Mark MacLeod

I help startup CEOs go from $5M in revenue to a massive exit

Since 1999, I have sat at the right-hand side of the leaders of high growth technology companies as either a CFO, VC or deal maker. I served as CFO for software companies including Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) and Freshbooks. 

I was a General Partner in Real Ventures, one of Canada's largest and most active seed stage funds. My investments there include the fund's largest cash on cash and highest IRR returns to date. 

Most recently, I founded SurePath Capital Partners the leading investment bank for SMB SaaS companies where we did hundreds of millions in financing and exit transactions.

The thing I loved most about these roles was the one on one coaching and advisory conversations I had with CEOs. 

Since 2020 I have been coaching, investing in and advising CEOs + helping them execute game-changing deals.

I am a semi-active angel investor with a portfolio of 22 investments, 2 highly positive exits and counting.

In my spare time, I am a passionate CrossFit athlete and electronic music producer/ DJ. I also run Deep Down Music, a record label.

Founder

I coach, advise and invest in the CEOs of high growth technology companies & help them execute game-changing deals.

The best CEOs I've worked with all have one thing in common: They're blunt.

Not rude. Not cruel. Not careless with their words.

Blunt.

They say what needs to be said in the room where it needs to be said.

They don't soften feedback until it loses its meaning.

They don't wait three months to have the conversation everyone knows is overdue.

They don't hide behind politeness when clarity is what the team actually needs.

Most founders confuse being nice with being kind.

Nice avoids the truth to protect feelings.

Kind delivers the truth because the stakes are too high not to.

Your team doesn't need you to be comfortable.

They need you to be clear.

Bluntness with respect is one of the highest-leverage leadership skills you can develop.

Subscribe to my newsletter and get a 22 page presentation on the secrets of Limitless CEOs https://lnkd.in/gWqQBd-n

Helping ambitious CEOs & founders scale world-changing companies without sacrificing their health, happiness, purpose, or humanity

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I don't think I will ever fully retire.

Retirement is a concept built for a world that no longer exists.

It assumed you'd grind for 40 years, then stop.

Trade your health for money, then try to buy it back.

But what if you could work forever?

Not because you have to. Because you want to.

Because building still lights you up at 60, 70, 80.

That changes the entire equation.

You can't run this game like a sprint.

The founders who burned out at 45 didn't fail because they lacked talent. They failed because they built a pace they couldn't sustain.

We're going to live longer than any generation before us. The question isn't when you stop.

It's how you build a life and a body and a mind that lets you keep going as long as you choose.

That means sleep isn't optional. Recovery isn't weakness. Energy isn't something you sacrifice for the next milestone.

It's the asset that makes every future milestone possible.

Retirement is what happens when you run out of energy.

Sustainability is what happens when you never do.

Subscribe to my newsletter and get a 22 page presentation on the secrets of Limitless CEOs https://lnkd.in/gWqQBd-n

I am leaning into my weirdness, and it feels good.

I have never been a stereotypical CPA. When I was in undergrad, I designed my life around raves. Classes were Tuesday - Thursday. This enabled me to go dancing all night Saturday and recover. 

While I love to serve, I hate having a boss. So, while my peers went the “Big 4” route, I joined a small firm serving founders. I have only ever been or worked with founders. 

I have always leaned into what I love. I love to write. When I look back, all of my most important relationships came from my writing. Tobi from Shopify. Mike from FreshBooks. The guys starting Real Ventures. All came in part because they read my thoughts.

Then there’s yoga. Starting casually in my late 20s, yoga has evolved to become the foundation of my life.

The stretches offered in most North American yoga studios are a tiny fraction of what yoga is. In fact, the word “asana” (that’s what these postures are called) is barely mentioned in the Yoga Sutras.

Yoga is a complete system for living your life. My goal is to live every minute in accordance with yogic practices and values.

I discovered kundalini yoga in 2012. I got serious about it in 2019. And I teach it now.

Kundalini focuses on building and directing energy. We all have dormant energy at the base of our spine. Through these practices (called “kriyas”), we activate and direct that energy. 

Studies have shown that this practice turns on dormant parts of your brain. It unlocks our potential.

All of this mix of yoga, breathwork, meditation, and human optimization has co-mingled with my startup experience to create Limitless. 

My mission is simple: to redefine how founders build companies by putting their energy, health, and inner alignment first. So they can scale without limits and lead from a higher state.

Change your life so you can change the world!

Hard to think of something more motivating to work on!

