I’m about two months into 📝Netic!

To set the stage, when I joined, we had significant revenue traction, strong PMF, two AEs, 0 SDRs, 1.5 people in marketing, nobody in growth, and nobody FT on GTM systems. We were using Attio as our CRM and had no other GTM software.

The objective: go build the engine as quickly and effectively as possible, nearly from scratch.

So, I want to share some of the biggest decisions & takeaways so far:

1. Go with the bread and butter foundational software tools (Salesforce and Gong)
1. Outbound 📝SDR is not close to dead, but it is changing
1. Customer love is the name of the game
1. Spend an uncomfortable amount of time hiring
1. This stage is an absolute blast

1. Go with the bread and butter foundational software tools (e.g. Salesforce)

We were using Attio as our CRM when I joined. We evaluated staying, building in-house, using Hubspot, or going with Salesforce, and we chose the latter.

A few people were surprised about our Salesforce decision - I have a community and podcast about AI in sales and marketing, and we’re going with one of the most legacy tools out there.

But by the end, the decision was pretty obvious. Here’s why: There are way higher leverage, lower risk places to go build GTM Alpha than the CRM.

We could have tried to build a bunch of API connections into Attio or risked Hubspot and hoped it could scale with us. Either might have worked. But, they were both risky without meaningful upside.

For Attio - it was already requiring manual workarounds. For example, you can’t natively pull all emails sent by 1 SDR last week, and if you want Gong and Attio to talk very clearly, you have to set up a network of API calls. We could have built this, but how much time would it have taken, and would we still have to switch eventually once we hit an immovable object?

For Hubspot - there were a few immediate custom configs we would have had to put in place. But, more importantly, we really didn’t want to switch again. I’d rather know with 100% certainty, “this is our CRM” than have the risk of changing later. Not to mention we would have had to take the sales guys’ words for features that they couldn’t show us a single case study on or intro to any of their happy customers to discuss.

Beyond the risk, there’s also the questionable upside. I’d rather go find GTM alpha in amazing offers, content, customer stories, SDR tooling on top of the CRM, etc.

You could argue about cost, but:

1. Salesforce is surprisingly inexpensive from a seat perspective, and I think we can build smart to avoid high cost of maintenance over time. Implementation will cost us more, but on long-term maintenance, I heard multiple people share that it can net out even with Hubspot if you build right, especially now with Claude Code and being able to make updates via CLI.
1. If we’re going to go build the business we are aiming to build at Netic, the CRM cost is negligible, and we should go with the underlying system that will be the most effective.

If you want any input on the actual CRM standup (objects, workflows, automations, etc), send me a note!

2. Outbound SDR is not close to dead, but it is changing

Griffin and Aidan joined 6 weeks ago - Griffin as an SDR leader who previously managed a team of 15 and has now rolled up his sleeves to get back in the trenches, and Aidan as an ENT SDR. They’ve been crushing it.

We sell very upmarket into an industry where relationships really matter. So, having SDRs is natural for us. But, even if we sold SMB deals, there are a few universal views I’ve developed on why outbound isn’t dead:

When scaling a business, you want to gather as much context on your GTM motion and your customers as quickly as possible.

Smart people are WAY faster at this than AI. This is especially true with people who are familiar with the industry and have good instincts for how to approach different companies. Aidan and Griffin are on the front lines all day every day helping inform how we talk about our product, how we understand the space we’re selling into, and how our sales motion looks.

With all this context, when it’s time to automate the more rote parts of their work (so that Aidan and Griffin can move even faster), we will know exactly what to go and work on.

Evenifwe thought we could use AI to automate everything Grif and Aidan are doing (and we don’t), the priority is learning whether outbound works

We want to know - if you put X resources into trying to convert Y accounts to taking a demo, what is the ROI? E.g. let’s say we’re able to get 5% of accounts we reach out to onto a demo within 30 days, with $500 of marketing budget per account.

This helps us determine if outbound is a scalable channel for our business. If we started with AI, it would take a ton of fine tuning and the ceiling on output would be capped. We could invest months, it could fail, and we wouldn’t know if it was because outbound doesn’t work or if it was because AI outbound doesn’t work.

On top of this, I wouldn’t be able to focus as much on everything else. We have other marketing channels, the CRM, hiring, and much more to go build.

We are learning far faster (with better outcomes) with Griffin and Aidan here. Here’s what to look for in founding SDRs:

1. Intelligence. The days of 100-dials a day, at least upmarket, are completely dead. You want SDRs that have better ideas than you do about how to cut through the noise with your accounts and that learn from each interaction to get smarter on the next one.
1. Team players. Especially early on, we need team players in our SDR org that are willing to roll up their sleeves to do what’s best for the company, that are sharing their insights back with the broader org, and that are working together to go and win.
1. Industry experts. This is obviously hard to find, but is a massive boon.

3. Customer love is the name of the game

One of the best ways to prove to prospects that your product is valuable is to share the detailed stories of happy customers. Go deep, create high quality footage, and amplify these stories. They are arguably your most valuable marketing asset.

As I’ve gone deeper on customer conversations (with Netic customers and in an upcoming podcast with Adrian who has created thousands testimonials at 📝Verbatim Labs for companies like Unify and Baseten), a few things are clear about the best products:

1. They have a high velocity of customer stories
1. Those stories are very detailed
1. The smart companies use those stories across almost every channel to build trust with new prospects

As a company building trust, amplifying those customer stories is mission critical. Not to mention, if you do it right, you can learn a lot about your customers and deepen the trust you already have with them.

4. Spend an uncomfortable amount of time hiring

If you have nothing built out, and you are growing quickly, you’re going to need more hands. Finding amazing people also takes time since you likely won’t have much of a brand, and you need to calibrate what you’re looking for.

I made the mistake for a few weeks (and I’ve seen friends make the same one for many months) of not hiring fast enough. The misconception is: “there’s so much to do, and I want to prove myself, so I should “build” with 100% of my time, not hire.”

You should definitely still build, but the area under the curve of output over a 3-6 month time horizon is obviously way larger if you’re able to effectively hire.

Figure out the roles you want (deep dive on our own thinking here), build in public, have opportunistic conversation, and spend dedicated time each week recruiting.

5. It’s an absolute blast

I’m having an order of magnitude more fun at Netic than in any role I’ve been in before.

The product is adding very material value to our customers. There’s so much to do with no red tape. I get to work with A players all day every day, and I get to do my favorite kind of work - growth & systems. All the while, building for the essential service companies that millions of Americans interact with every day.

I’m obviously biased, but joining post PMF, pre-hype, and pre-GTM build-out is the most fun time to join a 📝go to market org.

If you want to come work with us at Netic, we’re hiring across the board 😎 and if you found this useful, let me know! Thinking about turning it into an going series as we continue to learn and grow.