The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including:<\/p>\n
What\u2019s 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\u2014Centari, Atrix AI, and Gaiia\u2014break down how they\u2019re 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 \u201cdonut drop\u201d strategy, this episode is packed with practical, first-principles GTM plays you won\u2019t find in a sales playbook.<\/p>\n
Kevin Walker (Centari) \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
Vera Kutsenko (Atrix AI) \u2013 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\u2014recently authoring a viral book on AI in medical affairs.<\/p>\n
Steven Farnsworth (Gaiia) \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
If you missed GTM 151, check it out here:<\/em><\/strong> How to Scale Vertical SaaS in 2025 | Dennis Lyandres (Ex-CRO, Procore)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n 03:00 \u2013 Why Atrix AI scaled founder-led sales with viral content and thought leadership<\/p>\n 06:00 \u2013 The accidental (and wildly successful) AI & medical affairs book launch<\/p>\n 08:00 \u2013 Centari\u2019s early GTM strategy: legal empathy, cookies, and product conviction<\/p>\n 11:00 \u2013 Gaia\u2019s high-ACV model and why SDRs don\u2019t make sense for their TAM<\/p>\n 20:00 \u2013 The Donut Playbook: creating pipeline by showing up IRL<\/p>\n 23:00 \u2013 Why Chief of Staff was a critical early hire for scaling sales ops<\/p>\n 27:00 \u2013 How Gaia is thinking about building community in a slow-moving vertical<\/p>\n 28:00 \u2013 What\u2019s next: repeatability, vertical expansion, and community infrastructure<\/p>\n Guest Speaker Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Host Speaker Links (Paul Irving):<\/strong><\/p>\n Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund\u2019s media brand):<\/strong><\/p>\n Trinet<\/strong><\/p>\n Founding a company is hard enough. Navigating payroll, benefits, and compliance shouldn\u2019t slow you down. That\u2019s 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n Learn more at\u00a0https:\/\/trinet.com\/gtmnow<\/a><\/p>\n UserEvidence<\/strong><\/p>\n UserEvidence is the Customer Evidence Platform that lets you collect feedback, curate success stories, and create content that credibly proves the value of your product.<\/p>\n Learn more at\u00a0https:\/\/userevidence.com\/gtmnow<\/a><\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:\u00a0<\/strong>We\u2019re just kind of wowing the market with what we\u2019ve built.<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> if you\u2019re doing a strong founder-led sales motion, the hardest thing to scale is yourself<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> I did not expect it to go viral, and it did.<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> And the number of people who come up really excited about Gaiia, but are in year three of a 15 year contract, or a 10 year contract is shocking.<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> I\u2019m only one person. I can\u2019t be at every single trade show all the time. So I thought to myself, how do we scale this?<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> I\u2019m not convinced s we\u2019ll ever hire an SDR<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> Where we\u2019re right now, kind of transitioning from that C to series, A stage of Go-To-Market motion.<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> I never thought to ask the question.<\/p>\n Sophie Buonassisi:<\/strong> Before we dive in today, a quick important message from our sponsor. Partner TriNet, a trusted HR provider to startups and scaling companies. 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 most important parts of the journey.<\/p>\n 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. Trying to exist to make that easier. TriNet\u2019s Full suite of HR Solutions is designed to support companies at critical inflection points from early traction to scale.<\/p>\n Learn more@trinet.com slash GTMnow to see what\u2019s possible for your business. That\u2019s TriNet, T-R-I-N-E t.com\/gtm NOW. [00:02:00][00:03:00]<\/p>\n Wow. The feedback from last week\u2019s episode where we pulled back the curtain on a private episode from GTM Fund\u2019s annual general meeting, a GM was incredible. So. This is another special episode from the A GM and an extra special one because instead of my voice, this is a special host episode where GTM Funds partner and COO Paul Irving interviews three of our portfolio companies.<\/p>\n Vera Senco, founder and CEO of Atrix, ai. Steven Farnsworth, VP of GTM at Gaiia, and Kevin Walker, founder and CEO at Cent. These are three vertical SaaS startups talking about what is working in Go-To-Market. I think you\u2019ll really enjoy it.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> It\u2019s my honor to be up on the stage with three of three of my favorite people. We\u2019re very lucky to work with, but also do this particular panel. We talked about it earlier, but we obviously don\u2019t get to do panel discussions like this, but we also [00:04:00] don\u2019t get to do the A GM celebration of the funding community like this without our GTM operators.<\/p>\n Um, the investors we\u2019re lucky to work with. The same should be said, and maybe even more so of the founders that we\u2019re very grateful to be working with as well. So we\u2019re gonna talk about three of those teams and companies with a specific tone of what\u2019s working in GTM for everybody right now. And then maybe even some stuff we\u2019ll end at the end of what are the focus areas from here going forward?