So, what is a GTM engineer, and why is

it one of the fastest growing roles

right now that's coming into the market?

Why are so many companies hiring [music]

for it? A GTM engineer is a go-to-market

engineer, and they basically use

software to build pipeline for

companies. They use tools like Cloud

Code and all of these different APIs to

basically wire together automations and

workflows and even agents that can do

tasks or run autonomously. Now, on this

episode today, I'm hosting my friend

Ben. Ben is a GTM engineer who's worked

at multiple startups, and he's going to

be talking about what the actual job

role and function looks like and how

companies can be successful by

implementing these people at their

organizations. Specifically, some of the

things that I found really interesting

about this conversation is we're going

to talk about how API [music]

completeness is now the buying criteria

for software. An example of this is how

Salesforce is actually better now than

HubSpot because you can do more through

the API. [music] We're going to also

talk about how you can build UIs just in

time for your team for internal tools.

And this interface can be anything that

you need it to be because you can just

vibe code it. We're going to talk how

you should just leap over entirely from

Zapier or n8n. Don't even touch him. Go

immediately to code. The benefits of

that and why it's the better way to

start building these solutions. And then

we're going to talk actual workflows.

What does Ben's day-to-day GTM

engineering work actually look [music]

like? Where are the opportunities right

now on cold outbound and how you can

actually build pipeline for your sales

team. And this episode is brought to you

by graft.com. Graft.com is the platform

to deploy marketing agents with. It's a

data pipeline, a data warehouse, and

then also a cloud server that you can

push code to or agents to.

>> [music]

>> With that stack, you can build basically

anything that you need for marketing

engineering. And the best part about

Graft is that four deployed software

engineers can do these implementations

for you on top of the platform. They're

basically like Palantir, but how you do

if you're trying to implement marketing

agents for your business like a Facebook

Ads agent, a Google Ads agent, an SEO

agent, a cold email agent, go to

graft.com to learn more. All right,

let's get started with today's show.

>> [music]

>> Dan, what's up? Man, we've been chatting

online for like months, but I'm I'm so

stoked to actually have you on and be

able to share You have so much knowledge

on the GTM engineering side. I feel like

you're one of the few people that's

really actually doing this in

organizations. Like a lot of these guys

are just like you know, lone wolves.

Maybe they run it like a

you know, an ex-clay agency. They've now

moved everything to a super base and

like a railway server, right? But I feel

like you're one of the few people I see

that's actually doing these GTM systems

within companies. So, man, you you I

read you said this the other day online

and I

I just always resonates with me. You're

like salesforce is now the best CRM for

go-to-market.

Why do you believe that? Like why did

you say that?

I'd love to go deep on that for me.

>> Yeah, so

>> Um

>> So, first of all, it is

I don't care what anybody says. Like

listen, Adia is cool. We use HubSpot at

AirOps, which I wasn't a super huge fan

of and I don't think it's like a big

deal to say that, but

all these other CRMs like they they have

cool features. Like don't get me wrong.

But actually what's happened now that

you can just plug the salesforce CLI

into cloud code, all of that like legacy

complexity and all of those like crazy

endpoints and everything

that used to be like a huge pain in the

ass are actually like an asset in the AI

era and because I say

I'll give you an example of something

that's really stupid probably to most

people, but is a

symptom of how good salesforce actually

is now, which I know it's crazy that we

are having this conversation. Like we're

out here selling salesforce. Like we

should be getting kickbacks on

salesforce for this hopefully, but

um

when my

my previous company Sift

we you could literally provision user

security settings from the terminal.

Um

and some people might say, "Well, who

who cares?" Well, first of all, if

you're Salesforce admin or like an IT

person, you definitely care. Um

but

it's that sort of like attention to

detail that

makes something actually usable by

agents. Um that's so important now

because think about like you could have

you could build your own onboarding

flow. Like if you wanted to set

something up in cursor with all the end

points, it's like, "Okay, well, the rip

laying API is like this person's

onboarded. What what's their uh user

group?" Oh, they're an SDR. Well, we

already have all that provisioned. Um

and just go do the [ __ ] like

automatically. And I'm sure there's

services out there that do this, but

for enterprising teams who want to run

lean, who don't want to buy a widget for

like every [ __ ] business process,

like this stuff is a huge asset. Not

even not even getting into any of like

the actual sales and revenue generating

like potential of that. So, all those

features, right? So, that's that's my

like 10-second bit on why Salesforce

rocks and everything else sucks.

>> I I I think this is a larger like theme,

too, right? I mean, this is basically

how honestly, I got to tell you this

like my how I think about software and

choosing purchasing software now is

based off of what you you saying this

like 6 months ago. Like I I am now all I

think about is like how robust is the

API and do I have to like if I can't do

everything

through the API that I can do within the

UI of the website, like I am not buying

that software at this point.

Cuz it's like, "Why would I ever try to

touch a UI?" And and and really what it

comes down to even more so is like if I

need a UI, I'll just build a custom one.

Like we're doing this more and more now

where it's like if I need some type of

visual way to interact with like

whatever it is that I'm doing, I will

just use my like I will build the custom

solution that I need like just in time,

right? Cost of code has gone to zero and

I can basically build the exact solution

that I need. Um like if I need to click

a button or like view you know, have it

build a flowchart to understand what's

going on. This I think it relates It's

funny I've been having a lot of

conversations with companies and all

that they're like, "Why wouldn't we use

Zapier or like N8N to do this? Like why

would we Why should we go straight to

code? Like it's hard to visualize." And

I'm like, "Just ask it to visualize it.

