Alper Yurder 🤝

Co-founder & CRO of Flowla, interactive deal rooms your buyers LOVE 👉 Follow our podcast #salestherapy by Flowla 🎙️ on spotify

We build and operate GTM systems for B2B startups expanding into new markets.



I've seen it over and over. Businesses hit the same wall after product-market fit. Outbound isn't landing. LinkedIn feels like shouting into the void. The first SDR hire can't sell what they don't understand. There's no strategy to execute trust building, visibility, outbound and inbound growth loops to scale.



Agencies deliver generic playbooks that go nowhere.I've been there. 



I started in strategy consulting at Bain and Accenture, then spent a decade in the trenches. Five startups. One IPO, one exit. $60M+ in revenue closed as founder and CRO. I co-founded Flowla and scaled it to $1M ARR with zero paid ads. Just founder-led growth, LinkedIn, outbound, content, marketing hacks and systems that compounded.



Now I run Forte Growth. We run GTM Sprints for B2B SaaS founders at $500K-$5M ARR who need to find their repeatable buyer and start booking meetings fast.In 12 weeks we build your founder brand, LinkedIn presence, outbound engine, and test message-market fit. Then we scale what works. No 6-month strategies. No generic playbooks. Just a system that compounds outbound with trust and content.



Last year we ran Sprints with 12 startups. 10 got to 15-20 qualified meetings in under 4 months.Results from recent Sprints:



OMMA: £1M pipeline in 90 days

Genifea: 20 qualified meetings by month 3

Wealt: £750K pipeline in 6 months



For founders and revenue teams who want ongoing GTM leadership after a Sprint, I also offer Fractional GTM and Advisory. But most people start with a Sprint, see results and go from there.



DM me "SPRINT" or visit fortegrowth.co" to learn more.If you are earlier stage, I offer 1-2-1 coaching sessions on a weekly basis, and I help VC portfolios such as Tenity, Antler, EIF, Natwest, EF among others.

Co-Founder

Hey there, I'm an ex-sales leader turned co-founder, and I spend all day sharing ideas, solving problems and having #salestherapy with sales professionals from every sector and level. If you're after sales and G2M advice, you've come to the right place! And believe me, I've been through it all - from building SDR teams to closing multi-million dollar deals and everything in between. So, let's have some fun and chat sales!

👉Leaving a well-paid C-suite job for the startup grind is terrifying. I know because I did it. And some days I think of going back.

Some days I ask myself why I don’t just go back. Take a C-suite role at a mature company. Well-paid. 9 to 5. No 24/7 start-up hustle. No weight of the world on my shoulders.

Then I remember.

I travel when I want. I work from where I want. I work with incredible startups, VCs, on my own terms. Every win is self-made. Full ownership. I get to hire who I want. Build my own team. Build my own legacy.

Then I say ok it’s incredibly hard but it’s well worth it.

To anyone considering making the move from employment to entrepreneurship.

It’s incredibly hard. But it’s the best.

I’ve been on early stage grind for 6 years now since leaving late stage well-paid C-suite jobs. 

First as a CRO for a seed stage startup, then co-founder from zero, and now as a solo founder building Forte, where we provide cofounder level gtm and growth service to other founders scaling their businesses.

So it’s a few times the stress of building one company as we build 2-3 at a time as a fractional service and even more when I take care of vc portfolios as an advisor. But the early stage energy is different! I love it.

✈️Now on my way to Istanbul for a series of workshops, client work, and a visit to my parents. If you’re around, let’s meet.

P.S. I try to fly at least once a month. Not just to travel. Turns out a plane is the best place for deep focused work. No interruptions. No notifications. No AI.

Just thinking. The kind we get less and less of.

Alper Yurder

Founder @ Forte Growth | GTM Strategy & Market Expansion for B2B Startups | VC Portfolio Advisor | Former SaaS Co-Founder & CRO (1 IPO, 1 Exit)

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👉 Just updated my 34-page playbook on how to audit your GTM and build a strategy that gets you to more leads and revenue in 8-14 weeks.

This is the exact framework I’ve used to help 16 startups from 2025 to date:
→ Create clarity across founders, sales, and product
→ Build roadmaps they actually stick to, to run 30 day test sprints
→ And in 2 cases - use the outcome directly in their fundraising decks

Normally I charge £3,5k to implement this in 2 full day workshops + write up.

