Adam Carr is the Chief Revenue Officer at Apollo, where he’s scaling revenue by layering sales on top of a $150M+ ARR product-led growth engine. Previously, Adam helped scale Miro from a PLG-led company into a global sales organization, contributing to its growth into a $17.5B business. He’s known for building systems-driven GTM teams that turn product signals into durable revenue.
Discussed in this episode
- Why PLG is gravity (signals + acquisition) and sales is the monetization layer
- The “one-team” model to prevent PLG vs. sales cannibalization
- Building talent density (and why slowing hiring can be the fastest path)
- Hiring for curiosity, coachability, ownership, and team-first execution
- The “architect / systems thinker” profile for modern sellers
- A new post-sales model: CSMs → technical GTM Engineers + intervention-led journey
- Using customer journey milestones to drive expansion and prevent churn proactively
- AI in GTM: streamlining manual work so humans focus on better conversations
Episode highlights
00:00 — PLG is about signaling + acquisition (not monetization)
01:30 — “PLG isn’t the monetization way… it’s layering sales.”
02:41 — Talent density: hire for the next 12–18 months, not just “today”
04:50 — The soft skills that scaled Miro: curiosity, coachability, ownership
08:38 — Why Adam hires “architects” (system thinkers) instead of just sellers
10:41 — The mindset shift: celebrate value realized, not contracts signed
15:41 — Replacing CSMs with “go-to-market engineers” + an intervention model
19:14 — Turning PLG signals into PQA/PQL routing (and reducing the “noise”)
29:26 — “100M ARR is late” — when to start layering sales into PLG
Guest links
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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.
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