Just ask it to make a work like It's

just a It's a flowchart. That's that

That's not complicated. It can do It can

show you that logic." So

>> Yeah, that's so funny the portfolio

Well, you guys can't see in the chat,

but I was sending my portfolio earlier

and like it's literally all these

mermaid charts. I'm like, "Hey, I have

all these like old repos. Make mermaid

charts out of these." Like there's

nothing uh sophisticated about this

stuff. This is like an amalgamation of

like all the systems that I was running

and um this is like some some of the

smaller subsets, but like all this stuff

is like generated by Cursor.

Like um

and there's a ton of different like

pieces of code out there that it can

like then string together for like that

big mermaid chart. But yeah, um yeah,

it's funny that when you talk about like

N8N or something, somebody was um

telling me that Make was hiring for a

job in Raleigh or whatever, which is

kind of near me, and I was like, "Dude,

like how are these companies still in

business? Like if you're at Zapier or

Make, like I'm not trying to be a dick,

but like how are you How are these

companies still in business?" Um because

when I used to use those things, dude,

it was such a headache. And like I like

to think I'm pretty smart. I just I

think I have like, you know, ADD or

something and I'm like, "I can't I can't

get this [ __ ] workflow to work." Um

and when you're in Cursor or something,

it's like, "Hey, fix my workflow." And

you know what's crazier about this, too,

is like N8N had an opportunity to

actually really get people more embedded

into their tools when AI started like

coming out because

think about it, like the stuff that we

were talking about with Salesforce, like

N8N already has all that. They already

have all their endpoints and they have

metadata about what these endpoints are

supposed to do. And like, why did it

take them so long? I don't even know

what they're doing now, but like I

assume by now they've solved this

problem. Like, why did it take them so

long to like act upon the market forces

and like actually take advantage of

that? Like, I don't know.

>> Totally. I mean, I think and this was

the major learning like in the epiphany

I kept So, I was using N8N for a lot of

the stuff that I was doing on like the

marketing engineering, whatever you want

to call it. Like this this category that

we're in. Um but I found myself I was

using Claude code to create

uh or I was basically using a

state-of-the-art model to create JSON

files that I would drop into N8N. And I

was like

>> exact same thing.

>> Exactly. And you're like I'm like I was

like I'm vibe coding here. Why am I

doing this? Why am I not just going

straight to a server, right? Like, why

am I not just pushing code? And I think

that it leads into the next thing I want

to talk about with you. You you you you

say this all the time um about really

like code is the truth now of like what

you're doing as it go to market like for

go to market. Like it's almost a log of

your actions and your activities and you

know, everything that you're doing at a

company. I I think you advocate for this

a lot. Like if you don't have a GitHub

repo showing the stuff that you've done,

right? For the work that you've done at

companies, like

like that that is what the future of

this looks like, you know, for

everybody. They you need to learn how to

build these systems. Uh what's your

thoughts on that? Like do you do you are

you seeing I mean,

more I I I think we're both kind of on

the forefront of this. This is how we

think about everything now is like I'm

not trying to hire a marketer

traditionally. I'm trying to hire like

somebody that uh can actually build

systems and use all these AI tooling to

like build out processes, not just like

do individual, you know, campaigns that

are one-offs. But I love to think about

I love to hear about your systems design

and just like how you're approaching

like I am writing code that build, you

know, and trying to create this log of

all my actions. If you would want to go

down that that rabbit hole with me.

>> Yeah, yeah. So, um so first uh I think

when we talk about like hiring people,

um

like revenue operations people,

go to market people, engineers,

I don't know where this is going to end.

Like I guess like you don't want an

enterprise account executive to have a

GitHub repo. I mean, it'd be cool if

they did, but like I don't know if

that's super relevant for them, but like

even like the SDRs at AirOps were like

five coding stuff. And like those are

one of the things that I enabled some of

them to do is like, "Hey, we have the

growth team GitHub. If you have

automations, put them here, and like we

can like build upon this stuff like over

time." And we even had some of like the

less technical marketers. I was like

red-pilling them on this stuff. I'm

like, "Use the GitHub so that like I can

help you with this stuff. Other people

can help you with this stuff."

Um [snorts]

I am seeing like the top tier of like

GTM engineers like have GitHub repos,

and I think that a lot of the I don't

want to say like whatever middle tier I

don't know cuz I don't know like how

talented these people actually are. Um

but

I'm seeing more people adopt it. And to

me like not having a portfolio,

like there's so many other jobs where

you'd have a portfolio.

And like that's your

I don't know, stamp of approval or or

calling card or whatever. And

when like [snorts] people are trying to

get into GTM engineering, they're like,

"You know, I'm interviewing for GTM

engineering roles, but I'm not having

much success. Like what should I do?"

I'm like, "Well, you need a portfolio,

and you need to like be

working on these problems over time

because it's not the same as just being

like a random like campaign manager

where you're like, "Okay, we sent out an

email campaign. We'll see if it works."

It's like, "No, like

I had

a folder

where it it had all of my email

campaigns that had ever been sent, all

of the copy, the background, the context

on each one." And this was not something

that I finished, but it's something that

I need to do is like build Like gotten

into loops yet. Maybe maybe you can

educate me on those later, but like

Uh and Eric Nittolosso talks about this,

too, I think. There's probably some

other people who are a little bit

smarter than me about this particular

point. Where like every time [snorts]

you send an email campaign, you should

recursively use AI to like improve it

over time based on like response rates,

like how uh improve segmentation, like

things like this. And so that's like

something that would sit in a in a

GitHub repo. But yeah,

I mean, the bottom line is if you're not

like keeping a record of your work

either

uh for yourself or for your company to

like that's the that's the real value in

it is I think like when a GTM engineer

is like building something and leaving

it there for the company when they

leave. Like AirOps has all the stuff

that I built, you know, in in the group

GitHub repo. So, yeah.

