nearbound.com

Building the Nearbound category.

Where outbound interrupts, and inbound attracts, nearbound surrounds.

Nearbound GTM operationalizes Product, Marketing, Sales, Success, and Partnerships into a unified strategy that drives revenue. It does so by collaborating with individuals and partners that have trust and influence within your target market.

Nearbound matters because buyer behavior matters.

We’ve moved from the ‘How’ to the ‘Who’ economy. Buyers are asking, “Who can help me solve X?” 

They are looking to nodes of trust in their network.

Partnerships isn’t a department; it’s a strategy and integrated motion across every department.

Strategy & Champion

Stage 2 Capital

Stage 2 Capital invests in early-stage B2B software companies and sits shoulder-to-shoulder with leadership teams to operationalize sustainable revenue growth. We provide expertise and capital to help companies scale. 

Our LP base of 500+ seasoned GTM executives is matched with the strategic and operational needs of our portfolio companies. We involve our network in 100% of our investments, which often includes joining a portfolio company as an executive, board member, or advisor.

In 2018, I helped raise our $15 million Fund I from LPs at Asana, Atlassian, Box, Gong, HubSpot, Okta, Slack, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Toast, Twilio, Workday, Snowflake, Zoom, and many others.

$15m Fund I, LP, and Associate Member
$80m Fund II, LP
$150m Fund III, LP

GTM Advisor & LP

Klue

The All-in-Won Compete Platform. Combine market, competitor, and buyer insights in a unified platform.

Klue provides a lens into your competitor’s world, continuously updating and connecting dots to help you win more business. It’s a new way to capture, manage, and communicate market insights from the web and across the company, in platforms you already use.

Advisor

Folloze

Advisor to the CEO.

Folloze builds the leading B2B Buyer Experience Platform. With Folloze, sales and marketing teams can quickly create rich, personalized, and value-added experiences that maximize the revenue impact across the entire customer journey. Top B2B brands, including Adobe, Autodesk, DocuSign, Okta, VMware, UiPath, Cisco, and ServiceNow trust Folloze to boost customer engagement, revenue growth, and expansion across their target accounts. Integration partners include 6Sense, Demandbase, Marketo, Outreach, Qualified, and Salesforce.

Guild Education

Advisor to the B2B GTM team

Guild is on a mission to unlock opportunity for America's workforce through education and learning programs, career development, and one-on-one coaching. 

Guild is valued at $4.4 billion and is funded by Bessemer Venture Partners, Cowboy Ventures, Emerson Collective, General Catalyst, GSV, ICONIQ, Redpoint, Workday Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Oprah Winfrey.

GTM Advisor

LoopVOC

Voice of the Customer software for B2B SaaS Companies. Advisor to CEO & Founder.

Affinio

Member Board of Directors

Sales for Life

Advisor & Partner

https://www.linkedin.com/redir/invalid-link-page?url=Nudge%2eai

Acquired by Affinity, a relationship intelligence platform.

Advisory Board Member & Investor

Marketo

Acquired by Adobe for $4.75b

Reported to the CEO. Member of the Executive Leadership Team. Attended board meetings with Vista Equity Partners.

I took my second lap around the MarTech track. After two years at Salesforce working with sales leaders during the birth of SaaS, 10 years at Eloqua working with marketing and marketing operations leaders building the marketing automation category, a year at Oracle post Eloqua acquisition, and four years as a solopreneur working with sales and sales enablement leaders to drive digital sales transformation and the adoption of social selling, I joined Marketo as Chief Marketing Evangelist to advise companies on growth in the Engagement Economy. I worked with customers, spoke at events, and unified our internal teams and partner ecosystem to create the seamless experiences customers want. I consulted with Vista Consulting Group's portfolio of enterprise software companies, including Cvent, Xactly, Infoblox, Lithium, and TIBCO. #MarketingNation #CMOnation

Chief Marketing Evangelist

23 years in SaaS. Early employee at Salesforce (first 100), Eloqua (#13), HubSpot Advisor (2014-2016), Marketo (2018).

Love startups, especially category creators - - in the trenches building Nearbound.

Born Sales. Bred Marketing. Building Partnerships. 

I spent six years in management consulting, 52 quarters in software sales at Salesforce and Eloqua, six years doing professional speaking, 2018 reporting to the CEO of Marketo (acquired by Adobe for $4.75B), Limited Partner "LP" and GTM Advisor at Stage 2 Capital. 

I started investing in 2012 and maintain my personal portfolio of investments in sales and marketing technology startups. I also started advising startups in 2012 and joined my first Board of Directors in 2016. Four of the companies I've advised have had successful exits -- HubSpot, Accompany, DataRPM, and PartnerHacker. 

