"Hard is a moat" | Max Altschuler (GTMFund)

"I like hard. Hard is a moat. […] I like those types of companies. It might be a slow start, but then it's an upwards trajectory."

Jun 20, 2025

Cross-post from Get Paid

"I like hard. Hard is a moat. […] I like those types of companies. It might be a slow start, but then it's an upwards trajectory." -

Arnon

We hosted our friend Max Altschuler, founder of Sales Hacker and GTMfund in our studio to talk about how AI is fundamentally reshaping go-to-market strategies and why he thinks most GTM software companies are in trouble.

Max's GTMfund has a unique model with 300 software executives as LPs, creating what he calls the ultimate sourcing engine. But he's avoiding investments in GTM software entirely, seeing a "cloudy, soupy layer" where even successful companies like Outreach face existential threats from their own efficiency gains.

"If you can get 20% more capacity out of your sales force... you just need to hire 20% less reps to get the same productivity."

The conversation revealed several counterintuitive insights about building sales teams in the AI era. Max advocates for quality over quantity - hire "absolute killers" from companies like Outreach, support them with growth engineers, and focus on what he calls "hard as a moat" strategies.

Max's philosophy on competitive moats is brutally simple: if it's easy for everyone to do, it's not a moat anymore. Your competitive advantage lives in the stuff that's still genuinely hard to execute. When ZoomInfo and 6sense turned signal identification into a commodity, the moat shifted to how creatively you use those signals, how deeply you research context, and how much manual effort you put into crafting campaigns that don't feel like mass outreach.

This is why Max believes the future belongs to teams that combine elite sales talent with growth engineers - because building those micro-campaigns with perfect research and personalization is still genuinely difficult work that can't be easily replicated at scale.

"When only two emails came into that VP of sales saying 'congrats on the Series B,' it worked. Now when they get 600 emails, they mute all of them."

Max is definitely more bullish on vertical software and global infrastructure plays, pointing to massive opportunities in untouched industries. His recent investment in air traffic control technology exemplifies his thesis - find industries with no innovation for decades, then back exceptional founders to transform them.

"I like hard. Hard is a moat. […] I like those types of companies. It might be a slow start, but then it's an upwards trajectory."

We personally love Max's take on community-driven growth. Despite running Sales Hacker for years without cracking paid communities, he now sees them as more powerful than ever.

"Communities are stronger than ever... even if I don't make any money off my investment in the fund, I'm so happy I did this because of all the events and the community."

Towards the end of the conversation, we also talked about the dark side of AI in customer support, questioning whether companies like Klarna are moving too fast in replacing human teams.

"As a customer, I'm not really sure I want to hear that... I'm spending $100K with you for SaaS software versus like $15 on an Uber ride. Those are two different customer support experiences."

What's emerging is a new playbook where "hard" becomes the ultimate competitive advantage, vertical markets offer the safest returns, and human relationships matter more than ever - even as AI automates everything else.

What do you think about Max’s opinions on building communities? Join the conversation below.

Companies mentioned

Outreach
Clay
Operator (portfolio company)
Clari
SalesLoft
Seismic
Showpad
Highspot
Gong
ZoomInfo
6sense
DocuSign
Braze
Lattice
Rippling
Salesforce
Starlink
Armada Systems (portfolio company)
a16z
Index Ventures
YC (Y Combinator)