Patrick Monnot 🐙

Amandine Servain, VP Marketing at Wunderkind is more strategic and thoughtful than most when it comes to evaluating, implementing, and measuring AI tools for Marketing. I had the opportunity to speak with her in a recent AMA and here are some of the key takeaways: 1. AI tools are best adopted when solving specific pain points, not just for the sake of using AI. Start by identifying challenges, then find tools that address them. 2. The "pod" structure for sales and marketing alignment is highly effective. Bringing together an SDR, account executive, and ABM marketer creates transparency and improves collaboration. 3. Quarterly surveys are a great way to uncover pain points and potential AI solutions from your team. It gives space for people to voice opinions they may not share in regular meetings. 4. Brand authenticity is crucial when adopting AI tools for content creation. Ensure the platform can ingest your brand voice and tone. 5. Measure AI tool impact through improved engagement metrics like open rates and click-through rates. Always start small, test, and then scale. 6. AI is currently in the "co-pilot" phase but may evolve into autonomous marketing agents. Human oversight will remain critical for strategy, authenticity, and analytics interpretation. Check out more here - https://lnkd.in/gDDjrMNq #MarketingInsights #AIinMarketing #B2BMarketing

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Initially, Shopify struggled to raise VC because of 1 misunderstood metric. Today its market cap is $86.5B. 😳 Investors evaluating Shopify were stuck on the fact there were already 10,000 e-commerce merchants, causing concern around TAM. But if you don't get TAM right, you won’t be able to calculate slope, which is what you’re supposed to be investing in anyway. You need to answer two questions to get that evaluation right: → Is this a trend that’s going to continue to grow significantly? → Is this a company that’s capable of catalyzing that growth? If investors had answered the above, they would have seen that the addressable market was likely to grow exponentially—and that Shopify was going to be the primary enabler of that growth. In theory, investors get it. But in practice, it's actually very hard to invest in because you have to be able to understand the dynamics of why that increase will happen. One indicator is the rate and quality of progression in a product’s service, particularly if you're a user of a similar product. AI is a great illustration of how this is happening right now. Its progression rate is astonishing. If a service provider's service is getting better over time, you should invest in it with the assumption that it’s progressing exponentially. That's why I'm bullish on Notion right now. The way they've implemented AI indicates that as AI improves, Notion will accrue increasing benefits. Take their recent announcement that inside Notion, users can call on their other apps for information, reinforcing themselves as the front page of where you do work, making it your OS. I break it all down in the video below. Comment any topics you want me to cover for future Whiteboard Wednesdays. 

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🚀 Are you ready to be challenged and rethink how B2B SaaS companies structure themselves for the future? 🎪 Cirque du Solutions: Balancing Innovation and Structure 🎪 is happening this Thursday, and you don’t want to miss it! I’ll be hosting an exciting and open conversation with James Kaikis, CRXO at TestBox as we explore what the next “wave” of B2B SaaS looks like and how the role of solutions engineering is evolving to impact customer value across the entire lifecycle. We’ll unravel the following: 💡 The balance between innovation and structure 💡 How solutions professionals are taking on bigger roles beyond pre-sales 💡 Breaking traditional Go-To-Market models to unlock greater value 💡 Why challenging the status quo is essential for future-proofing your organization James is known for his bold ideas, and he’s ready to dive into some conventional thinking on how SaaS companies deliver real value to customers and how so many companies may have it all wrong today andjow you can solve for it. Whether you’re a solutions professional, a SaaS leader, or simply passionate about creating better customer journeys, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss! 📅 When: Thursday, 10th of October from 1pm to 2pm (CET) 📍Where: LinkedIn LIVE 🔗 Click on the link below 👇 in the comments to sign up and invite other people you think could benefit from this conversation. Let’s reimagine the world together! 🙌 #LinkedInLive #SaaS #SolutionsEngineering #CustomerExperience #GTM #Innovation #Leadership ARRtist Circus, Dominic Klingberg, Jan-Erik Jank

