Marketing Stunts That Helped this AI Company Raise $100M

0:00:08 Welcome to the Next Wave podcast. Today, we’re doing a special episode here live in San Francisco
0:00:13 for HubSpot Inbound. And we have a special guest host, Carly Baker from HubSpot. She’s
0:00:17 going to be having a great conversation with Varun Anand from Clay. And if you haven’t heard
0:00:22 of Clay, they’ve been really blowing up recently. They recently raised around a $3.1 billion
0:00:26 valuation from Google’s Growth Fund and a lot of other great investors, including Sequoia.
0:00:31 And the simplest way to describe them is AI for go-to-market. So I think you’re going
0:00:33 to love this conversation. So let’s just jump right in.
0:00:39 Hey guys, how’s it going?
0:00:44 Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you everyone for being here with us today.
0:00:49 Super excited to be able to kick off Inbound right before Yomini’s keynote. Just to sit
0:00:51 down and chat all things Clay.
0:00:51 Yeah.
0:00:52 The talk of the town.
0:00:54 Excited to hang. This is the talk of this town?
0:00:54 You are.
0:00:55 Oh, wow.
0:00:55 Clay.
0:00:55 Clay, really?
0:00:56 Yes, absolutely.
0:01:00 Okay, great. Thanks for telling me. We did just launch these billboards, which I’m really
0:01:04 excited about, timed for this particular talk, like this whole out-of-home campaign. So I
0:01:08 was very excited about that. But I think we can just kind of keep it conversational. That
0:01:09 could be fun.
0:01:13 Yeah. I mean, I would love to kick off exactly what you had shared, which was when I was in
0:01:14 my Uber from the airport.
0:01:15 Yeah.
0:01:17 I saw your billboards everywhere. Your billboards and our billboards.
0:01:18 Okay, great. Yeah.
0:01:21 I guess we have competing out-of-home campaigns going on.
0:01:26 I think out-of-home is a big, like, underrated thing. Like, I don’t think people do this remotely as
0:01:29 much as they should be doing. It’s really cheap, actually. Like, if you raise venture capital
0:01:35 and have money, it’s actually surprisingly cheap for the mindshare that you get from it. But I also
0:01:40 think most of them are quite boring. Like, most of these ads are really sad. I mean, I also went down
0:01:44 the highway last night to the airport, and I was, like, very disappointed by the lack of creativity
0:01:45 creativity on most of these.
0:01:50 Yeah. So tell me how you think about creativity, specifically with out-of-home and with billboards,
0:01:54 right? I know maybe we’ve all seen sort of some of the behind-the-scenes that you posted. I know you
0:01:59 had drones out there capturing some of the setups and all those things, which I love, sort of the
0:02:04 behind-the-scenes of out-of-home. And I could be wrong. I’m going to try to quote exactly what the
0:02:11 billboards say, but I think it was, like, Picasso had art and go-to-market has clay or something sort of
0:02:15 of that. I love the playfulness of that. Yeah, yeah. Well, basically, it’s every artist has their
0:02:19 medium and go-to-market has clay. And then there’s, like, these children ones, which was, like,
0:02:25 Michelangelo had marble and go-to-market has clay. Or Monet has paint, go-to-market has clay. By the way,
0:02:29 this wasn’t a question we even talked about, so we’re already off script and we’re already, like,
0:02:34 doing new things. So just so you know that this is riffing here, which is good. Well, first of all,
0:02:38 I can’t actually take any of this credit because it’s actually this woman, Jessica, on our team,
0:02:42 who is maybe the most creative human being I know, and Bruno, who leads our marketing,
0:02:46 and, like, Sarah and Tanner and Hudson are on our brand team. We, by the way, as, like, a separate
0:02:50 aside, I think we over-invest in brand. Like, I don’t know, we have a five-person brand team or
0:02:55 something. And we hired, like, our head of brand when we were, like, 20 people or 18 people or
0:03:00 something. So we probably over-invest in it. You know, it’s one of those investments that makes you
0:03:05 look good if the company works. But if it doesn’t work, then it was a really bad idea because you just
0:03:08 wasted all this money on something that doesn’t really matter. But I will say the reason I’m
0:03:12 starting with this brand thing is because you can’t just, like, come up with something creative
0:03:17 and, like, do it. Like, there’s a lot of steps that go from, you know, four years ago to now of, like,
0:03:21 okay, actually having a very creative out-of-home campaign. Because, first of all, it’s very core
0:03:26 to who we are. It’s, like, core to our identity. Like, the logo, for example, is inspired by this
0:03:31 extraordinary artist, Sol LeWitt. And creativity and art, like, runs through the company’s DNA in a
0:03:36 lot of different ways. And then we obviously back it up with, like, the money we invest to do it. Like,
0:03:42 we have a full-time claymation artist on staff, you know? Like, full-time. And I think he takes a lot
0:03:47 of vacation, too. It’s like he—and we’d actually been trying to recruit him for, like, four years.