Subscribe to my newsletter and get a 22 page presentation on the secrets of Limitless CEOs https://lnkd.in/gWqQBd-n

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Certified Personal & Business Performance Coach

Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA)

An exclusive community of VC and PE-backed CEOs who want
to scale themselves and their companies without limits.

Limitless is an exclusive community of VC and PE-backed CEOs who want
to scale themselves and their companies without limits.

I coach startup CEOs to grow themselves and their business all the way to a massive exit

SurePath Capital Partners is the premier strategic financial advisor to the global SMB Software market. With offices in Toronto and San Francisco, we aim to be the #1 advisor in this space globally and the one call CEOs and board make when they need to make a deal happen.

I led finance and corporate development at FreshBooks - the #1 cloud accounting specialist for small business owners. Since 2004, over 5 million people have used FreshBooks to track time, organize expenses and invoice clients online and in the cloud.

Accomplishments:
- Closed $30M institutional funding round + other unpublished transactions
- Led the process to find a partner to backstop a new product line
- Sourced and closed other key revenue-generating partnerships

CFO + Chief Corporate Development Officer

Venture Partner

Parter at Real Ventures where I focus on SaaS, freemium, e-commerce and digital media seed investments

Director, Fabric Technologies
Director, Context.io (sold to Return Path)
Director, Frank and Oak
Observer, Rewardli Inc.
Investor, Thinknear.com (sold to Telenav)
Investor, Localmind.com (sold to Airbnb)
Investor, Massive Damage Inc.
Director, Sweet IQ (sold to Reachlocal)
Observer, Unbounce.com
Investor, Engagio (sold to Influitive)
Investor, Origin.al Internet Company General Partner

General Partner

CFO for Tungle - a great solution for meeting coordination.

Raised a $5M "A" round. Served as CFO through the successful sale of the company to RIM.

Interim CFO, Shopify
Advisor, Well.ca
Advisor, Cakemail 
Advisor, Dok Dok Inc 
Advisor, Raymark
Advisor, Sitezoogle 
Interim CFO, Status.net Inc.

Advisor & CFO

Led finance, operations, legal, HR, strategic planning functions for this mobile communications startup. Raised an $10M B round led by Flybridge. Raised an additional $1M in China. Made major improvements to execution, ops, key metrics, etc.

Led finance, operations, customer support, IT and manufacturing for this venture-backed networked storage vendor. Negotiated the sale of Terrascale to Rackable Systems (NASDAQ: RACK) in a deal returning 10x on invested capital.

VP, Finance

Prepared this 15 person IP networking startup for commercialization & ‘B’ round funding. Responsibilities included financing, all back office operations, investor + board relations and negotiation of all  agreements. Towards the end of my term, I was given increasing responsibility for OEM sales and strategic relationships.

Strategic consulting assignments: 
•	Advised on the sale of two software companies and the purchase of an education services company
•	Led the successful restructuring of an insolvent retailer. The company is now thriving and expanding
•	Enabled the restructuring & strategic refocus of a new media company that resulted in a 3x growth in revenues and 5x growth in profit & cash flow

President

Was responsible for Finance, Alliances and Corporate Development functions. Raised $19M in equity over 2 rounds + oversaw growth to over 100 people. Established many key partner relationships

Director, Finance + Corporate Development

Helping VC-backed CEOs scale themselves and their companies without limits. 
| Host of The Startup CEO Show podcast

Marie Chevrier Schwartz spent 10 years building Sampler. Raised venture capital. Grew it to real scale. Then the business went bankrupt.

Most founders go dark when that happens. Marie did the opposite. She went on social media and told everyone.

The thing she said that stuck with me most: The day she accepted it was over, she felt relief. Not defeat. Relief.

Because she finally separated who she was from what she built.

That's the hardest thing in entrepreneurship. Not the fundraising. Not the product. Not the market timing.

It's realizing you are not your company.

Marie was late in her pregnancy when she learned the business wouldn't survive. She had a newborn when it officially ended. And instead of shutting down, she used that moment to rebuild her identity entirely.

She's went on to runTechTO, Canada's largest tech community, serving 60,000 founders. Different chapter. Same energy. More clarity.

If you missed the podcast, the full conversation is on my blog → link in the comments.

Most founder interviews are about fundraising, growth hacks, and exits.
This one was different.

I sat down with Tonya Papanikolov, founder of Rainbo, one of the leading functional mushroom brands. She's a holistic nutritionist, a Kundalini yoga teacher, and someone who built her company from a meditation download, not a pitch deck.

