GTMfund

GTMfund is an early-stage VC fund focused on B2B SaaS.

Our 350+ limited partners are the best go-to-market (GTM) executives in tech. Operators who have been there, done that at the world’s fastest growing SaaS companies - Salesforce, Okta, Tableau, Mulesoft, Procore, Snowflake, Segment, ServiceNow, Rippling, and many more.

GTMfund is more than capital. We have a flywheel of resources to support our portfolio companies grow revenue, hire, and build distribution:
- GTMfund: The VC fund itself.
- Community: Access to hundreds of the best GTM operators in tech.
- Talent: Resources to help you recruit and hire the best operators to your team.
- GTMnow: A media brand, including an industry leading newsletter, podcast and more.

We help you get from zero to IPO.

VP of Marketing

GTMnow

GTMnow helps you scale your company and career. 
As the media brand of GTMfund, GTMnow shares insight from working with 100+ portfolio companies backed by 350+ GTM leader LPs.

Included under GTMnow:
- The GTM Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/
- The GTM Podcast: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/ 
- The GTMnow Website: https://gtmnow.com/ - with live events, articles, a tool, and more.

noble

Marketing Advisor

Pavilion

Executive Member

Spiralyze

GTM strategy/execution. Optimization strategy. 

Spiralyze is a predictive conversion rate optimization service / SaaS that drives continuous optimization through proprietary data based on crawling 30K+ websites to find which tests work and helping our clients to execute tests.

Vice President, Optimization

Head of Growth & CRO Specialist

Collabera Inc.

Account Manager

Environment and Climate Change Canada

• Jointly developed a national engagement framework to address an identified branch-wide need, consisting of 8+ projects and guidelines from initiation stages.
• Developed a national evergreen presentation deck about the Enforcement Branch, creating nationwide consistency in delivery of branch information to stakeholders and key partners. 
• Facilitated weekly Indigenous working-group meetings with individuals located both locally and remotely.
• Represented the department’s Enforcement Branch on national Indigenous working groups and steering committees.

National Project Analyst

• Developed and maintained relationships with stakeholders, liaising locally and traveling within British Columbia for strategic engagement initiatives. 
• Conducted policy content analysis and provided subsequent recommendations to management; drafted briefing notes, memoranda, reports, decks, and presentation material.
• Maintained tracking tools for implicated policy in Indigenous treaties, ensuring that the appropriate department branches were consulted when necessary.

Regional Special Projects

Vice President at Spiralyze | Optimization | CRO for B2B SaaS

Join 50k+ other leaders, founders and VCs in GTMnow, the media brand of GTMfund: https://gtmnow.com/

What you'll get: one weekly newsletter (The GTM Newsletter), one weekly podcast (The GTM Podcast), and the occasional special event invitation. 

--

Data-driven B2B growth & GTM leader.

I used to play competitive soccer. After, I realized that it wasn’t the sport itself that drove me. 
All the physical and emotional sacrifices along the way... done not for the love of the game. 
Rather, I was obsessed with the process of improvement. 

Now, I channel that obsession into helping others improve their businesses and careers (and still play the odd soccer game). 

How I do this:
- Building GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand) into the best resource for helping people scale their companies and careers. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind explosive company growth. 
- Building GTMfund to support founders throughout the process of their own journeys, alongside an incredible team and 350 insanely supportive and talented executive operator LPs. 

Passionate people person. Passionate about global education. 
Life is short, and there are 1440 minutes in every day. Make the most of them, make a difference, and enjoy the ride

San Francisco from a bird’s eye view – the calm before the INBOUND storm.  

The pace of change in inbound has never been faster and it's reshaping go-to-market. A few of the themes I’m excited to hear more about this week:

- Short-form video (and LinkedIn’s shift toward a TikTok-style feed)
- AIO (AI optimization) and how it reshapes discovery
- SEO (intersecting with AIO, but also evolving on its own)
- Event strategies 
- Community strategies 
- Brand as a moat
- And of course, content

We’ll be sharing a GTMnow recap of the event with the most useful trends and tactics for operators and founders navigating the new inbound playbook.

If you have any specific questions around inbound you’d like answered, just drop me a DM. 

For those attending INBOUND, would love to swap notes on takeaways from the event. Drop me a DM and we can connect IRL! 

#Inbound2025

Sophie Buonassisi

SVP Marketing at GTMfund & GTMnow - Media, GTM and Venture Capital.

