In this new episode of Path to Market, our Director Natasha Lytton and co-host Micah Smurthwaite, Partner at Pipeline Ventures, sit down with Tim Bertrand — a three-time GTM leader who’s scaled companies from just a few million to hundreds of millions in revenue. Currently serving as President of HAProxy, Tim previously held sales leadership roles at Acquia and Project44, and brings deep insights into category creation, founder-led sales, sales hiring, and international expansion.

Tim walks us through his career of building sales engines from the ground up — including Acquia’s leap from $2M to $200M+ ARR — and explains why he keeps coming back to the early-stage trenches.

He also shares actionable advice for founders: when to hire (and who to hire) in your first sales roles, how to think about pricing in new markets, how to align product and GTM, and what great onboarding and sales coaching look like.

Here’s what’s covered:

05:00 Early-Stage Sales: Why Tim Keeps Coming Back
07:12 Structuring Your First Sales Hires
09:44 Traits of Great Early-Stage Sellers
13:00 Does Domain Expertise Matter?
15:28 Best Practices for Sales Onboarding
17:48 Sales Methodologies: MEDDICC & BANT
22:14 Creating Real Urgency in the Sales Cycle
30:23 Value-Based Pricing & Market Signals
38:09 Building a Business Around Open Source
42:16 Sales Methodologies for Founders
43:40 Hiring a CRO: When & What to Look For

VC | E499 | Path to Market: From Zero to Market Leader, A CRO’s GTM Playbook [Seedcamp Series]

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