Grab it while it’s free 👇

Please give a like & Comment “GTM” and I’ll send it your way.

Must be connected so I can DM.

👉 WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Most revenue teams get burned by outbound.

They launch channels. Spray messages. Burn budget.

Eventually, the realization hits:

❝We don’t need more tactics. We need a real strategy.❞

Because the unlock isn’t better copy or lists.

It’s alignment, trust, and clarity.

That’s what this GTM audit helps you build:

✅ Where to play (and what to ignore)

✅ What to say—and when to say it

✅ How to warm demand before you ever jump on a sales call

What you’ll get:

A GTM strategy audit you can run yourself

Or— if you need help, DM me and I’ll do the audit with you, and help you craft your roadmap

If you'd like to receive the playbook and start your own self-audit, please give a like, repost and comment

"GTM"

and I'll send it to you.

Happy building!

👉 No fancy visual, just the exact playbook that built our linkedin-first revenue machine at Flowla thru founder brand & what I now implement with founders I work with to scale GTM - use linkedin as testing lab then scale email and SEO.

1-Define your persona as the people who book a call fastest and close fastest.
2-Pick three main persona types to target.
3-Write down urgency signals that confirm someone is your persona (role, pains, triggers).
4-Re-listen to customer calls. What do they want, care about, want to learn?
5-Summarise what they most want to hear from you in a few sentences.

6-Pick five competitors and study how they and their founders post on LinkedIn.
7-Note what works: topics, hooks, formats, CTAs, comment style.
8-Do external listening on Reddit and elsewhere. Ask ChatGPT what your audience cares about.
9-Optimise your LinkedIn profile fully for this persona (headline, About, banner, proof, clear next step).
10-Make sure it clearly says who you help, with what, and what they should do next.

11-Follow 1,000+ people matching your persona and urgency signals to train your feed.
12-Build a core list of 20–30 ICPs and allies you engage with every week.
13-Comment on their posts daily. Specific, useful, on-topic comments (you or your SDR).
14-Share your tone of voice with your SDR so they comment like you.
15-Publish thought-leadership posts 2–3 times per week.

16-Focus on the problems, questions, and topics your personas care most about.
17-Mix TOFU–MOFU–BOFU: awareness, evaluation, and decision-stage content.
18- 70–80% core domain, 20% other things to stay human.
19-Before and after each post, engage with ICPs' content. Be in their feed and comments.
20-Occasionally post product/FOMO content with screenshots so they see what you do.

21-Connect with people from your list and commenters. No pitch in the first message.
22-Test two DM styles. Friendly/curious vs. direct. See which opens more conversations.
23-Use posts and assets in DMs. Send a relevant post or guide instead of a cold pitch.
24-Track who replies, books, and closes fastest. Refine personas based on real data.
25-Collect repeated questions from comments and DMs. Turn each into a new post.

26-Move into assets: carousels, checklists, guides, mini-playbooks on topics they react to.
27-Reuse assets in comments and DMs. They get saved, shared, and boosted by the algorithm.
28-Keep doing competitive listening. Fold new angles back into your content.
29-Ask for testimonials, quotes, or screenshots as you deliver. Even from small wins.
30-Publish social proof regularly so talking to you feels like the obvious next step.

👉 Save this. Come back to it when you're ready to stop posting randomly and start posting with intent.

👉 Your prospect list is your strategy. Get it wrong and the best message in the world won't save you.

I've always been against spray & pray. Unless your Total Addressable Market is everyone and their mother, you need to be careful with your outbound. The more targeted you are the shorter the sales cycle.

Which is why when we work with a client, we make sure our prospect lists are well curated. We start with LinkedIn outbound, which means you only get 100-120 connection requests and 20-30 messages to begin with.

So we don't spray and pray. We aim for high reply rates.

Unfortunately though, most B2B teams build lists the same way. Open a database. Filter by title, size, industry. Export 500 names.

Reply rate: 1-2%. Result is noise and pollution.

The reason our conversion is at 30% is because we don't filter by demographics. We decode the buyer and track their behaviour.

5 buying signals that work for most B2B companies 👇

1️⃣ HIRING SIGNALS Are they hiring for the role your product replaces? New leadership in your buyer's department? Team growing fast? Budget is unlocked and they're building.

