The GTM Playbook Podcast

Varun Bhandarkar is the Head of Startups, SMB, and Mid-Market across Southeast Asia at Stripe, one of the highest-valued private companies on the planet. Before Stripe, he spent six years at HubSpot, where he built and led the top-performing customer success team in the company globally during 2020. He brings a rare combination of product-led and sales-led GTM experience at genuine scale.In this episode, Varun breaks down how he structures a multi-market GTM motion across countries as culturally distinct as Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand, why standardizing frameworks while localizing execution is the only approach that compounds, how he segments startups from SMBs from mid-market and runs a fundamentally different sales motion for each, and what signals actually predict expansion before the revenue data catches up. He also shares his framework for churn prevention, the partner ecosystem strategy he is building at Stripe, and why most outbound fails before the first message is even sent.

Maddie Jones, founder of Talent X, has worked with founders and GTM leaders at fast-growing companies to fix one of the most underestimated growth problems: hiring the wrong people. With a background far outside traditional recruiting, she brings a performance-first lens to how teams are built and scaled.In this episode, Maddie breaks down why CVs, pedigree, and brand-name experience are weak predictors of success. You’ll learn how to hire for aptitude over credentials, design job ads that self-filter talent, interview for real performance evidence, and run reference checks that actually surface the truth. If your GTM strategy looks good on paper but execution keeps breaking, this conversation explains why.

Daniel Zarick is the CEO and co-founder of Arrows and was the second product manager at Twilio. He has spent his career studying what happens after deals close and why most SaaS growth breaks down post-sale. In this conversation, Daniel explains how those lessons shaped Arrows and why onboarding is one of the most overlooked growth levers in modern SaaS.We break down why churn is often locked in during the first two weeks after a customer signs, how collaborative onboarding replaces internal-only checklists, and how AI-powered sales rooms give buyers exactly what they need to move deals forward. Daniel also shares hard-earned GTM lessons from narrowing ICP focus, going all-in on a single CRM integration, and designing pricing around value rather than seats.

Second-time founder Jacob Banks breaks down how Sophiie AI is growing at 30% month-on-month in one of the most crowded AI markets. Drawing on lessons from scaling Service.com.au into a leading service marketplace, he explains how those experiences shaped Sophiie’s go-to-market strategy, pricing, and team structure.In this episode, Jacob goes deep on the GTM mechanics driving Sophiie’s growth — including high-velocity content testing, vertical selection, sales execution, and the leadership decisions behind building a lean, high-performing team. He also shares what investors looked for in Sophiie’s oversubscribed raise and how the company is scaling without losing focus.

HubSpot’s SVP of Product and Head of AI, Nicholas Holland, reveals the real drivers that scaled the company to $2.6B ARR, their new AI intiatives, and how they're rethinking GTM for the AI era.

Zams CEO Nirman Dave on building “The AI Command Center for B2B Sales Teams” and rewriting the GTM playbook for the autonomous era.

Ex-Google Head of Startup Growth Mantas Aleksiejevas on building an in-product, voice-guided AI onboarding agent, why tooltips are dead, and the GTM plays scaling Cor.

11x CEO, Prabhav Jain, on building autonomous coworkers, raising $70M, and the GTM org of the future.