Clay went from zero revenue to a 3.1 billion dollar valuation in just 2 years. Was it luck, skill, or are they just riding the AI hype bubble?

Meet Bruno Estrella, the Head of Marketing at Clay. He joined when the company was just 20 people and helped build one of the most effective partner and community-led marketing engines in SaaS.

In this episode, Bruno reveals Clay’s full growth playbook, from the influencer strategy that popularized the “GTM Engineer” role to the strategy behind their 7-figure campaigns.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

00:00 Intro

00:53 The GTM Engineer: How Clay created a new role through influencers

07:13 The story behind Clay’s iconic “Play-Doh” branding

09:55 How to split marketing for self-serve vs. enterprise

16:26 Clay’s programmatic SEO play generating 60 percent of their traffic

21:27 Why Clay uses Substack instead of a traditional blog

25:33 The playbook for scaling to hundreds of global events

31:09 How to get the right people to attend your events

38:20 Why adding a service arm accelerates enterprise revenue

40:57 How Clay uses its own product to grow

45:00 Clay’s social media and executive content strategy

51:31 The strategy behind Clay’s 7-figure billboard campaigns

55:41 Your brand is your advertising budget

01:00:28 The secret to hiring A-players

01:05:15 Clay’s single most effective growth tactic

Where to find Bruno:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brunoestrella/

Where to find Tim:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/

X: https://x.com/timsoulo

Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/

Referenced:

Clay: https://www.clay.com/

OpenAI: https://openai.com/

HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/

Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/

Webflow: https://webflow.com/

Substack: https://substack.com/

Miro: https://miro.com/

Gong: https://www.gong.io/

ClickUp: https://clickup.com/

Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/