Jason Grad

Take a look at how Trellus (YC W22)'s native parallel dialer integration works on top of Apollo.io - https://lnkd.in/eMgsp2JS The only native integration on the market - allows you to stay inside Apollo while dialing! #sdrs #bdrs #ai #coldcalls #coldcalling

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I meet and talk with 5-10 of the greatest GTM minds on the planet every week. CRO’s, VPs of Sales, CMO’s. 100% agree that getting outbound right is one of the hardest parts of their business, why? 1. Recruiting is hard again The same voices that sold tech sales as an easy path to 6 figures are now the voices saying the BDR role is dead. They sold a bill of goods to people who didn’t understand how hard this role is, are surprised these people who chose a path because it was sold as “easy” aren’t performing, and now have ulterior motives to pivot to a new message. Hard jobs are hard to recruit for. 2. Lack of Leadership 2020 through mid 2022 we had a bunch of capital bloat and talent bloat enter the market. Just like we have overvalued “zombie” companies we have overvalued “zombie” leaders who don’t know how to coach good habits for this type of market. Outbound was easy from 2014ish to summer 2022. 8 years is a long time, most of the voices we hear only know those times or only know what type of sales motion. 3. Absolute statements muddy the waters I've been around the block enough to click on their profile and see their track record. 99.9% of folks make these statements only sold transactional commodity technology, sold to GTM teams, or in most cases – only both. What works depends on multiple factors: ASP, buyer persona, and complexity of your sales process/customer’s buying process. Depending on what you sell – sometimes you are going to need to pick up the phone or send a note to get someone’s attention. That will NEVER change. 4. Generational consideration for career pathing is key BDR is still hands down the best route to market for future AE’s. You have to learn to prospect and get meetings before you can run a meeting, qualify, and manage a deal. No argument from me on CAC math – thousands of products require veracious qualification, deal management, and creating customer consensus. You can not run those types of deals and prospect. If any Voice had EVER done that type of role or ran a team that did, they wouldn’t say what they are. For BDRs to stick around for more than 14 months, you need steps in the BDR path where comp, responsibility and role grow over time. 5. Results are tanking Point 1&2. You are the equivalent of a fire fighter that starts a fire then takes the glory when you put it out. I absolutely loved the movie Backdraft – but stop it. These are the ideas of “not famous” GTM people. People who spend all day serving their customer and developing their people – not posting on this platform. They don’t care about clicks, followers, or impressions. They care about revenue and earnings. Outbound is hard. It (almost) always has been. Ya’ll need to block the noise and focus on what works for your business and try everything. Even the hard stuff. #AllGasNoBrakes #DialedIn

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As a B2B SaaS VC 👩‍💻 and a huge data nerd 🤓, fewer things bring me more joy than a truly statistically significant analysis (600+ companies surveyed) of B2B SaaS metrics across early stage companies. Great work by our team at Emergence Capital! See comments for full report, and please let us know how we can make this better in the future!

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There are so many vendors, and so much noise in the market right now. It's hard to tell what anyone does, harder to figure out who’s delivering value, and impossible to differentiate one from the next. I’ve been talking to a lot of VCs lately, and they all feel it in their portfolio companies - even good companies w/happy customers, great products, and strong net retention - just can’t get the market to believe (or pay attention to) to the success they are delivering for customers. It’s a huge problem - everyone is struggling to generate pipeline and opportunities, and struggling to win new business when they do get conversations. So what are we (as a market) doing about this noise problem? YELLING LOUDER (and more often) More emails. More calls.  Emails informed by intent data.  Emails informed by AI w/intent data context.  aiSDRs. Auto-dialers, AI-driven video at scale. Inbox creation/rotation/warming.  Signal-based emails. Microcampaigns. “Quick question”.  “Are you the right person?” “Q4 Priorities at %%Company_Name%%” You can have the most advanced technical outbound setup in the world w/Clay linked up to Unify linked up to HeyReach w AI Layers and Human Layers and waterfall enrichment, and all this (pretty damn) impressive/clever tooling, and could have downloaded the entire brains of Brendan Short and Mark Kosoglow and then trained an AI on them on how to set this ^ all up... But… the gains are only incremental at best, b/c the bigger problem is the channels (ie email, LinkedIn inbox, soon to be phone) are just bombed out. My inbox certainly is a mess - but interestingly enough - I’ve gotten so good at scanning/deleting an email about lead generation services that’s clearly AI-generated in about .35 seconds - that ironically I don’t actually get that many well thought out human emails. So what’s my prediction for what works for cold outbound in 2025? Well nothing really - again the channels are bombed out and anything that does work won’t be a silver bullet and will only be a small incremental improvement.  But if there is one thing that might sort of work in 2025… I think it’s a return to manually written, well-thought out outreach. And a whole bunch of dials :) Long-term I think we need to rethink the underlying problem of trust and attention in B2B though - there’s a whole lot of energy being wasted.