2️⃣ FUNDING SIGNALS Recently raised. New budget cycle. Growth targets announced publicly. Money is available and there's pressure to spend it on results.

for this obviously Crunchbase or Clay  is best.

3️⃣ CONTENT SIGNALS Posting about the problem you solve. Asking for recommendations. Engaging with content in your space. They're telling you what they need. Listen. 

👉 Use a tool like Trigify.io for social listening to see what your buyers are posting.

4️⃣ EXPANSION SIGNALS Entering new markets. Opening new offices. Hiring in new geographies. The biggest buying window is when a company is growing into unfamiliar territory.

5️⃣ INTENT SIGNALS Visiting competitor websites. Reviewing tools on G2 or Capterra. Downloading industry reports. They've already decided they need something. Will they find you or someone else?

Demographics = who exists. 

Signals = who's ready.

The difference between a 2% reply rate and a 20% reply rate isn't your message. It's your list.

When you find the right buyer, there's a buyer for every product.

At Forte we help you find your buyers and convert them fast when you enter a new market. If you're going through a similar exercise DM me, let's chat.

☀️2 days in Lanzarote and I feel like a human being again after 4 months of working with AI and turning into a 🤖. Afternoon run done and now responding to 100s of unresponded messages - finally. thank you sunshine, you always help me recover!

Founder @ Forte Growth | Revenue & Market Expansion for B2B SaaS | VC Portfolio GTM Advisor | Ex-SaaS Co-founder & CRO (1 IPO, 1 Exit)

👉 If you want to grow your business in the next 180 days, write down these GTM essentials and track them with a simple tracker👇

Without it, here's what happens:

One co-founder wants to update the website. Another wants to run five outbound sequences. The third is rewriting the pitch deck for the fourth time this month.

Everyone's busy. Nobody's aligned. Nothing compounds.

I've seen this pattern at every startup I've worked with. And at my own.

At Flowla, we burned months doing "a bit of everything." Content one week, outbound the next, partnerships the week after. We looked productive. We weren't.

The moment we got clear on ICP, channels, messaging, and priorities, everything changed. Revenue followed clarity. Not the other way around.

Now every engagement I run starts the same way.

Before we touch outbound. Before we write a single post. Before we open the CRM.

We build the GTM Clarity Tracker.

One document. 31 components. 30/60/90/180-day goals.

It covers everything:

✅ Who you sell to and why they buy now. 
✅ How customers find you and which channels actually work. 
✅ Your messaging, positioning, and proof stack. 
✅ Your content engine, LinkedIn rhythm, and visibility plan. 
✅ Your sales process from first touch to close. 

Your 3 mission-critical priorities - not twelve, three: product, sales, marketing. 

Revenue targets broken into a formula you can track weekly.

Every co-founder sees the same page. Every decision maps back to it. Every week has a clear priority.

It's not a strategy deck that sits in Google Drive. It's a living document you open every Monday.

When I built this for a legaltech startup preparing to raise, the founding team went from three different versions of "our GTM plan" to one page everyone could point to. They raised shortly after.

When I built this for a salestech company post-raise, the CEO stopped asking "what should we do next?" and started asking "are we on track against the plan?"

That's the shift.

From chaos to clarity. From scattered to focused. 

From "let's try everything" to "here's what matters this month."

I'll share the full playbook, 31 components. Description of each one. Examples. And the 30/60/90/180-day milestones to track against.

Comment "clarity" and I'll share the whole thing.

If you can't fill in a row, that's your priority.

👉 In the past year my SDRs created prospect lists for various clients from B2B SaaS to fintech, to edtech etc. These are the major sources we used across almost all engagements: (check the post for others) 

One source gives you volume. Three sources give you precision. Here are all 7, and when each one makes sense 👇

1️⃣ GENERAL DATABASES 
Apollo, Sales Nav, Prospeo. Your starting point for broad filtering. Everyone has the same data here, so your message has to be sharper. Use when you know your ICP and need volume fast.

2️⃣ LOOKALIKE SEARCH 
Ocean.io, Apollo lookalike. Feed in your 5 best customers. Find 50 more like them. Use when your ICP is proven and you want to scale what's already working.

3️⃣ GOOGLE MAPS 
Nobody talks about this one. If your buyer isn't on LinkedIn - local businesses, agencies, clinics - they're on Google Maps. Scrape by location and category.

