RevOps for Hypergrowth (Fireworks AI, Perplexity, Exa & More) | with CEO @ Go Nimbly, Jen Igartua

0:00Sam Jacobs: Jen Igartua is the founder and CEO of GoNimbly, a revenue operations firm that has built the go-to-market engines for SaaS unicorns like Zendesk, Twilio, and Gong, as well as some of the fastest-growing AI companies. I'm working now with Whisperflow, Exa, Perplexity, and Fireworks. These AI-first companies, the number of people they want to hire in a year is, like, it blows my mind. And in today's episode, Jen shares how to prioritize when your customer demand outpaces your sales infrastructure and her favorite approach if you want to get ROI from a RevOps team fast. It is like one of the first things that I look at.

0:34You can do that project pretty quickly and you can see ROI on that project really quickly.

0:39Sam Jacobs: We also debate how to source top sales talent. Are the best reps forged in early stage startups or more in polished tech monopolies? Plus, we discuss the dangers of investing in go-to-market engineers if you don't have the right infrastructure in place. What I don't like is a GTME rolling up to a sales manager and like doing things in a little silo. GTMEs are going to have a really easy time with. But after a while, the real work begins. If you're a revenue leader in the age of AI, this episode is for you. Welcome to Topline. Hi, everybody. It's Sam Jacobs. Welcome to Topline. I'm joined by my great co-host, AJ Bruno, the CEO of Quotapath, and my tolerable co-host, Asad Zaman, the CEO of Sales Talent Agency.

1:22Sam Jacobs: But we've got a very special guest on the show today. Her name is Jenna Gartwap. She's the founder and CEO of GoNimbly, one of the earliest firms dedicated specifically to revenue operations. Since launching GoNimbly in 2015, she's helped high-growth B2B companies including Gong, Zendesk, Twilio, Rippling, and Intercom build more integrated scalable revenue orgs. She's a longtime voice in the RevOps movement. She is great on screen, on camera. She's your host this week in SaaS, which you can catch on LinkedIn. And today, GoNimbly is servicing some of the fastest growing AI native companies in the world, including companies like Fireworks.

1:57Sam Jacobs: Jen is also the co-founder of Pillbox Kames, an independent board game company. Jen, welcome to Topline. Oh my gosh, Sam, can you do that for me every morning? I'm going to do it every morning. I'm going to whisper in your ear, girl. The days that I think I'm not doing enough, I hear that and I'm like, I'm okay. You're doing a lot. So let's dive right into it. Jen, you've been working. We've had a lot of conversations recently and the client roster at GoNimbly is incredible. And you have really captured the zeitgeist and you're able to work with some of the fastest growing companies, like we mentioned, Fireworks AI and a bunch of others.

2:35Sam Jacobs: And at the same time, these companies are growing faster than they've ever grown. we've seen growth rates that are quite unbelievable. But at the same time, when you get in there, we're not saying fireworks, we're just saying in general, their operational infrastructure is lagging. How much do you attribute success of product versus success of go-to-market motion when you look at these growth rates? Oh man, it's like, it's always been primarily product. Like I'll go back, our first ever customer was Twilio. And I'll be honest, I actually didn't know who they were. I got it and I was like, text messaging, cool.

3:07I didn't realize that we had hitched our wagon. Twilio and Twilio. Friend of a friend of a friend. At the time, I was working at BlueWall, so big Salesforce consulting company that got sold to IBM. And I was their first marketing automation hire. So I had this like really specific niche of like connecting Eloqua to Salesforce and making sure that that lead flow was in a really good place. Eloqua, that is a name I have not heard in a decade. I was number one on their top liners community. So I got very obsessed with that. And so I had this very niche skill set. And Twilio, like the reason I'm mentioning them, it feels very similar to my new customers.

3:43The inbound is insane. The signups are insane. We're trying to work through that, trying to figure out, like, we don't have enough manpower to get through all the leads. How do we prioritize them? And that was the project I got hired to do at Twilio was like, how do I make sure that we can pick up the phone in one minute? And like, that was really what we spent our time on. My second ever customer was Zendesk. For Zendesk, we built a fake AISDR. They weren't AI. They were just like, we had a fake LinkedIn. Her name was Sarah. And we sent emails from Eloqua that was dynamic content. So it was declarative, but it was like, depending on your industry and your title and your role, like we would send you a different email.

4:21And so it doesn't feel that different. I remember the head of IT, Jim Gearheart at Zendesk said something that like really stayed with me. He goes, oh, we've grown in spite of our operations. Like we have like reached this. And this was 2016. Zendesk was killing it. And they were like, yeah, we're like we're killing it, even though we don't have the infrastructure. That feels very similar right now. And I do feel like the pendulum swings like we're doing the same projects. It's still speed delete. And it's like automating SDR activities. It's not that different. It's just we're doing it with different technology.

4:54and these AI first companies. So like I'm working now with Whisperflow and Exa and Perplexity and Fireworks. And yeah, they have this incredible, like, you know, the number of people they want to hire in a year is like, it blows my mind. We cannot be fast enough. They are growing in spite of their operations because there's just no way for us to keep up with that speed. The number of people they're onboarding and the number of things that we have to fit into their process because they have a handful of like SDRs, some of them. And I do rep rides and they're doing, they're just making it work and they are booking enough meetings because the inbound is insane.

5:31And so it is, you know, they need to maximize the success that is already written in stone for them. Like they will be successful. It's just how successful and can go to market actually maximize and can become a competitive advantage to you.

5:45Sam Jacobs: Where's the, what's the order of operations? Where do you start? Is it speed to lead? Is it lead routing is like the most obvious place to start? Yeah. Top of funnel is like one of the first things that I look at because we like we don't do it. We're not going. And it's also the fastest. Like you can do that project pretty quickly and you can see ROI on that project really quickly. And so it's a it's a project I really love because I know GoNimbly is going to be successful. You get into further down the funnel. The feedback loop is much slower. And also I now have to do CPQ projects. So it's just like it's a different game later down the funnel.

6:23But we do try to really fit in like expansion workflows. When I think about top of funnel infrastructure, it's not that different from identifying an expansion or identifying churn risk. It's that same infrastructure that you end up using. So top of funnel is an easy place to start. Jen, when you said they've grown despite their operations, Asit and I actually talked about this last week. And he argued that, no, no, these companies definitely have operations and ops. that exist inside them. They have ops. But like what level. That's what I said. He said they have no ops anywhere. They have no ops.

