Hey and welcome to The GTMnow E-newsletter – the media model of VC agency, GTMfund. Construct, scale and make investments with the very best minds in tech.
That is Half II of a sequence on classes from a few of the prime 1% leaders in B2B SaaS. In case you missed it, Half I with the CCO of Canva will be discovered right here.
Scaling a startup is rarely a straight line, and significantly not when scaling from <$20M to over $100M ARR. Behind each story of hypergrowth are hidden chapters of income stalls, brutal competitors, and painful classes realized within the trenches. Few folks embody that journey higher than Stevie Case, the CRO who helped steer Vanta from a 200-person, inbound-driven firm to a 1,000+ particular person world chief in belief administration. Most lately, Vanta raised a $150M Sequence D and is now valued at $4.15 billion.
Stevie’s path is way from typical. She was the world’s first feminine pro-gamer earlier than main gross sales at Twilio and ultimately taking the helm of Vanta’s income group.
Main income at Vanta has been a experience. Her journey is full of hard-won insights each founder and operator can apply. After listening to Stevie deconstruct this journey, we’ve distilled three key classes:
Lesson 1: Flying blind is deadly
Lesson 2: Execution wins, not options
Lesson 3: Loyalty is constructed post-sales
Under, we dive into every lesson.
Lesson 1: Flying blind is deadly
When Stevie first joined Vanta, the demand was overwhelming. Clients had been banging down the door, and the plain recommendation was: “Rent extra reps.”
So she did. She staffed up with a category of junior SMB sellers, assuming the high-volume demand matched a high-volume, transactional enterprise. However the outcomes had been disastrous. Quotas slipped. Veteran reps who had been used to tripling quota abruptly struggled to make quantity. Morale tanked.
It wasn’t a hiring failure a lot as a visibility failure. Vanta merely didn’t have the GTM analytics in place to see the true complexity of the offers, the range of the client base, or the shifting aggressive dynamics.
“That’s in all probability the only largest mistake I made… it meant I went a couple of 12 months with out actually with the ability to see what was happening in my enterprise”
The lesson was seared in: by no means scale headcount with out measurement. Even a scrappy RevOps rent or a founder with SQL can present the info you must keep away from hiring the flawed profile.
Lesson 2: Execution wins, not options
Vanta invented the compliance automation class. However success got here at a value: greater than 40 copycat opponents appeared nearly in a single day, many with flashy advertising and half-price merchandise.
From the surface, it regarded like they may steal Vanta’s market. Inside, Stevie made a alternative: don’t panic, don’t low cost. As a substitute, rebuild the gross sales movement from the bottom up.
The workforce went from handing out “pens to anybody who wanted a pen” to promoting arduous, quantified worth. Discovery grew to become deeper and extra rigorous, powered by MEDDICC. Reps had been skilled not simply to speak about options, however to show how Vanta unlocked tens of millions in buyer income by unblocking offers.
To sharpen their edge, Stevie even spun up a “Aggressive Intelligence Company,” which was a small workforce devoted solely to tearing out opponents and equipping AEs with successful speak tracks.
The shift labored. Rivals may mimic options, however they couldn’t mimic execution or Vanta’s capacity to show ROI with math.
“Flashy advertising and software program constructed cheaply offshore doesn’t actually get you there. Each enterprise continues to be topic to the identical guidelines, the identical math.”
Lesson 3: Loyalty is constructed post-sale
By the point Vanta was racing towards $100M ARR, Stevie confronted a brand new downside. Internet greenback retention wasn’t excessive sufficient to maintain development. The rationale was as a result of the Buyer Success workforce was stretched too skinny – answerable for onboarding, adoption, renewals, expansions, and help .
“It was completely arrange for them to fail as a result of their job was like 100 various things”
The repair was easy in precept however arduous in execution: break up the perform. Buyer Success Managers would personal adoption and well being (gross retention), whereas Account Managers carried quotas for renewals and enlargement (web retention).
It took almost two years for this structural change to completely repay. However when it did, Vanta unlocked sturdy, scalable development. It was proof that NRR, not simply new logos, is the true development engine for SaaS at scale.
Lesson 4: Don’t pressure quotas too early
Some of the widespread errors founders make is assuming a primary gross sales rent needs to be managed like a scaled gross sales org. The logic is seductive: “I employed a salesman! I’ll know in the event that they’re profitable as a result of they hit an industry-standard quota.”
The issue is twofold:
- Compensation drives habits. In the event you push an early rep to hit an aggressive quantity, they’ll optimize for closing any offers — which regularly means racing downmarket, discounting, and pigeonholing your product within the flawed section.
