Founder perspective and strategic takes on AI, GTM, and the future of B2B growth.
98 posts
Most failed demos are actually failed discovery calls. The prospect watched a product tour, got interested in some features, and then had no specific problem driving urgency. When the problem isn't confirmed before the demo, the proposal that follows has nothing to pull it forward.
Marketing and sales misalignment isn't a communication problem. It's a structural one: the two teams are measured on different things at different time horizons, so their incentives diverge even when their intentions don't. Better communication doesn't fix a structural incentive problem.
Clay and Apollo both help with prospecting, but they're fundamentally different tools. Clay enriches and personalises data with waterfall logic. Apollo gives you a database with a built-in sequencer. Here's when to use each — and how they work together.
Pipedrive and HubSpot both work for early-stage B2B, but they're built for different motions. Pipedrive is a sales-first CRM — fast to set up, deal-focused, low friction. HubSpot is a growth platform — better when marketing and sales are both active. Here's how to choose.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo both help you find B2B prospects, but they're built on different data and suited to different outreach styles. Navigator wins for relationship-based prospecting. Apollo wins for high-volume cold outbound. Here's how to choose.
Most AI sales tool deployments produce disappointing results in the first 90 days. The tool gets blamed. The real cause is almost always the same: the tool was configured but the inputs it needs to work — tight ICP, proven message, supervision loop — were never set up.
Most ICP definitions describe who you'd like to sell to, not who actually buys. The gap between those two is where most outbound dies. Here's the specific ways ICP definitions go wrong and how to build one that actually reflects your buyers.
Small B2B companies forecast from CRM data. Their CRM data is unreliable. So their forecasts are unreliable. The problem isn't the forecasting model — it's the input quality. Here's why CRM data breaks down at small team scale and what to do about it.
Most B2B sales playbooks are outdated within 60 days of being written and completely ignored within 90. When the rep who built the knowledge leaves, the playbook is all that remains — and it's rarely enough. Here's why and what actually fixes it.
I spent years building GTM teams that couldn't run without me. Every team I built needed me in the middle — briefing the SDR, reviewing the AE's pipeline, explaining to the marketing person what we were trying to say. Here's what I got wrong and what I built Ektie to fix.
Every early Ektie customer shared one characteristic: they had already tried to build outbound manually and failed — not because of capability, but because of consistency. Here's the pattern and what it reveals about who AI GTM teams actually fit.
An AI SDR doesn't outperform a human SDR from day one — it outperforms at month 3 and accelerates from there. Here's the performance timeline, what drives it, and why the gap compounds over time instead of flattening.