6:54That's a fucking crazy statement. They have ops. They have ops. They might not be what you want it to be, but they have ops. What level of ops are you coming into? I assume that they don't have like an enterprise go-to-market motion and it's like, oh, they've hired a CRO. Lovables hired their first CRO. And they like, from that perspective, they don't have ops. But from an operational standpoint, there's a lot of things that they have up and running. So what do they typically have and what do they typically don't have? My clients are the smartest people in the room. They have incredibly smart people.

7:23They attract really incredible talent. And so for sure, they're operational thinkers. It's just that they're moving at a speed that they can't keep up. And so I typically do see some sort of sales leadership where it's starting to really formalize or they've started to make big bets. I mean, look at Clay. They tried to fight it forever and they just hired like an incredible head of sales. Her name's Becca Lindquist. She's amazing. And so they'll hire that really kind of amazing leadership talent for sure. From an ops perspective, they typically hired somebody who was, I would say, there's this kind of sweet spot of somebody who's done the work for a few years and is ready to be elevated.

7:59And they're sort of like willing to get their hands dirty, but also starting to be strategic. You'll usually see one of those in there, but they'll pretty quickly get overwhelmed. You know, that like you can fill one person's role really quickly. And so they'll start to, and I don't fight it. I'm like, you need to build a RevOps team. I'm not trying to outsource RevOps. I'm trying to give your team specialists. I'm trying to give your team speed to decision. I'm trying to do a special project because they're growing so quickly that we basically allow them to spike and come down and spike and get like specialized resources.

8:32So I want them to build it out. So they're building it. It's just the speed at which they're growing. Like as soon as you release, you know, the structure for 50 SDRs, now you have, you know, 75. Now you have 200. it's like, it's really hard to catch up. Do you feel like you have to match the pace of hiring internally? Because GoNimly is 100 people right now. Like you all are growing super, super fast. So are you feeling that with your clients as there's like this just pressure to keep up with them? And when you hire? Yeah. And everybody wants, you know, they slow you down during the sales cycle.

9:07And as soon as they're ready tomorrow, right? And so for an agency that like I'm essentially in the business of staffing. I'm in the business of making sure that I have a healthy enough bench to upsell and take on new business, but not too big that I, you know, burn cash. Like, I'm still bootstrapped. So for sure, like, that is the thing that keeps me up. And making, you know, obviously, I like long-term contracts and all that, but anything that I have that's a short-term project keeps me up at night. So I'm like, okay, I need to get these three people a new project by November 1st. So yeah, it's a forever problem.

9:43I think if you saw a company that didn't have that going on internally, isn't that a red flag in a way that when you're actually, if you're an investor, you're deploying capital, you're looking for various signals that things are going well. If you saw a company that had the opportunity to build this really eloquent rev ops infrastructure, it probably means that they weren't growing fast enough, right? And so it's probably not a good thing. And this is the nature of what we do is these companies, if you get the right product market fit, will just accelerate at such an astronomical rate where you just won't be able to keep up and you're kind of just building it as you're growing.

10:23It's going to be a little bit wild. But the product will make up for all of that other nonsense. What do you think? I work primarily with companies that already have product market fit. Like I don't work in that kind of small space, so I won't speak to that. Well, that's interesting. How do you define product market fit? Oh, a fast growing sales team. Like if they have a decent sales team and they're all getting fed, I'm feeling pretty good. What's a decent sales team these days? Like what's that definition? If you don't have 20 reps or about to get to 20 reps, I'm going like, I don't know if you need us.

10:58Like I'm charging 20 grand plus a month. Like you have to have a decent sized need to do that. So I'm really lucky that I'm at the point of turning down business. Like if I don't get good feeling from, oh, you have a strong operator or like a company that really cares about operations and is going to hire strong operators, we are not going to do that well. Like I need you to be committed in building operations for us to do great projects because it does take a lot of goodwill and executive presence to push these big initiatives. Like I'm trying to do transformational work and that does take a leader to open those doors.

11:37Sam Jacobs: Jen, you've been doing this for 11 years. And we were having a debate before we started recording. So let's have that debate now. The central question is, and I'll set the stage a little bit. I've been doing this for, we've all been in go-to-market for a couple decades at this point. Some of us more, Sam. Some of us a lot more. Look at all this gray. And here's one thing that's been true the entire time. One thing that's been true is that somebody somewhere is telling us that sales is broken and that look at all of these salespeople not hitting quota and that's evidence that sales is broken. Do you think sales is more broken today than it was?

12:14Sam Jacobs: Is it at the same state? Do you see AI improving sales effectiveness? I personally see roughly the same percentage of good sellers to crappy sellers that I've seen historically. And I don't see these tools making much of a difference from that perspective. But of course, I do see companies with huge product market fit with markets that are bigger than they ever have been feeding a lot of average sellers. But I don't think the number, the percentage number of good sellers is any different than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. What do you think about that? Man, I feel like I'm in a room of people that are going to have a way kind of stronger opinions.

12:57So I'll answer this. I think that operators have been doing an injustice to sellers for a long time. And we are starting to really take onus of the fact that revenue operations needs to be a support function to the sales team. And we've been fighting it forever. We are not a support function. I'm like, we actually are. We're creating a product on top of existing infrastructure for a group of people to do their jobs. And we do need to support that team. Of course, I also want a big percentage of our time to be strategic, but we need to do that. And for a long time, we weren't. And frankly, we didn't need to.

13:32Money was so cheap that I remember being at the Twilio office and half the reps were playing ping pong. That doesn't happen anymore. People are not playing ping pong. The job is harder. The expectations of the buyers are harder. And so I think that like maybe I don't know that I don't think they've gotten worse. I'll tell you that. I don't think it's gotten worse because I think that the the inefficiencies and the lack of skill is like just so apparent now. outside of this AI native space where you can go make a bunch of money and be mediocre for everybody else there's a lot more scrutiny on the salesperson so I have to believe that that creates more skill I also think that operators have had a little aha moment that we have been beating sellers over the head with like you have to put it in this stage at this time and do exactly this and now you have to send the proposal and now you have to do this and we've lost the like flexibility in the art of sales and allowing, you know, sellers to be consultants to say, it is my job to help you through a difficult decision.

