Introducing LeanScale for B2B Startups

The goal of a technology startup is to gain distribution before big tech builds their technology.

A great example of this is Slack. Even with a 3-year head start, they lost the distribution battle with Microsoft Teams and eventually sold off to Salesforce. What’s worse is Teams is regarded by most users as a worse overall product. Obviously, Slack had huge success selling for $27b to Salesforce, but overall they lost the battle of distribution, and potentially an even bigger exit. And the vast majority of startups who lose the distribution battle, you have never heard of.

The best product DOES NOT always win. There are graveyards of startups that can prove this to be true.

What’s critical for startups now is to leverage the latest technology to grow their distribution. Building a new, cool AI product is incredibly important, but oftentimes it’s not enough.

The Future of Go-to-Market: AI Agents

Go-to-Market = Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Partnerships

AI Agents (and workflows) are not only replacing software, they are replacing people. The cost of headcount is usually significantly more expensive than software being used. So this is a massive shift in how companies need to approach the distribution of their products. To simplify what’s happening, here is what we’re noticing:

• AI Workflows are replacing Jr. Go-to-Market Headcount (e.g. Support Agents): These are systems where LLMs and tools are orchestrated through predefined code paths. This means you can reasonably define every scenario a specific task can take.
• AI Agents are replacing Sr. Go-to-Market Headcount (e.g. Data Analysts): These are systems where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they accomplish tasks. This means it can accomplish tasks with an infinite, undefined amount of possibilities.

Now that decisions can be made in lieu of human intervention, and without predefined paths, it’s imperative to take the AI conversation for go-to-market seriously. For example, developer jobs are being fundamentally changed as a result of AI helping write engineering code (e.g. OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot). The exact same will be the case for Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Partnerships.

The entire Go-to-Market landscape (shown below in our Go-to-Market Operations Matrix) is about to be augmented or replaced by some form of AI Workflow or Agent.

AI Innovation Will Outpace AI Adoption

The likelihood of hiring a Go-to-Market Ops team that understands this entire matrix is very low, the likelihood of hiring a team that understands how AI can (and should) impact each of these functions is nearly impossible.

Some examples include:

• AI Support Agents (e.g. AgentForce): engages customers autonomously across channels 24/7 in natural language.
• AI Sales Development Reps (e.g. Amplemarket): save >10 hours per week per rep with Duo’s daily signals, in-depth research, and multichannel outreach.
• AI-first CRMs (e.g. Attio): AI-native CRM that builds, scales and grows your company to the next level.
• AI Analysts (e.g. Clay): 100+ premium data sources and AI research agents in one platform.
• AI Meeting Prep (e.g. CustomerIQ): AI operating system automates CRM data entry, next steps, content management, and insights to close deals fast

Large Enterprises are dealing with the same issues, and they are leaning on MBB to help catch them up on the trend. This is where consulting companies thrive.

“Rattled by tech’s latest trend, businesses have turned to advisers at Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey and KPMG for guidance on adopting generative artificial intelligence” – NY Times

Big tech companies have MBB, but B2B startups don’t have trustworthy consulting resources to guide AI adoption. This leads to startups attempting to figure it out on their own, resulting in mixed results.

Consultants Will Help Fill the Gap in AI Adoption

Startups have been looking to leverage fractional talent as a way to drive efficient growth, move FAST, and preserve equity. Big raises and high headcount are no longer the focus of founders and execs. It’s no longer a good signal with investors now viewing this as an outdated and inefficient approach. Don’t just take it from us, look at success stories like Superhuman, Basecamp, Zapier, and Notion:

Superhuman

• Product: AI-powered email client.
• Growth: Built a premium email experience with a small team.
• Key Strategy: High-touch onboarding, referral-driven growth, and focus on power users.
• Team Size: Around 50 employees at the time of major traction.
• Consulting Support  |  Fractional CX & Growth Experts: Superhuman brought in consultants for onboarding optimization and user research to refine their high-touch growth strategy.
• Consulting Support  |  Design & Branding Contractors: Used freelance designers to polish the UI/UX.

Basecamp (formerly 37signals)

• Product: Project management software.
• Growth: Profitable with a small, remote-first team.
• Key Strategy: Subscription-based pricing, focus on simplicity, and strong branding.
• Team Size: ~60 employees at peak.
• Consulting Support  |  Outsourced Development: Used contract developers to augment their lean in-house team.
• Consulting Support  |  Marketing & PR Consultants: Focused on thought leadership and book publishing (e.g., Rework).

Zapier

• Product: Workflow automation tool.
• Growth: Bootstrapped to over $100M ARR.
• Key Strategy: Focus on integrations, self-serve onboarding, and strong content marketing.
• Team Size: ~500 employees, but grew significantly before hitting that.
• Consulting Support  |  Remote Contract Support: Hired freelancers for customer support in different time zones.
• Consulting Support  |  Affiliate & Content Consultants: Leveraged SEO and content marketing agencies to fuel organic growth.

Notion

• Product: Productivity and note-taking software.
• Growth: Reached millions of users with a lean team early on.
• Key Strategy: Viral marketing, strong product-led growth, and user advocacy.
• Team Size: ~30 employees at significant scale.
• Consulting Support  |  Product & UX Consultants: Early on, Notion relied on external designers for UI updates.
• Consulting Support  |  Growth Advisors: Worked with fractional growth marketers before hiring an in-house team.