0:03:51 Notion kind of has someone like this, too. Like, not claymation, but, like, the person who does all
0:03:57 their doodles, you know? And so, you know, a lot of companies are not going to make that kind of
0:04:02 investment. And that’s okay. Like, brand doesn’t have to be everything for every company. It is for
0:04:06 us because it’s authentic to who we are. Like, for example, Jessica. We can just talk about her for a
0:04:10 second, right? So, Jessica’s a longtime friend of mine. We actually started a pickleball business
0:04:16 together, like, five years ago. And she, like, gained a lot of notoriety, like, a decade ago when she
0:04:20 was in, like, UT Austin. And basically, there was a law in Texas that said you couldn’t have, like,
0:04:25 guns public. But there was also another law, like, concealed carry laws. And there was another law
0:04:29 that said that you couldn’t have, like, sex toys public. And so, she, like, started this, like,
0:04:34 campaign and protest where people would, like, march with dildos, like, down the street, you know,
0:04:38 to protest these, like, gun laws. And so, that’s kind of how she became, like, famous and viral. But
0:04:42 she does these kinds of stunts all the time. And so, she’s kind of the most creative person I know.
0:04:47 And then, like, three years ago, I think, when the team was just, like, 10, 15 people, I was like,
0:04:52 okay, well, can we find a place for you at Clay? And even for me, I was like, okay, this is too extreme.
0:04:56 Like, this feels irresponsible, even for me. We only have one marketer. And then, to have another
0:05:01 marketer who knows what they’re going to do, you know, like, that felt too extreme. But then, three
0:05:06 years later, when the marketing team is 15 people, okay, okay, now we can have someone who knows what,
0:05:11 and so, her title is, like, schemer in residence. But I think, like, for example, like, her North Star of just
0:05:15 coming up with creative stunts. By the way, here’s a plug. She really asked me to plug this. So,
0:05:19 it’s not even a plug, because it feels very salient to the conversation. This week, we’re doing all
0:05:26 these events that are very creative. So, like, we hired Snoop Dogg’s, like, joint roller person. And he’s
0:05:32 doing a class for people on how you can roll your own joint, like Snoop Dogg does. So, like, that’s a
0:05:36 thing. That’s on Friday, I think. Somehow, people are not showing up to this. Like, I don’t fully
0:05:42 understand why, but people are not signing up. But it seems amazing. Okay, if I’m actually flying
0:05:47 out tonight, if I wasn’t flying out tonight, I would go. But if you are remotely our ICP, you should go.
