Ready to build your own Founder-Led Growth engine? Book a Strategy Call
Frontlines.io | Where B2B Founders Talk GTM.
Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
The founder's conviction is not transferable — you have to engineer around that gap.
Founders consistently try to solve rep underperformance by loading them with more product knowledge and founder zeal. Corey's view is that this fundamentally misunderstands what salespeople can carry into a room. The gap is structural, not motivational — and the fix is building an onboarding system that certifies reps in the product before they ever touch a prospect. "Salespeople, myself included, can never fully adopt the zeal and the intensity of a founder at a trade show, at a cold call, during a discovery session, during a demo." What Corey looks for instead: reps pliable enough to become genuinely versed in the product, capable of running a two-hour discovery and demo without a pre-sales overlay. His current client Aprica — a project management and project service automation company — has built exactly this model, and he calls it the most efficient early-stage sales org he has seen.
ICP discipline is a revenue architecture decision, not a positioning exercise.
The most common stall Corey diagnoses is founders chasing large inbound opportunities outside their core segment. Winning an enterprise logo feels like validation — the ACV is bigger, the board gets excited — but it distorts delivery, support, and eventually the product roadmap. "A large company knows that they've just jumped into a relationship with a smaller firm and there's a propensity for them to boss you around and maybe change your roadmap." His diagnostic question before any engagement: "What's the last piece of business you said no to?" If the founder can't answer, the revenue engine has no defined edge. Staying inside a specific ICP during growth phase is what makes demand gen and account expansion compoundable over time.
Three questions replace the pipeline review theater most founders run.
Corey's pipeline review framework is deliberately narrow. Before an engagement, he asks for recordings of pipeline calls — and the language he hears tells him everything. Phrases like "this deal looks good, it's ours to lose" are immediate red flags. His replacement: three questions only. "In the pipeline call, what problem are we solving? What level in the organization are we at, and what is a mutually agreed upon timeline?" No budget check. No demo recap. No three-week calendar readout. The discipline forces reps to prove a deal is real before it touches the forecast.
Ecosystem selling fails when founders lead with commission, not the partner's quota.
For founders building inside Salesforce or ServiceNow, the instinct is to approach ecosystem sellers with a co-sell pitch built around referral fees. Corey is direct about why that fails: "Going into a tower in Dublin or New York or wherever it might be and saying, hey, if you recommend my product, you'll get this amount of commission, it's not going to close the deal." The frame that works: position your product around the ecosystem seller's core job — securing new logos, expanding existing sites, improving retention. "If you can associate your product with the advancement of their message and helping them, the sellers and the sis, the systems integrators, to secure new logos or expand sites and improve retention, that's when you're talking their language." The partner motion becomes an accelerant only when you solve for their quota, not yours.
Pre-engagement diligence is how Corey decides whether to take the work at all.
Before committing to a fractional engagement, Corey spends roughly a month doing internal interviews — finance, marketing, and delivery leads. He explicitly avoids talking to salespeople at this stage because they won't give genuine feedback once they know a fractional CRO is coming in. The goal is a founder readout: here is what I think needs to happen, and here is whether I believe I can make a difference. "If I'm there to follow their playbook, then I won't take the engagement because I won't take anything that I don't think I can make a difference in." The filter he applies to founders before any of this: openness. A founder unwilling to revisit their preconceived growth assumptions is not a client he can move.
Conversation
Highlights
Fractional CRO Corey Kleinbauer: The Revenue Mistakes Post-PMF Founders Keep Making
Corey Kleinbauer walks into a company and spends the first month talking to everyone except the sales team. Finance. Marketing. Customer delivery. People close enough to the customer to have real opinions, but not so close to quota that they’ll manage their message.
He talks to salespeople last — and deliberately so. “If they know I’m coming in as a fractional, they’re not going to give me genuine feedback.”
Only after that month of site work, and a readout with the founder, does he decide whether to take the engagement. His filter is straightforward: “If I’m there to follow their playbook, then I won’t take the engagement because I won’t take anything that I don’t think I can make a difference in.”
That discipline — applied before a single dollar changes hands — is the frame for everything Corey does. As a fractional CRO embedded inside post-PMF SaaS companies, he has watched the same failure patterns repeat across different founders, different funding situations, different markets. In a recent episode of Unicorn Builders, he broke down exactly what keeps stalling revenue engines that should be working.
