Austin Hughes is the founder and CEO of Unify, a platform helping high-growth teams turn buying signals into pipeline. Previously, Austin led the growth team at Ramp, where he scaled the org from 1 to 25+ and pioneered a product-led, experiment-driven GTM approach. With a background in investment banking and venture capital, Austin brings a uniquely analytical and first-principles mindset to modern B2B growth.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Why you should run marketing like product
• Distribution is a startup's best friend
• How Austin’s content strategy turned LinkedIn into a hyper-efficient channel
• Why the best growth hires today are ex-engineers or investors
• How AI is redefining go-to-market motions

Highlights: 

04:00 Ramp’s growth org: running 100+ experiments per quarter

08:45 Why LinkedIn became Unify’s silver bullet

11:30 Austin’s content creation workflow (and why he doesn’t use AI to write)

13:00 Technical vs. traditional growth marketers—how to hire for impact

17:00 Using Unify to merge 1st & 3rd-party data into a signal pipeline

20:30 How automation + human-in-loop GTM creates leverage

24:00 Austin’s Carta example: what perfect relevance looks like

27:00 What broke in outbound and why signal-based selling is the fix

32:00 When startups should start ingesting signals

36:30 Culture of experimentation: “failure is just a data point”

39:00 How Unify is using AI internally for GTM and support ops

43:00 What’s coming next: AI-relevant messaging, BDR collaboration tools

47:00 The end of traditional marketing roles—and what comes next

Guest Speaker Links (Austin Hughes):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-t-hughes/
• Unify: https://www.unifygtm.com/

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

• Website: https://gtmnow.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/GTMnow_
• YouTube: /@gtm_now
• The GTM Podcast (on all major directories): https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/

Thanks to our Sponsors: 

TriNet
Founding a company is hard enough. Navigating payroll, benefits, and compliance shouldn’t slow you down. That’s where TriNet comes in. They work with startups and scaling businesses to help take HR off your plate, so you can stay focused on building product, growing revenue, and hiring great people - the go-to-market engine. B2B companies like Hivebrite and Equilend trust TriNet to help handle the infrastructure of their workforce, so their teams can focus on execution. Sponsor Link:

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

What’s actually working in go-to-market right now? In this live panel from the GTM Fund AGM, three early-stage leaders from three exceptional companies—Centari, Atrix AI, and Gaiia—break down how they’re closing enterprise deals in some of the most challenging verticals: legal, pharma, and telecom. From viral LinkedIn content and founder-led dinners to the now-infamous "donut drop" strategy, this episode is packed with practical, first-principles GTM plays you won’t find in a sales playbook.

Kevin Walker (Centari) – Founder & CEO of Centari, a legal tech platform providing deal intelligence to large law firms and, soon, financial services. A former M&A attorney at Paul Hastings, Kevin brings deep insider knowledge to solving complex legal workflows.

Vera Kutsenko (Atrix AI) – Founder & CEO of Atrix AI, a platform helping medical affairs teams at pharma and med device companies capture and operationalize real-world insights. Vera has become a thought leader in AI for regulated industries—recently authoring a viral book on AI in medical affairs.

Stephen Farnsworth (Gaiia) – VP of GTM at Gaiia and early GTM leader at Workato and Outreach. Gaiia is an end-to-end ERP, billing, and CRM platform for independent internet service providers (ISPs), tackling a niche but high-value market with massive infrastructure needs.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Centari built trust with top law firms by pairing deep domain credibility with a thoughtful, relationship-driven sales approach.
• Atrix AI sparked inbound demand by turning a single viral LinkedIn post into a full-length book on AI in medical affairs.
• Gaiia chose not to hire SDRs, focusing instead on high-ACV deals and personalized outreach in a tightly defined TAM of telecom providers.
• Gaiia’s “donut drop” strategy—personally delivering treats to rural ISP offices—created brand awareness and unlocked new pipeline.
• Both Centari and Atrix AI scaled founder-led sales by hiring a Chief of Staff to operationalize and extend GTM efforts.
• Atrix AI uses educational AI workshops to qualify buyers, build trust, and stand out in a noisy vendor landscape.
• Centari combats pilot fatigue and skepticism in legal tech by showing deep empathy, hiring former lawyers, and proving value early.

