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The GTMnow Podcast

The GTMnow Podcast

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The GTMnow Podcast interviews well-known tech executive, VC, and founders - the expert operators in the trenches who have ‘been there, done that’ to build some of the fastest-growing software companies. Every week, a guest joins Sophie Buonassisi to dissect their stories, revealing expert insights around what worked, what didn’t, and how things actually went down.

This podcast is produced by GTMnow, the media brand of GTMfund - sharing insight on go-to-market from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by over 350 of the best go-to-market executives. GTMfund is an early-stage VC fund focused on investing in the most exciting, up-and-coming B2B SaaS companies across the world. The LP network consists of VP and C-level Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success leaders from companies like DocuSign, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Snowflake, Okta, Zoom, and many more.

Visit gtmnow.com for more details and to sign up for our newsletter and other content resources.

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Episodios
  • How One Hackathon Took Zapier’s AI Usage From 10% to 97% | CEO of Zapier

    How One Hackathon Took Zapier’s AI Usage From 10% to 97% | CEO of Zapier
    Apr 8 2026

    Wade Foster is the CEO of Zapier, a company that sits between 7,000+ apps and runs millions of automations every single day. That gives him a front-row seat to how companies are actually adopting AI, not just talking about it.

    In this episode, Wade breaks down the exact decisions he made at Zapier to go from 10% AI usage to 97% company-wide, why agents and workflows are not the same thing, and what most leaders are getting completely wrong about AI fluency.


    What you'll learn:

    • The difference between agents and workflows (and when to use which)

    • What triggered Zapier's internal "Code Red" after GPT-4 launched

    • The one-week hackathon that took AI adoption from 10% to 50% overnight

    • The AI fluency rubric Zapier built: Unacceptable, Acceptable, Adaptive, Transformative

    • Why leaders who aren't using AI are the biggest bottleneck in their companies

    • How to measure AI ROI: floor raisers vs ceiling raisers

    • How AI now handles 50% of Zapier's customer support tickets

    • Wade's personal "advisory council" of AI sub-agents he uses for every major decision

    • Why building a company today is 10x cheaper but distribution is 10x harder

    • The truth about fundraising: you're selling your company, not raising money

    • How Zapier stayed profitable by only hiring when it hurt


    Guest: Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadefoster/

    Company - Zapier: https://zapier.com


    Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP Marketing at GTMnow

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

    Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com


    Episode highlights
    0:00 - Intro

    1:13 - The Seinfeld Quote & Kanye Text story

    3:16 - Workflows vs. Agents: What's the difference?

    6:09 - Zapier's Code Red moment

    8:55 - The hackathon that moved AI adoption from 10% to 50%

    12:06 - Making AI fluency a hiring requirement

    13:47 - Building the AI fluency rubric

    16:40 - Why leaders are the biggest AI bottleneck

    18:12 - Revenue impact of going AI-first

    22:09 - Would Wade build Zapier differently today?

    23:20 - Is Zapier's moat at risk from agents?

    24:59 - Staying profitable with minimal capital

    28:37 - The riskiest contrarian bet that paid off

    31:52 - Wade's 3 personal AI workflows

    36:53 - Favorite books for founders


    GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund, sharing go-to-market insights from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by 350+ of the best GTM executives.

    Subscribe for weekly episodes with the operators, founders, and investors behind the fastest-growing software companies.
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    39 m
  • VC: Investing at Inception in the Age of AI Agents | Ed Sim (Founder & GP, Boldstart)

