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📚 The GTM playbook every founder needs to bookmark
Ian Ito
October 12, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
ISSUE #276
This week in SaaS, the platform layer is shifting faster than GTM playbooks can keep up. OpenAI turned ChatGPT into a distribution channel, capital keeps flowing to AI-native plays, and marketing teams are rethinking what content actually does.
In this week's roundup:
ChatGPT becomes the user interface for software - and why that's an existential shift for SaaS companies
The GTM playbook every founder should bookmark - specific thresholds for hiring, comp, and sales model selection
Content as a Service - the framework that turns marketing from a request line into a revenue tool
Let's dive in!
Ian at SaaS Weekly
THIS WEEK IN SAAS
Trends across the industry
🗺️ Strategy | The GTM playbook every founder should bookmark
Tomasz Tunguz just dropped a comprehensive guide to GTM strategy that reads like the operating manual most startups wish they had at $1M ARR.
It covers everything from sales model selection (self-service vs. inside vs. field) to when you should actually hire your first AE (hint: after the founder closes 10+ deals). The guide includes decision frameworks for PLG vs. SLG, compensation benchmarks by role, and the often-missed nuance of when to layer in channel partners. [Tomasz Tunguz]
Why it matters: Most GTM breakdowns either skip the fundamentals or drown you in theory. This one gives you the specific thresholds - when to specialize your sales team, what pipeline coverage ratio you need, and how to structure comp at each stage. It's the kind of resource you'd normally piece together from a dozen different sources and three fractional advisors. Now it's just sitting there, waiting to save you six months of expensive trial and error.
🤖 AI Platforms | ChatGPT is becoming the user interface for software
The biggest news coming out of DevDay wasn't the advancement of models, but the impact on an entire industry. Here's why:
OpenAI announced an app store inside a chat window and a visual builder for AI agents. The first means you can now interact with Canva, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow directly in ChatGPT - not as redirects to other tabs, but as mini-applications that run within the conversation itself. The second part, AgentKit, is a no-code builder where you drag, drop, and deploy AI agents in hours. What used to require a development team now takes one person and a browser. [ScrumLaunch] [Humai.blog]
Why it matters: If your product can't be accessed from inside ChatGPT, you're now outside the new standard workflow. The interface is moving away from your carefully designed product pages and into a conversational layer controlled by OpenAI.
Automation tools like Zapier and n8n are especially exposed here; AgentKit just disrupted their prosumer market. For other SaaS companies, the path forward is to decide how you plug into this new platform: building for ChatGPT's ecosystem, or building something so complex and enterprise-grade that a generalist LLM can't replicate it.
💰 Funding | AI-native SaaS is pulling serious capital
Capital is clustering around two forces: AI-native automation platforms (agentic workflows, coding assistants) and vertical SaaS with measurable ROI in legal, defense, and fintech. Data and analytics backends like Supabase are also drawing growth money as AI workloads move to production.
n8n secured $180M at $2.5B valuation (backed by Nvidia) to expand its agentic automation platform [Silicon Angle]
EvenUp closed $150M Series E at >$2B valuation to grow its legal-ops SaaS for personal injury law [Bloomberg]
Supabase raised $100M Series E at $5B valuation to scale its open-source database and AI cloud platform [TechCrunch]
BUILDING THE PLAYBOOK
Frameworks and resources to design your growth play
📝 Content Strategy | 5 min read | Amanda Natividad, SparkToro
Content as a Service: Stop treating content like a vending machine
In theory: Most marketing teams treat content like a request line - Sales needs a case study, so you check the box and ship it. Everyone's busy, but nothing moves because content is optimized for output, not outcomes. Content as a Service (CaaS) reframes this: every piece of content performs a clearly defined job for another function. If your content can't tell you what job it does and who it serves, it's not ready to ship.
In practice:
Use the CaaS Brief before production. Define: who's the client (Sales, CS, Product), what's the job (enable, convert, deflect), what's the moment of use (sales call step 2, onboarding day 1), and how you'll measure success. Can't fill it out? Don't make it.
Prioritize by business impact. A one-pager removing a late-stage objection beats a top-of-funnel blog post 9 times out of 10. Talk to Sales and CS weekly - find what deals are stalling, what tickets are repetitive, then build to patch those holes.
Track content usage in deals, not just pageviews. Ask Sales to tag which assets they used in closed deals. Monitor CS tickets that reference your guides. Compile these wins monthly in a "CaaS Wins" post - when attribution is murky, these real-world examples prove impact to leadership.
My take: The CaaS framework forces one uncomfortable question: if this content disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice? If the answer isn't obvious, you're filling calendars instead of closing gaps. That shift - from content factory to revenue tool - is what separates marketing teams that report on activity from ones that drive outcomes.
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