Episode 51 - When an AI-Native SaaS Bet Doesn't Work Out

Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues.

In this episode Simon and Louis welcome back returning guest Mark Walker, Co-Founder at AI GTM Studio, who last appeared on episode five to discuss segmentation, targeting and positioning. This time, Mark generously agreed to talk through his experience as a seasoned GTM operator who set out to build an AI-native SaaS business — RevvedUp — in one of the most volatile markets in B2B software for quite some time. Louis frames the conversation not as a story about failure as an endpoint, but as an exploration of what the market teaches founders when the assumptions beneath a business change faster than the business can adapt.

Here's the TL;DL: RevvedUp set out to make ABM personalization and outbound relevance scalable through AI. It gained early traction, it gained funding and it gained recognition, but the market shifted fast. Gen AI changed buyer expectations. SaaS funding became less forgiving and the boundary between software, automation, services and agentic execution began to blur.

Other mentions in this episode:

Mark Walker on LinkedIn: buy vs build

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