4️⃣ VC PORTFOLIOS + DIRECTORIES 
Our secret weapon. We scraped Antler's portfolio page. 900 startups. Clay Chrome extension. Free. 4 minutes. Filtered down to 80 perfect prospects. Pre-qualified, funded, and actively building.

5️⃣ YOUR OWN AUDIENCE 
LinkedIn connections. Post commenters. Website visitors. Past customers gone quiet. The warmest list you'll ever build. Use this one first. Always.

6️⃣ PEOPLE PURSUING SOLUTIONS 
Competitor followers. G2 reviewers. Event attendees. They already decided they need something. The only question is whether they find you or someone else.

7️⃣ JOB POSTING SIGNALS 
Companies hiring roles that reveal priorities. "Preparing for IPO." Sales hire in a new geography. Intel no database can give you.

other sources include Claude enterprise (at 90 USD Claude provides great lists) - Facebook, specialist magazines, chambers of commerce for international expansion - these should cover the TAM at 80-85%

The list is the strategy. One source isn't a strategy, it's a starting point.

👉 What other source do you use to build prospect lists in a new market? Share in comments and I'll check'em out.

🎉 Client Success story: Atria was one of our very first clients when we started Forte last year.

Technical founding team. Product gaining traction. But sales and marketing plan needed clarity to help them close the round.

We built their GTM one-pager - product, positioning, how they'll acquire clients and close them,

90-day roadmap, and founder-led sales and marketing playbook together.

They closed their +£700K shortly after.

This was the same formula I used before we raised our $1.5M round for Flowla.

Same equation every time: great founders, product somehow gaining traction.

But without GTM clarity, it’s hard to raise.

VCs don’t fund confusion. They fund conviction.

When an investor can immediately understand what you do, why now, and why you, conversations move faster. Rooms open. Rounds close.

A GTM plan isn’t a document. It’s a trust accelerator for the investor.

It creates alignment between cofounders, and creates focus for execution.

That’s why I start every engagement with creating a GTM one pager, all your GTM essentials, product, marketing and sales plan in one place. then we execute, test-iterate-update. but we have one point of reference to look at.

if you’d like to see an example DM me,

👉 When you work too much, your language changes first.

You get shorter with people. More agitated. Less patient. You're technically "fine" but everyone around you can feel it.

I see this around me all the time. Founders, managers, execs who look completely calm and collected on the outside. Then they share what's actually going on... Or they don't but it comes out in a team meeting, and noone understands where it's come from.

The stress is real. For everyone. At every level. I'm no exception. And noone truly is.

This AI craze. Staying on top of everything. Managing people for the first time. Running a business alone. None of it is easy. And no one is immune to it.

At Flowla, I had a rule: take a break every two months. A small escape. A day off. Whatever. Just reset.

Then I became a solo founder. Hiring. Delivering. Building product. Frameworks. Workshops. Client work. The rule quietly disappeared.

Last week I was catching up with an old friend. A growth manager who recently moved to Athens to work from there. She looked bright. Happy. Recharged. 

☀️ Luckily, I'm off for a much needed break. First in 8 months. I had no Xmas, no holiday no weekend these last months. Building, delivering. The balance lost.... 

So. Some much needed sunshine after the most horrendous rainy stretch London has seen in years.

Life isn't just about work. We all know this. We just forget it when things get busy.

The pipeline will still be there when you get back. The inbox will survive. Your clients won't disappear.

👉 But your energy, your patience, your clarity? Those need topping up.
If you're reading this and can't remember your last proper break, book one. 

Seriously. Even a long weekend.

I'm taking mine this week. Pics incoming. Something I haven't done in a long time. You should do the same.

