The GTMnow Podcast

The single most expensive sentence in sales is "I'll follow up on that." Adam Liska joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to break down the "execution gap," the space between knowing what to do in a deal and actually doing it, and why that gap is where most pipeline quietly dies.

Adam left DeepMind's Gemini team in 2022, pre-ChatGPT, to build a native revenue execution platform now serving 200 customers across 20 countries (recently rebranded and fresh off a $20M Series A). In this conversation, he gets specific on what is actually changing in the sales role, what should be automated, and why he thinks this is about to be the golden age for sales reps.

What you'll learn:
- Why "I'll follow up on that" is the most expensive promise in revenue, and how the execution gap compounds from rep to manager to CRO
- What parts of the rep workflow to automate now (research, CRM updates, business cases, follow-ups) and what stays human
- Why AI is squeezing middle management, not reps, and flattening GTM orgs
- How per-rep coaching changes when every call is recorded, shared, and analyzed for patterns
- The "corrective action" approach to coaching deals on the job, in real time
- How to sell globally when borders disappear but local-language talent still matters
- Why in-person events drove 70% of early pipeline, and how that compounds with cold calling
- How to keep your team at the AI frontier by never locking into a single model
- Adam's #1 piece of advice for first-time founders (hint: it starts with your co-founder)

Chapters:
00:00 Why AI won't replace sales reps
00:22 Leaving DeepMind's Gemini team pre-ChatGPT
01:18 What airspeed does and the "execution gap"
02:07 "I'll follow up on that": the most expensive promise in sales
03:28 The $20M Series A and the rebrand from Glyphic
05:30 Why walk away from frontier AI research at DeepMind
07:17 Leading when the frontier models keep changing
08:39 Buy vs. build, and keeping customers at the AI frontier
11:03 Landing the first 200 customers across 20 countries
12:41 Advice for first-time founders
14:04 Selling globally and what AI changes about language
17:07 What the sales rep role looks like in an AI-first world
19:24 How reps and leaders should start automating today
20:51 The channels driving results right now
22:41 How AI makes per-rep coaching actually work
25:14 Building an execution-first culture
27:10 The DeepMind departure story
28:51 Building in London vs. selling in the US
30:43 Adam's favorite AI use case as a busy CEO
31:26 The biggest misconception about AI in sales

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
X: https://x.com/sophiebuona

Guest: Adam Liska, Co-founder and CEO at Airspeed
X: https://x.com/adliska
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adliska/

About the guest: Adam is the co-founder and CEO of Airspeed (formerly glyph), a native revenue execution platform that closes the gap between knowing what to do in a deal and executing on it. Before founding the company, he worked at DeepMind on the team that became Gemini. 

About GTMnow: 
GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Benchmark's Chetan breaks down why the path from $0 to $100M has collapsed from five years to under two, and the one thing that is actually getting harder in the AI era: reaching your first million in revenue. In this VC bonus edition of the GTM Now Podcast, he sits down with Sophie Buonassisi to unpack how AI native companies are compressing 180 day sales cycles into 30 days, why direct sales is here to stay, and how value is shifting away from code toward the last mile of customer service.

Using Legora (legal AI) and Manus as case studies, Chetan explains how Benchmark builds conviction fast, why the marginal cost of code trending to zero changes everything, and what separates the founders who win this window from the ones who miss it.

What you'll learn:
- Why the first $1M now takes longer than the next $99M in the AI era
- How top AI startups compress a 180 day sales cycle into 30 days
- The "trusted vendor" playbook for breaking incumbent distribution advantages
- Why Legora embedded inside a law firm for a year before launching
- How a magical demo plus a tightly scoped pilot collapses six month deals
- Why value is moving from the product build to the service and outcome
- What Benchmark actually looks for: technical insight that creates demand pull
- Why direct sales and forward deployed engineers are exploding in AI
- How buying one AI app triggers an enterprise to buy 100 more