Highlights:

03:00 – Why Atrix AI scaled founder-led sales with viral content and thought leadership

06:00 – The accidental (and wildly successful) AI & medical affairs book launch

08:00 – Centari’s early GTM strategy: legal empathy, cookies, and product conviction

11:00 – Gaiia’s high-ACV model and why SDRs don’t make sense for their TAM

20:00 – The Donut Playbook: creating pipeline by showing up IRL

23:00 – Why Chief of Staff was a critical early hire for scaling sales ops

27:00 – How Gaiia is thinking about building community in a slow-moving vertical

28:00 – What’s next: repeatability, vertical expansion, and community infrastructure

Guest Speaker Links:

1. Vera Kutsenko LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/verakutsenko/
2. Stephen Farnsworth LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-farnsworth/
3. Kevin Walker LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpwalker1/

Host Speaker Links (Paul Irving):

• LinkedIn:

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Dennis Lyandres is an Advisor with ICONIQ and a Board Member of Speedchain and CaptivateIQ. Dennis amassed incredible insights through his experience as the Chief Revenue Officer of Procore, where he helped grow the company from $10M to $900M+ in revenue and guided it through a successful IPO. At Procore, he led all customer-facing functions—Sales, Marketing, CS, RevOps, and BD. He’s now an investor, advisor, and board member to iconic B2B SaaS companies, and one of the most respected voices in GTM for vertical SaaS.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Why the best SaaS companies align people, product, and GTM into one unified strategy
• Using AI as a GTM advantage starts with a crawl-walk-run approach
• Scaling multi-product in vertical SaaS means following the money and the pain
• GTM leaders win when they speak product and co-own strategy with engineering
• Customer relationships are your most undervalued strategic growth lever
• Your top 5% of talent deserve a purpose-built strategy to maximize impact
• Lean AI teams are redefining what’s possible with just a handful of operators

Highlights:

03:00 Dennis’s journey as the Chief Revenue Officer at Procore: from $10M to IPO

05:00 The “People, Product, GTM” triad and AI-native orgs

07:00 Why vertical SaaS startups need a talent strategy (and most companies lack one)

09:30 Multi-product GTM strategy explained via Procore and other verticals

13:00 How Go-To-Market teams can show up better for product teams

18:00 Building deep customer strategy across functions in a B2B startup

23:00 Price’s Law and the T30 program for top performers within a revenue organization

24:30 Lean AI startup: what it is and what it isn’t

30:00 Crawl-walk-run AI adoption in Go-To-Market teams

Guest Speaker Links (Dennis Lyandres):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dlyandres/
• Speedchain: https://www.speedchain.com/
• ICONIQ: https://www.iconiqcapital.com/

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Sponsors: TriNet

Every early-stage founder is told to focus on product and growth. But behind every product launch and revenue milestone is a team – and building that team is one of the hardest and important parts of the journey.

“Build the team that builds the company.” – that is part of your go-to-market strategy responsible for growth. 

Hiring the right people, keeping them supported, and creating the infrastructure to help them thrive is critical. 

TriNet exists to make that easier. TriNet’s full suite of HR solutions is designed to support companies at critical inflection points – from early traction to scale.

Learn more at https://trinet.com/gtmnow

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Andy Mowat is the Co-Founder of Whispered, and is responsible for building incredible  RevOps and GTM systems at unicorns like Upwork, Box, and Culture Amp. With over two decades of experience leading marketing ops, sales ops, and go-to-market infrastructure, Andy is a true pioneer of modern RevOps. Today, he’s building tools to help tech executives collaborate on company insights, search strategies, introductions, and the deepest database of unposted GTM roles anywhere.

Discussed in this Episode:
- Why 80–98% of VP and C-level roles are never posted—and how to access them.
- The importance of clarity: how GTM operators should articulate their focus to stand out.
- How venture networks and backchanneling drive most executive hiring decisions.
- The rise (and limits) of fractional work as a bridge between full-time roles.
- What AI agents are doing behind the scenes at Whispered to match execs to roles.
- Why company stage, growth rate, and CEO quality are critical in picking your next role.
- What GTM functions (e.g. RevOps, Demand Gen) are most in-demand right now.