"yes you have Nike as a logo but that's Nike Turkey, friend of your friend. a new market is a new game. no presence -> no trust = no sales!"

is the harsh truth I had to tell a founder last week expanding to the UK. $1M ARR. 50+ enterprise logos at home. real product, real customers. but the UK isn't working.

so I ran a quick diagnostic. here's what I found:
👉 ICP clarity (UK): 2/10. three segments identified from home market, none tested in UK.
👉 messaging: 2/10. product evolved but the UK pitch never got rebuilt.
👉 founder brand: 1/10. neither founder posts anything on linkedin. nobody in the UK knows they exist.
👉 lead gen: 2/10. one agency running linkedin outbound, stalled when the key person left.
👉 competitive positioning: 2/10. can't articulate why you'd pick them over the well-funded incumbents.
👉 growth tests/ non-scalable channels: non-tried so far, no podcast, no event presence, no industry expert interviews.
❌ paid ads: +10K spent on paid ads! most common mistake I see all the time. before message-market or channel market fit. 

home market score? 7/10. solid business. UK score? 2/10 across the board.
the product isn't the problem. the GTM is.

yes you have Nike as a logo but that's Nike Turkey, friend of your friend. a new market is a new game. no presence -> no trust -> no sales

this is the pattern i see over and over with SaaS companies expanding to the UK:

they assume what worked at home will work here. they hire an agency before 
they have message-market fit. no founder builds any visibility in the new market. they pitch features instead of positioning around a wedge.

the fix isn't complicated. it's just not obvious from the inside.
✅ pick a UK-specific ICP 
✅ rebuild the messaging for UK buyers 
✅ get one founder posting on linkedin consistently 
✅ test 3-5 angles fast on linkedin outbound 
✅ get 2-3 UK case studies at any cost
✅ balance earned vs. bought trust

we're starting a sprint together in march. so we can put the company back on track,

if you've cracked your home market but struggling internationally, the problem is almost never the product. it's always the system.

👉 Here's the playbook we use to source the right buyers for our clients.
Go to market is figuring your way to revenue. Revenue starts with knowing your buyer. Next step is finding those buyers: sources, signals, list building.

Before the list building, let me set this straight, this is step 3 of the 24 step process we use as part of the Forte Growth System:

1) Set your GTM one-pager. Revenue architecture. Execution plan. Which channels to acquire, build trust and credibility, how: Done by me.

2) Define the right buyers. Where they live. What message converts. Done by me and our content lead.

3) Source them. In the AI age, the sources are endless. Boris our SDR does this himself. We review then he launches campaigns. Then we test-review-improve every week. That's how we get more SQLs that convert faster in time.

Source them well, we help our clients get to revenue faster. 

Source them badly, we lose time.

This is the playbook we use for prospect list building and lead sourcing:

✅ Why demographic filters produce 1-3% reply rates and signal-based lists produce 10-30%.

✅ 7 places to build prospect lists. Most teams only use 1.

✅ 5 buying signals that beat any database filter.

✅ The AI scoring system. How to research 30 companies in 45 minutes with the exact Claude prompt.

✅ The 6-phase process from zero to 200 qualified prospects.

✅ Tools by stage. £0/month through £750+/month.

✅ 6 things your first SDR needs from you before they start.

✅ Weekly checklist. Signal scoring quick card. Everything in one document.

✅ 20+ engagements compressed into one playbook.

👉 Comment PROSPECT and I'll send it to you.

p.s. You can check our previous playbook, the Full 34 page - GTM Audit playbook at https://lnkd.in/ehsBttdv

❌ You have no idea how many founder calls I have where they've just let go of a sales hire in a new market. 
Same story. +10 times last year alone. 👉 I've made the same mistake myself. Now I'm obsessed with helping others avoid it!

Raise money. Decide to expand. Hire a country manager or BD person in the new market. Give them a target and say "go get meetings."

3 months later: zero pipeline. The hire quits or gets fired. Back to square one.
The problem wasn't the hire. It was what they walked into. A blank slate with no system.

🤯 Mind you. I've been the leader told off for not being fast enough. Then been the leader or founder telling people off. Same story repeats!

6 things you owe yourself and your first hire before they start 👇

01 REBUILT ICP Your home market ICP won't transfer. At Witco, French property managers bought on relationships. UK buyers bought on ROI and case studies. 10 buyer conversations in the new market before you hire anyone.

02 TESTED MESSAGING 50 messages sent by you personally. 3 angles tested. See what resonates. Your hire needs proven templates. Not guesses from a brainstorming session.

03 CHANNEL STRATEGY What works HERE. Not what worked at home. In France, events drove 80% of deals. In the UK, LinkedIn content and targeted outbound converted faster than any event.

04 AI SCORING Claude scores every prospect 1-10 against signal criteria. Nobody under 7 gets a message. Quality over volume from day one.