0:05:53 That sounds very fun. Number two, there’s, like, a kung fu fighting scene that’s being filmed. So,
0:05:58 if you’ve ever wanted to be in, like, a kung fu fighting scene situation, this is your moment,
0:06:02 right? And so, I’m not kidding. Like, it’s serious. There’s a professional who’s going to come in
0:06:06 and is going to coach you about how you can, like, be in this, like, battle scene. And they
0:06:10 film this whole battle scene. And it’s, like, pretty sick. So, you should do that. That’s this
0:06:15 week as well. And there’s, like, a perfumery thing where we, like, go deep into the art of smelling and
0:06:18 stuff. I don’t know. There’s all sorts of wacky things. But anyways, like, who comes up with that
0:06:22 s***, you know? Jessica does. And so, this is what I mean by, like, the creativity and, like,
0:06:26 we invest in that because, again, it feels authentic to us. Yeah. And I definitely want to dig into that a
0:06:31 little bit more, too, because I think when we think about brand, often we think so much about sort of
0:06:35 what the online experience is, I think, specifically in the tech space as well. I’m serious. You really
0:06:40 should sign up for those things. We really are low on it. So, please sign up. Yeah. You know, you think
0:06:44 so much about the online experience and to be able to sort of bring those core brand values and be able
0:06:49 to do something really against a grain IRL, I think, is really important. Yeah. I mean, even when we’re here
0:06:52 and even when we’re at conferences, right? It’s, like, how many of you have four happy hours to go to
0:06:58 tonight? And what are you going to remember from those four happy hours? So, like, leaning into sort of
0:07:02 connecting your IRL, connecting your out-of-home, connecting, like, sort of the core values of your
0:07:08 brand and being able to do the experiential stuff is super important. I do think the more and more and
0:07:11 more saturated that the internet gets, the more important those bespoke events are going to be.
0:07:16 And to be able to have someone, it’s very hard to find someone who can be the steward of having those
0:07:21 ideas and making them actually feasible and sort of tying them back to your ICP, right? I think it’s
0:07:26 very easy to be an ideas person and not have an idea of sort of how to take those and connect the
0:07:30 dots and be able to sort of make sense in the whole ecosystem. And so, it sounds like Jessica is your
0:07:34 person. Yeah. Well, I’m not totally sure how much, like, you know, joint rolling really connects to our
0:07:40 ICP, but I think it’s cool and I think it’s fun and I think it’s interesting, which is more that can
0:07:44 be said for most programming at go-to-market events, not, of course, inbound, obviously. And I think,
0:07:48 look, I think people are people. And so, people are people and, like, you just resonate with them in
0:07:52 different ways. And, like, at, like, Dreamforce last year, we had, like, this big spa day and
0:07:55 everyone was, like, naked in a spa together. And, I mean, they weren’t technically naked, but, you
0:07:58 know, but, like, but it was just people were connecting because they were at Dreamforce. It was
0:08:03 exhausting. You lose your voice. You’re doing all this stuff. And then, you know, what do you want?
0:08:06 You want a massage, you know? You want to hang out. And so, I think it’s just finding ways for people to
0:08:11 connect that feel, like, human and nice and fun and refreshing and, like, do things people actually
0:08:14 want to do. And, yeah, maybe talk about clay in the middle, maybe.
0:08:19 I love it. I know one thing that you talk about very openly and, you know, as you’ve shared about
0:08:23 Jessica here is that you’re really a champion for your people. And a lot of folks that come to clay,
0:08:29 yourself included, sort of come from non-traditional backgrounds. And sort of you and clay really take
0:08:33 bets on sort of more non-traditional hires and really champion that and, you know, use that as a
0:08:36 part of your strategy. I would just love to hear more sort of about the intentionality about that and
0:08:40 sort of how maybe that’s shifted and sort of what other people can learn about maybe, like,
0:08:45 taking some of those bets in terms of hiring. Yeah, I actually don’t think it’s that risky or
0:08:49 that much of a bet. I just think it’s the philosophy how we think about it. The art of interviewing and
0:08:54 recruiting is just understanding who a human is. And I think people too often try to make value
0:08:57 judgments about who people are. And people, like, when you’re interviewing someone, it oftentimes feels
0:09:01 like, hey, oh, this person’s smart or this person’s dumb or this person’s good at their job and
0:09:05 they’re competent or they’re not. And it’s, like, easy to do that. By the way, I used to do that all the
0:09:10 time just to call myself out on that. But I think the real point is just understand who they are as
0:09:14 a human. And they’re kind of like a blank canvas when they come in front of you, right? And your job