What struck me most was how she thinks about success.

Not revenue targets. Not market share.
Alignment. 

Is what she's building aligned with her deeper purpose? And when the answer is yes, everything else follows.

She also said something that stopped me: when she feels the urge to escape and retreat from the work, that's usually a sign she's avoiding the next level of growth, not that she needs rest.

That's a distinction most founders never make.

We talked about building a CPG brand from scratch, getting into Whole Foods, running a company with her husband, and why her morning practice is the most important thing she does for the business.

If you missed the podcast, the full conversation is on my blog

Botkeeper raised $90M+ and just shut down after 11 years. It's a cautionary tale we all can learn from.

Raising capital is not a sign of success. It just means someone gave you a shot.

We celebrate fundraising like it's the finish line. It's not. It's the starting gun.

And sometimes it's the thing that kills you.

More capital means more pressure, higher burn, bigger expectations, and less room to figure things out.

Botkeeper never nailed product-market fit with accountants. But they kept raising anyway. I don't blame them. But this happens a lot with VCs overfunding.

$90M later, the outcome was the same as if they'd run out of money at $5M.
Except that more people got hurt.

The founders I work with who build lasting companies treat capital as fuel for what's already working. Not a substitute for what isn't working.

The true test of your values isn't when you fire a low performer.
Everyone can do that.

It's when you exit a high performer who violates them.

The person who is hitting their numbers. The one the board loves. The one your team depends on.

But they're toxic. They undermine trust. They treat people like collateral damage.

And you know it.

Most CEOs tolerate it because the results are too good to lose.

That's not pragmatism. That's a signal to your entire company that values are negotiable when the numbers are right.

The moment you exit that person, two things happen.

First, it hurts. Revenue might dip. There's a gap.

Second, your culture becomes real. Every person on your team now knows the values aren't a poster on the wall. They're the operating system.

And that's worth more than any one performer.

Harry Stebbings says fundraising has changed.

According to Harry, SaaS founders growing 2-3x have two choices:

Use AI to accelerate to 8-10x growth. Or cut burn and never raise again.

The reality is more nuanced.

The real question isn't "which path." It's "how do I build OPTIONALITY so I can choose either, on my terms?"

Optionality has never been more important than it is now.

Optionality means:

✅ Your can get to cashflow break-even in runway if you are not there already.

✅ Your growth rate & unit economics let you raise if and when you want to.

✅You are known to your most natural buyers and can enter into a warm, qualified exit process at any time.

And a personal consideration here: 

✅ As founder, your energy and clarity let you make that strategic call from strength, not panic.

The founders who win in this market aren't picking door 1 or door 2.

They're building a company, and a version of themselves, that can walk through whichever door makes sense, whenever it makes sense.

That's not simple. But it's the real game.

Founder @ 20VC

The biggest risk of AI isn't losing your job. It's never being able to stop working.

The people burning out fastest right now aren't the ones resisting AI.
They're the ones who embrace it most.

A new Harvard Business Review study followed a tech company for eight months and found that when people genuinely adopted AI, they didn't work less. They just did more. 

To-do lists expanded to fill every hour that AI freed up, then kept going. 

Work bled into lunches and late evenings. Not because anyone was pressured. Because the tools made it more doable.

This is the trap nobody's talking about.

AI doesn't create boundaries. It removes them.

And without boundaries, more capacity just becomes more work.

This is why health, energy, and inner clarity aren't nice-to-haves in the AI era.
They're survival tools.

The founders who thrive through this won't be the ones who squeezed the most out of every AI tool.

They'll be the ones who knew when to stop. Who protected their sleep. Who built recovery into their operating system. Who had the self-awareness to say 
"I can do more," and the discipline to say "but I won't."

Being able to call it a day and feel good about what you accomplished will become a superpower (it always was..).

AI is the most powerful accelerant founders have ever had.

Without boundaries, it accelerates burnout just as fast as growth.

Your job as CEO isn't to do more. It's to remove friction.

Friction is everywhere. It's the slow approval process. The unclear ownership. The meeting that should be an email. The hire you haven't made. The conversation you've been avoiding.

It's not one big thing. It's a hundred small things quietly dragging your company down.

Most founders tolerate them. They work around them. They get used to the drag.

Limitless CEOs have a different habit.

They remove one piece of friction every single day.

It sounds small. But compounded over a quarter, that's 90 obstacles gone.
Over a year, you've fundamentally changed how your company operates.

Not through a big reorg. Not through a new strategy deck.

Through the daily discipline of making things a little easier for your team to win.

