Carol Malakasis

Market Pull Group

"Startups strive for market pull. We help you find it" 

Hi there! At Market Pull, we help early stage founders and sales teams (Seed - A) predictably scale to their first $1M in ARR and beyond. 

But let's take a step back. You already know that 90% of early startups fail. 

And you probably know that's due to lack of product market fit (not enough traction), poor or no sales execution (no playbook), bad founding hires (wrong candidate / wrong stage), burning through your runway (is the business even viable?)

But...is it you? Do you lack sales ability / hate selling OR is it time for a product pivot?

You're losing sleep over: 

🔵 Selling to the right ICP

🔵 Transitioning from inbound to outbound sales

🔵 Successfully qualifying and closing deals

🔵 Finding the right pricing model

🔵 Selling without being 'salesy'

🔵 When to hire and train a sales team

🔵 Executing a repeatable sales motion. 

That's where we come in. 

We audit your processes, custom build your GTM strategy, teach you how to sell (founder-led selling), and help you hire, onboard, and train your first sales team. 

Our clients are able to get to their first $1M ARR and beyond, in a predictable, scalable way, and use the processes we build together for the lifecycle of their business. 

When you hire me, I am a part of your team. I am known for my directness, dedication, and aversion to BS.

If you'd like to work with me, DM me. I look forward to meeting you!

CEO & founder

SOSA

Startup Mentor

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator

Starta VC

Sales mentor for the Spring & Fall 2023 Cohorts

Techstars

Rampd

WHO GETS RESULTS WORKING WITH RAMPD:

Founders of early stage startups at the Seed to Series A stage, who want a predictable sales system to grow their revenue operations consistently as they scale their organization.

WHAT WE DO:

There are 5 chapters to an inside sales playbook — Building, Hiring, Training, Managing and Measuring. I walk you through a systematized process on how to execute each step flawlessly over the course of an accelerator program. With me you get a Trainer, Consultant, Coach and Mentor all in one.

Managing Partner | Head of Training 

WeWork

Seated

Senior Key Accounts Partner (Series B)

- Promoted in this position to handle our top tier, key accounts.
- Consistently closed over 100% to goal
- Launched Boston, Atlanta, and Chicago market

Senior Key Accounts Associate

- Second salesperson to be hired in the team (Seed stage)
- Helped built initial script and outreach materials
- Consistently closed over 100% to goal

Senior Account Executive 

Trendy Pal

Trendy Pal is a two-way app connecting local retail shops with influencers, in order to acquire new clients and promote retention via built-in loyalty program.

- Built GTM strategy
- Trained sales team
- Recruited VP of Sales

Sales Consultant

Munch Ado

All-in-one digital solution for restaurants providing social media and e-commerce design and management, driving growth and revenue online.

Director of Account Management

When I got hired at my first sales role, selling goat cheese door to door, I did not know what “revenue” meant. Fast forward 15 years later, I am an expert at scaling revenue for Seed - Series A startups. 

I am a NY sales vet who spent the last 15 years in startup sales. 

After my brief stint selling cheese, I co-founded a CPG brand (acquired) selling handmade Horchata to local markets and Wholefoods. 

I pivoted in tech in 2012 and found my passion in building SMB startups. I’ve been part of the founding GTM team in three high growth startups (2 exits). 

I’ve made over half a million cold calls, trained sales teams, hired and onboarded hundreds of reps, and sold over $2M in revenue. 

Since 2020, I am a GTM consultant, trainer, and coach for B2B SaaS companies. I’ve helped over 100 YC companies get to their first $1M in revenue and beyond. 

.........................................................................................

The first five years of a startup's life are the most crucial. 

During this time 90% of startups fail. 

Top reasons include lack of product market fit, poor or no sales execution, bad founding hires, burning through your runway. 

I de-risk all of the above and provide you with the tools and systems to predictably scale to Series A and beyond. 

When traction isn’t there, is it really your product or…is it you? Do you struggle with selling, lack a repeatable sales process, or need a product pivot? 

