WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:03.882
Everybody I speak to in B2B and every company I work with,

2
00:00:04.022 --> 00:00:05.243
they all heard about Clay.

3
00:00:05.643 --> 00:00:07.424
How do you manage this whole thing?

4
00:00:07.484 --> 00:00:10.166
Clay came in with a product that's self-serve.

5
00:00:10.266 --> 00:00:14.868
The main thing that people want is actually brand association with us.

6
00:00:15.269 --> 00:00:15.949
They learn Clay,

7
00:00:16.189 --> 00:00:18.290
they create content and distribute the content.

8
00:00:18.370 --> 00:00:19.991
Everything that we do funnels into LinkedIn.

9
00:00:20.331 --> 00:00:22.553
That's why I think people have this impression like,

10
00:00:22.593 --> 00:00:23.053
holy shit,

11
00:00:23.054 --> 00:00:25.674
I'm seeing Clay everywhere and everyone's talking about them.

12
00:00:25.855 --> 00:00:28.156
AI in general is sort of like...

13
00:00:28.532 --> 00:00:53.683
unlocking content creation like never before everyone can create content today the downside of this is like no one is actually authentic so people more than ever they want to hear from people they want to see content that's like clearly not ai what we did was we focused a lot on people bruno

14
00:00:53.723 --> 00:00:56.484
um it's been i think

15
00:00:57.908 --> 00:00:58.028
Two,

16
00:00:58.308 --> 00:00:59.429
three years you were in

17
00:01:00.309 --> 00:01:00.970
Clay, correct?

18
00:01:01.530 --> 00:01:01.690
Yeah,

19
00:01:01.691 --> 00:01:04.232
like two and a half years.

20
00:01:05.432 --> 00:01:07.333
So since you arrived,

21
00:01:07.533 --> 00:01:10.595
I think everybody heard of Clay.

22
00:01:12.776 --> 00:01:13.076
I mean,

23
00:01:13.256 --> 00:01:17.058
everybody I speak to in B2B and every company I work with,

24
00:01:17.199 --> 00:01:18.399
they all heard about Clay.

25
00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:20.480
They want to work with Clay.

26
00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:21.821
They are Clay users,

27
00:01:21.881 --> 00:01:22.261
et cetera,

28
00:01:22.262 --> 00:01:22.521
et cetera.

29
00:01:22.702 --> 00:01:22.962
And so

30
00:01:23.722 --> 00:01:27.004
I feel that you've managed.

31
00:01:27.592 --> 00:01:45.142
internally to really be everywhere and make sure that people talk about you and so you've got this playbook this content playbook with the founders or uh speaking online you speak online people from a team etc etc creators agencies how

32
00:01:45.162 --> 00:01:56.288
do you do that like how do you manage this whole thing i know it's a wide question this is this is basically the thing i want people to understand Yeah,

33
00:01:56.289 --> 00:01:56.388
no,

34
00:01:56.389 --> 00:01:56.768
I think the...

35
00:01:57.508 --> 00:02:18.283
there are two sides of this right like the side of people uh in our community posting about us or people in general that are not associated with clay posting about play and then our actually uh the content that we create the one on on clay specifically that other people are posting about us is more of like it's if you look at the actual the

36
00:02:18.303 --> 00:02:25.268
market and the product the the market within like go-to-market tools and sort of like...

37
00:02:26.052 --> 00:02:28.553
and data automation and all these things.

38
00:02:28.934 --> 00:02:29.654
Before Clay,

39
00:02:29.994 --> 00:02:32.856
like before 2023,

40
00:02:32.857 --> 00:02:42.861
most of the products in there were these sort of inflexible products that had like a sales-led motion and what kind of like...

41
00:02:43.522 --> 00:02:47.344
And Clay came in with a product that's self-serve,

42
00:02:47.684 --> 00:02:47.884
very,

43
00:02:47.944 --> 00:02:49.505
very flexible and horizontal.

44
00:02:50.365 --> 00:02:54.548
So people could then actually build on top of the product.

45
00:02:55.028 --> 00:02:57.049
The product actually unlocked a lot of creativity.

46
00:02:58.330 --> 00:03:05.073
And then what that enabled is actually people being able to create things like go-to-market workflows and stuff like that,

47
00:03:05.854 --> 00:03:07.935
that they would never be able to create before.

48
00:03:08.675 --> 00:03:12.638
And the reason why I'm saying this is because it starts there.

49
00:03:13.278 --> 00:03:15.439
That's kind of the foundational layer.