>> No, absolutely. I I It's funny you say

the loops thing. I feel like it's people

overcomplicate it so much and it's like

it's just what a human was doing

previously, but now we're just like

using agents within that process. Like

for example, say you're doing a cold

email campaign. Like how would you find

success? I would be like, "Cool. Like if

you're starting out from zero, we cold

email a bunch of people. We create

pipeline. We like have calls. We look at

who closed. And then we're like, 'Okay,

companies that have this shape

like they're the best companies.

Let's go find more companies that have

this shape.' But I think the granularity

that you can get to now is really

interesting cuz it's like, 'Oh, I can go

and I can scrape their similar web

traffic to be like, okay, what is their

What is the similar web traffic of a

good client look like for us?' Okay, I

can go and scrape their um for example,

um

uh like job post listing history. Like I

can scrape like there's all there's all

these different things that I can use to

enrich like who What does our target

customer look like? Both from like a

firmographic standpoint, but then also

like you can start to uh

like mine the sales transcripts,

understand like where were they at at a

given moment in time. Can we find other

businesses that have like that

psychographic that are, you know,

they're that look like for example, like

uh you know, we can go into signals

probably all day and there's people that

are way more advanced on this than I am,

but you know, one of the easiest signals

is literally like or two of them that we

see the most success with is like, did

they interact with content on LinkedIn

that's related to the product that we're

trying to sell? Um

and the second one is like, are they

hiring like for specific job roles that

we basically like augment or totally

replace that job role, right? Um and

then from that it's like, okay, is it

the company size that's appropriate for

it, but I think on the loop piece,

that's the thing like it's just it's

exactly what a human was doing

previously, but just didn't have time

for it, but now we can just do it at a

scale and with at a granularity with

also like more metrics than we

previously could, so.

>> Yeah, well,

that's what I was going to say about the

loops, too, is like you actually have to

know what information to enrich, which

is kind of like a crap shoot, so it's

kind of like you could you have to go

get everything like 100, you know,

different data points and

you know, at that point I feel like

sometimes like the

>> [gasps]

>> granularity and detailed like nature of

all that information can actually be

like distracting.

Also, the funny thing about like people

say this about like sales conversations

and stuff, too, but dude, listen, I I

mined thousands of conversations from

Gong at AirOps and there was a lot less

information there than than you would

hope and this is nothing against the

sellers at AirOps. I love you guys, but

it it's not always like people don't ask

the best questions for for me, you know,

which is not the point of them having a

sales conversation to be fair.

>> No, yeah, they're doing a talk track.

It's like how different can it be if

they know like if you know a talk track

works and it actually closes, like

you're going to do that same talk track

>> [laughter]

>> Yeah, you're not going to ask them like,

how are you feeling today? Like,

how many people did you hire last month?

Like, nobody's going to [ __ ] ask any

of that stuff.

>> No, totally. Totally. Yeah, I mean, we

just like all that information we're

just collecting anymore from like Reddit

or from like social chat channels like

we're using the uh

more and more just like scraping like

Tik Tok and Instagram to find like what

are the people talking about that are in

this category and like can we figure out

different or unique ways to talk about

the product? Um cuz I I feel you you you

said this before we jumped on the call.

It's like everything is becoming red

ocean right now. Like whether it's paid

ads, whether it's SEO, whether it's cold

email, like any cat like any any

everything is becoming just absolutely

cooked. Um

the

I I think the only way that we're seeing

that you can find like edge is you have

to basically map out what is everybody

doing in the market and a lot of the

times that your competitors are all

positioning themselves in the exact same

ways that you are.

Or like you know, they're all like

they're basically like you know, if you

think about it as a

a matrix, right? Where it's like here's

you know, five different ways I can

position and here's like 10 different

situations I could be in. They're all

kind of they'll they're going to be

bunched together.

Um and what you'll find is that like

rather than competing in that red ocean

space, if [clears throat] you go over to

this blue ocean space for like nobody

else is positioning themselves or like

talking about the product in that way,

it's so much easier to compete there.

And we see this within the ads all the

time where it's like, okay,

can we find some type of alpha within

the way that we're describing the

product or the pain that we're talking

to or the outcomes that we're talking

to, etc. Um but anyway, I I think it's

it's also

like something what we're seeing and

that's really top of mind for me is like

certain categories are extremely

competitive. Like I I

I imagine with Air Hops like you guys

there's so many companies that are doing

like AI search observability. Like how

do you differentiate in a category like

that? It gets really challenging, but in

contrast like we're working with a

company right now. They're like a motion

graphics company.

Um and for them uh like there's just not

a lot of players in the category yet.

And so it's just so much more blue

ocean. And I think this is just, you

know,

Anyway, I'm curious your thoughts there

like how you're thinking about it or how

how are you like trying to extract or

find that arbitrage or find that edge

within the current market? Also, just

what are you seeing on the front lines

from a competitiveness?

>> Well, okay. So, yeah, this is a great

conversation to have because Owen Clancy

who is my the VP of growth he left but

he was the VP of growth who hired me at

AirOps. Amazing guy if anybody's on

LinkedIn you should go he doesn't really

post anything but you should go ahead

him up. He's he's doing recruiting now.

So, anyway,

um

he would send me emails that like he

would get because people are, you know,

VP of growth they're going to send them

emails even though we literally sell

what they're they're trying to sell him.

And it was very interesting like some

people did a really good job with their

emails

and some of them did really bad job but

I don't think I think from a like a to

zoom out a little bit I don't think that

most people

understand the market that they operate

in and I think about this all the time,

right? Like people are like, "Oh, yeah,

I work at this venture-backed company.

We just raised a series B." I'm like,

"Okay, well, you just raised a $20

million series B or whatever it is.

Let's remember that the GPs in all those

funds

are LPs in other funds and they're

de-risking their investment by investing

in five other companies just like yours

who have the exact same positioning or

selling exact same product. We're all

just a bunch of monkeys in a knife fight

for the venture capital firms which is

fine. I'm not complaining. That's that's

what we all signed up for or I don't

know if you signed up for that. I don't

know if you're bootstrapped or whatever

but

>> Yeah, yeah, we we raised a pre-seed in

October.