You're losing sleep over: 

🔵 Selling to the right ICP

🔵 Transitioning from inbound to outbound sales

🔵 Successfully qualifying and closing deals

🔵 Finding the right pricing model

🔵 Selling without being 'salesy'

🔵 When to hire and train a sales team

🔵 Executing a repeatable sales motion. 

That's where I come in. I audit your processes, custom build your GTM strategy, teach you how to sell (founder-led selling), and help you hire, onboard, and train your first sales team. 

My clients are able to get to their first $1M ARR and beyond, in a predictable, scalable way, and use the processes we build together for the lifecycle of their business. 

When you hire me, I am a part of your team. I am known for my directness, dedication, and aversion to BS. 


If you want to work with me, DM me. You can also book a call at https://calendly.com/malakasis ☎️

Envoy

Pavilion is powered by an international community of revenue leaders from the world’s fastest growing companies. Together, we teach new skills, forge meaningful connections, and help our companies grow. 

As an Event Host, I host Executive Salon Dinners for Pavilion and drive insightful, confidential dialogues on trending topics, growth opportunities, and strategies for overcoming challenges. 

Unlock your professional potential and level up with community-powered learning for CEOs, GTM leaders, and teams. Join today at joinpavilion.com/apply-now.

Amanda Zhu

Co-Founder

Recall.ai

✔︎ Who gets results using Recall
∙ Product teams at fast-growing startups who want to go to market in days instead of months. 
∙ Engineering teams that don't want to burn engineering hours maintaining their meeting bot integrations.

✔︎ Here’s what we do
We provide one API for meeting bots on every video conferencing platform. We abstract over differences between meeting platforms (even for platforms that don’t have an APIs). We run, monitor, and scale the complex real-time video infrastructure.

Interested in learning more? Go to: https://recall.ai 🌐

Perfect Recall (W20)

Grew to thousands of users, signing on annual deals with customers like Faire and Quora

Edisoft Inc

Software Engineer

❗Your engineers are wasting 6+ months building meeting integrations.❗

Why? Because every platform (Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams) has different APIs, constant updates, and hidden edge cases.

❌ Building in-house = wasted engineering time.
❌ Maintaining it = ongoing distractions from core product development.
❌ Scaling it = reliability nightmares that break at the worst time.

That’s why we built Recall.ai.

✅ One API to handle every meeting integration for you.
✅ Ship in days, not months.
✅ Powering 1200+ companies, from early-stage startups to billion-dollar SaaS teams.

🚀 See how Recall.ai can save your engineers months of work

Amanda Zhu (Hiring SEO Manager)

The biggest unlock between $1M and $10M ARR wasn’t product or sales. It was messaging.

At $1M ARR, I kept hearing the same question on sales calls:
”So you’re like [consumer notetaking app], right?”

We aren’t a notetaker.
We are the API powering them.

But if every lead is comparing you to the wrong product, that’s a messaging problem.

Here’s what I changed:

1/ Clarified WHO we serve, not WHAT we do
Before: “Capture and transcribe your meetings with ease”
After: “The API for developers to get recordings, transcripts and metadata from meetings”

2/ Positioned as infrastructure, not a tool
Before: “Works with Zoom, Meet, and Teams”
After: “One API to access raw meeting data across Zoom, Meet and Teams”

3/ Used technical language with technical buyers
Before: “Get meeting insights and transcripts”
After: “Programmatic access to real-time meeting data”

The transformation was immediate:
- Wrong-fit leads dropped by 68%
- Demo to close rate jumped from 12% to 31%. 
- Average deal size increased by 67%.

Your messaging doesn’t describe your product.
It determines who shows up to buy it.

The API for meeting recording | Co-founder at Recall.ai

I built a $60K business and a multi-million dollar business in the same time frame. 
The difference: I picked a problem I’d pay to solve.

My first company, Perfect Recall, was a notetaker that helped user researchers record and share meeting highlights.
It solved a real problem. Customers paid us. We were ramen profitable.

But I’m not a user researcher. 
I knew I was building something people wanted. I didn’t know if it was something people desperately needed.

The test I failed: 
If this product didn’t exist, and I had to buy it with my own money, would I?