Highlights:
04:30 Why most executive roles are never posted
07:00 How Whispered operates as a curated talent network
13:30 Why GTM execs struggle to articulate their focus—and how to fix it
16:45 The right way to build a target company list
21:00 Engaging your network and VC talent teams the right way
28:00 What AI is (and isn’t) changing about hiring and team structure
34:00 How to evaluate growth-stage companies and pick winners
36:30 Head of vs. VP vs. CRO: The real meaning of title across company sizes
41:00 Most common mistakes execs make in their job search
44:30 Using customer advocacy and growth loops to scale Whispered
46:00 Is email dead? Why it's still critical to GTM and talent outreach

Guest Speaker Links (Andy Mowat):
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amowat/
- Whispered: https://www.whispered.com/

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
- Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):
- Website: https://gtmnow.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/GTMnow_
- YouTube:  @gtm_now 
- The GTM Podcast (on all major directories): https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/

Sponsor: Qualified

Qualified is the Agentic Marketing Platform with the world's leading SDR agent, Piper the AI SDR. Marketing teams trust Piper to autonomously drive inbound pipeline at scale, delivering real-time engagement and conversion. Trusted by top brands like Asana, Box, Brex, Clari, GE Healthcare, and more, Qualified is redefining how companies generate pipeline in the age of AI.

Sponsor Link: https://www.qualified.com/plus/category/ai-sdr-summit?utm_source=gtmfund

The GTM Podcast
Don’t miss The GTM Podcast dropping every Tuesday discussing true stories and experiences including trials and tribulations in the Go-To-Market world.

#career #jobsearch #techcareers

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Rick Kelley is the former SVP of Gaming & App Monetization Solutions at Meta and Managing Director of Meta Ireland, where he led a $1B+ revenue organization & played a pivotal role in building out Meta’s go-to-market teams across North America & EMEA. Over his 15-year career at Meta, Rick was instrumental in driving international expansion, especially across Europe, the Middle East, & Africa—helping to localize strategy, scale high-performing sales teams, & bring new ad products to market. Today, he advises founders on global GTM execution, sales hiring, & how AI is reshaping the future of commercial organizations.

Discussed in this Episode:

• The operational playbooks that scaled Meta’s ad sales
• Why AI will shift how sales orgs think about headcount & human capital
• The three traits Rick looks for in great sales leaders—& how to spot them early
• Why early-stage companies should prioritize hiring builders, not closers
• How to segment go-to-market motions by customer journey, not just ACV
• Why “coachable, humble, gritty” still wins—even in an AI-powered GTM world
  
  

Highlights:

6:30 How Meta scaled repeatable playbooks across SMB, Mid-Market, & Enterprise

10:00 The role of humility & coachability in building scalable teams

13:00 Why top sales leaders are systems thinkers—not just great closers

16:00 AI’s impact on headcount & how to scale without over-hiring

21:00 Making your first 5 sales hires count

25:30 Early-stage mistake: over-complicating GTM before validating demand

30:30 Why product & GTM must be tied at the hip—especially in AI-first companies

34:00 From Facebook to Meta: what changed & what didn’t in sales strategy

37:00 Final thoughts: GTM myths, leadership advice, & staying grounded

Guest Speaker Links (Rick Kelley):

1. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rickkelley

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

1. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi
2. Newsletter: substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

1. Website: gtmnow.com
2. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
3. Twitter/X: x.com/GTMnow_
4. YouTube: /@gtm_now

Sponsors: UserEvidence

UserEvidence is the Cust

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Sean Whiteley is a three-time founder and the Co-Founder of Qualified, the AI pipeline automation platform purpose-built for inbound GTM teams. Previously, he founded GetFeedback (acquired by Campaign Monitor) and Kieden (acquired by Salesforce), where he also served as SVP & GM. With over two decades at the forefront of tech’s biggest transformations—from on-prem to cloud to AI—Sean offers a rare, long-term view on how to build companies and go-to-market engines in the face of massive disruption.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Why the speed of AI adoption outpaces every previous tech wave
• How the role of RevOps and team design is being reshaped by agentic systems
• Why today’s buyer journey is nonlinear, AI-assisted, and fully in control
• Tactical breakdown: how Sean mapped and tagged every task at Qualified for AI automation
• Why success teams must sit at the core of GTM strategy, not as an afterthought
• The most common GTM myth Sean is seeing today—and why it’s outdated
• The characteristics Sean looks for in long-term co-founders and GTM hires

Highlights: 

