The Signal

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[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Jeff Ignacio (@jeffignacio), Founder of RevOps Impact, and Noah Adelstein (@noahadelstein), Head of Growth at Netic, and previously Growth at Rippling, came on the show on Tuesday to riff on:

The swim lanes between RevOps and GTM Engineering.

(0:00) Intro
(2:22) What are the swim lanes between RevOps and GTM engineering?
(3:13) Is GTM engineer a real role? If so, how do you define it?
(4:44) How does GTM Engineering relate to RevOps?
(6:13) Is the GTME title here to stay?
(7:43) Who owns what? RevOps vs. GTM Engineering
(9:25) Who should hire a full-time AI role (like a GTME)? And at what company stage?
(12:50) When should you hire a GTM engineer, and should it come before or after RevOps?
(16:17) Beyond outbound (aka the spam cannon): which AI use cases should teams be running with RevOps/GTMEs?
(20:15) Which AI/GTME use cases are working on the marketing side?
(22:21) What new GTM tools are you bullish on?
(26:14) Creativity is back in go-to-market / Avoid: "Gear acquisition syndrome"
(27:34) There's still alpha in data
(30:12) What is the context layer, and where does it live?
(33:13) What do you need to build your own agents? (Context, skills and tools)
(34:48) Defining an agent harness
(36:19) Will there be a GitHub for go-to-market? (eg: workflows you can take with you to your next job)
(40:15) Closing thoughts from Noah and Jeff

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

@criscafiero @_dan_lee_ @jeffignacio thank you 🙏

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

We had an absolute BANGER of a show on Tuesday.

First -
Dan Lee (@_dan_lee_), CEO of Nooks came on to talk about their $500M growth round, the launch of Node (AI assistant for salespeople), and where he sees AI in sales right now.

Then -
Jeff Ignacio (@jeffignacio), RevOps legend, and Noah Adelstein (@noahadelstein), GTM Engineer/Growth legend, came on to talk through the swim lanes of RevOps and GTM Engineering, where AI is having the most impact, and what tools they're most excited about.

You can find the full recording on our YouTube (will put the audio on Spotify and Apple Podcasts soon).

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Dan Lee (@_dan_lee_), CEO of Nooks (@NooksHQ), came on the show on Tuesday.

We discussed:

(0:00) Nooks raised $500M
(2:14) How do you describe your new product: Node? And how is it different from a general AI assistants like Muse, Instinct, etc?
(8:21) Sales is where coding was in late 2023. It's the next category to inflect.
(9:38) How do you train AI for sales when there's no "right answer" like there is in coding?
(11:45) Build vs. buy: what should teams build in-house, and what should they buy?
(15:03) The "barbellification" of software?
(17:05) AI is getting good at persuasion. Will it replace salespeople?
(20:04) Should you hire more salespeople? Dan's 3-question framework

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

HUGE news out of GTM tech-land!

Rox (@rox_ai) has raised a $100M Series B, at a $1.3B valuation.

Led by Ishan Mukherjee (@ishanmkh), CEO.

Rox says they'll use the capital "to advance its AI research, custom models and evaluation infrastructure, and expand its work with large enterprises across healthcare, industrial, financial services, energy and technology."

[brendan short @brendanjshort]

There are only 3 types of GTM companies today:

1/ THE OLD GUARD

They're slowly dying if they don't re-invent themselves (slapping on an MCP is not enough).

Gainsight announced 270 layoffs today. Good example here—scooped by PE and slowly lost market share since. Ganapathi (CEO) today: "refounding itself to move from selling customer success software to delivering retention as an outcome, shifting from seat-based to value-based pricing."

There's an entire graveyard of companies who have been crushed by innovations from their AI-era competitors. (Think Conversion .ai replacing Pardot)

2/ RE-INVENTORS

Brian Halligan (@bhalligan) announced he's coming back as CEO of HubSpot today. Bullish.

Eoghan McCabe (@eoghan) came back to Intercom and re-founded the company to be AI-native (eventually rebranding entirely as Fin, and having a massive acquisition to Salesforce).

