Last week I hosted an event at the Balderton Capital London headquarters discussing the impact of AI on go-to-market (GTM) functions. The event was inspired by two things:
- My aborted attempt to write an AI GTM guide, after I realized just how huge the space was and how fast it was changing. I quickly understood it’d take too long to write and it would be out of date the second it was published. But the exercise nevertheless got me started researching AI and GTM.
- The following slide from Battery Ventures that I discussed in my 2024 predictions post. This slide argues that, thanks to AI-driven productivity improvement, you should be able to drive the same quota with a 75-person organization that previously required a 110-person organization. This got me thinking: boards are going to start asking about that 30% productivity improvement in 2H24 and what are we going to say?
When the market is in a state of confusion and things are moving fast, it’s better to have a conversation than to write a guide. So I found two of the smartest people I know and asked them to join me on a panel:
- Alice de Courcy, CMO of Cognism, an amazing company that’s doing some of the best solutions-oriented and thought-leadership (aka “demand generation“) marketing in Europe. Alice is also the author of Diary of First-Time CMO.
- Firaas Rasheed, founder and CEO of Hook, a company that’s re-inventing customer success software. Firaas argues that CS software lost the plot and ended up more focused on process (e.g., QBRs and NPS surveys) than on results (e.g., churn prediction and prevention). The company’s origin story is quite compelling and told here.
After a I did brief introduction to set the stage, we focused on four high-level questions that GTM leaders are pondering:
- What should I make of all the AI tools flooding the market?
- What should my strategy be?
- What are my higher-ups expecting?
- Where should I start?
Thanks again to Alice and Firaas for joining me, and thanks to everyone who attended. The slides are available in PDF here and are embedded below. Balderton is writing up a summary of the event that, once available, I’ll link to here.
Note: both Cognism and Hook at Balderton portfolio companies.
Very interesting post. PE / VC firms saying AI will drive “X%” savings in area X seems to be the norm. It’s not clear how they got to the X% and all of them seem very light on “how do we get there” specifics.
Truth. But it doesn’t mean you still won’t get asked about it in a board meeting one day!
Hi Dave, thanks for posting this. Is there a recording of the panel discussion?
Unfortunately, no. Thanks for reading and hope you’re well.