We we just had to like make this like

infrastructurally we couldn't do it

bootstrapping so

>> Yeah. Well,

you have to

>> sign a sign a Fivetran contract. We love

you Fivetran. Thank you for all

everything you do for us but like yeah,

there was no way we were going to be

able to handle that so

>> Yeah, well, so you know this raising

money is an obligation not an

accomplishment. It's the the beginning

of the work and not the end but um

but yeah, uh there's a couple things I

can't really talk about that we were

doing at Ahrefs, but uh that they

wouldn't want me to talk about, but

um positive things like uh we were

trying to get a differentiation on our

positioning and go uh deep into one

vertical that we really believed uh we

could conquer. Um and especially like in

AI search, the thing about like Ahrefs

is like that we weren't just doing

visibility, but that's what you know,

right? Like and that's the problem.

That's that's that was our problem that

we were dealing with, right? Because

Profound was our biggest competitor.

They sort of I think we can say that

they won the visibility round for like

the last year. Um so, you know, hats off

to them

uh

>> [snorts]

>> for sure, but they also raised an insane

amount of money and I don't think that

their revenue is

like I just think that they have a a

very long road ahead of them. Um so,

best of luck to to them and they're

dealing with the same stuff, but

um yeah, finding differentiation is

really tough. I will say like one of the

things that I worked on right before we

left was um this lead magnet, which I

think I can talk about this. I don't

think it really matters. Um

where basically we went really deep on

analyzing

um everything about the company's uh

company's website, all of their AI

search performance, and we got like this

snapshot in time about like what how

they were actually performing against

competitors and things like this, right?

>> [snorts]

>> So, the lead magnet was great. Um it

generated a lot of pipeline for us

in a very short amount of time, and it

was really what what I thought of it as

like a V1 of a sales enablement product

and like marketing product that you

could actually spin off into a bunch of

different directions, um which is going

to be like phase two, and that's what I

would tell people. I'm like, "Okay,

guys, like I know the lead magnet was a

huge pain in the ass for us to build and

maintain and all this stuff, but it's V1

of a platform that we're developing for

our sales and marketing team." And um I

don't think that every industry has like

a tool that they could build like that

that would generate alpha.

Uh if anybody wants to know about it, I

can talk in more detail about it after,

but like um message me. But um

trying to find alpha and like leveraging

it in interesting ways and presenting it

in interesting ways

um

is something that like I think about a

lot. The problem with this lead magnet

though is like okay, think about this,

right? Like you get an email where like

hey, we did some analysis on your search

AI search performance.

SEO offers are so commoditized like that

you like VPs of growth, webmasters, I

don't know if that's a term that SaaS

bros use, but like the directors of

digital marketing, I don't know,

whatever.

They get so many emails where they're

like hey, your your traffic is down, you

know, all those like [ __ ] like

commodity sort of offers. And so how do

you actually present that in a different

way was a much different question and

like a much harder question to answer.

And I think we did a pretty good job of

it by like naming specifics from the

research that we actually did. Said hey,

you're not doing so well against this

competitor. We actually have a bunch

more we actually have an amazing data

set on this.

We would love to walk you through it and

you know, see if it could be useful. And

so that

Anyway, I'll I'll just like pause there.

Um but that's sort of like how we were

thinking about it.

>> No, man. I think it that's such a like

the insight there is like you have to

have some type of proprietary

information. Like everybody can go find

anything that's public, right? So like

that historically that was just like can

you systematize the process of getting

unique insights and sending them at

scale, right?

Um

but now it's you really have to have

some like secret sauce and that's the

only way that you can actually compete.

I also think that there's this something

to be said about like like the cost of

software has gone to zero. You can use

that as like a lead magnet now. So I I

have a friend who's running this company

is in the mental health space. Um

they have this mobile application and

like their data looks like super good

from a retention standpoint, all this.

Extremely cheap. And I'm like why is it

why are you charging so little? Like

this is crazy. And he said Cody, this is

marketing for me cuz like if I get all

these people into this app and like have

them, you know, basically using this

constantly, then I can go and it creates

pipeline for me to like, you know,

sell mental health like counseling,

right? Like to like whatever BetterHelp,

etc. And I it kind of was this epiphany

to me of like, okay, you can make these

like micro, whatever you want to call

them, like like features

and they become almost the lead magnet

itself. Like it's like the software

>> [laughter]

>> or this like custom thing that you build

is is what you use to get people in the

door. And I think that gets like pretty

exciting when you think about that at

scale and

it's It's really fascinating, man. I I

think that um

like this is also like a part of like

this new like go-to-market, you know,

your GTM engineer, marketing engineer

role is like what what free things can

you like what what can you give the

market that's relatively zero cost um

but historically would be impossible to

actually ship because like you you

couldn't actually get, you know, product

used to be the hardest thing to get out

the door cuz engineers were the most

expensive, you know, asset that we had

in an organization. I mean, that's kind

of flipped. It's like I can build

anything now. Now do you Now how do you

build this thing that is actually useful

and like have that filter for that? Um I

think everybody's calling this uh like

right now. It's it's basically taste,

which I think is like such a dumb way to

think about it. It's more just like what

does the market have appetite for?

That's actually the better way to think

about it. Um so

>> I think it's almost like expertise

though because think about like

companies like Clay and AirOps was

somewhat moving like in this direction.

Um and I'll I'll hear this I'll explain

it. Uh Jesse over at Lead Magic has this

like bit

that he does.

