Jack Altman(@jaltma):Sam makes the case for why startups should invest much more time and capital into brand, and lays out what he's doing at Monaco. Demand gen is always easier to justify, but a lot of the software companies I respect most like Rippling, Ramp, Figma etc have clearly prioritized it.

2026.07.14 19:54

Sam makes the case for why startups should invest much more time and capital into brand, and lays out what he's doing at Monaco. Demand gen is always easier to justify, but a lot of the software companies I respect most like Rippling, Ramp, Figma etc have clearly prioritized it.

Jack Altman@jaltma

2026.07.14 15:37

I sat down with @samdblond, founder of Monaco, to talk about to talk about the future of sales and GTM in the AI era. He's an incredible GTM leader and founder and I get new ideas every time I talk to him. Hope you enjoy. Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (1:26) Sam's sales journey (3:11) EchoSign learnings (5:28) Building Zenefits GTM (7:02) Parker's 0 to $10M thought exercise (9:51) Creating a demand-rich environment (14:20) People, brand, and revenue ops (21:19) Why Sam went to Founders Fund (28:00) Starting Monaco (29:40) Salesforce’s innovator's dilemma (31:40) Going straight for the system of record (34:30) Disrupting labor (41:10) Pricing in an AI-native environment (44:28) The Monaco GTM playbook (50:06) The $60,000 plane experiment (54:21) Creative campaigns vs. paid advertising (1:00:06) Monaco’s product approach (1:03:13) Advice for founders just starting to sell (1:07:58) Abundant pipeline and the right to say no