Josh James

Our latest edition of GTM Navigator is live! We are thrilled to have Riya Grover, Co-Founder & CEO of portfolio company, Sequence, join us to dive into the world of billing & pricing. In this episode, you'll learn how to select the right billing vendor, explore emerging pricing trends, and get tips on preparing for pricing changes. Huge thanks to Riya for sharing her valuable expertise with us. Tune in using the link in the comments below!

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⚡ 𝗧𝗼𝗽 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲 - 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻. Joel Cessna, Founder & Principal of Cessna Sales Solutions, shares the failure that taught him the most: thinking he was “crushing it” without clear agreement on expectations. The lesson: Align expectations early - write it down, review it often. What great leaders & sellers do: ✅ Define quota, goals, and stretch clearly ✅ Document expectations and revisit them regularly ✅ Tie stretch targets to explicit incentives ✅ Remove ambiguity before measuring performance The Goals.com Podcast is available on multiple platforms: Spotify https://lnkd.in/gpYfRhvV Apple https://lnkd.in/gScY642p YouTube https://lnkd.in/gp6eWv_c Amazon https://lnkd.in/g-i8VK3t Goals.com: https://lnkd.in/gX_GkSxH #SalesLeadership #Alignment #SalesManagement #ExpectationSetting #JoelCessna

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If you do one thing today, read this remarkable article by Brian Balfour on "The Next Great Distribution Shift" - it's the most thorough and impactful post I've seen on what is happening with AI platforms and how this will fundamentally shift the environment we're all operating and building in. As Balfour perfectly put it, "The platform isn't your friend. It's not your enemy either. It's a force of nature. You can surf the wave or get crushed by it, but you can't stop it from coming." These are truly wild times, but we have to be ready to adapt (or fall behind), build with these platform dynamics in mind, and leverage AI's potential by **both** building it into your product and also into your distribution strategies. It's the only path forward. #AI #tech https://lnkd.in/dB5rw_AQ

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The legacy SaaS (LSaas) platforms are doing exactly the opposite of what their customers need. Instead of helping their customers manage through this incredible transition to AI, they are finding every way to upcharge for SKUs that aren’t adding value. Customers are looking for ways to REDUCE spend, but LSaaS players are charging astronomical prices for half baked products, frustrating co-pilots and genAI wrappers. Between agressive pricing tactics, half baked products, and increasingly win-lose dynamics—the frustration level is at an all time high. LSaaS is no longer playing the long game. To prove to the stock market that they are relevant and posting “big AI wins” they are alienating the customers. Very short-sighted. What happened to making game-changing products that delight and add value? Products that have attractive win-win economics? Products you’re excited to use? Our singular focus at Elementum is to deliver an amazing workflow orchestration platform to help global organizations transition to the AI era. An easy to use product that moved the needle. We do so with very attractive economics and a deep belief that we win only if customers win. Call us old school but we believe in playing the long game with customers.

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Great article from Brandon Gell and the Every Inc. team. I agree with almost everything in here, as it's what we're seeing too. Here were some key points that resonated.. Build Your Own Stuff First: They started by building their own awesome products. Everyone loves Cora and Lex, which gave them credibility to help other companies do the same. For us, it was our Chrome extension. Having our own product gave us a bit of street cred to kick off the business. Cultural Adoption is Important: Brandon highlighted that the bigger challenges usually involve cultural shifts rather than technical ones. We've seen this too, especially after building products. Sometimes users hesitate because they don't trust the product will do the workflow as well as they can. Other times, they're worried it might automate away their jobs. Regardless, investing in training and development is crucial. Empowering Clients: Instead of just handing over ready-made solutions, Every prioritized teaching clients how to build and adapt their own AI tools. This approach creates more of a partnership vibe compared to traditional consulting and builds a ton of trust. Going to get to meet the Every team this week too, which I'm super stoked about. Big fan of their writing and their business. You should be too!

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Misinformation isn’t a strategy. Customer outcomes are. The B2B landscape is littered with companies trying to win through spin instead of substance. But here’s the thing: customers aren’t fooled. If your product delivers, customers stay. If it doesn’t, they leave. It’s that simple. At Billtrust, we don’t need to play defense because our customers—and the data—do the talking. 📊 91% of G2 reviews score us a 4 or 5 out of 5. 📊 Enterprises are switching to Billtrust because they’ve experienced the alternative. 📊 The best marketing isn’t what you say—it’s what your customers say after working with you. The real competitive advantage isn’t marketing narratives. It’s customer trust. And trust is built through innovation, transparency, and delivering on promises—not rewriting reality. Read Becky Carr's take on why the high road isn’t just the right choice—it’s the winning one. #highroad

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Ready to turn Braze into your automation powerhouse? Ryan Wilkins and Braze's Alex Magidow, PhD will be presenting "Best of the REST: Level Up with APIs in Braze" on Tuesday & Wednesday at Forge. They'll dive into the technical backbone that makes real customer engagement possible - APIs, Webhooks, and Connected Content. But this isn't just theory. You'll walk away with practical blueprints you can implement immediately: - dynamic segment growth dashboards that update themselves - weather-triggered messaging that responds to real conditions - project management integrations that eliminate manual handoffs Perfect for technical minds and curious marketers who want to push beyond basic campaigns and build the kind of sophisticated, always-on systems that scale.

