Navigating GTM careers in the age of AI
The Revenue Syndicate Newsletter
Hey everyone, Misha here 👋
It’s been a little while since our last newsletter — but I’m excited to say we’re now back with regular content and updates!
Going forward, these newsletters will dive into go-to-market best practice, practical career advice for GTM operators, the future of B2B technology, and of course, our experiences sourcing top tier angel investing opportunities for you all.
What will the world look like in 2027? 💭
If you haven't already, I highly recommend you check out AI 2027. I believe that while this somewhat dystopian vision for the future might seem extreme, we should all be positioning ourselves with a view that at least some of these predictions have a decent chance of playing out.
The AI 2027 scenario paints a vivid picture of a near-future where artificial intelligence evolves rapidly, culminating in the emergence of artificial superintelligence (ASI) by the end of 2027.
The tech industry, our careers, and the world are set to change drastically. Now is the time to position ourselves to capitalise on these shifts from both an investment and career perspective.
Where should we be looking now? 👀
You need to be ruthless about choosing companies positioned to ride - not get crushed by the coming AI tidal wave.
We’re looking to pick companies that are building on top of AI infrastructure, not trying to compete with it. Looking for startups that are moving faster than incumbents, using AI to create 10x cheaper, 10x faster products. Think AI-native platforms, not just AI bolt-ons.
Founders should be technically world-class (or have those people onboard) and be paranoid about speed. Things are moving fast and unless you understand how to leverage the technology, it will be difficult to keep up.
Software is easier to build than ever. Brand and go-to-market execution will increasingly become the sharpest edge over the competition. Founders that have this skill set as well as deep technical competency have the winning combination.
Work for and invest in companies where GenAI isn't a feature - it’s the foundation. In particular, companies that could not have existed without reasoning models will be the most cutting edge and disruptive.
Our view is that the best opportunities are currently in the application layer. AI coding applications are particularly hot right now — I’ve personally seen these apps have the best product market fit of any AI native application in the enterprise outside of general purpose chatbots. This fits perfectly with the AI 2027 timeline of where we are at right now in this AI supercycle.
The recent buzz about OpenAI potentially acquiring Windsurf validates this. Whether or not the Windsurf rumours are true, it signals that model companies are looking to move up the stack to the application layer to capture value. I’d expect to see model companies continuously acquire promising AI native application companies that have product market fit. This is great for us as investors!
Our thesis is that the majority of generative AI value that we can partake in for career and investment growth will largely be in these AI native application companies. As models become increasingly commoditised, only the truly state-of-the-art models will retain real pricing power.
Meanwhile, infrastructure players — Nvidia, the hyperscalers (Google, AWS and Microsoft), and others selling the "picks and shovels" for this AI gold rush will continue to perform well, but these are largely public market plays for now, with more limited upside for early stage investors and GTM operators.
Revenue Syndicate recent investment focus 💸
As such, our recent investment focus has primarily been AI native application companies. We have seen a few interesting early deep tech and infrastructure plays…but they have either not been compelling enough vs the mega cap incumbents or have been too far outside of our expertise to make an informed judgement.
We’ve recently made two investments that fit this thesis and plan to continue investing in the next generation of AI native application companies.
Artifact AI — Building AI agents to automate accounting end-to-end. We invested at pre-seed and two months later they're closing their seed round with a Tier 1 lead investor. Congrats to everyone who invested! We are very excited to announce the full details of in our next newsletter but they remain confidential for now.
The second investment we cannot yet disclose but we will announce in our next newsletter.
We’ve also been focused on strengthening our connections within the venture and AI communities in London. With my role leading go-to-market efforts for Mistral AI in the UK, I’ve had the opportunity to become more deeply embedded in this ecosystem. We're excited about continuing to access high-quality deal flow and look forward to sharing these opportunities with all of you moving forward.
The hottest new role in GTM — the GTM Engineer 🛠️
We’re starting to see a trend of companies moving away from the traditional SDR heavy outbound sales teams and highly specialised sales and marketing roles. The next generation of leaders are thinking more deeply about how they can leverage technology to achieve better results with less.
This has led to the emergence of a new type of role that is becoming popularised — the ‘Go-To-Market (GTM) Engineer’. This role signifies a transformative shift in how tech companies approach scaling.
GTM Engineers are the linchpins in leveraging technology to drive revenue. They integrate tools, workflows, and data to turn strategy into execution, building automated systems that scale high-ROI activities.
They possess a hybrid of technical and strategic expertise:
Sales and Marketing Acumen: Deep understanding of the first principles of marketing and sales.
Technical Acumen: Proficiency in top GTM software tools, APIs, and data orchestration.
Creative Problem-Solving: Fast learners with high initiative, and ability to overcome go-to-market challenges with technology driven solutions.
This role effectively collapses roles like SDRs, Growth Marketers and Sales Operations into a single, high-leverage function. This consolidation leads to tighter alignment (less sales and marketing in-fighting) and more efficient scaling.
AI won’t take your job. Those who best leverage AI will take the jobs of those who don’t embrace it.
I’d say their impact can be broken down into two primary categories:
Driving Efficiency Through Automation GTM Engineers leverage automation to handle repetitive tasks, allowing sales teams to focus on high-value activities. By automating processes like lead generation and outreach, they increase efficiency and reduce errors.
Enabling Data-Driven Decision Making By analysing customer data, GTM Engineers identify patterns and trends that inform strategic decisions. This data-driven approach leads to more effective sales & marketing outcomes and a better understanding of customer needs.
The GTM Engineer role isn't just a passing trend — it's fast becoming a must-have for any modern tech company serious about scaling. If you’re a VP of Sales, this role should be right at the top of your hiring list!
I'd recommend checking out this newsletter from The Signal for a deep-dive on this emerging role:
Latest tools we’re experimenting with 🧪
I’ve become obsessed with Granola over the last few weeks. It’s become by #1 used sales tool. It lets you easily capture notes and interact with your call transcripts with GenAI to:
Draft follow-up emails
Deeply understand the history of customer interactions
Easily build deal-specific messaging
Build business cases in the language of your customers
Automatically post meeting notes into Notion, CRM, and Slack
I never take meeting notes anymore which allows me to fully focus on the customer.
I’d say it’s the best substitute for conversation intelligence tools if you don’t have the budget or your company hasn’t already invested in one as it’s light weight, easy to use and free to get started.
If you’re already leveraging Gong and Clay, I would check out the new integration. It's opening up some really powerful automation use cases based on real conversation data. If you have the budget and a full sales team, this is a best in class combination to double down on.
Spotlight on our MVPs 🔦
Call out to our top operators: we want to give you a platform to share your insights, challenges and achievements with the community. We’ve got some of the best GTM minds in Europe here — let’s leverage the hive mind to grow and learn together.
If you have a topic you’d like to write about whether a short idea or longer form point of view, please DM me on Slack. We'd love to start publishing content from our members!
That's all for now.
Misha Jessel-Kenyon