The Founder-to-Seller Transfer Problem
The first mistake happens at the most natural moment: the founder hires salespeople.
Two or three reps come in. The founder walks them through the product, shares the vision, and expects conviction to transfer. It doesn’t. “Salespeople, myself included, can never fully adopt the zeal and the intensity of a founder at a trade show, at a cold call, during a discovery session, during a demo.”
The failure isn’t about finding better salespeople. It’s that managing a sales team is a job most founders have never done. The result is a cycle Corey sees constantly: hire sellers, watch them underperform, let them go, bring in a VP of sales and “just expect kind of magic to rain down.” The VP hire becomes the answer to a problem that was never properly diagnosed.
The most efficient sales model Corey has seen in practice solves this differently. Every seller becomes product-certified before their first customer interaction — no pre-sales engineer, no handoff mid-demo. “They become certified in the product, they understand the product to a great length, as good as any pre salesperson you could hire.” The seller owns discovery, demo, upsell, and retention. The founder stops being the only person in the room who can close.
The Enterprise Inbound Trap
The second failure pattern is harder to catch because it arrives as validation.
A large enterprise sends an inbound. The ACV is compelling. The board gets excited. The founder chases it — and sometimes wins. Then the real cost arrives. “A large company knows that they’ve just jumped into a relationship with a smaller firm and there’s a propensity for them to boss you around and maybe change your roadmap.”
The damage spreads beyond the roadmap. The delivery org reconfigures around a customer it wasn’t designed to serve. Support stretches. The sales motion drifts toward deals that look like this one — and the mid-market segment that drove product-market fit gets less attention. “Your delivery organization, your support organization, even your sales organization isn’t built for that market.”
Corey’s diagnostic for ICP discipline is a single question: what’s the last piece of business you said no to? “The answer to that question is very important to me because it’s hard to build a very high, efficient, high performing revenue engine if we’re not true to a certain ICP.” Founders who have never said no aren’t running a sales motion — they’re running a catch-whatever-moves motion, and it compounds over time.
Stripping the Pipeline Review to What’s Real
Even when founders get the ICP right and build a functioning sales team, the pipeline review often gives them a false picture.
The tell is in the language. “If we hear things in the pipeline call like, this deal looks good, it’s ours to lose — these are big red flags to me as a longtime sales leader.” Optimism in a pipeline call is a symptom. It means the team is narrating deals instead of qualifying them.
Corey reduces pipeline reviews to three questions — and removes everything else. What problem are we solving? What level of the organization are we engaged at? What is a mutually agreed-upon timeline? “I didn’t say budget. I didn’t say when the next demo is. I didn’t ask you for a readout of your calendar over the next three weeks. I just want to know these three things, and you can give me all the anecdotes later.”
Budget is excluded deliberately. A deal that can answer those three questions is real. One that can’t isn’t a deal yet, regardless of how the last call felt.
Exit Timeline as a GTM Constraint
Most founders treat exit planning as a board-level conversation. Corey treats it as a design constraint on the revenue engine itself.
“How we build the revenue engine can be affected by their plans for exit… we do keep an eye on who’s our ideal acquirer and what do they typically go get.” The ICP you target, the metrics you track, the customer profiles you optimize for — all of it shifts depending on whether an acquisition is the goal and on what timeline. Building for a specific acquirer means making the company legible to that buyer. Ignoring the exit horizon means potentially building something that’s hard to explain when it matters most.
The Audit Before the Engagement
All of this informs why Corey’s pre-engagement process looks the way it does.
A month of interviews across finance, marketing, and customer delivery — with an explicit commitment to those people that he is “there on a fact finding mission, not to tell on them.” A readout with the founder. An agreed-upon path. Then the engagement begins.
The founder’s openness to that process is the actual filter. Pipeline reviews, ICP discipline, comp plan design — those are all solvable. A founder who has already decided what the answers are is not.
“Quota is rent and rent is due every month.” That standard applies to the sales team. But the willingness to be wrong — about the ICP, the pipeline, the team, the strategy — is the standard Corey applies to the founder before he walks in the door.