In GTM, speed wins. Enterprise teams have the resources to dominate, but often lose weeks in campaign delays.

Mutiny just changed this with a big launch: AI for Enterprise GTM.

Here’s how it works:
- Account research on autopilot → The AI digs into your target companies, surfacing priorities, pain points, and trends.

- Instant creative production → Landing pages and ads, perfectly tailored to each account (no designers, no devs)

- Sales intel in real time → Personalized content and live engagement insights so reps reach out when interest is highest.

Enterprise teams can finally execute like scrappy startups, without losing their scale advantage💥 

--

Pictures from Mutiny's One to Won Summit earlier this summer. They brought together 50 enterprise marketers for one of the most curated and thoughtful events that I've experienced, hosted at the beautiful Dawn Ranch. 

I’ve got to sit in almost every seat with Mutiny – first as a customer, then as a partner, and now as an investor. 
When you see a company and team from all angles you get a deep view, and they are world-class. Really excited about what they just unlocked for enterprise teams!

Heading to #Inbound2025 next week! ✈️ 
(San Francisco, Sept 2–5)

We’ll be:
- Recording in-person GTMnow podcast recordings 
- Spending time with the GTMfund + GTMnow ecosystem
- Putting the final touches on details for a dinner in SF the following week 

The depth of insight from being in person is unmatched. 
We'll be packaging the most valuable go-to-market lessons from INBOUND into a special recap edition of The GTMnow Newsletter.

If you'll be there, looking forward to seeing you! 
If you won't be there in person, keep your 👀 peeled for the special recap!

Before the AI tidal wave, before ChatGPT hit 100M users in two months… we built GTMfund’s mission statement:

"We invest in the most ambitious Pre-Seed and Seed founders in B2B software and AI, and we help them build world-class distribution engines."

This has been our mission statement since the very beginning, day one. 

Why?

The best product does not always win. 

You need efficient, scalable distribution to outmaneuver a competitive market. In the new landscape where technology moats are fading away, go-to-market (GTM) has become priority number one. 

Building GTM the right way from the earliest days is a considerable competitive advantage for startup success. 

The paradox?
👍 It’s never been easier to ship.
👎 It’s never been harder to build something that sticks.

When your tech moat evaporates, you build a distribution moat.
And brand is the foundation of it.

What’s 1 brand play you’re investing in or excited about?

A great week at INBOUND! Fun to see it land on the west coast this year. 

The event itself was fantastic. 
The curated events around it were also excellent and made it even more memorable. Some of the side event highlights: 

- An evening with HubSpot Ventures, featuring a brilliant fireside chat and live jazz. 
- Breakfast with HubSpot For Startups x Clay, including a live conversation unpacking the pillars and stories behind building a unicorn.
- An epic NFL stadium party hosted by Default.
- A Pavilion x WeWork coworking hub, which was the perfect spot to land straight from the airport.
- Apollo happy hour (and they're back on Oct 9th with a big event - DM me if you need an invite).
- An intimate Tofu marketing dinner, covering everything from AI use cases to which D2C companies we would want to be.
- Chillipalooza with Chili Piper, Upside, Aircall and more. They sure do know how to throw a party. 
- Marketing x AI breakfast with Qualified x Matt Heinz, great conversation in a gorgeous room. 
- Humans of GTM, hosted by UserGems 💎. A mini conference in itself! 

Full recap of GTM takeaways (sourced from 30+ GTM leaders!) from INBOUND coming this Friday in the GTMnow newsletter ✍

As the saying goes, the fastest way to scale is to study someone 10 steps ahead.

This episode gives insight on how to scale a GTM engine past $1B in ARR 🤯 

James Roth is the Chief Revenue Officer at ZoomInfo, where he leads a global revenue org powering 37,000+ customers.

Key takeaways from the conversation:

1️⃣ Shrink to grow.
ZoomInfo cut its SMB focus to fuel upmarket growth. That shift unlocked higher retention, stronger LTV, and moved the mix to 72% enterprise.

2️⃣ PMF is not universal.
Their “Good Co, Bad Co” model maps retention by segment to guide product bets. Data beats opinions when scaling across markets.

3️⃣ Internal usage is the ultimate proof.
Copilot hit over $100M revenue because ZoomInfo’s own team used it first. Real usage became the demo and the proof point.