For Perfect Recall: “Maybe, if I had money left over.”
For Recall.ai: “Absolutely. It’s in my top 3 priorities.”

The difference shows up everywhere:

Sales cycle: 2 months → 2 weeks
When you’re solving your own problem, you know exactly how to articulate the urgency and who to talk to.

Close rate: 12% → 65%
When you’d pay for it yourself, you can explain why it’s worth every dollar.

Build something you’d pay for. Not something you think others might.

No alternative text description for this image

For the first 18 months, I worked seven days a week. Five years later, I still work 65 hours, and we’ve built a $250M company. Hard work only looks unhealthy until it works.

In the beginning, I did everything - building, sales, support, marketing.
There was no off switch.
I’d wake up thinking about the next build and fall asleep thinking about the next customer.

People told me to slow down.
They weren’t wrong.
But when you’re trying to make something exist, slowing down isn’t really an option.

Here’s the thing:
When athletes train nonstop, no one questions their discipline.
When founders do, it’s called burnout.

Maybe that’s because Olympic training has visible results.
Work doesn’t. At least not right away.
So people assume the effort is unhealthy when they can’t see what it’s building toward.

The work never gets easier.
It just starts working.

p.s. Andy Grove’s line, “Our society respects someone throwing themselves into sports, but anybody who works very long hours is regarded as sick, a workaholic,” has always stuck with me.

I spent $350K on our Series B push. It created $4.2M in pipeline.
Here’s the tactical breakdown:

1/ Treat fundraising as a GTM campaign
Build a campaign around the announcement with multiple touch points, not just one post.

2/ Invest in video as the centerpiece
Videos anchored the entire push. 

3/ Add physical touch points
Digital is noisy. Our postcards cut through in a way another LinkedIn post wouldn’t.

4/ Make customers part of the story
Instead of celebrating ourselves, we celebrated our customers.

5/ Create lightweight entry points
We gave away DoorDash credits (”lunch is on us”) so wfh prospects could hear of us.

6/ Layer behind-the-scenes content
It made the raise feel human, not corporate.

7/ Start with distribution
Great assets die without reach.

8/ Tie it back to product
This way, the raise is “we raised, and here’s what you can build with us.”

I was an engineer who avoided sales. After closing $5M myself in 18 months, I realized the hardest part wasn’t selling. It was starting.

The first few sales calls were a disaster.
I was trying to close people on the first call.
It felt cringey and forced.

I wasn’t bad at sales…
I just didn’t know where to start.

Things changed when I stopped trying to sell and started trying to understand.
On the first call, I’d do nothing but discovery.

Just ask questions, learn about their setup, and if they weren’t a fit, I’d tell them:
“You should probably check out these other options.”

That one sentence got people to trust me more.
Some even explained why the other products weren’t a fit (which taught me what really mattered to them).

By the demo, I’d only show what they said they cared about.
If they wanted recordings and transcripts, I showed that and nothing else.
No feature dump, no fluff.

Funny enough, that made them curious about everything I didn’t show.

Sales stopped feeling like convincing, and it started feeling like learning.
And that’s when it clicked.

The hardest part of learning sales isn’t selling.
It’s letting go of the idea that you already know what people want.

Three years ago, 22 minutes into discovery, the VP stopped me mid-sentence and ended the call. I lost a $60K deal because I asked the wrong questions.

I wasn’t asking dumb questions. I was being thorough:
“Walk me through your current process.”
“How many people are on your team?”
“What’s your timeline for deciding?”

By question eight, I could see him looking at his other screen.
I thought I was doing discovery right. 
I was checking every box, collecting every detail.

But I was optimizing for completeness, not understanding.

Compare that to a call I did last month. Same 30 minute slot.
I asked one question:
”What happens if you don’t solve this problem?”

He talked for 18 minutes straight.
Told me about missed targets, competitive pressure, and the cost of inaction. 
Everything I needed to know from his perspective.

Bad questions gather information.
Good questions reveal.

Anyone can fill 30 minutes with questions.
The best sellers find the one that makes the prospect talk for 18.