That's the real job.

Find and remove one piece of friction every day.

AI made you faster. It didn't make you better at stopping.

Every CEO I speak with has the same problem right now: the tools keep getting better, but the days keep getting fuller.

So I teach them a simple boundary protocol: Block one hour a day that is completely analog.

No screens. No Slack. No AI. No input at all.

Walk. Breathe. Sit. Think. Or do nothing.

This isn't a wellness hack. It's an operating decision.

Because the quality of your leadership is determined in the space between inputs. Not during them.

The founders who protect that space make sharper calls, see further ahead, and last longer than the ones running at full capacity every waking hour.

Your brain needs time offline to process what it's taken in. Without that, you're not thinking. You're just reacting faster.

AI gives you speed. Analog time gives you clarity.

You need both. Most founders only have one.

I asked a CEO client to rate his happiness. He said 6 out of 10.
I asked what would make it a 10.

His answer wasn't more revenue. Wasn't a bigger team. Wasn't closing a round.
It was spending more time on things that create energy.

He already knew the answer. Most founders do.

The gap between a 6 and a 10 isn't more success.

It's less of what drains you and more of what fills you up.

The hard part isn't knowing this. It's giving yourself permission to act on it.

Energy isn't a reward for building something great. It's the requirement.

Design your role, company and life around energy and you become limitless!

Every startup's 2026 budget is already wrong.

Not because someone made a mistake.

Because AI is changing the cost structure faster than anyone can model.

Roles you planned to hire for in Q3 might not be needed by then.

Tools that cost six figures are being replaced by agents that cost hundreds.

Runway is quietly extending at companies that are paying attention.

And the ones that aren't are still hiring against a plan that was outdated the week it was approved.

This is the new reality for founders:

You can't forecast spend the way you used to.

The old was was full of certainty. Full of proven formulas. 

The founders who adapt fastest aren't the ones with the best financial models.

They're the ones willing to revisit assumptions every month, rather than every quarter or every year.

Rigid budgets were already dangerous. In the AI era, they're fiction.

Subscribe to my newsletter and get a 22 page presentation on the secrets of Limitless CEOs https://lnkd.in/gWqQBd-n

Most founders optimize their GTM funnel. Almost none optimize the machine that runs it all.

I recently sat down with Greg Newlands, a fitness coach who works with founders.

Full disclosure: Greg is my coach and also works with several of our Limitless founders.

One thing he said stuck with me:

"If I'm not sleeping well, not exercising, not rested, I just don't perform the same in life or in business."

That's not a wellness quote. That's an operating reality.

Greg trains entrepreneurs the way athletes get trained: 
Strategic breaks throughout the day. 
Resistance training as a non-negotiable. 
Tracking four daily KPIs for energy and performance.

The part that hit hardest: he burned out multiple times before he stopped treating rest as the enemy of progress.

Sound familiar?

This is one of the most tactical conversations I've had on health as a founder strategy.

Full episode on my blog → link in comments.

From your biggest → the best shape of your life | Helping ambitious, driven men rebuild their body & confidence after letting things slip

Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Block, just gave us a lesson in making hard decisions.

Often, when faced with decisions like layoffs, the temptation is to do the minimum necessary. To avoid as much pain as possible. 

Jack did the opposite. He leaned into the pain. He cut 40% of Block's workforce. Over 4,000 people. In one move.

Not because the business is struggling. Gross profit grew 24% last year.

He did it because he saw where AI is heading and decided to get there first. He leaned in.

Dorsey said it clearly: “Repeated rounds of cuts destroy morale, focus, and trust.” He'd rather take one hard, clear action than manage a slow bleed toward the same outcome.

You can disagree with the decision. But the leadership principle is worth studying.

The hardest decisions aren't hard because you don't know what to do. They're hard because you don't want to feel the pain of doing it. They're hard because you resist.

So you delay. You half-measure. You spread the pain out over months, hoping it hurts less.

It doesn't. It just hurts longer.

Whether it's a layoff, a co-founder conversation, or a pivot you've been avoiding, the cost of the slow path is almost always higher than the cost of the decisive one.

Suffering = pain * resistance. If you don’t resist what you need to do, you will not suffer. 

It’s no surprise that Jack took this approach, given his spiritual practice. Jack does long Vipassana retreats. Anyone who has done these will know that they are painful but always worth it.

The way out (of whatever issue you are struggling with) is through. Lean into the discomfort. Make the bold call.

A founder built an AI system that scans everything. It was making him worse at his job.