4️⃣ Signals beat raw activity.
They don’t just track calls, they track how often reps act on buying signals. It’s about focused action (not motion). 

5️⃣ AI’s ROI is still hidden.
The biggest lift isn’t revenue - it’s time. Deal prep dropped from 85 to 10 hours, letting teams focus on higher-value work.

6️⃣ Repositioning starts in the product.
Changing the ticker to GTM only worked because the product had already become the GTM data layer. Branding follows substance.

7️⃣ The first 90 days decide your legacy.
New CROs: Don’t optimize the edges. Use your early window to tackle the hardest, highest-leverage changes.

8️⃣ Telemetry > gut feel.
ZoomInfo doubles down on what reps actually use. Internal usage data guides what to build and what to cut.

9️⃣ Build for workflows, not wow factor.
Copilot thrives because it integrates into reps’ tools. AI must slot into workflows, not create new ones.

🔟 Segment discipline prevents wasted cycles.
They avoid selling SMB products to enterprise buyers. That focus protects rep trust and drives better outcomes.

--

🎧 Tune in and subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen by searching "The GTMnow Podcast."

💡 GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund. Build, scale and invest with the best minds in tech.

In AI, your tech is no longer your moat.
Distribution is your moat. And brand is the foundation of it.

Competition is infinite and attention is scarce.

So what do you do when your tech moat evaporates?
You build a distribution moat, starting with brand.

And this doesn’t mean logos or fonts. It’s:
- The Promise (the urgent, repeatable outcome you deliver).
- The Personality (how your product feels and what makes it memorable).
- The People (the credibility and POV behind the product).

The promise you make, the feeling you create, and the trust you earn — that’s your moat. And it’s built from Day Zero.

The GTMfund team put pen to paper on this, which has been a core part of our thesis since inception (two of our deck slides shown in the full edition). 

This is Part 1 of the GTM Moat Series: In AI, Brand is the Foundation of Your Moat. Check out the full edition of Pt.1 and subscribe to receive the rest of the series (in the comments). 

This new series under GTMnow will help you build your moat before they build your clone.

This is a first: we wrote a guest post!

Since the no.1 place we see founders struggle (and where we can add the most value) is in go-to-market strategy and execution, we decided to share our perspective and tips on building a distribution moat. Rubén Domínguez Ibar has been doing incredible work with his newsletter VC Corner to produce helpful content for founders, so we teamed up. 

Here’s the core idea of the piece 👇 

For founders, the rules are timeless:
- No customers, no business.
- No growth, no capital.

But the environment today is very different. Expectations are higher and timelines are shorter. 

And yet, there are more tools, communities, and people to support than any generation of founders before.

What separates breakout companies is how well they connect their product with the people who need it most.

That’s what distribution really is: the relationships, channels, and communities that consistently get you in front of your customers. Go-to-market is the blueprint, but distribution is the heartbeat.

A pattern we see in successful companies is that early, they don’t try to do everything. They find one channel, master it, and use it to build trust and momentum.

Whether that’s a niche Facebook group, a podcast host turned advisor, or a local community of operators – it always starts with finding a channel to repeatedly reach your customers. It comes down to people, and how you reach them. 

Distribution needs to be a muscle you start building on day one. And when done right, it becomes your most durable moat.

When we find operators with incredible scaling stories, we dig in to uncover their foundational principles. 

Every hypergrowth story hides painful lessons beneath the milestones. For the next wave of founders and operators, the fastest way forward is learning from those who have been there, done that.

After listening to Stevie Case deconstruct Vanta’s journey going <$20M to $100M+ ARR, we’ve distilled four key lessons every founder and GTM leader can use:

1️⃣ Flying blind is fatal 
Never scale headcount without visibility. Even one scrappy RevOps hire or founder with SQL skills can prevent catastrophic hiring mistakes.

2️⃣ Execution wins, not features
 Vanta beat 40+ copycats not by discounting, but by proving quantified value and building a “Competitive Intelligence Agency” to out-execute.

3️⃣ Loyalty is built post-sale
Splitting CSMs (adoption/health) and AMs (renewals/expansion) drove NRR growth and unlocked durable scale.

4️⃣ Don’t force quotas too early 
Early reps aren’t just closers, they’re discoverers. Incentivize learning and outcomes first. Quotas come later.

At the end of the day, Stevie’s biggest reminder: execution is the only moat.