<\/p>\n Because we do have a lot of valuable people in this room, a lot of people who can make connections, introductions, hopefully unlock some of that value for you. So if we. Speak it into existence. Maybe we can get some connections made in the happy hour after this. I\u2019m sure most people here have heard us talk ad nauseum about Atrix and Centari and Gaiia, but it is much more meaningful when we hear it directly from yourself.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m gonna start with just some intros, if you don\u2019t mind. Kevin, I\u2019ll start with you at the end, just yourself, a little bit about Centari, what you guys are building and the stage you\u2019re at.<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> Great. Well, great to see everybody. I\u2019m Kevin Walker, founder, CEO at Centari. I started my career as a practicing attorney doing m and a at [00:05:00] Paul Hastings, and then went.<\/p>\n In-house for most of my legal career founded Ari primarily to tackle some of the problems I felt as a, as an attorney, and particularly around deal work. So ARI is a platform for deal intelligence, so it serves transactional practices at large law firms, and pretty soon financial services. So great to be chatting with all of you.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> Thanks Kevin. I\u2019m gonna pass the same, I\u2019m just gonna write down to Vera. Vera, if you could share a bit about Atrix yourself and what you are building.<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> Hi everyone. My name is Vera, founder and CEO at Atrix ai. So we work with the pharma and medical device industry with their medical affairs teams who are really important, critical function of a pharma company in helping capture real world insights when a drug goes out to market and we help them tap into that data so they can get insights and really measure the.<\/p>\n Impact of their efforts. So super excited to be here and, and share what works in, in a very regulated industry. So alongside you.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> Yes. No easy sales cycles, by the way, on the, on the panel, we got this on hard mode. last but not least, [00:06:00] Mr. Steven Farnsworth, a familiar face, I\u2019m sure for some of the folks in the room.<\/p>\n Been in LP since day one, but also, uh, VP of GTM at Gaiia.<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> Thank you and yes, good to see so many familiar faces here. I worked for Max at Outreach a long time ago now, and thankfully he did take my money. I guess it wasn\u2019t that hard to take when I, when I joined the GTM fund. But since then I\u2019ve been at Workato, our motto, which is also a port.<\/p>\n I was there first Go-To-Market hire, and then Gaiia for about a year. Gaiia is. It is essentially for the people not involved super deep into the telecom industry. It is CRM website, ERP, and billing software for NISP. So it is like the critical backbone for how internet service providers, which is a very distributed space across the country, outside of the.<\/p>\n Top tier one at and t Verizons that you\u2019re used to dealing with daily. It is a very distributed industry and we function as the backbone operating system for how they [00:07:00] operate. That\u2019s us.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> Amazing. Well, we\u2019re, we\u2019re excited to dive in a little bit and Vera, I\u2019m gonna go to you first. It\u2019s a pretty open-ended prompt, but as an early stage company, I mean seed stage company, working with some of the biggest and best pharma companies in the world, what\u2019s been working in GTM so far?<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> Yeah, great question. So as, as you guys know, probably pharma and medical device, very regulated industry, similar more to legal and, and FinTech very hard to sell into from an enterprise perspective. It\u2019s a very, and, and for context, I\u2019ve never, before Atrix done enterprise sales, so I\u2019ve kind of had to, you know, to, to warrant through in this really unique industry what has been working and.<\/p>\n And pharma in particular, it\u2019s very relationship driven industry, is probably, I would imagine is a across industries in, in the enterprise and what we\u2019ve seen really be effective in building relationships outside of the in-person trade shows. Right. And all of that that you\u2019ve probably already heard of is really starting to scale those relationships through producing things like content.<\/p>\n So when we initially closed our first [00:08:00] customer. I thought to myself, well, why did we close them? It was in person. I spoke on a topic of authority, which is AI in my case, and built credibility that way. I\u2019m only one person. I can\u2019t be at every single trade show all the time. So I thought to myself, how do we scale this?<\/p>\n So I started to create video content. And it\u2019s very cringe if you go, I\u2019m sure like way, way early on. But it, it\u2019s been a very effective way to that. Over the last year and a half has built kind of a, a following in AI and medical affairs space that has started to not only add oil to the kind of end-to-end, top of funnel to, to contract phase, but also with customer success.<\/p>\n And then recently, about maybe a month or two ago, I decided to run this little experiment where I\u2019ve done a lot of trainings in these, in these enterprises. Had all of this content. So I was like, let me create a LinkedIn post to talking about this book called AI in Medical Affairs. I did not have it written fully at the time.