You’ve heard the promise of Clay. You’ve seen how GTM teams from Rippling, Vanta, OpenAI, Verkada and more use it to run rapid growth-related experiments (E.g. ABM, automated outbound), increase operational efficiency through data enrichments & consolidate tech stacks.

Teams jump into implementing Clay due to these promises, and end up making one of these mistakes:

1. Expensive full-time hire
Commit to a full-time ‘GTM engineer’ at $120K USD++, plus standard benefits, taxes, overhead, and a 2–3 month onboarding cycle. 

There are cases where this works, the reality is that most fail.  If you’ve made a high-cost hire, there’s pressure to deliver results fast. 

That pressure kills the space needed to iterate & experiment, which is what implementing Clay is about.

2. Try to do everything internally
Depending on your current role or who you pass Clay to, the person already has a full workload: daily operations, meetings, reporting, campaigns, requests from sales, and internal priorities. 

Getting Clay to work isn’t the main job, so it gets pushed to the side. 

Before you know it, Clay becomes another unused subscription in your tech stack, full of half-built tables, unfinished workflows, and unrealized potential.

3. Outsource to the wrong person
Maybe it’s an outbound-focused Clay-Agency that doesn’t understand your broader GTM systems.

Maybe it’s someone who knows Clay’s interface well, but has never worked in a real B2B or SaaS company, unable to translate Clay workflows to drive revenue or operational efficiency.

Ultimately, you end up back at square one: wasted time, wasted energy, and wasted money.

DM me 'Clay' and let's start chatting about how we eliminate these costly mistakes!

Spent the final two weeks of 2025 in Japan, is it too late to do reflection posts on LinkedIn? 😂 

That being said, I truly went offline for about 95% of the time, which was ironically, something that I wasn't able to do much in my previous corporate sales roles. 

The tail end of 2025 was also when I hit my big 3. You've probably heard the saying: "Your twenties are for learning, your thirties are for earning." 

I like to think that despite two years of my 20s being given to serving in the army, I've spent the rest of my twenties embracing experimentation, trying new things, stepping into unknowns, building skills across different domains.

I've done sales, hosted a podcast, built communities, started my own business, and probably many other things in between. 

And the 'learning' route is easy to preach, not as easy to execute. Becayse learning also means constantly stepping into the unknown, and often going against what everyone around you considers "the safe path." 

In Singapore especially, where stability is deeply valued, choosing uncertainty has been tough for me at times. 

The trade-offs are real. Would I have more money in my bank if I'd stayed on as a corporate sales rep? For sure. I think about that a lot actually. But would I have enjoyed it in the long run? Unlikely.

But there's also been unexpected surprises in being naive at times. Sometimes not knowing all the reasons why something might not work is exactly what allows me to first take that steps.

Now, as I enter my thirties, I'm naturally starting to think more long-term about what I actually want to build. Will I still be naive and maintain that experimentation mindset? I'm sure that will never change. 

But I'm looking forward to applying a tint of maturity into everything I do, being more intentional about the things I create and the impact they have.

Here's to the thirties 🥂

Asher Chua

GTM Engineer & Official Clay.com Solution Partner | Building GTM systems for the AI Era

To my network of GTM Engineers, and growth-oriented individuals, this is for you!

During my time working with the Parasol team, I've seen first-hand how their work directly impacts the clients they work with. 

As per their tagline - "We don't just advise - we run your deals and scale your revenue."

If there's a GTM or revenue problem or gap, Parasol solves it for their clients. You're talking from top of the funnel, all the way to the bottom of the funnel.

The team is led by two powerhouse Joe Carbonaro and Josh Irwin, whom I've had the amazing opportunity to work with for the past few months. 

And due to upcoming personal changes, I'm officially helping them to find my replacement! (Role is fully remote!)

Here's what this role really needs: Someone with agency. Someone who doesn't wait to be told what to do, who sees what needs to happen and makes it happen.

Yes, you need the technical chops - building systems, orchestrating data, getting the right message to the right person at the right time. That's table stakes.

But here's the thing: this role goes deeper than execution. You'll be involved in the strategic side too. Figuring out who to target. What to say. How the final copy should actually land. You're not just building the engine - you're helping design the route, working closely with the likes of the dependable Blair Sherman.

If you're someone who gets energized by working with different types of clients, who thinks both technically AND strategically, and who wants to have real input on how GTM actually works (not just how it runs), check out the job posting in the comments below for more information and next steps!

"We want a GTM Engineer to build a highly profitable and effective GTM Engine'

This is the 'dream' of founders and GTM leaders I've spoke with, who've discovered the GTM engineering function. 

And look, I love the concept. But it's wildly misunderstood.

Too many people think a GTM engineer can walk in and build "the engine" in 1-2 weeks with some tools. That's not how this works.

I think about automotive companies building an engine, it takes months, sometimes years of experimentation and testing. To think you can do this in days or weeks in the B2B world? That can be naive.

Instead, my personal thoughts is that it starts with understanding the stage your company is in. Because your stage dictates how you should even think or approach GTM engineering.

Stage 1: Pre-PMF / Pre-Message-Market Fit - Treat GTM engineering as an experiment lab.
- You don't know who your ICP is yet. You're not even sure which pain points resonate. So use it to rapidly build lists across different industries, verticals, personas. Test messaging variations fast. See what sticks.
- The goal isn't leads. It's validating assumptions. The faster you can test hypotheses, the faster you find what actually works.

