6 Takeaways From Our VibeScaling x Clay Event on 8/14

Last week, my firm VibeScaling and our friends at Clay threw a private GTM + AI event at their HQ in Flatiron, NYC.

We did this event back in June in SF, and it was such a hit that we knew we had to do one in NYC with so much GTM talent being there.

Something Cailen, Julian, and I have been wanting to do for a while now is bring together the smartest GTM and AI builders in the room to discuss how the selling landscape has changed over the last year, given the rapid pace of this space.

It was an awesome turnout (~100) with a mix of some of the best AI-natives here in NYC - a talent-dense room from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Hebbia, Harvey, Sana Labs, Rogo, Unify, Default, Baseten, Avoca, Retool, Vercel, Ramp, Plaid, Stripe, and many others in attendance.

I wanted to document 6 takeaways from the panel, conversations I had with folks there, and feedback for future events.

1. It’s crucial to qualify out the window shoppers vs. the real buyers

It’s no secret that everyone wants to know what people are doing with AI.

This has led to a ton of inbound for AI-natives, as well as outbound (for hot companies) working better / people wanting to talk to folks at these companies (if you’re not seeing this, you might have a PMF or messaging problem).

However, with this interest comes a problem: GTM folks at AI-natives don’t have a pipeline problem, they have a qualification problem.

How do you distinguish between serious buyers and those who just want to “pick your brain”?

Some interesting ways people have been doing this:

• Qualifying earlier for executive alignment, even more so than you would in the SaaS era (where asking too early might seem too fast) - there is too much inbound and info demand, so you need to make sure this is real

• Implementation strategy - who is the internal person or champion responsible for ensuring this is successful? Clay has both an opportunity and a challenge here, for example - if they don’t have someone who will “own” the implementation of this, or using services to augment this, it might not be real

• Taking control of the sale, and walking through the process early in the discovery process to see if this scares them / confirming this is a journey they want to go on

• Being more upfront in discovery, asking questions about whether this project is budgeted for / do they have an AI experimental budget they’re pulling from

• Asking if they’ve already purchased tools (to solve other problems) to be a proxy for whether they’re serious or not

Sellers I were speaking to said a lot of these tactics were the same ones they brought from SaaS deals, but they feel they have the confidence to ask it earlier in the process b/c of a fat pipeline/inbound - good problem to have!

2. The 995 is real

9-9-5 —> 9am - 9pm, 5 days a week (for some, this is even 6 days a week, including Saturdays).

And yes, the best opportunities are in person (SF/NYC, especially at the seed through B).

I’m hearing they’re working more than ever, but it’s a worthy tradeoff because of the opportunity at hand (in the AI-scene, deals closing and thus making money, and equity is growing, accelerated startup experience).

Some noted burnout a little, but what is keeping them up is the excitement (and opportunity they never had) - definitely feel this hustle culture the most in NYC and SF.

3. People are craving more of these high-quality events to help build their network

It’s a high ROI to meet sometimes 5-10 new people at these events.

With AI, we’re busier than ever (paradoxically) - so this sort of ROI is a strong one vs. individual coffee chats.

We’re inspired at VibeScaling and GTMBA to continue hosting these events, which help fuel something missing in the GTM space: private events featuring vetted talent/quality in the early/growth-stage, allowing for great conversations about what’s working right now/swap notes.

4. Human touch/events are still hitting for GTM, especially now

As I mentioned above, there is a lot of inbound/outbound work that is working, and teams are creating leverage using GTM engineering. However, for some teams (especially early on), they still need to do focused outbound work, which they cite as feeling a little more crowded.

To shake things up a little, they’ve shown that attending conferences has been more impactful than SaaS days, given how cooped up we’ve been and how saturated some people’s inboxes are with AI content.

Even the little things, like handwritten notes, going on-site, and sending the team lunch, are being told to stand out significantly more in a world where we’re accustomed to more Zoom meetings and remote work (generally).

Nothing groundbreaking here, but it was interesting to see the best companies still focusing on this area.

5. What makes these events solid is the quality of people, over the quantity of people

People have attended other events (30MPC, Pavilion, etc.) and feel that they are too mass-oriented, and sometimes the quality can be a little sus.

In contrast, these events are more curated for builders (early- to growth-stage startups) and cerebral GTM professionals rather than those who are overly salesy.

We’re very intentional about keeping this smaller for this reason and will continue to have this focus.

6. The GTM talent bar in NYC is insanely high/strong

We had a similar event in June in SF and were impressed then of 1) how fast it filled and 2) how talent-dense the group that came out was.

NYC blew me away on this, and definitely matched it.

However, it so happened that we sold out of this event in half the time; I underestimated the number of strong NYC-based GTM professionals at both early- and growth-stage startups, whether in AI or looking to break into the field.

So much so, we’re splitting our time re: events in both cities every other month - we’ll see you at the next one!

For those who want to be considered for the next event we’re doing this fall for NYC, please reply to this or shoot me a note!

🫡 cheers,

Chris