Clay

Leading the business teams at Clay. 

We are building a complete GTM development environment where teams can turn any growth idea into reality. We serve more than 10,000 customers — including OpenAI, Canva, Google and Anthropic.

Co-Founder & Head of Operations

89 Christopher

89 Christopher is a $2M fund backed by Sequoia Capital and Bloomberg Beta. I started this fund with my best friend Nitin Gupta because we wanted to work together on something, thought this would be fun, and knew we could help founders.

Our fund is named after the address of our 300 sq. ft, 6th floor walkup, shoebox apartment we shared in New York when we were 22. It was in this apartment where we began our journeys working in the startup ecosystem. 

We can uniquely solve a handful of important problems all companies face: 

Compensation: Nitin built the benchmarking product at Pave and is the first call for dozens of founders when it comes to employee + executive compensation. 

GTM: Clay operates at the edge of all things GTM and having built all the business functions at Clay from scratch, I help founders with tactical advice on hiring, marketing, sales, team structure, planning, etc.

General Partner

Newfront

When Newfront merged with ABD, I managed the integration and developed the initial product roadmap/strategy post-merger for the employee benefits, 401k, and wholesale teams (>$100mm in revenue).

Director of Operations

When I was hired, Newfront was a fast-growing, tech-enabled insurance brokerage startup focused on P&C insurance. They wanted to expand to employee benefits, and I built and led that business unit from scratch to tens of millions in revenue.

GM, Employee Benefits/Health Insurance Business

Candid™

When I was hired, Candid had an e-commerce business and wanted to start a retail operation. My job was to build as many stores as possible, as quickly as possible. Of course, I had no experience in retail, site selection, real estate negotiations, store design or construction. But I learned quickly. 

We went from 0 to 27 retail stores in 20+ markets in 14 months, which drove more than 60% of Candid's revenue. Ultimately the business struggled with its unit economics, but I had a great time, grew a lot and met some amazing people.

Head of Expansion

Google

As many of you know, the Clinton campaign lost in 2016. I was surprised, confused and poor. I somehow got this job, via cold email per usual. I thought it would be a good fit because it was at the intersection of geopolitics which I knew and liked, and technology which I didn't know but thought I might like.

Long story short, it wasn't for me. I didn't feel challenged and struggled with the usual big company things. I used my extra time to intern at nights as a prep cook at the restaurant Dirt Candy for a few months, but then I met my now-wife and wanted to spend time with her :)

I was fortunate that my best friend and roommate was a VC and introduced me to the world of startups, which felt surprisingly similar to political campaigns. After the 2016 loss, I wanted to learn how businesses work and develop tangible skillsets. I knew that I learned best by doing, and felt a startup was the right place to do so.

Special Projects & Communications (Jigsaw @ Google)

Hillary for America

Traveled with Secretary Clinton throughout the general election — serving as a deputy to our traveling communications director, managing the 60+ traveling press corps and executing on communications crises as they arose (frequently!).

Traveling Press Aide

Served as the principal spokesman for Hillary Clinton during the South Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey primaries. Developed and executed a comprehensive press and earned media strategy — including TV, newspaper, and radio — for Clinton and high-profile surrogates across the four states.

Won South Carolina by 48 points
Won Florida by 31 points
Won Pennsylvania by 12 points
Won New Jersey by 27 points

Statewide Press Secretary

Special Assistant to Communications Director

Office of Hillary Rodham Clinton

When I was 18 I was singularly focused on politics and passionate about Hillary Clinton. I wanted to work for her, so I cold emailed her top advisor 10 times. Eventually he responded and begrudgingly agreed to meet for coffee. But before he went downstairs, he asked his assistant to interrupt in 5 minutes because he correctly diagnosed that I was "a crazy kid." In any event, the first 5 minutes went so well that I got the job. To this day, working for Hillary Clinton was one of the great adventures of my life.

Communications

I asked our Head of Finance if I could spend $60,000 to take five enterprise CRO prospects to the Super Bowl. He did the ROI math and it's not looking good for me.

Karan Parekh actually walked me through the numbers on camera - deal size requirements, probability lift benchmarks, estimated ROI, and why our bet at the US Open was 10x smarter.

