The GTMnow Podcast

Friday Fundamentals 188: Carl-Erik Michaelson The GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

In this episode of the Sales Hacker Podcast, we have Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg, CEO and Co-founder at TicketCo, an event sales solution for organizers and venues. Join us for a playfulconversation about a wild guy who took a wild ride to become wildly successful at selling tickets.What You’ll LearnWhy money alone will will never be enoughFind love in what you do and for the people around youHow your early career will inform the later part of your career  Show Agenda and TimestampsAbout Carl-Erik & TicketCo [00:40]Biggest lessons in building a business [06:35]The power of remote work [11:03]Pay it forward [19:48]Sam’s Corner [00:00]The GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Erik Kostelnik is the CEO and founder of Postal. He is an award-winning entrepreneur and sales leader that has founded and scaled multiple tech companies that have led to hyper revenue growth and major capital investments.Erik gives his take on the possibility of a recession by explaining indicators like the IPO traffic jam, the commercial real estate situation, and rising debt.What You Will Learn:The value of strong network (and how to build one).Reading the current economic downturn.The three most important company metrics and why you prioritize them. Highlights:(2:40) The value of your network. (How to prune and develop a strong network).(9:27) Erik’s take on the current down market/looming recession.(10:50) Why it is going to be difficult for unicorns to IPO.(14:00) Why commercial real estate leasing could be a cliff.(21:40) The experience that changed the trajectory of Erik's career.(35:33) What Erik would do different in his career.(39:39) How to attract great talent in the down marke.(42:48) The three most important company metrics. (43:02) Why you can’t sacrifice your average revenue per employee and customer acquisition cost for bad talent.(46:20) Summary of Erik’s career learnings.Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikkostelnik Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Friday Fundamentals 187: Alex BucklesThe GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

In this episode of the Sales Hacker Podcast, we have Alex Buckles, Co-Founder and CEO of Forecastable, which helps people sell in partnership with other vendors to deepen traction, penetration and integration to extend customer lifetime value. Join us for an engaging conversation about developing and implementing new, effective go-to-market strategies.The GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Suresh Khanna is the Co-Founder and COO at Pieces. He is the former CRO and president of AdRoll Group, where he led the go-to-market strategy, scaled sales, success, and support teams from 10 to 400 people, and increased revenue from about $3 million to over $150 million when he left. Suresh also established award-winning training and development programs that helped the company win Best Place to Work multiple times What You Will Learn:How to build a performance culture that works.How AI advancement could impact go-to-market and agencies.How to maintain raw energy while scaling. Highlights:(5:12) Suresh’s background and story.(10:00) Why Suresh turned down a once-in-a-lifetime McKinsey job at 26.(12:22) Suresh’s experience at Google.(13:22) Why Suresh left Google for AdRoll.(14:39) Suresh’s success at AdRoll.(14:39) Suresh founding Pieces.(17:00) AI advancement and its potential impact on go-to-market and agencies.(25:21) How to build a winning performance culture.(28:54) How to find and hire people wired for greatness.(34:01) How to train managers to make better hiring decisions and scale the hiring process.(38:29) How to reduce new hire ramp-up time.(44:20) How AdRoll created a winning self-policing culture.(46:20) What Suresh would do differently.(49:15) How to keep the raw energy when rapidly scaling.(53:32) The number one reason startups fail.(57:30) Summary of Suresh’s career learnings.Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khannasuresh/Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Dini Mehta is the former CRO of Lattice, a people management software for growing companies. She’s an operating partner at Operator Collective, bringing together 150+ of the world’s most successful tech operators from a variety of backgrounds as Limited Partners (LPs), each with current experience building, growing, and running the world’s most admired companies.Additionally, Dini serves as a mentor, advisor, and angel investor.She discusses her journey from hating sales to deciding on it as a lifelong career, how her leadership and collaborative skills have grown, and how she dealt with loss of control as a leader during the pandemic.Highlights:(3:57) Dini Mehta’s background.(6:28) Dini’s take on AI.(9:10) How did Dini decide to get into sales?(15:24) How should founders plan for their incremental growth?(18:49) Making bets on business.(21:47) Deciding on whether to make a bet or shelve it.(25:49) Dealing with change during the COVID Season.(32:50) How to deal with loss of control as a leader.(40:23) How to articulate the need to adjust expectations without seeming like you’re avoiding a challenge. Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinimehta/ Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

In this month’s bonus episode, Max Altschuler and Scott Barker share updates and insights into what’s going on in the venture capital landscape.How do companies stay afloat during a recession? How do they build the right foundation to set themselves up to operate efficiently? When is the right time to ‘restart the car’? These and more are the questions they answer in this update.Highlights:(1:06) - Thanksgiving.(3:18) - The latest from GTMfund.(3:56) – Why is capital going to more experienced leaders?(7:25) - Tough times are the most rewarding.(9:11) - Setting the right foundation for long-term sustainability.(12:35) - When to restart the car (Focus on growth again).(16:15) - Get in touch with GTM.Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Chris Donato, CEO of Esellas, shares his lessons and experiences in the sales profession. He talks about finding purpose in work, taking big risks, and turning ideas into opportunities. He also discusses the challenges in transitioning from mid-market to enterprise sales and the importance of understanding power dynamics and navigating organizational politics.

May Habib is CEO and Co-Founder of Writer, the full-stack generative AI platform for enterprises. Writer empowers your entire organization to accelerate growth, increase productivity, and ensure compliance. May has worked in NLP and ML for 10 years, and before Writer, she founded and built Qordoba, a localization software company. She is an expert in AI-driven language generation, AI-related organizational change, and the evolving ways we use language online.She sits on the board of TechWadi, an organization that bridges MENA-based entrepreneurs with Silicon Valley-based VC and talent networks, and is a MELI Fellow with the Aspen Institute.May graduated from Harvard University and spends her time between San Francisco, where Writer is based, and London, where her two children live.Highlights:(01:40)  May’s introduction.(04:15)  May’s learnings from Lehman Brothers and the economic crisis of 2008/2009.(08:40)  What you need to consider when accessing capital in 2023.(12:57)  How much attention should you be paying to AI and its impact?(21:17)  What is going to happen to AI in 2023.(23:55)  Writer’s product-led growth motion and stories.(30:24)  The importance of consultative sales and how it impacts everything else in the business.(37:08)  How to recruit A-players in the macro-environment.(43:52)  Summary of May’s career learnings.Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/may-habib/Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTMnow Podcast 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.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.