Paul shares specific, actionable advice on how early-stage startups can win even when facing well-funded competitors who iterate at lightning speed. He also explains why distribution has become the final remaining moat when technical advantages disappear in months instead of years, and why every company needs a unique go-to-market motion tailored to their specific ICP. They also dive into the power of warm-introduction mapping and building authentic relationships with operators who can open doors.
Leaseweb has announced the appointment of Ronald Richardson as its new chief revenue officer, as the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider looks to capitalize on growing hybrid cloud demand. A seasoned industry executive, Richardson brings more than 20 years' experience of international commercial leadership across the tech, cloud, software, and online advertising sectors. Previously, he has served in senior leadership roles at high-growth B2B technology businesses - including Banyan, Microsoft,
For the past months I've been working on Wave - an open source, AI-native terminal that knows your context (we know, the hook still needs work). In this time, we've gone from zero daily active users (DAU) and zero GitHub stars at launch in November 2023 to approximately 3000 DAU and 12k GitHub stars today. My biggest lesson: The tried and trusted SaaS go-to-market (GTM) playbook doesn't apply for AI-native products. We're consciously breaking all my cardinal rules, such as:
Hosted by Startup Battlefield Editor Isabelle Johannessen, Build Mode is a survival guide for early-stage founders navigating the messy, high-stakes chaos of building a company from scratch. No sugarcoating. No hype. Just candid conversations and tactical advice from the people who've done it before and have the scars (and term sheets) to prove it. Starting November 13, Isabelle will sit down with founders, VCs, and operators to unpack the real stories behind the build.
In any enterprise application, user-provided data is often messy and incomplete. A user might sign up with a "company name," but turning that raw string into a verified domain, enriched with key technical or business contacts, is a common and challenging data engineering problem. For many development teams, this challenge often begins as a seemingly simple request from sales or marketing. It quickly evolves from a one-off task into a recurring source of technical debt.
David Castignola arrives with more than two decades' experience in accelerating growth and driving customer success. He joins Nasuni from Delinea, where, as CRO, he successfully integrated and scaled the worldwide sales organization following its merger. Previously, he also spent 20 years at RSA, where he created and led the customer response program during the RSA SecurID breach, and later served as CRO at Optiv, COO at BlackBerry Cylance, and CRO at Bugcrowd.
This week on Playbook Broken, we're speaking with Sangram Vajre, co-founder of Terminus and GTM Partners, who delivers sharp, unapologetic insights into modern go-to-market (GTM) strategies. Sangram discusses why the traditional sales funnel is outdated and how SaaS is transforming into services software. He emphasizes the importance of metrics over meetings and proposes a redefined approach to GTM. This episode also explores the impact of AI, services becoming the front end of software and the shift towards fractional roles in organizations.
