How Startups Are Using AI to Boost Their GTM Strategies

At Salesforce’s first Startup Summit, AI-native founders, venture investors, and Salesforce’s go-to-market (GTM) leaders gathered to explore how AI is rewriting the rules of startup growth. One theme came through loud and clear: AI isn’t only changing what startups build ‌— ‌it’s transforming how, and how fast, they grow.

In this blog, we’ll share 10 takeaways about how AI agents are changing GTM strategies, as well as practical learnings you can apply to your own growth playbook. You’ll also learn about Salesforce Launchpad, a new program that is helping venture-backed startups build their GTM strategies and scale faster.

What’s a GTM strategy and why is it so important for startups?

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is how a startup introduces its product, wins customers, and grows in the market. A traditional GTM motion involves identifying target customers, defining the value proposition, managing data in a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, and optimizing how you engage your customers and prospects across channels. 

Now, a strong go-to-market strategy also involves integrating AI agents. A CRM is no longer just a system for managing data – it’s a platform for managing agents, augmenting startup teams to make smarter decisions, improve efficiency, and scale faster.

At the Summit, founders shared how weaving AI agents into their GTM motions is becoming fundamental to growth.

10 takeaways about AI in GTM strategies

The following Startup Summit speakers – spanning founders, CEOs, CTOs, and VC investors – shared their insights and lessons on how AI is transforming GTM:

• Scott Woody, CEO and Founder, Metronome
• Luis Paarup, CTO and Co-Founder, HappyRobot
• Ethan Ruby, CEO and Co-Founder, SaaSGrid
• Ben Budde, Head of GTM, ElevenLabs
• Jennifer Li, General Partner, a16z
• Kris Billmaier, EVP & GM, Sales Cloud and Growth, Salesforce
• Meredith Flynn-Ripley, SVP and GM, Global Private Equity and Venture Capital Practice, Salesforce
• Tyler Carlson, SVP, Head of Product, AppExchange & Ecosystem, Salesforce
• Mara Larson-Richard, Head of VC Team & Launchpad, Salesforce
• Derek Asbun, Head of Portfolio Development, Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce

1. AI-powered GTM strategies start with great data

Again and again at the Summit, conversations circled back to the same point: without high-quality, unified data, you can’t have effective AI or a strong GTM strategy. “When you have messy data, you have ineffective AI agents,” said Kris Billmaier, EVP & GM, Sales Cloud and Growth.

Fragmented tech stacks lead to poor data, which results in ineffective agents. Salesforce helps customers deploy effective agents by harmonizing all of your GTM data into one deeply unified platform. Data Cloud brings together your sales,  service, commerce, and marketing data, and also allows you to bring in third-party data with zero copy. With all your data already in one place, teams can use Agentforce to deploy agents quickly – improving the customer experience and supporting every part of your GTM strategy. 

2. AI agents are already accelerating sales productivity and growth

Billmaier described a radical shift in sales: we’re moving from software that supports sellers, to AI agents that act like sellers. AI adoption is happening rapidly, significantly impacting how startups grow their businesses.

AI agents are already autonomously handling lead nurturing, booking meetings, and managing pipeline. These agents are designed to work with humans, but over time, as trust builds, they’ll take on more tasks without much human intervention — that is the beauty of training. For example, HappyRobot, an innovative early-stage startup revolutionizing logistics communications, will deploy Agentforce in Slack to automate key sales workflows, allowing them to move faster, sell more, and centralize communications and account information in Slack.

3. Go-to-market is no longer just for salespeople

The GTM function has expanded beyond the sales team thanks to agentic technology like Agentforce. If vibe coding makes it possible for anyone to build with AI, vibe GTM does the same for selling‌ — ‌expanding who gets to engage customers with AI-powered tools.

Historically, GTM has been viewed as largely the responsibility of the sales team, with help from marketing, design, and some others. AI is now democratizing pipeline generation and deal acceleration by bringing in technical and product leaders from the beginning to communicate value:

• The traditional roles of SDRs, account executives, and sales executives are evolving as AI reduces tedious tasks and allows for more high-value customer engagement.
• Engineers and product leaders are increasingly embedded in GTM processes, especially at AI-native companies.
• Technical teams are building hyperpersonalized demos, updating front-ends mid-sales cycle, and driving post-sales expansion.

4. SDRs will be the first role to fully transform

Panelists agreed that with all the changes to roles, the SDR will be the first to evolve. Right now, most SDRs are responsible for finding and qualifying potential leads: a time-consuming process that can be subjective without the right guardrails. 

Now with AI agents, these tasks can be automated, allowing teams to focus on more strategic and high-value activities. Billmaier discussed how a massive amount of time is spent on menial tasks like scheduling meetings. “Hours upon hours of a reps day shouldn’t be spent on tasks like this. AI takes on these tasks for reps, allowing them to get back to what they actually want to do – engage with customers.”

