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The GTMnow Podcast

The GTMnow Podcast

GTMnow 638 Episodes Sep 15, 2026

The GTMnow Podcast features interviews with well-known tech executives, VCs, and founders who share their experiences and insights on go-to-market strategies. Hosted by Sophie Buonassisi, each episode delves into the successes and failures of building fast-growing software companies. The podcast is produced by GTMnow, the media brand of GTMfund, an early-stage VC fund investing in B2B SaaS companies. Listeners gain practical advice from industry leaders at companies like DocuSign, Salesforce, and LinkedIn.

Episodes

Why More AI Won't Grow Your Revenue (and What Will) | Loreal Lynch (CMO, Nooks)
Why More AI Won't Grow Your Revenue (and What Will) | Loreal Lynch (CMO, Nooks) Sep 15, 2026 1769 The CMO of Nooks (and former CMO of Jasper) joins GTMnow to explain why buying more agents won't grow revenue unless you rebuild the process underneath, and what the human-plus-agent revenue team truly looks like.Loreal has had a front-row seat to two AI waves: first at Jasper, where AI reshaped marketing content, and now at Nooks, building toward what she calls the revenue agents category. S
Building an AI-Era Sales Machine | Chris McDonough (VP Sales, Campfire)
Building an AI-Era Sales Machine | Chris McDonough (VP Sales, Campfire) Sep 10, 2026 2548 Chris McDonough has joined four companies right before they exploded. At the first, Motive, he was employee 40 and watched revenue go from $800K to $30M in about 100 days. The VP of Sales at Campfire joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to break down what he learned riding hypergrowth over and over, and why he thinks AI is about to split the sales profession in two.Chris gets tactical on the whole ar
Inside Electric's AI Relaunch, from a 3X Founder | Ryan Denehy (Founder & CEO, Electric)
Inside Electric's AI Relaunch, from a 3X Founder | Ryan Denehy (Founder & CEO, Electric) Aug 27, 2026 2723 The founder and CEO of Electric, Ryan Denehy joins GTMnow to explain why and how he rebuilt Electric as an AI-native software company.Ryan gets specific on why he split the business in half, how the pivot forced a total change in distribution (from direct sales to embedded channel partnerships with payroll platforms), and why a new product doesn't just need a new channel, it can unlock ones t
What the Top 1% of Sellers Do Differently | Ross Rich (CEO, Accord)
What the Top 1% of Sellers Do Differently | Ross Rich (CEO, Accord) Aug 25, 2026 3113 Ross Rich is the co-founder and CEO of Accord and spent five years leading go-to-market and partnerships at Stripe. He talks to hundreds of CROs and serves thousands of reps, so he has an unusually clear view of what the top performers actually do differently.His starting point: roughly the top 20%, often closer to 10%, of any sales team drives most of the revenue. Every leader says they want to m
Will Salesforce Win the AI Era Like It Won Cloud? | Kris Billmaier
Will Salesforce Win the AI Era Like It Won Cloud? | Kris Billmaier Aug 11, 2026 2621 Is Salesforce the dominant player in the AI platform shift, or the incumbent about to be disrupted? Kris Billmaier, EVP and GM of Agentforce Sales and Growth Products, sat down with Sophie Buonassisi at Salesforce Tower to answer that directly.Kris runs the business behind Sales Cloud's 26-year run and its rebrand into Agentforce Sales. He makes the case that CRM is becoming "agentic rev
Inside Deel's $1M → $1.5B Sales Machine | Chris Lee
Inside Deel's $1M → $1.5B Sales Machine | Chris Lee Aug 3, 2026 4003 Chris Lee joined Deel at $1M in revenue. Now, it just hit $1.5B. He joined GTMnow to walk through the pivotal decisions behind that run, including the ones he's never discussed publicly.Chris (Head of Sales, Americas at Deel) breaks down the "five-star sales experience" framework he built by studying luxury hotels, why speed itself became a reason customers bought, how he's had
Inside Merge: The $75M Bet on Open Source AI (Powering OpenAI, Netflix & Uber) | Shensi Ding, CEO
Inside Merge: The $75M Bet on Open Source AI (Powering OpenAI, Netflix & Uber) | Shensi Ding, CEO Jul 22, 2026 2838 The Co-Founder & CEO of Merge joins GTMnow to break down how she built a company that now powers integrations for OpenAI, Perplexity, Netflix, Uber, Mistral, and enterprise logos like Mastercard, JP Morgan, and Amex, backed by $75M from Accel and NEA.Shensi gets tactical on the GTM decisions behind that growth: why she went enterprise-first into greenfield, why she's now layering a self-s
The Blueprint for a High-Performing Sales Team | Brian Le, Notion
The Blueprint for a High-Performing Sales Team | Brian Le, Notion Jul 9, 2026 2754 Are your sales compensation plans driving the right behaviors or causing your best reps to quit? In this episode of GTMnow, Brian Le (Global Sales Compensation Partner at Notion) breaks down how to build a scalable sales comp operating system.Brian shares his firsthand experience scaling Notion's sales comp from 80 to over 400 employees and explains why trust is the ultimate currency in reven
VC: How a 2-Person Fund Runs Like a Startup (Memos, KPIs, R&D) | Vanessa Larco, Premise (ex-NEA)
VC: How a 2-Person Fund Runs Like a Startup (Memos, KPIs, R&D) | Vanessa Larco, Premise (ex-NEA) Jul 8, 2026 2930 "Investing in companies that OpenAI won't kill." That's Vanessa Larco's thesis, and in this VC bonus episode of GTMnow she breaks down exactly how she decides what survives. Vanessa, founder and GP at Premise (formerly a longtime partner at NEA, where she backed Robinhood from seed to IPO), joins Max to get into the nitty gritty of how AI is rewriting venture, distribution
Why a $1.2B exit felt like his biggest failure, and the customer-obsession thesis behind Agency
Why a $1.2B exit felt like his biggest failure, and the customer-obsession thesis behind Agency Jul 2, 2026 3171 A $1.2 billion exit is the dream. Elias Torres calls it his biggest failure. The Drift co-founder joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to unpack why the headline number felt hollow, what he learned in the quiet stretch afterward, and why he jumped straight back in to build Agency, an AI company that runs your entire customer organization.Elias gets honest about identity after the exit, the difference
From DeepMind to 200 Customers in 20 Countries: Building the Execution Layer for Sales | Adam Liska, CEO of Airspeed
From DeepMind to 200 Customers in 20 Countries: Building the Execution Layer for Sales | Adam Liska, CEO of Airspeed Jun 25, 2026 1942 The single most expensive sentence in sales is "I'll follow up on that." Adam Liska joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to break down the "execution gap," the space between knowing what to do in a deal and actually doing it, and why that gap is where most pipeline quietly dies.Adam left DeepMind's Gemini team in 2022, pre-ChatGPT, to build a native revenue execution pla
VC: How Benchmark Picks AI Winners - Max 10 Bets a Year, 5 Partners | Chetan Puttagunta (GP)
VC: How Benchmark Picks AI Winners - Max 10 Bets a Year, 5 Partners | Chetan Puttagunta (GP) Jun 24, 2026 3564 Benchmark's Chetan breaks down why the path from $0 to $100M has collapsed from five years to under two, and the one thing that is actually getting harder in the AI era: reaching your first million in revenue. In this VC bonus edition of the GTM Now Podcast, he sits down with Sophie Buonassisi to unpack how AI native companies are compressing 180 day sales cycles into 30 days, why direct sale

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