AI lets you measure everything now. Every Gong call. Every Slack thread. Every data query. Every customer conversation.

One founder I spoke with built an AI system that scans a thousand times more data than his team could manually. Every day, he is briefed on literally everything in his company.

Impressive. Also dangerous.

Because the ability to do everything is not a reason to do everything.

When I dug in, his real bottleneck was one thing. So we cut one of three product initiatives entirely. Narrowed focus to the one thing blocking growth.

More data didn't solve it. Less did.

Here's what I see happening everywhere right now:

AI gives founders superhuman capacity to monitor, measure, and manage.

But capacity without focus is just sophisticated distraction.

The founders who win won't be the ones who do the most with AI.

They'll be the ones disciplined enough to do less.

The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

For most founders, the mind is running the show.

It wakes you up at 3 am with worst-case scenarios.

It replays the board meeting you can't change.

It tells you that every competitor is ahead of you.

It convinces you that rest is laziness.

The founders I work with at Limitless are learning to think with more intention.

They choose what to focus on rather than letting their minds choose for them.

That's what meditation is. That's what journaling is. That's what a morning practice is.

Not escaping the mind. Training it to work for you, not against you.

You are a mental athlete. You need to train your mind the way athletes train their bodies.

Your mind built your company. Don't let it destroy you in the process.

Every founder has a financial dashboard. Almost none have a biological one.

At Limitless, we think about CEO performance across three dimensions:

Physical → sleep quality, HRV, recovery.

Mental → deep work hours, focus time.

Financial → MRR, pipeline velocity, growth.

(We also go deep on spiritual, but let's park that for now...).

Here's what most founders miss:
These aren't three separate dashboards. They're one system.

✅ Your HRV predicts your decision quality.

✅ Your sleep predicts your deep work capacity.

✅ Your deep work predicts your revenue.

The financial metrics are the output. The biological ones are the input.

Fix the inputs. The outputs follow.

Every playbook you relied on is being rewritten right now.

AI is disrupting how we build, hire, sell, and lead.

The best practices that got you here? Most of them no longer apply.

This is terrifying if you need external certainty to make decisions.
It's freeing if you don't.

When the map is gone, the founder who wins is the one who can navigate without it.

That means first principles over borrowed frameworks. Grounded decisions over reactive ones. Intuition over consensus.

Your own race over someone else's example.

The answers aren't in the latest AI playbook or the hottest thread on X.

They're inside the founder who is clear enough, calm enough, and honest enough to hear them.

This is the era where inner work becomes a competitive advantage.

I meditate every morning before I open my laptop.

Not just because I'm spiritual. Because it makes me a better decision-maker.

When your mind is full of noise, every decision feels urgent. Everything looks like a fire. You react instead of respond.

When your mind is clear, you see what actually matters. You hear the signal through the noise. You trust yourself enough to act without needing five people to validate the call.

The best CEOs I work with are the clearest.

That clarity comes from creating space between the input and the response.

That's all meditation is. Not woo-woo. Not escape.

A daily practice of training your mind to be still so it can be sharp when it matters.

You are a mental athlete. You need to train your mind the way athletes train their bodies.

Ten minutes a day. No app required. Just you and silence. Pay attention to your breath. As distractions arise, keep coming back to the breath. That's it.

It's the highest-ROI habit no one puts on their calendar.

Subscribe to my newsletter and get a 22 page presentation on the secrets of Limitless CEOs https://lnkd.in/gWqQBd-n

Co-Founder @ Thoughtleadr | We Go Viral on Command For The Most Exceptional Founders on X | +60M Monthly Impressions For Clients

Hey, I'm Fernando, Co-Founder at RevenueFlow, and we solve the #1 problem killing B2B growth: empty sales pipelines.

We help high-ticket B2B companies flood their calendars with qualified meetings using systematic cold email and LinkedIn outreach - data-driven campaigns that target decision-makers and book meetings on autopilot.

We can help you if:

• You're a B2B founder/CEO who needs predictable pipeline NOW... We'll deliver qualified meetings within 2-4 weeks using proven outbound systems

• You're scaling a 7-9 figure business and tired of inconsistent lead flow... Our cold email + LinkedIn campaigns run 24/7, filling your calendar while you sleep

• You sell high-ticket solutions ($10K+ ACV) and need buyers with real authority and active need... We target the right people with personalized messaging that gets responses

Our approach:

• Clay for data enrichment and hyper-personalization
• HeyReach for LinkedIn automation at scale
• Multi-domain cold email infrastructure for maximum deliverability
• AI-powered message variations to avoid spam filters
• Systematic qualification to ensure meeting quality

We've cracked the code on B2B outbound that actually drives revenue. Predictable meetings, qualified prospects, scalable systems.