AI agents are already performing SDR tasks, including:

• Triaging leads 24/7, meaning that potential customers don’t have to be passed around between sellers before finally landing with the rep who will answer their questions.
• Qualifying leads, so that sellers can get their time back to building core relationships
• Scheduling initial meetings and calls, freeing up sellers to work on more strategic tasks sooner in the sales cycle. 

5. The future isn’t fewer sellers, it’s more specialized ones

Speakers also agreed that humans were still the engine of GTM: “People are still buying from humans. Buyers are still humans,” said Ethan Ruby, CEO and Co-Founder of SaasGrid. They said to expect GTM teams to stay human, but more specialized, focused, and tech-enabled. Meredith Flynn-Ripley cited an MIT study showing that “B and C” players equipped with AI outperformed “A” players without it. Instead of replacing people, AI is making them more effective.

6. Who you hire, and when, will change

Luis Paarup shared that because of AI-enabled go-to-market strategies, he was actually hiring salespeople later in the startup growth cycle. Reflecting on software sales a decade ago, he said, “You hired SDRs, you hired AEs, when you were ready to grow, because people were what generated pipeline for you.” 

“Now,” he continued, “with a lot of these new tools, there’s a really great opportunity to hire sellers to do the selling and the closing once you are growing, once go-to-market is working, once AI is generating the top-of-funnel for us.”

Scott Woody agreed, saying, “We’ve taken the headcount you’d normally put toward BDRs and SDRs and said, ‘Let’s hire engineers or people who are coders to solve the kind of problems that you’d normally solve with a headcount, and solve them with technology.’”

7. Customer acquisition cost may finally go down

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) — the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing spend, salaries, and tools — is a critical metric for any startup, and one that’s notoriously high in software. 

“It just takes a lot of money to engage customers,” explained Ruby, “and that also means [that] at lower expected commercial value, you can’t always have a human touch. It’s just infeasible for people to spend time with customers, to really walk them through the process, and still have a great lifetime value (LTV).”

Sales agents can reduce CAC in several ways:

• Automating outreach and research
• Accelerating self-serve funnels
• Enabling leaner GTM teams
• Freeing humans to focus only on high-value customer interactions

8. AI deepens personalization, enabling sellers to build trust

AI agents can help startups deepen relationships with customers by enhancing personalization across the entire sales cycle. “We don’t go into a first call cold,” said Paarup. “We use AI to research the company, build a personalized demo, and lead with the product from the first moment. That changes the conversation entirely.” 

By outsourcing the heavy lifting on research and personalization to agents, sales teams can focus on human connection. Woody noted: “The metric we track internally is: how much time are you onsite with customers? The more AI handles the prep and follow-up, the more humans can focus on trust-building.”

9. Voice is the new frontier of AI GTM

Ben Budde, vice president of GTM at ElevenLabs, and Jennifer Li, general partner at a16z, offered a forward-looking perspective on how AI is transforming human connection at scale through voice agents.

For ElevenLabs, voice is more than an output, it’s a strategic layer that enhances everything from lead engagement to customer onboarding. When paired with AI agents, it unlocks new channels of communication that feel personal, even when automated.

10. GTM will continue to shift humans and agents deepen their work together

Tyler Carlson, Head of Product, AppExchange & Ecosystem, previewed an exciting future for the future of humans and agents working together at scale.

With Salesforce’s recent Agentforce 3 announcement, Salesforce is making a major upgrade to its digital labor platform that gives companies the visibility and control to scale AI agents without compromise. Agentforce 3 enables seamless agent interoperability with built-in support for open standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP). Through the expanded AgentExchange, customers will be able to access plug-and-play services from over 30 partners, while using the new Agentforce Command Center for a complete observability solution for optimizing AI agents.

As AI agents continue to become more sophisticated and seamlessly work together, the possibilities are endless for how startups can use AI to do more with less and advance their GTM strategies.

How Salesforce Launchpad takes your startup to the next level

Salesforce Launchpad helps founders with building AI-powered GTM strategies and accessing the best of the Salesforce ecosystem. By integrating AI into your GTM strategy, you can make data-driven decisions, automate routine tasks, and focus on what truly matters‌ — ‌growing your business.

Mara Larson-Richard continued, “We started Salesforce Launchpad to create space for this collaboration – it’s an honor to work with ambitious founders to build the future of AI and GTM together.”

To explore how AI can transform your go-to-market strategy, check out the Salesforce Launchpad program for venture-backed startups. This program supports startups at every stage of growth and level of funding with tailored product offerings, learning resources, and more. We look forward to supporting you.