- It hides the true points. When early, costly reps miss quota, many founders conclude they need to “rent cheaper reps.” However that may push the enterprise right into a field it by no means meant to play in.
Stevie noticed this sample firsthand. In Vanta’s early scaling, the flawed hiring profile mixed with quota stress almost despatched the workforce right into a spiral – junior reps lacking quota, veterans demoralized, and the corporate pressured to rethink its movement.
Her recommendation: be affected person. Early gross sales hires are as a lot about discovery as closing. Hyperlink incentives to the best outcomes (studying, suggestions, deal high quality) and solely rationalize quotas and comp plans after getting true product-market match.
Hear Stevie’s recommendation on quotas firsthand.
Probably the most largest lesson of all: execution is the one moat.
Tag GTMnow so we are able to see your takeaways and assist amplify them.
Suggestions
Harmonic helps you uncover the very best startups method forward of the competitors. We use it at GTMfund, as do hundreds of buyers at corporations like USV and Perception. GTM groups at corporations like Notion and Brex additionally depend on the platform to remain forward.
Harmonic tracks tens of millions of startups and allows you to search utilizing easy filters or pure language to match precisely what you’re on the lookout for. Once you discover a firm that appears fascinating, Harmonic pulls every little thing into one place (founder backgrounds, traction, and market knowledge) so you possibly can rapidly consider and perceive if it’s a match.
At GTMfund, we also have a non-public Slack channel referred to as #companywatchlist powered completely by Harmonic.
Extra to your eardrums
James Roth is the Chief Income Officer at ZoomInfo, the place he oversees a world income engine supporting over 37,000 clients and greater than $1B in ARR.
There’s a standard false impression that change and innovation doesn’t occur at scale. The very best corporations – and GTM orgs – are consistently pushing the boundaries, constructing, and rising. James joined at 700M ARR and helped:
1. Reposition ZoomInfo as a full GTM platform (ticker: GTM)
2. Launch Copilot to over $100M in income in months
3. Construct a segmented enterprise engine powered by their Good Co, Dangerous Co framework
Hear on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts by looking “The GTMnow Podcast.”
Startups to look at
Mutiny – introduced a giant launch, bringing AI to enterprise GTM groups with a platform that researches goal accounts, builds personalised campaigns, and arms gross sales with tailor-made purchaser insights. Enterprise groups can lastly execute like scrappy startups, with out dropping their scale benefit.
Gaiia – simply took Bronze on the ISE Innovation Awards 2025, recognizing their push to modernize broadband with a seamless, Uber-like expertise for service suppliers and clients.
Extra to your eyeballs
Bottoms-up GTM isn’t magic, it’s a deliberate technique. Claire Butler (early Figma) lays out how advertising drives PLG by constructing love with particular person contributors, turning them into inner champions, after which empowering them to unfold adoption org-wide. Within the age of AI, advocacy and affect matter greater than ever.
Hottest GTM jobs of the week
- Sr. Partnership Advertising and marketing Supervisor – Ecosystem Advertising and marketing at Gorgias (Toronto)
- RVP, Strategic Gross sales (West) at Author (Hybrid – San Francisco)
- Group Lead, Buyer Success at Atlan (Distant – India)
- VP of Product at Closinglock (Austin, TX)
- Account Supervisor, DACH – EMEA at Vanta
See extra prime GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.
In the event you’re trying to scale your gross sales and advertising groups with prime expertise, we couldn’t advocate our companion Pursuit extra. We work carefully collectively to have the ability to present the highest go-to-market expertise for corporations on a non-retainer foundation.
GTM {industry} occasions
Upcoming occasions you gained’t wish to miss:
- INBOUND 2025: September 3-5, 2025 (San Francisco, CA)
- GTMfund Dinner (non-public registration): September 10, 2025 (San Francisco, CA)
- Pavilion GTM Summit: September 23-25, 2025 (Washington, DC)
- Nationwide Mall Stroll with GTMfund: September 25, 2025 (Washington, DC) – NEW
- Dreamforce: October 14-16, 2025 (San Francisco, CA
- GTMfund Dinner (non-public registration): October 22, 2025 (Austin, TX)
- GTMfund Dinner (non-public registration): November 18, 2025 (Toronto, ON)
- GTMfund Dinner (non-public registration): November 19, 2025 (New York, NY)
- GTM x Founder Occasion (non-public registration): November 20, 2025 (New York, NY) – when you’re an AI-focused founder in NYC, hit reply to get the small print