14:31It's my job to help you make, you know, a bet with your organization, stick your neck out. And the people that really do that well are going to, you know, really shine right now. And it's that visual. I don't know if you got, I love a two by two matrix, of course, that talks about skill and taste versus like with or without AI. And if you have, you're very skilled with AI, you do a really great job. If you're low skilled with AI, you're a slop cannon. And I think that that's just showing so much more. How much did Asad pay you to say that revenue operations is a support function? That's funny.

15:05That has been his contention. Does that get you mad, AJ? Well, that's been his contention for years. We've had lots of arguments about this. And I think he's softened, though. I thought he actually changed and felt that more RevOps was more of a revenue driver and growth lever these days, but maybe not, Asa. No, I just say it's really important, but as a support function. I think it's important just to understand what role we play in the overall machine, and then we can play it really well. And so I think when done really, really well, it's a massive force multiplier. But if somebody misunderstands what their role is, like if a goalkeeper starts trying to play like a striker, you don't let in a lot of goals, right?

15:42So that's the main argument. And so I really like what you said. To me, it's no different than a product team. You build a product, you have to have customer support. And that's the thing that I kind of have a gripe with is in order, we got relegated for so many years that in order to be strategic, it was like, we're not that. It's like, no, you're both. We need to have both. And it's not the same people. You're going to have some people that are in strategy and ops and some people that are going to be much more executional and support. But you need that. If my seller is locked out of their systems, I need to help them.

16:14If they have an issue and they can't get their job done, I need to help them. So I do think it's important that we balance both. And I do think operators are starting to just be like, just own that part of it and know that it's not ugly. It's actually a really important function. Sam, I think to your question, if you say that there are more companies that have found product market fit, and I like the first approach to product market fit, that it's this ongoing thing, like there's levels to it. And so you could be optimizing for like the highest level, even at 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 million in revenue.

16:48And so if you have more companies that have really high levels of product market fit, then by nature, you should have more sellers, a higher percent of sellers that develop the right skills. Why is that? Because it's usually the best sellers come out of companies that had the best product market fit. So if you look at MongoDB, really high product market fit, hence the resources. Firstly, they were able to then attract a world CRO, then they had the financial power to invest in all the things that develop skills. And so there's a reason why every AI company would love to hire from MongoDB is because they have this great machine to develop talent.

17:30They take raw potential and turn it into these marvelous enterprise sellers. It's downstream of their product market fit. So if you believe there's more companies that are product market fit now, then you have to believe that there's going to be a higher and high percent of salespeople that develop great skills. I think that's happening. Maybe it just hasn't happened yet? Like, is it that it's starting to happen?

17:51Sam Jacobs: I think Asad's got it precisely wrong, actually, like, inverted. When I was at Axial 16 years ago, we were selling to private equity, and one of the private equity guys said, after Andrew Cholino, who now works in BD and private equity, had given him the pitch, he said, you're a really good salesperson. You're really, really good. The product must be terrible. He said, my perspective is that the better the salesperson, the worse the product. And we thought about that because we were buying LinkedIn Sales Navigator at the time. And the LinkedIn salesperson that was selling a sales navigator was one of the worst salespeople that we've ever encountered.

18:30Sam Jacobs: And we always said inside the organization, isn't it great that LinkedIn can afford to carry this person on their payroll? That's how good Sales Navigator is as a product. I think, so I think the better the brand, the better the, do we think, now it might be true, Asad, in the sequence of events that you said, if it's true enterprise sales and they went out and they find a legendary CRO that believes in development and training, they find somebody from PTC that was trained under John McMahon, then maybe it's true. But I think there tends to be an inverse correlation between the quality of the brand on your business card and the quality of the salesperson.

19:12Sam Jacobs: And all I have to say is, would any of us hire a great seller from Salesforce or from Google? My experience with people that worked at Google is, well, you did hire somebody great from Google Assets. So you have that. I stand by what I say. There you go. I think Salesforce and Google are very different in that regard. I think it's silly that people say you can't hire from Salesforce. I think this is all silly stuff. Like I think, so firstly, I don't think Sales Navigator is a great product. I think it's a shitty product. They have a monopoly, though. It was a monopoly product. It's a monopoly product, right?

19:43So that's a different situation. I think if you look at, if you met a young person today, they're like, man, where should I go? And this might be where we all defer a little bit. And they're like, where do I go? I'm about to get my first job. Would you say... Find the shittiest product. Find the shittiest product in the market. Strumpney is on its knees. They might make it, they might not. develop you might be there we're gonna make payroll that definitely sounds like a winner or do you say man go like to a company that is doing really well that's investing in tons of enablement and rev ops and has a great leader and has a great product in this room for like i would always say go to that later on in your life you've earned the luxury to take a risk to an earlier stage business but never start your career there um never that sort of risk early on in the career and I think shape a career in a really bad way.

20:37So for me, if I say that, then I believe that the better product has the better go-to-market infrastructure, hence can churn out better salespeople. Could we all be right? Like, I think right now what we're saying is that there's a line. Absolutely not. But we're kind of talking about it like there's one line in the sand, like good product, bad product. But I think it could be that like we're saying, hey, don't go to the two extremes. don't go to the ones that are like really shitty products don't go to the ones that are just like an incredible product and they don't really care about you or your development because they don't need to like there's a tranche in the middle that like can i silence would you tell a person not to go to anthropic open ai i would tell them to go um but but i don't know that i would tell them to go because i think that they're going to become great sellers i think i would tell them to go because

21:28Sam Jacobs: they're going to make bank yeah i mean that's a good reason to tell somebody to go somewhere Well, that's the old adage of, do you want to learn or earn? And I remember even when I was thinking about starting my first company, back in the day, my cousin was a VC and he was like, AJ, don't go start a company. Go work for a really small startup and learn the ropes and do that. I was like, they don't know shit. I don't either, but I don't think they're going to be able to teach me anything. But what I actually missed was that it would have had a little bit more stability, quote unquote, but I had already had the idea.

21:59So I was going to go do it no matter what i would have learned just you you learn just by doing the thing and being the first firefighter into a business we all talk about that's not like a salesperson is different like salesperson doesn't have to chew loss like that like that's an entrepreneur if you're the first seller if you're the founding ae which is also my yes what a horrible job to be a founding stop putting founding anything on your titles please please please excuse me it's the founding ae it's one of the hardest jobs let them have founding in their title you have to be so firstly they have to join this shitty company that has just started a product that barely works.