He's like, there's no such thing as

SaaS. Uh

there's software and then there's

services and they're not the same and

you have to sell both of them. And I

think that's kind of like where we're

moving like with something like the lead

magnet because like like to be fair,

like a lot of the stuff that AirOps

does, like

you could do on your own, but if you

don't have like alpha and expertise to

execute on these projects, like you may

put yourself in a bad hole. Like a lot

of the stuff that you do, this is why we

wanted to have you on one of our

webinars,

>> [snorts]

>> but um I think the the decision was like

um

if Cody comes on the webinar, he's going

to show up people how to do air ops for

free or whatever. But [laughter] like

>> That was the problem. I was like, all

right, maybe I can figure out how to

like fit this together where I like the

tooling is a part of the process, but

anyway, yeah, go ahead.

>> But

>> [laughter]

>> no, I mean, I I still think we should

have had you on because I don't think

that stuff matters. Because what happens

is

what like

uh okay, let me try not to go off on

another tangent, but like HubSpot just

implemented their like AIO

uh tool. It it's not good. It's actually

really bad and it's going to lead a lot

of people astray and they're going to

end up wanting to

buy something more mature and

purpose-built. And so like if somebody

tries to run the Cody Schneider

playbook, they're probably going to

shoot themselves in the foot. Like just

being real. Uh most people do not have

the expertise to do. It's the same thing

with cold email. People are like, "I

sent a million emails and like nothing

happened." I'm like, "Okay, well, let's

like

let's examine what you actually did and

maybe we can talk about like why it

didn't work and maybe why you need some

level of better expertise because doing

the actions at volume is like we said,

it's not the problem. Um so

anyway, I

>> No, man, I think everything you're

saying is exactly what we're

experiencing and feeling like on our

side of like the aisle. Um so like you

know, I I can't tell you how many

conversations I had where it's like I

had Claude code running our SEO and it

looked great and now it's absolutely

nuked. And it's like, yeah, it's cuz you

weren't, you know, you you it's still

like the tool is only useful by a person

that knows how to wield it, right?

>> Yeah. Um like I I and I think it's that

same principle. Like all this is is just

a tool for for execution. And and

there's ways to create those guardrails,

um but I mean, we're

you know, we're we're still figuring out

like how do we do this like in a

self-service motion, right? Like with

graphs. And what we're finding is that

there is a subset of people that are

like incredibly confident with and know

how to do this already. And maybe

they're running it locally and like

that's actually where we're finding this

opportunity right now. I'm curious your

thoughts here. It's basically the

infrastructure to deploy marketing

agents. Cuz it's like everybody's

monkey-patching this together right now

with like, "Okay, I I've got some data

stream. Maybe I got access to like, you

know, I I I I

Yeah. I begged my CTO to get access to

the data warehouse.

Um and uh I'm now like deploying random

agents to railway, but I have no

observability and my consistency.

Um and so basically what we realized is

like, "Okay, can we just unify that

where we're just going to give you

literally a CLI you can give your agent

and you're like, 'Go and spin up this

workflow I just made locally, put it

into a cloud with a live data stream,

and it can go do that, right?'" Um but

anyways, um first off, curious to get

your thoughts there in a second, but I I

think just to come back to that that

core idea, like the expertise is still

the most valuable part. Especially now

with like everybody like trying uh

competing, right? This is I think this

idea is related to what we just talked

about where all all of the marketing

channels are becoming more hard to

compete on because everybody can just do

the average route, right? Like so how do

you have differentiation? How do you

stand out? Um that you you it's becoming

more and more valuable. Like if you

really are good, you know, top 1% direct

response copywriter and you know how to

get um you know, uh an AI to write in

this in your style for for example email

or cold email or, you know, even scripts

for for ads, right? The the likelihood

that you're going to be able to

outcompete with the exact same tools is

way higher, right? So I think that that

expertise like there was this moment

where it's like, "Oh, you could just

throw anything up because

you know, it was the zero to one, but

we're past that now. It's now moving

into, "Okay, um it's the one to one to

100, which is way way harder because

it's just it's no longer blue ocean.

Like there's way more competition there.

So, but anyways, I'm curious to hear

your thoughts on like, you know, where

we see this is where the market's all

going and

that like everybody is trying to deploy

marketing agents. I swear to God, a new

one pops up every day and it's like

whack-a-mole at this point and it's

hilarious to me and it's like you look

under the hood and you're like, holy

[ __ ] you're just spamming Reddit

threads.

>> [laughter]

>> That is the software.

Um in my, you know, in my view, like

what what is an actual agent? It's like,

okay, some type of like job to be done

and you have like a thinking loop that's

within it with like an LLM making

decisions. Um and then you have a data

stream,

you know, that's basically coming back

to the agent so that it can understand

the outcomes based off of the actions.

And that's just like it's very it's very

simple, right? Like

I'm not trying to create God and put him

in a box and like have him have total

like control like I don't really want an

agent to make decisions and say, I want

it to run a process and I think that the

thing that we're realizing is like the

infrastructure for that is kind of hard

to like get built quickly. You can do

it. Like for example, like you can build

a data pipeline or warehouse and you

know, have a server that you deploy

agents to. It's like you can do it with

Airbyte with ClickHouse and then

you could have, you know, your agents

running a railway, but that's still like

engineer it's just hard. It's just like

we've tried to do it.

>> [laughter]

>> And maybe this gets easier as like

frontier models go along and and you

know, we're totally wrong, but our

thesis is that that like everybody's

going to want to go to code immediately.

Like anybody that is building some UI to

like connect together sequences. Like

I've seen this with all of these

marketing

like engineering startups. It's like

it's like this is just a Zapier clone.

Like you're you're ending up in the same

space. That's not how this is going to

work. Like how the the best are

performing right now that are like, you

know, I I talk to heads of growth at

companies like every week. Like they're

all running their systems out of cloud

code and the challenge that they're

facing is they're like they're trying to

deploy that into like something that can

either run on an hourly or a daily

cadence, but I'm curious just to get

your thoughts on like what you you saw,

you know, or what you're seeing on the

front lines, if that feels like it's in

the right direction or if you're like

no, this is like, you know, this

something entirely different. Is it Is

it going in a two different place?

