Incubating a Company Inside GTMfund: Operator.ai and a New Era in Sales Tech
The curtain pulled back on Operator and incubating a company
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Incubating a Company Inside GTMfund: Operator.ai and a New Era in Sales Tech
Last week, we unveiled Operator, the first company incubated within GTMfund, alongside the announcement of a $3.6 million pre-seed round led by our partners at Primary Venture Partners. The response has been incredible, and we're truly grateful for the support.
Operator launched with a bang - both digitally and through an in-person happy hour that brought our community together in San Mateo to celebrate this milestone. The energy was electric, and it was a testament to the excitement around what Operator is building.
In the spirit of transparency, we’re excited to take you behind the scenes of Operator’s journey and what it means to incubate a company within a VC firm. To dive even deeper, don’t miss the latest GTMnow podcast episode, where Max takes over the host seat to unpack the full story.
Let’s get into it.
The why
Incubating a company has always been on our radar, but only if the problem was worth solving. This one certainly was.
If it’s any indication of the market need, it took Mark Kosoglow, Co-Founder & CEO, just two and half weeks and 30 conducted conversations with potential customers and stakeholders to validate the idea and become convinced of the tremendous market need.
Sales was once a profession built on personal relationships and meaningful interactions. But the internet made it easy to find prospects, and automation allowed sales teams to reach thousands at once. Contact data became a commodity, and the more we reached out, the less we connected.
Buyers are now overwhelmed by generic, automated messages. Quality has plummeted, trust has eroded, and sales tactics have lost their effectiveness.
The result?
The “Great Ignore” – screened calls, junk folders, blocked contacts, and a general disengagement from the very people sales teams are trying to reach.
The market spends $2.5 billion on basic account and contact data, yet every company and sales rep has access to the same information. If it were truly valuable, everyone would see great results just by using it - but they don't. When everyone has access to the same data, it loses its competitive edge.
Read more about true differentiation in sales data in Primary Venture Partners' article on why they invested in Operator.
When everyone follows the same playbook, differentiation disappears, and so do your opportunities.
We created Operator to address this very disconnect.
Operator
The problem isn’t that sales reps aren’t working hard enough; it’s that they’re working on the wrong things. Too often, they’re caught in an endless cycle of activity without direction, chasing signals that only scratch the surface.
Operator was built to change that dynamic by going beyond signals to capture the bigger picture. The traditional GTM approach focuses narrowly on the buyer journey, but it’s fundamentally flawed. About 70% of your Total Addressable Market (TAM) doesn’t even know they have a problem, 20% are aware but aren’t prioritizing it, 7% are considering a solution, and just 3% are actively evaluating options. This means just 10% of your market signals interest, leaving everyone fighting over the same small pool.
Unlike other solutions that require users to know what to do or where to look, Operator starts by understanding the user. The platform doesn’t just provide data; it tailors insights and recommendations that are hyper-relevant to both the user and their buyer at every stage. It’s purpose-built to turn flat, commoditized data into dynamic, 3D insights.
Operator is redefineing the entire approach. Mark’s decision to eliminate credits - a disliked industry standard - goes beyond pricing strategy. It’s a bold statement: Operator isn’t here to play by the old rules; it’s here to break them. This isn’t about adding more touches or automating the same old tactics. Operator’s goal is to move from 20 impersonal touches down to 2 highly targeted ones, designed to attract buyers into conversations that convert, not just to fill activity quotas.
The platform leverages advanced AI in a way that fundamentally changes how sales teams operate. It’s not about bolting on AI as an afterthought; Operator was built from the ground up with AI as its core, designed to deeply understand the user and their target market.
Check out the Operator website to get updates, early access, and see how it’s taking the world back to 2 touches meant to attract buyers into conversations that convert, instead of 20 touches meant to make sure you hit your activity number.
Incubating a company
Operator was incubated by Max Altschuler, Founder & GP, at GTMfund and Adam Meyer, Co-Founder & CPO. Adam is a master of building 0-1 and an incredible product and design leader, having cofounded Monospace and most recently served as a founding member of the Amazon Explore team. Adam’s product skill set paired with the go-to-market brains of Mark Kosoglow, Co-founder & CEO, made for a deadly combination. Mark was Outreach employee #1 and former SVP of Global Sales, where he grew ARR from zero to over $200M. The Co-Founders brought in an insanely talented team: Pleasant Middelhof, (COO), Jeremy Jonas (CTO), and Carl Gunderson (Software Engineer).
The Operator founding team:
This picture was taken at the launch happy hour event in San Mateo - Sophie shared a few more pictures here.