22:32This company might now make it. Payroll is going to be a question. All of this fucking shit. And they can't have anything. They can't even put founding in front of the bloody AE title. Like, what is this? Why does the bar have to be so hard for these people? If AJ had it hard, you got to have it hard. Yeah. Well, Austin's not a founder, so it's okay. He doesn't know founder mode. But I would say, AJ, I learned a lot as a founder. But man, the first five years of running GoNimbly, I was doing a lot of stuff wrong. I probably could have done really well if I had worked at a small agency and learned things.

23:02I ended up reading a book that I recommended to you called Managing a Professional Services Firm. And as I read that book, I was like, whoops, whoops. Like I had tried everything opposite. And so I do think I could have gotten like GoNimbly's trajectory. We were doing really well at the beginning. We were essentially glorified contracting. I also founded the company in a really great year for founding companies. Because it was 2015 and money was just flowing in sass. So I killed it up until COVID. You thought you were crotching it. You knew, you're like, I know exactly what I'm doing. But it was in spite of operations, right?

23:34Like I didn't, you know, for me, it's margin and staffing and all that. I barely looked at it because we were getting enough money in. It didn't matter. And then like COVID happened. My biggest customer at the time was Caesars Entertainment, the casino. And I got a call. It was a$2 million project. I got a call on a Thursday being like, hey, shut it down by Monday. And I'm like, you got a six-person team. Like, what do you mean? And they were basically like, hey, I've been told that you have to sue us, basically, like take us to court. So now it's go nimbly versus Caesars Entertainment. Like, that's not like, you know, I basically was like, all right, give me a couple.

24:07Like, can you give me a month? Can you give me two months of invoices? And we like they ended up paying a couple and we called it, you know, but that shrunk my company like this. I also had like Copper was a customer of ours, which is a CRM for like basically mom and pop shops like that contract. What year was that? Because my CPO was the former COO of Copper. So I want to 20 ish. Wyndham. Wyndham Hudson. Did you deal with Wyndham Hudson at all? I didn't deal with him, but yes. And, you know, we had basically this giant contract. I got down to like 20 people during COVID and had to rebuild. and I'm lucky that like at that point I had had the you know years under somebody who didn't know what they were doing which was myself I started to read and get obsessed with what it means to run this business get actual advisors that I'd done it before and I got a chance to restart.

24:56One of the strange things about running a services business is when you I don't know if you had this problem but initially you look at the market that you're serving for inspiration so I remember looking at like software companies and being deeply inspired by how they run and how they operate and trying to like take lessons from them. That's a, that's a disaster. You cannot take too much from that world and try to implement it in the services business. And so at some point you're like, none of this shit works, man, what's going on here? And it works so well over there. I must have a bad business.

25:26And then you're like, oh no, I'm just doing everything wrong that I'm supposed to be doing the opposite of these things. It's really, it's, I remember when I brought that lesson, I was like, oh my God.

25:35Sam Jacobs: What's, what Jen, what's the number one lesson you learned running of services or like give us some some battle scars yeah okay so i mean to aside to your point i like i would talk about revenue as mrr like oh my god like i'm like i've we've all done that my arr is this like what's your arr it's like it's just revenue like let me stop pretending i poured a bunch of money in being tech enabled like we created all these like you know product tised services, but the level of company I'm working with is everything's custom. Like I can come up with an MQL flow, whatever, whatever, but I can't install it into everybody's org because they're all different and there's a bunch of tech debts.

26:15Like I really try to do product tised services. I really try to do tech enabled. I will say I'm more tech enabled than AI enabled in the last six months than I was in the first 10 years. And I burned millions of dollars trying to do it. It's also like your revenue by nature, if you try to optimize for too much recurring revenue, you almost like put yourself in the wrong position. Like you said something great a little while ago where like you want to come in, you want to solve these like spiky problems. You want to, there's emergency, you want to get the call. They're going through an inflection point.

26:46You want to be there to help them get through it. You don't want to be there forever, everything, right? And so you might like price yourself out of those really interesting companies and projects and then be suitable only for this like awkward, weird like side of the market. And that's and recurring revenue drives that thinking. Yeah, look, I love a retainer business because it lets me like staffing is the biggest thing that's really difficult. And so that lets me staff people for more than three months is really, really helpful. But if I scope my projects really well and have really incredible outcomes to them, I can charge a lot more.

27:22So my margin can actually be much higher on my projects. if I scope them right. Otherwise, I hemorrhage money because, you know. So it's such a balance. But I think one of the reality checks, and AJ was pissing me off at the last dinner because AJ wants to do more services. And when I tell you that SaaS companies have been putting their nose up at services for years as if I don't have a good business and now y 'all all are like sticking your necks in my neck of the woods and talking about how great it is, how great services revenue is. It's like, fuck you guys because you've been saying it's worthless for a long time.

27:56It's just flattering. I'm just jealous. I'm jealous that you've learned all these lessons. You're jealous of me now. That's what it is. Wait until you get a big people business and that's all you're doing. It's ruthless. It's a ruthless business. But it is, I had to have a moment of being like, oh, I run a services business and I'm proud to run a services business and I'm going to be obsessed with what it means to run a services business. And that's when my business started doing well. when I thought about like staffing like even if you look at staffing I should only take projects of skills that I want to nurture and it seems like such a dumb moment but you don't do that in practice right you get whatever project comes in awesome staff it to the person but really what I need to be doing is like okay is this a project that I want to be great at that I want to grow a skill and then who is essentially at like 80 % of the way there so they 80 % they can get this done 20 % is stretch because I can do training programs all day I can put people through like clay boot camps and whatever, it's hands on and they need to be stretching at all times.

28:54And if you nail staffing, you grow a really great services organization. And so like I had to have that aha moment.

29:01Sam Jacobs: How did you how did you do that? Like, how do you find good talent? And then how do you develop them in these skills that are themselves so new and so cutting edge? What is your approach to that? Yeah, we for a long time try to do outsource the staffing. We don't. We have a three-person team that's just always recruiting. I do think sometimes I'm like, do I need to have a recruiting agency on the side? But it feels like a distraction because we know how to find great talent. I just have a really badass team that knows how to find folks that have drive, that have confidence and skill, but also you have to have so much drive as a consultant to push through bullshit because there's no hiding behind the work.

