When I first joined Scale in 2022 to build out our GTM Advisory team, I promised the partnership at Scale that our team–tasked with helping startups transition from founder-led growth to GTM machines–would be unique.
The best venture capital firms deliver more than just funding: they bring networks, mentorship, and battle-tested insights that first-time founders couldn’t otherwise access. Too often, though, VCs can be guilty of giving generic advice or piling on tasks that don’t meaningfully accelerate growth. I knew I wanted our GTM Advisory team to offer something different and, critically, something more impactful for founders.
Reflecting on my eight years as Co-Founder of TOPO, where I helped tech companies optimize their GTM strategies and operations, I recognized that each of my successful engagements featured four core themes. After a bit of trial and error, these ultimately came to shape the four principles that my team and I now use to guide all of our GTM Advisory work at Scale.
1. Box the problem
Startups are, by nature, held together by duct tape and prayer. Consequently, as an advisory, we go where we’re needed and don’t try to fix everything at once. We define the limits of the problem scope upfront (we “box” the problem) and focus our efforts on solving that problem. This is not to say that in the course of solving one problem we won’t unearth another, or that we won’t work on multiple projects at the same time with a portfolio company. Rather, it just means that if a portfolio company asks us to do something specific, we get it done without seeking to perfect every other part of their GTM.
2. Embrace details, skip the busywork
Advisory projects are most useful when their direction is informed by concrete data. However, very few early-stage startups consistently have up-to-date, centrally-stored information for our team to consume. In instances where such data is lacking, we pursue one of two paths to avoid creating busywork for our portfolio companies: 1) we collect our own data, and 2) we make do with whatever the portfolio company can send us off-the-shelf. The first path might see us listening to sales call recordings or reviewing recent marketing campaigns or press releases; the second might have us digging into partially complete spreadsheets or work-in-progress drafts. The point is this: we get our hands dirty without taxing the people we’re trying to help.
3. Worship specificity
TOPO was founded in 2011 with a guiding mantra: “Specificity wins.” The novelty and uniqueness of that principle was actually one of the reasons we started the company in the first place. Back then, there was already a surfeit of free tips and best-practice content online, which meant that our target market could, in theory, find answers to their questions just by browsing. However, there was (and still is) a dearth of specific public information. What’s more, we found that even private consultants and advisories were providing high-level, abstract recommendations instead of anything actionable.
In the Scale GTM Advisory team, we avoid these sorts of recommendations like the plague. Instead, we strive to end each project, and even every individual conversation, with a highly specific next step or tactical tool. Tools we’ve created for portfolio companies in the past include everything from a complete sales compensation plan to an annual capacity planning model to a sample rubric for conducting employee reviews (all of which are now accessible on our content portal). The unifying theme is that everything we do is meant to be immediately actionable.
4. Learn from the best
We believe that the folks working with our portfolio companies should be the very best in their fields. As a result, beyond the executives already in the portfolio, we have built two communities of best-in-class GTM leaders who actually want to coach the next generation:
- Executives in Residence (EIR) community: At any given time, we have between 4-6 GTM executives (roughly split evenly between CMOs and CROs) serving as EIRs. Each EIR is employed by Scale and works with 6-8 portfolio companies at a time.
- Scale GTM Advisory community: We have a community of 50 GTM advisors who make time to consult with the portfolio while running GTM at non-portfolio tech companies. For this group, we work to have at least three leaders in each core function, including RevOps, People Ops, Customer Success, Product Marketing, Sales Development, etc. We also ensure we have experts in specific disciplines like marketing operations and pricing.
These are people who not only had experience building and leading successful GTM organizations, but also had the advisory skills to communicate with portfolio leaders when they need help and stay out of their way when they don’t.
Scale’s GTM Advisory isn’t your typical VC platform team. We’re building a community of experts equipped with highly specific tools and a shared mission: helping startups scale faster and smarter. Most importantly, we’re the team founders rely on to get things done. And that’s what makes Scale unique.