02:00 Sean’s journey through on-prem, cloud, and now AI

05:00 Ops leaders as the new AI orchestrators inside GTM teams

08:30 From workflows to autonomous agents: how org charts are shifting

10:30 The “two-way doors” mindset for fast experimentation

13:30 The future of GTM: agents, trust falls, and buyer-led journeys

15:00 From personalization to “relevance at scale” in modern marketing

18:00 AI unlocks speed and efficiency—how that reshapes CAC payback and TCO

24:00 How Qualified created internal AI blueprints across every team

28:30 Inside the AI SDR: replacing manual inbound sales with 24/7 automation

32:00 Success is not post-sales—it’s the center of the GTM experience

36:00 Reinventing yourself as a founder through three companies

39:30 What still hasn’t changed: customer value and trusted partnerships

47:00 GTM myth: “We control the buying process”—why that’s dead

51:00 Where Sean learns about AI: customer conversations > thought leadership

Guest Speaker Links (Sean Whitely):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanwhiteley
• Qualified Website: https://www.qualified.com

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi
• Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

• Website: https://gtmnow.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/GTMnow_
• YouTube: @gtm_now
• The GTM Podcast (on all major directories): https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Navin Persaud is the VP of Revenue Operations at 1Password, where he leads a 30+ person team supporting a GTM org of 450+. With over 20 years of experience across RevOps, SalesOps, and MarketingOps, including time at IBM and high-growth SaaS companies, Navin has built a reputation as one of the sharpest operators in the game. He’s known for building scalable systems, ruthless prioritization, and a clear-eyed view of how AI is reshaping operations.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Why RevOps is the most essential team for scalable growth
• The real signs that it’s time to hire your first RevOps leader
• What AI is disrupting first in RevOps forecasting, enrichment, orchestration, and reporting
• The rise of GTM Engineers and the shift toward intelligence-layer operations
• Tactical frameworks for combining AI insights with human judgment
• How RevOps should evolve from executor to strategic growth partner
• Hiring advice: what makes a great early-stage ops hire and how to test for curiosity

Highlights:

05:00 - The sports field analogy: building the GTM pitch, not just playing on it

07:00 - AI is both the scariest and most freeing technology in ops today

09:00 - GTM Engineers and the orchestration opportunity ahead

11:00 - Product-market fit is the right time to invest in RevOps

13:00 Forecasting, enrichment, and demand routing—where AI adds leverage

17:30 -Why dashboards are dying and how ops will move to real-time insights

27:00 - How RevOps became a central GTM function

30:00 - Advice for founders on when (and how) to bring in ops leadership

33:00 - “Perfection is the enemy of pace”—a RevOps mantra

Guest Speaker Links (Navin Persaud):

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/navinpersaud/
• 1Password:https://1password.com/
• 1Password Careers:https://1password.com/careers

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• Newsletter:https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

• Website:https://gtmnow.com/
• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
• Twitter/X:https://x.com/GTMnow_
• YouTube:@gtm_now
• The GTM Podcast (on all major directories):

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Mike Walrath is the CEO and Chairman of Yext, a publicly traded digital presence platform that helps businesses manage and synchronize their digital presence across search engines, maps, apps, and voice assistants by ensuring that information like locations, services, FAQs, and brand content appears accurately and consistently wherever customers search.

He also co-founded WGI Group, LLC, to provide growth capital to early and expansion stage startups in enterprise software, consumer internet and digital media industries. Previously, Michael was co-founder and Chairman of Moat Inc. which was acquired by Oracle in April 2017. In 2003, Michael founded Right Media - the world's first open exchange for digital advertising. He served as Chairman and CEO of the company until its acquisition by Yahoo! in July 2007. At Yahoo!, he was responsible for the operation of the global advertising marketplaces organization.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Why marketers must now structure content not for humans, but for machines.
• How Yext evolved from managing listings to powering AI-ready data pipelines.
• Actionable steps SaaS companies can take to optimize for AI agents and search diversification.
• The role of hyperlocal data, competitive analysis, and personalized content in GTM strategy.
• Why software innovation must start with intelligence, not workflow.
• The decline of seat-based pricing and rise of outcome-based models.

Highlights:

[00:07:30] – How the iPhone created geo-aware fragmentation, and how Yext was born.

[00:10:00] – Why Google still checks MapQuest (and what that means for SEO today).

[00:11:30] – “We have to rebuild the digital presence for machines, not people.”

[00:14:30] – The new battleground: how AI engines like ChatGPT shape discoverability.

[00:18:00] – Practical data strategies for local businesses and SaaS marketers.

[00:22:00] – Why structured data is the foundation of AI-first marketing.

[00:26:00] – Bespoke GTM: why no two locations (or campaigns) should be the same.

