Cassie Young is a General Partner at Primary Venture Partners, a $1B AUM early-stage firm in New York backing category-defining SaaS, fintech, and vertical software companies. Before investing, she spent 15 years as a GTM operator, serving as Chief Revenue Officer at Sailthru and later Chief Customer & Commercial Officer at Marigold (Campaign Monitor, Sailthru, and other martech brands), where she scaled global sales, marketing, and customer success organizations.

Today, Cassie leads investments while also running Primary’s Impact program, giving founders access to a 30-person team across talent, GTM, and strategic finance, and she continues to teach operators through programs like Pavilion and Duke’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship board.

Discussed in this episode:

• How Cassie “accidentally” became a VC after 15 years in GTM leadership.
• The career advice Bill Gurley gave her that changed her trajectory.
• Why Primary refuses to say “platform” and instead built a 30-person Impact team.
• How she actually sources pre-seed/seed founders before they leave their jobs.
• Primary’s 5-part Founder Outcomes Framework (vision, talent, JDCE, and more).
• The difference between real traction vs. “happy ears” and fake design partners.
• Why she’s picky on GTM/AI tools and looks for step-change, not incremental gains.
• How operators can actually break into VC (hint: it’s all about doing the work).

Episode highlights

00:35 — Clay, usage-based pricing, and the $100M ARR rocketship

09:10 — The real story on AISDR: where AI reps actually work (and where they really don’t)

14:02 — Inside “The Gross Retention Apocalypse” and why AI experimental budgets are a ticking time bomb

22:46 — How Cassie accidentally became a VC and the Bill Gurley advice that changed her career path

27:17 — Why Primary hates the word “platform” and how Cassie built a 30-person Impact team for founders

36:10 — Cassie breaks down her 5-part founder outcomes framework (including “jaw-dropping customer experience”)

46:01 — Avoiding “happy ears”: how founders should really use design partners and MedPick-style rigor

57:48 — Time to value as the new north star and why nailing a tight wedge beats peanut-buttering features

1:01:29 — So you want to be a VC: Cassie’s playbook for operators to break into venture (without delusion)

Brought to you by: AngelList

How did we build the GTMfund back office? Easy!

We leveraged AngelList’s Rolling Fund product for Fund I, which was the perfect vehicle to scale up GTMfund in its first iteration. This structure allowed us to build our network, and add revenue leaders while we raised and deployed capital simultaneously, which was crucial for getting early points on the board and building relationships with founders.

For Fund II, we transitioned to a traditional closed-end fund structure through AngelList. This time with institutional investor support. This model allowed us to be more intentional about our portfolio construction. We worked closely with the AngelList team throughout this process, and they were incredible — always there to support us and our LPs every step of the way.

If you’re raising a fund or are looking to migrate your fund, we highly recommend you check them out. You can do so at www.angellist.com/gtmfund.

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

Dave Boyce is a go-to-market–focused technology executive, author of Freemium, and longtime SaaS operator and board member. Over two decades leading and advising B2B companies, he’s helped founders navigate the shift from sales-led to product-led, from gut-driven to instrumented, and now from manual GTM to AI-assisted systems. Today, Dave teaches revenue architecture and PLG through Winning by Design’s Growth Institute, works with leadership teams on Bow Tie–based growth models, and is all-in on how AI will reshape GTM as a true engineered system.

Discussed in this episode

• Why classic sales & marketing playbooks haven’t caught up to how modern buyers actually buy.
• How the Bowtie model exposes the real levers of growth that funnels hide.
• Why PLG-style thinking is now essential even for sales-led and enterprise motions.
• The 3 first principles of freemium: empathy, generosity, and metrics.
• Where AI can reliably outperform humans across the customer journey, and where it absolutely shouldn’t.
• How to design hybrid human + AI workflows using a clear data model, not vibes.
• What RevOps should own in a modern revenue architecture (and why it can’t just serve the CRO narrative).
• Hard-earned founder lessons from Fundly on reinvention, calling bets early, and letting go of old branches.