Chapters: 
00:00 Intro
01:13 Why Max + Paul were furious taking notes on this one
02:10 Benchmark's $2B growth fund and the changing strategy
04:57 POC to trial and the power of direct sales in AI
11:33 Meeting Max early: $0 to $100M in 18 months
15:05 Manus: 0 to $100M in eight months through PLG
17:10 Will the AI native window close?
19:09 Sizing the window: $40B software vs $1T services in legal
21:50 How Benchmark picks the winners
25:31 Turning a 180 day sales cycle into 30 days
30:45 The Legora deep dive: research, pilots, legal engineers
41:46 Why $0 to $100M keeps getting faster
42:29 The harder problem: getting to your first $1M
44:04 When code goes to zero, what do customers pay for?
48:46 Sales led vs PLG in the AI era
51:49 How to spot the right founder
55:18 What company Chetan wishes someone would build
56:48 Investors founders should follow
57:40 Working with Jack Altman at Benchmark

Connect with Chetan Puttagunta: 
General Partner at Benchmark
Twitter/X: https://x.com/chetanp
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetanputtagunta/

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
Follow Sophie: https://x.com/sophiebuona
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

About the GTMnow Podcast:
GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund, sharing the tactics and strategies behind how the best companies go to market. The VC series brings on top investors to break down what is actually working in go to market today.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

LinkedIn CPMs just hit $800. AI is flooding every channel with content. Outbound is dying. So where should B2B marketers actually spend their ad budget right now?

Keith Putnam-Delaney, co-founder & CEO of Primer, joins Sophie to break down the complete state of B2B paid advertising, what's broken, what's working, and where the real opportunities are hiding in 2025.

What you'll learn:
- Why LinkedIn & Google search are hitting a ceiling (and what to do instead)
- How to get 80% match rates on Meta and 70% on Reddit for B2B audiences
- The only moat competitors can't copy: your targeting
- Why you need to feed CRM conversion data back to ad platforms
- Holdout groups, attribution, and what actually proves paid ROI
- The truth about ads in LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok)
- B2B influencer marketing: the most undervalued tactic right now
- Founder lessons from 6 years and 3 pivots building Primer

Chapters:
0:00 – The paid advertising crisis no one's talking about
2:40 – AI's real impact on ad costs
4:06 – Google Search & AI Overviews: what still works
5:04 – LinkedIn CPMs: $20 to $800 in 18 months
6:39 – Why B2B brands need to be on Meta, Reddit & Instagram
7:01 – What Primer does (80% match rates explained)
9:29 – The device fragmentation problem & attribution
11:16 – Holdout groups: the statistically proven approach
13:30 – Which channel to start with (and minimum spend)
22:18 – Paid ad creative: feed the algorithm with variants
25:14 – B2B influencer marketing & thought leadership ads
30:59 – Why you MUST push CRM data back into ad platforms
33:31 – Ads in ChatGPT & LLMs: what's coming
35:53 – Founder lessons, mental health & iteration

Connect with Keith Putnam-Delaney: 
Co-founder, CEO of Primer
Twitter/X: https://x.com/kcpdelaney
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithputnamdelaney/

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
Follow Sophie: https://x.com/sophiebuona
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

About Keith Putnam-Delaney:
Keith is the co-founder and CEO of Primer (https://www.sayprimer.com/), a B2B paid advertising targeting layer that helps brands unlock high match rates on Meta, Google, Reddit, and beyond. Former brand marketer turned data-driven growth leader.

GTM Now is the media brand of GTMfund, sharing go-to-market insights from the top 1% of revenue operators.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Most sales comp plans are quietly broken, and the people running them have no idea. Siva Rajamani, CEO of Everstage, has visibility into 300+ enterprise comp plans, and he says 90% of companies make the same mistakes. In this episode he breaks down what's going wrong, how to spot it, and what a comp plan that actually drives revenue looks like.

