it" factor
• you're a top 0.1% writer
• you understand how content actually drives B2B demand gen

This is an in-person role in San Francisco. We cover relocation, sponsor visas, and pay monthly wellness stipends.

Comp: $150K–$Uncapped TC (we will go all-in for top tier talent)

If you're a storyteller who also happens to be a top tier operator looking to grind for something larger than yourself, apply in the link in the comments.

Let's get you down to SF.

This is Virio's org chart.

Some fun details about it...

→ Max number of direct reports: 6
→ Former founders on the team: 100%
→ Biggest team: customer success
→ Newest team: customer success
→ Fastest-growing team: customer success

(Yes, our CS team is exploding, our customers are always #1 priority)

We're a very flat company and have been expanding the team like crazy over the last 2 months.

Content is a hot market with a lot of demand, so we're hiring aggressively. Here's our priority list:

1. Content engineers
2. More content engineers
3. Actual engineers
4. Chief of Staff
5. Account Manager

If you want to be part of a rocket ship and work with incredible people, apply in the comments.

Profound just raised $96 million at a $1B valuation.

Here’s what their data is showing about how LinkedIn content affects AI search.

In November 2025, LinkedIn sat at #11 on ChatGPT's citation rankings. By February 2026, it was #5. A 2x increase in three months.

In their latest report, Davis McCain and Brandon P. wrote that LinkedIn is now the #1 most cited domain for professional queries across every major AI platform. ChatGPT. Claude. Gemini. Perplexity.

Here's the part that caught my attention.

The growth isn't coming from your website. Profound's data shows the sharpest jump is in posts, long-form articles, and newsletters. Organic content created by individuals. That slice went from 27% to 35% of all LinkedIn citations in 90 days.

Your CEO's quarterly reflection. Your Founder's weekly growth stunts. Your PM's product update. That's what AI is reading, citing, and treating as a source of truth.

Most companies publish executive content once a month (if at all). The AI citation window is 7-14 days for trending topics. If you're not in the feed consistently, you're not in the training data.

→ The window is open right now and the brands that move will build a compounding advantage as AI keeps leaning on LinkedIn as a trusted source.

Shoutout to some of the awesome people behind Profound who are building the  edge to win in the AI search game: Trevor Pyle, James Cadwallader, Dylan Babbs, Mark Ebert, Nick Lafferty

We've closed over $1M ARR in the last 30 days at Virio.

Here are the 5 pillars of our Linkedin-only GTM strategy:

For context: We're an AI-native service. Our product helps executives and their teams build LinkedIn presence that drives pipeline.

–

1/ BUILD FOR THE ICP THAT CLOSES FASTEST

Before the first outbound message, we pulled our own data. Which accounts converted fastest? What did they have in common?

For us, this meant $10M-$25M ARR vertical SaaS companies selling to legacy industries (fintech, proptech, data infra). Most had already tried content before, either internally or with an agency. Some failed, some with okay.. success.

A failed attempt is better than no attempt. It means they've felt the pain.

We quickly future-opp’d accounts that didn’t feel a strong need and focused on high-intent.

–

2/ YOUR FIRST CUSTOMERS ARE YOUR PROOF, BUT SO ARE YOU

Most companies build case studies after closing deals. We didn't have that luxury.

So we built our own content engine first.

-> 20M+ impressions
-> 200k+ followers
-> $50M in pipeline generated

When we got on calls with prospects, we could say: "Here's exactly what we did last month. Here's the pipeline it generated."

Enterprise buyers are risk-averse. Show them you've already run the experiment on yourself.

–

3/ SHOW PROSPECTS WHAT THEY'RE LOSING TO

In one of our $100K ACV deals, we kept getting polite interest but stalled decisions. The champion liked us. The CMO was cautious.

Before the next meeting, we researched their top 3 competitors. One of them had a CEO with 50K+ LinkedIn followers driving consistent inbound pipeline.

We brought that to the call. As a market reality (and FOMO tactic)

"This is what your competitor is doing. This is the gap. Here's what it's costing you."

We tied ourselves to something leadership had already committed to: winning their market.