<\/p>\n I did not expect it to go viral, and it did. So [00:09:00] I think we had like over a thousand people that were very relevant, who commented, liked it, shared it. So that\u2019s an example of just from thought leadership and kind of content perspective. One way that I\u2019ve seen be effective in pharma. And scaling content. So it\u2019s,<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> the ebook story is one of my favorite founder led sales stories.<\/p>\n \u2019cause honestly, Vera wrote this LinkedIn post about a very real book that didn\u2019t exist about AI and medical affairs, and then had so many potential customers commenting underneath like, please send DM me, DM me, and various. Sent a screenshot over to us and said, I guess I need to write a book this weekend.<\/p>\n And she did. I mean, how, how many pages was it in the end?<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s like 315. I was,<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> I was expecting to get like a 35 page PDF and I got sent a 300 page book at the end of the weekend.<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s a, I mean, thank God for, for Chad g pt, but do not worry, it can came, he came through all my training content and I read it and I edited it.<\/p>\n So, you know, I can back all of the words that, that are in there, but I mean, that wouldn\u2019t have been possible before AI, to be honest. So thank God<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> it\u2019s, it\u2019s just really neat because you\u2019re, you\u2019re [00:10:00] experimenting a little bit before you go and do that work. \u2019cause you have limited resources to invest and Go-To-Market.<\/p>\n Of course. So where you focus your time is important. So you found the demand first and then back filled it and it\u2019s been, I know, a pretty cool source of top of funnel for you and the team. Kevin, I\u2019m gonna pass it over to you. \u2019cause in a similar state, I mean at the seed stage you were working with.<\/p>\n Some of the biggest and best law firms in the world. What was working in the early days of go-to-market for Centari and yourself?<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> Yeah, so it very, very similar. Those first deals being very relationship driven, lobbying, highly regulated, and very skeptical. Lawyers are skeptical of many things. If anyone here, are there any lawyers here?<\/p>\n Just outta curiosity? Just just two of us. Alright. Alright. Or there\u2019s a few more. Okay. Good. Not to out everybody at once, but, but it was a matter of going to, it\u2019s also a very closed network. So the large law firm space, there\u2019s a hundred, 200 large law firms, they actually have pretty, pretty deep spend on, on software.<\/p>\n So much larger than people typically realize. So they go to the same conferences, they kind of go to the same dinners. So the first few deals was very just, you know, me building those relationships. I think we took. Uh, the [00:11:00] same cookies from Maman Bakery to every conference we went to. So we kinda became known as like, oh, it\u2019s the cent entire cookies.<\/p>\n Uh, so that really worked and, and that got us our first Marques customers and then showed up with a product that we had conviction in that the customers believed in. It became a flywheel world, word of mouth. So that was the first cover, first few innings, and now we are in the mode of starting to scale sales and go to markets.<\/p>\n We just made. Uh, our first two strategic, you know, senior AE hires and building that playbook, kind of coaching them on my, you know, how did founder lead sales? I watched every GTMfund, you know, video and training and was talking to Paul, you know, every other week on how to approach this, you know, these first hires.<\/p>\n So I. That\u2019s where we\u2019re right now, kind of transitioning from that C to series, A stage of Go-To-Market motion.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> it\u2019s a really interesting time I think for legal tech as well, generally, just because if you look at, from a technology perspective, it is a fairly intuitive application of some of, some of the ai, both foundational models, but some of the other I.<\/p>\n You know, options there are available to those individual law firms, but they\u2019re probably having to make some difficult decisions. I\u2019d love to get the sense of what you\u2019re hearing of just build versus buy [00:12:00] for some of these enterprise law firms.<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> Yeah, so this, this has been really interesting and I\u2019m, I\u2019m sure this is gonna resonate with for other verticals as well, but we are seeing.<\/p>\n You know, those firms where there\u2019s someone in the firm who has a pet project and really has the edge to build something, and maybe they used to be a PM somewhere and now they want to, you know, bring that skillset to their, to a large law firm that they wanna shake up. And eventually the firm realizes that they are not a software company, that they are, you know, not a product company.<\/p>\n They\u2019re a services business for clients. So, and usually those projects fail from what we\u2019ve observed, but we occasionally see. Firms try to do it, and then they come to us after it has failed and we\u2019re, we\u2019re kinda stepping in as the, as the buy decision. So that\u2019s most common. There are a couple firms in our industry that are truly building like software teams from the ground up and hiring, you know, armies of data scientists and engineers.