In this insightful podcast interview, I sit down with Matt Curl, the COO of Apollo, to discuss the future of AI-powered sales, how cold emails are evolving, and why data-driven go-to-market (GTM) strategies matter more than ever. Matt draws on his experience at Apollo (a leading sales engagement and data platform) to share unique perspectives on PLG (product-led growth), the challenges of AISDRs, and the importance of RevOps in B2B SaaS.
You’ll learn how AI-driven personalization can backfire, why focusing on the right signals in your target market dramatically boosts reply rates, and how creative testing in cold emails resembles running meta ads. We also dive into the power of intent data, the nuances of domain reputation, and how founders can navigate “shiny object syndrome” while scaling.
Whether you’re a sales rep looking for cutting-edge tactics, a founder exploring PLG strategies, or a RevOps professional seeking the perfect tech stack, this conversation is packed with actionable takeaways and real-world insights. Tune in to hear how Apollo continues to innovate, the role of data in cold email success, and why customer obsession should guide product decisions.
Timestamps
0:00 – Introduction & Technical Glitches
1:30 – Matt’s Musical Background & How Music Builds Discipline
2:30 – The Rise of AI SDRs& What It Means for Sales Teams
5:00 – Personalization vs. Scale & The Looming Spam Filter Problem
9:00 – Why the Best Cold Email Tactics Resemble Ad Creative Testing
14:00 – Finding High-Value Signals & The Role of RevOps
19:30 – Unlocking Intent Data & Why Customers Drive Product Roadmaps
24:00 – Clay vs. Apollo& The Importance of Ease-of-Use in Sales Tools
28:00 – SMB vs. Enterprise: When to Move Up-Market
31:00 – GTM Is Part of Your Product: The Future of End-to-End Sales Tech
35:00 – Final Thoughts & Parting Words
📢 Stay Connected with Us:
Don't forget to subscribe for more inspiring interviews and startup stories.
- Follow me on X (Formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/andymewborn
- Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amewborn
- Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andy.mewborn
📩 Feedback & Contact:
We value your feedback and questions! Leave us a comment below or reach out at: andy@distribute.so
🤝 Production Partner: https://bio.link/ytorbit
🎙️ About the Channel:
Our channel is dedicated to uncovering the stories of entrepreneurs who are changing the game. From tech innovators to wellness pioneers, we bring you the insights and behind-the-scenes looks at the journeys of today's top founders.
🔔 Hit the bell icon to stay updated with our latest content and dive into the world of entrepreneurship with us! 🔔
Matt:
It's so easy intellectually to get there. It's hard to operationally do it and execute and execute. Let's suppose you're in a crowded space, you're competing against five or six other competitors, which is most early stage startups and most, you know, mid-stage growth companies. What are you doing from a targeting perspective to out-compete them? Most GTM teams, they just want to make it all the product. Well, like the product needs to be better. The product needs to be better. There is of course, a lot of truth in that. Like great product is the most valuable asset you can have. You have to think about GTM as part of your product. Okay. What are we doing in this highly competitive space that is actually targeting better and outsmarting all of the other GTM teams?
Andy: Super pumped for today's episode. I've got Matt Curl in the house and we're about to geek out on some seriously cool stuff happening in sales tech right now. Matt and I dive into the wild world of AI sales reps, AI SDRs. Yeah, I know, it's actually a thing now. And we break down where sales and marketing are headed. And finally, we settle the debate on whether cold email is dead or not. Now, trust me, his takes on this are gonna blow your mind, y'all. And as always, feel free to subscribe to Andy's Pod on your favorite podcasting app, whether that's Spotify or Apple Podcasts, so that you can be the first to know when we drop a new episode with some of these go-to-market leaders that just will knock your socks off and teach you something new. So with that, I have Matt Curl.
Matt: All right, can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you now. You can hear me? It was me. It was weird. Once I joined, it wouldn't let me change settings. So it locked me inside the exit to go reset at the other screen.
Andy: Oh, no way. Riverside's like super weird. Like it's great quality, but sometimes it just like goes back and forth. But like, yeah, it's it's it's interesting. But I see you got a guitar back there. You got a guitar player?
Matt: Oh, my my spouse and my kiddos mess around with it. I'm not. I did more piano stuff when I was younger.
