Emir Atli

HockeyStack

The Command Center for B2B Revenue Teams. Backed YC, General Catalyst, Soma, and Madrona as well as founders of Citus, Lambda School, and Golden and the first investors of Rippling, Cruise, Ramp, Deel, Brex, Stripe, Scale AI, and others.

Co-Founder & CRO

Pavilion

Executive Member

Stanford University

Guest Lecturer

CRO, HockeyStack

Hiring across all functions in San Francisco. Send an email to emir@hockeystack.com with proof of extraordinary talent.

Co-founder and CRO of HockeyStack

I didn't grow up with a Stanford network, a Rolodex of investors, or a playbook for "how to make it in America." I landed in the U.S. at 18 years old, with an accent, some childhood acne, $3,000 in savings, and one thing that mattered more than any of it:

My dad believing we could pull it off.

He was literally HockeyStack's first customer.

As a kid, I watched him transition from teacher to entrepreneur and build his business from scratch. Years later, when I dropped out and moved to SF with nothing figured out, he backed me without hesitation.

Two weeks ago he flew from Turkey and joined us for our All Hands.

He watched dozens of people talk about why they love working here. He saw every exec give updates on the business. He got a sneak peek at the most ambitious project we've ever built.

That’s what I was most thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Someone helping me believe in myself.

Someone betting on me before anyone else.

Success is hard to define as a founder.

No matter what you achieve, there is more to do.

There is ALWAYS a problem, and you notice every little one.

If you are a founder reading this, take a deep breath and celebrate how far you have come.

And call that one person who believed in you on day 1 and tell them thank you.

For me, that person was my dad.

And I am forever grateful

Emir Atli (Hiring Chief of Staff)

CRO @ HockeyStack | AI Agents for Account Intelligence and Marketing Reporting

Seven months ago, our LinkedIn ads stopped working. We had scaled spend from $30k to $100k/mo and efficiency collapsed. Today, LinkedIn is generating $12M/year in pipeline at 5X ROAS. 👇

From 2023 to 2025, LinkedIn was our most reliable pipeline channel.

And then it broke.

As we increased spend, it became clear the whole ads program relied on broad messaging, unclear funnels, and fragmented campaign structure.
I knew if we didn’t fix it, growth would stall… and I’d be fired.

So we tore the entire thing down and rebuilt it from scratch.

Last week, our team spent 10 hours documenting everything we fixed and working on right now. 

We broke down:

- The old system that capped our scale
- What we fixed (and why it mattered)
- Our new 2026 foundation
- The full-funnel architecture we now run
- ABM vs Acquisition as separate engines
- Geo-first budgeting
- Conversion minimization (only high-intent actions)
- The creative strategy behind our top performers

All the exact frameworks we’re using to scale in 2026

Want the full playbook?

Comment “LINKEDIN” and I’ll DM you the system we use to generate $12M/yr in pipeline from LinkedIn ads.

(Make sure we’re connected!)

We spent the last month searching for the Top GTM Operators in tech. The ones we can all learn from. Today, we are presenting the AI x GTM 50 by HockeyStack:

2026 will be the first year that AI workflows will be democratized.

I am not talking about personalizing the first line of an outbound email.

I am talking about multi-step agents built on real reasoning on top of your entire GTM data.

We got bios, experiments they ran, and 2026 plans from everyone on the list and will ship a coffee table book in New Year.

Thanks everyone on the list for inspiring me and my team and congrats!

GTM 50

Like most CROs, I pride myself on not Understanding Marketing. I hate MQLs, think alignment is fake, and never follow up on "high-intent" leads. So when Marketing won’t stop Slacking me about a Pipeline Report that's due, I silence my phone and turn on my custom Ross Pomerantz Meditation Tape.

Last week, Marketing wanted to meet to talk about Marketing-Sales alignment.

I said sure, then faked a Wi-Fi outage and spent time outside doing yoga and working out.

Who has time for that when there is a Q2 revenue goal, 14 open Sales roles, and a VP Sales crying in the bathroom because his champion ghosted him on a $300K deal?

Marketing asked for feedback on a new content campaign.

I replied, “Love it,” then muted the Slack thread forever.

When Marketing begged me to follow up on a ‘hot’ lead who downloaded a case study, visited our website 61 times in 2 weeks, and has a hiring signal, I hit them with my standard response:

“If someone’s really that interested… they’ll find us. It’s not sales job to chase down leads.”

If you are a CRO in a similar situation, just turn on the new Corporate Bro Meditation Mixtape – CRO Edition™ by Ross Pomerantz (see video).

Take a deep breath

Let go of the demands of Marketing, “Where did these leads come from?”

Release the urge to say, “That’s not Pipeline!”

Picture a world where Attribution is Clear

And all your Pipeline Reports and Analysis can be built by HockeyStack’s AI Agent, Odin.