–

4/ MULTI-THREAD BEFORE YOU NEED TO

Most deals stall because you're talking to one person. They gets busy, go on vacation, or leave the company.

We started multi-threading on day one. 

We mapped 4-5 stakeholders to each of Virio’s accounts:

CEO = Eric
CRO = Melissa
CMO = Jeremy
…
Head of Sales = Jonathan

We created content and outbound messaging that spoke to each role's specific pain.

Competitive positioning -> CEO
Attribution -> CMO
Warm outbound -> Head of Sales

By the time we asked for a meeting, 3-4 people in the account had already seen at least 1/5 accounts with Virio’s name. When we finally got the decision-maker on a call, they'd say: "Actually, I've been seeing your posts, my {champion} mentioned you last week."

The result: $1M ARR in 30 days.
From a replicable system on the most underutilized gtm channel in 2026.

I love selling brands. I hate selling myself. So here's six rapid-fire facts about me and my work. In, out, nobody gets hurt.

1) I have 6 years of experience standing up scalable outbound functions, inbound lead funnel capture systems and repeatable sales processes from scratch.

2) I've bootstrapped LavaReach (AI Sales SaaS) as a Founder, scaled it from $0-600K ARR in 8 months through Founder led lead gen and closing, hired, trained, onboarded and managed a sales team of 3 BDRs and 1 AE.

3) I've helped ConnectCPA (Cloud Accounting) and Virio (Content Marketing) set up their outbound function from scratch at 150% quota attainment in 2 months and $0-300K USD ARR in 3 months respectively. 

4) I think and work like a Founder - SUSTAINABLE GROWTH is everything. This means proper unit economics, LTV/CAC and Sales Efficiency. I quickly validate whether outbound is a scalable lead generation channel through 2000 cold calls to your ICP in 1 week.

5) I don't like to advertise this fact, but I'd do this job for free. It's my passion - no leads, no pay. Integrity is EVERYTHING.

6) If you're a Canadian Corp/Founder - I can help you get government grants to lower your CAC by at least 70%.

Professional Skills
Business Development | Consultative Selling & Closing | Sales Team Development | Rev Ops | Market and Pricing Analysis | Strategic Planning | SaaS 

Domain Knowledge
SalesTech | MarTech | AdTech | Accounting & Finance | DataTech | Enterprise Software | Small Business Software | IT Management Software | PropTech

Max Woo 👋

I’m throwing an event that doesn't exist in Toronto yet. 
28 people signed up before I even posted about it.

Every major US city has a community for go to market operators. 
SF has operator dinners. New York has peer groups.

Canada had nothing. 
So we built GTM North.

Here's what made people sign up before we even went public:

A pro videographer will be at the event to film attendees a personalized 30-60 sec video clip. 
The kind of short form content people pay $500+ for. 
Yours to keep. Yours to post. 

Only 20 spots left for this.
Want it? Repost this post and it's yours at the event.

April 22nd. Downtown Toronto. 70 people.

Sales leaders, founders, AEs, SDRs, and marketers in one room. 
No panels. No one asking “so what’s your tech stack”. No awkward name-tag networking. 
Just real conversations with people who know what building pipeline actually looks like.

Food and drinks covered. 
Photographer on-site. 
And the kind of energy Toronto's been missing.

The first 50 who sign up get in free.
Want the invite link and your free code? Here's how:
Like this post. Drop "LAUNCH" in the comment. Connect with me. I'll DM it to you.

📍 Everyside, Adelaide & University, Toronto 
📅 Tuesday, April 22nd, 6–9 PM

28 people didn't wait. Don't be the one who screenshots this and never signs up.

Max Woo

Head of Sales Development @Landbase | 1x Exit

Cold calling is dead.
Cool. Less competition for us.
Last year, my team averaged 3 SDRs & booked 1093 outbound meetings via calls.

No automation. No AI sequences. 
Just phones - and 3 rules we never break.

Rule 1: Win the first 7 seconds or lose everything.

Most reps open with: "Hi, this is [name] from [company], is this [name]?"

That sentence is a death sentence.
We do two things instead - pattern interruption and specificity.