50
00:03:16.620 --> 00:03:19.781
Because then as people build these things,

51
00:03:20.062 --> 00:03:23.723
a portion of them are service providers.

52
00:03:23.764 --> 00:03:24.484
they have

53
00:03:25.532 --> 00:03:41.977
freelance businesses or they have agencies and or they are individual contributors in a company and they want career progression or business progression if they have a business and clay kind of enabled these people to

54
00:03:42.077 --> 00:03:53.280
showcase things that they were building and showcase to the market that they were very very innovative in general so we kind of saw so like initial

55
00:03:53.756 --> 00:04:10.901
signs of this and to be fair this is also like before clay i was at webflow for five years and i saw a similar this is this sort of playbook is kind of similar on design tools and develop developer tools and

56
00:04:10.981 --> 00:04:21.344
um and also like in some productivity tools as well with like notion yeah notion is a good example of that notion and air table early days as well and then webflow frame or a Figma.

57
00:04:22.324 --> 00:04:22.484
That,

58
00:04:22.804 --> 00:04:26.326
the creativity and flexibility of the product enable people to showcase.

59
00:04:27.146 --> 00:04:28.827
The thing that it's tricky is like,

60
00:04:28.867 --> 00:04:29.048
okay,

61
00:04:29.468 --> 00:04:30.308
you as a marketer,

62
00:04:31.069 --> 00:04:33.510
how do you actually have control over these things?

63
00:04:34.651 --> 00:04:35.351
And for us,

64
00:04:35.611 --> 00:04:46.577
the way that we found that we can actually control some of these things is by creating programs on the community that actually enable these people,

65
00:04:46.917 --> 00:04:51.600
that incentivize people in a soft way to actually create content.

66
00:04:51.980 --> 00:04:55.633
And the reason why I say in a soft way is because most of these people,

67
00:04:55.934 --> 00:04:56.115
like,

68
00:04:56.116 --> 00:04:56.376
you know,

69
00:04:56.597 --> 00:04:58.584
they don't want this was a learning that we had.

70
00:04:59.627 --> 00:05:00.688
They don't actually want like,

71
00:05:00.808 --> 00:05:01.028
oh,

72
00:05:01.188 --> 00:05:03.851
post this and I'll give you

73
00:05:04.331 --> 00:05:04.892
X, you know?

74
00:05:05.452 --> 00:05:07.194
Like basic sponsoring.

75
00:05:07.654 --> 00:05:08.114
Exactly.

76
00:05:08.515 --> 00:05:14.340
The main thing that people want in that case is actually brand association with us.

77
00:05:16.121 --> 00:05:18.463
Because we had this initial,

78
00:05:19.564 --> 00:05:24.829
it's a product that was innovative in the market and people wanted to be associated with this.

79
00:05:25.509 --> 00:05:26.050
So for us,

80
00:05:26.310 --> 00:05:27.311
how can we build a lot of...

81
00:05:27.411 --> 00:05:42.755
programs that give this sort of brand association which will then generally increase the output of content that they create so we created the experts program which is now the solutions solution

82
00:05:42.815 --> 00:05:55.059
partner program we created the creators program for people to get started and then we created a lot of educational related sort of programs for people as well so they can like Learn flea.

83
00:05:56.099 --> 00:05:58.560
The education piece is the core element here.

84
00:05:58.620 --> 00:05:59.441
Like they learn clay,

85
00:06:00.702 --> 00:06:03.063
they sort of understand the value of the product,

86
00:06:03.383 --> 00:06:05.624
they get invested in this brand,

87
00:06:06.004 --> 00:06:11.267
they create content and then distribute the content on a specific channel.

88
00:06:11.828 --> 00:06:20.372
So that's like the part of how we try to get community and the ecosystem to continue to post about us.

89
00:06:21.373 --> 00:06:24.414
Then there's also the actual content that we create that you mentioned,

90
00:06:24.415 --> 00:06:25.655
like our executives are...

91
00:06:25.755 --> 00:06:42.907
employees and the the thing that we kind of noticed like early is ai in general is sort of like unlocking content creation like never before everyone can create content today so

92
00:06:44.168 --> 00:06:53.615
the the downside of this is like no one is actually authentic uh and so you so you need to actually so people So...

93
00:06:53.835 --> 00:06:54.515
More than ever,

94
00:06:55.155 --> 00:06:57.596
this trend happened even before Clay and Yano.

95
00:06:58.576 --> 00:07:01.897
They want to hear from people most of the time.

96
00:07:02.597 --> 00:07:05.878
And they want to see content that's clearly not AI.

