#35 — The rise of GTM Engineering

Why it matters: In today's hyper-competitive SaaS landscape, traditional go-to-market strategies are becoming less effective as inboxes overflow with automated outreach and markets flood with similar products. The emergence of GTM engineers represents a fundamental shift in how startups approach growth.§

The big picture: GTM engineers combine technical expertise with business acumen to build scalable growth systems across the entire customer journey, making them increasingly valuable in a post-ZIRP era where companies must "do more with less."§

By the numbers:§

• Over 33% of GTM Engineers started their roles in 2024, indicating rapid growth in this field
• Companies using GTM engineering approaches have seen conversion rates increase by up to 70%

What sets GTM engineers apart

Different from growth marketers: While growth marketers focus primarily on acquisition and top-of-funnel metrics, GTM engineers orchestrate the entire customer journey from awareness to revenue and retention.§

Different from growth engineers: Unlike traditional growth engineers who focus on product experiments, GTM engineers integrate expertise in user journey, ICP, messaging, and business acumen while connecting multiple systems.§

Different from growth PMs: Growth PMs concentrate on product evolution, while GTM engineers focus on integrating product, marketing, and sales strategies into one unified growth system.§

What GTM engineers actually do

They own revenue metrics: GTM engineers forecast and work backward from key business metrics to build workflows that directly tie to the bottom line.§

They master the full funnel: They're responsible for the entire buyer journey, from ICP identification to pipeline building, conversion, and retention.§

They build systems, not silos: GTM engineers create automated, data-driven systems that connect marketing, sales, product, and customer success.§

Between the lines: The most effective GTM engineers combine technical skills (coding, data, APIs) with strategic thinking and deep understanding of customer behavior and messaging.§

The Gorgias success story: GTM engineering in action

Event-Based Marketing: Gorgias built their growth engine around an Event-Based Marketing (EBM) strategy that monitors detectable user actions as signals of elevated purchase intent.§

Signal-based outbound: When Gorgias detected prospects with intent signals (like hiring a CX lead or using complementary tools), their contract values were 3-4x higher than those with no signal.§

360-degree customer view: Gorgias used Segment to build unified customer profiles and identify high-intent prospects by tracking signals like new hires, Facebook group conversations, and competitor app installations.§

Hyper-personalization at scale: They developed 20 different onboarding combinations tailored to each customer's tech stack. For example, if a customer was using Shopify and Recharge, they'd suggest specific integrations for those apps.§

Automated outreach: By 2024, Gorgias had built a fully automated demand gen engine using multiple data vendors to map their TAM, then applying predictive analysis to prioritize resources.§

Measurable results: This GTM engineering approach helped Gorgias:§

• Grow to 9,000+ customers and over $25M in ARR
• Reduce manual support responses by 15,000-16,000 tickets through AI automation
• Increase pipeline by 70% through automated outbound messaging

Why this matters for founders

The bottom line: As AI and SaaS tools productize entire job functions, startups need fewer specialists and more system thinkers who can orchestrate growth across functions.§

What to watch: Companies like Clay, Cargo, Gorgias, and Datadome are already leveraging GTM engineering to achieve outsized results with smaller teams.§

Go deeper: The shift toward GTM engineering reflects broader market pressures: tighter funding environments, the rise of AI, and increasingly saturated product categories all demand more efficient growth strategies.§

The smart move: For founders looking to stay competitive, investing in GTM engineering capabilities—whether through hiring or partnering with agencies—could be the key to breaking through market noise while maintaining lean operations.§

Reality check: Finding true GTM engineers is challenging as they require a rare combination of technical expertise, business acumen, and growth mindset. This scarcity makes them extremely valuable to startups looking to scale efficiently.§