<\/p>\n That\u2019s very rare. But we have seen a, a couple of examples of. Someone gets to be in their bonnet to go, you know, build a gen I tool end to end. And in our, in our case at least, usually it doesn\u2019t work out for them. It\u2019s,<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> I mean, it\u2019s something that we\u2019re seeing I think, in a lot of different areas and verticals.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m sure some of our, our, you know, [00:13:00] GTM operators that are in the crowd would say the same thing, where there\u2019s a subset of customers that want to build it internally. They wanna try it themselves, but it\u2019s not just the build, it\u2019s the execution of it, the quality of it, but it\u2019s the maintenance of it too.<\/p>\n And, and you need to invest, I think, far more than people think when you hack together something over the weekend to really be sustainable. Especially when you\u2019re talking about. You know, really big customers and, and firms. Um, Steven, I\u2019m gonna kick kick it to you here \u2019cause I think guys an interesting Go-To-Market approach and I, I remember talking to you a little bit about it in the early days of, you know, you\u2019re building core infrastructure software for these telecom companies, but there\u2019s not an infinite number of potential customers that are out there.<\/p>\n So how does it change the way you and the team have thought about Go-To-Market when it\u2019s, you know, a smaller pool of water, so to speak, but still, you know, really big fish that you\u2019re going after. Y<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> Yeah. Just for context, there are 2200 ISPs we can sell to in the us and that\u2019s, I should say, that\u2019s our tam in terms of who\u2019s actually in a buying cycle and is maybe potentially in market this year, it\u2019s probably just a couple hundred, [00:14:00] which is why traditionally this space is, it\u2019s a very distributed space in terms of our competitors and when we go out and understand from the market how many logos they\u2019re winning a year, it\u2019s, it\u2019s, they\u2019ve got a rep or two and they\u2019re winning.<\/p>\n Five to six logos a year. Like this is a very slow moving space and very few people are migrating. I talked to, we were just at this big conference in Nashville, it\u2019s like our Super Bowl for this space. And the number of people who come up really excited about Gaiia, but are in year three of a 15 year contract, or a 10 year contract is shocking.<\/p>\n So like, it\u2019s just, it\u2019s becoming, you know, a few months ago, I never thought to ask the question. I\u2019m still relatively new there, but now it\u2019s like. Okay, you\u2019re excited. Awesome. How long? How long? Because I can\u2019t get creative on, on nine years left of your contract or whatever it is. And so we\u2019re, we\u2019re stuck.<\/p>\n So for us, we have to be really conscious of, okay, if there\u2019s only a limited number, how do we, it is so [00:15:00] paramount for us to get in front of them and to figure out how to, how to get that consideration when we\u2019re there. And so for us it\u2019s the, the playbook, like outreach is where I, you know, met a lot of you from.<\/p>\n Where you hire a bunch of SDRs and you go to markets and I see Lars and a few other people looking like this. This is the playbook that that, that I think many people still run. I\u2019m not convinced s we\u2019ll ever hire an SDR like in in our world it is. I, I think I\u2019m gonna have a few AEs and today, we\u2019ll, we\u2019ll have probably about one and a half to two AEs that we\u2019ll do about 7 million a RR this year.<\/p>\n And so we\u2019re doing high a CV deals. We can only do, we\u2019ll do about a dozen a quarter, which is unheard of for the space. But it\u2019s, it\u2019s, so our velocity, our product velocity is really high and people are seeing that. But for us it\u2019s, we have to be value every relationship so, so carefully. And so, you know, you mentioned the events and trade shows and get building relationships.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know yet the way that we\u2019re gonna scale this to today, [00:16:00] because today it is just us on a plane constantly to go be at these trade shows, to go interact with these people so that they know who we are. And from there we\u2019ve been able to somehow, we\u2019ve been able to drive deal cycles very quickly, but I don\u2019t know how long that\u2019ll last today.<\/p>\n We\u2019re just kind of wowing the market with what we\u2019ve built.<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> Yeah, very, very similar. Just to echo that very, very similar feeling here with kind of. And maybe that\u2019s a, I\u2019m curious how much of that is a broader trend with sales today where that relationship does matter more and more As gen AI is, you know, more and more prevalent and firms are getting, you know, fatigued by pilots and by the deluge of, you know, AI generated email sequences, that relationship, personal touch showing up at the trade shows just feels so, you know, really feels like, you know, the way to get that, that mind share.<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> Yeah, I, I mean, I think a lot of that will be dependent on the tam itself. Like somebody, like, I don\u2019t think Kyle Norton\u2019s here, is he from like the, you know, we, we all see him on talking about owner online. There\u2019s I think a quarter million restaurants or something in the us. Like they\u2019re not gonna know all of [00:17:00] them by name.