0:09:18 is to fill out the blank canvas. You use pastels and watercolors and the references and the interviews,
0:09:23 they all kind of piece together into filling out the story of who this human is. And then once you
0:09:29 understand who they are, then you can kind of try to understand, okay, what is the fit, right? And so,
0:09:33 like, let’s just say you thought someone wasn’t competent or wasn’t smart or whatever,
0:09:37 something like that. It’s not actually those things. It’s actually just that, hey, they need
0:09:42 more mentorship and guidance and help and support than you were able to provide in your current
0:09:46 structure, right? Maybe they should work at Google because they have a lot more of that than, like,
0:09:48 some fast-growing startup like Clay because that’s just not going to be able to give them that
0:09:52 structure and support, right? And where someone’s going to be successful. So, I think it’s just
0:09:57 thinking about people in this, like, terms of fit and, like, where are they in their journey of life and
0:10:01 what are they looking for and what do they need to be really successful? Like, what does it take for
0:10:05 you, Carly, to be unleashed, you know? Like, what does that take? And I think there’s actually,
0:10:10 so, Izzy right over there is videotaping this for some reason. Videotaping it, by the way,
0:10:13 right next to a very professional videotaping setup. I think it’s because we want, like,
0:10:17 a fast follow on content, so I am grateful. But anyways, Izzy is a perfect example of this,
0:10:21 by the way. And Billy right next to her, and we’re working on her role, so we’re still working on that,
0:10:26 but an example nonetheless. So, Izzy, she was a product manager at Samsara. We have this,
0:10:30 like, rotational program called The Wheel, where basically everyone’s not hiring new grads and
0:10:34 we’re going all in on new grads. And so, we have this rotational program where we take new grads or
0:10:37 people just out of college, and then they do product support. They learn the product really
0:10:40 well. They understand their customers really well, and they rotate to other customer-facing
0:10:44 functions. And then within, like, a year or something, they go join that customer function
0:10:47 full-time. And it’s usually faster because everyone chases them because they know the product and
0:10:54 customers better than anyone. Anyways, Izzy applied for this, and I was, like, the final interview,
0:11:00 and it was, like, a 15-minute conversation. And I was, like, why do you want to do this again?
0:11:05 Because, like, you were a product manager at Samsara, and now you’re trying to do product
0:11:09 support, and it didn’t totally make sense to me. And she explained, by the way. But I had some other
0:11:15 context about Izzy because she sent in this video, and then she has—is it a hamster? Is it a hamster?
0:11:19 It’s a bunny. Okay, sorry. It’s hard for me to remember. I think it’s—I thought it was a hamster.
0:11:24 Okay, sorry. It’s a bunny. So she has this bunny, and I remember this video with this bunny, and it
0:11:29 was, like, a very thorough video about, like, a clay use case on this bunny. And then there was also some
0:11:33 other details of how, like, proactive she was that Kareem mentioned that she came up to him at some
0:11:36 conference that was having Indian food with Kareem, and he was like, hey, did you meet this person named
0:11:39 Izzy? And I was like, no, but I think I’m talking to her tomorrow. So there was just, like, some details
0:11:43 about this that I had. And then we meet for 15 minutes, and then, like, immediately it was clear
0:11:47 that, like, this didn’t feel like the right fit, you know? And so I was like, okay, what could be the
0:11:53 right fit? And anyways, I asked her if education could be a good fit. And I don’t know, Izzy, is it a good fit?
0:11:58 Yeah, okay, so it’s a good fit. Similar, by the way, not just Izzy, the other person on the education
0:12:03 team who started on the same day was a very funny similar story, which is she was applying for, like,
0:12:08 a CX role. She did growth before that, all these things. And we have this interview. And by the way,
0:12:12 there’s a lot more serendipity in in-person interviews, but it’s harder to do that usually
0:12:16 on virtual interviews than it is in person. So anyways, Sarah, this other person, we’re, like,
0:12:19 in this conversation, and she keeps referring. She has this, like, notebook, right? And she keeps
0:12:23 referring to it. And I’m like, can I just see that notebook? And so I just, like, look at this
0:12:27 notebook, and I, like, read through all the notes. By the way, she was very prepared. And so she had lots
0:12:31 of notes. And then I asked if I can read her Apple notes, too. So I read her Apple notes.
0:12:37 I did, by the way, before checking into different notes, if they were ambiguously titled,
0:12:40 I did ask her for permission to read that. So I read that, too, like, during the interview.
0:12:46 And basically, I got a lot of insight into who this person is. And then I asked her, hey,
0:12:49 do you want to consider education instead of CX? And I didn’t feel like this was the right fit.