Episode highlights

00:00 — GTM is still running 20-year-old playbooks

01:29 — “Sales, marketing, CS… the last unengineered engine”

03:20 — The myth of “just add more heads”

05:50 — The Fundly story: reinvention, too late

08:30 — Why Freemium had to be written

11:01 — Three first principles of freemium

15:25 — Mapping AI across the entire customer journey

19:29 — “Automate the predictable, humanize the exceptional”

25:18 — What the Bowtie exposes that funnels hide

27:25 — Building a “minimum viable Bowtie

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is the GTM Intelligence Platform built for sales, marketing, and RevOps.

By unifying data, workflows, and insights into a single system, ZoomInfo helps revenue teams find and engage the right buyers, launch go-to-market plays faster, and drive predictable growth. With industry-leading accuracy and depth of data, it gives your team the intelligence advantage to win in competitive markets.

It’s trusted by the fastest-growing companies and has become the category leader in GTM Intelligence.

Learn more at zoominfo.com.

Follow Dave Boyce (Guest)

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boycedave
• Substack: https://daveboyce.substack.com

Where to Find GTMnow

• Website: https://gtmnow.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
• Podcast Directory: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

Brian Weinberger is the Chief Revenue Officer at Sisense, a leading analytics platform helping companies embed intelligence into every product experience. With over 30 years in sales leadership across New York’s tech scene, Brian has built and scaled go-to-market teams at every stage—from early-stage startups to category-defining giants like Yext, Segment, and Salesforce.

Discussed in this episode

• The evolution of partner selling — from VARs to SIs to ecosystems
• How to know if partner selling fits your GTM model
• The delivery-first mindset that drives retention
• Direct vs. partner motion: Microsoft vs. Salesforce
• Why enablement is the #1 green flag for partner success
• Partner marketing: how to make resellers self-sustaining
• Using AI to power future-ready GTM models
• The case for hybrid work in high-performance sales cultures

Episode Highlights

00:00 — The “year four” moment when partners are selling for you

01:07 — 30 years of selling through partners in New York

03:22 — Start partner strategy with delivery, not distribution

06:32 — Why partner selling creates “superhuman” sellers

09:59 — Salesforce vs. Microsoft: direct vs. reseller — and why the future is hybrid

12:13 — The startup hack: sell delivery on your paper, subcontract partners

17:16 — A 90-day playbook for integration partnerships

21:39 — Hiring the right people to build a partner business

27:18 — How Sisense runs delivery partners and an Australian reseller

29:55 — White-labeling Snowflake: using resell to get the giant’s attention

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: BoomPop

We’re deep in event planning right now, as no doubt many of you are.

Whether it’s an offsite, conference, or any other kind of event, BoomPop makes that happen with end-to-end planning all in one place.

They handle everything from venues to experiences, so you can focus on the delights of meeting in person, not the logistics.

Being part of GTMnow, you’re eligible for full-service event planning for just $99 per person (terms apply). Head to boompop.com/gtmfund to explore seamless support for your events.

Follow Brian Weinberger

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianweinberger

Recommended Books

• What Great Salespeople Do by Michael Bosworth & Ben Zoldan — The power of storytelling in sales
• The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval — Why kindness compounds in business
• Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson — Coaching and leadership lessons from the Bulls dynasty

Referenced

• Sisense: https://www.sisense.com
• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com
• AWS: https://aws.amazon.com
• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com
• Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com
• Accenture (SI example): https://www.accenture.com

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

This bonus episode dives into how Cristina Cordova (Stripe’s 20th hire, early leader at Notion, now COO at Linear) spots exceptional talent early, and how she pressure-tests whether a team and product are truly worth betting on. It’s a crisp, tactical look at evaluating “spikiness,” finding beloved products (even with limited data), and building GTM the right way from day one.