    VC: Investing at Inception in the Age of AI Agents | Ed Sim (Founder & GP, Boldstart)
    Apr 1 2026
    Ed Sim has been a VC for 30 years. He's backed companies like Clay, Front, BigID, and Snyk. He writes What's Hot in Enterprise IT every single Saturday, 489 weeks in a row. And right now, he says this is the most exciting and terrifying moment he's ever seen in his career.In this episode, Max and Ed break down what's actually happening inside startups and boards right now, why the old playbooks are dead, and what separates the companies that will survive this AI shift from the ones quietly getting killed by it.Discussed in this episodeWhy engineering is no longer your bottleneck (and what is)The 5 P's Ed uses to evaluate every inception-stage investmentThe autonomous enterprise thesis and what it means for how companies are builtWhy AI-native leadership is now a survival reqxtuirement, not a nice to haveThe full Clay story: $600K to $100M ARR, how they stayed lean, and what actually unlocked growthThe 3 CH's framework for being a great board partner to foundersWhy the best founders today are inside the AI jet stream, not chasing itWhat every board meeting sounds like right nowEpisode highlights0:00 Intro & 1:05 Episode Preview: Ed Sim & Key Takeaways3:10 The Jet Stream Analogy: Two Types of Companies5:43 How GTM Operators Should Evaluate Companies Like Angel Investors7:20 The Collapsing of Moats & AI-Native Business Opportunities10:00 Rebuilding Industries vs. Selling Software to Them15:00 Why Old GTM Playbooks Are Dead17:46 Ed Sim's Background: From Cutco to 30 Years in VC21:43 The Five P's of Inception Investing23:04 How to Evaluate Potential & TAM in a Fast-Changing Market25:40 Staying Ahead of the Jet Stream as a Founder26:32 The Autonomous Enterprise Thesis28:44 Agent of the Week: How Companies Should Adopt AI Agents29:10 How Agents Are Changing Engineering Bottlenecks31:15 What Incumbents Must Do to Survive the AI Wave32:53 Intercom, Snowflake & How Legacy Companies Are Adapting36:43 The Clay Story: How They Found Their Footing38:33 The Three C's of Working With Founders (Cheer, Challenge, Chill)40:07 Clay's Growth Trajectory: $600K to $100M+ ARR41:10 Clay's Agency GTM Model & Community Moat43:50 Ed's Fund Model: $500K to $15M Checks at Inception46:57 What's Hot in Enterprise IT & Venture Right Now48:03 Closing RemarksKey takeaways1. Engineering is no longer your bottleneck. Your people are. Code is shipping faster than your sales, marketing, and customers can absorb it. The constraint has flipped completely and most companies haven't noticed yet.2. Painkillers beat vitamins every time. The only startups worth backing at inception are solving a hair-on-fire problem someone desperately needs fixed, not a nice-to-have they can live without.3. The 3 CH's of being a great board partner. Know when to Cheer (when founders are getting beaten up), when to Challenge (when they feel invincible), and when to Chill (when they just need breathing room to figure it out). Elliot used all three with Clay to perfection.4. If your CEO came from sales, you are in trouble. Surviving this AI shift requires product-driven, agent-native leadership at the top. The companies that adapted, Snowflake, Intercom, Atlassian, all changed leadership first.5. The best founders are inside the AI jet stream, not chasing it. The question Ed asks every founder today: are you struggling to keep up, or are you the one constantly shipping and adapting faster than anyone can copy you?Thank you to our sponsorConnect with Ed: https://x.com/edsim / edsim Connect with Max: https://x.com/hackitmax / maxaltschuler Connect with Paul:https://x.com/PaulGTM / paulsirving GTM Now is the media extension of GTM Fund, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage B2B companies. Every episode features the operators, investors, and founders defining what modern go-to-market looks like.GTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/
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    50 m
  • How Sophos Scales Customer Success for 600,000 Customers in a 24/7 Cyber Threat Environment, with Teresa Anania, SVP of Customer Experience

    How Sophos Scales Customer Success for 600,000 Customers in a 24/7 Cyber Threat Environment, with Teresa Anania, SVP of Customer Experience
    Mar 24 2026
    This episode was recorded prior to Teresa Anania’s move to Chief Customer Officer at Verint. At the time of recording, she was SVP of Customer Experience at Sophos.Teresa Anania (CCO at Verint, formerly CCO at Sophos) joins GTMnow to share how she's built customer success into a true revenue engine at a company serving 600,000 customers across over $1 billion in annual revenue, and why the old reactive, relationship-based CS model is no longer cutting it.At Sophos, the threat landscape is compounding fast. AI is accelerating the speed and sophistication of attacks, which means response times, customer journeys, and success motions all have to evolve in lockstep in order to keep up. Teresa has spent her career at companies like Zendesk, Autodesk, and ON24 building the operational frameworks that make that possible at scale.Mentioned Resources: Cleverbridge: Merchant of Record for Software & SaaS​Guest links: Teresa Anania - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresa-anania/Sophos - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sophos/Sophos - Website: https://www.sophos.com/Host links:Sophie Buonassisi - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/Sophie Buonassisi - X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuonaNewsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.comSponsors: - HockeyStack - the AI platform that unifies GTM data to help teams convert, expand, and scale. Learn more at https://www.hockeystack.com/- Nooks - the AI workspace for outbound teams, where AI agents handle prospecting, research, and sequencing so reps can focus on conversations. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/- Cleverbridge – the digital commerce platform helping enterprises optimize post-sale revenue through renewals, winbacks, and add-ons with buyer-friendly purchasing experiences. Learn more at https://grow.cleverbridge.com/lp/digital-commerceTranscript available under the episode here: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/Subscribe to GTMnow for the latest episodes! https://gtmnow.com/Highlights:00:00 – Sophos at a glance: 600K customers, $1B+ in revenue, and why cybersecurity keeps growing when everything else slows down01:51 – AI vs. AI: how threat actors are using the same tools Sophos is building against03:02 – The 2026 Active Adversary Report: why attackers are logging in, not breaking in04:20 – Attackers move in 3-4 hours and how Sophos structures CS to respond before the customer even knows there's a problem06:05 – Connecting CS activity directly to retention and expansion: the attribution model08:45 – Advice for early-stage companies that want this kind of rigor but don't have perfect data yet10:06 – Automation as a scale lever: crawl, walk, run and why you should start at the end of the renewal cycle13:43 – The future of go-to-market: self-serve from first touch through win-back, powered by AI18:20 – "The customer should never feel your org chart": building a digital journey that meets people where they are20:39 – Going from legacy manual to digital without blowing up the business22:00 – Dynamic segmentation: why hard lines on ACV are the wrong way to assign CS coverage26:02 – The two-by-two that actually matters: risk, spend, and growth potential32:08 – The humble confidence hire: why Teresa looks for this specific combination across her entire org34:15 – The 5-to-1 scorecard and what Teresa has learned about earning customer trust over time36:14 – Inner and outer feedback loops: how Sophos turns NPS data into cross-functional action38:11 – Why retention has to be an all-company meeting, not a CS slideFor inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email gtmnow@gtmfund.comGTMnow is a media brand brought to you by VC firm, GTMfund: https://gtmfund.com/
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    42 m
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