Recommended Founder
Interviews
Adam Haskew
Associate Director, Brand Experience at Redis of Redis
How Redis trained a custom GPT on rebrand documentation to automate brand compliance | Adam Haskew
Leena Joshi
CEO of CloseFactor
Leena Joshi, CEO of CloseFactor: $15+ Million Raised to Automate Repetitive Sales Processes
Adrien Menard
CEO and Co-Founder of Botify
Adrien Menard, CEO and Co-Founder of Botify: $82 Million Raised to Build the Future of SEO
Dirk Wolf
CEO of Market Logic Software
How Market Logic rebuilt customer segmentation to stop optimizing for the loudest accounts | Dirk Wolf
Vinay Jain
Founder of MadMen AI
Vinay Jain, Founder of MadMen AI: $4.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI-Powered Marketing Platforms
Zack Rosenberg
CEO and Founder of Qortex
Zack Rosenberg, CEO & Founder of Qortex: $11 Million Raised to Build the Future of Video Analytics
Dan Rua
CEO of Admiral
Dan Rua, CEO of Admiral: $28 Million Raised to Build the Future of Visitor Relationship Management
Creating the Marketing Automation Category with Mark Organ
CEO of Eloqua
Creating the Marketing Automation Category with Mark Organ
Matt Krebsbach
Senior Vice President of Thought Leadership & Brand Awareness of Acquia
From Politics to PR: Building Unassailable Market Position
Sam Fonoimoana
Founder & CEO of Datajoin
Sam Fonoimoana, Founder & CEO of Datajoin: $3.5 Million Raised to Help Brands Leverage Customer Behavioral Insights
Alex Reynolds
Alex Reynolds, CEO & Co-Founder of Vendelux: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Event Intelligence
Justas Malinauskas
CEO & Co-Founder of Whatagraph
How Whatagraph generates 500+ marketing qualified leads monthly through competitor pain point SEO | Justas Malinauskas ($10+ Million Raised)
Jonas Rinde
CEO of Nomono
Jonas Rinde, CEO of Nomono: $15 million Raised to Power the Future of Podcasting
Marty Ringlein
CEO & Co-Founder of Agree.com
Marty Ringlein, CEO & Co-Founder of Agree.com: $3M Raised to Transform Contract-Based Revenue Management
Dan Malgran
VP of Marketing of Steno
Dan Malgran, VP of Marketing at Steno: Elevating Legal Tech with Revenue-Driven Marketing Strategies
Pierce Ujjainwalla
CEO of Knak
Pierce Ujjainwalla, CEO of Knak: $25 Million Raised to Empower Enterprise Marketers with Codeless Email and Landing Page Creation
John Jahnke
CEO and Co-Founder of Tackle.io
John Jahnke, CEO and Co-Founder of Tackle.io: $148 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Go-to-Market
Max Elster
CEO & Founder of Minoa
Max Elster, CEO & Founder of Minoa: $2.7 Million Raised to Build the Go-to-Market Value Intelligence Platform
Cory Schmidt
Head of Marketing of Heyflow
Mastering Organic Growth: Insights from Heyflow’s Head of Marketing
Danielle Pederson
Chief Marketing Officer of Amaze
Why Amaze Markets Experiences Over Channels
Jared Siegal
CEO and Founder of Aditude
Jared Siegal, CEO and Founder of Aditude: $15 Million Raised to Build the Future of Publisher Monetization
Jason Zintak
CEO of 6sense
Jason Zintak: The GTM Story of 6sense ($5.2 Billion Valuation)
Omed Habib
VP of Sapient AI
Omed Habib, VP of Marketing at Sapient AI: A Technical Founder’s Guide to B2B SaaS Marketing
Matt Martin
CEO & Co-Founder of Clockwise
Why organic referrals drive 80% of Clockwise’s growth after a decade of marketing experiments | Matt Martin
Franklin Morris
Vice President, Marketing of Alloy.ai
Why ChatGPT Converts 30x Better Than Your Website
Avi Avital
VP of Customer Success of Nimble
How Nimble evolved CSMs from technical support to revenue owners with NRR/NGR targets | Avi Avital
Katy Carrigan
CEO of Goody
Katy Carrigan, CEO of Goody: $32 Million Raised to Build the Future of Corporate Gifting
Chris Strahl
CEO of Knapsack