29:42There's no hiding within an organization. You really have to enact change. So we look for some of those skills. And then we have we have training programs we have like an executive training workshop that everybody has to take we have like our work ramps and whatever but that isn't really where people end up learning like it is you know old school in that you have to be paired with someone that's really great to learn how to run a room to learn how to do a really robust like architecture diagram and and all those things and so a lot of the a lot of it is how do i put a person surrounded by the people they're going to learn from on a project that they're suited for but also has like stretch moments.

30:17And that's the math. And we have an individual that is like full-time just staffing. Like our whole job is playing Tetris with resources. And you don't always nail it. Like there's times when I go, oh man, this works too easy for this person. Like they're going to do great, but they're not going to develop anything.

30:33Sam Jacobs: These people are all full-time employees of Go Nimbly because that's a controversial decision. I know we probably both know Michael Ingram and And he's always thought about this expert network concept for RevOps where you have a community of 3 ,000 people and you just know who the HubSpot expert is. That's a marketplace. That's not like an actual problem. It's a little bit of both. Yeah. I don't know. No, but that's a shitty services business if that is one. But it is a much better marketplace model. But you can't do what she's doing in that sort of model and then be the world's best at that. It's too transactional on both sides then.

31:10It's really, really difficult. We've tried. Like, for sure, we were like, 20 % of our workforce should be a contractor workforce. There's two things that happen. Your contractors, they will bill like crazy because they're making money per hour. And so in some ways, like, if you look at that individual, they usually charge you a lot more. So now I'm paying$100 an hour instead of$50, you know, for these people. So my margin's really bad on my contractors. But they are, they, you know, the WIFM is there for them to bill. So they're some of your best billers. the reality is the way that we staff teams contractors there's a lot of laws around it I can't tell them what their schedule is they can't be part of my core business in California like there's all these like rules around it that like are a headache and frankly I could just not follow them but like you know we try and then the last thing is like really control and insurance and all like the companies that we work with they want to know that these are full-time employed folks and that they're trained and that they're like with our policies they all get laptops like you know all these companies that i've mentioned like half the time we'll ship you laptops you have to do this so it just becomes this like overhead now those people are billing me for like internal or like they're gonna bill me if they have a one-on-one i was in your team huddle pay me for that yeah um i think there's like you also you can't you have transactional customers right because even if you sign them on on a retainer for a year they're not like these aren't like 10-year enterprise relationships right they'll have like moments where revenue comes doesn't come etc in a relationship we looked at like our customer base we work with 2 000 companies very rarely have we worked with more than 30 or 40 percent of the companies we're working with in one year in the second year but by the third year we're working with them again so like if you look at across a five-year stretch we're working with them for the majority of those years but we don't work with them every year.

33:04Well, I should do that analysis. I think I have something similar. I've never looked at it.

33:09Sam Jacobs: This episode of Topline is brought to you by Compound Growth Marketing. The way your customers buy has shifted. Before they ever reach a rep, they're asking an LLM who to trust, who to shortlist, and why. Decision-making is impacted by investment at the top of the funnel, and most B2B marketing teams under-invest because it's difficult to measure. That's the gap, and it's expensive. Compound Growth Marketing bridges this gap for many of the fastest-growing companies in b2b sas and security their predictable demand system unites paid media answer engine optimization and gtm engineering into one discipline engineered to produce pipeline you can actually forecast back by over 100 million of media managed no vanity metrics no guesswork if you'd like a free audit on funnel media including aeo reach go to compound growth marketing.com and mention pavilion i want to tell you i want to tell you something people this episode of top line is brought to you by DevRev.

34:00Sam Jacobs: I've been really excited about this thing lately. It's called a computer, but it's not the computer that you know. It's Computer by DevRev. If you work in GDM or sales, you know what it's like. You're running a dozen deals at once, and it's on you to remember every detail. What the customer said, what you promised, what needs to happen next. So things slip. Follow-up gets missed. A deal goes quiet. Computer by DevRev is an AI teammate that fixes that. Computer uses something called shared memory to hold the full context of every deal across Slack, email, Granola, and Salesforce, even across the rest of your team.

34:31Sam Jacobs: So nothing falls through the cracks and you always know exactly where every account stands. Your deals keep moving and you stay one step ahead. Take a look at computer.io forward slash top line. AJ, does that resonate with you? Yeah. As the CEO of a company that has a million systems plus, I am always trying to figure out context. Last week I was in New York and had in-person meetings meetings with, we had 15 in-person meetings with CFOs, finance leaders. And afterward, I turned to my VP of strategic services and I was like, Max, I don't even, how are we even supposed to remember any of this? So having a system like computer by DevRev would have put me in the driver's seat.

35:12I wish I had it.

35:14Sam Jacobs: You're great. You're great. You're a good, a good partner to these sponsors. There's Computer by DevRev. DevRev, we appreciate you. Computer, we appreciate you. We appreciate that you use shared memory. You're doing good work. Go to Computer by DevRev. If you work and go to market, I want to tell you about Pavilion's GTM 2026, our annual event. It's happening September 28th through October 1st in New York City. And this is Pavilion's biggest event of the year. And this year, it's especially meaningful because we're celebrating 10 years of Pavilion. If you're a top-line listener, a lot of familiar faces are gonna be there.

35:54Sam Jacobs: Asit and AJ will both be there and we'll be doing live top-line recording. We'll also have longtime listeners and friends of the show like Jackie Robinson and Ryan Burke alongside an incredible group of GTM leaders and thinkers including Nick Mehta, Jeffrey Moore, the author of Crossing the Chasm, Alison Moore, the CEO of Chief, Eric Gilpin, the president of G2, Manny Medina, the co-founder and CEO of Paid, Linda Leanne, the CEO of Common Room, Amanda Kahlo, CEO and co-founder of OneMind, and regular guest on the show, plus many, many more. We're going to be spending several days talking about what's happening in go-to-market right now, AI, sales, marketing, leadership, company building, and how the GTM profession is changing.

36:36Sam Jacobs: But the biggest reason to come is the people. There are people you want to hear from, follow, learn from, and work alongside. Also, it's a vibe. GTM is really one of the only conferences that feels like a college or high school reunion, depending on if you had a good time in one of those moments of your life. It's where the community of Pavilion really comes to life. And if you're curious about what that community feels like or looks like, come join us. It really embodies our values of give to get, of helping and supporting each other, and of propelling all of us as operators forward. It's a chance to get to know everyone together in the same room.

