Transcription
There's a new role popping up inside some of the fastest growing [music] startups and it's spreading quickly across the industry. In the last year alone, job postings for this role have surged over 5,000%. [music] And it's called a go to market engineer.
But what the is a go to market engineer? Is it engineering? Is it marketing? Is it sales? Is it an internal facing role or an external role? What do they actually do every day? I have no idea. Which is exactly why I ended up inside Clay because [music] they didn't just adopt this role, they actually coined it.
Clay was founded in 2017 and in just a few years it went from a small product to powering go to market teams at some of the [music] largest companies in the world like Anthropic and Google. It's now valued at $5 billion. And this whole idea of go to market engineering seems to be a big part of how they've scaled so fast.
So, I'm meeting up with Ever Berry, their head of go to market engineering, to find out what it is, what they actually do all day, and how it's driving Clay's growth. But first, in order for this to be a real full day, we got to go to Jersey. [music]
>> He's on the phone and >> he's working already. >> And then just And by the way, >> what's up? What's up? >> How's it going? >> Um, and then yeah, on the train got to make a we got to write a LinkedIn post and then we got to like finish with this enablement session. >> Oh gosh. >> Leaving the train, please watch the gap. >> The trick [music] with this commute is basically the cell service goes in and out. So, I got to get all my stuff like ready to go. >> You've mastered your commute. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> All right. So, we're basically racing the clock. 45minute train ride, spotty service, and somehow the goal is to write a full LinkedIn post and prep for a presentation he had later that day.
>> We're going to do a look at how Clay's [music] like internal GT team engineering team works. >> Are you under pressure cuz we're watching you? >> No. [music] No, I feel I feel comfortable. >> Okay, good. >> People are like, "What are your goals at Clay?" I'm like, I'm trying to become famous. >> Smile at the camera really quick. >> Make Everett famous. >> I said, I think we're ready to post. >> Let's go. post made. >> What should they comment? >> Comment. So insightful. >> Perfect. >> Okay. Yeah. So, we just got to and then we're there.
>> So, Ever's already in a meeting >> to like make him aware of that, [music] too. He may just not know. >> I would do I'd probably do a meeting for this one. >> The second we got to the office, Everett's dream of becoming famous [music] started to come true. >> Welcome to the office. >> Thank you. >> His co-workers stopped to take photos of [music] him. I think it's because they thought it was funny he was being followed around by a camera crew. >> What's going on? All right. Nice to meet you guys. >> Anyway, he got straight to business and jumped into a meeting with Zach. And I'm not going to lie, within about 30 seconds, I had no idea what they were talking about. So, I left and decided to go explore the office.
Just came across this cinnamon roll. I kind of want a bite. >> Are you busy right now? Uh, >> can we uh ask you a couple questions? >> Sure. >> What do you do? >> I do go to market engineering here. >> I am a go to market engineer. >> I am an internal go to market engineer. >> What the is a go to market engineer? >> What the is a go to market engineer? Sorry. So this is why I think interviewing Clay about go to market engineering can be confusing. I am a go to market engineer. I am the core user of every other company. We try to sell to people like me.
>> And he was right. It is confusing. >> Trying to explain this in a video. I think you guys will have a lot of trouble. Well, that wasn't very comforting. [music] But I figured if I could understand what Spencer does, I could figure out how Clay works. And that's when he started talking about pickles.
>> I default to the pickle analogy, which is imagine you make pickles. >> Have you never had a pickle? >> You've never had a pickle? That's heinous. >> They look so gross. >> The main thing we're thinking is how do you grow your business? You need to think, who [music] are my customers and how can I find more of them? Somebody making pickles in New York City needs to build a list of all of the delis in New York and say which ones are my customers, which ones are not. Now I know the ones that I should sell to or maybe even for the customers, maybe I want to expand my customer into different pickle varieties, right? And we know exactly which ones they're buying and which ones they're not buying. Um, we build that list, we find the right people, we find the [music] decision maker who's the most likely to buy the pickle. Uh, and then we sell we sell you pickles.
>> So what Spencer is describing is [music] the core job of a go to market engineer. They take messy data about who's out there, track signs of interest, which is something like who visits your website, and analyze buying behavior. Then they turn it into a system that tells [music] you who to sell to, who's most likely to buy, and how to reach them. And instead of doing all of that manually, like teams used to, they automate the entire thing. Clay is the tool that lets go to market engineers build those systems.
And when I [music] asked Spencer what else he's been up to, he said, >> "It might be because I'm in a good mood, but I've been hyping people up." >> [music] >> Yo, Emily. Emily's actually she knows exactly how to target and who to target at any given moment. [music] >> Thank you. >> This is not good hype. We got to find better hype. >> All right, I'm going to go hype up somebody else. People engineers have like onboarding projects to learn the code base and Jenny's onboarding projects the gives me a smile once. >> I think Spencer is just the best hype fan. Like Spencer brings a personality to the office. >> That was slightly awkward.