3/ THE NEW GUARD

Rox announced a $100M round at $1.3B yesterday, Nooks announced $500M in growth capital last week. Monaco and others in this category too.

~~~

Innovate or die.
It's really that simple.
@jasonlk has been saying this all along.

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Friday! 👀

[brendan short @brendanjshort]

We're making this "roundtable debate" happen LIVE here on X, this friday at 10am PST!

I'll be joined by THE GREATS:

- Parth Gujare (@ParthGujare_), the PM at Ramp who built the famous internal GTM tool

- Kyle Norton (@kylecnorton), CRO of Lassie (formerly Owner, Shopify)

- Tim Geisenheimer (@tgeisenheimer), CRO of Hatch (acquired by Yelp)

...to discuss a topic on everyone's mind right now:

Should AI systems in GTM be CENTRALIZED or DECENTRALIZED?

Join us Friday morning on @TheSignalclub's (*new) Live Show to hear how Parth, Kyle and Tim think about this topic.

[Jai Toor @jai__toor]

@brendanjshort @TheSignalclub hit after hit

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

We're going live now:

Segment 1:
Dan Lee, CEO of Nooks to talk through their latest fundraise and the launch of Node, the AI sales assistant

Segment 2:
Noah Adelstein and Jeff Ignacio to talk through the swimlanes betwen RevOps and GTM Engineering

[brendan short @brendanjshort]

The Signal - Live Show https://t.co/4F7xmxeUts

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Drop your questions for Jeff and Noah below—anything on RevOps or GTM Engineering (anything is fair game!)

[brendan short @brendanjshort]

I'm super excited to have @jeffignacio and @noahadelstein come on The Signal's Live Show tomorrow.

What questions should I ask them?

(I'm planning to talk with them about how they think about the difference/overlap between RevOps and GTM Engineers. But I want other ideas of what to ask these legends!)

Follow @TheSignalclub to listen LIVE at 9:30am PST tomorrow.

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Chris Balestras (@gtmba_) says: "The biggest skill in sales is choosing the right company.

That is, by far and away, what makes up your happiness, your financial outcome."

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Chris Balestras (@gtmba_), Head of Talent, Media & Brand at Crew says "the most important skill in sales is picking the company."

Listen to our full conversation below.

TIMESTAMPS:
(0:00) What’s your take on NY vs. SF for GTM?
(04:19) Is “GTM” just a rebrand of "sales"?
(11:13) AI adoption within orgs right now
(15:12) Where he would work as an AE right now
(16:27) Order-takers vs. hunters
(18:22) Can you be successful in sales today without using AI?
(20:22) Favorite episodes of the Crew podcast
(21:01) Are revenue leaders joining hot companies running a different playbook than in 2019?

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Chris Balestras (@gtmba_) shares the history of why every AI-native sales teams call themselves "GTM":

1. Sales has rebranded before. Sales rep became “account executive” in the 1980s, once reps started sitting in boardrooms with software buyers. Titles are status, and "words matter."

2. “GTM” as a job title started at Stripe in the mid-2010s, in Jeanne DeWitt’s org. The problem was getting very smart people who didn’t want a sales job to take one. So she used three levers: give them inbound, pay them a lot, and rename the role.

Stripe alumni then carried the title to Vercel, Anthropic and OpenAI.

3. That’s where the community split. The AI-native orgs sell to developers and don’t want to seem "salesy," so AEs (and even SDRs) are now “GTM.” The John McMahon camp says sales is sales, be proud to be coin-operated, and you don’t get to rename a 30-year-old profession.

At the elite orgs, GTM just means AE. At a startup, it means “I sell, plus a lot of other things.” Most of the debate is the two camps talking past each other.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Is the term "sales" being replaced by "GTM"? Seems kind of bogus frankly.

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

BREAKING: @NooksHQ announces $500M in growth capital and launches Node, an AI personal assistant for sales.

Back in February, we published a piece about Nooks expanding beyond the dialer, with a workspace where agents and reps collaborate.

We sat down with Dan Lee (@_dan_lee_), Cofounder & CEO of Nooks, to discuss the most recent news.

Tl;dr:
Sales is the next job category to inflect (we’ve already seen coding, support and legal). And Nooks’ bet to start with the execution layer of the seller (across every motion), expanding out to agent collaboration, has earned them the right to use that foundation to run agents across the entire revenue lifecycle.

TAKEAWAYS:

→ Sales is the next job category to inflect

Coding, support and law have all inflected already. Sales is next. Frontier intelligence is accelerating, but sales productivity hasn't kept up. Three pieces are needed to make it happen:

1. Teams need an execution infrastructure.
2. Agents need a context layer.
3. Agents need a learning loop.

→ Why Nooks started with the channels sales reps own

"Our bet has been to start with the channels that the sales rep owns, because that’s where we can learn from the person deepest with the account."
—Dan Lee

What’s unique is that Nooks has the data on what has and hasn’t worked for reps, because it owns the channels reps use. It sees what reps do and how the customer reacts. With that data, Nooks trains an agent on the best rep and scales that across all other reps.

→ Nooks' expansion from prospecting to the entire revenue lifecycle

Nooks started with outbound pipeline, but you use these same primatives for inbound, deal execution, account management, and coaching. So they're naturally expanding to support the entire revenue lifecycle over time.

→ Announcing: Node

Node is like an EA for every rep: a proactive agent that starts with the full context of every account and deal. And Node is multiplayer. As Dan told us, it can “work with your sales manager’s Node to tell them, ‘Hey, I need you to go multi-thread this account’.”

To many, Nooks is still perceived as simply “the best dialer,” but builders are realizing it is infra for building AI-native GTM systems.

→ Will AI replace salespeople?

Dan says there’s a range. In the case of AI in support (eg: Decagon/Sierra/Fin/etc) or AI in law (eg: Harvey/Legora/etc), you don’t want more support tickets or lawsuits. But in the case of sales, you do want more sales. So when AI makes support or legal more efficient, teams often get smaller. When AI makes a seller more efficient, the math can go the other way (see: Jevons paradox). Nooks supports the full range.

→ What comes next

If Nooks can close the gap between AI spend and AI productivity by having reps and agents working the same “board,” they have a real shot at being one of the companies that defines the next wave of GTM.

Read the full post (free&ungated) 👉 https://t.co/Q9B0Flmsyt

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Adam Schoenfeld (@schoeny), Independent Analyst, and solopreneur, at AdamGTM says:

- every company should assume their product will be used through agents,
- AI adoption requires a centralized and decentralized approach,
- GTM Engineers should help marketing too,
- CMOs who aren't AI-pilled aren't going to make it,
- how AI has changed the way he uses a computer,
- and more.

All on our latest live show.
Listen to the full conversation below.

TIMESTAMPS:
(0:00) Intro
(1:11) How do you describe your job?
(4:10) How should a CMO/CRO think about build vs. buy in October 2026?
(8:50) Should GTM software assume customers will use it through agents? (Buy the infrastructure, build the intelligence)
(12:01) Will every rep eventually have their own personalized UI?
(18:56) Should companies centralize or decentralize AI adoption?
(23:18) Where is the context layer going to live?
(26:48) Should "GTM Engineers" be inside marketing too, and where should a CMO start?
(32:34) Is in-person back, and does a CMO have to be AI-pilled?
(36:28) How AI has changed the way Adam uses a computer
(38:48) The “new inbound” and everyone's new buyer persona ("AI Agent Amy")

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

Chris Balestras (@gtmba_), Head of Talent, Media & Brand at Crew says "the most important skill in sales is picking the company."

Listen to our full conversation below.

TIMESTAMPS:
(0:00) What’s your take on NY vs. SF for GTM?
(04:19) Is “GTM” just a rebrand of "sales"?
(11:13) AI adoption within orgs right now
(15:12) Where he would work as an AE right now
(16:27) Order-takers vs. hunters
(18:22) Can you be successful in sales today without using AI?
(20:22) Favorite episodes of the Crew podcast
(21:01) Are revenue leaders joining hot companies running a different playbook than in 2019?

[The Signal @TheSignalclub]

just setting up my twttr