Dan Vetras

The latest episode is live, and this one is fantastic. I sat down with Eric Gilpin, President, GTM of G2, a leader who’s spent over two decades scaling teams, navigating change, and driving growth in some of the most competitive technology markets in the world. What makes Eric stand out is how he thinks about people, performance, and presence. In this conversation we went beyond tactics and hit on: Being strong at work without losing your presence at home Work demands a lot. But the cost of absence, in relationships, in moments, in memory, isn’t on any spreadsheet. Why alignment with your spouse matters more than “balance” It’s not a 50/50 scorecard, it’s shared intention and honesty about what really matters. What “being present” requires, not just physically there, but mentally and emotionally engaged, even when everything else claws for your attention. The real talk on AI Will AI replace us? Maybe parts of what we do. But the parts of leadership no model can replicate are exactly what matter most going forward. Listening to understand, not to respond That might be the most underrated leadership skill in the age of speed. This episode is about the humanity beneath the headlines and what leaders need to actually thrive in the chaos of work, tech, and life. If you’re thinking about the future of work, AI, or how to show up better in the places that matter most, give this one a listen. 🎧 Youtube: https://lnkd.in/e4nrDEAu

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Many founders wait too long to hire a CFO. Here's when you actually need one. On the latest episode of The "Founder & CEO" Podcast, Michael Viscuso and I chat with Gordon Pothier and Steve Webber—two veteran CFOs with decades of experience helping companies scale. We dive deep into: - How a CFO drives growth beyond just keeping the books - When to bring a CFO on board (hint: earlier than most founders think) - What makes a powerful CEO-CFO partnership work - The strategic skills every growing company needs from their finance leader Whether you're bootstrapping your first startup or scaling past Series B, this conversation is packed with insights on finding the right finance partner for your business. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/g2fw7v9g #CFO #Founders #Startups #Leadership #Podcast #ScalingBusinesses

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In Formula 1, the fastest car doesn't always win. Smart drivers know how to tuck into the slipstream (tailwinds) of a competitor - reduce drag, conserve energy then slingshot ahead at exactly the right moment. Its not luck - its aerodynamics + timing. So how do we do this in B2B land? I've signed up for Craig Rosenberg's session 👇 "Engineering Tailwinds. The GTM Playbook for Winning in Hard Markets". Do hard things (or get other people to do them for you), more easily. Hit repeat. (...that's what i'm hoping to learn 😉). Join us!

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ROI is not just for assessing certain projects or investments. You should be using it to assess your partners and the value they bring to your business as well. #unipacproducts #ROI #distribution #meat&poultry #value

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DANIEL LURIE: We have to get competitive on the tax front… Whether you're in San Francisco or California — we're never going to win on taxes. But we've got to be in the ballpark, because we win on everything else. If we have clean & safe streets, if we get our behavioral health crisis under control, if we allow housing to get built more quickly and create more affordable housing… then businesses want to be here. Look at [OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks]. The list goes on and on… Every mayor on the planet would love to have the business infrastructure and ecosystem that we have here in San Francisco. There's no better place. Now, [on taxes] we have (once again) lost our way. You know, we can raise taxes all we want, but a 30% tax rate on zero, (if everybody leaves four miles to the south) is zero. So we forgot that… [Now] we have a board of supervisors that gets it; you have a mayor that gets that. We're going to get competitive. But it first starts with clean & safe streets, and then I think business is going to come rushing back. They already are. We won Databricks' business to keep their conference here through 2030; they were going to Las Vegas — we worked hard to keep them. J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference: they were thinking about leaving; we did such a good job that Jamie Dimon said, "We're coming back again next year." We did a great job on the NBA All-Star game. We got Super Bowl LX. We got World Cup. This city is on the rise, and we want your business here… I think a great, very tech-forward company that is not often thought this way [is] Visa… and they started investing through Tipping Point Community. And now they're doing so much, and their building just south of Oracle Park, and they are all in on San Francisco. Ryan McInerney, their CEO, is just awesome. Oliver Jenkyn, their president: awesome. They get it. We want companies that are investing in our arts & culture, [and] in our public schools, like Salesforce has done for so long. OpenAI and Sam Altman has talked about how they're investing in arts & culture… And we have companies that go way back [such as] Levi Strauss & Co. or Gap… Richard Dickson, the head of Gap, is all in on San Francisco… We have companies that get it: [Salesforce, Databricks, OpenAI]. So what I want them is investing in all of those areas — arts & culture — that make our city so dynamic… And I think we’re doing a good job. And I need everybody who works with me to do that, to get to where we want to go. And where we’re going is: a city that is the safest city in America; that is the cleanest; that is leading on climate; that is leading on energy; that is leading on arts & culture; that is a place that every business, every entrepreneur, every innovator says: "I have to either be headquartered here, or I have to have a presence in San Francisco. If I don’t, I’m missing out." Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉

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The Real Value of Nitrogen: Creating Fearless Client Conversations - Dan Zitting, CEO of Nitrogen on The Customer Wins with Rich Walker Full Episode: https://lnkd.in/g9TctF-i

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The credentials PE firms screen for hardest — prior CEO title, elite MBA, consulting pedigree — explain less than 1% of the difference in exit outcomes. New research from Verata, analyzing 12,174 CEO appointments over 18 years, finds résumé traits barely outperform a coin flip. The strongest predictor of CEO success isn't background — it's timing and context. The takeaway isn't that search is broken. It's that the spec is. I partnered with Richard Stein, CEO of HSiQ Talent Intelligence, to analyze the implications of our latest research for the PE and search community. Full report >> https://lnkd.in/ePA9M7_J #privateequity #CEO #leadership #talentintelligence #executivesearch

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Excited to host Steve Isom. When he shares what PE firms actually expect from CFOs, he's not guessing. Steve's seen it from every seat at the table. 2009 → Banker, TD Securities & Jefferies 2013 → PE Investor, @North Bridge Growth Equity 2016 → Finance Leader, Cybereason, Flywheel, WP Engine 2021 → CFO, Bloomerang (Warburg Pincus LLC & JMI Equity) 2026 → COO & CFO, Bloomerang On March 5th, he's joining me to break down his playbook and perspective on working at PE-backed businesses. 📍 Inside the PE Boardroom: How CFOs Win (or Lose) 🗓️ March 5 | 12:00 pm ET / 9:00 am PT Link in the comments 👇

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Layer is tackling one of the most overlooked pain points for SMBs: accounting. They’re gaining real traction doing so. Emergence is leading their seed round to bring embedded, AI-powered accounting to the SMB software stack. Kevin Spain highlights what makes this team and product so compelling. 

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Looking to accelerate your company's growth beyond organic means? Vistage's latest article, "Growth Through Acquisition," explores how strategic acquisitions can serve as a powerful catalyst for business expansion. The piece delves into the advantages of acquiring complementary businesses, including rapid market entry, diversification, and the acquisition of new talent and technologies. It also highlights the importance of thorough due diligence and integration planning to ensure successful outcomes. For business leaders considering acquisitions as a growth strategy, this article offers valuable insights and practical guidance.

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PE partnership is an emergent GTM channel that’s proving to be massively successful. Unlike traditional sales motions, PE is a 1-to-many motion—but with that comes a major risk. Michael Belkin, Head of Global Private Equity Practice at Zuora, broke down the pros and cons. The major con? Companies get sold. Often. So, let's say your SaaS product is used by 6 PortCos backed by a partner PE firm. 2 of them sell, and the new owners favor their incumbent SaaS product over yours. Overnight, you’ve lost 2 clients. Since the new owners are not necessarily your customers, traditional client retention tactics won’t work. The benefit of working with a PE firm is that you’re getting warm intros all the time…but when a PortCo sells, you might be left out in the cold. Pursuing a PE-partner GTM strategy means you have to build an expectation of controlled churn into your process—especially if you’re building your comp plan around the total amount of PE-owned ARR. That’s why it’s critical to track where your clients are in the PE lifecycle. You want to keep a healthy balance across the PE investment cycle so you don’t end up with multiple clients rolling off all at once. But, just as PE taketh away…PE giveth. Say you have companies on your books that get bought by other PE firms. Then you have an opportunity to begin a partnership motion with a new firm, opening up other avenues of business. Functionally, that means identifying opportunities by closely monitoring PitchBook data, tracking which strategic accounts are owned by PE for each AE, and zeroing in on actionable relationships. PE partnerships are relatively new, but are already proving fruitful to some. It will be interesting to see which companies successfully integrate this into their GTM playbook—and which ones fall prey to the relentless churn. Listen to the full episode with Mike Belkin on “The Data Room.” Link in comments.

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I’m excited to share the latest episode of ThriveCast, where I sit down with the incredible Andrew Capland to explore how growth really happens when alignment, activation and accountability aren’t just buzzwords—but the backbone of your system. 👉 Tune in to “The Growth Operating System — Building Alignment, Activation, and Accountability” here: https://lnkd.in/gZcP3zuM Here’s what we dug into: Here are the top insights we covered: 1️⃣ Ideas are cheap. Systems win. How team alignment, communication, and consistent execution outperform frameworks and playbooks every single time. 2️⃣ The new ladder for Growth Leaders. Why moving into growth leadership means influencing peers, managing pushback, and driving clarity—far beyond tactics. 3️⃣ Effectiveness > “Right answers.” Great growth leaders focus less on being correct and more on persuading teams, prioritizing under ambiguity, and keeping momentum. 4️⃣ AI is a multiplier, not a replacement. Tools can generate ideas—but timing, context, judgment, and cross-team communication remain deeply human. 5️⃣ Build your Growth OS before you scale. From rituals to scorecards to decision frameworks (yes, including RACI), we break down how to make growth repeatable, not accidental. If you’re building or scaling a growth function in SaaS — whether you’re in product, marketing, revenue operations or leadership — this episode is for you. 🔗 Give it a listen, drop a comment with your key takeaway, and if this resonates, let me know and I’ll send you the full episode guide with all the frameworks we covered. Thanks for being part of the ThriveStack journey—let’s turn your growth from chaos into a system. #GrowthOS, Delivering Value #B2BSaaS