Stage 2: You've Found PMF, Now You Need Scale - Treat GTM engineering as a way to scale efficiently.
- You know what works. You've probably been doing much of this manually or with lots of headcount, and it's working. But you're hitting headcount limits, or costs is rising, and you want more revenue per person.
- This is where you automate those proven manual processes. But here's the key: keep a human in the loop, at least initially. Don't just flip a switch and hope. - Verify the output matches what you'd do manually before you fully let go.

Stage 3: Mature Company, Multiple Systems - Treat GTM engineering as backend infrastructure.
- You've got systems everywhere. Processes stacked on processes. At this stage, a GTM engineer is basically your backend architect for revenue operations.
- Break everything down into discrete workloads. Inbound lead enrichment? That's one system. Outbound sequencing? Another system. Design each one properly. Build them one by one. Make them talk to each other reliably.

Understanding which stage you're at changes how you approach this brand new term called 'GTM Engineering'.

If you're early-stage and trying to build a full engine? You're wasting time and resources on complexity you don't need yet. Build small experiments instead. They're faster, cheaper, and actually match where you are.

Notice something? I didn't mention tools once until now. That's intentional.

Clay or other platforms are just tools at the end of the day. They amplify your approach. They don't create it.

The mindset comes first. Always.

Being in the GTM engineering space myself and working with various clients, I think (And this is very much my personal opinion)...

The mark of someone who can do well in this space, is the person who doesn't start with "What template should I use?" or "what buttons should I press to get that outcome?.

They start with "What's the problem we're solving?", and dive into the processes and structure around things.

Take Colm Gath 🥾, one of the students I've been coaching as part of my partnership with Clay Bootcamp 🥾.

Our sessions look like this:
- We discuss the general problem we are trying to solve
- Have multiple 'Post-It Notes' in Miro
- We discuss the thinking behind different approaches
- We talk through enrichment strategies and integration choices

But always: problem first, process second, tools third

Here's what I think is amazing - We'll have these deep conversations about an approach. 

Then the next session, or sometimes even the session after - Colm shows up with "Hey, I've tried it, I've had some good results. Now here's my next question..."

That execution speed comes from understanding the WHY before jumping to the HOW.

This is rare. Most people want the template, the recipe, the copy-paste solution. Colm's building the mental models that work across any tool, any client, any situation.

Anybody lucky enough to work with someone who thinks this way is going to see the difference immediately!

📷 Here's one from our recent session! Just look at the amount of post-it-notes we have 😂

FASTEST way to move marketing data ⏳ | Host of the #TheRevenueJourney Podcast 🎙️

World’s Fastest GTME 🏃‍♂️ | Olympic Sprinting Aspirant | Clay • n8n • HubSpot

Clay Bootcamp 🥾

Colm Gath

The recent conversation around the state of GTM Engineering between Kellen Casebeer and 🚀 Benjamin Reed's articulated something I've been observing and experiencing, but hadn't quite put into words! (Link in the comments)

For a long time, I took pride in being the person who knew Clay inside out. "I can build X enrichment. I can automate Y workflow. I can integrate Z." 

But the truth is, given enough time, most people can learn these tools. Clay isn't Salesforce or some legacy ERP - the technical barrier isn't as high as we sometimes make it out to be. 

So, you get a bunch of 'GTM Engineers' that know Clay, and GTM Engineers are out there working different companies.

But why is there such as gap when it comes to customer experience?

'Creator' vs 'Button Clickers' were the words they used.

Clients or companies pay for the ability to:
- Identify what problem actually needs solving
- Design a strategy that fits their stage and context
- Map out the frameworks and steps to get there
- Then yes, implement it (This is the button clicking step)

The thing is, most 'GTM Engineers' really only know how to click buttons within Clay. They don't think about the steps before that.

But on the other end, ideas are everywhere. Everyone has a "we should do this" moment. Giving and shouting ideas is the easy part, because AI seems to be able to do 'everything'.

But if you are stuck in just generating 'ideas', you are ignoring the fact that you have to give AI constraints, context, and time to train time.

Therefore, there is a gap in the middle - the people who can generate the ideas, think through the frameworks, sequence the steps.

If you can execute? That's a bonus. But without the strategic thinking and framework design, you will stay as a button clicker.

We're only at the start of 2026, and all the hype around Claude Code, n8n and agentic workflows being the next step after Clay has been brought from 2025.

Yes, I'm deep in the weeds with learning these things myself, and honestly, even I'm overwhelmed. 

But a recent coaching I did with a client reminded me of something: 90-95% of teams aren't even there yet. These words and technologies we use, are still very much foreign to them. 

They've heard of the name, that's it. They don't even understand how these things work.

This client I worked with for example, had a "simple" problem:

- They had a CSV of just company names (thousands of them)
- They needed to find domains
- Then LinkedIn profiles
- Then contacts with specific titles
- Then email addresses

No AI agents. No complex workflows. Just Clay and some basic enrichment and prompts.

For power users, this is child's play. 

But for these businesses who are only getting into tools like Clay and utilising AI for the first time? Massive leap in their outbound efficiency.

Here's the thing though: In actual business contexts, you work with what the client already has. Or you recommend something small and manageable.

Because to many clients? Just installing Clay is a big step. Just getting buy-in for a new tool is a project in itself.

The bleeding-edge stuff is cool. I love experimenting with it. But when working with clients, I've learnt that I'm not there to show off the latest tech (Unless they are really advanced and have the infrastructure to support it of course)

Ultimately, we're there to drive business results.

The questions comes back to...
- What am I actually trying to achieve?
- What's the fastest path to get there with the tools available?

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