0:12:54 We were kind of shoehorning it, because I think she was excited about Clay. And so I was like,
0:12:57 oh, there’s something instinctively that doesn’t feel right. And then you know what she said? She was
0:13:00 like, actually, I can’t believe you asked that, because my whole life, I wanted to be a teacher.
0:13:05 And I’ve never been able to do it because of the pay and the economics of it. But I’m really excited
0:13:10 about it. And again, that was completely out of nowhere. But I think it comes from really being
0:13:14 so naturally curious about who this person is. Okay, I have another tangent. Sorry. I just met
0:13:19 this guy, Brandon, who is the founder of Humans of New York. And I don’t know if you guys are familiar
0:13:23 with Humans of New York. Okay, it sounds like people are. And yeah, I’ve been a fan of this for a long
0:13:27 time. So it’s pretty cool for me to meet this guy. And I talked to him. And I was like, how do you get
0:13:33 these people to basically open up their whole life stories to you in like seconds, right? And then
0:13:38 like, get deep. And honestly, the answer he gave, which is so similar to what happened with Izzy and
0:13:43 Sarah, is you just have to be naturally curious. And I find in interviews a lot of times, like even
0:13:46 myself, by the way, you ask for like, what is the best question you can ask? Like, how do you do this?
0:13:51 Honestly, none of that matters. If you’re actually naturally just really curious about understanding who
0:13:55 this person is, the questions kind of come out naturally. And the same thing happened with
0:14:01 Brandon and Humans of New York. And people feel the natural curiosity. And they lean in because
0:14:03 like, you’re a stranger, you sit down, you’re like, hey, can I take photos of you and post it on the
0:14:08 internet, right? Like, that seems off. But if you’re naturally like eager about understanding who they
0:14:13 are, people respond to that. And then the same thing applies for interviews. And so I think that
0:14:17 principle is kind of how we’re able to like understand who they are and like find the fits for them in the
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0:14:59 Yeah. So I want to take sort of the philosophy and thought that you have around hiring and talk
0:15:04 about sort of how that’s related to just the pivot and sort of the changes of Clay as a product over
0:15:08 time. I think there’s actually a lot of parallels in your sort of personal and the team’s personal
0:15:12 curiosity has really played into that. So can you talk about sort of just the journey of going,
0:15:18 you know, just sort of from fancy spreadsheets to going all into being a full sort of go-to-market
0:15:22 AI-powered tool and sort of how that story maps with how you think about hiring?
0:15:30 Yeah. Basically, in like late 2021, early 2022, we called ourselves like a spreadsheet that would fill
0:15:37 itself. And it did, but to no particular audience that well. And I think that really reflected a lack
0:15:42 of commitment and a lack of focus from all of us. And so basically, there was a moment where we were
0:15:47 like, okay, let’s commit. And where should we commit to? Well, I think there’s a pull here in this go-to-market
0:15:52 space. And then we kind of need to understand where to start. And so for me, I was like, okay, well,
0:15:55 this is a broad audience. How do we like narrow it down to something that we can start with?
0:16:01 I talked to a lot of different people. And the only audience that I was feeling any type of pull
0:16:06 from were our like agencies, like these cold email agencies, marketing agencies. That’s where I felt
0:16:11 immediate pull. And so we just kind of focused on them. Now, in retrospect, it might seem a little
0:16:15 silly. Like if we went to go raise venture at that time, and we were like, we’re building software for
0:16:19 cold email agencies. I don’t think that like pitch would have landed very well. I don’t think it would
0:16:24 have won the Hopspot pitch contest, you know, like Arjun did, plug for Arjun, because that’s not like a big
0:16:28 market or whatever, right? But I think these things are very unpredictable. There’s also a good book on
0:16:33 this, by the way, Greatness Cannot Be Planned by Ken Stanley, which I really like. I actually almost
0:16:36 successfully hired him at Clay, again, for a non-traditional role to kind of study curiosity
0:16:40 and stuff. The reason I resonate with the premise of that book, which you can kind of guess from the
0:16:45 title, is that greatness can’t be planned. And greatness could be defined as product market fit,
0:16:50 it could be defined as an iconic company, whatever. You kind of have to follow your instinct and your
0:16:55 curiosity. And each step and each stone unlocks the next one, right? And all you’re trying to do
0:16:59 is just get to a place like a base camp place, right? And so that’s what happened here, right?
0:17:02 We followed our curiosity. We started with these cold email agencies. We didn’t know where that was
0:17:07 going to lead, but we knew we were helping them. And we knew we were helping them because they felt the
0:17:12 pain so acutely because they had lots of clients. And then we were kind of able to parlay that into them
0:17:15 posting about us on the internet. We were able to parlay that into working with our clients,
0:17:22 take that and work with other startups and SMBs. And eventually, our first enterprise customer is
0:17:26 rippling and then Vanta and OpenAI. And so we were able to take that and get momentum with
0:17:30 these enterprise customers. And the way it works is the bigger companies look at the company right
0:17:35 below them, right? And so the onion kind of unfolds in that way. Yeah. And then that’s kind of been the
0:17:40 journey of how we’ve grown. And then from the product perspective, we’ve gone from really just
0:17:47 a spreadsheet to a data enrichment tool and to now a go-to-market platform that we call an IDE maybe
0:17:52 that lets you kind of come up with any idea really quickly, execute those ideas, and kind of execute
0:17:56 any growth play. And we’re still on that evolution because I still don’t think we’re achieving that
0:18:00 vision remotely as much as we want to. I want to talk a little bit about sort of the intersection
0:18:05 of curiosity and the fact that we’re sort of increasingly more and more in an AI world where
0:18:09 I think curiosity is being sort of put on the sidelines. I’d love to hear from you personally
0:18:14 as someone who really champions curiosity, sort of any exercises or anything that you do or encourage
0:18:18 others to do to sort of stay in touch with that side of yourself or just to build that up sort of as,
0:18:23 you know, being curious or finding information or getting ideas is sort of easier than it’s ever
0:18:27 been in the age of AI. I guess a simple way to put it is, can you help people become more curious?
0:18:30 Can you help people become more curious?
0:18:35 You’re right that it’s more difficult because people basically just default to ChatGPT for
0:18:41 everything right now. And I think there’s a lot of like trade-offs with that that are not so obvious
0:18:45 because yeah, you have these AI tools and people are like, okay, immediately just go use them.
0:18:49 And then like, you don’t think about what happens because of that. So like, for example,
0:18:53 a lot of people use ChatGPT as like a therapist, right? And like, what are the trade-offs of that?
0:18:57 Are people then not going to talk to their friends about their problems? What does that
0:19:01 do to friendships? You know, what does that do to our social circles? So I think that’s like this
0:19:05 challenge. And then also, by the way, that’s exacerbated, like in San Francisco, where we are
0:19:10 now, there’s this whole push to like 996 and like those types of companies, which Clay, by the way,
0:19:16 definitively is not. And I think those companies also kind of, that philosophy kind of exacerbates
0:19:20 this problem actually, because people are like, they, like, they kind of view like success as like
0:19:25 a treadmill, right? Where a lot of things come from curiosity, from openness, from creativity,
0:19:30 from having time and space to think about problems. I actually just read this article last night about
0:19:36 this guy, Jun Su, who is an economist and mathematician at Princeton. And he just won the
0:19:42 Fields Medal, which is like the best prize in mathematics. And he was a high school dropout and
0:19:46 he was a high school dropout to study poetry, and then didn’t actually get into math until like his
0:19:53 sixth year at like Seoul University or something. And you look at his days, like you wouldn’t ascribe
0:19:59 any of those things to actually like doing good things, like getting your work done, like his wife
0:20:03 almost like didn’t get married to him or divorced him because like he couldn’t like do the basics of
0:20:08 like household items and stuff, right? But that creativity and that magic and that space that he creates
0:20:12 is what enabled him to like come up with these breakthroughs that warranted him a Fields Medal,
0:20:15 right? And I’m not saying you need that type of thing for everything you do.
0:20:21 Yeah. Right? But I think you just need that space and that time. And it’s hard to do that when you’re
0:20:25 in this like treadmill, you’re in this grind. I feel like I’ve still been evading the core question of
0:20:29 like, how do people actually do this practically? And so I don’t have a great answer of how people can
0:20:33 be more curious. I think they just have to like want it and they have to create space for it.