37:17Sam Jacobs: So come celebrate 10 years of Pavilion with us in New York and with me, Sam Jacobs. Go to attendgtm.com forward slash register. If you could do that right now, I'd really appreciate it. Go to attendgtm.com forward slash register. Go there, I'll wait. Okay, use the code ambassador20, ambassador20 for 20 % off your ticket. and that's because I view you, loyal listener, as an ambassador of both the Topline and Pavilion brands. So go to attendgtm.com forward slash register, use the code ambassador20 for 20 % off your ticket and I hope to see you in New York in just a couple of weeks. What's interesting is like if you're gonna be transactional on one side, you have to have longevity with your employee base on the other side.

38:04You have to develop deep expertise. They have to be amazing at the craft. They have to be able to deliver it with extreme elegance. And so you actually want really high tenure internally. This transactional employee base and that transactional customer base leads to really wishy-washy work. And then as a services business, you don't build the reputation you need. Because like in services, you are not buying a product. So you don't know what tangible value you're going to get. You're buying the ability of somebody to solve a particular problem in a creative, tenacious manner. And so there's a bigger leap of trust or leap of faith you have to take.

38:38And you will not earn that reputation unless you have crafts people in the business. If I staff a new project with all new people, it'll go red. Because there's also like they need to know how to work together. Like I'm putting three people in the room. if they don't have, if I don't know that they work well together, the project's not going to go well. And then to your point on the buyer, I don't have anything to demo. I literally have to be like, no, I've done it before and I'm smart. And I promise. I got this. And I promise. And it behooves me to blow up your problem. It's like a mechanic, right?

39:10You come in, oh boy, this is a lot more work than you think it is. And it's actually going to be a million dollars now. So I have to earn so much trust that, you know, my customer comes in real skeptical. and lucky for me I have a lot of referral business which like reduces that you know if your friend tells you no they're good they won't do that it feels a little bit better but I have to prove our ethics much more heavily than a software company does. That makes sense. Something that Asad said or he's been saying for years is the thing from a services standpoint is every year you start at zero goes to the point of MRR and I that's what kind of scares me the most is like I like that is just you have such an uphill to climb, like from the get-go.

39:54And I know I've taken shots at Asa during this episode. For the record, and Sam would agree with this, he's the sharpest of the three of us. I agree. I agree. To pull Sam down. Same time, apparently. And he's so humble. He's so humble. Down to it, I would go.

40:09Sam Jacobs: Jen, I want to change topics to a new subject, which I think we're all going to have exciting opinions about. And it is this controversial job title that we've seen pop up over the last couple of years called the GTM engineer. So, you know, I think I've heard you or read that you've argued that the GTM engineer is a legitimate emerging role, but that the hype has outrun reality. And that really the function is essentially just a RevOps function with some fancy, you know, branding around it and some ornamentation. But I just want to explore this a little bit because there are GTM engineering communities.

40:54Sam Jacobs: There are people that are convinced, you know, young people that are newer to the ecosystem, convinced they are hot shit and that all of us old fogies don't have any idea what we're doing. And they are GTM engineers and get out of their way. So let's have a conversation quickly about what is a GTM engineer actually? And how is it different from RevOps? Are they doing anything interesting? What do you see out there as you're running all of your projects? Oh, Sam, I'm so pumped for this. I'm ready. I'm ready to debate this. Okay, so I would argue I started my career as a GTME. I just didn't have that title.

41:27I was a like Eloqua specialist. It is no different than these clay specialists that call themselves a GTME. I was able to automate a bunch of workflows. Like I mentioned for Zendesk, I built a whole flow that would email somebody cold and I would pitch them the product. And it would say things like, we would love to have a meeting with you. And if they replied, we would send them the link of the AE that it was assigned to. Like I was building these workflows and these GTMEs, you know, talk about. What I think is the reality is that we had a chunk of time, 20, I don't know, 15 to 20, 22, where we were just doing so much declarative work.

42:05And we were doing so much just like buying products that we weren't really true operators and we became less technical. And I think there was just like a pendulum. When I started my career, we were really technical. Sending an email was really technical. And then we went to the other version of like we gave everyone sales loft and we like, you know, told everybody they could do their own work. And our division became less technical. Marketing operators became not technical for a while. It was crazy. They were just like clicking things in Marketo and they lost the ability to be as technical. And there was also Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot.

42:38So they're like, just click a button. They were 100%. Salesforce. You don't have to know anything. Right. Salesforce, they had process builder, rest in peace, and then flows became a bit more technical. But they really tried to move us away from Apex code because they knew that was kind of a thing that was hurting their product. And it's like, no, it's easy. Anybody can do it. It's declarative. And so we just became RevOps teams that were less technical. And I think the GTME is a response to saying, oh, no, we need more technical talent. And we've lost that. And to me, it's just that this RevOps team needs to build back up this technical capability because our work became more technical again.

43:12It's not that it was wrong to become less technical. We didn't need to be. And then now we need to be again. And so I'm all for creating the aptitude, the technical aptitude. I didn't have the same success as Clay did creating a title. But we have RevOps Architect is a title we were first to market with. And we were really pushing this like, no, we need architects. We need people that are highly technical within these teams. And that's my best selling. When I talk to my customers, I'm like, what do you need? They need a RevOps Architect. and so I think this is a reaction to needing to become more technical so I'm here for it what I don't like is a gtme rolling up to a sales manager and like doing things in a little silo and and are there places where that can happen sure like there are places that don't impact infrastructure and are fine and places to play but gtmes are gonna have a really easy time with the low-hanging fruit coming in doing a couple of automations and getting you know everybody's love but after a while the real work begins.

44:12Sam Jacobs: Who should they roll up to? RevOps leaders? RevOps. 100%. One of the complaints or piece of feedback I heard is also GTM, tell me if I'm wrong, much of the time GTM engineers are focused on top of the funnel and don't have a perspective on the entire customer journey. Would you agree or disagree with that? I agree. I think because the whole concept and push came from Clay and Clay's very good at top of funnel. And so it's just those workflows are the ones coming up. It doesn't mean they can't apply it elsewhere. Like I mentioned, you could do an expansion flow, the same way you do a new business flow.