Andy: Oh, OK. Nice. Nice.
Matt: Yeah. I see you have a couple of acoustics though and an electric.
Andy: Yeah, yeah, acoustic, electric, classical. I'm a nerd. So like growing up, I studied classical music for, you know, 10 years or something. So stuff that will put you to sleep. But I swear I tell I tell my wife I have a two year old. Um, or we have a two year old, I should say. And, um, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. She's listening to this. You can buy what you have a two year old. Um, no, but you know, we have a two year old and I told her, I was like, honestly, what taught me the most discipline in life was like learning classical music. because it just drives you nuts. I think learning any music in general is just like super, it just teaches you how to learn, right? Like, cause especially sheet music. So if you look at like one measure, you have to like sit there on that one measure until you figure it out before you move on to the next. And then you move on to the next, and then you combine the two, right?
Matt: And then, so it's- Like, you're a child of savant, Andy, and then you watch those videos that are so depressing of, like, a seven-year-old that will listen to music and just get on a piano and play the whole thing. Then you're just depressed with yourself, but yes.
Andy: Yeah, exactly.
Matt: Your experience is closer to mine, playing music and- It does become second nature, but yeah, it's a slow, it's a slow process.
Andy: Yeah. It's slow. And like you bang your head against the wall. Right. And, um, I think I have this theory that it, it, it produces the best founders, like the best founders were always musicians. Like, and, you know, and, um, they just have that, like, it teaches you such great discipline. Um, so anyways, that's something that, that I'm like on my wife about, I was like, all right, we got to get them in piano lessons as soon as like, he's capable. He's only two and a half now, but.
Matt: Uh, she's like chill weird things also where you, you do get a ton of reward and you can actually see the impact of practicing at something for quite a while. And it's really cool. And it becomes, it does become second nature. Like I can still whip out songs on a piano and play them. No problem for, I don't know, learn 10 years ago. It's just weird. They're just stuck in your memory and you can just, you know, slow down for a long time. Fingers get slower. You miss some keys, but like it's, it's there. It's pretty.
Andy: Yeah. It's like ingrained, right? It's like, it's just, it's crazy. I, yeah, I always bust out. Um, on the piano like if there's one laying around i'll bust out like some cold play or something you know classic yeah the classics the classics the classics yeah exactly the cloud the scientist which is a great song but like you know playing it on piano i just love doing but um yeah well let's chat matt we i just hit record and we make this super conversational i know we've got like 20 minutes here so Um, yeah, I think what would be interesting for today to discuss is like, we have all these tool, you know, I come from outreach, of course, that's my, you know, I spent eight years at outreach was one of the first, like employees, early employees, I should say. And, um, yeah, spent time there and. Now we've got AISDRs and Apollo kind of plays in the same space as outreach and sales loft, right? And so I think, you know, what my group text wants to hear, because all the cold email gurus I have in a group text, right? And I'm like, what should I ask Matt? Yeah. And a lot of them were like, ask him what he thinks about all this AI SDR stuff coming out, where's Apollo going? Are they gonna double down on that as well? Like where does Matt think the market is going? And so I just wanna ask you that, right? And kind of get your perspective and others I believe wanna hear it too.
Matt: That is like a prophetic question. It's like, I mean, let's, let's talk about it. You know, anyone that's been in rev ops has been a part of their career, probably like senior sales leadership where you're actually doing pretty sophisticated tooling for targeting. you or you've built a scale sales team, you end up doing a lot of targeting stuff. And I think LLMs in particular are ripe for all sorts of displacement and disruption in RevTech. And I think that my honest belief is what we're going to see in the near midterm, you know, two, three years is probably AI assisting humans. I just don't think AI by itself works particularly well. And I think it's just causing too much damage. I have a big network of RevOps peers. Very, very, very few have been able to get pure AI SDR to work. It just causes more problems than it solves. It's difficult. It's really difficult. And I think that you're seeing a lot of companies inadvertently really harm the domain reputation. You're seeing a lot of companies scale spam messaging, and it's almost becoming comically easy to detect which emails are AI versus not. They come to my inbox. And I'm sure if you're getting emails like that, you can probably detect the same. I think ultimately, if you have the right message, right customer, right time, and it's contextualized, you're just going to convert at a better rate. So I think with the AI space, what you're going to see is, it kind of reminds me of the, do you remember the very first time you had a video of an SDR that sends you something and they've got like the whiteboard and it's got your name on it?