Then it was time for me to go meet back up with Everett. All right, quick pause. If you stay to the end of this video, I'm going to try a pickle. But also, I wanted to let you know that if you're trying to wrap your head around this whole go to market engineering thing, don't worry. I got you. We put together a full playbook breaking down how Clay built this into a $5 billion growth engine, what the role actually is, and how to structure it inside your own company. Because right now, this is one of the fastest growing roles in B2B, and most companies don't know how to hire for it or use it. So, if you want the playbook, it's free. Link in the description. All right, back to Clay.
On my way back downstairs, I ran into Verun, one of Klay's co-founders. So, I asked if he could walk me through how Klay got here. Hi. >> What I didn't realize was that Klay's [music] growth was pretty slow in the beginning. For the first 5 years, they made basically zero in revenue and nothing really happened for a while.
>> But eventually, they landed on an [music] idea. What if a spreadsheet could actually pull data from anywhere on [music] the internet? And then in like February of 2022, we um launched the product on Product Hunt. >> And that's when they started noticing something. The people who really understood the product were technical scrappy operators using it to build [music] systems to find and reach customers. And watching how those users worked gave Clay a clear direction. Instead of just being a data tool, Clay became a system that lets teams find the right people, understand them, and [music] reach out to them.
Then in late 2022, artificial intelligence supercharged all of it. Now instead of just finding the right people, teams could actually generate personalized outreach automatically all [music] in Clay. And that's when startups started using it. >> I still remember, by the way, Rippling was the was a pretty meaningful customer for us. They signed in March of 2023. [music] They were the customer that pushed us over a million dollars.
>> But then heading into 2024, they hit a new challenge. Startups were using Clay, but enterprise companies weren't. Well, how do we how do we become like an amazing company? Well, you kind of need other amazing companies to use your product. And it just so happens that other amazing big companies don't want to use your product if like we need to kind of help them. So, okay, how do we do that? Well, apparently that's what sales is.
>> But Voon didn't want traditional sales people. The product was too complex. So, he looked at Clay's users for people who already knew how to use it. >> Effort was there in our community. >> So, you were using [music] Clay before you joined Play. >> Yes, that's right. >> Okay. >> And I was like, "Hey, what if you did sales?" And you're like, "What? >> I've never done sales before." >> What was your reaction? >> I was like, I'm first of all more of an engineer. Second of all, more of a like a growth person. Sales is like icky. >> Yeah, sales is icky.
>> But that's exactly why Verun wanted him. He was someone that could build systems and could show another company how [music] to grow using Clay. >> At one point, I was like, "So Voon, like should I be like head of sales?" And he was like, "No." He was like, "Gm engineering is a thing." >> And just like that, the team had a name. So Ever joined helping bring Clay into enterprise companies.
>> And then I didn't sell anything at Clay for 6 months. >> But eventually he started to figure it out. Instead of just telling companies what the product could do, the go to market engineers started building real workflows [music] for each prospect. >> Well, no one liked their data stack. Everyone thought it was too expensive, the quality wasn't good enough, there was too many vendors to manage. So we're like, hey, we'll solve that for you. We'll prove to you that we can solve it through this data test. Let's start with that use case, get you on that and then we can expand you to all these other use cases, outbound, inbound, CRM expansion, all these other things that ABM that we can do for you after the fact. Yeah.
>> And by the end of the year they were landing companies like Figma and Open AI. By 2025 they scaled that approach and crossed $100 million in revenue. Today they have over 16,000 customers including hundreds of enterprise teams. And a big part of how they got here came from building their goto market engineering team.
Okay, so now that I know why Clay created Go to Market Engineers, it was time to see what they do all day. >> All right, so we are [music] in Boommy. What up? >> Hi. >> Hi. >> I'm Payton. >> Nice to meet you. >> That's Daniel and that's Molina. >> So then I just wanted to kind of quickly go over what is [music] present in the GTME training around pricing from Zona. >> Who is this deck for? >> The GTme, >> of course. >> All right. Awesome. Nice meeting you. >> And then we had so many meetings.
>> Well, in case you haven't noticed, I brought a camera crew with me today. >> It got to the point where Everett just kept disappearing into so many meetings and I kept losing him. Well, lost Everett. He's just such a busy guy. So, now we got to go find him. See where he possibly could have went. Everett, where are you? We saw him walk past us. >> Right. >> Problem with these uh these operators. They're just so busy. >> Yeah. >> I know. I was uh well, I had a I had meeting with uh Becca there. >> Oh, okay. >> So,
>> Not going to lie, I was getting really hungry. And just when I was about to go get food, Everett said we had to take a field trip to the park. >> Oh, yeah. I was wondering what was going to happen. So, our customer meetings outside the office, not the usual. >> No, they are. They are. >> Okay. Okay. Yeah. >> And a lot of times we go to their office. It sounds like Washington, >> right? >> Hi. >> How are you? >> Good. Good to see you. >> Every day. >> Nice to meet you. >> All right. Shall we stroll around the park? >> Yeah. Let's do it.