<\/p>\n AI and, and the way that they go scale is gonna be totally different. But in a, in a market, like, it sounds like the three of us are in, like, I can actually know the names of most of the accounts that we\u2019re gonna go after, and I can know. By name and by face. A lot of the leaders that are gonna buy my product this year or next year.<\/p>\n And so it\u2019s, it\u2019s why bring in an SDR some other motion to try to like kinda create that middle layer today. It\u2019s important for our whole executive team to know who these accounts are and to work with them. So it\u2019s, it\u2019s, it\u2019s a big support system around the seller.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> I\u2019m now just known I, I, take me out of it.<\/p>\n No one wants to hear from me. They\u2019ve already heard enough from me. I, we should have named the panel Making unscalable scalable. I feel like this is the theme of what a lot we\u2019re talking about. Vera, I\u2019m gonna go back to you on one of the things that you\u2019ve been doing, which has been really interesting, and it\u2019s the same idea where, you know, a lot of these buyers at the accounts you\u2019re going after, which accounts are, are sort of the qualified people you should be talking to, and you\u2019ve been pulled in because there\u2019s a lot of interest in AI and how they should be using it to do almost like workshops on AI and how it would work in their [00:18:00] organization as a way to create some top of funnel.<\/p>\n How have you found success, or how have you been thinking about turning that into urgency to actually buy, so like the excitement and the interest in getting in the door and building a relationship, but trying to transition that into real velocity on the buying part. It.<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> Yeah, I think that\u2019s a great question.<\/p>\n I\u2019m actually, you know, curious if anyone else has, has tried a similar emotion. So for this it is, it\u2019s an experiment for us. So I, I don\u2019t quite know if, if this kind of Go-To-Market model will be effective, but the reason why it came about was because we sell into medical affairs. They\u2019re MDs Pharm, these, they\u2019re very smart people, but they\u2019re not tech experts.<\/p>\n So, you know, pharma as an industry, I would qualify them as a very sophisticated data buyer. They\u2019re, they understand data, but they\u2019re not sophisticated software buyers and especially medical affairs. So when we\u2019re trying to sell a solution that is a sophisticated AI solution, the way that it has to be sold, there\u2019s some educational components that have to be involved to [00:19:00] also create, uh, signals through noise of all the other vendors that are like, we have all these AI solutions and it\u2019s just a GPT wrapper.<\/p>\n Right? But, but medical affairs isn\u2019t. They don\u2019t have the language or the framework to evaluate that. So anyway, so, so we started to get requests to do AI trainings for medical affairs teams within the organizations. And the hypothesis ultimately is, you know, one, would that help us get one into the account to meet everyone there and be on the ground within the organization.<\/p>\n You know them talking about their confidential stuff within those confines to be able to then gather intelligence to qualify or disqualify them. So I recently did a training for Alexion, which is an AstraZeneca subsidiary, and you know, what became clear for through that example is that I don\u2019t think they\u2019re ready for, for an AI solution.<\/p>\n That\u2019s good to know. Because then maybe next year we dedicate our times because every relationship matters. And you know, if you have two people maybe building those [00:20:00] relationships, you want them to prioritize their time. So, so that\u2019s kind of, you know, the high level there. So using it more as a qualification.<\/p>\n Yeah. Step<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> and, and, and anyone too, if you have tips for VE on how to leverage some of the thought leadership work that you\u2019ve done in your GTM works and turn it into buying urgency, I\u2019m sure she would be all ears. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> And Kevin, back to you. So I. I was interested \u2019cause I think when we, when we were originally talking to customers that you had been talking to was I guess a little over a year now with Centari.<\/p>\n I think one of the things we heard over and over again was the thoughtfulness of your approach and LA\u2019s approach with the product and the way that you thought about the customer problems. And it felt a little bit like some of that stemmed from some of these big firms having to make a lot of technology decisions really quickly.<\/p>\n And wanting to feel like they\u2019re being sort of heard or understood. I, I\u2019m curious if you\u2019ve heard, like what\u2019s, what frustrations you\u2019ve heard within, you know, the enterprise buyers and legal tech over the last little bit.<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s, it\u2019s interesting because our, our market has, I mean, probably similar to other, other [00:21:00] verticals, your end users, associates and partners at these law firms and, and then your buyers, which are the innovation teams, knowledge management teams.<\/p>\n Sometimes teams have just been spun up in the last two years to kind of go. Explore gen ai. And of course there\u2019s whole separate conversation around the risks of that and how you need to really prove value to the end user and make sure you stick the landing. \u2019cause the, you know, there is a cycle of innovation.