Zero → IPO Mindset: Hiring, GTM that Scales - Max Altschuler

TLDR: How a $54M fund operationalized 300 GTM leaders into a scalable growth engine

Max Altschuler built Sales Hacker to 150,000 members, sold it to Outreach, rode the valuation from $515M to $4.4B, bought it back for pennies on the dollar, and now runs GTM Fund with $54 million across two funds. His 300 go-to-market leader LPs act as nodes for deal flow, diligence, and portfolio support, all orchestrated through an internal GPT called XVAL.

Listen to this episode to learn why AI is flipping traditional sales development backwards, how exceptional founders differ from adequate ones, and why market tailwinds matter more than perfect execution.

Meet the guest: Max Altschuler, GTM Fund

Max Altschuler is the founder of GTM Fund, an early-stage venture fund focused on B2B SaaS and AI. Previously, he founded Sales Hacker (now GTM Now), grew it to 150,000 members, sold it to Outreach, and helped scale the company from a $515 million valuation to $4.4 billion. His first angel check into Outreach was at a $3 million valuation.

Max brings deep operator experience across content, community, and go-to-market strategy, and has placed over 70 candidates at portfolio companies through his LP network. He's also the author of Hacking Sales and Sales Engagement.

Chapters

[01:23] How Max's 300-operator LP network creates deal flow, diligence, and portfolio support through one flywheel

[05:01] From Arizona State to Udemy employee #8: how Max turned Filipino virtual assistants into the first SDR automation team

[16:18] How Sales Hacker grew to 150K members through newsletters, webinars, SEO, and the early LinkedIn algorithm

[19:18] The Outreach acquisition: from a $3M angel check to a $4.4B valuation, then Max bought Sales Hacker back

[25:37] How AngelList's Rolling Funds let Max turn an old idea into a $54M venture fund

[29:42] Why Max calls exceptional founders "machines" and how market tailwinds beat perfect execution

[32:26] How AI flips traditional sales: value props now inform ICPs and messaging instead of the other way around

[39:08] Why charisma and taste in founding teams matter as much as singular focus

Key Insights

SaaS growth leaders can turn operator networks into scalable growth engines through systematized coordination.

GTM Fund's edge isn't just having 300 go-to-market leaders as investors. It's the infrastructure that operationalizes them. "Every one of our LPs acts as a node for deal flow, diligence, and portfolio company support, whether that means candidate placement, customer introductions, or overall GTM advice," Max explains.

They built an internal GPT called XVAL that matches LP expertise with portfolio company needs automatically. The fund has placed over 70 candidates at portfolio companies through this system. As we discuss in the episode, this mirrors the allbound coordination approach we champion at Understory: systematized processes that scale without proportional headcount.

Exceptional founders share one trait: singular, machine-like focus on their problem space.

"Sometimes I look at these people and I'm like, you're not human. Manny was a machine," Max says about Outreach's founder. The common thread isn't intelligence or charisma alone; it's obsessive commitment. "You need to be cranking all the time. You need to be singular minded. This is the only thing I think about all day, every day, basically."

Max applies this standard when evaluating investments, looking for founders who demonstrate relentless execution. For SaaS leaders evaluating hires or their own commitment, this provides a clear benchmark for identifying operators who drive exceptional outcomes rather than adequate performance.

Market tailwinds matter more than perfect execution when scaling SaaS.

Max uses a surfing analogy: "You can have a great surfer and a great board, which is like the founder and product, but if you don't have a wave, you can't go anywhere." GTM Fund prioritizes spaces with tailwinds "where even if it takes them a little while or they mess up on something, the space just pulls you forward no matter what."

This led to investments like Abio, where a $500 billion government allocation to road safety created a massive, non-obvious wave. For SaaS growth leaders, this reinforces the value of positioning within growing categories rather than trying to create markets through execution alone.

AI enables research-first GTM that works backwards from value propositions instead of hypotheses.

Traditional GTM follows a linear path: build products, identify customers, create ICP, build messaging. Max describes how AI flips this entirely: "You can actually use the value prop for your business as your prompt. Go show me all of the companies that have ever mentioned that they have this problem."

AI's ability to "index every inch of the web in seconds" surfaces signals buried in page-10 Google results or tweets from 2016. At Understory, we see this same shift in how we build Clay-powered outbound campaigns: problem-expression-based prospecting consistently outperforms static demographic targeting for high-ACV SaaS deals.

Modern data platforms represent the essential infrastructure layer for AI-first sales development.

"If you can figure that out, you will win. And if you're not using that process or that product, you're just spending cycles, you're overhiring," Max explains. He draws a parallel to autonomous vehicles: Tesla's AI-driven approach at $35K will beat Waymo's LIDAR at $180K once it works. Clay and similar platforms represent this AI-first approach to sales development.

Meanwhile, traditional email sending platforms have become "heavily commoditized" for startups and SMBs. For SaaS teams, this suggests prioritizing budget toward research and intelligence tools over traditional sales automation, since the competitive advantage now lies in finding and understanding prospects.

The "hacker, hustler, hipster" framework reveals why taste is an undervalued competitive advantage in SaaS.

"You can't buy good taste," Max observes, referencing the founding team dynamic at Outreach: "Manny was the hustler. Kinzer was the hipster. Design elements, everything was just like, here's how we're going to do this. Pay crazy attention to detail. And then Gordon and Wes were the hackers."

The "hipster" role, the person with aesthetic judgment and design sensibility, often gets overlooked in SaaS founding teams. But coherent user experiences and brand consistency become differentiators that competitors cannot easily replicate. Someone on the team must own this, whether that's one person or three.

Content marketing compounds over time, but only when driven by the same machine-like focus that defines exceptional founders.

Max's trajectory from Sales Hacker's 150,000-member community to venture capital demonstrates content's compounding effects. "Newsletter, webinars, virtual events, and SEO" drove most growth, supplemented by early LinkedIn when "the newsfeed was set up and worked in our favor." But content success requires obsessive commitment.

Successful creators "want to produce content about it, they want to hear from people, they want comments, they want to be out there talking about it." As we discuss in the episode, this aligns with how we approach content and paid media at Understory: authentic expertise and sustained commitment outperform sporadic, outsourced content every time.

Early monetization creates strategic freedom that compounds across every business decision.

"It was important to me to make a lot of money as early as possible in my career because I've always optimized for peace and freedom," Max shares. This philosophy drove every major decision: angel investing during Sales Hacker's profitable years, structuring the Outreach acquisition as mostly stock to ride the $3M-to-$4.4B growth, and eventually buying Sales Hacker back "for pennies on the dollar."

Personal liquidity means GTM Fund can take longer-term positions and provide more patient capital. For SaaS leaders, this approach suggests prioritizing profitability and personal liquidity earlier to maintain strategic optionality rather than chasing valuation milestones alone.

Want more insight on operationalizing GTM networks for SaaS growth? Listen to the full episode on YouTube and subscribe to Understory's podcast for more insights on venture-backed growth tactics and AI-powered sales systems.

Looking to eliminate the coordination overhead that's slowing your SaaS growth?Book a call with Understory to explore how expert allbound execution across paid media, Clay-powered outbound, and professional creative can replace the need to manage multiple specialists.