Some of what we get into:
- How to calculate the real cost per ticket 
- Why a 15-20% increase in close probability on even $400k ACV deals doesn't justify the spend
- My land-and-expand counterargument (which I thought would win him over)
- Our portfolio approach to event marketing budgets and when we measure individual bets vs signal for scaling

In the end, Karan gives a surprising reason why even if all five CROs convert, the Super Bowl isn't worth the $.

This type of conversation happens every day at Clay. It's how we balance making aggressive creative bets with financial discipline. Whether we're debating a $5k executive dinner or 50-yard-line seats at the most expensive sporting event on earth, Karan's reasoning is keeping us honest.

Yes, he just killed my Super Bowl dreams. But he is (probably) right!

P.S. My schedule just freed up for February 8th, 2026. If anyone is looking for a +1 to the Super Bowl, DM me.

P.P.S. Any other marketing questions you want us to debate? Drop them below👇

Varun Anand

This year Clay invested over $1m in billboards.

That kind of marketing spend without clear ROI makes finance people nervous.

But we make a TON of marketing bets like this at Clay, big and small. So here's a look into how Karan Parekh, our Head of Finance, guides our marketing motion without demanding perfect attribution and killing our creativity.

Some of what we cover:
- How brand and performance marketing are linked and why B2B companies invest in brand too late 
- How we use attribution modeling, customer-defined attribution, and incrementality analysis to measure the unmeasurable 
- What marketing works as you move from Series A to scale-up to public company (and why Figma nailed it) 
- Guerilla marketing tactics from Clay's early pre-PMF days

At the end, we share the strategy behind our recent billboard campaign and real examples of how we're measuring impact and ROI. 

Karan is brilliant and I'm very excited for more of the world to get to know him. Anything you want us to discuss next? Let us know! 👇

P.S. We have no idea the ROI of this video.

Next week I am kicking off a 3 week European tour.

Why? Because Clay is expanding to Europe!

This is a MASSIVE market opportunity for us. Europe is already 20% of our revenue and we only have a tiny but mighty team on the ground. That changes now. We are actively hiring for sales, success and support roles in London.

On this trip, I'll be hanging with users in every city, as well as speaking at Web Summit, Slush, and SaaStr AI, and meeting with founders and GTM teams at companies like Lovable, Legora, Miro and Granola. 

Here's my tour schedule:

- Lisbon (11/12 - 11/13)
- Amsterdam (11/14 - 11/15)
- Helsinki (11/19)
- Stockholm (11/20 - 11/23)
- London (11/25 - 12/2)

I am HYPED about connecting with Clay [Clubs] and kickstarting our European expansion. I'll be posting updates and learnings along the way, with plenty of selfies.

I'm hosting or attending 11 public events, I would love to meet you there.

Link to register (and full event schedule) in the comments. 👇

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On Saturday I got to hang with two of the most exciting AI founders in Europe - Anton Osika (Lovable)and Max Junestrand (Legora). 

People love to underestimate the tech scene in Europe. But after two weeks on the ground and doing multiple firesides with them both, I can tell you that is a BIG mistake. The talent is top notch, the ambition is booming and the energy is on fire.

clay-run

Co-Founder @ Clay

Karan told me Clay was a terrible idea and I shouldn't work on it. Two years later, he quit his dream job to become our Head of Finance. The night before he accepted his offer, we shared a bed and bonded till 3am. He was the last invite to my wedding. There were three emotional dinners every time he failed to give his notice. This is the story of how I recruited him:

In 2023, Karan had the perfect setup as a hedge fund manager. 9-5 hours, incredible pay, unbelievable culture and returns. And I was looking for the smartest person with a financial skillset who makes every decision better.

In this video, we tell the full story of how we found that person in Karan:

- Why I had him build our financial model as a "favor" when we didn't even know if our Stripe data was revenue or bookings
- The 3 times he said he'd give notice and couldn't pull the trigger (and the 3 intervention dinners I orchestrated with different teammates)
- What happened the night he slept over at my house before attempt #4 - shared bed, emotional wreck, late night pillow talk

I wanted to share how messy, long and emotional exec recruiting processes can be. And also show how wonderful they can feel when you get it right. The trust we have makes everything easier and faster, and it is SO MUCH FUN to work together. Even when we disagree, we resolve conflict almost instantly. I hope you see that energy in these videos, and find this for yourself too!

