Finding the best AI tools for GTM
“Try before you buy” continues to be the clarion call of startups everywhere when it comes to choosing AI tools for GTM. But these decisions are still a major challenge for startups.
“Evaluating vendors and figuring out which one to go with is probably the hardest problem with AI,” says Richard White, Founder and CEO of Fathom. “You have to develop a whole new kind of acumen internally about how you judge tools and vendors, not just on ‘can it do a thing,’ but ‘is the output high quality’.”
Founders and CEOs lean toward word-of-mouth recommendations (24%). In-house research and testing is more popular with other C-suite executives (30%) and VPs/directors (28%). Meanwhile, startups with ARR over $20M are most likely to find tools through industry events and conferences (24%).
Measuring the ROI of AI tools
AI is a workforce enabler, with 23% of respondents measuring marketing efficiency; but it also impacts businesses’ bottom lines.
"GTM's version of 'vibe coding' is 'vibe selling,’ and we're seeing startups capture measurable ROI in hours, not months,” says Co-Founder and CEO of Read AI, David Shim. “AI handles the grunt work like CRM hygiene while learning from every interaction to recommend the exact actions that drive revenue. That immediate proof of value is why startups are rapidly experimenting and scaling deployments of AI at record speeds, and why Read AI adds over 1 million new users monthly. When AI delivers results this fast, adoption at scale is inevitable."
Popular AI tools for startup GTM
Clay achieves 10x growth by integrating GPT-4 into the platform
Clay, a customer intelligence platform, integrated with GPT-4 to create Claygent—an AI agent that aggregates and extracts data from multiple sources to automate research, used daily by 30% of Clay’s customers. Clay has achieved 10x year-over-year growth for each of the past two years, with over 100,000 users at companies like Intercom, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
Rippling scales growth experiments and email personalization with Clay
Rippling is a workforce management solution that consolidates people, spend, and IT management. By centralizing data enrichment in Clay and using the platform to run growth experiments, Rippling doubled the year-over-year performance of its cold email channel in 2023.
Cyera books 75% more meetings using Apollo
Cyera, an AI-powered data security platform, had a poorly integrated sales tech stack. The Cyera team built an end-to-end process in Apollo to centralize and clean data, and automate lead routing, scheduling, and data pulls. Using this setup, reps are doing 50% less manual work while booking 75% more meetings.
Flipsnack uses Breeze customer agent to deflect 50% of customer service interactions
Flipsnack, an interactive online flipbook software platform, uses HubSpot’s AI tools to cut down on customer service interactions by 60% and improve the customer experience. "Breeze customer agent has been an incredible addition to our team,” says Adrian Moza, CEO, Flipsnack. “Since implementing it in one of our chat flows, it has single-handedly reduced human-led conversations by almost half, from 7,600 down to 3,034—a huge win! [The] customer agent excels at managing simple or repetitive questions, streamlining our workflow, and keeping things running smoothly. It’s been a real game-changer for us, especially as we use it to enhance the customer experience for Flipsnack users."
AI tech stack takeaways for startups
- Establish a process to evaluate AI: Create a system for researching and testing AI tools—software review sites are helpful resources. Stay plugged in to your professional network and attend industry events to get word-of-mouth recommendations.
- Measure ROI from AI: Define clear use cases for AI and establish KPIs that will help you measure success or failure.
- Learn from others’ success: Research and analyze case studies of industry leaders’ AI implementations to identify proven approaches.
- Network with peers: Join HubSpot for Startups’ networking community to learn from your peers’ approach to AI.
AI’s impact on startup GTM performance
At every step of the customer journey, AI helps startups reach customers and streamline processes.
Marketing impact and ROI
Startups that dedicate over 50% of their GTM tech stack to AI get the most marketing value from personalized customer experiences (32%), as do those with an ARR over $20M.
The most common benefit of AI for marketing teams is increased lead generation and conversion rates (25%) and enhanced personalization (24%) For those that dedicate over 50% of their GTM tech stack to AI tools, improved campaign performance and ROI win the day (27%).
“In search, AI is rapidly becoming the new brand visibility broker. This means content doesn’t need to just rank on Google, it now needs to be cited by AI. To respond to this moment, marketing teams need to rethink their workflows, leveraging AI internally to rapidly prepare their content for this huge shift. At AirOps, we’re helping teams like Webflow and Descript optimize for this shift with AI-powered solutions that structure content for higher visibility with agents like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews,” says Alex Halliday, CEO and Co-founder of AirOps.
Top marketing benefits of AI by industry
Tech/AI
Increased lead gen/conversion rates - 28%
Financial services/fintech
Enhanced personalization/customer experience capabilities - 30%
Professional/business services
Increased lead gen/conversion rates - 25%
Manufacturing
Increased lead gen/conversion rates: 28%
In a time of rising customer acquisition costs, AI has become a competitive advantage. More than one-third (37%) of startups say AI has moderately or significantly decreased customer acquisition costs, along with 43% of startups that dedicate 11-25% of their GTM tech stack to AI tools.
Sales performance improvements
In 2024, 59% of early-stage startup founders said AI helped them reach qualified prospects more efficiently. In 2025, AI is making every part of the sales process more efficient.
