Sam Jacobs

Founder & CEO

Pavilion

Pavilion is the leading global community for high-performance go-to-market executives. We build elite, modern GTM operators—CROs, CMOs, CCOs, and Revenue Operations leaders—who power growth at companies like Salesforce, Hubspot, Stripe, Oracle, Snowflake, Clay, Klaviyo, Xero, Upside, Owner.com, Otter.ai, and Square. With over 10,000 Members worldwide, Pavilion is a paid membership platform for GTM leaders at every level, offering tactical support, advanced education (from financial fluency to AI-powered GTM strategy), career acceleration, and a world-class peer network. We help ambitious professionals unlock their full potential and grow into the next version of themselves—faster, smarter, and surrounded by community.

For more information about Pavilion or to become a member of one of our worldwide chapters, visit joinpavilion.com.

Topline

Co-Host of Topline, the sharpest wittiest podcast on B2B tech, with Asad Zaman (CEO, Sales Talent Agency) and AJ Bruno (CEO, Quotapath).  We discuss real-time market trends, analyze the private markets, and answer questions from the Topline community.

Sundays - Full Episode
Thursdays - Topline Spotlight

Co Host

Clay

Advisor

Otter.ai

FyxerAI

Tidbits, LLC

Board Member

Sales Hacker, Inc.

Founding host of The Sales Hacker Podcast (now GTM Fund podcast) which featured interviews and discussion with leading sales practitioners from high growth companies around the world.

Host, Sales Hacker Podcast

Behavox

Behavox is the People Analytics company, using AI to make companies smarter, more secure and more successful. 

The company has offices in London, New York and Singapore and employs industry leaders in compliance and regulation, sales and customer success, software and data science. 

Behavox software reveals previously undetectable insights to protect reputation and maximise revenue generation by analysing vast amounts of structured and unstructured data.

The platform delivers benefits across the enterprise: 
- reducing the costs of compliance and increasing the effectiveness of systems and controls; 
- optimising the performance of teams and enhancing levels of customer service; 
- tracking and measuring corporate culture to strengthen teams and companies.

The company works with forward thinking, multi-national businesses, financial institutions and investment firms. 

The ever increasing demand for People Analytics means we are expanding in existing markets, entering new markets and recruiting at all levels. 

If you want to be part of the Behavox journey please contact us.

Chief Revenue Officer

TheMuse.com

Chief Revenue Officer of The Muse, the most beloved and trusted career website in the United States and the leading employer branding platform helping companies attract, recruit, and retain top talent.  Hired to lead Sales, Success, Account Management, and Sales Development and reaccelerate growth.

Experience & Responsibilities:

- Led Sales, Sales Development, and Account Management
- Repackaged product, redeveloped pricing, and rebuilt go-to-market strategy with emphasis on Enterprise growth
- Built Enterprise business from standing start resulting in number of early six-figure wins with F100 ($360K, $150K, $150K, $90K, and more)
- Increases overall sales efficiency ~2x in 5 months
- Increased average deal size ~45% in 4 months

Livestream

SVP, Sales & Marketing for LiveStream's Platform Products business, overseeing all sales, marketing, and success functions for LiveStream's 10,000+ subscription customers.  

Acquired by Vimeo/IAC.

- Led Sales, Sales Development, Account Management, and Marketing functions
- Ran a portfolio of Livestream’s businesses including SaaS, Production & Professional Services, and Advertising
- Hired and built overall B2B go-to-market function including SMB and Mid-Market Sales, Demand Generation, Content Marketing, Marketing Operations, and Sales Development
- Helped company grow from ~$20M+ to ~$40M+ in run-rate revenue over 2 years

SVP Sales & Marketing, Platform

I build elite, modern GTM operators - CROs, CMOs, CCOs, and Revenue Operations leaders - who drive growth at the world’s fastest-growing B2B companies, including Salesforce, Hubspot, Stripe, Oracle, Snowflake, Clay, Klaviyo, Xero, Upside, Owner.com, Otter.ai, and Square

That’s the mission behind Pavilion, the leading global community of over 10,000 high-performance go-to-market executives. We exist to help ambitious professionals unlock and realize their full potential—not just as employees, but as leaders, thinkers, and builders.  