05 WARM PIPELINE 5-10 conversations already started. Meetings already booked. Your hire walks into active pipeline. Not a cold market where nobody's heard of you.

06 DOCUMENTED PLAYBOOK What worked. Every objection you heard. The full sales cycle mapped. Your hire needs your brain on paper. Not your hope that they'll figure it out.

Founder-led first. Handover second.

I've done the Turkey to UK journey twice. Built two companies past £1M ARR in a new market. The playbook is different here. The buyer is different. The trust signals are different.

If your board is pushing expansion and your instinct is to hire first, you're starting at step 6. Start at step 1.

👉 Save this. Comment EXPAND and I'll send you the full expansion Sprint checklist.

💡 Hiring a GTM lead costs £80-120K a year if you're lucky!
You still have to manage them. Ramp them. Hope they figure out your market.
Here's what a Revenue Sprint gets you instead:

✅ GTM strategy locked in week 1-3, not month 3 
✅ Messaging written and tested before you spend a penny on ads 
✅ Target list built from your actual ICP, not a job description 
✅ First meetings booked by month 1 if you're post PMF
✅ A system your team can run after we're gone

A full-time hire is the right move. Eventually.

But not when you're still figuring out what works.

The Sprint is how you figure out what works.

👉 If you're between £500K and £5M ARR and expanding into a new market, DM me "Sprint" and I'll show you what 90 days looks like.

Greg Mccallum

The 🚫🐂💩 Startup Mentor & Commercial Advisor! 👉 1h FREE advisory sessions. 🌱1K+ Founders 🧩 Co-Founder & CEO @ Observic 👨‍💻 Host Founders Unplugged 🎙️ Angel Investor

$1B+ Revenue influenced 
500+ founders advised
9 x fCCO
2 x Founder & CEO
3 x FT CCO
5 x Angel Investor
4 x Sales & Marketing Leader
2 x Father (to humans)
1 x Father (to dog)
1 x Husband
99.99% 🚫🐂💩
0.01% 🐂💩
Occasional Idiot

Podcast Host

Raw, unedited long-form conversations with entrepreneurs and startup founders from around the world.

Watch/Listen here: https://linktr.ee/foundersunplugged

100% alignment is hard to achieve in a remote first world. 

nothing can replace spending time with people irl; breaking bread, learning about one another, seeing the world others live in and discovering new things together . 

For Raphael Allstadt, Allan Bettarel, Carlo Thissen and I to spend this time in Japan with our incredible team here was important for deeper alignment on not just strategy, but... 

personal convictions
motivation
philosophy
ambition 
velocity 
expectations
and so much more. 

I've said this forever, but, while it's important to be running 1000mph in AI right now, it's also important to make time to play, laugh and bond together. 

Pit stops are important. 

Something AI will never be able to do as well or messily as we humans do! 😁🤣

Sotaro Mizoguchi, Mioko Nakayama (Otani), Hiromi Takano and Oji KINOSHITA: thank you for being such gracious hosts and looking after us during our trip. ☺️🙏🙏🙏

Time to get back to 1000mph again to help the world's best business level up their AI intelligence game with the world's best AI meeting tool... tl;dv - AI Meeting Assistant 😉 

#tldv
#tldvjapan

fCCO @ tl;dv | The 🚫🐂💩 GTM Advisor | CEO @ Peer + Thinkwork + Founders Unplugged | Builder of revenue engines, fixer of broken ones, and fine-tuner of high-performing ones.

very excited and fully prepared (with pocket money in hand 😉) to spend some time with the tl;dv - AI Meeting Assistant founders in Tokyo to meet with our incredible Japan team. 

Raphael Allstadt, Carlo Thissen, Allan Bettarel and I shall be making the trip today to break bread and work alongside Sotaro Mizoguchi, Mioko Nakayama (Otani), Hiromi Takano and Oji KINOSHITA. 

While I love a good online meeting, opportunities to meet irl are always very welcome; especially if those opportunities also come with the benefit of spending time with kind and talented people in a beautiful country. 

see you soon! 

#tldvjapan

What a city! And what amazing hosts we have!
🥹

I shall be here until Thursday...

So, startup founders and business operators building cool things in Tokyo, hit me up if you want to grab a tea and talk AI, innovation and (of course) why tl;dv - AI Meeting Assistant is sweeping through Japan's business ecosystem at rapid pace! 