At Clay [Club] Amsterdam, a top-secret yacht broker to the rich and famous showed me a wild Clay use case I've never seen. He can't be in this video for privacy reasons. But here's how it works:

Use Case #1: Know Your Customer

Imagine you're shopping for yachts. You're perusing, hanging out, drinking champagne, acting rich. And then you go to the broker and say, "I'm interested." But he doesn't know you from Adam. You could be anyone off the street. Are you even wearing a Rolex? Is that a Loro Piana sweater or Old Navy? How does he know you're worth his time?

Well, this is where Clay comes in. You provide brief info through a web form, which kicks off a Clay workflow to find unique data points trying to answer one question: are you going to buy a yacht?

Data points like: What's your net worth? Where do you live? How close is your address to a marina? What are the house prices in your area? What's the average income in your area? What companies did you work for? Do you sit on any boards? Does your region have a boating culture?

Then they're connecting it back to the CRM to see if there are any mutual connections and assigning a lead score. Finally, they WhatsApp the salesperson within seconds to share whether this stranger is a qualified lead.

Use Case #2: Newfound Wealth Signals

Then they built signals to catch people right when they get rich:

- Company IPOs
- Acquisition events (for employees who just cashed out)
- Estate/trust unlocks that become public
- News mentions
- Even lottery winners

The moment these triggers fire, they're in the inbox selling yachts. 

Use Case #3: ABM for Yacht Teams

Turns out yachting is a B2B industry. Call it YaaS (Yachting-as-a-Service). News to me too.

Super yachts and mega yachts... buy smaller yachts. One for groceries. One for diving. One for fishing. Some owners have a yacht in the Mediterranean and another in the Adriatic.

So they're running ClayBM campaigns on yacht teams—targeting captains, first mates, the yacht support team—to sell them MORE yachts. Your yacht needs a yacht, apparently.

I learned all of this in 30 minutes at Clay [Club] Amsterdam from a guy who couldn't be on camera because his buyers are royal families and oil barons. Very hush hush!

Pretty cool to find unexpected Clay use cases in the most niche industries!

P.S. Thank you to Patrick -- co-founder of Claygency The Kiln and more importantly my EuroTour companion -- for stepping in and talking this through with me :-)

The people have spoken. Clay is coming to Paris! We're adding a late-breaking stop to the Euro Tour.

We'll be taking the Chunnel next week from London to Paris, which I thought for the longest time had windows like an aquarium to see the fishies.

The momentum from this tour has been more exciting than I could have imagined. I just toured offices in central London yesterday. We're going all in!

Come join us for two more exciting events in Paris. First, I'm talking about GTM in the Age of AI with Gabriel at Dust, and then hanging with the Clay [Club] to talk Top GTM Trends for 2026 with our hosts Jérémy Grandillon and Bill Stathopoulos.

Would love to meet you in person!

Register in the comments. 👇

P.S. Some people have been commenting that our Fireside Chats have been "unhinged" and "the most fun I could have had on a Saturday at noon". Come see what all the fuss is about!

I just spent a few hours in Amsterdam with my friend Salar, CEO of Monumental. They're building AI-powered robots and software that autonomously construct masonry walls on-site. And we realized something crazy: Clay and Monumental have the same go-to-market motion. 

When Salar started, everyone told him construction tech doesn't work. His words, not mine. But in a way they were right. Contractors don't have budget for tech.

So, instead of building their GTM around selling contractors AI robots and fancy software, they sold brick walls. 

Contractors already have budgets for brick walls and market pricing already exists. Monumental just shows up with robots instead of masons. If the tech fails? They bring in human masons, eat the cost, and still deliver the wall.

We do the same thing at Clay.

Early on, we'd pitch the dream to CROs and CMOs on all the crazy AI automation Clay could do. We were faced with skepticism. So instead we led with selling data.

These GTM leaders needed data, they already had pre-allocated budget, and we could improve their data quality and prove it quantitatively. Then once we did that, we showed them all the incredible things Clay could do. We showed them our version of robots that can lay bricks. 

Two completely different industries with the same playbook.

With AI it's easy to get caught up selling the dream. And if you don't hit those high expectations, you're setting everyone up for disappointment. Better to start with a wedge for a pre-existing problem and budget, earn trust with quick wins, and build the magic from there.