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The best part of Revenue Kick Offs (besides connecting with the team) is hearing from individuals with high-growth company experience. Big thank you to Emmanuelle Skala for hanging out with us at our RKO to talk about her time scaling Toast from $20M > +$1B (and her other roles at Sophos, Influitive, DigitalOcean and Endeca). Some takeaways from her chat with Philip Braden: It's everyone's responsibility to surface inefficiencies in a business. It's not solely leadership's responsibility. As you grow, not everyone can be in the room anymore. You have to trust the people delegated to make those decisions. And it's not only leaders; it's a group of people where ideas are vetted, keeping leaders grounded in reality. Get very good at running very rapid tests. As you grow, it's imperative to test changes before full implementation. Assumptions/Emotions don't matter when you have a real reason to implement change. Don't get emotional about change. Ultimately, it will be better for your career. Embrace it. You can say, "Hey, if I were to change something, here are some things that might make a difference." If you need help understanding the WHY behind the change, feel free to speak up and ask. You should have a solid answer. Alignment = common objectives and truth in data 

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Two weeks ago I ran a 2-hour deep dive on AI for pipegen with our lead investor at Lightspeed. Investors at large VC firms see a LOT of GTM tech. Their job is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Even then, the market of GTM AI tools is incredibly confusing. The tools that you hear a lot about often don’t actually drive any meaningful ROI. Then a tool that is driving ROI for one company won’t translate to another, because of nuances in each company’s GTM motion. All of this gets glossed over in the headlines. And it’s confusing as hell for both investors and GTM teams who are trying to make an informed decision. The deep dive with our investor was a huge success in cutting through the noise and driving clarity. Inspired by this, I’ve been running similar 2-hour white-boarding workshops with GTM teams on their AI strategy for pipegen. We’ve already done 3 and it’s been incredibly high leverage for everyone involved. During the sessions we: 1) Build a first-principles framework of the customers’ outbound motion, highlighting the highest leverage points where AI can make a big impact. 2) Define realistic goals to measure ROI, anchored to what similar GTM teams have actually implemented and achieved. 3) Call out the traps of AI specific to their business, and help them make sense of the landscape of AI tools and which might be a great fit. 4) Make sure each function responsible for pipegen is involved and walks away more aligned than before. As a founder, I also see these workshops as a high leverage use of my time. Every day I get to talk to cutting-edge GTM teams across verticals. From my vantage point, I see patterns of what’s working and what’s not, and can contextualize this for customers so they can move faster with fewer debilitating mistakes. Going to lean into this. Look forward to running more white-boarding workshop on AI and GTM!

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How to incorporate AI into your demand gen and marketing I watched this SaaStr video twice from Guillaume "𝑮" Cabane. Its that good. Instead of paying consultants thousands of dollars on how to leverage AI in marketing, CMO's should just take 30 mins and watch this since there is so much tactical goodness. Some key takeaways AI Automation in Outbound Marketing: Using AI to replace traditional activities carried out by SDR's , such as audience targeting and personalized messaging. The example with leveraging public datasets to build an automated campaign and the associated results is just incredible. The icing on the cake was that the AI over a few weeks ended up beating the SDR team that had been working on this for much longer. Deepgram’s SEO Enhancement: I actually attended Marcel Santilli 's amazing workshop that shows how he built this as a separate event. By leveraging AI for programmatic page creation, Deepgram automated the generation of SEO-friendly content based on keyword research. The AI analyzed keywords and used them to generate an amazing directory that's actually useful vs the usual programmatic SEO crap. https://lnkd.in/d3CdN86A