97
00:07:06.819 --> 00:07:07.519
So for us,

98
00:07:07.979 --> 00:07:14.681
what we did was we focused a lot on people.

99
00:07:15.801 --> 00:07:18.142
But the way that we actually structured this is,

100
00:07:18.942 --> 00:07:20.322
and I think every company can do this,

101
00:07:20.323 --> 00:07:20.923
to be honest.

102
00:07:21.003 --> 00:07:22.403
Like for Clay,

103
00:07:23.159 --> 00:07:25.460
We have two sides of the business,

104
00:07:25.520 --> 00:07:28.482
which is the self-serve side and the sales-led side.

105
00:07:29.703 --> 00:07:33.165
The self-serve side has a lot of startup founders,

106
00:07:33.185 --> 00:07:36.827
a lot of agency owners,

107
00:07:37.167 --> 00:07:38.388
and some marketers,

108
00:07:38.608 --> 00:07:40.029
like the first marketer in a startup.

109
00:07:41.269 --> 00:07:43.050
And on the sales-led side of the business,

110
00:07:43.831 --> 00:07:46.032
we typically have ops,

111
00:07:46.252 --> 00:07:47.072
like rev ops,

112
00:07:47.173 --> 00:07:51.295
marketing ops folks as the end user.

113
00:07:52.219 --> 00:07:52.639
And

114
00:07:53.259 --> 00:07:57.381
CROs and CMOs as the final kind of decision maker there.

115
00:07:58.242 --> 00:08:05.745
So we kind of selected specific individuals in our company that match,

116
00:08:06.125 --> 00:08:07.225
that have that profile.

117
00:08:08.726 --> 00:08:17.389
And then actually put a lot of resources for them to create content on LinkedIn that is relevant for that audience.

118
00:08:18.630 --> 00:08:18.750
So,

119
00:08:18.790 --> 00:08:19.390
for example,

120
00:08:20.251 --> 00:08:20.851
we have...

121
00:08:22.679 --> 00:08:23.720
For the ops persona,

122
00:08:23.760 --> 00:08:25.960
we have Everett in our team creating content,

123
00:08:26.040 --> 00:08:27.861
which is our head of go-to-market engineering.

124
00:08:28.701 --> 00:08:30.522
For the founder persona,

125
00:08:30.662 --> 00:08:32.422
we have Varun creating content.

126
00:08:33.802 --> 00:08:34.903
For the marketing persona,

127
00:08:34.904 --> 00:08:36.323
it's me creating content.

128
00:08:38.484 --> 00:08:39.964
For the CRO persona,

129
00:08:40.124 --> 00:08:41.145
we have Karan,

130
00:08:42.045 --> 00:08:45.166
who's our CFO and CRO-ish,

131
00:08:45.586 --> 00:08:46.766
creating content as well.

132
00:08:48.507 --> 00:08:49.727
And then for SDRs...

133
00:08:49.887 --> 00:09:05.273
we have our our head of sdr that we just hired and then we put actual like writers with these people that they meet on a weekly basis like oh i have this this experience that i had in the past here's what i want to write about and they kind of go back and forth and they post so

134
00:09:05.274 --> 00:09:18.959
we we we focus a lot on people to create content uh on on on on social channels and the main thing here is that everything that we do funnels into linkedin um you

135
00:09:19.435 --> 00:09:23.477
Because we keep seeing that it is the channel that people spend time after,

136
00:09:23.517 --> 00:09:24.678
like as we talk to customers,

137
00:09:24.698 --> 00:09:25.499
as we hear about,

138
00:09:26.159 --> 00:09:27.600
how did they hear about us and stuff.

139
00:09:27.700 --> 00:09:31.462
So everything that I just said funnels everything into LinkedIn.

140
00:09:31.962 --> 00:09:34.644
That's why I think people have this impression like,

141
00:09:34.984 --> 00:09:35.905
holy shit,

142
00:09:35.906 --> 00:09:39.347
I'm seeing Clay and everyone's talking about them.

143
00:09:40.467 --> 00:09:40.667
Yeah,

144
00:09:40.827 --> 00:09:41.128
sure.

145
00:09:41.688 --> 00:09:41.988
All right.

146
00:09:43.509 --> 00:09:45.590
I've got a lot of questions because it's really,

147
00:09:45.650 --> 00:09:46.171
really interesting.

148
00:09:46.591 --> 00:09:46.711
So.

149
00:09:47.779 --> 00:09:49.082
Going back to what you were saying before,

150
00:09:49.102 --> 00:09:49.322
Clay,

151
00:09:49.323 --> 00:09:49.563
you know,

152
00:09:49.603 --> 00:09:58.823
you had companies that were either focusing on the small freelancers.

