GTMnow

Staying on the PMF treadmill is the only way to survive. Ship, test, reposition. Repeat. You can’t control the pace, so you better keep up.

@armada_ai youtu.be/MEQmhi1OFEQ

Everywhere is now a potential AI cluster, thanks to Starlink and @armada_ai. The Arctic, the Saudi desert, the middle of the ocean, Antarctica…

@ServiceNow on what gets harder (and what gets easier) as a public company with over $10B in revenue.

What happens when people start configuring workflows, and start telling agents what to do? There goes Salesforce and Hubspot’s whole moat.

Customers should never feel your org chart. That’s one of the core lessons behind @ServiceNow’s $10B+ go-to-market engine.

Fastest way to know if a GTM leader is ready for the agent era: see if they're building. The days of just directing and delegating are over. When Brett placed a former Salesforce leader into one of his portfolio companies, by day three he was building. He realized you can no longer make GTM calls without being in the product. Brett Queener (Partner at Bonfire Ventures) in conversation with Max Altschuler on The GTMnow Podcast.

Nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to buy software 🙃 @danwrightSF (CEO of @armada_ai) explains how to sell what they actually want to buy.

@ServiceNow youtu.be/XKb33r5-U1I

A Fortune 500-level CIO just cancelled 900 AI pilots. Governance outweighed innovation. Paul Fipps (President, Global Customer Operations at @ServiceNow).

The old SaaS playbook looked like: find a wedge → raise a couple million → declare product-market fit → start scaling. That’s getting harder to rely on. Now it’s more like you find a bit of fit… then have to find it again. And again. Because the value your product delivers and how customers perceive it keeps changing. If the product isn’t getting better every ~30 days, sales and marketing eventually start to break.

NEW: Inside ServiceNow’s $10B go-to-market engine with Paul Fipps (President, Global Customer Operations at @ServiceNow). ServiceNow powers over 80 billion workflows annually and has seen 20%+ growth for five consecutive years. From CIO at Under Armour overseeing a 300 million-member connected fitness ecosystem, to now leading global sales, customer success, field marketing, and partners at a growing enterprise org, Paul has seen what it takes to scale on both the B2C and D2C sides. I sat down with Paul to take you behind the scenes on ServiceNow’s disciplined GTM engine. Highlights: 00:00 – How ServiceNow built one of the most disciplined GTM engines in enterprise software 01:22 – 80B workflows, $10B+ revenue: what gets harder and easier at scale 06:49 – The post-sale handoff problem: signing on Friday, new team showing up Monday 08:22 – How to spot churn before it shows up in a report 15:35 – Why Paul blocks calendar time every week for direct customer conversations (and responds within 24 hours) 17:53 – From Under Armour to ServiceNow: what DTC product thinking unlocks in enterprise B2B 25:18 – The CIO with 900 AI pilots who cancelled every single one 32:39 – "Now on Now": $335M in productivity gains running on their own platform 34:18 – Integrating Claude into the GTM motion for all 10,000 go-to-market team members 39:15 – Paul's one piece of advice for every GTM leader: get the best people in the right seats