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PE - How to Get Best Insights to Drive Commercial Growth Across Any PE A friend at a traditional/industrial PE firm mentioned that they view inflecting more Organic Growth (i.e. Commercial Excellence, specifically GTM best practices & profitable revenue growth strategies), as the next major focus at their firm for driving better portfolio company outcomes and IRR for their LPs. Some of the most advanced and effective practices in this area are coming out of the Tech PE world - traditional PE can benefit greatly by learning from the best practices developed in the Tech PE arena. The strategies in Tech PE and highly applicable and relevant across all PE backed B2B industries and market segments: > Battle-Tested in the Most Competitive Markets - Tech GTM demands more precision than most other industries - every dollar of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion is scrutinized and must produce ROI. That discipline easily translates to less competitive, under-optimized industries. > Pricing and Monetization are a Core Skillset - tech pricing is complex: tiers, usage-based models, upsells. If you can price Tech/Software, you can price anything. Most industrial firms still rely on basic cost-plus. > Data-Driven and Analytical Mindset & Strategy - tech GTM is built on detailed metrics/KPIs/dashboards, cohort analyses, funnel conversions, segmentations, and testing. That analytical rigor helps prioritize the most high-impact levers and drivers, and drive more effective decisions (applying this to any industry will produce disproportionate results). > Relentless Focus on Efficiency - Tech PE (investment teams & operating partners) live by capital efficient growth strategy, RevOps, and automation. Bringing that rigor to traditional field sales models unlocks major gains. > Capital-Efficient Growth - Tech PE is built on growing ARR and EBITDA without burning cash. That skillset is tailor-made for traditional PE’s focus on margin expansion and organic growth. > Modern GTM Playbooks are Transferable to Any Industry in PE - digital demand gen, segmentation, enterprise sales motions, sales enablement, revenue operations - these are replicable across sectors and drive fast, measurable impact. I was sharing with my friend at the traditional PE firm that understanding industrials, manufacturing, services, or supply chains isn't complex to understand. What takes decades to truly master is the art and science of capital-efficient growth: commercial excellence, pricing strategy, diagnosing underperformance relative to TAM, and making data-driven decisions that account for nuance and complexity. Traditional PE firms can gain many insights from Tech PE - if one can help scale growth in tech (i.e. in hyper-competitive and complex, ever-changing markets), then they can fix or optimize any traditional PE-backed business. ------------------ #pe #privateequity #middlemarket #revenue #growth #investing #finance #business

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Dust is helping Vanta reclaim 400+hours/week across their GTM organization through a connected network of Dust agents. When Daniel Baralt and Shashank Khanna came to us, their biggest blocker was that company expertise lived in silos. Compliance knew frameworks, finance had usage data, product owned customer feedback, but connecting those dots meant hours of manual work. They tested 7 platforms before choosing Dust. They liked that Dust struck the right balance -> simple enough for anyone to build with in 30 minutes, but powerful enough to scale programmatically across the organization. Other platforms were either too shallow for enterprise needs or too technical for widespread adoption. They built their system in 3 layers: 1/ Domain agents built by experts Each function created its own agent. GRC built a compliance expert. Finance created one for usage insights. Product developed a Voice of Customer agent. 2/ Cross-team orchestration QBR prep now automatically pulls from finance, GRC, and Voice of Customer agents to generate complete decks in minutes. 3/ Agents embedded in daily work The same agents operate in Slack. The GRC agent handles security questions directly in channel with quick human review, so specialists never answer the same question twice. As a result, they're saving thousands of hours annually while improving the quality of customer interactions and internal reviews. They've also discovered just how much appetite there is at Vanta for integrating AI into daily work. When they hosted their last company-wide Dust training, 180 people showed up. What began as a GTM initiative has now become a company-wide capability and we couldn’t be happier to be working with such a world-class team. 🫡