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The other day I met with a founder & CTO who advises and scales early stage companies - with several successful exits under their belts. We talked about “what exactly is Rev Ops” and how if done right - we are a lean / mean strategic investment to drive GTM operations at scale. Many founders are doing exactly this type of work. But when a founder has to focus on sales, or marketing, or pmf, or, or, or….who is taking this lens. So we talked about the purposeful investments in ops and the strategic need for Rev Ops. Driving cross business alignment of gtm operations, tooling, data, and business strategy that fuels the revenue creation engine. Knowing what levers to pull by when, how, and to what outcome. Don’t grow at all costs. Don’t grow inefficiently. Grow sustainably using the levers you already have in your business. #revops #growtherightway

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How to pitch: The company has zero traction —> “We’re early” You only have 2 customers —> “We’re working with design partners” You currently have no revenue but hoping some pipeline finally closes —> “we’re on track to exit this year at $3M ARR” You’re in the natural kill zone of a FAANG —> “We view them as partners rather than competitors” There’s no way the tech can actually work —>“We’re manifesting the future” And of course: One of your developers uses Co-Pilot to write some front end code —> “We’re an AI company”

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To scale from $1M to $10M ARR, you need to turn your ad hoc GTM efforts into a well-oiled machine. This means creating repeatable processes across your entire GTM - from lead gen to sales to customer success. The good news for technical founders is that they're experts at solving complex engineering challenges with precision, efficiency, and structure. At this stage of startup growth, they need to apply that same systems-oriented mindset to GTM - which, for B2B startups, can be approached more as a science than an art. More in the May edition of B2BaCEO: https://lnkd.in/emsvFN9q

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Some tools I'm using in many of my consulting engagements right now (steal my tech stack—"Good artists copy, great artists steal": (For context, the type of engagements I'm doing include: automated PLG workflows, inbound automation, scoring, micro-campaigns, and automated warm outbound/signal-based selling). ~~In alphabetical order~~ [CRM] Attio (a new one in the mix) HubSpot Salesforce [Data] Apollo.io Clay (a spreadsheet with APIs into 80+ data providers and LLMs) Sumble ZoomInfo [Miscellaneous] Chili Piper (Lead routing) Default (next-gen lead routing) HeyReach (LinkedIn automation) Ocean.io (Lookalikes) [Signals] Apollo.io Champify Common Room Koala Orchestra Pocus RB2B UserGems 💎 ZoomInfo ••• The alpha is not in the technology. It's in the strategy. Remember, avoid catching "GAS" (gear acquisition syndrome). The tools used to execute the strategy is merely a means to an end.

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Folks put time on my calendar frequently, but I sometimes get the sense they're unsure what to talk to me about. To have a high quality convo with your CRO, here's the mindset👇 Two years into my role scaling up GTM as a CRO, I would describe my #1 job as debugging. I'm always keen to talk to folks at any level with creative ideas and a vision for where the business needs to go and how we can unblock more revenue. Here are some prompts to get you started on a great convo with your CRO: - What's your POV on where your team needs to go over the next 2-3 years? - What skills does the team need to develop and what metrics will they move? - What hidden opportunities exist in the business that could be captured with small operational changes (to process, packaging, cadence etc)? - If I asked you to 2x, 5x, 10x your business in 12 months, how would you do it? There is value in the perspective from every seat. Don't be afraid to bring forward your ideas and excitement -- it's exactly what we want to hear.

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"Only 17% of venture funds larger than $750M have ever returned to limited partner investors more than 2.5x TVPI net of fees and expenses compared to 25% of funds smaller than $350M. Said differently, a smaller fund is roughly 50% more likely to return more than 2.5x than a large fund. An even larger performance gap exists when measured by cumulative IRR, which is 17.4% in funds smaller than $350M versus just 9.7% in funds larger than $750M." * Sante Health Ventures II LP Sante Health Ventures I Annex Fund LP PitchBook https://lnkd.in/gEC5tsX8 * Calculated for all U.S. Venture Funds raised from 1990-2018. As of May 2023. Includes funds larger than $10M.

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Why Did Wiz Turn Down Google’s $23B Offer? Assaf Rappaport called it one of the hardest decisions he’s ever made. 😬 𝗪𝗶𝘇’𝘀 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: • $100M in ARR in just 18 months - fastest-growing SaaS company 🤑 • $500M in ARR to date • $1.9B in total funding, reaching a $10B valuation • Secured over 25% of Fortune 100 clients (Costco, Salesforce, Chipotle, and BMW) • Expanded from 40 employees in 2021 to a global presence, with offices in New York, Europe, and Asia-Pacific 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗗𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗥𝗮𝗽𝗶𝗱 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵? • Enterprise Focus - Targeted Fortune 500 companies, winning enterprise contracts • Competitive Edge - Quick product delivery and robust API provided a strong advantage over competitors like Palo Alto Networks • Market Timing - Post-pandemic, companies have increased investments in security ⏳ It’s clear why this acquisition appealed to Google but, why did Wiz reject $23B? 𝟯 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 1. IPO Ambitions - Wiz has been eyeing an IPO, aiming for a $100B valuation while retaining control of its future. 2. Regulatory Concerns - The deal could have faced regulatory scrutiny with BigTech acquisition (take HubSpot for example) 3. Market Validation - The CrowdStrike outage and Google’s interest validated Wiz’s belief in its market position and growth potential. Rappaport believes in himself and his team. 🔥 They had a few lucky moments with the pandemic and CloudStrike outage, but their results are not lucky by any means. Now, Wiz has the opportunity to take it all the way, and create public value. With the decrease in IPOs the past few years, we need more founders like Rappaport. Much credit to Rappaport and the Wiz team for pursuing IPO. 👏 #wiz #venturecapital #startups