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💎 When I launched my first startup, I was convinced our product was revolutionary. I poured my heart and soul into building the perfect app, certain that users would flock to us once we went live. I had dreams of millions of users, hockey stick growth charts and our servers overloading. Man, was I in for a rude awakening 💔. The most dangerous assumption founders can make is to think that if you “build it, they will come”. Far too many founders believe that creating an amazing product is enough - that users will magically discover and adopt it. The truth? It's far more challenging. Your users don't just appear, you have to fight for every single one. 1️⃣ Building a great product is only the first step. There's a vast graveyard of products that were built but never properly distributed. These were potentially game-changing products that faded away in obscurity, not because they necessarily lacked quality, but because they lacked visibility. 💯 Founders must commit significant time, money, and energy to attracting (and retaining) users. This means leveraging multiple channels: ▪ Email marketing ▪ Content marketing ▪ Social media ▪ Influencer marketing ▪ Events ▪ PR ▪ Partnerships ▪ Community building ▪ Paid ads Each channel requires its own strategy, setup and ongoing optimization. 🔥 So to all the founders out there, don't fall into the trap of neglecting user acquisition. Start planning your growth strategy from day one. Make it as big of a priority as your product. Test different channels and approaches, double down on what works, and be prepared to pivot when needed. Roll up your sleeves and get ready to hustle for growth 🚀. It’s the only way. What hard lessons did you learn while building your startup? How did you acquire your first 100 users? What user acquisition channels worked for you? Share your experiences and insights in the comments below! 👇 #startups #growth #marketing #founders

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Surreal moment…… $60,000 deal for a company to use DealFuel for a mass hiring spree. This deal is significant in so many ways. 1. The biggest individual deal we’ve done since launching 5 months ago 2. The founder of the company : I used to watch this guy on Television with my uncle about 10 years ago. He has a pretty large business now but was a television personality. If I told myself 10 years ago this was going to happen I’d be pleased however not remotely surprised. Join DealFuel - we are months away from evolving into one of the most dominate players in the recruit tech space for sales reps. I’m giving you early notice. Our growth on a graph looks like Bitcoin 2013. Sales reps : DM me if you want access to the best sales roles on the market (lowest roles OTE $60,000). I want the best SDRs / Account Execs. I want them all. Businesses : We have the strongest inventory of sales reps. I’ve been a recruitment consultant, I’ve been a customer of them and I can tell you with every ounce of conviction there is zero comparison. We absolutely blow them out of the water on speed, price, execution and process. It has my trademark je ne sais quoi all over it and a product that has its own beating heart. It’s magical.

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Important fact about most startup (and VC) success stories. It is convenient to overlook this, but the best companies and products are not built on any specific timeline. The best people win, and that is the only thing that has consistently and repeatably truly won over the test of time.

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SaaS tools focus on product differentiation so much they forget the one thing that actually matters... Distribution advantage. In today's Whiteboard [Thurs]day, I'm diving into: 1. How the launch of our FRMT couture line highlighted the difference in distribution advantage opportunities between DTC and SaaS. 2. How SaaS can achieve high growth using its distro opps. [ICYMI: We launched FRMT, our luxury couture line called "Style As A Service," taking ordinary pieces of clothing and blending them with timeless craftsmanship. Link below to check it out.] Aside from being an experimental marketing campaign sold through FERMÀT funnels, this venture accomplished the hardest thing in the sea of software: Being memorable. How? "Moonshot marketing" - Rabah Rahil, CMO of FERMÀT. Within DTC, the distribution advantages are a dime a dozen. You've got: ➝ Meta ➝ Influencers ➝ Riding the wave of cultural moments ➝ And so on... Within SaaS, you have fewer options: ➝ Truly fresh ideas (like an outlandish couture line) ➝ Product-driven distribution trick (+1 product that makes you want the primary)  ➝ Partner-driven distribution trick (I.e. what eBay is to Paypal) Our FRMT line has taught me SaaS has these 3 major options. So experiment within these to figure out your distro advantage and product differentiation (aside from good engineering). It's how you'll be top of mind and make a high-growth company grow even faster. For us, it's so far so good on FRMT. I'll let you know how it goes.

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Marketers: Here are 4 reasons to HMU and talk about how Mobly can transform your Event strategy. 1-The cost of Mobly is offset by the savings from never having to rent badge scanners again. 2-We do the data enrichment in real-time so it's crazy up-to-date. Stop relying on email signature scraping and dated databases. 3-We all hate the "know before you go meetings" where everyone has to learn the new lead capture tool (and they all forget before the show and have to be retrained.) Wouldn't it be nice to learn 1 tool and be done? 4-Speed to lead is what will win you more deals from your events. It takes the average company 11 days to follow up with their field leads. It takes the average Mobly customer <11 minutes. Who's gonna win? My money is on our users. Bonus*-We've got some records to break and deals to make. Let's talk! calendly dot com slash mobly