44:48And folks are pushing into that. But one of the things that RevOps is supposed to do, right, our nemesis is silos. That's like the thing that we've been saying forever is like the reason you want one team across the board is because we can think about the entire go-to-market flow. And then what we're doing is bifurcating it. We're going, OK, GTME, go focus on top of funnel. And what's going to happen is they're not going to match ICP with what the sellers actually care for. They're not going to actually talk to SDRs to make sure their workflow and that they're capturing that demand. So, you know, for me, again, I'm fine if there's a GTME focus on top of funnel.

45:20I just want their boss to care about the whole thing. The career path for a go-to-market engineer has to be head of RevOps, basically. It has to sit in RevOps. It's a specialized junior role, relatively speaking, right? Like from a scope of responsibilities perspective. But as that person progresses, they go from developing top of the funnel context to understanding the rest of the funnel and becoming a head of rev ops. And so when they try to argue the opposite stance, it's really weird because it's like, well, where's your career going? Where do you want to go? Oh, isn't the customer facing role?

45:53Why would it be a customer facing role? No, that's the new forward deployed engineer, which I also have thoughts on. that one's the customer facing one which to me again it's it's sass companies wanting to be consultants you can call it engineer all day but what you're saying is like oh you have a person from your team working with your customer to get the most out of their product like that one blows that one that one i'm not here for i'm like gdme i i think it's interesting we do have have one and i i would agree but where i actually think we've over rotated i'm interested to hear your perspective is that sales teams, specifically at traditional SaaS, like Quotapath, are over-rotated to two technical AEs.

46:35Like I find, and maybe this is just my own personal world and I am projecting a little bit, but Ryan RevOps background, he's my CRO. He hired a team that I feel like has done a phenomenal job. I mean, their performance speaks for itself. But what I will say when I look into it and the technical AEs that he's hired have taken a lot longer to ramp than I would expect. Was he a CEO? Yeah, that's the problem. Ryan's never carried a bag. And that's a big part of it. And that's actually, that's the learning curve. Like it's a cool career transition, but that's the learning curve. It's like till you've been kicked in the face and actually been a salesperson, it's really, you sometimes over-engineer.

47:17It's where you actually sell it. That's where the friction is. And I can see the challenge as a CEO, So I, in my background being sales, I can see this super early, like within ramp. Why didn't you stop it? I like you. That's the, that's the push pull friction where I called it out multiple times, but it's Ryan's got to learn. He's, he's the hero. Do you feel like you weren't sure enough that you didn't like put your body in front of it? Cause it's a pretty fundamental, like it's something where you have to decide, like, am I going to let him learn it? He's going to learn a lesson here. Or am I going to put my body in front of this?

47:49Cause the lesson is too expensive for us. Do you think of it, Laila? There's this whole, it's five dysfunctions of a team. There's this whole trust factor in terms of just letting him, we're performing. So as long as we're performing, I'm going to give him a longer leash to really figure this out from a leadership standpoint. This is why I think you're a better leader than I am. Because I wouldn't let that happen. I would hurt the person's development as a result. But I'd be like, I know that's too, I'm not going to let this happen. I think you actually develop people better as a result. I'll let it be known.

48:21I'm like, hey, I'm looking from the outside and this person to me is underperforming. Like, take a second look. I'll say it. But I won't go in and go, you have to fire them. I'll let it sit. I won't let them hire the person. For sure. Well, yeah, that's, yes. That's the distinction is like, would you let him make these hires or would you let the hires happen but have like a close view on it? I very clearly said, look, I'm not going to lay down in front of the tracks, but this is like, this is objectively there's some concerns. and the challenge I have, this is one, I think, fault of mine from a CEO perspective is like once I get that in my head, I'm going to put it under a microscope regardless and it just is like, can lead it down.

48:59I don't know if that's a flaw. That's a really good way to think about this. Like I wish my brain naturally thought like that because I just wouldn't let that thing happen and I think it sounds good, right? Because like the most, but like it actually hurts people's development and sometimes it's a one-way door and sometimes it's a two-way door And like throwing your body in front of a two-way door all the time is kind of stupid, but I tend to do that. Jen, so your company is 100 folks and you're objectively crushing it. Thank you. We'll say that. In 2027, what scares you the most? You're on this like trajectory and you're like, we're cruising, we're going to have kickoff in Jamaica, I don't know, wherever.

49:44Columbia. Columbia, yeah. Is that true? are you having i think we're doing columbia yeah like you're what's keeping you up at night about 2027 um you know what's interesting is i i think the thing that kept me up happened like a couple months ago like we definitely had like two or three months where i think we had like a mini recession um like for me and in sass and i think it was just fear-based it's just like nobody was making big buying decisions or big bets and so that's what i keep worrying about is like obviously the only like I have a pretty safe space and services. What's the worst case scenario, which I don't love, is I right size the business.

50:22Like, great. I lose a couple of customers. I, you know, shrink the size and I keep going as long as my overhead is pretty manageable. As long as all your clients aren't Caesars, you'll be OK. I'll be OK. And so for me, it's do I double down on this AI native segment that I'm doing really well on? Or do I take my business school advice of diversification and I do something about it. Like I am so like deep in it with SaaS and AI. Like my entire business is that. I think I have one that is medical tech. I have a little insurance, you know, segment, but I'm pretty much at the hands of the market. And I don't have a lot of space to find solace if things go south.

51:05And so I'm very worried about that. And then I'm always kind of thinking like, what is the exit for a services company like my only exit is pe comes in and takes a little chunk or mushes me with three other companies or like now i mean this came up in the the dinner that we had aj where you're like a sas company wants to take this bet on services and buys us like it really basically is i have to go let go of this thing and i don't know what the timing is um i do know that if 10 years from now i've got 150 person company i'm not happy uh and so it's either this like big trajection of like, hey, let's let's keep growing this thing.

51:42And I keep learning and I keep growing or I do want an exit. And so like I'm always and if I want an exit, I got to go clean my books and show good margin and do all that kind of work. Yeah.

51:53Sam Jacobs: But you're you're in a good position, right? I mean, yeah, you're entering probably good time to get an audit, good time to like clean everything up, because the beautiful thing about rising markets is that people you're not the only person that thinks about diversification. You know, you're all of a sudden, all these assets that are, that are not in favor when everybody is, has the hatches battened down and is totally focused on just surviving. When people feel a little expansive, you know, communities become interesting, services businesses become interesting. You know, this is why OpenAI bought TBPN, which didn't make a lot of sense.