Pavilion is a paid membership for GTM leaders at every level. We provide tactical support, advanced education - incorporating financial literacy, advanced AI-powered GTM motions, and modern leadership tools - career acceleration, and a powerful peer network to help Members perform better in their roles and grow into the next. We operate in every major global hub and represent a new way of thinking about career development—community-powered, principle-led, and relentlessly practical.

This all started with a belief: that greatness exists within all of us. Sometimes it just needs the right mechanism to bring it forth.

To learn more, visit: www.joinpavilion.com

I also co-host the Topline Podcast with AJ Bruno and Asad Zaman.

And I wrote a bestselling book, Kind Folks Finish First, about building with kindness at the center.

Host of The Sales Hacker Podcast featuring interviews and discussion with leading sales practitioners from high growth companies around the world.  

Learn more here: https://www.saleshacker.com/podcast-announcement/

Bad VP of Sales:

- I need to hit the target at any cost
- Close every deal. Even if they’re a bad fit
- 30 day opt-out? Sure why not
- Not engaged? Throw every discount under the sun at them
- “Sure we’ll do a ‘deferred payment’ deal. We’ll still book it as ARR. Nobody will find out right?”
- Closing *any* deal is better than no deal

Good VP of Sales:

- We need the right customers because they need to renew
- A closed deal we know for sure will churn is worthless
- It's worse than worthless. We lose money on it
- If they can’t abide by the contract terms, we haven’t sold the value
- Steep discounting is a sign that we haven’t executed the sale properly
- We need the right customers or the thing will stall and break

What you’ll learn over time: Churn will kill your business.

A year from now feels like forever but trust me. It’ll arrive right on time.

Right customers > any customers

CEO @ Pavilion | Co-Host of Topline Podcast | WSJ Best Selling Author of "Kind Folks Finish First"

SPVs are taking over venture capital.

But nobody knows what the hell they are.

Peter Walker from Carta just broke it down for us at Topline. 
SPV formations are up 116% over 5 years. The median size doubled from $1.2M to $2.2M. And Anthropic just banned them from their latest round.

What's going on?

An SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) is basically a shell company that pools investors together. Instead of 50 angels on your cap table, you get one entity. Clean. Simple. Efficient.

Except when it's not.

The good: SPVs democratize access. Minimum investment can be $1,000 instead of $50,000. Smaller investors get into hot deals. Founders get cleaner cap tables. Everyone wins.

The bad: Fee stacking is out of control. Some SPVs charge 16% in fees. SPVs on top of SPVs. Multiple layers of intermediaries extracting value without adding any.

The ugly: Anthropic's $170B valuation round just said no SPVs allowed. They want "tier-one VCs who will be with the company for the long haul." Not anonymous money hiding behind shell companies.

Why the ban?

When you're oversubscribed by 5x, you can be picky. Direct relationships matter. Transparency matters. Knowing who actually owns your equity matters.

The deeper issue: SPVs were designed to reduce bankruptcy costs and isolate risk. Academic research shows that's their primary value. Everything else—the pooling, the access, the simplification—is secondary.

But in the AI gold rush, they've become something else entirely. A way to flip allocations. A fee extraction machine. A game of financial hot potato.

Data from Carta:
- 67% of large SPVs now charge management fees (up from 41% in 2021)
- About 18% of SPVs exceed $10M in assets
- The top 2.6% of SPVs control 30% of all capital

The market is concentrating at the top while fees multiply at every level.

My take: SPVs aren't inherently bad. They're a tool. But when the tool becomes the business model, when fees exceed value, when opacity replaces transparency—that's when the best companies say no thanks.

The future belongs to companies willing to be selective about their capital. Not just who invests, but how they invest.

Direct relationships > Anonymous capital.

Check out the full episode of Topline for our deep dive on SPVs.

Out now (link in comments).

Taplio

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