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🤝 Influencer App Node Sells for $13 Million to Talent Agency Dulcedo Group, a Montreal-based talent agency, has bought the startup Node, described as an "AI-powered influencer marketing platform." If you look at influencer M&A activity, most startups are bought for either their existing relationships or their technology. In the case of Node, their 5,000 content creators/micro-influencers and their AI technology are what was attractive to Dulcedo Group. These add to a larger agency's credibility in the realm of "influencer marketing" and can help them win new clients. The ability to mention your "AI capabilities" and your existing relationships with creators are major selling points. The creator economy is one of the biggest trends in media, marketing, and advertising. There is a limited (but growing) supply of native influencer/creator-related agencies and platforms and there is a massive amount of more traditional agencies who know that they need to build out their creator capabilities. They either build that capability in-house or acquire that capability via another company. These supply and demand dynamics will shape the creator economy over the next 3-5 years. More influencer M&A is definitely on the way! #influencers #influencermarketing #creators #creatoreconomy #marketing #advertising #media #entertainment #agencies

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My top 3 takeaways from working at a YC-Backed Fintech SaaS company Aspire in the past 3 months: User Journey + Sales & Marketing Alignment + Community Building = Success Remove just one, and everything falls apart. ↳ Lack of Understanding of Your ICP's User Journey: Your software becomes a disconnected set of features ↳ Lack of Sales & Marketing Alignment: Messaging becomes inconsistent and feedback loops break ↳ Lack of Community Building: You miss out on valuable relationships and branding opportunities 👇 It's important to get all three parts right: 1) User Journey: Map out your ICP's journey and solve their problems 2) Sales & Marketing Alignment: Ensure both teams work closely together every day so you can create tighter feedback loops, creating a strong message-market fit across all your marketing channels 3) Community Building: Host events that bring your niche together to connect, creating a community for your audience that's more than just a pitchfest. It was great to be able to work with you guys during this short time, Wilson Chin and YiJia Koo!

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Weekly Update 8.2.24 ⚡ • One month ago, I posted about how we shifted our operating cadence to better manage the tension between dedicated deep work time vs. managing increased merchant onboarding volume as we scale our Shopify App. A few shifts we made as an organization: 1. Engineering cycles — 2 week sprint on new functionality, 1 week focused on maintenance/tech debt. This ensures we continue shipping at a face clip while dedicating 1 week towards housekeeping. So far so good. 2. Dedicated deep work time — Jennifer is leading the charge by carving out 9 am - 1pm on select days for sacred deep work time, allowing her to focus on her top priority. Others on our team will follow lead by carving out dedicated deep work time and silencing notifications during these hours. I'm delinquent on this! I'll follow suit on this next week. 3. Product-led engineering — we've been inspired by companies like PostHog that champion product-led engineering and people like Arnaud Lassignardie, who takes extreme ownership. Our engineering team at TryNow increasingly makes product decisions, interfaces directly with merchants, and pulls forward our product roadmap. Typically, Product Managers define the "What to build" and Engineers define the "How to build." At TryNow, we're increasingly relying on Engineering to define select components of the "What" in addition to the "How." This level of ownership makes for better products. Josh Rathke, excellent work leading the team in this shift! • Onboarding Ian Schneider, Director of GTM at TryNow.com. Grit and Empathetic Leadership are two core value of ours at TryNow. Ian is as gritty as they come and leads with empathy. He's off to an electric start — 8 new deals created in week 1! ⚡ 🔥 • We're onboarding brands across a variety of new verticals (#TryNewThings): pajamas, fine jewelry, color cosmetics, streetwear, bedding, wedding dresses, and premium sandals. #TryBeforeYouBuy #TryNewThings #Shopify

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What does a day look like for a VP of Revenue at a fast-growing startup like Sendspark ✨? It's probably quite different from the same role at a larger, more established technology company. Here's a snapshot of my day so far: 6:00-7:00 - Final preparations for two major enterprise demos. 7:00-9:00 - Conduct the demos. 9:00-10:00 - Strategy session with our SEO consultant to refine our SEO and content approach. 10:00-10:30 - Edit copy for our upcoming website launch. At an early stage startup, there are 1m things to do at all times. Its what makes it so incredibly rewarding. Every day our team is shipping work that is making an impact on our end user base. Incredibly grateful! We keep going 🙌 🚀 #sendspark #growth

