Why GTM Engineering is the Future | When to Hire Your First GTM Engineer | How to Treat GTM Like a Product | How Clay Scaled from PLG to Enterprise | Automate the Manual, Never the Important with Yash Tekriwal, Head of Education at Clay
Description
Clay pioneered GTM engineering and went from $1M to $100M in ARR in 2 years.
I talked to the person who invented the role of GTM Engineer at Clay.
Yash Tekriwal, Clay's first GTM engineer - back when the $3B company was still figuring out what that even meant.
What started as one person drowning in too many jobs (RevOps + Sales + BDR + data analyst) has since become a new category that's now reshaping how startups think about go-to-market.
You’ll learn:
- Why RevOps is "maintenance" but GTM engineering is a growth lever
- The skills that define a great GTM engineer today (hint: it involves vibe coding)
- What "treating go-to-market like a product" actually looks like in practice
- Two org models for GTM engineering teams - and which to start with
- "Automate the manual, but don't automate the important"
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
01:23 - The origin story of GTM engineering at Clay and why the term is polarizing
05:02 - GTM engineer vs RevOps: maintenance function versus growth lever
07:31 - Treating go-to-market like a product team, not an individual sport
10:42 - Three experiments every GTM team should run on inbound and outbound
15:24 - The essential GTM tech stack: CRM, enrichment, sequencing, and what actually matters
19:08 - Tools founders should consider when getting started—and the automation trap to avoid
22:12 - Zero to $1M: be thrifty on tools and process information manually
25:38 - What to look for in your first GTM engineering hire (hint: it's not technical skills)
28:43 - Signals that you need to hire a GTM engineer for outbound vs inbound motions
31:45 - Scaling past $10M: specialize fast and the hyperscaler dilemma
36:01 - Two org models for GTM engineering: centralized hit team vs embedded engineers
40:22 - The ideal GTM engineer profile: tinkerers, not traditional engineers
43:33 - Why engineers are not the ideal candidates for GTM engineering roles
45:19 - Can salespeople become great GTM engineers? The sales hacker archetype
47:26 - Resources to learn GTM engineering: Clay University, substacks, YouTube channels, and agencies
51:00 - Top three things founders must know about GTM engineering at any stage
52:16 - The most creative GTM engineering builds: satellite imagery, hospital capacity, and custom memes
56:24 - Personal lessons from scaling at Clay: ego death, pivoting, and balancing maintenance with big bets
59:42 - The one thing Yash would change: stop oscillating and let problems become obvious
United States