Last week in Helsinki I went ice dipping in the Baltic Sea with the founders of Google Maps (Lars Rasmussen) and Dust (Gabriel Hubert). I lasted all of 5 seconds. It was fun, it was invigorating, and has absolutely zero relevance to any of you but I wanted to bring you in on this energy!!

P.S. I know some think Clay takes our marketing a bit too far on here, but we draw the line at nipples on LinkedIn. So Peter had to get creative with this edit.

Yesterday I got to hang with Clay [Club] London. Over 120 people showed up and it was an epic night. I remember going to the first London [Club] event 18 months ago and it's surreal to see how much the community has grown! But people were not expecting my answer to the first question:

"What are the best plays to run right now?"

I think that's the wrong question to ask. One I hear all the time. And if you're thinking what's the next tactic, you're probably going to lose. 

What you really need is a core insight into your audience, into your customer, something unique. Tactics aren't going to move the needle. They're just going to give you a temporary advantage, and that's not what you need at the early stage.

The INSIGHT is what you really need.

Tactics are what SDRs do at scaled companies to keep building pipeline. One example from Bill Stathopoulos: messaging people in their own language, like Greek copy and Greek signatures for Greek companies. 

What early-stage startups need to do is move the needle.

So let me give you a few examples from the event:

One person was selling to programmatic advertisers. "I don't know how to reach them. What tactic can I do?" I asked where they live. He said, "Well, they don't live anywhere actually. They go to one conference a year, they don't have communities, they're not on WhatsApp groups."

I said, you're telling me that these people, all working in the same profession, don't meet anywhere? Well, that is an opportunity for you to create your own community. Make that a brand moment. Leverage that to build community, get all of them in it and build credibility so you can sell to them.

Derek Feinman, our real estate broker, is in a commoditized industry, but he helps Clay find lots of new customers. He's competing on a vertical that no other real estate brokerages are competing on to win our business. 

What is that insight for you?

For us, we're always doing new things. My LinkedIn presence is something that's working. It's very authentic to us. It's a unique insight that's creating a lot of resonance and getting a lot of traction.

There's so much discourse on LinkedIn about plays. What's the newest play? What's the next best thing?

But as Patrick Spychalski said: if a play works for somebody else, it actually shouldn't work for you. Every play should be so niche and so tailored to your offer and your audience that unless somebody operates in the exact same space as you, there's no chance the play truly resonates.

It has to come from your own creativity. It's not going to come from a playbook that's published in a lead magnet.

WHAT A DAY AT SLUSH! Yesterday we did some LIVE growth hacking on stage with my dear friends Eileen O'Mara (CRO of Stripe and happy customer!), Luciana Lixandru (Sequoia) and Jane Alexander (CapitalG). 

Let me share one with you. One SaaS founder is building a product to turn WhatsApp messages into a CRM. His problem was they're getting lots of leads but people aren't showing up for demos. What does that scream to me? He's got an ICP problem! Those people don't truly have pain! If they did, they wouldn't be ghosting him.

Well who could be his customers? It's likely small businesses. I suggested he use Clay and prospect local companies with Google Maps, scrape their websites to see if they use WhatsApp, and then check their Google and Yelp reviews for people who are complaining about long response times. Have that table run on a schedule and reach out to the owner minutes after the review gets posted. I promise you that person will show up to a demo!

That was a lot of fun to do on the hottest tech stage in Europe, trying to solve real growth problems for founders figuring out their product-market-fit. 

Now I'm off to Stockholm to continue my European Tour. 

Excited to meet the teams at Lovable,  Legora, and hangout with the local Clay [Club]. If you want to meet up, register for the Stockholm events (some later today!) in the comments. 👇

Just had a very fun fireside chat with the RevOps, revenue marketing and product marketing teams at Adyen, the $43b payments juggernaut based in Amsterdam and very happy Clay customer :-) 

We had a great hour-long conversation on a range of topics including the Clay journey, GTM engineering, our culture, marketing ROI, and the future of GTM. 

But certain questions stood out. Why? Because I hear some variation in every event I host for startup teams across Europe and the US. Questions like: How do org structures evolve in AI? What skills should ICs be prioritizing in the age of AI?What are the common denominator qualities that the cutting edge teams all share?