My work keeps me focused on the changing B2B buying environment and what revenue teams need to do to evolve their culture, skills, processes, data, and tools. 

****If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, don't send a generic invite.****

After thriving in both the outbound and inbound eras, I've come to realize something crucial over my 20+ years of experience --

Your solution is one small piece of your customers’ ecosystem. 

My strategy? Customer-centricity. I ensured my buyers were surrounded by the right people, messaging, content, and solutions that mattered most to them, guaranteeing they derived the maximum value from our platform AND our partners.

I brought the ecosystem TO my customers.

And now, as we navigate the new era of GTM strategies—nearbound, 
surroundbound, allbound—it's clear that understanding and designing around your customer's ecosystem isn't just beneficial; it's essential.

By their nature, partner ecosystems are customer-centric. They focus on optimizing the collaboration between different parts of the interconnected ecosystem to benefit the CUSTOMER.

This is especially true for HubSpot's ecosystem.

This is just one reason why I'm incredibly honored to follow HubSpot’s CEO, Yamini Rangan, as the next guest on HubSpot’s new podcast, ‘Good Morning Ecosystem,’ hosted by Karen Ng, SVP of Product, and Brian Garvey, SVP of Worldwide Solutions Partners.

Curious about how ecosystems are shaping this new era of GTM strategies?

Listen in.

We’re discussing what's NOW and NEXT in GTM.

Jill Rowley

The traditional marketing playbook is no longer effective, and many are questioning its relevance. 

In 2021, my good friend, Sangram Vajre generously shared an advanced copy of his book, MOVE, which discusses the evolution of go-to-market strategies. I read it and loved his insights, but something was missing.

He included points the market undoubtedly needed to adopt:

	•	GTM is like building a new product—and like a product, it will be improved upon over time with customer data and input.
	•	Revenue teams must prioritize customer success alignment.
	•	Instead of targeting everyone in the largest possible market (total addressable market), focus on the customers most relevant to your product (total relevant market).

But he didn’t mention the role of partnerships and ecosystems. 🤔

In fact, at that time, discussions around partnerships were surprisingly scarce. 

So I sent this email to Sangram. 

As companies move from product-market fit to platform-fit, I argued that partner ecosystems are not just beneficial but ESSENTIAL.

Fast forward to today, Sangram and I are in full agreement on the importance of a nearbound GTM motion. 

And now, Sangram and GTM Partners are leading research on partnerships and ecosystems more extensively than any other GTM analyst firm. 

It’s a true full-circle moment to be sharing the stage at Goldenhour with Sangram and Martech OG, Jon Miller, co-Founder of Marketo.

We’ll address the current challenges in generating pipeline and what the new playbook may look like.

Hope to see you April 17th in The Big Apple or digitally on AudiencePlus.

In 2020, Atlassian’s Platform and Ecosystem were valued at $1 billion. Now it’s $3 billion, and they’re aiming for $10 billion.

Atlassian’s growth, while still strong, is at a slower pace compared to the explosive growth seen in previous years.

But here’s the problem: I talked to a big Atlassian partner, and they told me that Atlassian’s not as partner-centric as other leaders in the tech industry.

Unlike companies like HubSpot Salesforce, and ServiceNow who report on revenue generated for partners, Atlassian’s more focused on the revenue they generate for themselves.

And worse, this award-winning Atlassian partner told me that Atlassian does little to help partners in their ecosystem connect with each other.

Partners organically connect with each other behind the scenes because customers demand it.

This seems like a huge missed opportunity for Atlassian. The more partners connect with each other, the more value it creates for ALL members of the ecosystem — customers, partners, and Atlassian.

What do you think? Are other ecosystems also missing out on opportunities like this?

Dear B2B founders and execs,

Enough with the empty talk about partnerships—it's time for action.

Sure, every company and CEO publicly professes love for their partners, but let's be real: behind closed doors, the story changes.

I’ve witnessed it myself. 

Businesses I once looked up to for their dedication to partnerships were actually walking a different walk behind the scenes.

I'm writing today because I sense a seismic shift in the market, and too many are failing to grasp the urgency.

Partner ecosystems aren't fluff; they're the essence of your brand’s trust and defensibility.

With today's changes in AI, buyer preferences, shifts in VC funding, and more, your competitors are coming for you.

And your ecosystem and customer loyalty? That's your fortress.

Fail to navigate from the ‘How’ to the ‘Who’ Economy, and you’re not just behind, you’re becoming irrelevant.

Let’s prioritize action, together.

And because this isn't meant to be a doom-and-gloom post, here are a few companies already adopting nearbound exceptionally well. Shoutout to Pigment, 6sense, HubSpot, and Clari for daring to write the new playbook and share along the way.

Taplio

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