So you can focus on what you do best.

Yelling at the SDRs to send more emails.

As CRO, I automated my entire life with n8n. Yesterday at 1pm, The New York Times knocked on my door and woke me up. Turns out they want to learn how it’s possible I can be so successful and only work 4 hours a week. I spent the day with them to show them how:

Like all good CROs, I need my team to think I’m working 24/7.

That I’m the first online in the morning and the last to sign off.

And that’s what it looks like, from the outside…

But they don’t know about the 1,000 step n8n workflow I spent MONTHS building.

It runs all of HockeyStack’s GTM and my entire personal life.

It answers all my Slack, emails and phone calls

Sends the team motivational messages and 🔥🔥🔥 emojis while Odin (HockeyStack's AI Analyst) tells me what to do 

Joins my coaching sessions and says “yes, that was a great call”

Sends my girlfriend “I miss you texts” when I open up LinkedIn

And 1,000 other things!

If you want to learn why I’m the most efficent CRO alive, watch this video:

P.S. Comment WORKFLOW below and I’ll send you a copy of my 1000-step n8n workflow ($500,000 value).

As the CRO, my job is not to build reports. It’s to drink Americano’s from Blue Bottle and yell at the SDRs to send more emails. Unfortunately, I have a board meeting tomorrow and my “investors” want to see where all their money is going…

Like all busy CRO’s, I have a million things to do.

Just look at my typical daily schedule:

5am - wake up angry our CPO only worked 80 hours last week
515am - Full Murph Workout, plus 13 mile run (set new PR on Strava)
630am - cold plunge, red light therapy, hot stone massage
730am - Text Buğra to stop doing Rubik's Cubes and come to office
8am - Drink 3 Blue Bottle Americanos
9am - Standup with the Team, inspire the troops
10am-3pm - scroll LinkedIn, write posts, eat 7 almonds
3pm - 1am - sign contracts, roll calls, tell product about all the features I promised
1am - Turn on 8Sleep mattress, respond to 200 Slack message while watching How I Met Your Mother for the 8th time

Where in this busy schedule am I supposed to find the time to build QBR reports for our next board meetings???

It’s unrealistic.

Thank god, for Odin - HockeyStack’s new AI marketing analyst.

Answers all my questions and allows me to schedule my reports and insights for every Monday morning.

Watch me begging Lily Roosevelt to prepare my board meeting reports and analysis 👇

We just wrapped our Q3 Board Meeting. 79% of our business is now MM/ENT (vs 61% in January), we closed our highest TCV deal ever, and Fortune 100 companies are requesting demos. But we're also facing our most complex sales challenges yet.

Here's my honest Q3 breakdown:

The Good:

- Closed the highest TCV deal in HockeyStack history
- 38% of new business deals were multi-product (Marketing Intelligence + Account Intelligence)
- Enterprise shift is real: 79.1% MM/ENT vs 61% in January
- Inbound demo requests from Fortune 100 companies
- Hired incredible leaders across Sales, Engineering, RevOps, and Sales Engineering

The Bad:

- SMB deals are taking as long as MM deals but at lower ACV (we'll need to shut it down)
- Our sales process is getting more complicated with each feature launch and industry expansion
- We need to diversify our Marketing efforts and budget.
- Competitors are doubling down on FUD tactics in deals and content. We've had to clean up AI engines. We still win 85%+ of competitive deals.

What's Next:

We're entering the most transformative period in HockeyStack's history. Our biggest product launch ever is coming in January. 

I've been heads-down on a new content series. 

And we have a new announcements that will redefine how people think about our category.

More soon.

P.S. We’re hiring Content Marketing, Chief of Staff to CRO, AE, SDR, and bunch of other roles. Check our careers page.

WEEK 7: Ghosted
WEEK 52: $120K TCV deal closed in 4 days

All because our AE Tyler and SDR Team Lead John Basar did the one thing every Sales Team should be doing right now.

We worked this deal for 2 months earlier this year.

Everything looked great until it got shut down.

We didn’t have visibility into why. It sucked.

Then, their CMO and a Director left.

They hired 2 new execs. We learned previous leadership blocked the deal.

Luckily, our champions stayed.

John reached out and got them to re-engage, Tyler took the call and aligned on priorities, got the offer out, and signed in 4 days.

If you are looking to close the quarter out strong, do what Tyler did.

Go back to all closed lost opps that got stalled earlier this year and reach out with a very relevant message including updates you made to the product and any type of incentive you can offer.

I guarantee you will close a ton of deals vs going after net new accounts.

I am hiring a Chief of Staff. This is just not an EA with a fancy title. Our GTM team has 3x’d in size since January. We are growing in all segments, launching new products, and expanding into new regions. I need a Chief of Staff who will work 1-1 with me daily, keep the team organized and structured, and work on special projects. Ideal for someone with a consulting/investment banking + growth experience at Series B+.