Siva explains why sales compensation is not a back office cost center but the single biggest lever in your go-to-market strategy. It's the glue between what a company intends and what reps actually do. If your reps aren't doing what you want, the answer isn't in a 1-on-1. It's in your comp plan.

We get into the over-complication trap, the hidden math that makes reps refuse your best deals, the base-to-variable ratios that actually work, why your top reps should out-earn almost everyone, and how AI is about to blow open the gap between your best and average sellers.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:30 Siva's RevOps background at Freshworks
04:00 Scaling RevOps from 1 to 25
04:50 Why he left to build Everstage
06:30 Why incentives drive revenue, not tools
08:00 Comp as the glue between intent and action
10:30 The 1 to 2 mistakes almost every team makes
12:00 "If your comp plan needs FAQs, it's a tax code"
14:00 The 60-second test for a broken plan
15:30 Designing comp to retain top talent
16:50 How AI widens the gap between top and average reps
18:00 The $1M sales rep is coming
19:30 Why optimizing for top earners is better on margins
21:30 Quota to OTE ratios that actually work
23:00 Base vs variable: the 50/50 rule and exceptions
24:00 What Everstage does and who it serves
25:30 How Everstage structures its own comp plan
28:00 The rise of the revenue architect
48:00 CPQ and connecting margin to commissions
50:30 When should reps earn commission in the deal cycle
52:30 Six month vs twelve month comp cycles
54:30 The most a sales rep has ever made
55:20 Where to find Siva

Connect with Siva Rajamani: 
Co-founder, CEO of Everstage
Twitter/X: https://x.com/siva_rajamani
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasrajamani/

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
Follow Sophie: https://x.com/sophiebuona
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

ABOUT GTMnow

GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/

Subscribe for more conversations with the operators and founders behind today's best go-to-market teams.
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

Ben Lerer, Managing Partner and Founder of Lerer Hippeau, has built one of New York's most influential early-stage venture firms across nine funds and nearly $1.5B in AUM. In this VC edition of the GTMnow podcast, Ben sits down with Max and Paul to unpack how he actually picks founders, why he wants to be the "worst investor" at his own fund, and the contrarian belief that backing good, sensible businesses is a mistake.

Ben got his start in media, building Thrillist before it merged into Group Nine, then turned those relationships and that operator empathy into a venture career writing early checks into companies like Warby Parker and Casper. He shares what's changed about winning deals in a more competitive, sharp-elbowed market, how Lerer Hippeau runs its investment committee on conviction rather than consensus, and the process failure behind passing on Peloton.

We also get into the debate every investor is wrestling with right now: the crazy, fast-moving AI-native founder versus the second or third-time operator with deep domain expertise, and why the answer is rarely a silver bullet.

A real venture-nerd conversation on firm building, IC decision-making, founder selection, and what it takes to chase the power law.

Topics covered:
- The "worst investor at my own fund" philosophy
- Conviction vs. consensus in the investment committee
- Why Lerer Hippeau funds "crazy" founders, not good companies
- The Peloton miss and what it revealed about process
- From Thrillist and digital media to venture capital
- AI-native founders vs. domain experts
- How to win competitive deals as a smaller firm

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:52 Max and Paul on the episode: IC process and founder selection
14:36 Conversation with Ben Lerer begins
15:02 Nine funds, $1.5B AUM, and the early-stage strategy
23:00 From Thrillist to venture: the media springboard
28:00 What's changed in picking founders and winning deals
33:00 How the investment committee grew and evolved
37:40 The "magic" deal and chasing high-conviction bets
50:43 Why Ben wants to be the worst investor at his fund
53:00 Funding crazy people, not good companies
51:35 Yankees or Mets?

Connect with Ben Lerer: 
https://x.com/BenjLerer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benlerer/

Connect with Max: 
https://x.com/hackitmax
linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler

Listen on Apple and Spotify, and subscribe for more GTMnow VC editions.

Visit us on: https://gtmnow.com
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
Follow us on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gtmnow_
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtmnow_/
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.