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Just wrapped up a keynote interview with SaaS expert and Mercury Fund’s Aileen Allen on the transformation of search. Here are some of the key takeaways from our discussion: AI-POWERED ANSWER ENGINES ARE REDEFINING SEARCH ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and others are reshaping how consumers discover brands—by delivering direct answers instead of a list of links. Traditional SEO is no longer enough. Being the first answer is the new frontier. (As Nat Ives noted this week in the Wall Street Journal, marketers are scrambling to catch up as AI upends the rules of search.) ORGANIC TRAFFIC IS DECLINING FAST Many brands are already seeing 20%+ drops in organic traffic—well ahead of Gartner’s 2028 prediction. At the same time, younger audiences are increasingly discovering products through social search, not just Google. If you’re not optimized for these new channels, you’re invisible. THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE IS SHIFTING Google’s antitrust trial and Chegg Skills lawsuit against AI summaries are wake-up calls. The power dynamics in search are under scrutiny—and the outcomes will shape how brands fight for attention in the future. CONTENT READINESS IS THE NEW CURRENCY Winning in answer engines means content that’s available, deep, and clear. Forget keyword stuffing—what matters now is structured, trustworthy, high-utility content that AI engines recognize and elevate. MEASURING WHAT MATTERS: BRANDRANK.AI’S APPROACH BrandRank.AI tracks three key metrics across all major LLMs: visibility (are you showing up?), vulnerability (where are the risks?), and readiness (is your content optimized?). We even monitor our own brand daily across 200+ keywords—it’s that critical. STARTUPS FEEL IT EVEN MORE THAN ENTERPRISE BRANDS While we work with large global companies, startups may have more to lose. Answer engine output already shapes perception, traction, and even valuation. If your AI presence is weak, investors and customers may never see your best story. IMPERATIVES FOR B2B SAAS TEAMS This shift isn’t just for consumer brands. B2B SaaS companies—many of whom rely heavily on inbound—need to reassess how they show up in AI and social answers. Now’s the time to audit your AI presence and rethink your go-to-market strategy. Thanks again to Aileen for the smart conversation—and to all the SaaS builders embracing the Answer Economy. Blair Garrou Heather Butler Shiv Singh Hank Hudepohl John Costello Dave Balter Michael Donnelly Frederic Colas Michael Kassan Hilding Anderson Matias Perel Chetan Parekh James Knott Ximena O. Zack Huhn

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Why hire a full-time CMO or CTO when you are still figuring out your first 50 customers? Early teams often rush senior titles too soon. What you need is sharp direction without the heavy payroll, paired with execution you can trust. That is where fractional leadership plus CoEs work best: senior expertise guides the call while Design Delta, TsquaredC, and Alt Dash execute. It’s not just advice on your slides but product design that improves usability, code that is production-ready, and marketing that shows real signal. The upside is clear: save cash by avoiding premature CXO hires and still get strategy plus execution that ships. Startups that balance ownership with rented expertise move faster. Fractional CXOs with CoEs give you brains and muscle but without the bloat. My team has published details around my thoughts here - https://lnkd.in/gyJWbjH7

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Attio and Clay are two powerhouses in the GTM space - as good as they are on their own, they are even better combined. I'll walk you through a basic demo of the two tools working together. I love both of these tools, and I think we'll see them integrated more ad more as teams try to implement and/or improve their GTM motions. If you have any questions, let me know - happy to share whatever knowledge I have, because I really love this stuff 🙂 Hope you get something out of this video!

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I'm always fascinated by how innovative companies are building on top of our infrastructure. This review of Hostinger's new "Reach" email marketing platform is a perfect example of a company focusing on its core strengths—in this case, an AI-powered template generator and a seamless user experience—while leaving the complex challenges of multi-tenant email deliverability and abuse prevention to us. We handle the intricacies of email reputation management so that our customers can concentrate on building amazing products. And Hostinger is no exception. SaaS platforms that are sending email on behalf of users they don't control often have a terrible time dealing with spam and phishing that might ruin their reputation and get them blocked everywhere. MailChannels makes this problem go away. It's clear that the market is shifting. Companies want to innovate faster without getting bogged down by the hard parts of building and maintaining a secure and reliable email service. By integrating with MailChannels, our customers can skip the steep learning curve of abuse prevention and deliverability and get to market quicker with a product that "just works." This is the future of email: focusing on the application layer and leaving the infrastructure to specialists. It's exciting to see our customers succeed with this model, and it validates our mission to make email delivery simple, secure, and reliable for everyone. I look forward to seeing the next Hostinger Reach.. and the next and the next... #EmailAPI #Deliverability #AbusePrevention #Innovation #Hostinger https://lnkd.in/g7RZe3fR

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