Chris Strahl, CEO of Knapsack: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Design Systems
Canay Deniz
CEO & Co-Founder of Ren Systems
Canay Deniz, CEO & Co-Founder of Ren Systems: $8.8 Million Raised to Build the Future of Relationship Intelligence for Dealmakers
Pulkit Agrawal
CEO & Co-Founder of Chameleon
Pulkit Agrawal, CEO & Co-Founder of Chameleon: $15 Million Raised to Build the Product Adoption Category
Sam Kellett
Head of Marketing of ProfitMetrics.io
Why ROAS Is Lying to Your CFO About Campaign Performance
Jonathan Corbin
CEO & Co-Founder of Maven AGI
Jonathan Corbin, CEO and Co-Founder of Maven AGI: $28 Million Raised to Build the Future of Customer Experience
Thomas Millay
CEO of DemandJump
Thomas Millay, CEO at DemandJump: Over $25 Million Raised to Power the Future of Content Strategy
Rajat Mishra
Founder & CEO of Prezent
Rajat Mishra, Founder & CEO at Prezent: Over $24 Million Raised to Build the Presentation Productivity Platform Category
Ishveen Jolly
CEO and Co-Founder of OpenSponsorship
Ishveen Jolly, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenSponsorship: Over $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Sports Influencer Marketing
Alex Mann
Head of Growth of Lunos
What’s the ROI of Bringing a Horse to Wall Street? (Ft. Alex Mann)
Ksenija Rohrkamp
Director of Marketing of Buynomics
Why Product Marketing Should Be Your First Category Creation Hire
Vitaly Pecherskiy
CEO and Co-founder of StackAdapt
Building stackadapt: how three founders turned failure into a 1,600-person company | Vitaly Pecherskiy
Andrea Bailiff-Gush
Head of Marketing of Reco
Why Category Creation Is a Trap (And What Actually Works)
Taylor Lint
CEO and Founder of Swantide
Taylor Lint, CEO and Founder of Swantide: $7 Million Raised to Revolutionize How Companies Design and Build Their GTM Infrastructure
Ori Entis
CEO and Co-Founder of Staircase AI
Ori Entis, CEO and Co-Founder of Staircase AI: $5 Million Raised to Power the Future of Customer Revenue Growth
Hikari Senju
CEO and Founder of Omneky
Hikari Senju, CEO and Founder of Omneky: $10 Million Raised to Empower Brands With AI-Powered Ads To Maximize Performance
Andrew Forman
Founder of Givz
Andrew Forman, CEO of Givz: $3 Million Raised to Make Donating, Not Discounts, eCommerce Brands Ultimate Growth Lever
Natasha Woods
Senior Director Communications of The Linux Foundation
How GitLab’s comms team workshopped the “iPhone for DevOps” analogy for CNBC’s IPO interview | Natasha Woods
Elio Narciso
Co-Founder & CEO of Scalestack
How Scalestack landed MongoDB as their first enterprise customer through cold email | Elio Narciso ($3.1 Million Raised)
Tine Karlsen
Co-Founder & CEO of Vev
Tine Karlsen, CEO and Co-Founder of Vev: $7 Million Raised to Power the Future of No-Code Visual Design
Tyler Strand
Co-Founder and CTO of Air
Tyler Strand, Co-Founder and CTO at Air: $38 Million raised to Build the Creative Operations Category
David DeWolf
CEO & President of Knownwell
David DeWolf, CEO & President of Knownwell: $2 Million Raised to Build the Future of Commercial Intelligence
Daniel Saks
CEO & Co-Founder of Landbase
Daniel Saks, CEO & Co-Founder of Landbase: $12.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of GTM Automation
Andy Mowat
CEO and Co-Founder of Gated
Andy Mowat, CEO and Co-Founder of Gated: Over $3 Million Raised to Build Noise Cancelling Headphones for Email
Robert Thelen
CEO & Founder of Rownd
Robert Thelen, CEO & Founder of Rownd: $3.3 Million Raised to Build the Future of App Onboarding
Daniel Frohnen
Founder and Fractional CMO of FrohnenGTM
Category Design Is a Company Strategy, Not a Marketing Exercise
Sangram Vajre
Co Founder and CEO of GTM Partners
Behind the Category: Creating the Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Category with Sangram Vajre