<\/p>\n We have to think long term there. But I\u2019d say for the, for the buyer profile, they are pilot fatigued, they\u2019re inundated with vendors. The pain points that we\u2019re solving there are demonstrating, you know, helping them look good to their stakeholders, which is firm management. That\u2019s usually said, we have an innovation mandate, we\u2019re gonna hire this innovation team.<\/p>\n If we can make them look good, help them demonstrate. ROI, we\u2019ve, we\u2019ve won that, that half of the equation. Then with the associates and partners, the practicing attorneys, and I go back to attorneys being skeptical. \u2019cause I, I am a very skeptical attorney myself. I was in the buyer\u2019s seat before and was always very, you know, questioning what I was, what I was being sold.<\/p>\n So with that stakeholder, it\u2019s demonstrating, look, we hear [00:22:00] you, people on our team have been in your seat. We empathize with your problem. And just really that, that personal touch of like. You know, we have formed our own organization around the identity of our, of our end users. So we\u2019ve hired attorneys from top law firms like Kirkland and from Davis Polk and others.<\/p>\n And so we\u2019re able to evangelize directly to. The pain points they care about. And that\u2019s, that\u2019s great. \u2019cause they\u2019re getting pitched by a lot of, you know, vendors that don\u2019t have that same, that same ethos and empathy for the problem. Uh, so it\u2019s kind of been a two-sided equation for us in that way. Yeah,<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> that\u2019s really interesting.<\/p>\n And so a lot of it is that, yeah, the customer empathy and understanding as a way to accelerate some of the decision making that, you know, I, you can just, you can understand the position they\u2019re in, where they feel overwhelmed, they need to make big decisions, but don\u2019t know if they\u2019re talking to a lot of vendors that understand truly what they\u2019re going through, what their pain points are and what they wanna solve.<\/p>\n Steven, I\u2019m gonna go to you. We, we got the Centari cookies and, and now we might get the Gaiia donuts. I think I had, I had dinner with Mark Andre, the founder of Gaiia last, last week, and he was telling me about the donut playbook. So I was [00:23:00] gonna ask what\u2019s working for Gaiia, but I think I might need to spill the beans on the, the donut playbook as well.<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> Uh, probably not prepared to call it a playbook. Oh, hey, we just did. But what we\u2019ve, there are again, a few number of accounts that matter to us. We just, I just tried this out. It was maybe a dumb idea, but I think it got us some really great exposure. Since we\u2019ve hired our second rep, it\u2019s allowed me to not have to be at every single trade show.<\/p>\n And so I asked, I\u2019ve asked the reps recently, Hey, where can I be? Is there some account that you wanna break into? Or an account that if I could be on site that I could go accelerate the deal? Where should I go while you\u2019re out at this next event? And so I\u2019ve recently been down in a big drive through Southern Utah.<\/p>\n A, I showed up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and then done in Oklahoma City to Dallas Drive. And in each case, what I\u2019ve done is before having planned any sort of trip, we\u2019ve manufactured some interest with a key counter two by saying, I\u2019m going to be in town, [00:24:00] and I\u2019m sure everyone\u2019s done this lots of times.<\/p>\n And then of course they say, yes, I\u2019d love to go to dinner. And then I book my flight and say, okay, I\u2019m gonna be there. And so I go and meet a two, one or two of these accounts. But if I\u2019m gonna be there and I\u2019ve got a. A breakfast and a dinner. I have a whole data fill. So this AI has been actually relatively difficult for us to apply in our small TAM business.<\/p>\n And I\u2019d love ideas for many of you, but one thing it has been helpful for is when I have a specific location in mind, I can say, help me understand all the different accounts in their locations, their office locations. \u2019cause most of them have physical locations for us that are within an hour or two of this area.<\/p>\n I go call the local donut shop. I buy 15 to 20, do dozen donuts. I get a rental car and I am meeting for breakfast with one of these accounts. And then I spend the next nine hours driving around in a circle around these little, you know, rural areas in dropping off donuts with. Some brochures, my business card, [00:25:00] whatever, shaking the hands of the people at the front desk, who in many cases are our customer service reps who interact with a lot of what we do.<\/p>\n Again, these, in many cases, we may have a high A CV, but the business might be 50 people in many cases. And so if I do this right. The CEO, the leaders, they know about us and then if I go do this at multiple locations of the same account, they\u2019re all sending each other messages. Hey, did you guys get donuts?<\/p>\n You, we showed up. And so we\u2019ve driven some real interest and awareness at these accounts that. Just never would hear about us. They may never actually go to these trade shows through us just showing up in this random city that no vendor has any business showing up to. But the fact that we just we\u2019re doing this in a a more efficient way around these other meetings has been something that\u2019s allowed us to, I.<\/p>\n To drive some real pipeline and awareness for the future. And so that\u2019s, again, it\u2019s not, that sounds like a playbook. I\u2019ve gotta<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> figure out more. We, we can, we, we pulled it<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> around.