Des Traynor

Speed wins. It always has. In SaaS times, engineering velocity used to set the pace. You could only go to market about as fast as you could ship. Maybe sell and market slightly ahead of capabilities, but not too much. That era is over. Tech moats are fading, and it’s easier than ever to build. Now the constraint is: Can you tell the market, enable your team, and capture demand before someone else does? All 👀 👀 👀 are on GPT-5 this week. Our GTMfund team has been testing it out with portfolio companies, and here's what we've found so far: - Strategy, creative, analysis, and launch happen in one workflow. - Marketers can ship interactive tools without waiting on engineers. - Reps can train on real calls, not outdated decks. - Your next GTM plan can ship before your competitor’s offsite even ends. Speed has moved upstream, and GPT-5 puts that speed in the hands of your GTM team. It's amazing to see what application companies can do with it. We broke down what changed and how to use it (including sample prompts) in the latest The GTMnow Newsletter.

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GTM Engineer might be the hottest title in tech right now, but the work has always been there. Some wear the title. Others just do the work, connecting systems, stitching insights, enabling teams, and pushing go-to-market efforts forward without the fanfare. Whether your org calls them GTM Engineers, Revenue Ops, or just “the person who makes everything work,” they’re often the difference between activity and real impact. If that’s you, this asset will help. It’s a clear, no-fluff breakdown of what great GTM execution looks like and how to improve it. Built to support the people behind the motion. Enter Peel Playbook - GTM Engineer Edition (of course as a Talkable) Talk to it - steal the great ideas - link in comments

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Two weeks ago, I spoke with a RevOps leader who has hired 25 people in the last six months. She now leads a 40-person team. Her secret to scaling RevOps fast? Run it like a product + engineering org. This is how Mollie B., SVP of Operations at Engine (1,000+ people), built and scaled one of the most forward-thinking RevOps orgs I've seen. The best part? Mollie broke it all down on the latest episode of the RevOps Lab. Listen here: getweflow.com/revops-lab My top takeaways from this episode: 𝟭. 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗮 𝗽𝗼𝗱 𝗼𝗿𝗴 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 Each GTM team at Engine gets a cross-functional pod (including sales ops, enablement, analysts, and systems). One team, one roadmap, one weekly sync. 𝟮. 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 + 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 Asana boards and sprint cycles replace endless 1:1 side convos. Everyone sees priorities. Everyone knows the trade-offs. Salesforce becomes your internal product. Your team = dev team. 𝟯. 𝗛𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 Mollie looks for “how hard can it be?” people - those who are coachable, cross-functional, and eager to learn new tools. RevOps changes fast. Your people need to keep up. What else we cover:  • Centralized vs. decentralized RevOps orgs  • How to prevent systems chaos in pod models  • How to run RevOps like product/engineering  • Traits to look for in RevOps hires Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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We've evolved Exit Five to be much more than "B2B SaaS" --> That's been my background working in B2B SaaS, and Exit Five started as my podcast/private community, so no surprise a lot of the early members and content centered around SaaS. But as we've evolved from my little thing to thousands of members and marketers from around the world, we've had a strong pull from people saying Hey, B2B marketing does not mean B2B SaaS and they are right! That's why we made a shift in our community recently to split out into subgroups. For the past three months we've had success with a "B2B Not SaaS" group and "Women in B2B Marketing" and it feels almost obvious today, why didn't we think of this earlier? So now we'll have leaders/ambassadors for a bunch of subgroups and we'll continue to scale Exit Five to be relevant to anyone that works in B2B marketing, which is a much bigger universe than the world of B2B SaaS. Now, I am biased and I *do* think marketing is marketing and lot of the lessons in SaaS apply to other businesses and vice versa, but I also know that there is HUGE value in hearing from your peers as each industry has their own nuances. SO: now inside of Exit Five we have industry subgroups for FinTech, HealthTech, HR, Manufacturing, MarTech, Women in B2B Marketing, Non SaaS - and more to come. PLUS we added local chapters including Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, NYC, Toronto, Austin, Chicago, Phoenix, Halifax - and more to come by demand. We've also shifted the membership experience to focus more on peer groups and matchmaking, since you can just yell at other people about marketing on LinkedIn, you don't need E5 for that and I want E5 to be different than what you get with social media feeds. It's not a discussion board, it's a site for professional development. If you take it seriously and treat it like an investment. If you never do anything - much like the gym - you'll wonder why you pay for this thing. Thanks to our members and early ambassadors and leaders for giving us great feedback and helping to shape the future. I think community/peers is more important now than ever, and we wanted to give you a home base with people from your industry and your city. I think this update is great and if you want to join us in E5 you can hit our site and signup for a month. If you don't want to participate in the community that's totally fine too. We have invested heavily in our newsletter (approaching 50,000 subs) and our podcast (will cross 1M all-time listeners in Q4) plus we do free monthly live trainings (some might call them webinars). We're also going to be adding two more in-person events in 2026 and I'm excited about the future. There's so much momentum in marketing because of what's happening with AI and it's been super fun to have a front row seat for all the changes. - Dave

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Your churn problem isn’t about product value. It’s about user friction and it’s silently killing you. Most founders think churn is a feature problem. But I’ve seen inside 30+ SaaS teams and here’s the truth: 95% of early churn isn’t because your product sucks. It’s because your experience does. Here are 5 silent friction points draining your MRR and how to fix them: 1. Onboarding is a scavenger hunt Your users signed up. Now they’re lost in a maze of tooltips, modals, and zero context. Fix: - Give them one clear job on day 1. - Show them what success looks like and how to get there. 2. No emotional “AHA” moment You explained the features. But they never felt the magic. Fix: - Design an early “win” within 5 minutes. - Something that makes them think, “Oh damn, this just made my life easier.” 3. Support is too slow, too reactive Your CS team replies after 12 hours. By then, your user already bounced. Fix: - Proactive nudges > reactive support. - Anticipate roadblocks. Use AI to surface issues before they boil over. 4. Over-customization too early You throw 19 setup options at a user who just wants to test the damn thing. Fix: - Default > Decision fatigue. - Let them play with a preloaded setup, then personalize later. 5. No context during handoffs They talked to Sales. Now CS treats them like a stranger. Fix: - Bridge your GTM teams. - Every handoff should come with a full context payload, automated. You don’t lose users because your tool lacks value. You lose them because it’s "too damn hard" to experience value. Churn isn’t just about features. It’s about friction. Fix that and your retention graph won’t just stabilize. It’ll rise!

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Most startups build software the hard way. Full-stack teams. Big burn. Slow to scale. Quavo did it differently - and it worked. They launched a purpose-built SaaS product in a complex space (fraud & dispute resolution for Financial Institutions), grew 60% YoY, and just landed $300M in growth capital. The playbook? Focus on your IP and core value. Leverage a platform. Deliver real outcomes to clients fast. Then scale. Read the full story from my recent interview with Joseph W. McLean Co-Founder & CEO of Quavo. https://lnkd.in/eT4x5_N4

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