Cristina Cordova is a seasoned operator who has scaled some of the most iconic companies in tech. At Stripe, she built and led partnerships that became a foundational revenue engine, including the pivotal deal with Shopify. At Notion, she helped turn viral adoption into a durable distribution strategy powered by community. Today, Cristina is the Chief Operating Officer at Linear, where she’s applying her experience building high-velocity GTM engines to the next generation of developer-first tools.

This is a clip from the full episode with Cristina (an inside look at the judgment frameworks behind Stripe, Notion, and now Linear) and the practical filters every GTM leader can use to pick winners early.

Discussed in This Clip

• How to recognize “exceptional” even outside your own domain
• Finding early proof a product is truly beloved (signals > vanity metrics)
• Starting with a sharp market wedge, then earning the right to expand
• Why founders who excel at something—anything—tend to excel at company-building
• What to expect from early operators: founder mode and bias to execute
• Sales hiring for technical buyers (and why quotas can help earlier than you think)
• Aligning tightly with founders as an exec: relationships drive outcomes
• How to assess GTM on day one: ride-alongs, raw customer feedback, ground truth

Highlights

00:00 — The difference between good and great—and how to spot it across functions

00:12 — Why this clip hit: Cristina’s framework for identifying exceptional people early

01:17 — Looking for skills you don’t have—and recognizing greatness outside your lane

03:38 — Evidence a product is beloved (Stripe on Hacker News, Notion on Twitter)

04:49 — Start with a wedge; win big later (why early enterprise skeptics don’t matter)

07:54 — “Spikiness” and unconventional signals of excellence (Minecraft servers to sales)

12:52 — What great early leaders do: see problems, create strategy, then execute

16:45 — Sales at product-led companies: hire technical sellers, set quotas sooner

21:31 — How Cristina assesses GTM on day one: ride-alongs, direct customer observation

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: BoomPop

We’re deep in event planning right now, as no doubt many of you are.

Whether it’s an offsite, conference, or any other kind of event, BoomPop makes that happen with end-to-end planning all in one place.

They handle everything from venues to experiences, so you can focus on the delights of meeting in person, not the logistics.

Being part of GTMnow, you’re eligible for full-service event planning for just $99 per person (terms apply). Head to boompop.com/gtmfund to explore seamless support for your events.

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

Alex Clayton is one of the clearest minds in growth-stage investing, the person elite founders turn to when the market is noisy and the stakes are high. A General Partner at Meritech Capital, Alex has built a reputation for breaking down complex businesses with uncommon clarity, from his legendary S-1 teardowns to his frameworks on power laws, secondaries, and AI-native growth. Before Meritech, he honed his craft at Spark Capital and Redpoint, backing breakout companies like Braze, JFrog, Outreach, Pendo, Duo Security, and RelateIQ. A former ATP tennis pro and Stanford team captain, Alex brings that same discipline, pattern recognition, and competitive fire to evaluating the next generational companies.

Discussed in this episode

• Why GAAP revenue and cash burn are the two metrics that quietly govern everything.
• How AI is changing growth rates, margins, and what “good” looks like in SaaS.
• The rise of secondaries, and why they now rival or exceed IPO volume.
• How to read an S-1 like a pro (and what Alex looks for first).
• Founder ownership, fund lifecycles, and how long companies really stay private.
• Why power laws in venture are getting even steeper in the AI era.
• How AI is reshaping pricing models from seats to usage and outcomes.
• Which iconic private companies are most likely to go public in the next 3 years.

Episode highlights

02:40 — Is the IPO window really back? 

05:10 — Secondaries quietly outpacing IPOs

08:10 — The only two metrics that matter

10:56 — AI growth that breaks SaaS mental models

26:20 — From “software” to “SaaS” to “AI”… and back again

29:25 — Seat-based pricing vs outcome-based AI pricing

34:55 — The capital tidal wave & longer private lives

44:00 — Bubble vs biggest opportunity of our careers

57:17 — What the rest of the 2020s look like

1:03:41 — Why GAAP revenue + cash burn still win

Brought to you by: AngelList

How did we build the GTMfund back office? Easy!