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> That sounds like it\u2019s certain to, we have, we have a<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> notion doc to try to capture what we think could become a playbook, but it\u2019s, it\u2019s something early we\u2019ve [00:26:00] done and it\u2019s, it\u2019s allowed us to start getting in front of people that we just wouldn\u2019t otherwise be able to capture and talk to.<\/p>\n It builds a lot of credibility for our, at least our brand in the space.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> And a very important follow up question. Did you bring donuts today, Steven? I didn\u2019t, and I<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> tried. I put them in the trunk so that I don\u2019t eat a whole box.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> I\u2019m driving around. That was like a<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> learning from the, the first one.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> I, I didn\u2019t, and, and Kevin Vera, I\u2019m sorry.<\/p>\n I\u2019m gonna do this. I didn\u2019t prep you for this question, but I think it\u2019s a really interesting one. \u2019cause we talked about how difficult it is to scale some of the founder-led sales stuff that you\u2019re doing and both of you. Identified hiring a chief of staff is actually like one of the earlier hires that you did to help scale.<\/p>\n And I just would love to, not even the what, but like the why of, of sort of where that became a really important first hire. And Kevin, I\u2019ll start with you.<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> Yeah. We, we just, we just made our first, you know, chief of staff hire about a month ago who\u2019s fantastic and, and works here in New York with me. And we, it, it was that, that becomes, if you\u2019re doing a strong founder-led sales motion, that is the hardest thing to scale is yourself of course.<\/p>\n And so having someone who you can really rely on too. Yeah, start to scale everything [00:27:00] else that you would be doing. And this particular hire we made was, uh, one of the first, uh, employees outta FinTech a number of years back, and kinda was there, you know, soup to nuts. So really saw that, uh, we, we looked for someone who had been on the zero to one startup journey in particular.<\/p>\n So we weren\u2019t trying to find someone who was gonna learn startups for the first time as someone who really knew how to, um, you know, be successful at this stage of the business and hit the ground running. Because critically for me it was, I don\u2019t want to have to. You know, train anyone on the job. At this stage, we\u2019d meet someone who are, do you know, doers on day one.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s been really, really effective and helpful for us.<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> That\u2019s awesome. We should exchange notes \u2019cause we\u2019re, we\u2019re still recruiting. So if you guys have any good chief of staff candidates that have early stage startup experience please and, and also enterprise or B2B would be super awesome, but very similar.<\/p>\n I think I\u2019m the one Go-To-Market person at our company. We\u2019re very engineering product heavy from like a headcount perspective. And the hardest thing to scale with founder-led sales is your time. So really [00:28:00] having someone come in who can. Put processes around some of the things we see working like a donut playbook.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll say, I tried candles, I did make candles for prospects. I\u2019ll not say that, that\u2019s a playbook to, to follow though, but, but I think in a similar vein, the chief of staff ideally could be someone to scale the Go-To-Market operations and if they can support the relationship management piece and really have executive presence, I think that\u2019s a, that\u2019s a nice to have.<\/p>\n But then I think maybe that veers a little bit more towards like the true. Sales aside from a higher perspective, so.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> It\u2019s, it\u2019s, we were worried about Steven eating too many donuts. I\u2019m worried about you burning your car, or something like that. Carrying around too many candles. I know we just have a couple of minutes left, so I, I wanted to end on, on just sort of where you and the team are focusing most of your efforts or sort of what are the big strategic initiatives on the revenue side of the business that you\u2019re spending a lot of your time on right now?<\/p>\n And, and I\u2019ll, I\u2019ll start Steven with you. And the idea is, I, I would love to hear if anybody in the room, you know, in the happy hour later has some ideas for these. [00:29:00] But yeah, I wanted to end on a note of. Of what\u2019s the big initiative for the team right now?<\/p>\n Steven Farnsworth:<\/strong> One of the things I think we\u2019ve done, and I, I honestly think this has changed the trajectory of Gaiia, and it may seem very simple, is.<\/p>\n At these events that we go to, these trade shows, we\u2019ve been holding these really non-salesy operator focused dinners and everyone\u2019s done dinners around events, so it\u2019s, I, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re reinventing the wheel, but we\u2019ve, I think that we\u2019re at Workato, for example, where I was before we had a. Suite at the Warrior Stadium and Stadium, and we would beg people to come.