153
00:09:59.464 --> 00:10:02.927
Or the big player is enterprise level companies,

154
00:10:03.007 --> 00:10:03.448
blah,

155
00:10:04.068 --> 00:10:13.117
And I think what you did well is that you showcase the kind of flexibility that you can have with if you are a freelancer.

156
00:10:13.777 --> 00:10:18.682
But still show that the impact that you can have on the business is really high level.

157
00:10:19.202 --> 00:10:19.482
Yeah.

158
00:10:19.642 --> 00:10:21.284
And also one thing that

159
00:10:22.025 --> 00:10:24.507
I was telling you before we just recorded,

160
00:10:24.727 --> 00:10:25.047
I had...

161
00:10:25.920 --> 00:10:42.331
conversations with your team and uh for example nancy i remember her she she told me that you don't want to be opinionated as a product yeah and and i think this is something really interesting because you know going back to what you were saying figma

162
00:10:42.492 --> 00:10:54.600
and notion and blah blah you know all these productivity tools and uh creativity tools yeah they have to be unopinionated because then you have to offer the full flexibility blah blah law.

163
00:10:55.488 --> 00:11:01.713
But when you work on the GTM in a team,

164
00:11:02.013 --> 00:11:02.714
for a company,

165
00:11:02.934 --> 00:11:03.054
etc.,

166
00:11:04.836 --> 00:11:06.257
you kind of know the playbooks.

167
00:11:07.638 --> 00:11:08.038
Still,

168
00:11:08.559 --> 00:11:11.041
you decided not to be opinionated,

169
00:11:11.121 --> 00:11:16.365
to have the flexibility of the freelancer plus the impact.

170
00:11:16.685 --> 00:11:16.805
So,

171
00:11:17.406 --> 00:11:17.646
you know,

172
00:11:19.308 --> 00:11:24.612
managing everything there is kind of weird and really original.

173
00:11:25.160 --> 00:11:29.821
And I think this is what brings such success for Clay.

174
00:11:30.381 --> 00:11:30.542
Yeah.

175
00:11:31.102 --> 00:11:32.422
But so in terms of marketing,

176
00:11:32.502 --> 00:11:33.582
how do you play with this?

177
00:11:33.642 --> 00:11:34.883
Because again,

178
00:11:35.443 --> 00:11:39.604
people expect you to be opinionated because you do GPM and blah,

179
00:11:39.904 --> 00:11:40.684
And at the same time,

180
00:11:40.824 --> 00:11:42.325
you decided not to be.

181
00:11:42.925 --> 00:11:43.585
Yeah.

182
00:11:43.645 --> 00:11:44.265
This is actually,

183
00:11:44.266 --> 00:11:44.425
I think,

184
00:11:46.106 --> 00:11:49.667
having a horizontal and flexible product like this.

185
00:11:50.667 --> 00:11:53.468
What you're describing is the difficult part.

186
00:11:53.936 --> 00:11:55.116
From a marketing perspective.

187
00:11:55.937 --> 00:11:56.557
Because...

188
00:11:57.397 --> 00:11:58.317
And the exciting part.

189
00:11:58.777 --> 00:11:58.897
Yeah,

190
00:11:59.037 --> 00:11:59.418
exactly.

191
00:11:59.478 --> 00:12:00.398
And the exciting part.

192
00:12:00.458 --> 00:12:00.678
Like,

193
00:12:00.698 --> 00:12:02.879
I think the difficulty comes from,

194
00:12:02.899 --> 00:12:03.079
like,

195
00:12:03.080 --> 00:12:04.779
a positioning point of view.

196
00:12:05.079 --> 00:12:05.319
You know,

197
00:12:05.379 --> 00:12:05.559
like,

198
00:12:06.320 --> 00:12:06.640
okay,

199
00:12:07.920 --> 00:12:09.400
the product is so flexible.

200
00:12:09.780 --> 00:12:10.481
People are building,

201
00:12:10.501 --> 00:12:10.701
like,

202
00:12:10.761 --> 00:12:12.061
insane use cases.

203
00:12:12.341 --> 00:12:12.581
Like,

204
00:12:12.741 --> 00:12:16.602
some people build use cases as the back end of some tools,

205
00:12:16.662 --> 00:12:16.962
you know,

206
00:12:17.022 --> 00:12:17.203
like,

207
00:12:17.383 --> 00:12:19.643
that they generate.

208
00:12:19.703 --> 00:12:21.524
Some people use this for outbounds.

