Why Old Playbooks Are Breaking and How AI Assisted GTM Actually Works | Dave Boyce

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Dec 10, 2025

In a fascinating discussion, Dave Boyce, a seasoned technology executive and author of 'Freemium', highlights the urgent need for B2B companies to ditch outdated sales and marketing playbooks. He unveils how the Bowtie model reveals hidden growth levers and why Product-Led Growth (PLG) thinking is crucial even for traditional sales. Dave explains three core principles of freemium—empathy, generosity, and metrics—while showcasing AI's role in streamlining customer journeys and enhancing self-service experiences. Tune in for insights on reimagining go-to-market strategies.

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INSIGHT

Legacy GTM Playbooks Are Outdated

GTM teams still run playbooks built 20 years ago and haven't been fully engineered for modern buyers.
Buyers now control the process and expect self-service, not seller-led discovery or demos.

ADVICE

Don't Scale By Adding Heads

Avoid the reflex to 'just add more heads' or higher spend as the growth plan.
Re-tool GTM around engineered systems rather than scaling headcount as the primary lever.

ANECDOTE

Fundly Reinvention Came Too Late

At Fundly Dave delayed calling the pivot and kept straddling strategies, which cost time and position.
Once he fully committed to the new direction after Series A, results improved but it was too late to be market leader.

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

Discussed in this episode

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

Episode highlights

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

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

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

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

08:30 — Why Freemium had to be written

11:01 — Three first principles of freemium

15:25 — Mapping AI across the entire customer journey

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

25:18 — What the Bowtie exposes that funnels hide

27:25 — Building a “minimum viable Bowtie

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: ZoomInfo

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

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

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

Learn more at zoominfo.com.

Follow Dave Boyce (Guest)

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

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