This is the most high visibility role we have. If you want to be a founder or a GTM executive, this will give you visibility into how a GTM team functions at a high-growth startup while also working on special projects with the founders.

Also… another VERY important role: Hiring a Content Marketing Manager.

Our marketing org is content-first. We have commercials, podcasts, AI ads, blog posts, newsletter, case studies, daily LinkedIn posts, and more that we are planning. I need someone who will work on the end-to-end lifecyle of our new projects and focus on distribution.

Ideal candidate has experience in high-quality content and is OBSESSED with both the quality and reach of each piece of content.

BOTH ROLES IN SF, 5 days in person.

Email me at emir@hockeystack(.)com

Tomorrow we are hosting 18 GTM execs at the Sharks game in San Jose. It’ll be my first Hockey game, and I might be there with our new custom HockeyStack jerseys! DM me if you are around and want an invite!

P.S. Our designer team quit. Only took me 2 hours in Canva to make this.

As the Lead Sales Engineer, James helped close $50M TCV in 5 years. He’s the best SE I’ve ever seen. Here's what he says the ideal AE <> SE relationship looks like:

I was our SE for a long time before we hired James

Honestly, I didn't fully get it. The process never felt repeatable.

James changed that. He showed me what real partnership looks like.

The best AE/SE relationships aren't transactional. You know the dynamic: SE owns the demo, AE owns the slides. Everyone stays in their lane.

If you watched James work with our AEs, you wouldn't be able to tell who was the SE and who was the AE.

They are just two people obsessing over how to get the deal across the line.

Here’s how he explains it 👇

This Thanksgiving, we took our extra Q4 marketing budget and used it to support the SF-Marin Food Bank. No campaign. No angle. Just wanting to do something useful for a community that’s been so good to us. Grateful for the work they do every day and happy HockeyStack could help in a tiny way.

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving! 🦃

Hope you’ll join us in helping feed families in need this holiday, learn how here: https://lnkd.in/deghFYAn

Last year Marty Kausas was scaling Pylon fast — 60+ people, 6x revenue growth, and aggressive 15% MoM pipeline targets. BUT their GTM teams were flying blind.

They had one major problem: they couldn’t see which channels were actually driving pipeline.

After switching to HockeyStack, they were able to:

- Gain full-funnel visibility across LinkedIn organic, Google Ads, and all paid/owned channels
-  Uncover 10% of monthly pipeline  from Google Ads (previously hidden)
- Triple ad spend with confidence after identifying high-ROI campaigns
- Have Daily pipeline accountability through a single source of truth
- Save engineering + RevOps time by avoiding an internal attribution build
- Get AI insights from Odin (HockeyStack’s AI Analyst) surfaced underutilized channels automatically

Pylon went from reactive → proactive GTM.

Every marketing dollar was accountable to pipeline.

This is what modern GTM looks like.

Want to try HockeyStack?

Try our interactive demo here: https://lnkd.in/dKgHGxzv

GTM teams don’t fail because they lack data. They fail because the data doesn’t tell them what to do next. Most dashboards were built to explain the past, not shape the future. Grateful to partner with Brett Kobold and the team at CreatorIQ in their journey to turn their GTM data into decisions.

When Brett Kobold stepped in as Director of Operations and Analytics, he inherited a reporting stack that looked strong on paper but collapsed in execution. 

Building custom dashboards took 30+ hours, insights were trapped across outdated tools, and everything depended on backward-looking data. 

The outcome: low adoption, reactive decision-making, and missed chances to accelerate pipeline.

That's when Brett and the GTM team turned to HockeyStack. Ditching the fragmented, time-sucking builds, they unlocked:

- Real-time buyer behavior insights
- AI-powered hypothesis generation for testing and experimentation
- Unified attribution beyond last-touch to reveal the "why" behind performance
- Self-serve analytics that empower everyone

We are super pumped to continue our partnership and work with this great team!

We analyzed $150M in spend on Google Ads data from 198 B2B companies for our last HockeyStack Labs report. Here are top 4 insights for marketers:

1. Google is one of the only channels that scales and stays efficient.

Qualification and close rates barely move month to month. Every other channel swings wildly. Google behaves like infrastructure — not a campaign.

2. Mid-Market is the hidden winner.

Enterprise starts fast and cools off. SMB surges but struggles to close. Mid-Market? It converts consistently and delivers the highest incremental lift of any segment.

3. Social creates demand and Google captures it.

LinkedIn, Meta, YouTube all spark awareness but lose efficiency late in the funnel. Google shows up at the exact evaluation moments that precede revenue.

4. Incrementality > Attribution.

Deals with Google in the journey are up to 3× more likely to close. Not because of volume — but because search reliably accelerates deals across sales cycles.

Check out the full report here: https://lnkd.in/gTnrQSRh

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