At Canvas, we have found that the biggest factor that differentiates good outcomes from fund-returning outcomes is the strength and scalability of a company's go-to-market strategy.  That is why we built an elite team of sales and marketing professionals, the Go-to-Market Council, to coach and guide our portfolio companies.  (They also help keep us smart!) With Council Members’ expertise and guidance, our portfolio companies are able to scale faster, avoid common pitfalls, and rapidly get to the right answers.  

This is especially important when the market is shifting, as it is today.  The professionals on the GTM Council have seen prior market cycles, and they are uniquely equipped to help our CEOs capitalize on the opportunities that come with market dislocations. There are always new developments to track in go-to-market, and we closely watch the news to ensure our companies are well-positioned to capture any upside opportunities, refreshing our Council with sales and marketing leaders with experience in areas where it is most relevant. Here are a few macro trends we’re tracking today:

• Ad spend is spreading  across diverse platforms. Meta and Alphabet have grabbed the majority of ad spend over the past decade, but that is changing. Ad spend shifted dramatically in 2022, causing Meta and Alphabet’s shares of digital ad revenue to be the lowest since 2015. Competition from Amazon, Apple, Tiktok, and even Walmart chipped away at their duopoly as advertisers diversified in order to lower customer acquisition cost and reach new audiences.
• Ad spend continues to grow through the downturn. According to GroupM, the advertising and media giant, e-commerce ad revenue is predicted to increase by 10% and streaming ad revenue to grow by 18% in 2023.
• Ads are cheaper, and more prevalent, than ever. The shift towards digital platforms continues with ad impressions increasing by 26% YoY, and the average price per ad decreasing by 17% YoY in Q1 2023, as reported by Meta in its Q1 investor report. 
• Analytics matter. It may be surprising that 100% of marketing decisions are not made based on data. However, companies are making progress. Marketing analytics are now being used in nearly half of all marketing decisions, up from just 38% before the pandemic. To facilitate that work, spending on marketing analytics as a percentage of the marketing budget hit an all-time high of 8.9% after a decade-long level of 6%-7%. 
• AI driving gains in marketing revenue. “In 2018, manufacturing and risk were the two functions in which the largest shares of respondents reported seeing value from AI use,” according to the latest State of AI report from McKinsey. “Today the biggest reported revenue effects are found in marketing and sales.” 

To help our companies use these trends to their advantage, I’m thrilled to introduce the 2023 cohort of the Canvas Go-to-Market Council. Since the launch of the Council in August 2021, our Council Members have offered insights on product positioning, business development, sales, growth, and channel experimentation through Master Classes, 1:1 founder advisory support, and workshops. As with the previous two cohorts, we have searched far and wide for people with unique know-how built from years of doing the actual work themselves—as well as humility, curiosity, and passion for sharing their knowledge in service of helping founders win, traits we prize at Canvas Ventures. 

Please meet the 2023 Canvas GTM Council:

• Allan Ng, recently: Freenome, previously: Common Networks, Livongo Health. First marketing hire at 4 companies. Scaled Livongo beyond its first 250 enterprise clients.

• Andrea Collins, currently: Cowbell, previously: Flyhomes, Hippo Insurance, PolicyGenius. First marketing hire at Hippo creating and leading marketing strategy all the way through going public via SPAC in 2021.

• Andrew Speyer, recently: Landing, previously: Airbnb. Served as CMO at Landing as the business scaled from 3 national markets to 20 and grew revenue by 6x.

• Ash Blackmon, recently: Restream, previously: Pathstream, Zillow Group. Original architect of Zillow’s performance marketing strategy, which enabled the business to grow from $30M to over $1.3B in revenue.

• Coley Czarnecki, currently: Uber, previously: Visa. Served as initial product marketer on Uber’s grocery delivery, which has since grown to a +$5B business.

• Jack Hart, currently: Yelp, previously: PwC. His work led to Yelp successfully tripling marketing-driven revenue from 2019 to present.

• Jamie Perlman, currently: Dropbox, previously: Box. Led Box’s partnership with IBM, driving over $200M in total contract value.

• Jeremy Bass, recently: Unit, previously: Bread Financial, Onswipe. As the first revenue hire at Bread, managed the sales org from pre-revenue through a $450M Alliance Data acquisition.

• Mark Musselman, currently: CloudZero, previously: Sumo Logic, BladeLogic. Took Sumo Logic from pre-revenue to $30M ARR.

• Nick Fairbairn, currently: Chime, previously: Experian, Gabi, Dollar Shave Club. As CMO of Gabi, led the team through 2021 Experian acquisition following 500% growth in business. 

• Sary Brunner, recently: Zendesk, previously: Hearsay Systems. Grew Zendesk’s customer success team from four to 250 people globally.

• Tony Small, recently: Wiliot, previously: Pro.com, Convoy, Zillow Group. At Zillow, as the company grew from from 75 to 4,000, built out and managed a sales team of 500, overseeing sales ops and strategy across 4 business lines.

• Thomas Langan, currently: Veradigm, previously: Allscripts, Practice Fusion. Scaled Practice Fusion up through the 2018 acquisition by Allscripts.

• Yuri Alexandrovski, currently: Observable, previously: CrowdAI, Parsable, Zenefits. At Zenefits, helped grow the sales team from 6 to 600 and increase ARR from $1M to $60M prior to its ADP acquisition.

You can learn more about the 2023 GTM Council Members on the GTM Council page. Whether you're already part of the Canvas family or interested in getting to know us better, we invite you to subscribe to the Canvas Newsletter to gain access to content straight from the GTM Council.