<\/p>\n And you guys know what it\u2019s like to sell to leaders in San Francisco. Nobody shows up. It\u2019s crazy. It\u2019s the finals. You can\u2019t come on. Seriously, this space is just a, is different. We\u2019ve, we\u2019ve been able to get exposed to very, very senior folks through these dinners. Again, non-salesy, getting great people in a room.<\/p>\n It\u2019s ended up being a huge source of pipeline for us of brand awareness. It\u2019s been amazing for us. What I\u2019d be really curious and something that we\u2019ve been noodling on, and I think it\u2019s finally [00:30:00] time for us to jump in, is we do this at these major events, but then in the, in, in between, these people clearly crave community.<\/p>\n They, they want it. And these are people who again, might be in year three of a 10 year contract, they have no interest in Gaiia in the near term, but we, they, they want to be part of this. They want this community and I. Again, in a B2B Tech world, say, great, let\u2019s start another Slack group, and it\u2019s one of my 10 that I\u2019m in.<\/p>\n And I can see that that is not the case here. It\u2019s, it\u2019s, they\u2019re, they\u2019re using different tech. We\u2019re, we\u2019re not quite sure the best way to, to do this. And so I\u2019m, I\u2019m really curious for people who have created this, almost this feedback cycle of dinners and communities and local events. We, we need to do this.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m not quite sure the right way to do so yet, but that is going to be an initiative that I take very, very seriously to. Take my accounts that will, you know, that I, I hope are friends of ours and prospects of ours for, you know, in five years and wanna work with us.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> I\u2019m, I\u2019m sure, I know we have some community builders in the house here, so I\u2019m hoping we\u2019re gonna have some, some [00:31:00] good ideas.<\/p>\n And even just the technology enablement side, which you mentioned is not what you would expect when you would build a tech company, a community, so to speak, and try to support it. Vera, how about yourself?<\/p>\n Vera Kutsenko:<\/strong> Well, I was gonna say, I would love to exchange insights. \u2019cause one of the things I\u2019ve been thinking about pharma\u2019s very in person, relationship driven as well.<\/p>\n So outside of doing dinners at trade shows, which everyone does, how can we enable kind of repeatability and consistency? Creating those types of environments, like in New York or, or wherever, throughout the year to kind of encourage pipeline. Although I will say I, I don\u2019t think most of the pharma contracts are like 15 years, but maybe three years.<\/p>\n So a little bit more achievable. So from, from our perspective, what I\u2019ve been really thinking about is just repeatability. So how do we. You know, pharma sales cycle is also very slow, but re referenceability or word of mouth is so critical. Like I, if you have an existing customer that speaks very highly of you, it just, it\u2019s such a switch to like convert to a contract.<\/p>\n So almost just thinking of, okay, we have what we have [00:32:00] today. We know bits and pieces that are working, what can we do to enable repeatability in, in this kind of complex environment? So.<\/p>\n Kevin Walker:<\/strong> Great. Yeah. I think for, for us it\u2019s, we are starting to pursue a market expansion, play into financial services. I think I mentioned earlier, and it\u2019s a very interesting, you know, problem to solve where you have a kinda a playbook that\u2019s working for one vertical.<\/p>\n You have a product that can very well be deployed at a different vertical. But, you know, trying to attack that in a way that\u2019s not too distracting and doesn\u2019t cannibalize the core market that you\u2019ve, you\u2019ve built. Uh, so if anyone has gone through that motion of, you know, spinning up a. An adjacent vertical for a similar product and found a good way to approach that all years.<\/p>\n Paul Irving:<\/strong> Amazing. Well, I, we were, you know, very appreciative of the applause earlier, but I think the largest applause of the day should go for our founders here. So thank you very much for coming. This has been fantastic.<\/p>\n Alright, Sophie here again. And that wraps up the special, special edition episode. Hope you enjoyed this style of conversation. If you have any feedback, drop me a line on email [00:33:00] responding to the GTM Now podcast email. It goes to our team. I do personally read and respond to every single email also, or on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n Would love to hear your thoughts. If you enjoy this podcast overall too, it would mean the world if you could leave us a review on the platform that you listen on. YouTube, apple, Spotify, wherever you tune in, you know the drill. This helps us continuously grow the podcast. We can continue to bring on the guests that you wanna hear from on the topics and areas that you wanna hear most about.<\/p>\n Thank you. Appreciate you. Have a great day and catch you next week.<\/p>\n The post GTM 152: What\u2019s Actually Working in GTM Right Now: Lessons from Centari, Atrix AI, & Gaiia<\/a> appeared first on GTMnow<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube What\u2019s 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\u2014Centari, Atrix AI, and Gaiia\u2014break down how they\u2019re closing enterprise deals in some of the most challenging verticals: legal, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":760,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Highlights:<\/h2>\n
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\nGTM 152 Episode Transcript<\/h2>\n