0:20:37 And they apply it in their day to day. But that’s kind of the best answer I can come up with right
0:20:44 now. Yeah. Well, that’s a great answer. I want to hear from you about sort of creative use cases or
0:20:48 things that you’re seeing customers doing that you just never sort of had the idea of sort of your
0:20:52 customers using clay in that way, just sort of to follow the thread of curiosity and creativity.
0:20:57 Yeah. Well, not to call on Izzy again, but I think Izzy had a very creative use case. We have
0:21:01 this thing called Clay Bootcamp for all new hires of the company. And they basically have to use clay
0:21:05 in some creative use case in their lives. Izzy, do you want to tell them about your like creative use
0:21:11 case? Yeah. In my table, I was building out an offer negotiator using clay. So it’ll pull similar
0:21:17 job data as a similar companies for roles that you want to apply for or have applied for. And you can
0:21:22 also input using like lovable as almost like a front end clay as a backend where we’re processing
0:21:26 the data that you put in. If you put in details about your offer letter, it’ll go ahead and compare
0:21:31 that to like the industry standard that clay has pulled in from like the recent LinkedIn job postings
0:21:36 and then give you back on lovable, a negotiation letter that you can now send back to your recruiter
0:21:43 over email. So Varun actually wanted to use this for all our candidates. Yeah. Did we do that by
0:21:47 the way? I don’t think we actually did it, but we’re posting about it on our GTME blog.
0:21:51 Okay. Let’s post about it, but also let’s post about it in the recruiting channel or send it to
0:21:56 depot me. And like, I think we should actually include it in the materials because people should
0:22:00 have access to the latest things that could get them more money. And if it actually helps them get
0:22:06 more money than either they’re right or our process is wrong. And so either outcome is fine. So we
0:22:10 actually should do that. But okay. So that was pretty creative. And then if I remember correctly,
0:22:15 there’s a lot of things like my EA just started last week and she had a creative use case in her
0:22:20 bootcamp where she like found all the GMs of all the fancy hotels and all these places and got their
0:22:25 contact information and sent them all like a very personalized letter that makes it so that they’re
0:22:31 more likely to give me an upgrade when I go. She calls it nice hacking. I have encouraged her to make
0:22:37 a LinkedIn post about that. Ivy from our team, like created a builder in clay for like finding
0:22:42 tennis courts and hiring tennis coaches and stuff, which is pretty creative. Like there’s like a use
0:22:48 case of like tracking all the new content on like HBO max and Amazon prime and Apple TV. And then like
0:22:52 having like, okay, what, what scores are they going to run tomatoes and IMDB? And like, what should you
0:22:56 watch this week? Right. So these are all kinds of like very fun, creative use cases in your personal
0:23:01 life. I can give like a real work one too, but okay. So there’s a company, a logistics staffing
0:23:06 company, for example, and they serve warehouses of a very particular size because that’s how much
0:23:11 account they have. But the traditional data sources for warehouses kind of suck actually and aren’t very
0:23:16 good. So what to do? Well, they’re like, okay, well maybe AI can help. And it does actually. So
0:23:21 they actually use clay to automate finding all the warehouses and Google maps. And then they use AI
0:23:26 to analyze the satellite images. And then in the satellite images, they count how many parking
0:23:30 spots are around the warehouse. And then they count how many cars are in the parking spots. And it turns
0:23:34 out that that’s the best predictor for headcount size and warehouse size and anything else.
0:23:35 Very interesting.
0:23:40 Another one I’ll hit you with, Canva. You guys all know Canva, big company. One of their products
0:23:45 helps you keep your brand consistent across lots of different social channels. So they use clay to
0:23:49 automate social listening on LinkedIn and Twitter. Then they like use AI to analyze those posts and be
0:23:54 like, are they on brand or off brand? And if they’re off brand, it’s like, hey, like the font is off,
0:23:59 the coloring is off, the spacing is off. Then they’re like, okay, well, let’s find the head of design.
0:24:02 Let’s message them and be like, yo, you just posted this on LinkedIn yesterday.
0:24:07 It’s off brand. Here’s why it doesn’t meet your brand guidelines. That’s not good for you.