If you:

• Sell high-ticket B2B solutions (>$10k contracts)
• Need qualified meetings, not vanity metrics
• Are ready for predictable, scalable lead generation

Let's talk.

Or DM me directly and I'll show you exactly how we're getting these results.

Fernando C.

I'm 26. we've scaled a $3M/year AI GTM company in 2.5 years. Something insane is quietly happening...

In 2025, we burned through $430K+ executing go-to-market strategies. Agencies, freelancers, tech tools, campaigns - you name it, we tried it.

We eventually narrowed down and built a content + outbound marketing channel that worked. Scaled it to $3M/year. At our peak we had a 50-person team, worked with 150+ clients, and we learned how hard it was to scale a labour-intensive service.

Today, AI is so good that it can replace entire teams and workflows. Not one task - entire systems.

Alex Hormozi (Acquisition.com) said it best: "When there is infinite information, the value is in the selection and curation because no one has the time to consume all of it to figure out what's good."

Y Combinator recently put out a Request for Startups calling for AI-native agencies. Their words: "Agencies of the future will look more like software companies. And they'll scale far bigger than any agencies that exist in these fragmented markets today."

That's exactly what we're building...

For the first time ever, we're running every single GTM play we've ever executed at the same time without making a single hire:

1. LinkedIn content engine that generates inbound pipeline
2. Personalized cold email at scale
3. Personalized LinkedIn outbound at scale
4. Signal-based targeting
5. Viral X thought leadership content engine
6. SEO at scale

All running, simultaneously.

All of my co-founders - Tim Carden, Ben Carden, Hosun Chung, and I spend 80%+ of our time living in AI. Vibe coding in the terminals. Testing new GTM tools. Building AI agents that actually work. It's not easy, but for the first time, everything we've ever wanted to build is all possible.

We can do this because we've spent 3+ years doing it all manually. Countless times, hours, and mistakes made. We know what works, what doesn't, and how to build it - because we've ruthlessly tested every single play by hand before automating it.

The tools exist. You can go buy them all yourself. But the strategic curation, the orchestration, knowing what actually works and how to wire it all together so that it ACTUALLY WORKS - that's moving too fast for most business owners and marketing & sales leaders to keep up with.

We are the human layer between you and this wave of AI, your "All-bound GTM partner". We've already tested every play manually, so you get the systems that work without the $430K+ learning curve.

The businesses implementing this are going to be untouchable in 12 months. It's time to build.

Want us to build your GTM infrastructure so you're not left behind? Let's chat:
https://lnkd.in/dCBwpVcF

Co-Founder & CEO at RevenueFlow | AI-Native GTM Partner | 100k+ on X @thefernandocz

The GTM tech powering top sales teams in 2026. 27 tools:

We spent two years trying every GTM tool that crossed my feed. Most of them promised the world and delivered a dashboard.

What I actually learned is that the stack matters less than how the pieces talk to each other. These are the only list of tools to check out:

Lead Gen and Data
Apollo, ZoomInfo, Clay, Findymail , MillionVerifier , Apify, Firecrawl, Serper 

AI and Automation
Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Zapier, GitHub

Email Infrastructure
EmailBison, Instantly.ai, Smartlead, lemlist, Zapmail.ai, ScaledMail

Sales and CRM
HubSpot, Salesforce, Close, HeyReach.io, Gong, Outreach, Salesloft 

Meetings and Comms
Cal.com, Inc., Grain, Loom, Slack, Intercom 

Data and Ops
Supabase, Airtable, Notion, Stripe, monday.com 

Content
Figma, Notion, Loom Loom

We have tested or actively use every tool on this list. Some we dropped. Some we built around. The ones that stuck are the ones that did one thing well and got out of the way.

After $93K+ in GTM tooling, the biggest lesson wasn't which tool to pick. It was knowing when to stop adding tools and start connecting the ones you have.

Still figuring out the perfect stack. But this map is where I'd start if I were building from zero today.

