Product & Growth at Bardeen.ai ($15M Series A from HubSpot, Insight, & 468Cap) I share automations you can use for work & life

3 reasons you should read my LinkedIn profile & connect:

1. I enjoy helping others 
2. I love to collaborate and discussing fresh ideas around GTM, AI, and CLAY!
3. I’ve helped 500+ businesses implement AI, nocode, and Clay.

I consider myself a lifelong student and SHARE what I learn.

If you've made it this far. Connect with me here and say hello. 
I love to chat all things tech, social media, fitness, or AI. 
If Twitter is more your thing tweet me at: @chrisviglietta

Chris Viglietta

Yesterday's AI GTM Workshop at Clay wasn't what I expected

It was BETTER - here are some insights I gathered from teaching:

1. Improvisation - the wifi went down for 45 min before we started. Normally, people might panic in this situation BUT this created an opportunity for us to openly talk about what each person THOUGHT they wanted to build during the workshop. HOWEVER, their ideas transformed as we asked more questions. This is a beautiful result of being curious, empathetic, and inquisitive. 

2. Every artist has a medium. We deeply believe this at Clay. So, we brought in a sketch artist (Saki- she's amazing!) to recreate each student's favorite photos and bring THEM into her artistic process. The result? People were beaming with joy when they say the finished art. Every artist has a medium. Saki has sketching. Now they (the students) have Clay.

3. Beginners prefer to be GIVEN 1-2 workflows to build. This is contrary to Intermediates who already know what they want to build but just need a little gut check before starting. Next time, we'll let beginners choose from a set of pre-determined usecases (ex: inbound, outbound, crm, etc...)

4. Don't let students "chase the rabbit". Clay is powerful, but with great power comes great responsibility. Just because you CAN do (almost) anything doesn't mean you should - especially given time constraints. During open build, it makes sense to checkin with students every 10 min to ensure they're not going down rabbit holes and coming back empty-handed.

This is only the beginning.

AI GTM Workshops are coming back to SF and NYC next month (in Feb).

Thank you to EVERYBODY that came to learn, build, & create art (literally!) 🎨🖌️

Lindsey Newman, David Ronen, Brandon Ward, Alex Diaz-Casos, MS, MRED Margy Shomaker, Hakeem Oloritun, Lili Cook, Arthur Julio Nelson Matthew Iles, Sungmoon Lim, Kelvin Sims Katherine Shiff, Emily Limoncelli Carolyn Philip, Dan Sunchu, Joseph Rosenfield 

SPECIAL shoutout to our AMAZING Claymates that helped make it all possible! Katherine Dao Sarah Xu Sayli Godse Natalie Ho, Luda Zhao

Things in 2025 I'm taking into 2026. 

🎵Music I fell in love with in 2025
1. Buena Vista Social Club
2. Bad Bunny salsa 
3. Hamilton 
4. In the Heights


📦 Products I felt were worth the buy
1. Espresso Machine + Coffee Grinder (making coffee is relaxing)
2. Piano (trying to learn 1 song this year)
3. Longboard Surfboard (9.6ft rides smooooth in Malibu)
4. Salsa private lessons (not a product, but worth every $1)
5. Tennis lessons (same thing)
6. Truck - less mess when surfing
8. Physical books (tactile things bring me joy)
9. Whiteboard 
10. Pocket notebooks (i found ones that I enjoy carrying and using to write ideas)
11. Big A$$ calendar by Jesse Itzler
12. Nintendo Switch (I flew a lot this year and it was nostalgic to play Pokemon!)


🧰 Tools I really adopted this year
1. Clay (crazy to reflect on my journey)
2. Wispr Flow (feels like magic!)
3. Claude (reusing projects for convos around life)
4. Lovable (vibe-coded quite a few apps at work and personal)
5. Raycast AI (leveling up my productivity when I use a computer)
6. HotKey (doubling down on using keyboard shortcuts)
7. beehiiv (powers my newsletter)
8. Riverside (started filming B2B interviews with GTM leaders)


📕Best Books I got a lot out of
1. Navalmanack (reread it again)
2. Feel Good Productivity 
3. The Inner Game of Tennis
4. Poison at Breakfast
5. All about Love
6. Barbarian Days
7. Storyworthy


🎰Bets I would take again
1. Invest in community (spent thousands to travel with my core group and created mems)
2. Launch a newsletter (2k, so much to do here)
3. Build in public, permissionlessley 
4. Creating a video series - filming V4V changed my life
5. Work at Clay (I got no's for 5 months, but eventually, it all worked out)
6. Be a friend to have friends (always show up for my friends)


🧠Habits I'll continue
1. Going for a walk first thing in the morning (feel happier)
2. Making a slow coffee in the morning 60-90 min after waking up (no crash)
3. no coffee after 1pm (sleep is terrible)
3. Reading before bed instead of Netflix (i feel more rested)
4. Weekly therapy sessions
5. Working out (Weightlifting 4x, Pilates 1-2x, Tennis 1-2x, Salsa 2x)
6. Use the Big Ass Calendar (it forced me to proactively plan a year of adventure)
7. Contrast Therapy (dry sauna with friends feels amazing for my body and soul)
8. Matcha Mornings with core group to just hang and chat once per week
9. Weekend Hikes (walking in nature feels so good)
10. Going for mid-day walks to change up my location (feels more creative and days are less blurred)

This year's themes for me are creating, thriving, and exploring. Last year was focused on community and expansiveness. Last year, I fractured my L1 vertabrae after getting violently thrown off a horse - was bedridden for 3 months. I'm motivated to feel strong, athletic, and explosive again. Bright side - 7 solo skydive jumps!

✏️ Tell me your best products, habits, music so my 2026 list is even better

s/o 🐰 Jen Igartua for the inspo to write this post

Hunter McKinley 🛸

Co-founder at Yac & Backtrack, building the future of exhibiting and hosted buyer events through audio and voice AI.

Hunter started as a designed and moved into marketing and product management for the past 10+ years. Now he leads multiple products across multiple devices such as mobile and desktop, as CEO, shipping high quality software to the world's biggest brands at their events. 

Featured/mentioned in:
Business Insider Tech, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Axios, Tech Crunch, Product Hunt, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, & more.

Co-Founder & CEO

Backtrack is a local audio recorder that lets you save audio your Mac's mic heard in the past.

- #1 in 10+ countries
- Top 10 app in 35+ countries
- #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt
- 20k+ downloads
- 4.7 rating App Store
- Waitlist includes: Snap, Meta, Shopify, Disney, and more

Learn more at www.usebacktrack.com

Hunter McKinley

Google just launched practice SATs FOR FREE.

The democratization and personalization of education is here🎓🤖

“We’re launching full-length, on demand practice exams for standardized tests in @GeminiApp, starting with the SAT, available now at no cost.

Practice SATs are grounded in rigorously vetted content in partnership with @ThePrincetonRev, and Gemini will provide immediate feedback highlighting where you excelled and where you might need to study more.

To try it out, tell Gemini, “I want to take a practice SAT test.””

CEO @Backtrack - Building robots to do robot things for events so people can do the people things, better

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