I shall have a few limited slots Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. 

Arigatou gozaimasu! ☺️


#tldvjapan

fractional leadership is not about time. It is about leverage.

You go where the signal is strongest and where decisions actually shape outcomes.

This week that means being in Japan with tl;dv - AI Meeting Assistant, working directly with our team and customers on global GTM execution.

From the outside, the AI race still looks like models, features, and demos.

Inside serious companies, it looks very different.
The real work right now is turning raw operational reality into structured intelligence. Conversations. Decisions. Behaviour. Context. The human layer most systems historically ignored.

Meeting data is becoming foundational infrastructure. Not for note taking, but for organisational memory, execution intelligence, and building AI systems grounded in how companies actually operate.

The shift is accelerating globally, but Japan stands out. The level of intent here is different. Teams are not experimenting with AI. They are operationalising it, deeply and systematically.

And when you spend time inside customer environments, patterns emerge quickly:
The winners are not the companies with the most AI features.

They are the ones closest to real operational truth.
Everything else is noise.

This is also why fractional leadership works when done properly. Real leverage comes from being embedded where reality is created, not observing from a distance. Strategy without proximity is theatre.

The next wave of AI-native companies will be built by teams who stay close to signal, close to customers, and close to truth.

thank you Raphael Allstadt, Carlo Thissen and Allan Bettarel for taking me on this journey and continuing to place your trust in me. 

Big things coming! 😎💪🚀

Some of us can only unwind with a challenge! 

That's my Sunday sorted.

Everyone talks about AI models.

Very few talk about training data for human capability.

And that is going to become a huge problem.

Here’s why.

Most companies assume AI will replace roles like sales reps, consultants, support agents etc.

But AI doesn’t learn from job titles.

It learns from behaviour.

Real interactions.
Real judgement.
Real skill.

Right now almost none of that data is structured.

Think about it.

Millions of sales conversations happen every day. Yet we don’t have a universal language for things like:

• persuasion
• discovery
• objection handling
• commercial judgement

So the experience just disappears.

Gone.

The companies that build large structured datasets of human skill will quietly become some of the most valuable AI infrastructure companies in the world.

Not because they build models.

Because they teach the models how experts behave.

We’re still incredibly early in this.

One of the biggest myths in AI right now is that we have infinite data.

We don’t.

We have infinite text.

That’s not the same thing.

Training data for reasoning, persuasion and judgement is actually very rare.

Take a sales call transcript.

Most people assume this is useful AI training data.

It isn’t.

It’s just a conversation.

For it to become training data you need structure:

• what skill was being demonstrated
• what behaviour occurred
• what the context was
• how well it was executed

Without that structure it's just another meeting transcript.

The companies that figure out how to turn messy human interactions into clean behavioural datasets will end up owning a very important piece of the AI stack.

And right now almost nobody is talking about this.

A lot of people say AI will replace sales.

I think that framing misses something important.

AI doesn't replace jobs.

It replaces collections of skills.

And most companies have absolutely no idea what those skills actually are.

Ask a sales leader what makes their best rep great.

You’ll usually hear something like:

"They build great rapport"

OK… but what does that actually mean?

Tone of voice?
Question structure?
Pacing?
How value is framed?
How objections are sequenced?

Very few organisations can describe it consistently.

Which leads to an obvious question.

How exactly are we supposed to train AI to do something we cannot even properly define?

This is the hidden bottleneck in AI right now.

Not compute.
Not models.

Structured human expertise.

Until companies can observe skills, define them, grade them and store them… AI agents will always feel slightly incompetent.

dry pipeline. targets not being met. 
F##k!

every revenue team I have worked with encounters this at some point or another. 


Assuming leads are coming in, the issue is usually a product of a simple dilemma; reps not being able to balance developing new pipeline while also progressing current to meet growing quota. 

Why this often happens?
poor task and time management. 

yep, it's actually that simple... well kinda. 

you see, this isn't to suggest these reps are bad at task and time management. in fact, they are often some of the best team members at this overall. 
the issue is they have developed a system to manage tasks and time in a way that has a natural ceiling (even if it is unusually higher than others in different roles). 

so. solutions?
No, it's not all about automations and leveraging AI.  At least not at this point in the reps journey. 