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Wonder why Alexandre L. and I get along so well? We use Pluvo. ☂️ I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you want your business to succeed – you need a solid financial plan. A bulletproof financial plan is going to: 🤔 Remove guesswork from your decision making  🔥 Reduce friction between leaders in your organization  🔋 Improve your organizational health Pluvo makes sure that CFOs and CEOs are on the same page, unlike any other product on the market. Give Pluvo a try, and see how a good financial plan can turn your business into a great one. See more on our website! 🌧️ #financialplan #fpanda #fintech 

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One of the biggest challenges as a SaaS company is getting people to *actually* enter their credit card information and pay you money. With customer acquisition costs on the rise, just about anything you can do to prevent a credit card from exiting your business is going to be a good thing. Within reason, of course.Think time-constrained discounts, subscription pauses, free trial extensions, etc... Segmenting customers based on CRM/CDP data is key. The more your incentives speak to their pain points, the more customers you'll save, and the more revenue you'll retain. And if this gives you pause? Think of the short-term hit to revenue as a long-term investment in each customer. After all, you've already spent hundreds of dollars—maybe thousands!—in acquiring them. What's a few extra towards buying them the time to find success in your product once and for all? Think LTV, not MRR.

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Harmonic’s team recently tripled their hiring speed, going from 1 hire/quarter to 1 hire/month. They also 6x-ed their quality candidate pipeline. All without paying an upfront retainer. How? By partnering with Paraform. Harmonic’s investors and customers make up all the household VC names you can think of. They’re scaling fast, and needed exceptional engineers to match that growth. Soham Kamat, Harmonic’s Head of Business Operations, knew what the company needed to build. He just needed to find the right talent to build it. Last quarter, Soham made a bet with Harmonic’s head of sales. Could the company generate $1 million in net new sales by the end of the quarter? Or could Soham hire 4 engineers first? The loser would buy the winning team a Michelin-starred dinner. Can you really hire as quickly as you scale? Turns out, you can. Harmonic hired 4 new engineers last quarter – with Paraform recruiters Clint Tankersley, Ryan Poole, and Nick Kimball helping land 3 of those 4 roles – AND secured $1M in net new sales. Congrats to Soham, Max, and the team on both milestones! To learn more about Harmonic’s story, check out the link in comments.

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Meet Alec Levandoski, Sales Enablement Manager at Beefree. In the first year of using Toplyne, Beefree closed over $100k in enterprise deals through sales while cutting their sales cycle length by 33%. Beefree offers intuitive design tools that enable businesses to craft beautiful, high-performing emails compatible with any marketing platform. With millions of monthly users, Beefree is used in over 220 countries. In our recent customer story, we spoke to Beefree. Here are a few highlights: As the platform scaled to millions of monthly users and 15k+ new sign-ups each month, Beefree faced these three challenges- 🤔 Sensing upgrade intent  ✨ Bringing AI on board 🌍 Unified customer view Throughout 2023, Beefree deployed three Toplyne audiences across their GTM teams to solve the above challenges: Audience 1: Product-led growth pipeline - Used by Beefree’s Head of Growth, this Toplyne automation surfaces marketing content and custom in-app messages to convert share value propositions with non-paying customers to have them convert into paying customers on their own. Audience 2: Sales-assisted pipeline - Alec’s team uses this automation to identify high-intent users who have shown a propensity to convert in the future, but are currently on free or lower-tier pricing plans. Audience 3: Reduce churn - Beefree’s CS team uses this automation to flag Enterprise accounts that show early indicators of churn so they can proactively prevent it. Impact? In the first year of using Toplyne, Beefree saw: 1) Double the amount of enterprise deals as before 2) Reduced their sales cycle from 45 days to 30 days 3) $100k closed in deals due to Toplyne Read the entire customer story with link in comments. Here's Alec on Beefree's Aha moment using Toplyne: #customerstory #marketingai #aiaudiences

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