Our $38M Series B didn’t come from a deck. It came from the monthly investor updates we’d been sending for 12 months.

1/ Investors updates are relationship building.
Every month, we sent an update to our existing investors.
The goal wasn’t to raise.
It was to keep people in the loop so that when the time came, we weren’t strangers.

2/ Consistency compounds trust.
You don’t need perfect metrics.
You need trust.
Showing up every month - sharing progress, wins, losses - builds confidence.
By the time we opened the round, most investors already knew our story.

3/ How we structure updates:

- Asks: hires, intros, feedback
- Numbers: cash, burn, MRR, retention, headcount
- Graph: MRR vs time
- Lowlights: what didn’t work
- Highlights: what did

4/ The result
When we started fundraising, trust was already there.

Instead of explaining what we have been doing since the last raise, we got to focus on what comes next.

My first startup was doing $60K ARR. I shut it down and started Recall.ai. 3 years later: a $250M company

Perfect Recall, my first startup, was working. Customers were happy.
But growth had stalled. We were nibbling.

Deep down, I knew we were solving a want, not a need.
I’d already spent two years on it. The idea of starting over felt unbearable.

Eventually, I realized staying comfortable was the slower way to fail.
So we shut it down and started Recall.ai.

Three years later, Recall.ai powers millions of recorded meeting hours each week and is now a $250M company.

The hard part wasn’t building again.
It was letting go of what was broken.

p.s. Ben Horowitz said it best: “If you’re going to eat shit, don’t nibble.”

I’ve personally interviewed every hire at Recall.ai - from our first engineer to the team that helped us reach our Series B.

Along the way, I’ve learned what actually predicts success:
Proof. Ownership. Judgement.

Here’s the interviewing system we use today.

Save this if you’re scaling your first team.

Between Series A and B, everything was picking up pace. To keep our $250M company on track, I had to do something uncomfortable: nothing.

Seven-days weeks. Every block on my calendar full.
I was moving fast but not necessarily forward.

One day David asked: “When was the last time you had an hour to just think?”
I couldn’t remember.

He pushed: “You’re optimizing for speed. But are you optimizing the right things?”
He was right. I too deep in execution to see what actually mattered.

Started doing what he suggested: once a month, one hour, no devices. Just paper.
I call it “boredom time.”

The first 15 minutes are rough. My brain claws for tasks.
By minute 20, the static clears, and I’m left with the few questions that actually matter.

What to kill?
What to double down on?
What to stop pretending matters?

Every major shift started in those hours.

It’s still uncomfortable. My brain still resists.
But the hour I least want to take is always the one I need most.

My champion left mid-deal. $180K on the line. I closed it in 3 weeks because I’d been multi-threading since I got the meeting invite.

On $100K+ deals, your champion will leave, get promoted, or lose say.
Build the committee before you need it.

Here’s the framework I use:

1/ pre-meeting connections
2/ in-meeting engagement
3/ post-meeting follow-up

If you’re only building a relationship with one person, you don’t have a deal. You have a dependency.

Save this for your next $100K+ opportunity.

When I first started doing founder-led sales, I had no idea how to run an enterprise deal. Today we sell to dev teams at companies like HubSpot and Rippling. Here’s what I’ve learned about multi-threading early.

It’s easy to start multi-threading when deals stall.
By then, it’s too late.
You need to build internal alignment before the first call.

Here’s what I do:

Phase 1: Before the meeting

1/ Research the invite list
Look at everyone on the calendar.
Understand their role, team, and what “success” likely means for them.

2/ Connect early
Send short, personal LinkedIn messages to everyone attending.
“Hey [Name], noticed you’ll be joining the meeting on [date]. Looking forward to understanding your perspective.”

You’d be surprised how many people click through your profile before the call.

3/ Send a single-threaded pre-meeting email to every attendee
“Hi [Name], I see you’ll be part of our discussion next week. [Main POC] has been super helpful so far, and I’d love to make sure we address everyone’s needs. What aspects of [solution/product] would be most valuable for you?”
One reply from a secondary stakeholder can completely change how you frame the call.