>> This was a customer meeting with someone from AWS. A chance to check in, see how things were going, and keep building the relationship. This is a customer meeting, everybody. And I not allowed in that conversation. [music] >> Looks like it's going well. How'd it go? >> Great. >> Great. >> Amazing. >> All right. See you. >> Nice to meet you.
>> I've been seeing a lot of meetings and on the walk back I wanted to ask Everett a bit more about what his team does. And so what we do is go deep with customers and kind of discover all their use cases and like really carefully kind of build like a P for them. There were three things his team needs to be able to do. Know go to market well, no Clay well and basically be a good salesperson.
When we got back to the office, Everett had more meetings of course. So I took the opportunity to go chat with the rest of the team. I think so go to market engineering for as like a whole I think is really kind of just very um intertwined with Clay's growth as a company because we are the kind of pioneers of the go to market engineer. >> I ended up talking to George for a very long time. >> You [music] I'm talking to 10 different goto market orgs a day and so a lot of times when they're creating a role it's to solve the problem that they have. So be one application of clay for these customers. So why not just call yourself a saleserson? >> Good question.
>> And then he said something that stopped me in my tracks. >> So there's two go to market engineering teams. >> Wait, two teams? I needed to find Everett. [music]
>> GTM engineers use technology to help businesses [music] grow. >> Okay. Okay. So there are two GTME teams at Clay. >> The first team is the internal team. Other companies have only this [music] for GTM engineering, they have internal people focused on pipeline generations.
They're not traditional ops or marketing people. They're engineers, but instead of building software, they're [music] building systems that power a company's revenue. Things like pipeline operations, automated follow-ups, and [music] content generation. >> They're basically helping sort through [music] the best prospects to target. >> Right. Correct. >> Okay. But I still had one question. If most companies only have the internal team, [music] how does Clay's second team actually fit in and how do they work together? So, I had Everett map it out.
Basically, the internal team is responsible for bringing in all different types of leads. [music] >> Enterprise customers or potential ones go to our second GTME team for deployed GTMEs. >> That's Ever's team, the salespeople. And this is where Clay did something most companies haven't. They took people with the same skills as the internal team and deployed them directly to customers.
>> So this GTme team receives what this GTme [music] team kind of creates. >> The internal team generates and qualifies leads and when they identify something that seems like a strong enterprise fit, it gets passed to Ever's team. [music]
>> And so, you know, we're basically coming in almost as like a go to market consultant and figuring out, hey, what is the like root cause of problems you're facing in your go to market, you know, stack? um and how do we fix that and how can we build something in clay that will solve that problem. It's completely custom for the customer. So, we're doing these [music] kind of one-on-one builds for people pre-sale to just show them like how they would run this, you know, use case in clay um for like a small sample of of their, you know, their customers or their their data that they're trying to source.
>> They are people with the same skills pretty much divided depending on personality. The more engineering-minded ones gravitate towards internal infrastructure. The ones who may like more customer conversations end up forward deployed. And what makes this work is that the people selling Clay are the same type of person buying it. So they deeply understand the customer's pain [music] points and how to fix them. And that's what makes the loop a revenue engine. The internal team generates the pipeline. The forward deploy team closes it and everything they learn goes straight back in.
>> It's a flywheel bait because we like help customers with clay. We learn a lot about what they're doing with Clay and then we feed that back into our team so that [music] we can do cool stuff with Clay, too. >> And because both teams have the same skills, the flywheel [music] actually works >> cuz it's like, hey, our CEO is headed to San Francisco. Who are the 20 best people that we could put around a dinner table with him to like drive the most impact for the [music] business? We have a live clay table that at any point you can go in and filter for say SF, Austin, NYC and you can build these like super targeted lists and then we can actually send the invite on behalf of our founder and we can we can [music] then log responses and like registrants and who created this system. >> This is was created by our GTM engineers. [music] A Ford deployed GTME would build this for our customers.
Clay didn't just coin the term go to market engineer. They became the best example of what it could do. Two teams, one loop, and a >> [music] >> $5 billion company to show for it. And to end the day in true Everett fashion, the team and I headed to his favorite pub.
>> All right, everybody. Well, that was our day inside of Clay. A full day spent with Everett, their head of go to market engineering. >> Thanks so much for hanging out with Clay today. Hope you guys learned about GTM engineering and also what it's like to work at a growing company in New York City. >> That's all I have for this episode of Stories of Scale. Stay tuned. We got plenty more to come. Lots of new things happening on the channel. And uh remember to hit that button. Please subscribe.
Okay. So, if you made it to the end of the video, I'm about to try a pickle. This is for you. Do I have to eat the whole thing? Have a bite. Oh, wait. Wait. Oh, I don't know how I feel. I don't know how I feel. I actually don't know. I have water.