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At most networking events… Business owners shake hands, exchange business cards, and go home. HumanX has a different approach. You’ll be paired together in 1:1 conversations with investors & AI startups. You’re not just adding people to your rolodex. Deals will be made.

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Winning early GTM via founder led sales is an essential step in building a consequential start up. 🎯 But, while there are countless conferences focused on scaling GTM once you've hit a couple million in revenue, to date there hasn't been a conference focused on FOUNDER LED SALES and nailing the earliest days of GTM. 👀 😅 That ends now. 🙌 Pear VC has helped 100+ founders learn how to sell, how to build their 0-to-1 sales engine, how to get from $0 ARR to $1M ARR -- and now we're introducing the first ever GTM CONFERENCE for EARLY STAGE FOUNDERS. ⭐ "Zero to $1M: Winning Early GTM" will be held in San Francisco, CA this September 5th! ⭐ If you're at the idea 💡, pre-seed 🌰 , or seed stage 🌱 , this is the GTM conference for YOU. Come hear from Pear veterans, industry leaders, and successful repeat founders like Sanjit Biswas (Samsara and Cisco Meraki Co-founder and CEO), and leave with actionable guidance to supercharge your startup’s revenue from day 1. ​ ➡ APPLY NOW! Space is limited, and the early application deadline is July 15th. Pepe Agell and I will review applications on a rolling basis. 🚀 CANNOT WAIT TO SEE YOU THERE! 🚀 #earlystageGTM #zeroto1M #founderledsales

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Ever noticed how many B2B SaaS companies talk about community-building these days? It seems that building communities is often seen as an extra effort rather than a main strategy. I think this might be because traditional marketing tactics are deeply embedded in these companies. But I've realized that focusing on genuine connections can lead to lasting business growth. Consider platforms like Slack, where familiar tools boost community activity. What approaches have you tried to make your community strategy a priority rather than an afterthought? - Btw, if you want to create your B2B community on Slack, Tightknit makes the entire process dead simple. Check them out at Tightknit (dot) ai. Thanks Tightknit for inviting me to be a part of this! Zach Hawtof Jakub Zajicek Demandi.co La Creme de la STEM ™ - female founders support system

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Who will best serve your path to product-market fit?  In the early days of your startup, chances are it’ll be a renaissance player.  I first learned the term from Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway’s 2006 article on the “Sales Learning Curve” (still an excellent piece) and it comes up constantly in my work with startups who are seeking product/market fit, or having to pivot.  #Leadership #Startups #RenaissancePlayer #ProductMarketFit  https://lnkd.in/ggcYYggM

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🚀 Attention Founders: The Power of Pro Rata Rights 🚀 Having been on both sides of the table - as a VC and a founder - I can't overstate the importance of pro rata rights in seed-stage investing. Why it's a win-win: +It keeps early believers invested in your success 🤝 +It helps maintain a balanced cap table 📊 +It can lead to smoother future funding rounds 💰 Why it's a pain for founders: -Later-stage investors may try to block seed investors' pro rata -Founders need to manage this dynamic carefully! As you navigate your funding journey, remember: fair terms build lasting partnerships. Maybe this round is hot, but what about the next when you need an extension? Keep your earliest supporters close and bought in! Go deeper into this topic with Scott Orn, CFA's insightful article - link in the original post. #StartupStrategy

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In 2020, we sold Voxbone for $519m. That experience taught me 5 invaluable lessons on how to build and scale a successful B2B SaaS company. These lessons were so transformative that they ultimately led me to build CustomerOS. It took years of trial and error, wrong turns, and painful mistakes to figure all this out. My pain is your gain. Here's what I learned... 👇

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I love data. Especially people data. It helps answer those lingering..."is it just me...or?" late night questions. The OpenView SaaS Benchmark Survey is one of those annual ones I always read and reference with the founders I work with. That's why I'm so excited that High Alpha is partnering with OpenView, Paddle and Kyle Poyar to launch the 2024 annual SaaS Benchmark Survey. And guess what -- it's live! If you want early-access to the report, be sure to participate and we'll be back in November to share insights. Link to survey below. https://lnkd.in/ey9FAgYV #SaaSBenchmarks

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Founders and VCs everywhere should collectively put a bullet in the term “unicorn”. If you sell your company or go public for $1B, then sure, you're a unicorn. Implied valuations based on minority investments? Different story. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Operate like your company is worth nothing. Keep your leaders, your board, your team, etc focused on long-term equity value - not your paper valuation today.

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