>> Um yeah, so a couple things. So first of

all, like the marketing agents that spam

Reddit for you, that [ __ ] is not going

to last. Like that that

door is going to be closing very

quickly.

And there was some news about Reddit

possibly not renewing their contract

with Google that allows Google to scrape

them for AI overviews, which is going to

screw up a lot of people.

And I don't know, I don't care if they

do or not, but

if that's what your product is built on,

you need a you need to find God pretty

much.

>> [laughter]

>> Um

as far as like

what the best heads of growth are doing

and stuff like this, um I don't know if

this answers your question, but

basically like the way that I was I was

running a lot of my processes was out of

Vercel with just the code that we we

deployed. And so like

you can almost imagine a future where

like instead of,

you know, where your directory of vibe

coded slop revenue agents are is like in

Vercel and instead of logging into like

Salesforce every morning, you're like

logging into Vercel to like make sure

that none of them errored out overnight.

And you know, you click on the little

Vercel tab and it opens the app and you

go to the the dashboard and you know,

you see what's going on. Um

I I don't see people like

buying more apps. Like it just Think

about like some of the most successful

things that I did

AirOps was around like job changes.

Um and it was 100% vibe coded. Like

could I have gone and bought User Gems

or something? Like, probably, yeah. But,

there's like so many little nuances

around like account ownership and, you

know, all these First of all,

vibe coding a job changing bot, like

that automatically sequence people and

enrich stuff, like was like way harder

than I felt like it should have been.

Like, maybe I'm an idiot or something,

but it seemed so simple. And, um I

remember one time I got into like a uh

fight on LinkedIn with the CTO of

UserGems because I was like joking

around about how anybody could vibe code

UserGems.

I don't regret it. I wasn't wrong, but I

will say if you are listening to this,

you are right. It was not easy.

Okay, I admit it.

>> [laughter]

>> You can see.

Tell me how you did that, just so the

audience gets some nugget there. So,

what just for context for everybody

who's listening as well, like what what

uh Ben is talking about is basically uh

like com- person switches to a new role

and you're trying to as quickly as you

can

get to them basically with your offer

cuz like a job change is typically a

high signal that they're going to try to

implement some type of new solution at

the company that they're at. Uh tell me

about uh like what was it what was the

actual tactical like what did you use in

the stack to do this?

>> Yeah, so uh we used Common Room for the

actual signal. Um and

the Common Room folks, I've had

discussions with their product team, so

this is they're not going to be mad at

me if I say this, but like Common Room

is great is a great tool, but there's a

lot of shortfalls for it. I I probably

would have used something else to be

totally honest if uh if we didn't

already have Common Room. Um but,

they're trying to do great things over

there, so

hopefully they do it. But, um

uh all the all you need is a webhook

that uh you need something hook up to

your CRM, so obviously it has

everybody's LinkedIn URLs. Um then you

need a database uh or a

you know, enrichment provider that's

going to tell you that they changed

jobs. Um I mean, that it sounds really

simple, but the the problem was like all

of the stuff downstream from that, like

all of the the rules, like did were did

they have an open up? Are they a

customer? Because I had two different

sequences. I had former customers and

then former prospects. Former prospects

is really kind of overstating the matter

because they may not know anything about

us.

Um, and

all I wanted to do was like in enroll

them in a one-month sequence. The the

hard part like like the part where like

complexity started getting in was like

account ownership. Um, you know, if an

SDR I felt like if an SDR had helped

book the meeting that the original

customer came from, like they should get

the downstream of that, but that's not

really how we wanted to do it. Um, just

making sure that if the account wasn't

because this was the other problem,

right? We have an account scoring model.

If an account's not tiered, we're not

going to work the account. And so like

if it was a new account that wasn't in

HubSpot, I had to send it to a clay

table to get scored and then I had to

like make a webhook that would like wait

for 5 minutes for it to like either show

up in HubSpot or not and then I if you

know, then I had to like route it to a

different person based on the tearing

and like all this [ __ ] Um, and so

that's why people buy UserGems, I guess.

But uh, I think that it's probably

explains the the whole thing.

>> Totally.

>> it would go into a one-month sequence.

That's that that was the end of it. Like

it goes into a sequence. That's pretty

That's pretty simple.

>> Totally. Uh, I got some money that is

like the very midwit version of this,

but it's basically just like their

LinkedIn profile.

Um, you just all of the you know,

getting your ICP, you have them in a

database. Um,

and daily you just use an Appify to

scrape it

>> [laughter]

>> or weekly you can do this like go to

each profile and pull out the job

listings and then just have an LLM

that's like a super cheap LLM be like is

there a new job role on here from last

time? And that is a way to get signal.

>> What kind of What kind of scale does

that work on though? Like how expensive

is that?

>> You can get profiles for like like

fractions of a penny. So imagine if

you're doing 10,000 like it would be

cheaper than what you would pay one of

these signal companies for, for sure.

>> Yeah, I mean we had like few hundred K

contacts in HubSpot at least, probably

more than that. Like the week before I

left I had like 50,000 more contacts. So

we were well on our way to

having a lot, but

I don't know. I mean I think it would

even be at that cost. I mean depends on

how the frequency you want, but like I I

mean you could do this weekly, you could

do this

uh

you could do this daily depending on

your list size. It just depends on like

I mean I don't know what a contract for

a common room looks like um on a yearly

cadence, but like I I again

it's just that's that's all they're

doing, right? It's just

Well, we're seeing like is the LinkedIn

did they change, right? So anyway. There

was a bunch of other stuff we were doing

with Common Room. That's the ours used

to do.

