How GTMfund Uses a Product, Media, and Community Flywheel to Drive Compounding Growth (Interview with VP of Marketing Sophie Buonassisi)

Introduction and Sophie's Role at GTMfund

Sophie Buonassisi

00:00And for everyone for being here to listen and connect. My name is Sophie Buonassisi. I'm the VP of marketing at gtmfund and gtmnow. Gtmfund is a early stage venture fund backed by 350 go to market expert operators who have been there, done that, if you will, to grow some of the greatest SaaS companies. GtmNow is the media brand at gtmfund, sharing insight and advice from that top 1% of operators in addition to our viewpoints from working

GTMNow Media Brand and Sales Hacker History

Sophie Buonassisi

00:34with over a couple 100 portfolio companies. And our media roots extend far beyond even the fun back to Sales Hacker, which is a brand our GP Max Ultra founded back in the day. He sold it to Outreach in 2018. And then last year, we actually reacquired it and rebranded it as gtmNow.

Overview of the Day's Agenda

Sophie Buonassisi

00:56So I'm gonna kick us off on the stage today. Unfortunately, you're gonna see a little bit more of me as I introduce our subsequent speakers. You're gonna hear from seven incredible speakers throughout the day, but we will get started with building and growing a or building a growth flywheel versus an engine, an example of product, media, and community.

Growth Engine vs. Growth Flywheel Defined

Sophie Buonassisi

01:18So in the next twenty minutes, I'm going to show you a flywheel versus an engine, breakdown of an actual example, so our example, our use case, and three key benefits of building a flywheel.

01:33Now a growth engine requires continuous input to generate growth, much like fueling a car unless you drive electric. It works, but it stops once you stop putting fuel in it. A growth flywheel, on the other hand, grows on its own once it gains momentum with different parts of the business reinforcing each other. And so once it's set in motion, it has this compounding growth effect and a much more sustainable growth impact.

GTMfund's Flywheel: Fund, Community, and Media

Sophie Buonassisi

02:07So it's self reinforcing and sustainable versus a growth engine that is linear and predictable. It's momentum driven versus more input driven, and it has a compounding effect versus more of a direct relationship.

02:24So this is our flywheel at gtmfund.fund, community, media. Now for a SaaS company, that would be the product. The fund is our product in this case, and they all reinforce each other. So all elements kind of work together. The fund is at the top of this flywheel simply because the flywheel is designed to support the fund. Everything we do is to support the fund and in SaaS company's case, everything would be to support the product.

How Each Flywheel Component Reinforces the Others

Sophie Buonassisi

02:57So if we break those down, a few examples of the pieces of the flywheel that come together. So the product fund in this case supports media by providing an industry landscape and visibility to be able to share that kind of insight through media. It brings limited partners, so go to market executives together to create a community.

03:20Media in turn helps the flywheel because it increases brand visibility, provides meaningful distribution for portfolio companies in a SaaS example, that's for yourselves or any of your partners in your ecosystem. And for us, it also provides a revenue source for programs for portfolio companies. Media also supports community in the flywheel because it helps amplify the thought leadership of anyone in that community to support their professional goals. In SaaS companies, that can be, you know, prospects in

03:54your funnel, that can be customers. And for us, it also serves as a revenue source for community events.

SaaS Examples: Pocus and Noble

Sophie Buonassisi

04:02And last but certainly not least is community. It supports our product product by providing built in go to market support for portfolio companies. On the media side, it helps by providing insight and expertise to share through that content and support the distribution. So there's a couple examples of SaaS companies doing this really well at a very early stage. Pocus is one example. You'll hear from their CTO later today. His name is Isaac. And they built media

04:31and product or media and community, pardon me, around their product. And it's been really effective as they bring this flywheel together. Another interesting example on the community side is a company called Noble, and they brought together an advisory board of their ICP. And that advisory board, their ICPR marketers, helps them with distribution, helps them overall get connected. It also informs their product road map, however, because they can easily get feedback. They set up a Slack channel.

05:01And the interesting thing about that is they've shaped their advisory board as a community, and then those members get the benefit of having that community together. Together, it creates a flywheel. And again, product, community, media coming together.

Flywheel Creates Compounding Growth

Sophie Buonassisi

05:21So they all work together to create compounded growth. Now in this graphic, the arrows are unidirectional, but the reality is they all feed into each other. So they are multidirectional, all supporting each other.

Key Benefit 1: Efficient Growth and Reduced CAC

Sophie Buonassisi

05:39So with a flywheel, growth is baked in, not bolted on.

05:47There's a few key benefits to doing so and thinking about this at a very early stage while you're building. Number one is efficient growth. So building a flywheel can help reduce your CAC in the long run as it creates more sustainable organic channels. It also just helps you overall do more with less. I know it sounds cliche. We say it all the time when we acquired the media business. Purely, it helps us do more with less.

06:14Fewer resources because you can lean into your distribution to get any kind of messaging feedback way quicker than otherwise. And word-of-mouth organic, So it's certainly helpful on that front also.

Key Benefit 2: Building a Competitive Moat

Sophie Buonassisi

06:30Second, it creates a competitive moat. So the recipe of having a flywheel creates differentiation. You could have the product, you could have a community, and you could have media working in silos, but when you connect them as a flywheel, they create a unique blend, almost like, I mean, a recipe. And the reality is in the startup world that we're often against larger companies with way more resources. So if you were slow cooking a recipe, for example,

07:04you'd have a large company. They've got expensive pans. They've got all the ingredients they can throw together no problem at a way quicker rate. But for startups, when you're layering in parts of the flywheel very intentionally, it's creating this recipe where each individual ingredient is layering on the next and extracting more flavor to create a unique blend that is harder for any company to replicate.

Key Benefit 3: Deeper Relationships and Higher LTV

Sophie Buonassisi

07:29And third, it helps build deeper relationships. So because we've got these long standing deep rooted connections, it does help in the long run for contributing to higher customer lifetime value in addition to any kind of top of funnel acquisition.

Compounding Momentum vs. Feeding the Fire

Sophie Buonassisi

07:49So any kind of pillars of the business, any growth strategies, the way we recommend always thinking about it and looking about it is, are you compounding momentum or are you constantly feeding the fire? And it's not to say that growth engines do not serve a purpose and a very important purpose. They certainly do, especially before brand is taking off. But everything that is being built can be viewed in the lens of how can this contribute or

08:20how are there potential synergies to be creating a flywheel or building towards creating a flywheel for acquisition, for retention, and for expansion.

Recap and Closing Remarks

Sophie Buonassisi

08:37So just a quick recap. We covered key differentiation between growth flywheel and a growth engine. A real kind of example, if you will, a flywheel for us, of course, that is fund. It's a little bit of a different unique use case, but the same things lend itself in terms of product, community, media, and three key benefits towards looking at everything that you do through the lens of how can I build a flywheel that is self sufficient?

09:04So efficient growth, competitive moat, and stronger long term relationships.

09:12Thank you. Thank you for listening. We've got seven fantastic speakers coming up. So again, unfortunately, you can't get rid of me that that easily. I will be hanging around to introduce them as the next one comes up in about seven minutes from now. So feel free to grab a quick drink of water, and then we'll be right back.