[00:29:00] – The shift from product-led to intelligence-led SaaS development.

[00:31:00] – Seat-based pricing is dying – how to move to value-based contracts.

[00:34:30] – Mike’s advice: get radically honest about macro changes, not just tactics.

Guest Speaker Links (Michael Walrath):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-walrath-b63166/
• Yext: https://www.yext.com/

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

• Website: https://gtmnow.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Marcy Campbell is the Chief Revenue Officer at AppFolio, where she leads sales and client services with a focus on delivering unified, end-to-end customer experiences. With over 30 years of experience scaling revenue teams across FinTech, SaaS, cloud computing, and communications, Marcy has held executive roles at Boomi and PayPal—where she led an 800+ person global team. Her deep expertise in aligning sales, customer success, and operations makes her a standout leader in the GTM space.

What happens when a CRO owns the entire customer journey

Discussed in this Episode:

• How AppFolio’s Unified Customer Experience (UCE) platform aligns marketing, sales, and customer service.
• The evolving role of the CRO and the importance of owning the entire customer journey.
• Why customer experience is a competitive differentiator in vertical SaaS.
• Tactical tips for early-stage startups on aligning go-to-market motion with product-market fit.
• The importance of cross-functional “stream teams” for accelerating GTM initiatives.
• How Marcy builds inclusive leadership cultures and mentors rising female leaders.
• Why how you make the number matters as much as making the number.

Highlights:

10:30 The Chief Revenue Officer's (CRO) responsibility to understand and optimize the entire customer journey.

12:30 How the Unified Customer Experience (UCE) platform was formed and how it works.

16:00 End-to-end GTM orchestration across sales, marketing, product, and CS.

22:00 Results from the UCE initiative: accelerated deal velocity and customer retention.

26:30 Advice for startups: identifying your ICP and fixing pipeline fundamentals.

29:00 How to scale with customer empathy and GTM precision.

31:00 Advocating for women in sales leadership and building inclusive teams.

36:00 Marcy’s communication strategy for managing a 600-person org.

39:00 Marcy's favorite business leadership tactic: “Take a beat” before reacting.

40:00 What’s outdated: The belief that only numbers matter in sales.

Guest Speaker Links (Marcy Campbell):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcyc/
• Appfolio: https://www.appfolio.com/

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

• Website: https://gtmnow.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
• Twitter/X:

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Oji Udezue was most recently Chief Product Officer at Typeform, where he led product strategy across the company’s growing suite of tools. Previously, he was CPO at Calendly, where he helped scale one of the most beloved PLG tools in the market. Before that, he was Head of Product for Creation and Conversation at Twitter, leading core features like Tweets, DMs, and Spaces. At Atlassian, he led all communication products, including the launch of Atlassian’s first post-IPO product.

Oji also spent years at Microsoft, building foundational experiences across Windows, Outlook, Hotmail, and Internet Explorer.

In addition to his product leadership, Oji is the founder of Kernel Fund, an early-stage fund supporting startups across Africa. He writes about product, growth, and leadership at his newsletter Product Mind and is the author of the upcoming book Building Rocketships—a guide for high-growth product teams.

Discussed in this Episode:

• When to hire your first PM (and what to look for).
• Why great product teams include marketing from day one.
• A framework for picking winning startup ideas.
• How AI is changing how we build (not just what we build).
• What product leaders can learn from Microsoft’s Longhorn failure.
• Why 3x better isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s a must.
  
  

Highlights:

04:52 – Why marketing is essential to product leadership.

12:02 – How AI is transforming the process of building products.

17:07 – Common product mistakes founders make early on.

24:16 – Building Rocket Ships: Why Oji wrote the book.

31:08 – Framework: Where to fish for unicorns.

33:17 – The “3x better” rule for product value.

37:07 – The challenge of true product differentiation.

39:22 – What Microsoft’s Longhorn failure taught Oji.

44:51 – When (and how) to hire your first PM.

48:31 – The importance of fast, early customer feedback.

54:46 – How AI is changing go-to-market strategy.

57:32 – Why marketers must master signal in a noisy world.

Guest Speaker Links (Oji Udezue):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ojiudezue/
• Kernel Fund: https://www.kernelfund.com/
• Product Mind: https://www.productmind.co/
• Building Rocketships (Book): https://a.co/d/0HGjf18
• SubStack: https://ojiudezue.substack.com/

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

• Website: https://gtmnow.com/
• LinkedIn: https:

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.