💡 This is Part II of a new series on GTMnow of lessons from the top 1% of B2B SaaS leaders. Stevie joins Canva’s CCO Rob Giglio in the lineup! More details 👇

PR is one of the biggest black boxes for startups and one of the most misunderstood growth levers.

How do you actually get covered in outlets like TechCrunch or Forbes?
When does PR make sense and when is it not?
How do you build reporter relationships before you launch?

This episode demystifies the PR black box ◼️ 
Jenny He is the Founder and General Partner at Position Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that helps startups craft strategic comms from day one.

She led comms at Square, has placed hundreds of startups in top outlets, and knows exactly what makes a narrative newsworthy (you’ll learn this from her in the epi). 

She breaks down, step-by-step, how to nail your launch, earn credibility, and avoid the most common PR mistakes founders make.

Key takeaways from the conversation:

1️⃣ PR is about distribution with credibility. 
Focus on getting the right message to the right people at the right time.

2️⃣ Set a clear goal before any launch. 
Hiring? Fundraising? BD? Your PR approach changes depending on what outcome you're optimizing for.

3️⃣ Positioning comes before PR. 
You must know your “why,” your ICP, and what makes you different or no story will land.

4️⃣ Your story is your strategy. 
Reporters want memorable, emotional, founder-driven narratives.

5️⃣ Not all news is newsworthy. 
A good story is: (1) timely, (2) impactful, (3) relevant to the outlet’s audience.

6️⃣ Match your story to the right outlet. 
If your product sells to dentists, TechCrunch may not be where your audience is.

7️⃣ Warm relationships win pitches. 
Build trust with reporters before you need them. Offer data, connect dots, be useful.

8️⃣ Exclusives are common (and often expected). 
Many top reporters won’t take your story unless they get it first.

9️⃣ An interview isn’t a guarantee. 
You still need to nail the call with crisp soundbites and a clear, compelling arc. Otherwise, it may not get published. 

🔟 Success = the right message, in the right outlet, reaching the right people. 
Define this before you ever hit send.

--

🎧 Tune in and subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen by searching "The GTMnow Podcast."

💡 GTMnow is the media brand of VC firm, GTMfund.
 Build, scale and invest with the best minds in tech.

By deconstructing a company’s go-to-market strategy, you uncover:
 ✅ The decisions behind breakout growth
 ✅ The mistakes that almost derailed them
 ✅ The hidden levers that aren’t obvious from the outside

That’s why we study companies like ClickUp which went from a scrappy beta launch in 2017 to a $4B+ enterprise company by building around one principle: 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘦𝘥.

From there, three eras emerged:

𝐄𝐫𝐚 1: 𝐏𝐋𝐆 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (2017–2020) – relentless shipping cadence, compounding mechanisms like templates and imports, and content that scaled.

𝐄𝐫𝐚 2: 𝐋𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐋𝐆 (2020–2021) – inbound demand triggered Product-Led Sales, fusing usage signals with human outreach.

𝐄𝐫𝐚 3: 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞 (2022–𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭) – growth gave way to orchestration, segmentation, and a unified GTM system (Project Constellation).

Behind the growth, they used mental models and playbooks to evolve:

💡 Mental Models:

𝐈𝐧𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐬 > 𝐎𝐮𝐭𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐬 → ship weekly improvements, don’t just chase lagging KPIs.

𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 > 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 → fund what drives true lift, not what ads “credit.”

𝐒𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬 > 𝐎𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 → product/account events call the play.

𝐌𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐦𝐬 > 𝐌𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 → compounding programs beat one-off launches.

💡 Playbooks:

𝐏𝐐𝐋-𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 → prioritize by product usage, not just firmographics.

𝐒𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬 → 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 → 𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐬 → turn usage spikes into next best actions within 48h.

𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐥𝐲 𝐖𝐢𝐧 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 → every GTM lane ships one improvement per week.

𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐓𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐏𝐚𝐜𝐤 → 2-week holdouts prove which channels actually add revenue.

Studying these transitions is a shortcut to pattern recognition you don’t have to pay for in mistakes.

--

📖 Full breakdown in the latest The GTMnow Newsletter (in the comments).

💡 Join 50k+ founders and GTM leaders in GTMnow by subscribing on Substack or on the website.

Every startup has a product roadmap. But what about a go-to-market roadmap?



Paul Williamson built one that scaled Plaid from $3M to $300M ARR 🚀 

In this episode, he breaks down how to build a forward-compatible go-to-market roadmap that evolves intentionally from scrappy v0.1 experiments to multi-year strategy.