Andy: I used to do that.
Matt: When that first came out. the conversion rates were extremely high because it was like, whoa, this is like some hyper personalized, you know, somebody took the time. It pulls on your heartstrings as a human. I think AI is similar. What's going to happen is it's going to be a race because once that approach, for example, with the whiteboard became commoditized, the effectiveness just drops. And I think what AI is doing is really learning. and learning faster. And so I think that what you're going to see is the companies with the most data are going to be the ones that win in an AISDR type of race. And the ones that are sort of playing behind don't have access to good data assets are probably going to fall further behind. And I think that the extra part there is it's dangerous because you're dealing with domain reputation. Google, Gmail, Outlook are not going to like thousands of messages that all sound the same with low open rates and high bounce rates and spam filters. You will also probably definitely have companies that start to put spam filters at corporate inboxes that can detect AI language. Like these things are going to happen. I think that's sort of where we are.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, it's funny you say that because it's, it's ironic when, when I get personalized emails now, I know it's AI. Right. It's kind of this opposite effect where, so my cold email strategy right now is I don't use any personalization. I think of it like an ad where it's like, what's something I can say that's going to like humor or entertain or something. Um, you know, like an ad, right? Cause if you think about ads, like at Facebook, when they do an ad, right, when you make ads on Facebook, what you're optimizing for is a creative or saying something in an ad that appeals to a lot of people that will get them to click, right? Or do the next action. And you can't personalize every single ad, right? And so I'm starting to think of this cold email. It's almost like a cold, like a ad network in a way where you're trying to essentially come up with something to say to a group of people. Um, Now, my thesis on this whole thing is, so what does that mean? I think what's gonna happen is you're gonna have to get really freaking good at doing creative testing with your cold emails. And it's no longer going to be like who, who can use clay or one of these tools. So like do 10,000 emails, personalized emails in three seconds or whatever the heck it's going on. No, I think where the magic sauce and what's needing to be disrupted is actually the creative testing part of the cold emails themselves. Yeah, I just gave Apollo an idea. So I want credit if you guys build something like that.
Matt: You know, I mean, you're right. I mean, what's even interesting about what you're saying, though, is if AI from a technology perspective is working correctly, and too much personalization stops working, it should back off personalization and go towards less dense personalization. This is where it gets sort of crazy. If you think about the actual effect of like, if it's properly tuned, I mean, you have to think five years away, I think tech is really It's, I don't know, I don't know what your perspective is. To me, it's, it feels like it's going to be sudden, but it's not. And then when you look back and you see things that are 10 years old, you're like, wow, it has changed a lot in 10 years. And I think that's, that's sort of what it's going to feel like when we look back at AI. Um, these models are getting smarter by the day. I do think though, that the biggest risk is what you're saying, which is how do you get right message, right customer, right time. And I think what most people are making mistakes of is they're using AI as a blunt. forced weapon and they're trying to just blast a bunch of emails to a bunch of people because for the first time, it's making it very easy to do broad email communication on demand where historically you've had to rely on SDRs and start smarter, more sophisticated marketing teams to build more bespoke campaigns, right? You run. You know, in an enterprise model, it's like, let's go target these top 1000 accounts and we're going to treat them this way. And we're going to have messaging that sounds like this. Let's go target this mid-market audience for tech within this ICP, with this specific campaign that we're going to build into outreach. Let's go segment over here. It's a slower draw. It's more methodical. It's more thoughtful. And a lot of human process strategy, sales training goes into that. I know you, I know you would have lived out at outreach, right? You're, you're doing things like, okay, we're going to run a campaign. In the next half of the year to go against tech companies, you know, a thousand to 5,000 employees. This is the pitch. This is the narrative. This is why we fit for them. Here's the collateral for the sales team. It's a really targeted, well thought through message. That's really resonant. And I think what the mistake that AISDR is doing is it's promising all of those things in a cold email. And then you hop on a call and it's not like the rest of the sales call came with that.
Andy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Matt: You're saying, yeah, it's got to be a lot more planned and thoughtful. And, and your, your, your sales pitch, the rest of the brand has to deliver the promise of some hyper personalized, customized email that was written by a model to make you say yes.
