Revenue Remix - Inspiring Visionary Leaders

This is the published recording of the live OC Tech Week panel "The GTM Wall (Part 2): Getting Paid in HealthTech," hosted virtually by Rise of Us on Thursday, October 22, 2026. It is Part 2 of 3 in the GTM for HealthTech panel series. Part 1, the LA Tech Week panel: https://youtu.be/D5iKZYwJTtwPart 3 is Monday, November 2 at 11:30 AM PT, part of San Diego Startup Week, sign up here.In health tech, the user is rarely the buyer, and the buyer is rarely the person who feels the pain. This GTM for HealthTech panel brings together a venture investor, a clinician operator, a regulatory expert and a marketing creator to explain how health tech founders actually get paid: product value, regulation, hospital buyers and proving traction before revenue.WHAT YOU'LL TAKE AWAY- Why investors who have never built a company give different advice, and how fund size shapes what a fund backs- The three questions behind every hospital sale: is it easier, is it cheaper, and is it timely- Why a "not for diagnosis or treatment" disclaimer does not protect you, and how your regulatory classification decides who can buy- How to find the champion who feels the daily pain, not only the person who signs the contract- How to prove traction with no revenue: crowdfunding, letters of intent, and 20 to 50 clinician testers- When to go to the FDA (later than most founders think) and why regulation can strengthen your sales pitch- Why one audience, one channel and one ideal customer profile beat "we sell to anybody"THE PANELShruti Shah, General Partner at Symphonic Capital, has sat on both sides of the table as a founder and an investor.Sabrina Runbeck, clinician operator, health tech investor and advisor.Megan Kane, regulatory expert, helps health tech founders make FDA strategy part of go-to-market.Melissa Kunde, founder of KÜCO Media and creator, on messaging, buyer beliefs and focus.Moderated by Summer Poletti, Founder and CRO of Rise of Us.WHO THIS IS FORHealth tech founders, clinician founders and early-stage teams selling to hospitals, practices, payers or consumers, plus the investors, advisors and marketers who work with them.ABOUT THE HOSTSummer Poletti is the Founder and CRO of Rise of Us, where she right-sizes the revenue strategies that scaling companies pay six figures for and brings them to founders before the expensive mistakes get made. Her path is operator-first: after leading revenue across corporate organizations, she co-founded an investor-backed fintech and learned firsthand what misalignment and early mistakes cost. Across dozens of companies, her work comes down to one thing: helping founders define a go-to-market motion that holds up under investor diligence, so they can prove they can sell it, not just build it.MORE FROM THE GTM FOR HEALTHTECH SERIESPart 1, LA Tech Week: https://youtu.be/D5iKZYwJTtwPart 3, San Diego Startup Week, Monday, November 2: https://eventship.com/event/the-gtm-wall-nobody-warns-you-about-pt-3-getting-paid-in-healthtechListen wherever you get your podcasts.

This is the published recording of the live LA Tech Week panel "The GTM Wall Nobody Warns You About: Getting Paid in Health Tech," hosted virtually by Rise of Us on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. It is Part 1 of 3 in the GTM for HealthTech panel series, a tour of California tech weeks. Part 2 is the OC Tech Week panel on October 22: [PART 2 LINK]Health tech go-to-market is not SaaS go-to-market. The user, the buyer and the payer are often three different people, hospitals move slowly, and investors can misread your traction. This GTM for HealthTech panel covers how health tech founders actually get paid: reimbursement, non-dilutive funding, and pitch and diligence readiness.WHAT YOU'LL TAKE AWAY- Why every health tech deck sounds the same, and why sounding the same pushes buyers to compare on price- The three questions that make your story flow: who has the problem, who feels the pain, and who writes the check- How non-dilutive funding works (SBIR, NSF, NIH and pitch competitions), and how to test whether your idea is fundable before you write a full application- What to do when there is no CPT code yet, from value-added benefits to shared-savings and capitated models- Why data is not clinical value, and why a 2 percent improvement rarely gets a hospital to change its workflow- What "diligence ready" means, and the four questions investors ask after the pitch: traction, differentiation, moat and use of fundsTHE PANELKruti Baires, founder of SprintFit, helps health tech founders get capital and diligence ready.Robert Wegner, non-dilutive funding consultant, helps health tech and deep tech companies with grant applications and competitions.Eric Hazzard, PhD, researcher turned go-to-market operator, explains how to navigate health insurance and red tape to get paid.Moderated by Summer Poletti, Founder and CRO of Rise of Us.WHO THIS IS FORHealth tech founders, first-time founders (physicians turning into tech founders and tech founders entering health), and anyone building a go-to-market plan for a digital health, wearable or medical device company.ABOUT THE HOSTSummer Poletti is the Founder and CRO of Rise of Us, where she right-sizes the revenue strategies that scaling companies pay six figures for and brings them to founders before the expensive mistakes get made. Her path is operator-first: after leading revenue across corporate organizations, she co-founded an investor-backed fintech and learned firsthand what misalignment and early mistakes cost. Across dozens of companies, her work comes down to one thing: helping founders define a go-to-market motion that holds up under investor diligence, so they can prove they can sell it, not just build it.Working on your health tech go-to-market? Learn about Rise of Us startup advisory.MORE FROM THE GTM FOR HEALTHTECH SERIESPart 2, OC Tech Week, October 22Part 3, San Diego Startup Week, November 2Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