Sarah Gavin
Interim Chief Marketing Officer; Chief Communications Officer of Zendesk
How Zendesk rebuilt a 40-person in-house comms team in 9 months and eliminated all agency spend | Sarah Gavin
Mark Keaney
Chief Revenue Officer of Greenfly
How Greenfly doubled revenue and headcount by staying inside three tightly defined verticals instead of expanding TAM | Mark Keaney
Rebecca Corliss
VP of Marketing of GrowthLoop
Why GrowthLoop Ditched Paid Ads for Influencer Marketing
Daniel Erickson
Founder and CEO of Viable
Daniel Erickson, CEO of Viable: $9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Customer Feedback Analysis
Cassandra Gholston
CEO & Founder of PartnerTap
Cassandra Gholston, CEO & Founder of PartnerTap: $9 Million Raised to Revolutionize Partner Orchestration
Chris Golec
CEO and Founder of Channel99
Chris Golec, CEO and Founder of Channel99: $5 Million Raised to Power the Future of B2B Marketing
Steve Keifer
Chief Marketing Officer of Ordway
100K Outbound Emails Monthly Without Getting Blocked
Tom Lee
Co-Founder of LOVO AI
Tom Lee, Co-Founder of LOVO AI: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Voiceovers
Patrick Woods
CEO and Co-Founder of Orbit
Patrick Woods, CEO and Co-Founder of Orbit: Over $22 Million Raised to Power the Future of Communities
Tara Robertson
Director of Marketing of ContactMonkey
Why ContactMonkey Spent 50% of Marketing Budget on Events in 2025
Michael Bamberger
CEO and Founder of Tetra Insights
Michael Bamberger, CEO and Founder of Tetra Insights: $7 Million Raised to Power the Future of Qualitative Research
Creating the Go to Market Category with ZoomInfo’s Bryan Law
CMO of ZoomInfo
Creating the Go to Market Category with ZoomInfo’s Bryan Law
Ashish Nagar
Founder & CEO of Level AI
Ashish Nagar, CEO of Level AI: $35 Million Raised to Power Contact Centers of the Future
Philipp de la Haye
Senior Vice President of Marketin of FrontNow
AI Will Cut Marketing Teams to 2 People – Here’s the Playbook
Marty Kausas
CEO & Co-Founder of Pylon
Marty Kausas, CEO & Co-Founder of Pylon: $20 Million Raised to Build the First B2B Support Platform
CEO and Co-Founder of Sendoso
Creating the Sending Management Category with Sendoso’s Kris Rudeegraap
Sam Mallikarjunan
Co-Founder & CEO of OneScreen
Sam Mallikarjunan, Co-Founder & CEO of OneScreen: $10 Million Raised to Power the Future of Offline Advertising
Stephen Karaolis
Marketing Director of Cleary
Stephen Karaolis, Marketing Director at Cleary: Mastering Speed to Market – The Key to Dynamic Content Strategy
Marc Bernstein
CEO and Founder of Balto
Marc Bernstein, CEO and Founder of Balto: $52 Million Raised to Power the Future of Contact Centers
Woody Klemetson
Founder of AskElephant
How AskElephant achieved 400% growth with zero marketing spend | Woody Klemetson
David Walsh
Founder & CEO of Limelight
How Limelight validated the B2B creator market by interviewing 100+ creators before building | David Walsh
Parry Bedi
Co-Founder and CEO of Tingono
Parry Bedi, CEO of Tingono: $7 Million Raised to Help Companies Boost Net Revenue Retention
Rush Shahani
Co-Founder & CTO of Persana AI
Rush Shahani, Co-Founder & CTO of Persana AI: $2.3 Million Raised to Power the Future of GTM
Anthony Lye
Chairman & CEO of Quid
Why the next great tech companies will sell outcomes, not software | Anthony Lye
Jonathan Legge
Co-Founder and CEO of &Open
Jonathan Legge, Co-Founder and CEO at &Open: Over $35 Million Raised to Create the Future of Corporate Gifting
Marc-Alexander Christ
Co-Founder of SumUp
Marc-Alexander Christ: the Story of SumUp ($8.5 Billion Valuation)
Lars Grønnegaard Hansen
CEO and Co-Founder of Dreamdata
Lars Grønnegaard Hansen, CEO & Co-Founder of Dreamdata: $12 Million Raised to Build the Future of B2B Revenue Attribution