In this episode of 'Stories of Scale,' a host spends a full day inside Clay, the $5 billion New York startup that coined the term 'go-to-market engineer,' to figure out what this fast-growing role actually is. Shadowing Everett Berry, Clay's Head of GTM Engineering, along with teammates like Spencer, Varun (co-founder), and George, the video unpacks how GTM engineers blend engineering, marketing, and sales to build automated systems that find, understand, and reach customers. It also reveals Clay's two-team 'flywheel' — an internal pipeline team and a forward-deployed customer-facing team — that helped the company scale from five years of near-zero revenue to over $100 million and 16,000+ customers.
Monaco is an AI-native sales platform - billed as 'the first revenue engine for startups' - that replaces the usual patchwork of CRM, outbound tools, and pipeline software with a single system. Founded in 2025 by former Brex CRO Sam Blond alongside his brother Brian Blond, Abishek Viswanathan, and Malay Desai, Monaco builds a company's total addressable market, runs outbound, captures every call and email, and manages pipeline using AI agents paired with embedded human sales experts. It launched from stealth in February 2026 and, three months later, raised a $50M Series B led by Benchmark, pushing total funding past $85M.
Nutshell is an all-in-one CRM and growth platform built for B2B small and mid-sized businesses that are tired of overpaying for software they barely use. Founded in 2009 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Nutshell combines sales pipeline management, email marketing, and customer engagement tools into a single subscription — with free live support on every plan. Acquired by digital marketing agency WebFX in 2022, Nutshell now serves over 5,000 companies across 50 countries, competing against industry giants like Salesforce and HubSpot by doing less, but doing it better.
Pipedrive is a sales-first CRM built by salespeople, for salespeople. Founded in 2010 in Tallinn, Estonia, and now headquartered in New York, Pipedrive gives small and mid-sized businesses a visual, activity-based pipeline that keeps deals moving. With over 100,000 companies across 179 countries using the platform, Pipedrive became a $1.5 billion unicorn in 2020 after a majority investment from Vista Equity Partners. Its philosophy is simple: salespeople should spend less time in software and more time selling.
Close is a bootstrapped, profitable sales CRM built for small and mid-sized teams that want to spend less time on admin and more time actually selling. Founded in 2013 out of a San Francisco sales agency, it combines pipeline management, built-in calling, email, and SMS into one platform - no integrations required. With $17M+ ARR and a fully remote team across 40+ countries, Close has grown almost entirely without venture capital, making it one of the more unusual success stories in SaaS.
Copper is a CRM built for Google Workspace users - specifically teams of 5 to 100 people who live in Gmail and Google Calendar all day. Founded in 2013 as ProsperWorks and rebranded in 2018, Copper is the only CRM officially recommended by Google on the Workspace Marketplace. Rather than forcing sales reps to log every interaction manually, Copper pulls contact and activity data straight from Gmail, auto-populating records so nothing falls through the cracks. Used by over 30,000 businesses across 100+ countries - from creative agencies to consulting firms to real estate teams - Copper has raised $99.5 million and evolved from a sales tool into a full client management platform for professional services.