We truly believe every VC should incubate a company to deeply understand both sides of the table and never lose their edge.
By incubating Operator, it put us on the other side of the table for a change. We got to sit in the Founder seat. We built the team and were heavily involved in the fundraise, and it was super eye-opening.
We got to see how other funds ran their process - the good and the bad. As a young fund, there is plenty to learn from and emulate.
It's super interesting to see the different approaches from similar-stage funds from the founder angle.
Max puts it well through a hockey analogy worth sharing:
“Alex Ovechkin, one of the world's best hockey players, is known for his snipe of a shot from the top of the faceoff circle. It's his signature move, and scoring rate from there is about as high as you can get.
Some VCs are like Alex. They have one way to score and that's the only shot they take. They pass on other good scoring chances to only take the one shot they know they have a high chance of success at. Other VCs will take all sorts of shots that they believe they can score on. Tap-ins, one-timers, etc. There's not just one way, but many ways.
Spending some time on the other side of the fence helped us see the different strategies at play by a few of the different top tier firms out there. It's a good reminder that there's no one-size-fits-all approach, but it's necessary to have a strategy that works for your fund.”
We also came to understand a lot more about what to expect from companies at the pre-seed and seed stages - from financial models, to completeness of thesis, and beyond.
It was an amazing exercise to build muscle and continue innovating in how we run GTMfund.
Plus, there are many advantages around the company building side itself when incubating a company.
Don’t forget to tag GTMnow so we can see your takeaways and help amplify them.
📹 Upcoming digital live events
The Future of Outbound: An Ecosystem-Led Approach - September 24th at 10am PST / 1pm EST
The $1B Sales Leadership Methodology - October 10th at 9:30am PST / 12:30pm EST
👂 More for your eardrums
The GTM Podcast - subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
GTM 112: The Ultimate MarTech Guide and the Great Contraction with Austin Hay
Austin Hay is the Co-Founder of Clarify, a new intelligent CRM built as a platform that developers love. He is also a Partner and MarTech Teacher at Reforge, as well as a MarTech Advisor and GTM Investor at HBE Ventures. With a background leading marketing technology teams at high-growth startups like Ramp, Branch, and mParticle, Austin brings a wealth of expertise on the evolving MarTech and RevTech landscape.
Mark Kosoglow is the Co-Founder and CEO of Operator.ai, the company incubated by GTMfund and discussed in this newsletter. Mark was employee #1 at Outreach and former SVP of Global Sales, where he helped grow the company from zero to over $200 million in revenue. He is joined in this special edition podcast episode by Max Altschuler, Founder and General Partner of GTMfund.
👀 More for your eyeballs
The research report, The Evidence Gap, is packed with insights that B2B marketers can use immediately to improve their customer evidence strategy and better align with what buyers (and their sales teams) need. There’s a serious disconnect between the customer evidence buyers need to make purchasing decisions vs. the content GTM teams create and share with buyers. The report dives into the Evidence Gap and offers actionable steps to fix it. No fluff - just practical takeaways.
Becoming a sales leader isn't just a step up - it’s a complete turnaround. A key aspect between leading sales teams to IC roles is the unexpected yet necessary change from a self-centered approach to a selfless mindset.
🚀 Startups to watch
Default - the first part of a founder content series on Nico Ferreyra, Co-Founder & CEO, dropped. He dropped out of college in his last semester to build the company.
Pocus - launching their free AI account plan generator on Product Hunt on Wednesday, 9/25 - get notified when they launch. Generate robust account plans in a few seconds. Pocus reads 10ks, websites, news, listens to podcasts, and more to generate an account plan just for you. It also combines your value props to suggest how you might pitch the account. Like chatGPT but more powerful, built just for sellers.
Arrows - launched brand new CRM Cards for HubSpot. This adds a whole new dimension of interaction and data for our customers inside HubSpot.
🔥 Hottest GTM jobs of the week
VP of Product at Esper (Remote)
Sales/Solutions Engineer at Armada (Remote - US )
Sr. Customer Success Manager at OfferFit (Remote - US / Canada)
Sr. Business Development Representative (BDR) at Stotles (London)
Sr. Customer Success Manager at Stotles (London)
See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.
If you’re looking to hire incredible startup talent, reach out to our search firm partner as a resource: Integrity Power Search (IPS). They are also available to support candidates looking for their next startup opportunity.
🗓️ GTM industry events
Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:
GTMfund Annual Retreat: October 4 - 6 (San Diego, CA)
GTM Summit by Pavilion: October 14 - 16 (Austin, TX)
Grateful as always, but particularly grateful today.
Grateful for all of your support - thank you.
✌️ Scott