We leveraged AngelList’s Rolling Fund product for Fund I, which was the perfect vehicle to scale up GTMfund in its first iteration. This structure allowed us to build our network, and add revenue leaders while we raised and deployed capital simultaneously, which was crucial for getting early points on the board and building relationships with founders.

For Fund II, we transitioned to a traditional closed-end fund structure through AngelList. This time with institutional investor support. This model allowed us to be more intentional about our portfolio construction. We worked closely with the AngelList team throughout this process, and they were incredible — always there to support us and our LPs every step of the way.

If you’re raising a fund or are looking to migrate your fund, we highly recommend you check them out. You can do so at www.angellist.com/gtmfund.

Follow Alex Clayton

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aclayton
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/afc

Follow Max Altschuler (Host)

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer of Snowflake, where he helped scale the company from pre-product to over $4B in ARR and more than $100B in market cap. Over his 11-year tenure, Chris built Snowflake’s go-to-market engine from the ground up, from personally running the first outbound campaigns to leading a global sales organization through four CEOs and one of the largest software IPOs in history.

Today, he advises founders and revenue leaders on how to build high-velocity GTM teams, hire with grit, and scale with discipline. Chris is also the co-author of Make It Snow, the definitive playbook on Snowflake’s go-to-market journey, co-written with CMO Denise Persson.

Discussed in this episode

• The early days of Snowflake: selling a stealth startup with no product
• How to hire and identify truly self-motivated, gritty sales talent
• The lessons from John McMahon that shaped Snowflake’s leadership DNA
• How to build sales-marketing alignment that actually scales
• The near-death experiences that almost killed Snowflake
• What great CEOs do differently, from Muglia to Slootman
• The power of focusing on new logo acquisition
• The evolution of sales methodologies: MEDDPICC, culture, and curiosity
• The truth about AI’s “bubble”, and what’s real beneath the hype

Episode highlights

00:02:21 — Why join Snowflake pre-product and in stealth.

00:05:36 — The original outreach script and what resonated with prospects.

00:06:49 — Scaling from lists to SDRs; Degnan’s “8 meetings per week” rule.

00:09:11 — Hiring for self-starters; the interview opener: “Tell me your life story.”

00:12:49 — The feedback loop that kept a CRO in seat for 11 years.

00:24:46 — The outage that almost killed Snowflake, and how leadership showed up.

00:28:34 — New logo gates every quarter and why it mattered more than anything.

00:34:05 — “Customer success is everyone’s job”: removing CS, monetizing PS, driving adoption.

00:36:40 — Databricks: where Snowflake ceded ground and what they’d do differently.

00:39:19 — Why going public was the right move for enterprise trust.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: BoomPop

We’re deep in event planning right now, as no doubt many of you are.

Whether it’s an offsite, conference, or any other kind of event,BoomPop makes that happen with end-to-end planning all in one place.

They handle everything from venues to experiences, so you can focus on the delights of meeting in person, not the logistics.

Being part of GTMnow, you’re eligible for full-service event planning for just $99 per person (terms apply). Head to boompop.com/gtmfund to explore seamless support for your events.

Follow Chris Degnan

• LinkedIn:
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-degnan-524470Make It Snow (book):https://makeitsnowbook.com

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

Michel Tricot is the co-founder and CEO of Airbyte, the open-source data movement platform he launched in 2020. Before Airbyte, Michel led integrations and served as Director of Engineering at LiveRamp, where he scaled the teams and pipelines that synced massive data volumes. He also helped build rideOS as a founding engineer and Director of Engineering. Michel has spent 15+ years in data infrastructure, with a focus on commoditizing data pipelines and giving teams control and sovereignty over their data. 

Discussed in this episode

• Why Airbyte launched open source first (catching engineers “at the search”)
• Project-market fit vs. product-market fit, and why they’re different
• The content engine: founder-led writing, shipping slides, and radical transparency
• Turning interest into community: 25k+ Slack, champions, and hiring from within
• The near-misses: hiring ahead of PMF, support-heavy community, cloud complexity
• Going upmarket: enterprise motion, longer cycles, and team ramp realities
• AI wave → agents as “data consumers” and what it means for pipelines
• Replatforming for control & sovereignty, not just “more connectors”

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is the GTM Intelligence Platform built for sales, marketing, and RevOps.

By unifying data, workflows, and insights into a single system, ZoomInfo helps revenue teams find and engage the right buyers, launch go-to-market plays faster, and drive predictable growth. With industry-leading accuracy and depth of data, it gives your team the intelligence advantage to win in competitive markets.

It’s trusted by the fastest-growing companies and has become the category leader in GTM Intelligence.

Learn more at zoominfo.com.

Follow Michel Tricot

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheltricot
• X (Twitter):https://x.com/MichelTricot
• Website:https://airbyte.com/Airbyte

Host links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
• Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/
• Website: https://gtmnow.com/

Where to Find GTMnow

• Website: https://gtmnow.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
• Podcast Directory: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

Tessa Whittaker is the VP of Revenue Operations at ZoomInfo, where she leads a 70-person global team powering one of SaaS’s most efficient $1B+ revenue engines. Over the past decade, she’s helped architect the systems, cadence, and AI workflows that underpin how ZoomInfo operates at scale.

Tessa is known as one of the most thoughtful operators in tech, bringing structure, clarity, and rigor to how GTM organizations run. Her work sits at the intersection of data, process, and execution, proving that with the right operating cadence, even the most complex go-to-market systems can move in rhythm.

Discussed in this episode

• Building a personal operating system (Salesforce's V2MOM, Notion, weekly reviews) that maps vision → methods → measurable actions.
• “Operating rhythm” for GTM: the meetings, reviews, and enablement that create predictable execution.
• Color-coding calendars to align time with quarterly KPIs (and fixing misallocation).
• Counterintuitive up-market move: automate down-market so scarce humans focus on enterprise.
• AI intake & prioritization agent: compressing 10–15 hrs of RevOps scoping into one interaction.
• Democratizing creation: org-wide agent “hackathons,” usage leaderboards, and adoption lessons.
• Health OS during sprints: cut alcohol, protect sleep, simplify to sustain output.
• What to buy vs. build; auditing tech stacks; avoiding (and accepting some) agent sprawl.

Episode highlights

00:00 — Systems beat motivation; why cadence creates consistency.

01:36 — RevOps as connective tissue of SaaS; the “invest earlier” regret.

03:58 — From EA to SVP-level ops leader to VP RevOps: the long workback.

06:51 — Why operators obsess over simplifying complexity.

12:24 — Time as the scarcest resource: color-coding calendars to goals.

20:05 — The RevOps operating rhythm at ZoomInfo (and how AI slots in).

21:48 — Going upmarket? Automate downmarket first to free resources.

31:19 — Intake agent: collapsing 10–15 hours of back-and-forth into one interaction.

36:48 — Democratizing creation: internal agent hackathons and a usage leaderboard.

44:30 — The Alchemist and reframing growth: get uncomfortable to keep climbing.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors

The best talent isn’t actively job hunting. Pursuit helps companies hire elite go-to-market talent on a non-retainer basis. As a key GTMfund partner, they equip sales and marketing teams with top performers.

If you’re hiring for sales or marketing roles, reach out to Pursuit at pursuitsalessolutions.com/gtm or message a GTMfund team member.

Guest links

•  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessa-whittaker-44903940

Where to Find GTMnow

• Website: https://gtmnow.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
• X (Twitter):https://x.com/GTMnow_
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
• The GTM Podcast: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

Peter Grant is the Chief Revenue Officer at You.com, the AI search and productivity platform reshaping how people find and create information. A veteran GTM leader, Peter has built and scaled revenue engines at some of tech’s most iconic companies — from Siebel Systems to Salesforce to C3.ai — working directly under legends like Tom Siebel and Marc Benioff. Today, he’s leading You.com’s charge against giants like OpenAI and Google, bringing precision, storytelling, and speed to the most transformative era in technology.