Want us to build it for you? See how: https://lnkd.in/dCBwpVcF

London is the B2B tech capital of Europe. This won't change soon. Here are 20 GTM companies changing how businesses go-to-market:

Sales Intelligence:
• Cognism - phone-verified B2B contacts with GDPR-compliant intent data
• Ebsta (now part of Fullcast) - revenue intelligence that predicts deal health and forecast accuracy
• 11x - autonomous AI SDRs handling prospecting, outreach, and booking 24/7

CRM & RevOps:
• Attio - flexible CRM where you define the data model, not the other way around
• Paddle - merchant of record handling global SaaS payments, tax, and compliance
• Omnea - AI procurement orchestration across finance, legal, and IT workflows

Marketing & Content:
• Synthesia - AI video avatars in 140+ languages for enterprise comms at scale
• Dotdigital - cross-channel marketing automation across email, SMS, and chat
• Ometria - retail-specific CDP that builds personalized omnichannel journeys
• Turtl - interactive content platform that attributes reader engagement to pipeline
• JACQUARD - AI copywriting engine generating brand-consistent messaging at scale
• Onalytica - B2B influencer platform matching brands with 700K+ vetted creators
• Passle - one-click thought leadership publishing for professional services firms

Sales Enablement:
• PolyAI - voice AI agents that resolve 50%+ of inbound customer calls naturally
• trumpet 🎺 - digital sales rooms with buyer insights for 28% faster close times
• Cuvama - value selling platform that coaches reps to lead with outcomes
• Jiminny - conversation intelligence capturing calls and auto-logging to CRM

Growth & Referral:
• Mention Me - referral marketing turning customers into advocates at scale
• Engage Hub - AI journey orchestration with real-time triggers across channels

Data & Intent:
• Permutive - privacy-first audience targeting without third-party cookies

All based in London. All building the future of GTM.

Want help using these tools to build your GTM system? See how: https://lnkd.in/d67PR_CW

How I'd close my next 3 B2B clients in 30 days. This is exactly what we did to scale past $3M/year:

Step 1: Get specific on your ICP.
Not "B2B companies." One vertical. One pain point. One buyer you can describe in a sentence.

Step 2: Build a list of 10-30K companies that fit, then find 30K decision makers - founders, VPs, directors - whoever signs the check.

Tools: Clay, Apollo, Sales Nav, Trigify.io, RB2B, Vector

Step 3: Write one cold email with one clear offer.
Not five variations. One offer so good it doesn't need fancy copy. Include a "try before you buy" lead magnet - something that shows how you deliver before they pay.

Tools: OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Copy.ai 

Step 4: Send emails from pre-warmed inboxes with one follow-up.
Most replies come from the initial outreach. Don't over-follow-up.

Tools: Instantly.ai, lemlist, Smartlead, HeyReach.io, Expandi Group 

Step 5: The lead magnet IS the offer.
When they respond, show them exactly how you deliver. A free audit, a sample build, a teardown of their current setup. That's what closes.

Tools: Grain, Gong, Slack, Loom, HubSpot, Cal.com, Inc. 

Referrals got you here. Outbound gets you to 3 new clients in 30 days.

Want us to build this system for you? Book a call: https://lnkd.in/dCBwpVcF

Fernando Cao

Most sales leaders spend $400K+/year on SDRs doing work that AI handles in seconds. Here's what the new model looks like:

Traditionally, SDRs would manually build lists, find emails, verify contacts, research companies, and log activity in CRMs.

Tools (old model): ZoomInfo, Outreach, Salesloft, lemlist, Smartlead, Close, Pipedrive, Intercom 

Here's what the new model looks like:

1. AI sources leads matching your exact ICP criteria
2. Every lead gets verified, enriched, and scored automatically
3. Outreach goes out across pre-warmed inboxes with domain health monitoring
4. Your team only touches leads that reply

The entire pipeline from "define ICP" to "booked meeting" runs without a human touching it.

One SDR handles warm follow-ups and LinkedIn. AI handles everything else.

Tools (new model): Clay, Apollo, Instantly.ai, OpenAI, Anthropic, HeyReach.io 

This is the exact system that we use to book 60+ qualified meetings per month for our GTM agency.

Want to see if we can do the same for you? Book a call: https://lnkd.in/dCBwpVcF

Sales teams in 2026 don't need 10 SDRs anymore. AI replaced them. Here's the new structure:

The old sales team had 10 people doing what 3 can do today.

Here's what the new setup looks like:

SDR - Old Way vs New Way

• Old: 5-10 SDRs manually prospecting, building lists, writing emails, and booking calls. $80K/year each doing $15/hour tasks.

• New: One SDR handles LinkedIn outreach and warm follow-ups. AI does the rest - sourcing, enrichment, email finding, verification. All automated.