209
00:12:21.525 --> 00:12:22.384
Some people use this for...

210
00:12:23.408 --> 00:12:41.496
inbound and so how do you actually position the product is is a challenge um but at the same time it's also like exciting like you said because clay is so flexible that can actually serve specific

211
00:12:41.916 --> 00:12:50.580
problem areas really well you know like even from like a marketing perspective we have the ability to verticalize clay quite well

212
00:12:51.468 --> 00:13:08.580
to different industries because because of the flexibility of the product like for example you can get data points that if that if you were targeting a dentist office you would never be able to get you know uh because of the flexibility of the product so

213
00:13:09.881 --> 00:13:20.348
there is like challenges on the on the actual like positioning side but i think for us the way that we kind of approach it is sure the we're we're not opinionated uh

214
00:13:21.088 --> 00:13:22.729
on how you go and actually build.

215
00:13:22.769 --> 00:13:25.490
Because I think the thing in here that people,

216
00:13:27.111 --> 00:13:31.192
I think GTM tools kind of like failed.

217
00:13:33.233 --> 00:13:35.674
And you look at the GTM tools that actually took off,

218
00:13:35.754 --> 00:13:36.755
they are pretty flexible,

219
00:13:36.795 --> 00:13:37.675
like Salesforce.

220
00:13:37.676 --> 00:13:37.875
You know,

221
00:13:38.035 --> 00:13:40.256
it's actually like a flexible product.

222
00:13:40.276 --> 00:13:42.197
There's so much you can do there.

223
00:13:44.418 --> 00:13:46.059
Because I think the main thing is like,

224
00:13:47.039 --> 00:13:48.280
every business is different,

225
00:13:48.440 --> 00:13:48.680
you know,

226
00:13:48.720 --> 00:13:48.940
like.

227
00:13:49.580 --> 00:13:57.843
The data point that you're looking for to actually identify your ICP and try to target the right people.

228
00:13:59.444 --> 00:13:59.884
Ideally,

229
00:14:00.164 --> 00:14:07.888
there are very specific things that you want to find about that person that would give you 100%

230
00:14:07.928 --> 00:14:08.508
confidence that,

231
00:14:08.509 --> 00:14:08.708
okay,

232
00:14:09.388 --> 00:14:11.029
this is actually the right ICP for me.

233
00:14:13.250 --> 00:14:18.672
And you need a flexible product that enables you to actually find that specific thing.

234
00:14:19.716 --> 00:14:20.557
And most of the,

235
00:14:20.837 --> 00:14:21.438
like you said,

236
00:14:21.478 --> 00:14:23.339
most of the other products in go-to-market,

237
00:14:26.101 --> 00:14:31.586
there was a playbook that one type of company was successful and they built a product around that playbook.

238
00:14:32.887 --> 00:14:36.890
And it's typically around a channel on how you implement things,

239
00:14:36.930 --> 00:14:38.051
what data you leverage.

240
00:14:38.471 --> 00:14:46.258
But the reality is that there's always a life cycle of a specific tactic,

241
00:14:46.358 --> 00:14:46.638
right?

242
00:14:46.698 --> 00:14:48.319
Which is like...

243
00:14:48.500 --> 00:14:48.860
I agree.

244
00:14:49.128 --> 00:14:53.171
Like where you start here and then everything is so effective.

245
00:14:54.132 --> 00:14:55.052
And then over time,

246
00:14:55.092 --> 00:14:56.233
everyone adopts this thing.

247
00:14:56.453 --> 00:14:57.174
Everyone like us,

248
00:14:57.194 --> 00:15:00.116
like every marketer adopts this and we exploit the effectiveness.

249
00:15:00.758 --> 00:15:16.832
of that channel so you need like a an environment like a product or a tool that enables you to keep pushing the boundaries okay this thing it worked for a while now it's not working anymore what

250
00:15:16.872 --> 00:15:28.602
else can i do you know and like that's kind of the whole thing that we tried we try to say like you need this flexible infrastructure and this flexible uh tool to keep

251
00:15:28.682 --> 00:15:46.534
pushing the boundaries so you are always ahead i think the best companies kind of that we've seen in doing go to market are the ones that are pushing and trying new things as much as frequently as possible so that's kind of like how we've been trying to sort of position and and how we see value play do

252
00:15:46.774 --> 00:15:57.922
it just do it dreams be dreamed yesterday you said tomorrow so just do it

253
00:15:58.370 --> 00:16:00.436
Make your dreams come true

254
00:16:01.098 --> 00:16:02.502
Just do it