------

Phase 2: During the meeting

4/ Start by aligning goals
“What specific outcome of today’s meeting would make this meeting valuable for you?”
You’ll surface hidden priorities.

5/ Read the room
If someone looks lost or disengaged, DM them directly:
“We may have rushed through [topic], would a quick clarification help?”
“This seems to resonate with you. Should we explore this aspect further?”
Treat the meeting like a conversation, not a presentation.

-----

Phase 3: After the meeting

6/ Follow up with every attendee in a single-threaded message with context
Re-watch the call. Look for moments where individuals leaned in or dropped off.
Then tailor your follow-ups:
“Wanted to clarify [concept] from our discussion. Here’s a short explanation.”
“You seemed excited about [topic]. Here’s a quick resource expanding on that.”
Within 24 hours, every attendee should have 1:1 message from you that feels written just for them.

------

Why this works

You’re building alignment before anyone asks for it.
By the time procurement or leadership steps in, you already have advocates across the table.

This is how you turn one conversation into multiple champions.
And that’s how early-stage founders close enterprise deals faster.

I’ve handled 1000+ objections in the last 3 years. 90% of deals don’t fall through because of price. They fall through because of how you handle the objection. Here’s the right way to handle each.

Objections aren’t about price. They’re about uncertainty.
Your job isn’t to “win” the argument.
It’s to remove doubt.

I built a framework to handle the ones the most common ones for us:
- “Pricing is too high”
- “Our margins don’t work”
- “We need you at $X”
- “We need to redline the contract”

Each with phrasing, mindset, and talk tracks that actually work.

I’ve gotten 21.7M impressions since Dec 3, 2024. What started as a simple experiment turned into one of our largest inbound channels. Here’s exactly what I did.

1/ Don’t start with a strategy. Start with reps.
I didn’t have a plan, pillars, or themes.
I just posted every day to get as many at-bats as possible.
If a post/comment doesn’t do well, no one will see it anyway.

2/ Write what you’d actually read.
If you wouldn’t stop scrolling for it, no one else will.
Start by asking: what value can I provide?
What answers, examples, or shortcuts could make someone’s tomorrow easier?
Every great post/comment starts with what you’d want to learn.

3/ Find your repeatable hits.
After a month, patterns emerge.
I found myself gravitating towards certain topics, and those were the ones getting results.
Double down on what compounds.
That’s when I started building out content pillars.

4/ Constantly test.
LinkedIn changes. Audiences change. What works today won’t work tomorrow.
Every post/comment should tell you something.
Aim to learn from every swing.

5/ Track real outcomes.
I don’t have 1-1 attribution, but I do track mentions on sales calls.
Today, 30% of inbound calls say they heard about Recall.ai from LinkedIn.
For me, that’s enough proof that this channel scales.

p.s. let me know if there is anything you want me to expand on

Founders ask me when to hire a VP. After our Series B and multiple functions handed off, here’s the litmus test I use.

When I was running sales myself, every deal taught me something new. 
Different objections, new market segments, evolving pitch angles. 
I was the only person who could navigate those unknowns effectively.

Then deals started feeling identical. Same discovery questions, same close tactics, same follow-up sequences.
I caught myself going through the motions.

That’s when I knew the function was ready for a leader.

Two signals I look for:
1/ The work feels repeatable. I’m not learning anymore, just repeating playbooks.
2/ The work feels low leverage. I’m not the unique person who should be doing it.

Many founders think to hire VPs when they’re overwhelmed. I hire them when I’m underwhelmed.

If you’re still learning from every decision in a function, you’re not ready to hand it off. If you could train someone to handle 80% of those decisions, you are.

A great VP doesn’t just take work off your plate. They give you leverage to focus on problems only you can solve.

I didn’t close my first six-figure deal. The buyer did.


Three years ago, I was doing founder-led sales and chasing what felt like a dream customer.

Steph, our champion, was strong, but the deal was stuck.
Everyone else in the company had concerns I couldn’t hear directly.

Instead of pitching harder, I made one shift:
I stopped trying to sell them, and started helping her sell internally.