Key takeaways from the conversation:

1️⃣ Build GTM like product. Plaid iterated through 9-10 GTM versions in year one (they treated GTM as a roadmap, not a static plan).

2️⃣ Make your GTM roadmap “forward-compatible.” Each version should extend the last, not force you to rebuild from scratch.

3️⃣ Not all inbound is good inbound (writing this while at INBOUND!). Plaid filtered for value (not volume), routing low-value use cases to PLG instead of sales.

4️⃣ Pattern recognition beats volume. The team learned to spot ICPs vs. anti-patterns by manually reviewing deals daily.

5️⃣ Run daily standups (twice). In early days, Plaid used AM/PM GTM standups to refine qualification and learn fast.

6️⃣ Sales-led ≠ better. Some customers were better served via PLG. The team used human routing to steer deals appropriately.

7️⃣ Go-to-market must match product readiness. Moving upmarket required SLAs, uptime, SSO. Roadmap GTM and product together.

8️⃣ Avoid overbuilding too early. The best GTM orgs feel slightly behind…just enough to stay lean, focused, and adaptable.

9️⃣ Your comp plan shapes sales behavior. SMB-style comp delayed enterprise deals. Fixing this reduced cycle time and risk.

🔟 Write it down. Documenting the GTM roadmap helped align the org and communicate clearly with technical founders.

--

🎧 Tune in and subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen by searching "The GTMnow Podcast."

💡 GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund. Build, scale and invest with the best minds in tech.

Head of Marketing role here! Melanie Fellay 🐙 / Spekit 🐙 is hiring! 
This is a dream marketing opportunity (both the role itself and working with Mel).

CEO, Spekit 🐙 Book: JUST-IN-TIME: the Future of Enablement in a World of AI✨

Are you a movement builder? 🚀 BIG ROLE HIRING ALERT.

My #1 priority right now is to find our next Head of Marketing. We sit at a complex and interesting intersection in the market - a difficult PMF challenge, but also a massive opportunity.

On one side, you have the "traditional" enablement platforms (CMS/LMS) trying to become GTM revenue tech platforms to stay relevant and capture more rep attention. On the other, you have general-purpose AI technologies like Gemini and ChatGPT trying to be the "everything" AI for a company. Everyone is battling for the rep’s attention.

What excites me most is that on both ends, they're gravitating more and more toward the vision we've had since day one for just-in-time, in-the-flow-of-work enablement and assistance. We're not satisfied just being a part of this movement; we are here to lead it. (That's why I quite literally wrote the book, JUST-IN-TIME: the Future of Enablement in a World of AI (https://lnkd.in/gJWqhTJV))

Our most important challenge is positioning: cutting through the noise to define our place and own our category. 

While I want to spend as much time as possible figuring out how to out-innovate, Seth, our President and COO, and I need a partner to help us solve our market awareness challenges.

What I'm looking for in a CMO: a category definer and a movement builder. You thrive on solving the hardest positioning challenges. You're a master with words and have impeccable *taste*, knowing that Simple, yet Spektacular, messaging is what cuts through the noise. You geek out on keeping pace with AI and applying it to move faster and better across our marketing function. You love iterating fast and live for that perfect balance between a clear strategy and the agility to execute on a rapidly evolving product—our R&D teams are on a tear.

To give you a glimpse of the problems we need to solve to lead this movement, here are some of our core goals for Q3:

1️⃣ Our greatest challenge right now is an outdated market perception of what we do. Our win rates are healthy (29%) across the board, and even much higher across non-LMS deals so, my confidence is very high that we've got a solid repeatable motion on the sales front. But the issue is that we’re not getting ENOUGH of a seat at the table. We need to correct this perception.

2️⃣Solve our LLM discoverability problem. Our functionality competes with traditional CMS platforms, but LLMs often index old, irrelevant data. We need a strategy to own our narrative.

3️⃣ Scale our thought leadership. I wrote the book and we invested in a brand refresh to solidify our view on the future of enablement, but we know we've barely scratched the surface.

4️⃣Nail our competitive positioning. This goes hand-in-hand with the other two goals and is a big focus across our GTM team.

If these challenges sound interesting to you and you’re ready to define a category and build a movement, let's talk. Or if you know someone, please send them my way - my inbox is ready!

Taplio

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