Episode 6 of the @GTMnow_ VC Series is live! I sat down with @bqueener (Partner at @bonfire_vc) who joined Salesforce early, a co-founder of SmartRecruiters, and is one of the sharpest seed-stage investors I know, to talk about what three decades of building and investing taught him about what actually wins in a world where anyone can build anything. Before the conversation with Brett, @PaulGTM and I also talk through what we're seeing across founders, funds, and go-to-market teams right now. A few takeaways that are particularly worth sitting with: 1. The GTM playbook most of us learned is already gone. The entire motion from SDR to CSM was designed around one problem: the product didn't do the job, so humans had to explain it. When the product actually does the job, that whole layer of explanation collapses. You're showing product earlier, deploying before you close, and tracking outcomes from day one. The people who built careers on translating software into value have to find a new edge. 2. Your right to win becomes table stakes every 30 days. In SaaS, you could build a wedge, raise a Seed round, hit $1M ARR, and spend 18 months turning that into a go-to-market machine. That’s a thing of the past. The rate of change in what your product does (and what your competitors can ship) means the messaging, positioning, and value prop have to move in lock step. 3. The founder profile that wins now looks inherently different. Brett looks for founders who are building, not managing people who build. You need to be actually in the tools, shipping, and learning what the product can do firsthand. If you're not building, how can you expect to have a clear enough point of view on what you're selling or how to sell it? 4. Face-to-face matters more in the AI era. Buyers right now are more nervous than ever. They're betting their careers on products that are evolving fast and vendors who might look completely different in 6 months. They're buying whether they trust you to build what they'll need tomorrow. That trust is still built in person. It’s no surprise that events are creating 75%+ of the pipeline for Brett's early-stage portfolio companies. 5. Vertical software is the most defensible bet in AI right now. In vertical markets, customers hand you everything: their workflow, their edge cases, their entire context. That data is the moat. And to make matters even better, the non-technical buyer is now one of the most attractive customers in the market because AI finally makes their job meaningfully easier without requiring them to learn anything. Big thank you to our series partner, @AngelList, who have been instrumental in helping GTMfund scale since the early days.

Apple: [apple podcasts link] Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6tqiAv… YouTube: youtu.be/UacZa_9i3HE

Brett Queener (Partner at Bonfire Ventures) joins GTMnow to share what three decades across Siebel, early Salesforce, co-founding, and seed-stage investing has taught him about what actually wins now that software is cheaper and faster than he ever imagined. Brett was one of the earliest GTM hires at Salesforce when it had seven employees. He helped build the go-to-market playbook that defined an entire generation of SaaS. Now, he's investing at pre-seed and seed out of Bonfire, watching that same playbook get dismantled in real time, and placing bets on the founders willing to throw it out. Highlights: 00:00 – Brett's career: Siebel, Salesforce employee #7, co-founder, angel investor, seed-stage VC 06:58 – The big shift: from passive CRUD apps to agentic software that does the work for you 08:07 – "Failing upwards" and what the fastest-growing companies taught Brett about investing in people 10:58 – Why Brett moved into VC: 25 years of operators whose collective worth hit $25B 16:50 – What Brett looks for in founders now and how it's changed over 6-7 years 18:05 – Why anybody can build anything: Brett builds a fully functional travel app in 15 minutes 19:20 – The last remaining moat in software 26:20 – The real threat to Salesforce and HubSpot and why their ecosystem might be the boat anchor 34:20 – How the entire GTM motion changes when the product does the job instead of just enabling it 38:30 – Why communicating the right problem to the right ICP hasn't changed in 30 years 41:00 – Why events are driving 75%+ of pipeline at Brett's early-stage portfolio companies 42:10 – Pricing and packaging: the most important GTM lever nobody talks about enough 47:25 – What happens to VC when software is no longer scarce to build 55:20 – The rep who drove 65 miles to drop off donuts and closed an $80K deal Big thank you to our series partner, @AngelList, who have been instrumental in helping GTMfund scale the early days.

Traditional channels are collapsing under AI noise. You can’t rent attention like you used to. So what actually works now? Growth loops > funnels. We teamed up with @bader_stefan (co-founder & CEO of @cello_hq) to map: • 8 growth loops (viral, content, community, etc.) • A 5-layer architecture for a resilient GTM engine The shift: from linear funnels → compounding systems. In a “Growth OS,” every function becomes a node: • Happy customers → referrals • Sales objections → product improvements • Content → distribution → demand Everything feeds everything. Think: an always-on, self-reinforcing GTM machine. Full breakdown + framework: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/p/growth-loops…

One of the questions we get most at GTMfund: "I'm a VP/CRO/CMO currently, but how do I eventually move into an operating partner role?" Our honest advice: start building those relationships right now, even if you're 1-2 operating gigs away from making the jump to investing. Get to know the VC and PE teams behind the companies you work for. And here's something people often overlook: don't dismiss the more junior folks at funds.

8,000 tickets won’t tell you what one user struggling will.