Tools: LinkedIn, HeyReach.io, Cal.com, Grain 

GTM Engineer - Old Way vs New Way

• Old: This role didn't exist. You had ops people duct-taping tools together. Half the stack didn't talk to each other.

• New: One GTM Engineer runs the entire outbound engine. Le Firecrawl ad sourcing, enrichment, email infrastructure, deliverability - managed from a single system. Thousands of leads processed per hour.

Tools: Anthropic, Supabase, Firecrawl, Serper, OpenRouter, Cal.com

AE - Old Way vs New Way

• Old: AEs split time between prospecting and closing. Half their day wasted on admin and lead research.
• New: AEs only take qualified meetings. Zero prospecting. Zero list building. Just selling.

Tools: Grain, Loom, Cal.com, LinkedIn 

That's the entire team. Three roles.

AI handles everything between "define ICP" and "take the meeting." It finds your buyers. Validates them against your ICP. Finds and verifies emails. Sends outreach across pre-warmed inboxes. Monitors domain health in real time.
Tools: Apify, Findymail, MillionVerifier, EmailBison, Zapmail.ai, ScaledMail 

60 qualified meetings booked last month for our agency. On autopilot.

In 2.5 years, we scaled our GTM agency to $3M ARR with this exact model. Want us to build it for you?

Book a call: https://lnkd.in/dCBwpVcF

Insane image from the new Anthropic labor market impact report.

But the real takeaway is a bit different from what most people are posting. It's not just that AI can do a lot.

It's that there's still a huge gap between what the tools can already handle and what companies have actually built into the way they work.

That's the part that matters, especially for B2B companies.

Most teams are still running marketing, sales, and client acquisition in a very manual way.

• People are still doing hours of research manually or basic GPT searches
• Still moving information between tools
• Still writing first drafts from scratch or with AI slop
• Still spending time on work that used to matter more than it does now

The companies that win are quietly rebuilding their workflows and company culture around it.

Marketing gets faster. Sales gets more focused on actual conversations.

Client acquisition stops feeling like brute force and starts feeling like true, scalable GTM infrastructure.

That's where the gap opens. And honestly, your competitor doesn't need to become some AI lab to get ahead.

They just need one better workflow. One tighter loop. One system that compounds faster than yours.

That alone can create a real edge over the next 12 months.

Want to build your AI-native GTM infrastructure so you don't get left behind? Let's chat:
https://lnkd.in/d67PR_CW

Absolute banger cooking up. Amazing hosts Romans Ivanovs and Kristina Radeva. Thank you so much for having us!! Can't wait to watch it

You built a $1-5M agency business. We make it run without you (with systems and AI).

Recorded an absolutely mind blowing conversation with Fernando C. and Hosun Chung about how they went from 50+ team to a lean and fully AI-native agency!!!

If there's anyone who's truly building for the future it's these guys!

Out soon. 😎 

Fun fact:

they generated 3 billion views for their clients and 1 billion for themselves with content marketing on X.

🚨 BREAKING: $31 BILLION wiped from IBM's market cap after Anthropic announced that Claude can streamline COBOL code

A 115-year-old company just had its worst stock day since 2000 because of a single AI blog post.

Anthropic showed that Claude Code can map COBOL dependencies, document workflows, and identify risks across thousands of files. Modernization timelines went from years to quarters.

I've heard this exact sentence from old school business leaders we speak with. "We've always done it this way." "Our relationships already bring us enough deal flow." "Why change what's working?"

And then they see what AI-native GTM actually looks like and the reaction is always the same.

I spoke to an M&A firm last week. They'd been relying on broker networks and paying 0.5-1% origination fees because "cold outreach doesn't work." We showed them how signal-based targeting actually finds sellers with intent, not just a list of names. Their exact words were "okay, this is real deal."

That's the disruption pattern playing out everywhere right now. Legacy moats don't hold when AI compresses the value chain. IBM found out in one trading session. Legacy consulting found out the same day.

The question is whether your go-to-market is next.

Companies building AI-native GTM infrastructure now are going to have an absurd compounding advantage over the next 12 months. Everyone still running the old playbook is going to feel it the same way IBM felt.

Want to build your AI-native GTM infrastructure so you don't get left behind? Let's chat: https://lnkd.in/d67PR_CW

taplio

The Battle

Mark MacLeod

Fernando C.

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Performance ScoreMark MacLeod's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreFernando C.'s LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Mark MacLeod

Fernando C.

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mark MacLeod's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreFernando C.'s LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMark MacLeod's LinkedIn Performance