How do you grow revenue without growing headcount? Automate the admin work sellers carry, then spend the time you free up on accounts that are ready to buy. Four go-to-market founders show how in this Revenue Remix panel on sales automation, intent signals, ICP, and B2B outbound that books meetings that close.Host Summer Poletti, founder and chief growth strategist at Rise of Us, opens with a stat: sellers spend about 40% of their time on admin, down from 66% or more a couple of years ago. These founders helped move that number. Each one gives you a way to cut seller admin, sharpen outbound, and grow revenue without growing headcount.THE PANELTrent Ballard, Sales EQ: captures meeting data and context and makes it searchable for AI agents and automationsKanoj Vora, Prospect AI: intentional cold outbound that earns attention instead of spray and prayMartin Markov, Clearcue: signal-based outreach that finds companies at the moment they need your solutionAndrei Stoica, STOICA.CO: B2B marketing agency and platform that turns 5,000 target accounts into the 100 to contact this weekWHAT YOU'LL LEARNWhere seller time goes, and how meeting data, RevOps automation, and AI agents give it backWhy outbound fails: ICP, timing, and offer matter more than copyHow to run your ICP as an ongoing experiment, not a set-it-and-forget-it documentBehavior-based ICP: define customers by what is happening inside the company, not only size, industry, and countryIntent signals and dynamic lead scoring: why a signal loses value fast and why the first 24 hours produce the most meetingsChannel-market fit: where your buyers are active (LinkedIn, email, phone) and why no channel is universal or deadWhy most offers aren't compelling, and why end-of-quarter limited-time discounts failThe outcomes that count: rep onboarding cut from three months to one, meetings that convert to closed-won revenue, and revenue from the right customersWhy selling to the wrong customers creates problems for customer successONE ACTION FROM EACH GUESTAndrei: run the demo to see the first 10 to 20 accounts in your market worth contactingMartin: name the problem you solve, trace the digital footprint it leaves, then study your closed-won and closed-lost customers for behavior patternsKanoj: tie your message to your buyer's incentives and KPIs, and pair it with an offer so good people feel foolish saying noTrent: take more calls, review them, and iterate on discoveryWHO THIS IS FORFounders, CEOs, CROs, and sales and RevOps leaders at growth-stage B2B companies who want more pipeline from the team and tools they already have.GUEST DISCOUNTS AT SUMMER'S FALL EVENTSThese founders added attendee discounts on their products. Find Summer at:LA Tech WeekOC Tech WeekSan Diego Startup WeekAI Builders Global Conference

