Formative Ventures

2025 will be a year of AI--I can feel it in my bones. The public has had 2 years to get used to interacting with digital personalities, and development teams have had 2+ years to learn how to adapt GPT capabilities to solve specific problems in specific markets. So what does this mean for go-to-market teams? It means every GTM leader, starting now, is either gaining experience automating their GTM, or incurring a month-for-month slip behind their competitors who are doing so. I wrote about this in Chapter 4 of #FREEMIUM, which I just published live to my Substack: ▶️ How do I think about investments and returns in automating GTM? ▶️ What are the major decisions I need to make? ▶️ How do I measure success along the way? ▶️ Does it really take 1-3 years to see financial returns? Could I cut that in half? "Hey, Boyce, I'm glad you're so excited about this, but it's not really a thing in my market yet--I'll get to it when I get to it." Okay... but you will be behind if you wait. Every month of experience you gain is a month of progress. Every month you wait is a month of experience your competitors gain, while you slip behind: ▶️ Product-led Growth Strategies: Gartner projects that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur in digital channels. ▶️ Freemium business models: Forbes notes that over 50% of top-grossing apps in Apple’s App Store leverage the freemium model. ▶️ AI-led GTM: Deloitte highlights the rise of subscription-based approaches, with 75% of brands using AI for customer retention. Take a look at my Chapter 4 and see if this framework for investing and measuring returns is helpful to you in making decisions about your future GTM motions! XOXO, -db Winning by Design, Formative Ventures, #PLG, #AILG

Let's say you don't have a product that sells itself (99% of companies) And let's say you want to grow (99% of companies) So in that case, to grow, you need sales, and more of it. You need more sales "work units" that are productive. Why don't we have more now? Because we've been busy "right-sizing" sales teams, and not hiring--too expensive. But now we're ready to go. Here are the options: 1. I can hire humans and stack up work units. For this, all I need to do is interview / screen / hire / onboard / train / manage / coach. Each salesperson will have a quota, of which they achieve X%, and I will pay them 50% for being an employee and 50% for attaining their quota. They will have some support around them--e.g. sales engineer, deal desk, manager, enablement, marketing... and we hope that over 50% of the hires we make end up being successful and staying for 2+ years. 2. I can acquire robot work units. For this, I acquire an AI sales agent, train it on my processes, and deploy it to accomplish specific tasks (e.g. discovery, qualification, scheduling, technical configuration, etc). This agent will execute exactly as trained (no forgetting curve), will require no commission, and will work 24 x 7. What's the right answer? 1 + 2. We've already hired Calendly as our scheduling robot, ChatGPT as our writing robot, Grain as our note-taking robot, and DocuSign as our signature robot. Why not hire agents to take over for other parts of the process? Until now, hiring an AI Agent to interact with the customer directly, ask her questions, help discover her (S)ituation, (P)ain, (I)mpact, (C)ritical (E)vent and (D)ecision process, and handle objections--has not been an option. The agents just haven't been good enough. Until now. In 2025, we will see agents capable of selling (I've already seen them in action). And that makes it easier to get back to growth. These agents need to be trained, yes (like humans), and they need to be managed, yes (like humans), but unlike humans, they don't get tired, they don't get frustrated, they don't get selfish, and they don't get paid. Salesforce believes in this future so much, Marc Benioff joked he might rename the company "Agentforce." If you're interested in this version of the future, please check out the attached paper, written by my friend, 🐶 Jacco van der Kooij. You thought #PLG was awesome, but only available to some? Wait until automated #GTM becomes available to all via AI Agents! The future is bright, and we are getting back to growth. All the foretelling is about to become real. XOXO, -db Winning by Design, 1mind, Formative Ventures

➡➡➡WORKSHOP ALERT 🐶 Jacco van der Kooij, David Spitz and I worked on a piece of research on #SaaS GTM that revealed that 41 of 72 public SaaS companies are struggling to make their #GTM engines work economically. Why? How did we get here? What can we do about it? Never mind the 72 public companies... what about the 1,200 SaaS companies with over $100M in revenue? Are they ready to IPO? Will they make it through narrow market openings? (OneStream Software just did... and as you may know, their GTM numbers are phenomenal.) Part of our research included how to build a Lean Revenue Factory, borrowing heavily from Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production system. I will lead a workshop on these topics next Tuesday. We anticipate a robust conversation about the research and its implications. If you are a SaaS executive concerned with GTM, I'd love to see you on the call. I promise to make it worthwhile. (links to the workshop and the research in comments) XOXO, -db Winning by Design