Andy: Yeah. You know, the way I think about, I'm thinking like, all roads lead to it being like an ad management or like a email version of an ad management platform, like meta ads. If you've ever ran a meta ad, now what they do is what they call flexible ads or this dynamic creative testing. And so honestly, someone needs to build this. And if they're listening, I'll invest if you do it, but like, it's now what you do is they pick the audience for you, right? Like their whole, like, because they're an algorithm.
Matt: It's a pixel that just tracks and gets smarter. And the more people that interact, the more it doubles down. It's a smart, it's a smart.
Andy: And you know, it's crazy. You can do that if you're tied into people's emails, which Apollo is right. I know this is probably a sore subject, but you know, you have all the data of what people are looking at, what they're trying to do. And so if you can basically do something like that for cold email, where you say, Oh yeah, Hey, here's my audience, or it already knows your audience because it, from your domain, here's. Here's three sets of subject lines. Here's three sets of a first line. Here's three sets of this. Find the perfect combination and use your own kind of like machine to change things a little bit here and there for particular people. I think all roads are leading to that when it comes to cold email, which is kind of crazy. I think there's a lot of data you're going to need to back that and make that happen. But I think all roads are kind of leading to that where it's like, you're not like setting up every single little email. You have a system that's sending all the emails for you. You're just kind of like guiding it and there's guide rails of like what the different sets of creative tests are. And then the winning cold email, you're going to be able to use that thing multiple times over and over until it gets stagnant. Right. I basically do this manually today, by the way. And this is where I'm like, holy shit, this is just like running. And I run ads too. I'm like, it's literally the same thing I'm doing. I'm just, it's way more manual from the cold email standpoint at this point in time.
Matt: And it's going to have the same risks. Like let's talk about fun ad strategy, things I've done in career. A lot of people with ads, right, they try to drive a low CPL. So if you have a product, like I'll give like a good sort of thought experiment, like, you know, like a checker example, checker runs background checks for all sorts of folks. If you focus so heavily on CPLs and you're trying to just drive CPLs down. Let's talk about that. Okay. I want the lowest possible CPL. What is the ad tracking pixel going to start finding? It's going to find people to click on it. Do you think more people search on web traffic for, I need to run a background check for a business, or I want to run a background check on Andy newborn. Cause I'm about to go sell him something. And it's a lot more people are trying to run background checks on a date they're going on, on a peer that they might know on an individual than there's ever web traffic in Google for an HR professional saying, let me go search and switch over my ad tech. So I think the same thing is true with AISDR and these AI modules. They're all focused on the click-through rate, the conversion rate, the response rates. They're not focused on whether I got the right customer and did they actually go for a down funnel? I don't, I've not seen very many. AI type of agents right now that are looking at whether the quality of the traffic they're picking up is good. So there is also risk of what you're saying. They'll work their way into the highest response rates, which might be a bad audience for your company. And I don't think anyone, not anyone, I think very few people are paying attention to this except for like some more sophisticated rev ops folks that I know.
Andy: Yeah.
Matt: Full funnel. And actually have the instrumentation to say, here's the lead source. And did it convert or not into an actual customer? And was it a good customer? That cycle? I mean, this is how early we are. This is why I'm saying we're early. It's still, most things on AICR are focused just on open rates. And did you have reply rates?
Andy: Right. But like, not necessarily if it's a right, like positive reply rates, But it's like, okay, I can have someone that's positive reply rate, but it could be the total wrong type of customer. Right?
Matt: That's what you're saying. You can work into a very, very low value audience that you may not want.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, which is interesting. And you know what this reminds me of is like the large market formula, which is like, we're getting really deep now, by the way, Matt, this is, this is fun. Very, yeah, this is very intellectually stimulating, which I love. So it's like, okay, the next thing, this, how do you think about this in relation to the large market formula? Right. Which is that formula that says like only 3% of your buyers are ready to buy at one time. Right. Then there's like people who are not problem where that's like 30%. The rest are, you know, it's that pyramid. And I think a lot of the time too, is like, people are just starting to understand this theory as well. where with data, there has to be some, this is a funny term, people are going to make fun of me, but a synergy, right? Between like, how do you look at data in a way that finds those people that are in market that are that 3% that may be looking for your solution and then use that data to understand the 97% that are not and send the right message at the right time for them. And that's something I've been trying to like tackle with too. It's so nerdy. This is what I think about, but like, you know, how do you think about that, right? Like, have you kind of wrestled with that at all?