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Fundraisers are facing mounting pressure, rising complexity, and shrinking support. Most organizations are forced to stitch together a patchwork of tools from different software vendors; we call point-solutions — one for events (ticket sales), another for auctions, another for raffles, another for their marketplace, another for memberships and another for communications. The Result? · Impacts productivity: Lost time learning and juggling systems (keeping track of logins, contract renewals, multiple vendor relationships) · Causes staff burnout and retention · Creates fractured data and fragmented processes, impacting analysis and insights · Higher costs impacting already constrained IT budgets · Impacts guest/user experience · Impacts overall fundraising returns When technology creates more headaches instead of helping, everyone loses — staff, volunteers, and most importantly, the communities we serve. The future of fundraising isn’t about more tools — it’s about connected solutions that make life simpler, safer, and more effective. What’s your experience? Are you seeing this patchwork problem in your organization? If you would like to discuss your situation further, please contact me directly gmurray@launch57.com or via support@communibee.ca #Fundraising #Nonprofits #CommunityEngagement #DigitalTransformation

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“PE Growth HEADWIND”: The Next Wave of PE Exits is Coming - And GTM Blind Spots May Be The Silent Killer of PE Returns With a huge backlog, PE exit activity is poised to rebound over the next several years - but are PE firms quietly sabotaging outcomes by overlooking GTM red flags at the portco level just prior to exit? In the PE world, we all know that acquisition multiples aren't just a function of EBITDA - they reflect how repeatable, scalable, and strategic your revenue engine looks to the buyer. And many business sellers seem to ignore the direct link between organic growth & acquisition multiples until it is too late - and they end up scrambling to improve GTM just prior to exit. BIG POINT: PE-backed businesses that demonstrate: ·  Consistent, repeatable revenue growth ·  A low cost of acquisition and high retention ·  A scalable GTM model …are more likely to command higher multiples. And improvements in Marketing, Sales & Customer Success directly contribute to this profile. And yet, GTM underperformance is one of the top reasons portcos exit at suboptimal valuations. Here are 5 common GTM challenges silently hurting acquisition multiples: ·  CAC is rising, but Marketing can't prove what’s working ·  Sales win rates are inconsistent and heavily rep-dependent ·  ICP definition is vague or misaligned across teams ·  Customer Success is reactive, not revenue-driving ·  NRR is flat or declining, with no structured expansion playbook But it doesn’t have to be this way. When a portco proves it can grow organically, predictably, and efficiently, strategic & financial buyers are willing to pay more - often significantly more. So, here are 5 top GTM-focused priorities for PE-backed businesses to unlock higher multiples: ·  Clearer Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) across Marketing, Sales & CS ·  Full-funnel GTM metrics to track CAC, payback, pipeline velocity & NRR ·  Systematized sales execution - deploy training, playbooks & buyer-aligned messaging ·  CS is enabled to drive expansion, retention & proactive churn mitigation ·  Own the growth narrative with a data-backed story positioning the portco as a category leader These aren’t just “Marketing & Sales improvements.” These are exit-valuation levers. And when they’re working together, they can unlock a 1-3x multiple uplift at exit. RECOMMENDATION: Consider a “GTM exit-readiness assessment” at least 12-18 months ahead of a planned exit to ensure your growth narrative matches actual growth results to avoid exit valuation disagreements. Don’t let GTM gaps drag down your next exit - learn how to fix them now. Let's talk - DM me. ------------------  👍 React to support  💬 Comment with your views  ♻️ Please repost this to also help others  ➕ Follow Brian Gustason💡for more PE growth tips #PrivateEquity #PortfolioGrowth #GTMStrategy #ValueCreation #ExitMultiples #B2BGrowth #CustomerSuccess #MarketingStrategy #SalesEnablement #RevenueGrowth #OperatingPartner

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Just a 5% drop in order cancellations can mean millions back in your pocket. Forrester's latest dual-OMS study found that 63% of the gains from adding a secondary OMS came down to resolving cancelled orders caused by gaps in legacy systems. The truth is that legacy OMS platforms can’t deliver accurate inventory quickly enough. So it shows items as in stock when they’re not. The brands that added a modern OMS on top of their legacy system discovered they were quietly losing money in three big ways: • Selling products that weren’t actually available. • Hiding stock that did exist, just not where the OMS was looking. • Failing to reallocate when one location sold out but another still had inventory. The study's participants found they could solve this by integrating a modern, modular OMS alongside their legacy system. Many of those same companies initially planned to run dual systems indefinitely, but they soon realized just how much better the modern OMS was. They ended up wanting to move everything over to the new platform. With all of that in mind, here’s the question you should be asking yourself: How much revenue might your business be silently losing to preventable cancellations?

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Powerful work here. The 18-month CRO tenure stat is eye-opening and is surely a strategic misalignment problem. The shift from "which AI tool" to "what should be human-led vs. AI-led" is the exact reframe revenue leaders need right now. That's a strategy question that separates operators from order-takers. Excited to dig into the Six Traits framework. If GTM Operating Partners across top-tier funds are converging on common patterns, that's a signal worth heeding.

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