Here's how we think about it:

We see the best GTME teams operating like product and engineering orgs. They iterate and experiment quickly, power through a queue of tickets, and rigorously automate through every revenue function. Teams look less like assembly lines now and more like GTM engineers building systems that help sellers focus on selling.

The best teams are increasingly technical and use Clay and other tools to build sophisticated workflows that automate QBR deck creation, build event invite systems, and weaponize conversational data into ABM, Salesforce updates and prep notes. This shift matches with the tide we see moving to more flexible data warehouses as the system of record, with GTMEs orchestrating many workflows from there through Clay. 

Massive thank you Evelina Petrova-op den Kelder for hosting! We're so happy to be a partner to you and excited to keep working together.

Wow Lisbon what a whirlwind! Two panels at Web Summit, an amazing dinner with our friends at Coverflex and an epic cruise with Clay [Club] Lisbon. 

I'm always so struck by the community we are building. I met so many people on the cruise who have forged deep friendships through the Clay [Clubs]. We can take Reyhan Khan as an example, who's made lifelong friends with Rafael Guerreiro 🚀 and Olivier 🧪 Tytgat through this community. 

At the Coverflex dinner, I finally was able to meet Pedro Azevedo who has been pushing the boundaries of what's possible in Clay for years. I had such great convos with Luis from Amplemarket about what we're excited about in GTM tech, Ollie Cheal from 1Password on the latest security practices, and Norberto Guimaraes a legend who pushed me on authentic marketing and the limits of our jobs data. 

We had such a good time that when I left at 12:30am, half the folks were still hanging! Big thank you to Miguel Santo Amaro 🇵🇹🇮🇹🇪🇸 for gathering this special group.

Just got to Amsterdam, where we have another [Club] event, a fireside with Andrey from Miro and lots of meetings with our customers here :-) 

P.S. Thank you to Andrew Johnson for capturing the this picture of my custom Clay sneakers.

LTV to CAC. Two acronyms that dominate marketers' mindshare. It's the sacred metric of SaaS that tells you if your marketing dollars are working. Get to a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio and you're crushing it. Drop below that and you're in trouble. But is that really true? Should it be THE measuring stick for marketers?

I just sat down with our Head of Finance Karan Parekh to walk through why optimizing for LTV:CAC can actually hurt your business (and what metric Clay prioritizes).

Here's a bit of what we cover:

- Why projecting customer value 5 years out is "garbage in, garbage out" (you don't know who'll be president, let alone if your product will still exist)
- How historical retention data blinds you to innovation cycles that destroy LTV assumptions
- How high LTV:CAC ratios create a deeper J-curve that constantly consumes cash as you grow
- Why Clay prioritizes Year 1 Gross Profit:CAC (aiming for 80% payback)
- What to do when your year one economics suck

At the end of the day, LTV:CAC is helpful context. But if you're spending cash based on three years of projected value, you're putting yourself at extreme risk if the world changes. 

Before you finalize your 2026 Q1 marketing budget, watch this 👇

P.S. What's the one 'sacred' marketing metric you think most people get wrong?

Had two great sessions yesterday. One on the main stage at SaaStr with Amelia Lerutte and then with Paul Adams at Intercom. One question kept coming up: what is behind all our crazy marketing, like Kung Fu and blunt rolling videos!?

Well it comes down to our people of course. And their unique backgrounds that makes the creative magic.

Let's start with Peter Kang, who runs Clay's rapidly-growing social media presence. Peter was an investment banking analyst at Barclays and worked in finance at Clubhouse. But on the side he ran a TikTok about SPREADSHEETS with 200k followers!! How rare is it to find someone with an analytical mindset but a proven creative track record?!

And then there's the inimitable Jessica Jin, our chief schemer in permanence. If you've seen something crazy we've done on LinkedIn, it was probably her brainchild. I can't go into too much detail about her background or LinkedIn will suppress this post. But if you're curious you can look up my past posts on her. The short safe story is that she organized absolutely hilarious nationwide protests and had no B2B tech experience before her scheming began at Clay. But political organizing is marketing.

This is the whole point of the interview process. Learn everything you can about someone and see how you can translate their skills to what you need. That's where the real alpha is in hiring.

Just arrived in Paris today and absolutely pumped to wrap up the EuroTour with baguettes and croissants! 🥐

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