Matt: I think this is where, you know, I've got lots of stories through lots of places in careers where we've done this, it's generally been my brightest frontline sales managers and SDR managers that come up with these answers. Uh, so it's closely driven to this. I'll give like an interesting example of stuff from a long time ago. Uh, we used to use a lot of data from Yelp at five stars to figure out how to target an owner. And we sold SMB loyalty at that time, largely feet on the street, but we also had a, you know, a peak about a hundred person contact center. doing inside sales out of Denver. One of the things we would look for were comments on Yelp posts that talked about an owner or would list the owner name. Why? It's just data signal that the owner's present, the owner's available at the store, the owner's paying attention to the store at that time. If you never saw comments about an owner in a shop, the owner name never appears, you don't see owner appear in any of the comments, conversion rates are way lower. So I think this is sort of getting back to what you're talking about. It's like, how do you find interesting signal? And the person that found that was like, it's a guy named Carson Lou. He was inside sales manager at the time, but it's these types of signals that sort of tell you buying readiness. That's not exactly buyer readiness, but it did tell you something really important, which stores that are brick and mortar SMBs actually have an owner present and a lot don't.
Andy: Yeah.
Matt: Uh, and it's chipping away at those things, getting back to what you're saying, which is how do you find signal that tells you about readiness to purchase? And obviously a part of readiness to purchase is the decision maker is available.
Andy: Yeah.
Matt: But these are types of things where when tech companies really succeed or you get really sophisticated, cool GTM teams, they're really dang good about finding these signals. And it's almost always in my experience coming from really bright AEs, really bright SDRs and those, those really like bright frontline managers. They're the ones that see it.
Andy: Yeah. So is there like an easy button for that these days? I think common room and these other people are kind of like trying to like measure these signals, but there's like so much you can throw at the wall. And it's like, what do you focus on? Like, do you think it just takes talking to customers, right? Quote unquote, which is what everyone tells you to do. is how that happens or is there actually an easy button that's going to tell you like, Hey, you're this business looking for these signals out there. Like, you know, or is it just going to have to stay manual?
Matt: I don't know if there's an easy button. I think intent data, you know, stuff like the Bumbora has built over time. Those types of things are valuable. I mean, those are just built off of someone with a corporate domain is Googling something about this product, which, which is, um, I do think there's value there. What most companies in my experience struggle with is that the technologists get divorced from the field. Like how many times do you have RevOps folks get on the phones? And how often have you seen RevOps? I mean, you were at Outreach. How often were RevOps teams coming and saying, I'm going to build this messaging or I'm going to build this audience profile based off direct feedback from sales managers and AEs? No comment. Some of the single best conversion rates I've seen for businesses are ones where it's almost like the co-founder led, the founder led. And it's when the person that's manning the ship, so to speak, and building the cadences and building the emails is also the person that's delivering the pitch and talking to the customer. And I don't think there's a secret to that, but. A lot of companies grow and size up and the divide and the divorce between the technologists building messaging and programmatic campaigning aren't the ones talking to customers or listening to calls.
undefined: Yeah.
Matt: That, that creates, I think back to the point you, you stop losing the magic that helps you figure out what those signals are and get really dang good at targeting.
Andy: Yeah. It's almost like. it's kind of like an idea that's popping in my head right now. It's like, you almost need like a chief signal officer, you know, of like someone- CSO. Yeah, CSO. Sorry, security CSOs, not to, you know, but like, honestly, cause you know, some of these signals from what I'm hearing from you is like, make or break your business that you can use in order to build pipeline. Maybe not make or break, but they definitely give you more tailwinds. is what it can sound like. And, um, it's almost like you need someone looking for the needle in the haystack, right?