Most founders blame the person. In this bonus episode of Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us [link], continues her conversation with returning guest John Mason-Smith [link] to explain why new sales hires fail — and it's rarely because the company hired the wrong salesperson.JMS spent years inside ADP and Paycheck watching the same mistake repeat itself: a great salesperson gets promoted into sales management, expected to teach a new hire to sell exactly the way they sold, with no structure and no process behind them. Some of the best sales reps he's ever worked with became the worst sales managers, because closing deals and building a repeatable sales process are two different skill sets. Summer sees the founder-led version of the same problem constantly — a first sales hire is handed a phone and a title and expected to build the entire sales function from scratch, then the founder concludes "sales doesn't work for us" when that hire doesn't succeed.They break down the real distinction founders miss when a sales hire fails: the difference between lead generation and closing, and the difference between rapport and actual buying intent. Good salespeople are excellent at relationships. That doesn't mean they're equipped to build a repeatable sales process, price a deal, or manage a CRM — and expecting one person to be good at all of it is exactly why new sales hires fail at growth-stage companies before they ever get a fair shot.Also covered: why the best sales reps are the worst at documentation and CRM hygiene, why AI and automation tools are starting to remove that friction instead of fighting it, why the instinct to promote your top performer into sales management is rarely the right call, and what a real compensation and process foundation looks like before a company makes its next sales hire. This episode closes the loop on a conversation Summer and JMS started in an earlier episode about why founders shouldn't rush to hire their first salesperson [link] — this time from the other side: what actually has to be in place before that hire has a chance to succeed.This one is for any growth-stage founder or CEO who's hired a salesperson, watched it not work out, and assumed the problem was the hire instead of the sales infrastructure underneath them. The fix isn't a better resume. It's a pricing process, a compensation plan built around what the company actually needs, and a system a new hire can walk into instead of inventing alone.Guest: John Mason-Smith — payroll and PEO industry advisor and recurring Rise of Us partner.Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.About Rise of Us: Summer Polettiworks with growth-stage B2B founders and CEOs to build the pricing strategy, sales compensation design, and process infrastructure that decides whether a sales hire succeeds — because most of the time, why new sales hires fail has nothing to do with the hire. Learn more at [link].#SalesHiring #B2BSaaS #RevenueLeadership #SalesCompensation #FractionalCRO #GTM #FounderLedSales #SalesManagement #ScalingUp #RevenueRemix #WhyNewSalesHiresFail #B2BSales

Every growth-stage company reaches a point where the next revenue lever isn't another hire — it's a partner. In this bonus episode of Revenue Remix, Summer Poletti, founder of Rise of Us [link], sits down with returning guest John Mason-Smith [link] to break down what it actually takes to grow revenue without growing headcount through a systemized partner network instead of a bigger payroll.JMS built his entire business — three companies that are really one business at their core — on knowing exactly what he won't do, and having someone he trusts to hand it to instead. He calls it capacity versus capability: just because you can do something doesn't mean you have the time, energy, or positioning to be the right person doing it. That distinction is the foundation of every partnership that actually produces revenue instead of just good intentions.Summer and JMS unpack why most partner networks never produce a single referral. The problem usually isn't a bad partner fit — it's the absence of a process. No onboarding call, no defined cadence, no agreement on what "working together" actually means week to week. The result: two founders who liked each other, agreed to work together, and never spoke again after the handshake. Summer calls this dying in "good vibe land," and it's the single biggest reason partner programs underperform at growth-stage companies that could otherwise grow revenue without growing headcount.What they cover: why saying no to the wrong opportunity is a sales skill, not a weakness; how to build a referral engine instead of saying yes to every project that lands in your inbox; the buy-versus-build decision every service business eventually faces when a client asks for something outside their core offer; why the right partner — a specialist who notices what a generalist never would — is worth more in referred revenue than the fee you'd make doing the work yourself; and how to set a cadence so a partnership survives past the first good conversation.This episode is a practical look at partner-led growth for founders and CEOs who are done chasing every lead themselves: what a systemized partner network actually requires, how to know when to say no, how to turn a one-off favor into a repeatable revenue channel, and how to grow revenue without growing headcount by building the kind of partnerships that refer, collaborate, and follow through instead of quietly dying in good vibe land.Guest: John Mason-Smith — payroll and PEO industry advisor and recurring Rise of Us partner.Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.About Rise of Us: Summer Polettiworks with growth-stage B2B founders and CEOs to get out of founder-led sales and build a revenue foundation that doesn't depend on them personally closing every deal — pricing strategy, sales compensation design, and partner-led growth that lets a company grow revenue without growing headcount. Learn more at [link].#B2BSaaS #RevenueGrowth #PartnerStrategy #FounderLedSales #RevenueLeadership #FractionalCRO #GTM #BusinessPartnerships #ScalingUp #RevenueRemix #GrowthStageCompanies #PartnerNetwork