GTM 152: What’s Actually Working in GTM Right Now: Lessons from Centari, Atrix AI, & Gaiia
What’s actually working in go-to-market right now? In this live panel from the GTM Fund AGM, three early-stage leaders from three exceptional companies—Centari, Atrix AI, and Gaiia—break down how they’re closing enterprise deals in some of the most challenging verticals: legal, pharma, and telecom. From viral LinkedIn content and founder-led dinners to the now-infamous "donut drop" strategy, this episode is packed with practical, first-principles GTM plays you won’t find in a sales playbook.
Kevin Walker (Centari) – Founder & CEO of Centari, a legal tech platform providing deal intelligence to large law firms and, soon, financial services. A former M&A attorney at Paul Hastings, Kevin brings deep insider knowledge to solving complex legal workflows.
Vera Kutsenko (Atrix AI) – Founder & CEO of Atrix AI, a platform helping medical affairs teams at pharma and med device companies capture and operationalize real-world insights. Vera has become a thought leader in AI for regulated industries—recently authoring a viral book on AI in medical affairs.
Stephen Farnsworth (Gaiia) – VP of GTM at Gaiia and early GTM leader at Workato and Outreach. Gaiia is an end-to-end ERP, billing, and CRM platform for independent internet service providers (ISPs), tackling a niche but high-value market with massive infrastructure needs.
Discussed in this Episode:
- Centari built trust with top law firms by pairing deep domain credibility with a thoughtful, relationship-driven sales approach.
- Atrix AI sparked inbound demand by turning a single viral LinkedIn post into a full-length book on AI in medical affairs.
- Gaiia chose not to hire SDRs, focusing instead on high-ACV deals and personalized outreach in a tightly defined TAM of telecom providers.
- Gaiia’s “donut drop” strategy—personally delivering treats to rural ISP offices—created brand awareness and unlocked new pipeline.
- Both Centari and Atrix AI scaled founder-led sales by hiring a Chief of Staff to operationalize and extend GTM efforts.
- Atrix AI uses educational AI workshops to qualify buyers, build trust, and stand out in a noisy vendor landscape.
- Centari combats pilot fatigue and skepticism in legal tech by showing deep empathy, hiring former lawyers, and proving value early.
Highlights:
03:00 – Why Atrix AI scaled founder-led sales with viral content and thought leadership
06:00 – The accidental (and wildly successful) AI & medical affairs book launch
08:00 – Centari’s early GTM strategy: legal empathy, cookies, and product conviction
11:00 – Gaiia’s high-ACV model and why SDRs don’t make sense for their TAM
20:00 – The Donut Playbook: creating pipeline by showing up IRL
23:00 – Why Chief of Staff was a critical early hire for scaling sales ops
27:00 – How Gaiia is thinking about building community in a slow-moving vertical
28:00 – What’s next: repeatability, vertical expansion, and community infrastructure
Guest Speaker Links:
- Vera Kutsenko LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/verakutsenko/
- Stephen Farnsworth LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-farnsworth/
- Kevin Walker LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpwalker1/
Host Speaker Links (Paul Irving):
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.
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