Matt: Yeah. Especially highly competitive markets. If you're competing, like just think it's so easy intellectually to get there. It's hard to operationally do it and execute and execute intellectual exercise for anyone. It's like so easy. Let's suppose you're in a crowded space. You're competing as five or six other competitors, which is most early stage startups and most, you know, mid-stage growth companies. What are you doing? from a targeting perspective to out-compete them. Most GTM teams, not all, I don't even know if it's most, more than more than half I've ever like advised, interacted with, talked to, they just want to make it all the product. Well, like the product needs to be better. The product needs to be better. There is, of course, a lot of truth in that. Like great product is the most valuable asset you can have. You have to think about GTM as part of your product. Okay. What are we doing in this highly competitive space that is actually targeting better and outsmarting all the other GTM teams? I don't think that's a dominant perspective in a lot of go-to-market teams. And I think that people have to adopt that and think about I'm competing for the same audience, the same eyeball. So how do you get smarter? How do you find the Yelp owner signal? How do you find these types of things that help you outcompete?
Andy: Hmm. Yeah. Dude, what you just said is, is, is amazing. It's GTM is part of your product, right? Like if people think product is just like where you click on the page and you know, how you open like Apollo's data, you know, uh, filters and stuff, but it's like, no, like how you get people to come in, interact onboarding, right? Like getting them through that, even though that's product, but it's like the thought behind how GTM leads to the onboarding flow and all that kind of crazy stuff. Um, which is so true. And from the outside, it's like, Oh yeah, you just spin up a few, you know, email campaigns and you're good to go.
Matt: And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
Andy: Yeah. And we have a couple of minutes here, Matt. So I want to, I want to get, and this is a selfish question for me because, you know, as a founder, and I'm sure you, I'm sure you hear it from your founders all the time and you keep them in line because we tend to have shiny object syndrome. Right. And so you, you have a data product, right. Apollo, which is great. I use it all the time, you know, and then you have something like clay, right. What's your like mental model or thinking process behind that, right? You see Clay as like a data platform, like up and coming, you know, lots of people are talking about it, using it, all that fun stuff. Like, do you say, holy crap, we need to make the Apollo product more like that? Or do you sit back a little bit and kind of like strategize what you're going to do next? Or do you say, hey, look, maybe that is the way, and then go towards that. Like, what's your thinking behind that from a product strategy and go to market perspective?
Matt: Yeah, I think, I think I'm very, it's a, there's a personal thing that I think there's, there's, you know, Tim and founder DNA too at Apollo. I think from a personal perspective, I tend to think about who our customers are and what our customers need and what our customers are asking for and what we suppose they may need. I think when I look at Clay. They built a really interesting orchestration engine. They've really just stitched together a lot of tools to make it easier for folks to do jobs. And I think that if you talk with a lot of customers of Clay and a lot of users of Clay and Apollo or just Apollo, you can talk with all of them. Uh, I think on the clay sphere, you have probably like advanced use cases where you're trying to have rev ops teams stitched together six, seven, eight, nine, 10 different tools to do some bespoke targeting. I think it's definitely an opportunity for us. Uh, Apollo has a lot of SMB customers, a lot of lower mid market, and they have a lot of needs there. Some of those needs are some of these tools, data water falling for some of that stuff. Others are not at that extreme or that level. And it's overwhelming. Um, for teams to use it. It's more of a, who was it built for? And when I look at Clay as a RevOps professional, I'm like, oh, I feel like that was built for me. When I look at Apollo and I put on my sales, my SDR, maybe even my marketer hat, I think this was built for me. And so I think who our customer is, is really, really, really dang important to Apollo. And we really care a lot about sales, SDRs, marketers. Yes, we care a lot about RevOps too, but we really want the audience and the ease of use to be there for the teams that are actually sending emails to customers, listening to calls, and we're trying to make the tech stack simple. So kind of pulling one step away from that, if I'm in RevOps and I'm early stage, mid stage, I don't want to go buy seven tools. I don't want to procure a data provider, then procure a calendar tool, then procure a meeting tool, then procure an engagement tool, then procure a deal forecasting tool. I don't want to do that. I will if I'm a larger enterprise and I've got 200 AEs and I want a lot of sophistication, but that's not most people. And the result is they just do like old school GTM, like very old school GTM. And I think that Apollo has a really exciting opportunity there. And that's what a lot of our customers want and ask us for and need. Um, I think Clay has a lot to be gleaned from, but at the heart of it, I think what they're showing is, Hey, if you make it very easy for people to orchestrate a lot of interesting data, there's appetite in GTM teams to pull in a lot more data and make it usable. And I think that's very intuitive and obvious to me is if I have rev ops hat on.
