Beyond Founder-Led Sales: A Closed-Door GTM Session

​Somewhere between finding your first customers and building a repeatable GTM engine, things get messy.

​Your outbound stops working. Deals stall for unclear reasons. Pricing keeps changing. Distribution feels harder than product. And many of these questions are difficult to discuss openly in a public setting.

​This closed-door session is designed for B2B founders and operators who are navigating exactly that stage. We’ll bring together a curated group of founders and GTM leaders for an honest conversation about what is working, what is breaking, and how teams are adapting their go-to-market approach in today’s market.

​Come with a question, a challenge, or a deal you’re trying to move forward. You’ll leave with practical perspectives, clearer benchmarks, and people worth staying in touch with.

​What we'll discuss

• ​Where GTM gets stuck.
  Common challenges around outbound, founder-led sales, enterprise evaluation, pricing, procurement, and moving from early traction to a more repeatable motion.

• ​What is actually working now.
  How teams are using events, partnerships, communities, signal-based outbound, content, AI tools, and sales workflows to create pipeline.

• ​How buyers and operators think.
  Perspectives from people who have built, sold, evaluated, or scaled B2B products, including what makes a message land and what causes deals to lose momentum.

• ​Real examples from the room.
  We’ll invite attendees to share anonymized GTM challenges, stuck deals, or open questions, then discuss them together with the panel and the broader room.

• ​Relevant connections.
  The room is intentionally curated so attendees can meet other founders, operators, and GTM practitioners facing similar challenges.

​Who's on the panel

​Lillian Ma — Head of Global Partnerships, GMI Cloud
Artin Bogdanov — Co-founder, SUN (a16z speedrun SR006)
Weida Tan — Co-founder, PressClub
Danni Chen — Head of Product & GTM, GEN (NASDAQ: GEN)

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​Agenda

• ​6:30 PM: Doors open, drinks and light bites

• ​7:00 PM: Panel discussion: practical GTM challenges in today’s market

• ​7:40 PM: Room discussion: founder questions, stuck deals, and real examples

• ​8:30 PM: Networking and curated introductions

• ​9:30 PM: Close

​Who's in the room:

​This session is designed for a curated group of early-stage founders and GTM operators.

​Best fit:

• ​B2B software, AI-native applications, SaaS, dev tools, or vertical software

• ​In market with early customers, revenue, pilots, or active sales conversations

• ​Pre-seed to Series A, or at a similar early GTM stage

• ​Working through questions around distribution, sales, pricing, positioning, partnerships, or pipeline

​Every registration will be reviewed so the room stays relevant and useful for everyone attending. The room only works if every seat holds someone worth learning from.

​A note on RSVPs:

​Seats are limited, and the value of the room depends on who is in it. Please register only if you are likely to attend. If your plans change, let us know early so we can offer the spot to another founder or operator.

​Please bring your ID for check-in — entry is verified against the guest list.

​Supported By

​Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP A leading investment management law firm known for providing top-tier, innovative, and collaborative legal solutions for complex financial services matters. CFM services start-up investment managers, multibillion-dollar funds, and everything in between. The firm’s corporate and intellectual property (IP) practice groups also advise early-stage startups to later staged companies valued in the billions and the business innovators and investors who run and fund them, including: global comprehensive and strategic IP counsel and legal services, delivering tailored solutions and robust protections for developments and inventions, brands, digital assets, AI technologies, designs, know-how, and more; and advising companies and investors during all stages of the corporate lifecycle across emerging industries, from formation to exit, such as fundraising rounds, mergers and acquisitions, securities compliance, joint ventures, corporate clean-up and due diligence, employment matters, corporate tax matters, etc.

​GMI Cloud A GPU cloud and AI infrastructure company based in Mountain View, providing on-demand access to high-performance NVIDIA GPUs and an inference platform for training, deploying, and scaling AI models. It serves frontier research labs, developers, agent builders, enterprises, and startups, with offerings spanning raw GPU compute, a token-based inference API, and dedicated endpoints. add these four speakers information as well

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​Hosted by OpenStages · LinkedIn

​building invitation-only conversations for researchers, founders, and technical leaders across the Bay Area.