In today's episode, I chat with Michael Slawson, founder of Apero Advisors, about running a boutique go-to-market advisory that goes deep on a small number of clients rather than running the same cookie-cutter playbook for fifty—listening to past sales calls, mapping full prospect journeys from top to bottom of funnel, and figuring out who to target, what to say, and how to reach them before touching any tooling. 

We explore his Y Combinator client campaign where he used Disco to build a use-case-segmented list of companies that fit their universal API product, ran them through Clay to tag accounts and filter false positives, then pushed simple founder-led outreach on LinkedIn use case by use case—letting the co-founder's profile do the advertising so the message itself could stay short and direct. Michael breaks down why Disco fills a gap that Sales Navigator can't: semantic similarity search across companies that LinkedIn's algorithm simply doesn't do well, especially for businesses outside the well-funded venture-backed universe. His prediction: outbound channels don't die suddenly, they degrade slowly like banner ad click-through rates in 1999—and the smarter bet is positioning around complexity rather than any specific channel or tool, because go-to-market will always be complex and whoever can diagnose and solve that complexity consultatively will have durable positioning. He also flags a middle-probability scenario worth watching: in five years the attention economy shifts toward a community economy built on closed loops of trust, CRM data quality gets productized and commoditized, and there's meaningful agency consolidation as infrastructure complexity rewards scale. Michael shares his path from economics grad school and infrastructure finance consulting in DC, to naively jumping at the first tech company that messaged him on LinkedIn, to origination at a private credit marketplace talking to 2,000 founders, to leading GTM for a new vertical at a healthcare marketplace, to founding Apero after a mentor told him to learn Clay. His advice: go deep before going wide—work inside a single company for a few years, because context is what's scarce for a new GTM engineer, and no company will trust you with full-funnel thinking until you've earned it somewhere. 

Enjoy 🙂

(00:00) Introduction to Outbound Wizards 
(00:21) What Apero Advisors Does: Boutique GTM Advisory Going Deep on Few Clients 
(01:24) First 30-60-90 Days: Starting from First Principles on TAM, Offer, and Channel 
(04:08) YC Client Campaign: Disco + Clay + Founder-Led LinkedIn Outreach by Use Case 
(06:40) Why Disco Fills the Semantic Search Gap That Sales Navigator Can't 
(07:47) Michael's Journey: Economics Grad to Infrastructure Consulting to GTM Advisory 
(09:22) Talking to 2,000 Founders at a Private Credit Marketplace 
(10:20) Leading GTM for a New Vertical at a Healthcare Marketplace 
(11:25) Future Predictions: Channels Degrade Slowly, Community Economy on the Horizon 
(13:47) CRM Data Quality Gets Productized, Agency Consolidation Coming 
(15:44) Positioning Around Complexity Rather Than Any Specific Tool 
(17:00) Advice: Go Deep Before Going Wide, Context Is What's Scarce

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