Andy: Yeah, if you have that route. That's a great point, which is like- What are your thoughts there, Andy?
Matt: I mean, you potentially use both products. Like how do you think about that? Does that resonate what I'm saying?
Andy: Yeah, no, it does. I'm gonna be honest and I have friends at Apollo like yourself and I have friends at Clay. And look, I think Clay is great if you're a geek with this data and cold email stuff. And yeah, you're a geek and like, you're kind of like really in the weeds. Personally, I think it's a little difficult to use. Right. And so like their clay is going to do great for sure. But exactly what you're saying is an average salesperson going to go and use it? Probably not. Right. And so from my anecdotal experience, I just use data from Apollo and I have amazing reply rates and people ask me what I do. And I'm like, dude, I just target my exact market. I, and I, it comes down for me to the creative inside of the cold email. And is there some people that like, aren't necessarily my ice people that I accidentally email? Sure. Right. Like that happens or whatever. And they respond, Hey, like totally wrong, whatever. That's fine. But what I'm focused on is the content and the email and the positioning. And I think Clay is great and all that stuff. For more sophisticated industries that you need to go after, but for like, and again, that's the other thing, right? Is I'm using Apollo because I'm targeting software companies. It's great, right? Amazing. If I'm using it to go target HVAC companies that have a Yelp presence and do all this sophisticated stuff, Then I'm going to probably ask my friend how to use clay, right? So like you said, it's kind of like a, it depends on your needs. And I think clay is amazing, but it's going to definitely be for the more geeky stuff where you need to get like more into the weeds and targeting for some of these industries where data is not readily available. That is my thoughts.
Matt: Yeah. I agree. I think if you haven't seen them coming yet, they're coming very soon. I'm really excited about our roadmap. We've got a lot launching this quarter. I think some things will feel… similar to some stuff that Clay has, but it's, it doesn't come from them. What really informs our roadmap is we talk to people, we talk to customers, we have a value of customer obsession. We talk to customers and exactly you're saying our design principle is ease of use. We need to make it easy to use. We want to build power into this. So we've got AI power ups and plays and a lot of really advanced workflows you can do now inside of the product and more coming on that vein. We hear a lot from customers like, Hey, can you make it easier with some type of enrichment, these types of things, we hear these things from customers. And I think that's really how we inform roadmap. Um, so you want to like, look at, you want to look at the space. You want to see who's gaining traction. Who's not. But first and foremost, we have to stay obsessed with our customer. And I think that what I really love about Apollo is we know who our customers are and that's who we're serving and that's who we're like trying to delight.
Andy: Yeah. It makes sense. And you guys have. Always done that, right? Which some, something that I, and we, I know you have to hop, um, is what last thing I'll say is I'll say kudos to Apollo because, um, I was shut down at outreach. I'm like, we need to do a data tool. Like that's the fuel for the engine and we need to do that. And I was shot down and that's a totally okay. You know, just in the midst of everything, like focus on sequences or whatever, but. That was such a solid move, right? Because, you know, it just makes it way more sticky, I think. And it was a great job. And I'm like, shit, they really made a good move there. So kudos, kudos to the Apollo team. I think that was genius.
Matt: You know, it's all back to ease of ease of use, you know, if you step back and you know, we can shut down in a second here. It's peculiar to me that it's 2024. And I know that if I were to start my own company right now, and I wanted to run a modern go-to-market tech stack. how insane it would be. I'd have to go buy a bunch of tools, configure a bunch of tools, define an ICP, load in contacts, pull in emails, find an engagement platform, do AI note taker, call listening, build like a Calendly type of integration into myself. I'd have to go do seven, eight, nine things. And I think what we're sort of saying is like, that's ridiculous. It's far too long that it's been this hard. And the result is so many businesses that could be served and not being served because the barrier to entry on that you come from the world and it would be difficult for you. I come from the world and it would be difficult for me. Imagine what it's like for the first time founder. It's either technical or not technical. Yeah, but it is bizarre that you can't just. log into a CRM and say, here's an example of one customer and here's an example of one message. And I have go-to-market in a box. I think that's a big opportunity. And I think data is the core genesis of that because if you have the data asset, you're able to then do a lot of those things easier. And I think that's really what this is about is ease of use and making it very customer-friendly.