Lead with something real about them before you mention yourself or your product:

→ "Hey, it's Max. I was looking at your LinkedIn and noticed you're going after a pretty niche TAM. Can I steal a couple seconds?"

They don't know who you are yet. Make them curious before they can say no.

Rule 2: Diagnose before you prescribe.

A doctor doesn't walk in and say "want some medicine?"
They ask questions until you feel genuinely understood.

Before every dial, my reps build a sharp hypothesis on the prospect's biggest pain. 

They don't pitch. They make an assumption:

→ "Given you target [ICP], I'm guessing you can reach half your market pretty easily, but the other half takes hours of manual research your team doesn't have. Am I close?"

That one sentence opens more real conversations than any script I've written in 5 years.

Rule 3: Book the meeting. Don't ask permission.

→ Weak close: "Would you be open to a quick call sometime?"

→ Strong close: "I'd love to show you how we helped companies like yours expand their reachable market by 50%. If we can't, you keep the data for free. I have Thursday at 2 or Friday morning. Which works better?"

Assumptive. Specific. Confident.

Reps who struggle treat the meeting ask like an imposition.
Reps who crush it treat it like the obvious next step, because it is.

Shoutout to TitanX & Landbase for making this possible.

If you're considering starting your career as an SDR...
Don't.

I'll let you in on something no sales leader will ever tell you:
It's a high expectation, low control role.

You don't pick the product. 
You don't pick the territory. 
You don't pick who you're selling to.

Crush quota? They'll raise it. 
Bad quarter? You're on a PIP before you can explain yourself.

The market shifts. The product misses. The positioning is off.
Doesn't matter. The number is the number. And it's your fault if you miss. 

You spend your days cold calling strangers who don't want to hear from you. 
Sending 100 emails to get 2 replies - one of which is "remove me from your list."

Most people who start don't last. 
You'll understand why on day one.

So why do I still think it's the best job you can have in your 20s?

Because cold calling is the fastest demand validation tool that exists.

50 people hang up instantly - that's signal. 
One stays on for 8 minutes asking questions - that's signal too.

Founders pay consultants thousands to learn what you figure out every single day.

The reps who survive come out with 2 things most people spend a decade chasing:

→ Resilience. Getting told no 80 times before lunch and still picking up the phone - that's the exact muscle you need when your startup isn't growing and your runway is shrinking.

→ Pattern recognition. After 500 calls you know who buys, what objection is coming, and how to move someone from skeptical to curious in under 30 seconds.

That's founder training disguised as an entry level job.
And there is no faster way to learn how to build something from scratch.

85 confirmed attendees. 1 week. 0 ad spend.
For our first ever event.
Here's exactly how we did it at GTM North.

1) Pick a niche you have an unfair right to own

Don't build a community. Build your community.

Where do you have unfair founder market fit?
Which room doesn't exist yet that you'd actually want to be in?

For me: Toronto's B2B GTM operators. No panels. No name tags. No small talk.

2) Make the incentive stupid obvious

Every vertical already has a community. Generic loses.

So we killed the panel format and made showing up actually worth it:

First 50 to comment → free ticket
First 20 to repost → free professionally edited short form video filmed at the event

No panels means the whole room is a conversation. That's the real incentive.

If people have to think about whether to share it, the incentive isn't good enough.

3) Work every comment yourself

Most people post and ghost.

I DM'd every single person who commented. Screened for fit. 
A room full of the wrong people isn't a community - it's a networking event.

7 video spots still open.
Comment "GTMNORTH" and I'll lock you in.

Shoutout to Eric Lay for showing me how it's done.

GTM North. April 22. Toronto. 85 confirmed and climbing.

👇 Event link below.

Cold calling tip that feels like cheating.
It's not. It's just embarrassingly simple.

Most SDRs hear an objection and immediately fight it.

They push harder. 
Pitch louder. 
Pull out the reframe they've been rehearsing all morning.

The prospect feels it instantly. And they're gone.

Here's what my team of SDRs - currently sitting at 150% quota do instead.

They repeat the objection back. Slowly. With a confused tone:

→ Prospect: "We're actually pretty happy with our current solution."
→ SDR: "Hmm... you're happy with your current solution."