52:29Sam Jacobs: So I think you're in a, in, I think you're in probably great position. And I bet that some of your clients might actually want some kind of services deployment arm that could become the consulting division of XYZ Frontier Lab Company or something like that. I mean, we have a$5 million gong business. And I'm like, is that like, I don't know that I want to work for a services company. Also, Amit has never even floated this. This is like me having dreams. I'm like, is that the next move? I mean, Salesforce has bought services organizations or has heavily invested in services organizations. So for sure, that's a thing.

53:04I don't, you know, maybe tides are changing, but I don't know that I want to be the services leader inside of a SaaS company. I think it's a pretty, I think it's a job where you get beat up quite a lot. Like, I don't think it's, I like being the winner and I don't think that's a role in which I win. Well, 10 years ago, when you were founding your own Nimbly, your perspective on this? Would you have said the same thing, which is in 10 years, if I'm 100 people, I'm not happy. I think so. But I was also very naive at 25 thinking that this was going to be like I remember making a bet. Like I've always been a little more realistic.

53:40My business partner, Troy, is definitely like it is so lovely how much he believes in me. It is like a very beautiful thing. But he's like, oh, yeah, we could do it. Like everything that he thinks about, like growing the business, he feels so positive. I'm the one that's a little bit more of a realist. But I remember when he was talking like, yeah, when we get to 100 million, and I'm sitting here going, you think we're going to be 100 million? And I was like, so skeptic. And I did make a bet with him. I told him if we hit$100 million, I would change my name. And the CEO of Blue Wolf, his name was Eric Barrage, is, he's still with us.

54:10And I told him I would change my name to Erica Barrage. I would legally change my name to Erica Barrage if we get to$100 million. And he brings it up. We're at 25. It doesn't feel that insane. Like, I guess we could keep going. I don't know if I'm the leader of a hundred million dollar company. Like, I don't know if that's who I am. I would like to believe that I could rise to the occasion, but I don't know that I would love it. I think it's just like a very different role.

54:36Sam Jacobs: I'm sure you could rise to the occasion for sure. We have time for one last topic. And because I know you're going to be out there in San Francisco in a couple of weeks. And it's sort of a bulls versus bears conversation. that is typically the last thing that we do because we're a little tight on time today. Bulls versus bears. And so my question is, and Asa can correct me if I get any of the numbers wrong, I think Clay just raised$150 million and announced their Series D. It is, yeah. And it's a$7 billion valuation. And we had Liz Christo on the show from Stage 2 Capital, and she said she's bearish on Clay because it's too hard to use.

55:21Sam Jacobs: And, but that was, I think, a moment perhaps before everybody was using everything through Claude or through OpenAI. So you could control basically any platform. It was headless. That was the beginning of the year. That was a lifetime ago. Bull or bear on clay? It's an interesting reasoning that it's hard to use. It's definitely giving me business, like the fact that it is difficult to use. So for sure, it's technical, but it's an orchestration tool. And so it's not going to be easy. Like if it is easy, you're not doing that much complex stuff. So I don't think about it as that being that much of a negative.

56:04I'm obviously bullish because I'm building an entire practice around it. I think that they're going to shoot off. They are going up market. I'm seeing enterprise customers wanting to utilize clay. The things that are going to be difficult is it is technical. You need to go hire people alongside it. It is more expensive by the unit of data, but it gives you incredible prototyping capabilities. So I'm bearish. I'm sorry, I'm bullish. Now, the only thing - Look, that's a quick flip. No, I'm bullish. The only thing I would maybe say is I don't know about valuations right now. Like I look at Clay, I compare it with, They basically have like similar, I think a little bit more, but they're not that different from Airtable.

56:50And Airtable sells for, you know, 1.2. And so now is it worth 700? After raising 700. Totally. How much revenue does Clay do? Does anyone know? I think they hit 100 million mark, but I don't know what's public.

57:04Sam Jacobs: Airtable is doing 400 million, I think. They hit 500. Yeah. So. Yeah. So let's say these guys raised their last round in August at 3.1. That's when they'd hit 100 million. Let's say they've doubled it and they're at 7 billion right now. That's an, yeah. Asad, are you bearish or bullish on Clay at 7 billion? I heard something really interesting from Jason Lumpkin, which is that he's, you know, very AI-pilled. He's like, my agents just love working with Clay. And that was really interesting. That is very interesting. Right. Like I think more and more that's going to matter. And if that's the case, at least for now, you have to be bullish on the company that the agents love working with.

57:51If there's three companies that do something and agents prefer one. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing you really have to think about is that they're, I mean, Clay's 10 years old. They're like lasting power and sustainability. to think about that. Well, because four years ago or three years ago, they were 10 million in revenue, maybe less. But they pivoted. They are new, like they did big pivots. But think about how strong their operations are. They had so much time to build great ops. I mean, honestly, though, they had a lot of time and they've definitely pivoted. They've had a lot of time to really, really think through the business and what's going to be a long-term business.

58:27Do you think anyone has like some big plan that they then execute over four or five years? Or like, And it's an honest question. So much of it is like just like solving the Nets problem, moving in. Well, today that's true. The world keeps changing around. So you just like keep evolving. You're thinking about like what's possible next year. Yeah, but their Nets work well together, right? Like their teams are past the like, you know, storming, forming. Like they really know. They know each other. Me and Troy work together now versus when we started the company. Like we were fighting all the time at the beginning.

59:00Sam Jacobs: Oh, my God. I think this is everything what you're saying right now, Jen. I forget who said it. It might have been this guy I follow on Twitter, Matt Paulson on X, but he was like, the name of the game, especially for businesses like ours, is find the people that you love to work with. Keep cycling through until you find the right team and then never let them go. And that feels so true. Jen, it's been incredible to have you on Topline. We're so grateful to you. If folks want to find you, how can they purchase GoNimbly services? is like, what's the best way to get in touch? You can DM me on LinkedIn.

59:35I will answer. Yeah. Awesome. If there's nothing else, I am extremely bullish on GoNimbly. Oh, thank you, AJ. That's very nice.

59:43Sam Jacobs: We're all bullish on GoNimbly. And we're excited to see you in person soon. Thanks so much for being our guest on Topline. Thank you. Thanks, Jen.

59:58Sam Jacobs: If you are looking for more Topline, Check out the Topline newsletter at toplinemedia.substack.com. That's toplinemedia.substack.com. Or if you're a video person, check us out on YouTube. Topline-media is what you want there. Have a delightful day, everybody.

1:00:30Thank you.