How the best do it

Teardowns of what specific companies actually did, and the judgment calls great operators make.

What founders use for how the best do it, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

  1. A useful breakdown of the signals Postman used to decide a company was ready for a sales conversation, such as many developers... Reo.Dev Article · Long read Postman's Sales Playbook: Scaling Enterprise Sales Without Breaking PLG Reo.Dev In 2 answers
  2. Datadog's own VP of Marketing describing the dual motion and, more usefully, saying you have to actively reach out to the... OpenView Article · Short read An Inside Look at How Datadog Reached $500M in ARR (and Counting) Kristin Hillery In 2 answers
  3. The founders describe coining inbound marketing as an old game versus new game framing, then choosing SMB over enterprise to... Crucible Moments Podcast · 40 min HubSpot: An Underdog Helps Invent Modern Marketing, and Then Takes on Goliath Sequoia Capital with Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah In 2 answers
  4. A sitting CIO explains how he actually finds and evaluates startup vendors, including that roughly 80% arrive through outbound.... The Neon Show Podcast · 62 min How Startups Can Sell to Big Companies ft. Karthik Chakkarapani, Zuora Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  5. Five GTM bets from an Indian founder who reached $600M+ ARR, including spending $45k early to find which inbound channel would... SaaStr Article · ~10 min read Building A Global SaaS Empire: 5 Bets That Paid Off with Freshworks Founder CEO Girish Mathrubootham Girish Mathrubootham
  6. Practical on the first US sales hire, hiring for adaptability rather than a quota record at a big brand, and on testing... Efficient Capital Labs Article · ~10 min read Unlocking the US Market: A Guide for Indian SaaS Founders Efficient Capital Labs
  7. Gives you numbers to aim at on your next call instead of vague advice: roughly 11 to 14 questions, spread through the call... Gong Labs Article · short read Effective strategies for successful sales discovery calls Chris Orlob
  8. Podcast · podcast episode SaaS, Chennai, Acquisition By Freshworks and Building Rocketlane with Founder, Srikrishnan Ganesan Siddhartha Ahluwalia with Srikrishnan Ganesan
  9. Krish is blunt that inbound marketing was the whole strategy, chosen because Chennai gave them no access to a Silicon Valley... Insight Partners Article · long read How Krish Subramanian built global SaaS unicorn Chargebee out of India Insight Partners
  10. Video · Conference talk "Big Bets that Paid Off" with Freshworks Founder & CEO Girish Mathrubootham | SaaStr Annual Girish Mathrubootham
  11. Vembu walks through the actual mechanics: the pivot after the dot com crash, ManageEngine turning profitable on Google ads, and... Mixergy Podcast · Full episode "The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur" Talks About How He Built Zoho Into A Bootstrapped Powerhouse, with Sridhar Vembu Andrew Warner with Sridhar Vembu
  12. The best single profile of how Zoho funded itself, split into WebNMS, ManageEngine and Zoho.com, and built a talent pipeline... Forbes India Article · Long read The Bootstrapped Buddhist: How Sridhar Vembu built Zoho Harichandan Arakali
  13. Vembu explains the segment choice in his own words: go to the customers who find the premium products unaffordable, then grow... Thought Economics Article · Long read Sridhar Vembu: How He Bootstrapped Zoho to $1 Billion Without Investors Vikas Shah
  14. Asthana says plainly that Postman built customer success instead of a sales team early on. That one staffing choice explains... OpenView Article · Short read Postman on Designing for the End User and Product-led Success Abhinav Asthana
  15. Video · Interview The BrowserStack story, from Co-founder and CEO Ritesh Arora Ritesh Arora
  16. The founder saying it in his own words: no ads, no sales team with targets, not much marketing, and about 1,000 people while... Nithin Kamath (Substack) Essay · Long read Inside the making of Zerodha Nithin Kamath
  17. Go look at the actual asset rather than reading about it. No signup, no paywall, no ads, and it is the top of Zerodha's funnel.... Zerodha Tool · Ongoing library Zerodha Varsity: Free Stock Market and Trading Courses Online Karthik Rangappa
  18. A quick companion to the podcast, with the origin of the inbound insight and the counterintuitive calls laid out in five... HubSpot INBOUND Article · Short read Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah: How They Built HubSpot HubSpot (Guy Raz interview recap)
  19. Fills in the part the founder interviews skip: how the team formed out of Zoho, how they picked recurring billing, and the... SeedToScale (Accel India) Article · Long read The Early Story of Chargebee: Why it's Better to Start with People, not Ideas Prabhakar Reddy
  20. Seven concrete lessons with the numbers attached, including the 15 minute time to value and net retention above 140 percent.... aakashg.com Article · Long read Datadog: The Archetypal Example for SaaS Product-Led Growth Aakash Gupta
  21. The memo itself, published by Butterfield. Read the primary source rather than the hundred posts summarising it, because the... Medium Essay · Short read We Don't Sell Saddles Here Stewart Butterfield
  22. Her four recurring failure modes, including misreading your competitive alternatives and the go to market gaps that quietly... Business of Software Video · Conference talk The Hard Parts of Positioning: Learnings from 11 years and 300 technology companies April Dunford
  23. Has the diagnostic that is genuinely useful: if people cannot tell what you do, or you get compared to the wrong competitors,... Intercom Podcast · Full episode with transcript Ambient Strategy's April Dunford on what marketers get wrong about positioning Geoffrey Keating with April Dunford
  24. The method behind the talks, with a Positioning Canvas you can actually run a session against. Short enough to finish in a... aprildunford.com Book · Short book Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get it, Buy it, Love it April Dunford

Show the next 24

The questions

GTM teardowns 16

How named companies actually got their first customers, and what they changed to scale.

How did Freshworks sell to the US from Chennai without a US sales team? 5 → How did Zoho build a global GTM engine without ever raising money? 4 → What did Postman do differently to get developers to adopt before it ever sold anything? 5 → How did BrowserStack get its first millions in revenue almost entirely on word of mouth? 6 → How did Zerodha become India's largest broker with no ads and no sales team? 5 → All 16 questions in GTM teardowns →
How great operators think 16

The mental models, the judgment calls, and the non-obvious moves behind good go-to-market.

What did Slack's "We don't sell saddles here" memo actually change about how they sold? 5 → What does April Dunford say most teams get wrong about positioning? 3 → What does Gong's call data actually say top sellers do differently in discovery? 3 → When should you add a sales team on top of a self serve product, and how do you avoid breaking it? 4 → When does a founder stop selling personally, and why do the best ones hire two reps instead of one? 4 → All 16 questions in How great operators think →
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →