the gtm engineer How Warmly hit $5M ARR after 5 pivots and deep channel focus
Maximus Greenwald is the CEO and founder of Warmly, a $5M ARR GTM software tool. Warmly helps businesses identify, prioritize and follow up with their prospects by tracking and ranking intent signals ranging from website visits to third party competitor research.
Maximus left his job as a product manager at Google and decided to start a company. After multiple failed iterations, including a tinder for cofounders, and five pivots, Maximus and his team learned sales and marketing from scratch, eventually building out Warmly. Warmly has grown from zero to $5 million ARR in the last three years, and Maximus built the company completely in public for the last year and a half, sharing revenue numbers and strategic insights on LinkedIn.
In this podcast, we discuss:
* The right number of marketing channels to test each quarter and to build up to over time
* Why the team at Warmly structures their marketing teams horizontally, focused on different parts of the funnel, instead of vertically, focused on channels
* The rise of signal-based orchestration and the number of days you have to engage with an actively looking buyer before they’re lost
* Why Maximus chose to build Warmly in public and the benefits that have come with the decision
* The GTM software tool landscape and different ways of building motes within micro verticals
* Maximus's favorite growth hacks and tips for building a LinkedIn presence
Episode highlights:
* Maximus intentionally cut off all warm introductions to pressure test their cold outbound campaigns. This taught Warmly what sorts of LinkedIn messages cut through the noise so they could scale the team of SDRs.
* Warmly obsessively focuses on 1 channel per quarter while testing the waters on 1-2 others. This allows them to build conviction on which channels to cut out, leave the lights on, and double down in.
* Maximus believes AI will create a shift from channel-level specialists focused on things like SEO and paid ads to horizontal generalists who can context shift and hone in on different parts of the funnel (TOFU/MOFU/BOFU).
* Maximum decided to build Warmly in public by sharing revenue numbers and strategic insights monthly on LinkedIn. This has been beneficial to drive pipeline, keep employees aligned on the company strategy and to have fun going up against competitors in the ring of LinkedIn.
* Warmly has put together step by step guidance to evaluate data providers quality.
* There is still significant alpha to be had in most industries by capturing intent signals that indicate a company is in market and quickly following up with the relevant messaging.
Where to find Maximus:
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-greenwald
* Warmly
Transcript details:
(00:00) Intro
(02:44) The origin story of Warmly's multiple pivots
(07:22) The journey to $5M ARR and how Warmly obsesses on 1-2 channels per quarter
(12:34) How Warmly made LinkedIn work
(14:30) Horizontal vs vertical team structure within marketing
(21:54) Signal-based orchestration and how intent signal commoditization is playing out
(27:34) Making the most out of your warm lead follow up and targeting niche verticals
(33:30) The role of GTM engineering at Warmly
(35:30) Why Warmly builds in public and how it has impacted their business
(38:01) Maximus’s advice for growing your LinkedIn following
(39:12) How Maximus thinks about the GTM software space at large and evaluating different data vendors
(44:04) How Warmly uses a tennis analogy to explain how humans should interact with AI
(46:55) Underrated tools and the LinkedIn group chat growth hack
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegtmengineer.substack.com