Series C and D startups see just as much value in using AI for CRM data enrichment and management as for automated prospecting, outreach and follow-up (23%). Startups that dedicate over 50% of their GTM tech stack to AI or have an ARR over $20M are more likely to get the most value from lead scoring.
The greatest benefits of AI for startup sales teams are improved sales efficiency and productivity (35%), increased accuracy of sales forecasting and pipeline visibility (18%), enhanced customer personalization and engagement (16%).
Top sales benefits of AI by industry
Tech/AI
Improved sales efficiency and productivity - 37%
Financial services/fintech
Increased accuracy of sales forecasting and pipeline visibility - 26%
Professional/business services
Improved sales efficiency and productivity - 34%
Manufacturing
Improved sales efficiency and productivity - 38%
Nearly three in four startups (72%) say AI has moderately or significantly improved their ability to upsell and cross-sell existing customers. That number jumps to 81% for startups that dedicate over 50% of their GTM tech stack to AI tools.
Customer service growth
The GTM area that startup professionals say has benefited the most from AI, customer service teams are gaining richer insights and saving time.
AI’s greatest benefits are 24/7 customer support availability (27%), improved customer satisfaction and experience (25%), and increased efficiency and reduced support costs (17%). Startups that dedicate over 50% of their GTM tech stack to AI are 24% more likely than average to improve customer satisfaction and experience because of AI (31% vs. 25%).
Top customer service benefits of AI by industry
Technology/AI
Improved customer satisfaction and experience - 31%
Financial services/FinTech
24/7 customer support availability - 31%
Professional/business services
Improved customer satisfaction and experience - 30%
Manufacturing
Increased efficiency and reduced support costs - 29%
AI stretches the resources of lean teams. Startups with ARR under $1M benefit from AI-driven personalized customer support (28%). Meanwhile, startups with under 10 employees are most likely to benefit from 24/7 customer service availability (28%).
Case Study
Fathom is scaling to $100M in ARR with a lean team and an AI-augmented customer experience
Fathom, the #1 AI notetaker and meeting assistant in the HubSpot App Marketplace, has built its GTM strategy around AI-first principles since its founding. A Series A startup, Fathom has raised more than $20M in total funding and serves tens of thousands of HubSpot customers and millions of teams worldwide. Most impressive of all? Founder and CEO Richard White and his team reached these milestones with fewer than 150 employees.
The challenge
Traditional sales and customer success teams spend significant time on administrative tasks instead of high-value customer interactions.
Not only does this manual work slow teams down, it also introduces a high possible margin of error. Whether it’s competitor mentions, sales objections, or requests for product features, information that never makes it into the CRM effectively doesn’t exist, making it impossible for leadership to track broader trends.
The AI solution
Fathom has always been an AI-first company. This enables the company to punch above its weight class and scale faster, all while delivering a best-in-class customer experience.
“We have much smaller sales and success teams than I think we normally would have at our revenue level because they’re not doing any low-value data entry work,” says White. “They’re not taking notes, they’re not filling in the CRM, they’re not tracking the next steps. All that stuff happens automatically.”
The Fathom team leverages AI across core go-to-market (GTM) areas to enable both external and internal work.
Here are some of the team’s most impactful use cases:
Automated meeting intelligence
By integrating Fathom with HubSpot CRM, every conversation the sales and success teams have with customers is automatically captured, analyzed, and integrated into the customer profile, eliminating manual data entry.
Streamlined customer handoffs
AI provides continuity between sales and success with complete conversation history and context for every user, so customers never feel the gaps between departments.
Proactive meeting insights
Real-time alerts in Slack (via a Zapier connection) flag key risk indicators, pricing discussions, and competitor mentions so sales and customer success can jump on timely issues immediately.
Whether it’s a tense negotiation or a must-have product feature mentioned by multiple customers, AI’s ambient listening capability makes it easier for managers to identify areas of risk—and opportunity.
Hybrid AI and human customer service
Fathom has incorporated an AI bot into its support chat as an additional option for customers who need help.
“Customers can always click a button to send their chat to a human,” says White. “But if they want to give the AI a shot, it can often give them an answer faster. People really like the AI option when you present it that way. They think ‘That's great. I got my answer faster,’ as opposed to, ‘I hate that because it's a gatekeeper.’"
Content enablement
The Fathom marketing team uses AI to bookend most content creation projects. While a human does the bulk of the work and execution, AI helps create a framework to kick off projects and cleans up the work at the end.
“I still think we’re in the age of AI enablement, not AI replacement,” says White.
Deeper insight into trends
Leadership at Fathom used to rely on pulling data from the CRM to identify trends that impact topline pricing, packaging, and product strategy. Now, with rich and complete records on every customer conversation, it’s easy to export information to an LLM to answer longitudinal research questions.
AI Maturity Assessment
Where does your startup stand today, and how are you preparing for the future? The first step to implementing an AI-first GTM strategy is to understand your company’s current approach. Score yourself for each question, then add up your points and see where you stand.
Get Notified of Parts 3
Two parts down, and one to go. And of course, we saved the best for last. In part 3, we'll look at the Future of AI-powered growth.