Consultants for Startups Suck

Startups don’t need slide decks and ideas. They need hands on keyboards.

This is why there are no go-to consultants for new fast growing companies. Consultants have a negative connotation, they are not considered a competitive advantage.

• Consultants leverage rigid plans- things change, how is this even possible when speed is the main advantage?
• Tactical Consultants focus on low leverage tasks- strategy is better served internally, so is it even worth bringing in any strategic support?
• Strategic Consultants deliver powerpoint presentations- then you have to go figure out how to implement all this new work. How is that even useful?
• This just doesn’t work. And it makes the exec who brought them in look bad, wastes money, and worst of all wastes time (the most valuable resource).

Startups are Not Easy to Work With

On the other hand, startups are high maintenance. This is why MBB doesn’t focus on them, and why the market is fragmented with a bunch of small agencies. Some of the smartest people in the world, working as fast as possible, on a mission to take down big tech companies. That is not an easy audience to work for.

tl;dr

• Expectations are high
• Price sensitive
• Prone to failure

LeanScale’s Mission—Empower Startups to Gain Faster Market Distribution

Go-to-Market Operations (i.e. Revenue Operations) is the most direct path to helping B2B startups rapidly gain market share. This encompasses all parts of Planning, Process, Systems, & Reporting. It requires a team approach with a heavy focus on architecture and engineering.

• Traditional GTM Ops operators are not equipped to handle the scope and complexity of what’s to come. They need architect and engineering support to be able to increase market distribution at the speed required to win their market.
• Hiring a team of these individuals is incredibly difficult, expensive, and risky.

That’s where LeanScale comes in.

We’re creating the most quick, cost effective, and high quality option for startups to increase market distribution as fast as possible.

LeanScale’s Approach—GTM Architects & GTM Engineers

Our unique approach is tailor made for startups. No BS, just hands on keyboards with cutting edge approaches that we research every single day.

Startup Talent

We don’t hire consultants, we hire startup operators who relentlessly want to stay tip-of-the-spear in regards to growing companies.

• 3-10+ Years Startup Experience
• Deep Technical Abilities
• Fast Pace Work Style
• Rapid Re-Prioritization Skills
• Iterative Approaches
• B2B SaaS and AIaaS Experience
• Everyone on our team deeply empathizes with the race our clients are in. They know what it takes. They understand the speed and sacrifice needed. They realize that every single slight advantage can be significant.

These are people you want on your team, difference makers that are deeply invested in your success.

Technical Enablement

We’ve spent years building and sharing best practices for our team, and for all the startups we may never get to work with. We now have the largest YouTube channel, one of the biggest in all-things-startups.

• 200+ videos
• 250K+ subscribers
• 1mil+ views

We’ve also built API-style Go-to-Market Ops Docs for startups, to document the blueprints of what is needed for startups.

Unique Operating System

We have a top-down approach to GTM Operations

• Start with an Annual Growth Model
• Build Quarterly Epics and Monthly Milestones based on what’s not performing well
• Execute tactics based on the largest GTM gaps
• Review performance to plan

This keeps us aligned with the highest leverage projects, we don’t want to build and implement just because someone used this at a previous company. That, unfortunately, is how many systems and processes are brought into startups today.

We build teams with a GTM Architect armed with 2 engineers

This 2:1 ratio allows us to rapidly build the right system to support rapid growth leveraging the latest AI technologies.

No one on the team is just a ‘coordinator’ or a ‘pm’, we’re all hands on deck technical talent building a rock-solid foundation that won’t be outdated in 6 months.

LeanScale’s Partners—Leaders across Go-to-Market Operations

In order to execute on LeanScale’s vision…we need top-tier GTM Ops leads to take us there…we are increasing the size of our partner team. Ushering in some of the brightest minds in our space. Their experiences cover a combined 50+ go-to-markets. 5x the average executive at a startup. They power LeanScale with a mix of both architecture and engineering experience across all parts of the Go-to-Market Matrix. Together, they are bringing the next generation of LeanScale to startups across the world.

Bernardo Alves  |  Meet Bernardo

Bernardo has years of experience in Go-to-Market operations at a variety of startups, GTM motions, and technology stacks. He was the first employee hired at LeanScale and worked with more LeanScale portfolio companies than anyone else at the company.

He’s the co-author of the LeanScale Method, and has built all enablement material to onboard the best new talent, and fastest growing new clients.

Cameron Legge  |  Meet Cameron

Cameron is the creator of the LeanScale Operating Model, which he built leveraging years of experience as a CS leader across dozens of startups.

Our unique approach to solving consulting for startups was built on his relentless pursuit of delivering value every week. His model is the shining example of how we want to partner with startups at the highest level.

Jake Toepel  |  Meet Jake

Jake has built LeanScale’s Engineering team, Technical Centers of Excellence, and now onto LeanScale Labs to bring in the latest AI innovations internally and to our clients.

With over a decade of engineering experience, he’s helped LeanScale turn into an engineering-first company with a deep competency on cutting edge AI technologies.

Sean Kennedy  | Meet Sean

Sean is one of the most experienced Marketing Operations experts in the startup world. He’s built the MOps offering from start to finish, and now runs LeanScale Studios – one of the most important parts of the LeanScale brand.

Marketing Operations is the most influenced part of the AI influx, and he’s bringing our clients the latest tactics in AI to continue to increase distribution as fast as possible.