0:24:11 Here’s how we can help, right? So it’s like timely, comes with a solution. It’s very effective.
0:24:13 Those are some like in the wild creative use cases.
0:24:18 Yeah, I love those. All very different. As tools sort of become more natively integrated
0:24:21 in workers’ lives, we’re going to see so many more of those sort of personal use cases where
0:24:25 they’re building using a tool at work and they’re expanding that into how they’re using it in their
0:24:30 real life. And just like tools and software being more natively, I think, as a part of just
0:24:33 people’s lives outside of work, which is something we’ve never, haven’t really seen before.
0:24:34 At least at this type of scale.
0:24:34 Yeah.
0:24:38 Which I think is very interesting. I think we have time for one more question. I do want
0:24:43 to go back more towards the product side and just hear sort of what you’re building for
0:24:48 2026 and beyond as AI is sort of continuing to grow and shape technology as a whole. Like
0:24:51 what are you really focusing on and where are you looking to grow with the product?
0:24:56 Yeah, I think there’s a lot. I mean, I think basically our ambition is to build a space where
0:25:02 it’s very easy to come up with ideas really quickly, execute them, and then the ambition
0:25:06 of those ideas can be really, really high. And I think we are meeting certain elements of
0:25:10 those problems, of that ambition right now to certain audiences, but definitely not to everyone
0:25:15 and to all of these use cases. And like the bar to access product is super high right now.
0:25:19 How do we make that more accessible? So we’re working on like lovable-esque like interfaces
0:25:24 in clay to make that really much more accessible. How do we like help you be way more creative
0:25:28 in those and be a thought partner to you? How do we help you like be way more ambitious?
0:25:33 And so like, we’re considering like agent-based, node-based architectures to help you do way
0:25:38 more, absolve away the tables in some ways and be more ambitious. So there’s a lot kind
0:25:42 of coming up down the pike that we’re really excited about. And then also like, how do we
0:25:46 expand into new audiences, right? Like how do we not only just help rev ops teams, but how do we help
0:25:51 like marketers do ABM in sophisticated ways? How do we help reps be more efficient in their day-to-day,
0:25:56 right? So I think there’s both surface area and scale of ambition that we’re excited about and kind
0:26:01 of a lot coming down the pike. Yeah. Are you more excited about sort of surface area or scale? Like
0:26:05 how are you sort of balancing your priorities? Yeah, it’s a tough, tough balance. I was just talking
0:26:10 to our friend G Caban, like he was asking me about our ambition and it’s like, he was like,
0:26:13 he was referencing this other company and their ambition is like to become a hundred billion
0:26:16 dollar company. And it’s like, I don’t care about that. Like, I’m not trying to, like,
0:26:20 that’s not the point. The point is that a lot of the people in this room are starting companies,
0:26:25 running companies. And when you have an idea or when you start your new company, we want your first
0:26:30 instinct to be, to use clay. The same way your first instinct right now is to open up your phone
0:26:34 and call an Uber or Waymo or search something on ChatGPT, like that should be the default mindset.
0:26:39 And then not only is that the instinct, but we meet that promise, right? And we actually help you
0:26:43 do something that genuinely grows your business in a way that’s differentiated. And that’s an
0:26:46 ambition and we’re trying to meet that, but that’s kind of where we’re headed.
0:26:51 Awesome. Well, thank you so much, everyone for joining us. This breakfast and this conversation
0:26:56 was presented in partnership with Clay, of course, with our friends at HubSpot for startups, which is
0:27:01 your go-to place for tools and resources and exclusive access to the starter community at HubSpot
0:27:06 with Mindstream, which is HubSpot Media’s premier AI newsletter. And then of course,
0:27:10 the next wave, which is our AI podcast and newsletter. We’re really excited to share this
0:27:15 conversation. We’ll be available in just a couple of weeks, both on YouTube and on audio for anyone who
0:27:19 wasn’t able to join us, or if you want to revisit the conversation. So we’ll send a follow-up with
0:27:24 that, but thank you so much, Varun, for the time this morning. Thanks everyone for joining us and
0:27:38 we’ll see you over at 9:30 for Yomini’s keynote next door. Yeah. Thanks guys.