Then they pause. Long enough to feel slightly uncomfortable.
Then they flip it.

→ "I'm probably barking up the wrong tree then. Out of curiosity - what's the one thing you wish your tech stack had right now?"

That's the entire move.

The prospect tells you exactly what's broken. 
Exactly what they want. 
Exactly what their current solution quietly isn't giving them.

Here's why it works:

→ The confused tone disarms them. Nobody feels sold to.
→ The pause signals confidence. Desperate SDRs fill silence. Calm ones own it.
→ The flip removes pressure at the exact moment they expect you to apply it. They relax. And relaxed prospects talk.

Most SDRs are trained to have an answer for everything.
The best ones are comfortable having nothing.

So next time you hit a wall - repeat it back, confused tone, sit in the silence.

→ "I'm probably barking up the wrong tree. But out of curiosity..."

The answer will do the rest of the work for you.

150 saves on my last post.
So I'll keep going. 
Here are 3 more objections that kill cold calls, and exactly how my team handles them. 

1) You need to speak to someone else

"No problem I'll reach out directly. Quick question before I do: is [pain] something your team is actively trying to fix, or does it keep getting bumped to next quarter?"

→ Qualifies the problem before you burn the referral. Don't climb a ladder that leads nowhere. 

2) Call back in a few months

"Of course, I'll put it on my calendar. Before I let you go: is [pain] something that's genuinely keeping you up at night, or is the timing just not there yet?"

→ Gets you off the dead end callback list. Forces them to self qualify on the spot. A brush off becomes a real answer. 

3) "We tried something like this before and it didn't work"

"So this is a problem you've already put time and money into solving - what broke down? The Solution? Or the Execution?"

→ They just told you the pain is real. Now you're a consultant, not a rep. Let them write your entire pitch for you. 

❗ Hail mary for when you're stuck:

"Sounds like I'm barking up the wrong tree. Before I let you go, what's your biggest challenge?"

Most people can't resist answering it - and when they do, they'll tell you exactly where it hurts. 

Most reps lose in the first 30 seconds because they panic and pitch harder.

The pattern that works:

Don't defend. 
Don't push.
Acknowledge, reframe, and ask the one question that makes them think.

Don't overcome objections.
Lean into them.

Shoutout to TitanX + Landbase for enabling 274 meetings in 1 quarter with 3 reps.

The "wrong person" objection is a gift.
Most SDRs don't know how to open it.

When someone says "I'm not the right person for this"
Don't apologize. Don't hang up. 

Most reps do both. 
They mumble a sorry, ask for a transfer, and get sent to voicemail purgatory.

Say this instead:

→ "Sounds like I'm barking up the wrong tree. One last question - I wonder if you can help me out. Is [problem] even something your team deals with?"

You're asking someone with no stake in the answer. 
No quota. No reason to sugarcoat it. 

If the problem doesn't exist, move on. 
If it does, you just got confirmation from the most unfiltered person in the building.

Then:

→ "I was going to reach out to [Decision Maker] - does that sound right, or would you point me somewhere else?"

You've shown you've done your research. 
Most people will route you in and some will even tell you exactly why the DM cares.

Two questions. 

First qualifies the account. 
Second gets you to the right door.

The wrong person just became the most useful call of your day.

Most SDRs personalize the email.
Nobody personalizes the call.
My SDR changed that without Clay, without n8n, without a single automation tool.

Before anyone dials, we segment every account.
TAM size, SDR headcount, RevOps presence.

Each segment gets its own opener. 
Different room, different conversation.

But she didn't stop at segmentation.

She enriched every contact in the CSV. 

Then wrote a Claude Code prompt that pulled each target's ICP, their buyer persona, and why the call was relevant - before a single rep touched the phone.

Every rep picks up the phone already knowing:

→ "You go after [job title] in [industry] - are you calling all of them, or just the ones who [signal]?"

Sounds like homework.

Because it was. They just didn't do it manually.

Personalization was always the excuse not to call.

Now there are no more excuses.

taplio

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Eric Lay

Max Woo 👋

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taplio

The Battle

Eric Lay

Max Woo 👋

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Eric Lay's LinkedIn Performance

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