I sent her one-pagers, Looms, customer references. 
Turned objections into clear talking points she could reuse.
I told Steph, “Use whatever helps. Change whatever doesn’t. I’m here if you need me.”

A few weeks later, she emailed:
“We’re in.”

That’s when I learned the difference between selling TO someone and selling WITH someone.

When you’re selling TO someone, you’re trying to convince them.
When you’re selling WITH someone, you’re trying to arm them.

Your champion already believes in you. 
They just need help winning the conversations you’re not in.

The best closers don’t push harder.
They enable better.

It took 5 years and 40 hires to realize company values aren’t HR fluff. When done right, they’re the decision-making framework that runs the company for you.

Early on, I thought “values” were just something you put on a careers page.
But as we grew, I noticed every hard question circled back to them.

Will I hire this person?
What decision should I make?
What kind of people actually thrive here?

At Recall.ai, we have a few that keep us aligned:

1/ Laser focused on mission.
We have one mission: making it easy for developers to work with conversation data. We focus on the 20% of the work that delivers 80% of value to our customers, and put the company’s goals ahead of any particular team or individual goals.

2/ Continuously raise the bar.
We are a winning team with high expectations for delivering results. We ask whether each candidate will raise the average on the team before making an offer.

3/ Do hard things.
We set ambitious goals and take risks, even if it means facing the possibility of failure. We do whatever is necessary to achieve our goals, and embrace doing hard things.

4/ Raw hours make a difference.
We have a big mission. There’s a huge amount of high-impact work to do, and we put our sincere best effort every day into making as much progress as possible.

They’re not meant to sound nice.
They’re meant to be useful.

p.s. photo is from our weekly PT

I built this playbook while closing deals with companies like Calendly and Monday. Now you can steal it.

One of the hardest lessons in sales:
Not every “champion” can actually get the deal done.

It’s easy to mistake enthusiasm for influence.
The person who loves your product isn’t always the person who can move the org.

That’s why I started testing champions early.
Before I invest months in a deal, I run a few quick tests to confirm if someone has real pull.

1/ subtle qualifying questions
2/ observing how they act between meetings
3/ giving them a small “ask” to see if they’ll advocate internally

It’s about figure out whether you’re working with a coach or a champion to adjust accordingly.

A year ago, one text completely changed the direction of a $265K deal.


Six months in, everything looked perfect on paper.
Then suddenly…silence.

Our champion stopped replying. Meetings kept getting “rescheduled.” I could feel the deal slipping, but had no idea why.

An advisor told me: “You need to backchannel.”

So I reached out to a former exec who had worked with their CTO.
 I asked on question: “Off the record, what’s happening inside?”

The answer changed everything.
The CTO was worried we couldn’t scale to their workload.
Officially, no one had told us that. Unofficially, it was the only think blocking the deal.

Because now I knew, I armed my contact with a one-line blurb to text the CTO that addressed that concern directly.
Two weeks later, the deal closed.

Here’s what I learned:
1/ Make it easy - short blurbs
2/ Match the format (text, call, email)
3/ Tailor to who’s receiving
4/ Don’t be afraid to follow up. People like helping when you make it easy.

My decks didn’t save that deal.
The backchannel did.

I asked 20 customers for a favor on a Saturday. 80% replied right away. Even when there was nothing to gain for them.

I wasn’t asking for feedback or to upsell them.
It was a small favor that wouldn't move their metrics at all.

But within minutes, my notifications lit up.
One sent a detailed Loom.
Another offered to jump on a call.
A few wrote paragraphs explaining what they’d do in my place.

That moment reminded me why Recall.ai works.
Our customers are our partners.

Because from day one, we’ve treated every conversation as two-way:
We ask about their stack before we talk about ours.
We debug side-by-side when something breaks.
We help them ship features their users will love. Even if it means doing extra work on our end.

We’re infrastructure.
If they succeed, we succeed.

That’s why 20 people replied to a Saturday message.
Because they know we care about their product as much as they do.

The best customers don’t just buy your product.
They build it with you.

p.s. A real founder story about customer obsession, leadership, and what PMF actually looks/feels like.

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