Discussed in this episode

• How Peter defines “the biggest opportunity of our lifetime” in AI
• Lessons from working under Tom Siebel, Marc Benioff, and Rishi Khosla
• How to hire SEAL-Team-Six-level GTM talent
• Why belief and speed are non-negotiables when competing with giants
• You.com’s differentiation strategy against OpenAI and Google
• How to operationalize AI literacy and agentic workflows
• The ROI gap in generative AI adoption, and how to fix it
• Building products that stand on truth

Episode Highlights

00:14 — The biggest opportunity in technology this century

05:25 — Lessons from working directly with Thomas Siebel

06:41 — How to hire “SEAL Team Six” sales talent

10:24 — Why “train hard, fight easy” defines great enablement

20:08 — The new sophistication bar for AI literacy in sales

25:14 — How You.com differentiates against OpenAI & Google

30:00 — Peter’s personal AI productivity system: 40 agents

40:12 — Speed, truth, and trust: You.com’s go-to-market culture

48:30 — The “war room” story: building a sales plan overnight

59:45 — No easy days: why startup life mirrors special forces

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: BoomPop

A quick pause to spotlight a partner that helps GTM teams actually connect—BoomPop.

Your next big unlock might not come from another meeting… it’s from getting your team in the same room. BoomPop makes that happen with end-to-end offsite planning all in one place.

They handle everything from venues to experiences, so you can focus on the delights of meeting in person, not the logistics.

And as a listener of GTMfund, you’re eligible for full-service event planning for just $99 per person (terms apply).

Head to boompop.com/gtmfund to start planning your offsite.

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/peterkgrant
• Company: you.com

Recommended Books

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
• Elephants Can’t Dance by Louis V. Gerstner Jr.
• The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos
• No Easy Day by Mark Owen — a favorite for its lessons on grit and resilience

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.

This bonus episode dives into how Rick Kelley helped scale Meta’s global sales organization (from 900 employees to 90,000) and the playbook behind building high-performing international teams.

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

This is a clip from the full episode with Rick, an inside look at how Meta built its $1B EMEA business and the lessons every GTM leader can apply to scale globally.

Discussed in This Clip:

• The exact framework Rick used to decide which EMEA markets to enter first
• How Meta built a $1B+ regional business from just three salespeople
• The power of centralization in early-stage go-to-market
• Why you should plan every headcount allocation before hiring
• Creating “optionality” in your sales org to weather change
• How gaming became Meta’s fifth global region
• When to localize sales teams versus staying centralized
• Why AI can make sales more efficient—but can’t replace relationships

Highlights

00:12 — Scaling Meta: from 900 to 90,000 employees

01:22 — How Rick Kelley built Meta’s mid-market sales org from scratch

02:15 — The data-driven framework Meta used to prioritize global markets

04:50 — Why startups should build expansion plans before executing

07:52 — Centralized vs. in-country hiring: Rick’s take for startups

09:49 — The importance of sales ops and forecasting discipline

13:32 — Hiring leaders who scale with you, not limit you

14:59 — How AI will reshape (but not replace) sales relationships

16:09 — From zero to $1B: lessons in efficiency, cost, and culture

This Episode Is Brought to You By

ZoomInfo is the GTM Intelligence Platform built for sales, marketing, and RevOps. 

By unifying data, workflows, and insights into a single system, ZoomInfo helps revenue teams find and engage the right buyers, launch go-to-market plays faster, and drive predictable growth. With industry-leading accuracy and depth of data, it gives your team the intelligence advantage to win in competitive markets.

It’s trusted by the fastest-growing companies and has become the category leader in GTM Intelligence.

Learn more at zoominfo.com.

Follow Rick Kelley

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickkelley/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow 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.