Solutions are all about being ruthless with priorities, segmenting the day to focus on task types to reduce context switching burnout, boundary setting with other departments (including leadership) and (possibly the most important and rarely done) utilizing available tools fully. 

This last one is ALWAYS the one that causes the most pain. especially for reps that have solid process habits that are hard to break. 
But if I can leave one major practical tip in the post for reps and revenue leaders on this specific topic it's this:

Reps must fully utilize the CRMs tals management, emailing and meeting booking systems. They MUST LIVE IN THE CRM!
leaders must enforce this ruthlessly and with ZERO tolerance.

WHY?
3 reasons that compound:

1. reps always chase the leads/deals with the strongest signals, leaving those with weaker signals to die. A very strict adherence to this ensure all leads/deals are treated with equal attention l. 

2. the seconds + minutes saved staying in one platform to work throughout the day adds up. 
overall reps become far more efficient, especially when combined with the above points about focus and distractions. 

3. this quickly surfaces repeated tasks, weaknesses in processes and playbooks and builds the found for what CAN then be automated or augmented. this can only work when it's stress tested like this by a full team of reps, all day, every day!

I call this the transition to a level 2 rep (there is level 0 and 1 before) and goes up to level 4 (technically 5 but that's a story for another day).

most startups can't afford to hire reps per segment (ie. SMB, Mid market, Enterprise) and want reps to close all to maximize revenue. 

reality check: level 0 or 1 reps can't do this. 
Level 2 reps can beging to close a handful of larger ticket and longer sales cycle deals on top of their SMB segment. 
Levels 3 and up can only be unlocked by passing through this stage first. and those are the guys you hire once you have unlocked MM and ENT anyway. 

It's all about progression. 
Step by step. 

Want to get your reps to level 2. DM me for a virtual coffee and I'll share. 😊

I'm in tech, but...

my 11 YO son has limits on his PlayStation, specific to certain games only playable a certain amount of time per day and only on certain days. 

his TV has a smart plug that only turns on some days for an allotted amount of time. it's up to him if he allocates that time to watching TV or playing PlayStation. 

on his TV he has access to age appropriate versions of Netflix, YouTube, Disney Plus and Crunchyroll (all other adult accounts are pin protected).

his mobile has no access to social media, apps are strictly controlled with YouTube with no access to Shorts. (it's just brain rot!).

there are some games on there, but they are limited to a handful of minutes a day and only on days when gaming overall is allowed. 

the whole device has a parental monitoring layer via an app I pay for to look out for inappropriate searches, conversations that flag as cyber bullying or harassment etc (it pings my phone) and he can request extra time on things if needed. 

app store is blocked and no cc or debit cards are associated with the phone so it's not vulnerable. 

my entire family has VPNs on all devices and our wifi is locked down (needed for the work I do for my clients anyway) and so my son has the same on his mobile and PC. 

regarding PC, more of the same. limits setup in epic games, Spotify, YouTube, Steam, browsers and more. 
he has unlimited access to AI, learning tools, coding tools, 3d rendering, graphic design and game design tools. 

No strangers can add him via any game and I have to approve and connect requests across PlayStation network etc.

we dont have tablets for the kids. never have. 

all this encourages him to make thing, learn and occasionally be bored. 

it's constant. 

it's very complex to setup and monitor. 

it's multiple platforms, passwords and pins.
 
it's ever changing as he grows and shows he is capable of taking on more trust and responsibility. 

there is much more I would like to do but don't have the time to. 

I'm not saying all this to tell you this is the best way, only to suggest that if it's this difficult/complex for someone in tech to barely manage, perhaps we all need to do better in this space.  

AI tooling especially right now is lacking in parent controlled accounts and oversight, gaming is fragmented and low effort in its UI for parental controls, social is just not worth the effort and learning tools are amazing but often priced too high for the average family trying to pull their kids away from Fortnite or YouTube. 

It's possible to implement family friendly tools and pricing strategies that are not only complimentary to commercial strategy, but also enhance it. 

I would even go as far as saying, many companies need to take a family first approach to commercial strategy and market dominance. 

I for one will continue to champion this with the companies I advise. 🫡

ps: my 3 yo boy has a Yoto player and watches TV with us. that's his exposure to tech for the most part.

biggest GTM hack of 2026...

pick up the damn phone!

Thank me later.

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