How OpenAI and Google see AI changing go-to-market strategies

For years, when it came time for startups to start selling their product, they could turn to some traditional playbooks. But as with so many things, AI is changing the way companies prepare for the market.

“You can do more with less than ever before” Max Altschulergeneral partner at GTMfund, told the audience at TechCrunch Disrupt last month.

The challenge for founders and operators, however, will be threading the needle. While there are rumors of startups hiring developers who have more experience with typical GTM problems, he says, there is still a need for more specific domain expertise.

“If you have good advisors around you, you can learn some of the tried-and-true playbooks. Those things haven’t gone out the window yet. I think it’s still necessary that you have a general understanding of how and why certain things work in marketing,” Altschuler said.

Alison Wagonfeldvice president of marketing at Google Cloud, said marketing is still desperately needed.

“You definitely need the AI ​​knowledge, the AI ​​curiosity, the technologists, but also an understanding of what the purpose of marketing is, to understand customer insights, to do research, to see how great creative work is,” Wagonfeld said.

However, teams that adopt AI can move faster. “You can just get out there with so many more messages faster, and then you can think more holistically about what metrics I want to achieve,” she added.

Marc Manarahead of startups at OpenAI, has found that many startups have embraced AI in their GTM strategy, even if not necessarily with the sole focus on minimizing the amount of resources they spend on it.

“There’s a movement of yes, you can do more with less, but you can also be very focused on the way you do it,” he said. “The amount of personalization and signal tracking you can do with AI is now differentiated.”

Specifically, he said there are tools that help build leads that are much more sophisticated than in the past. Rather than just a simple database search, AI prompts can help startups find potential customers that meet a very specific set of requirements.

Inbound marketing has also changed, he added, using the results of those prompts to qualify and score inbound leads “with a lot more precision that could have been done in the past.”

When it’s time for a startup to plan its go-to-market strategy, Wagonfeld said it’s important to consider what qualities it would want in a GTM team.

“It’s a change in the hiring perspective, where in the past it was more about hiring specialists, people who really knew, sometimes even as a subspecialty within marketing or within sales. And now it’s hiring for a sense of curiosity and understanding,” she said. “It’s almost best to hire right now.”