How Clay Built the GTM Team Behind a $5B Valuation w/ Becca Lindquist, Head of Sales @ Clay
The Crew PodcastShow Notes
Becca Lindquist is the Head of Sales at Clay, the go-to-market infrastructure platform that's grown past nine figures and become one of the most loved tools in modern sales. Before Clay, she spent four-plus years at dbt Labs, where she joined at roughly $600K in committed revenue (three reps, no SDRs) and scaled it into one of the most respected go-to-market runs in data. Prior to that, she was building the sales motion at Heap alongside Todd Baszler, going all the way back to 2017. A former D1 rower at Cal, she traces her competitive streak straight back to her time spent in that boat, and she's now building Clay's sales team from a group of artists and generalists toward hundreds of reps.
Discussed in this episode: Why she optimizes for people over product or market, and the booze-cruise gut check that sealed the Clay decisionThe best way to use AI in GTM: Waste Management's green-dumpster play and the Tide sentiment workflowBuilding a pipe-gen muscle before the inbound music stops Why "how much pipeline do you self-source?" is a useless interview questionThe mock-call-plus-deal-debrief that replaced the memorized product demoSpike in product or spike in sales: how Clay hires when there's no playbook yetNo variable comp, on purpose and the signal that it's time to switch it onThe autopilot trap: how to tell you're decaying at a good company"Learn like Mongo, join like Stripe" and the two tracks for a sales career in AIThe biggest mistakes founders make hiring their first sellers
Timestamps: (0:00) Cold open (1:40) Welcome + why Becca chose Clay (2:30) The Brooklyn walks with Varun, and optimizing for people (6:27) "Are they your people?" and why you should always vet the team first (9:06) Joining at $100M (mostly PLG) vs. dbt at sub-$1M (11:06) Diligencing product love before joining (13:16) Pipe-gen culture: grow while the sun shines (14:08) The World Cup analogy: predict the future for the team (14:56) Hiring for outbound: the "favorite deal" question (17:23) The Spotify-playlist cold open, and spotting hunters (18:05) The healthy pipeline split, and Clay Day (19:52) SDR/AE pods, pipeline channels, and Tuesday readouts (23:53) The best way to leverage AI in GTM (28:20) Your alpha: executing on new ideas faster than competitors (31:43) The Waste Management green-dumpster play (33:08) Running a hiring seminar: how to read a LinkedIn profile (37:09) The 80/20 of a great mock call (38:01) Teaching vs. learning: the rhythm of the best calls (45:02) Comp in a usage-based, land-and-expand business (46:17) Company selection and the leap of faith (48:31) The autopilot trap: decay vs. loyalty (50:25) Sales orgs she admires: the MongoDB lineage (52:28) Learn like Mongo, join like Stripe (53:34) The biggest mistakes founders make hiring sellers (56:44) Reading energy: "what does your Friday look like?"(59:55) How to actually stand out to when applying to Clay
About The Crew Podcast The Crew podcast interviews GTM leaders and investors at top AI startups and early-stage companies. Every week, host Chris Balestras, partner @ Crew (an advisory, recruiting, investing, & media firm for seed through series C AI-natives) sits down with GTM operators from the fastest-growing AI natives and SaaS companies to break down what's actually working in go-to-market today. No fluff, no theory - just honest, tactical insights from people in the trenches building the next generation of AI breakouts.
About Crew Crew is an advisory, recruiting, investing, & media firm for seed through series D AI-natives & fast-growing SaaS startups.
Where to Find Crew LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crewgtm YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thecrewgtm Newsletter: https://www.withcrew.blog/ Website: https://www.withcrew.ai/
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