Andy: Shoot, we got to go, but we'll continue this at some point, but my next question for you would be like, you guys have targeted SMB segment amazingly well. you know, and it, and everyone, you know, your investors and everyone's probably like go up market, right? Like you need to go up market and you need to do this. And I'm sure you hear this all the time. And do you stay focused or do you actually try and go up market and compete with. you know, the other guys that are targeting focus on that market. Like I'll let's end with this question.
Matt: I'll give you my one sentence answer and then we'll, we'll tease it. And if you want to chat again, we happy to happy to hop on and riff more.
Andy: Yeah.
Matt: PLG business. You do not decide to go up market. Customers tell you you're ready to go up market. That's the answer.
Andy: Okay. So where's Apollo?
Matt: I think customers are telling us that they want more things from us.
Andy: Okay. There we go. There's the answer, right? Nice, okay, okay, this is good because… I like your perspective. Cause I'm, I'm, I'm founder. We're a newer business. Don't get me wrong. But like, you know, it's like, shit, do I focus on the enterprise? Because we, that's where some customers are coming from, but also like a lot of individuals can just sign up and get value out of our product. And so in this early phase, you know, I'm constantly wrestling this idea. And so I'm kind of like, shoot, what do we do? You know, like what, and it is two different motions, right? It's, it's, it, it is very different. And so, That, for me, is just a concept.
Matt: Tell you if you're ready. Your customers will tell you where you're ready and where you're not. I think, again, it's like, really, so many teams decide, like, how do most companies decide how to go enterprise? They sit in a room and they say, we need to get more revenue growth next year. Let's cross the chasm and jump to enterprise. And we're just going to go do it. That is not what you do in a PLG business. It's just not. Your customers will tell you, hey, we've got all these licenses deployed. Can you consolidate them? Hey, we would love if you could bring these teams together. These are the signals that you see. You can talk to anyone. Jenna says early Atlassian. even a lot of B2C companies that have done this, that's what happens. I think that's the signal you're looking for. And I think increasingly over time, obviously Apollo is having people ask for this. And I think again, heart of PLG, a lot of people get it wrong. I'm not saying I'm right, but my general framework is in this order, you acquire users, you activate your users, and then you monetize your users. And that's the third step. And I think that back to that principle, a lot of companies, when they try to jump to enterprise, they're trying to skip activation, and acquisition, and they're jumping straight to monetization. How do we go take this product and monetize it up market? And that's okay. And that works sometimes, but it's- It's far and few between, right? Yeah. And I think Apollo, you know, probably took swings at this years back and learned that the hard way. And they're not alone. I know many businesses that have done that and learned the hard way.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, same thing with outreach, right? Then we'll go here. Cause we're, we're definitely over, but, um, you know, they target a lot of enterprise, but early in the, in the day, dude, we were taking orders from anyone that would pay us, you know, like, and it was typically smaller businesses. Cause they could just make a decision like that. Holy crap, early adopters in the chasm, right? They can move fast, do that. And the few stragglers would come in that were happening to be enterprise, but you know, it wasn't like an overnight, like, Oh yeah, we're just going to do enterprise. You know, it was kind of like figure out what people want, what's useful. And then, you know, do that. And I think, A lot of businesses screw up because they try and go too early and build for the enterprise. And then their other users are like, Hey, what the heck? We need to make this thing that we already have better. Right.
Matt: And so, Know your customers, reviewing a strategy plan once for a company. And it was like, we're doing SMB mid market enterprise and international. And I just politely, what are you not doing? What are we not doing? I was like, that's amazing, but what are you not doing? You have the most brilliant GTM plan ever. SMB Midmarket Enterprise International, we got it all. So.
Andy: Yeah. And so it comes, you got to focus on one. And so this is good. This is good. Well, Matt, Hey, it has been a pleasure. We'll let you go, my friend. Hey, well, you know, thank you so much for jumping on. This is going to be great for all the gurus. And then we'll probably have this out in like a week or so and I'll shoot it over to y'all. But no, this was a great conversation, man. Yeah, likewise, Andy.
Matt: Thanks for having me.
Andy: Yeah, man. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much, Matt. Great to meet you, man. Bye.