>> for sure, for sure, for sure. It was

just what I had at my disposal. But

yeah, there's probably a mid-web version

of that that would have saved me time.

But like now I did it and I'm like next

time I'm doing this I'm [ __ ] doing

the mid-web version. Like this [ __ ] was

too complicated.

>> For sure, for sure. So

Um okay, man. What What am I not asking

you about that I should be? Um like

we've we've been here for a minute. Like

there's so much I feel like changing in

this category. Also like for the

uninitiated like GTM engineering, what

is How do you think about it? What is

your definition of that? I feel like

it's just like this thrown around term

and it started out as like you know,

people doing waterfall enrichments.

>> [laughter]

>> That was like the origin and now it's

evolved into like nah, man. I'm writing

like custom software and you when you

hire me I literally have agents I bring

with me to the team. What do you

actually view it as and then what am I

not asking you that I should be?

>> Um well well you're not asking me what

kind of job I'm looking for cuz I'm

looking for a job.

>> [laughter]

>> We can deal with that later, but um

uh

yeah, for to me GTM engineering is a set

of principles around

applying software solutions to sales

problems and

a lot of people are going to be like,

well, you know sales isn't a product

problem. And of course I agree sales is

not a product problem. It's not that

it's why I like you see like engineering

founders really struggle and why they

make bad first sales hires and why they

want to hire a VP of sales for 350k a

year who like does nothing for them and

things like this.

Um to me it's about like finding

uh friction points in like sales

processes. And this could be anything

from like revenue operations, marketing,

sales development is kind of like where

my like specialty lies, like finding

friction in those processes and like

working with like SDR teams, uh

marketing teams to like build lead

magnets, things like that. Um and then

like utilizing and measuring all that

stuff. But um

it it is fundamentally different. I

think the best way to explain it is why

it would be fundamentally different from

like revenue operations cuz first of

all, nobody's asking me about finance

stuff. Like nobody's asking me to

reconcile billing. Like you don't want

to ask me to do that. Like cuz I

probably wouldn't do a good job. But um

but it is interesting because I actually

saw a job listing for a post-sales GTM

engineer and I was like, I've never

heard this. What does this mean? And

when I went onto the listing, somebody

had, you know, sent it to me.

Um it was around like onboarding, CPQ,

finance, billing. And so really it felt

more like a bizops person with like a

cursor subscription. But I was like,

that's actually really cool. That would

be really cool application of these

principles

um and like ways of working that uh are

GTM engineering adjacent. Um

I don't think GTM engineering is just

about spamming people at this point,

like whenever I would run an email, um I

mean, we would use email bison, but like

all of the inboxes and stuff, you know,

I have a provider for that, like and um

there's a lot of things within email

deliverability that require like custom

coding, like inbox rotation and like

automatically retagging an inbox that's

like burnt to re be warmed up for, you

know, the next 3 weeks and things like

this. But um I know that's kind of like

a a long-winded to It's it's not

marketing exactly because like typically

I'm not doing like creative or campaigns

or or ads for the most part. Like

I did uh

add people to add audiences based on

like certain things, but that's um just

like one little thing. I don't do too

much of in ads. Um what I think uh

if you're looking for a GTM engineer,

you should hire me. No, I'm just

kidding. Um but uh if you're looking for

a GTM engineer, like I think you should

find somebody who has a real sales

background and not just a uh computer

science background because to me it's

more about the jobs to be done and

understanding what actually closes deals

and drives the revenue and like building

things in service of that as opposed to

like, you know,

a bunch of dopamine hit like workflows

that like sound cool and like I talked

to one guy who had hired a GTM engineer,

quote-unquote GTM engineer, and I was

like, "Okay, [snorts] well, what

happened?" Cuz they're like, "We let him

go." Or something. And he's like, "Well,

they just made like a bunch of

dashboards. Like they vibe coded some

dashboards." And I'm like, "Okay, well,

that's not really driving the business

forward, but um

okay." So, yeah, there's a lot There's a

lot of things to look out for. I know

there's some recruiters out there who

help people find GTM engineers and like

maybe can help you vet them better. So,

that's

that's what I'd probably recommend if

you're looking for somebody like that.

>> No, totally. I think that it's it's it's

your point. It's like this person is

They're I like what you described. It's

like it's better for them to come from

the sales rep side of the spectrum and

then move into this um rather than the

engineering side and move into it, you

know, from that that side. Um

it can be possible and like depending on

like the complicate, you know, what

you're doing. Like I

met a

>> [laughter]

[snorts]

>> Absolutely. Absolutely. But I think for

the general public when they think about

like what is the actual like

implementation of this hire look like in

the company, it's to your point. It's

like it's in service of the sales team,

right? Like it is not uh

you know, you're this person drives

revenue for the company and has like

directly and has a lever to pull that.

Like I think what you said is really

interesting to you on the dashboard

side. Like this isn't like a person that

is

you know, you're not reporting on the

activities. You are initiating the

activities and then reporting on them,

right?

That's like you're not an analyst. This

isn't an analyst role. This is like

somebody that goes and actually does

things. So

>> Yeah, absolutely. And they should hold a

bag. I think GTM engineers should be

responsible for a quota of some kind.

Whatever that is. SQLs pipe blind.

Whatever.

>> I think that's great and be measured to

that and maybe have bonus structures

that's associated that I get it. This is

a sales hire, right? And it is a part of

the sales organization as a function. Um

I'm curious your thoughts on this. I

talked to it I had it another person on

the podcast yesterday.

They'll be like right before your

episode comes out.

He called the email guy talking about

he's like I'm starting to think about

cold email now was it like one-to-one

marketing at scale.

