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

For years, when it came time for startups to start selling their products, they could resort to any number of traditional playbooks. But as with many things, AI is changing the way companies prepare to go to market.

“You can do more with less than ever before.” Max AltschulerGeneral Partner at GTMfund, told the audience at Disable TechCrunch last month.

However, the challenge for founders and operators is figuring things out. He said that while there has been some talk of startups hiring more experienced developers and losing them to typical GTM problems, more domain-specific expertise is still needed.

“When you have great consultants around you, you can learn some tried-and-true playbook. Those things haven’t gone out the window. I think it’s still essential to have a general understanding of how and why certain things work in marketing,” Altshuler said.

Allison WagonfieldThe craft of marketing is still in high demand, said Google Cloud’s vice president of marketing.

“You definitely need to know about AI, the curiosity of AI, the technologists, but you also need to understand the purpose of marketing, to understand customer insights, to do research, to know what great creativity looks like,” Wagonfield said.

But teams that embrace AI can move more quickly, she added. “You can only come up with so many messages faster, and then you can think more holistically about the metrics I’m aiming for.”

Mark ManaraHead of Startups at OpenAI, found that many startups have embraced AI into their GTM strategy, although not necessarily with the sole focus of reducing the number of resources they devote to it.

“There’s a movement that says, yes, you can do more with less, but you can also focus very hard on how you do it,” he said. “The degree of personalization and signaling you can do with AI is different now.”

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

He added that inbound marketing has also changed, using the results of those claims to qualify and score leads “with much more accuracy than they would have in the past.”

When it’s time for a startup to start formulating its go-to-market strategy, Wagonfeld said it’s important to think about the qualities you might want in a GTM team.

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