>> [laughter]

>> Um and I I really found this like a very

interesting and unique idea of like oh,

you can now research people so deeply

and like have like an understanding of

the individual like at a such a granular

level that like Wait, and for example,

the example he used was were they're

cold emailing these different agency

businesses and maybe they have different

specialties like cold calling or cold

emailing or

you know, LinkedIn DMs etc. And so from

that they can basically like craft this

like pitch, you know, because their

product you know, it serves all of those

individuals. But rather than a generic

it can be specific to them. You know,

based off of their website, based off of

their LinkedIn post history, you know,

them talking about the business etc. And

then from that it's like an email he's

like I don't even care if they respond.

I just want them to see this.

>> [laughter]

>> And like we know that that impression

like is going to be a high value

impression because it's like a

one-to-one like you know,

basically it's a one-to-one ad is like

how he was thinking about it. I thought

that was really interesting. I'm curious

your thoughts there and like have you

seen at you know, any experimentation

with that or any, you know, any data

that you're sitting on, you know,

anecdotally that that feels related to

that idea?

>> Yeah, um so first thing, um I do also

view cold email as a one-to-one ads

channel. Um I think that's the best way

to think about it. Obviously, we want

people to respond. We want people to

say, "Send me the booking link." That's

not But here's the thing about email,

and I think this probably is obvious

when you really think about it, but I

don't think

I think um

the way that like cold email has been

treated is like we used to think of it

as a marketing channel, and then to some

people, maybe it's just me, I don't

know, we then started to think of it as

like a sales channel where we're like,

"Oh, if they don't respond to the email

and book a meeting, then it's not

working." And now after working at

AirOps and being exposed to like a more

traditional marketing organization, I've

sort of like shifted back to thinking

about it as a traditional marketing

channel,

um

because like I do have data, hard data,

that showed like uh heavy influence on

some of the larger deals that we booked.

Um where I had this like a it's in my uh

portfolio if anybody goes to see it, but

like um

this dashboard that showed like all of

the deals that we'd booked, and like it

would manually allow me to attribute it

to outbound or not based on like do I

think that we actually had some effect?

Did they reply to an email?

Uh did we email the person who came

inbound? Things like that. [snorts] Um

and so there was an influence whether or

not they responded to it. And the other

thing is like think about like this,

like what hap- like this happens to me

all the time, and I do this, right? Like

somebody will send me an email, it's not

really relevant for me, but I'm like,

"Oh, you know what? The other guy like

in RevOps or the SDR leader might be

interested in this." I forwarded it to

them. Like there were Gong transcripts,

speaking of Gong transcripts, this was

actually useful for me, um

in this deal attribution like uh app

that I built.

I would have it analyze the Gong call to

see if they said how they heard about

us, and I would use that to like

attribute it to the case. It's amazing.

I would use it to attribute deals to

outbound because like there was a couple

of examples where somebody was like,

"Oh, well, my boss forwarded me this

email and told me to like check you guys

out." So, nobody responded to anything.

They [ __ ] came in through a branded

search, but like they told us on the

call and they probably didn't even in

the like we have a how did you hear

about us form on our like our demo

booking. They would never [ __ ] say

email.

>> [laughter]

>> I so I don't know why people are so

reticent to just tell us how they heard

about them. Um but then they'd get on a

call and they'd be like, "My boss

forwarded me your cold email." So,

I can't figure it out. You know,

attribution is not a solved problem. So,

it's something everybody else deals

with. So, yeah, that's that's my spiel

on that.

>> No, man. I I I stand so firmly behind

this. I did this test forever ago. I I

said this in the last pod, so sorry if

you're hearing this again, but we

basically like cold emailed a bunch of

people with no intention of responses

and then we just looked at the emails to

see if they went and signed up for the

product and we saw

we saw a conversion rate that was

comparable to like what we saw with like

ad traffic.

>> [laughter]

>> From like, you know, ad traffic to sign

up and I was just over there and I was

thinking to myself, I'm like,

"This is just literally a marketing

channel if you think about it like

this." And so it's like, "How cheaply

can I send it scale?" It's like and

actually get it to land, actually get it

to be open. So,

>> Dude, think about the cost per click

versus the cost of somebody reading your

email.

>> Totally.

>> Like

it's cold email is basically [ __ ]

free like when you think about it like

that.

>> Yep. And so then it's like, "How do I

stand out?" And that comes to the

copywriting piece, but

All right, brother. We're coming up on

time. Thank you so much for coming on

today. I cosign that you should go sign

go hire Ben if you need a GTM engineer.

He's exceptional at what he does. I

respect your work deeply. Also include

link to the portfolio below and anything

else that you want, but man, if they if

you want to reach out to you, where

where should they where should they find

you?

>> Awesome. So, I have a website. It's a

benyamin.ai b e n y a m i n.ai. You can

check me out there. It's got links to my

LinkedIn, my uh account, my YouTube, um

all my other podcast appearances and

stuff. So, a bunch of like long-form

articles if you guys want to go

pick my brain. I wrote all these

articles cuz people would always ask me

things and I got [ __ ] sick of like

answering their questions. So, I'm just

going to write an article about this.

[laughter]

So, anyway, that's where you should go

check me out.

>> Amazing. Awesome. We'll include that all

in the show notes. Thanks for coming on,

man. We'll have you back in like 6

months and tell us the state of the

union, what's going on at GTM

Engineering, and what you're seeing on

the front lines. So,

>> Dude, we're all going to be unemployed

by then.

>> But,

>> [laughter]

>> Yeah, we're going to have the Chinese

model ship and it's just going to it's

going to replace every person. So,

>> We can talk about our woodworking

projects that we're doing now that we've

been replaced by the robots.

>> Exactly. Exactly. I've just gotten into

gardening. I'm happy to just like

continue only doing that if this my job

basically disappears. So,

>> [laughter]

>> All right, brother. Yeah, thanks for

coming on. We'll talk to you soon.

>> Yep, talk soon.