Brendan J. Short is a go-to-market leader who writes the newsletter The Signal and co-founded and leads Groundswell. He worked at Zoom in its 2020 high-growth stage and left Apollo before consulting on pipeline generation. — The Data Stack Show Ep. 150 with Brendan Short of Groundswell (2023).

Infographic for "Lessons from Brendan J. Short".

On Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy and Sales:

  1. On CROs Learning the Tools: Brendan J. Short: "I think that in, let’s say the next 3 years, the CROs at the darling companies will be the ones who spent hundreds of hours in 2026 learning Claude Code (like Tim), not the ones who outsourced it to someone on their team (RevOps, GTME, whoever)." — www.thesignal.club/p/how-a-cro-uses-claude-code-to-run-a-100-person-revenue-org.
  2. On Micro-Campaigns in Pipe Gen: Brendan J. Short: "I believe this is going to become a much bigger part of overall pipe gen strategy." — "Micro-Campaigns" - by Brendan J Short - The Signal.
  3. On GTM Engineers Everywhere: Brendan J. Short: "I believe that in 18 months, ~every company will have this person embedded in their go-to-market org." — www.thesignal.club/p/most-companies-are-using-gtm-engineers.
  4. On Signal-Based Selling: The notes: "Rather than blanket outreach, signal-based outbound taps into internal and external indicators to identify genuinely in-market prospects." — Predictable Revenue: "Hunting Alpha in GTM Strategies with Brendan Short" (2024).
  5. On the Right 50 Accounts: Predictable Revenue summarizes Short's view: "the future of GTM isn't about lists of thousands but targeting the right 50 accounts this week." — Predictable Revenue: "Hunting Alpha in GTM Strategies with Brendan Short" (2024).
  6. On Founder Brands: Brendan J. Short: "I believe founders and operators who build authentic audiences on LinkedIn over the next 12 months will have a meaningful distribution advantage over everyone else." — www.thesignal.club/p/how-to-build-a-founder-brand-with-alec-paul.
  7. On the SaaS Boom: Brendan J. Short: "I think the AI era ushers in the biggest boom in SaaS that we’ve ever seen." — www.thesignal.club/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-saaspocalypse.
  8. On the Headless Software Take: Brendan J. Short: "The cool, contrarian, new thing to say is that software is “going headless,” or that “UI doesn’t matter in a world of agents.” I think that’s a lazy take." — www.thesignal.club/p/clarify-agents.
  9. On Piping Data In: Brendan J. Short: "I think the winners will be the ones who pipe their data into your system." — www.thesignal.club/p/i-dont-want-to-use-your-agent-i-want.
  10. On Defining Micro-Campaigns: Short defines micro-campaigns as "Small, highly-targeted lists of, say, 50-250 contacts" generated with "very specific filtering and/or signals." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  11. On Perishable Lists: Short: "Each list (aka 'micro-campaign') is relevant this week, but won't be next month." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  12. On Stale Signals: Short on manual list building: "By the time the list is ready and passed to the sales team, the signals are stale and the leads are less likely to convert." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  13. On Creativity as the Bottleneck: Short: "Your creativity is the only bottleneck with the help of AI to create micro-campaigns." The old way meant "1,000 contacts to get 1 meeting"; the new way "100 contacts to get 10 meetings." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  14. On Rich Data: Short contrasts static B2B database filters with "RICH data": tech stack from job postings, whether a warm intro exists, tier-1 investors, or hiring salespeople. — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  15. On Knowing Your Business: Short repeats Clay's founder: "the alpha is always going to come from you knowing your business and your customers and how the market is evolving." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  16. On Anecdotal Alpha: Brendan J. Short: "But, I’ve found the alpha is oftentimes in the anedcodotal, small, weird experiments." — The Signal: "Micro-Campaigns"
  17. On a Noisy World: Brendan J. Short: "My current thinking is this: we’re living in an incredibly noisy world (and getting noisier, with AI)." — The Signal: "Micro-Campaigns"
  18. On the Old Playbook: Brendan J. Short: "For the last couple of years, with almost complete unanimity, the founders and revenue leaders I speak with agree that the old GTM playbook no longer works" — The Signal: How to Get Your GTM Team AI Pilled
  19. On Treating Workflows Like Ramp Does: Brendan J. Short: "The best GTM teams I’ve seen are treating their workflows the way Ramp treats their internal tools: build it, use it, learn from it, replace it when something better becomes possible." — The Signal: How to Get Your GTM Team AI Pilled
  20. On Using One Definition of GTM: Brendan J. Short: "I think it’s helpful for everyone to, eventually, get on the same page and use the term the same way." — The Signal: Why “GTM” is not just a rebrand of “Sales” (sorry, Paul Graham)
  21. On Where Great Enablement Comes From: Brendan J. Short: "I believe that most (not all, but most) of the best Sales Enablement folks came up as sellers themselves" — The Signal: The Renaissance of Enablement
  22. On Retrieve Versus Recall: Brendan J. Short: "This framework matters because, in my observation, most enablement teams spend the majority of their time on retrieve and almost no time on recall or resist" — The Signal: The Renaissance of Enablement
  23. On Product Usage as a Signal: Brendan J. Short: "We believed (and still do believe) that if you’re a PLG company, product usage is the highest intent signal there is for SDR/Sales Teams for targeting" — The Signal: What we learned building Groundswell
  24. On Needing Users First: Brendan J. Short: "Therefore, our customers first needed to acquire more users through marketing and sales outbound efforts, before we could add value." — The Signal: What we learned building Groundswell

On AI in Sales and Business:

  1. On a Human Driving the Process: Short: micro-campaigns will not replace your job "because it requires a creative, strategic, and thoughtful HUMAN driving the process (who can then use AI as a tool, to scale their experiments)." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  2. On Breaking Mental Models: Short: "Gen AI unlocks a new way of operationalizing creative experiments. But, it breaks people's mental models of 'doing outbound.'" — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  3. On Thoughtful Outreach: Short: "I hate spam and inefficiencies. I like automation and doing things smarter. I want more thoughtful outreach to exist. More consultative selling." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  4. On Toys Becoming the Next Big Thing: Short: "the next big thing will start out looking like a toy." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  5. On Strategy Over Tools: Short: "It isn't about the tool (Clay is just a spreadsheet with APIs into LLMs and other data providers). It's about the strategy." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  6. On Missing Tools: Short in 2024: "The right tools don't exist to really support this motion (outside of building one-off campaigns using Clay)." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  7. On Building Within a Platform: Brendan J. Short: "We still think this product should exist, but we have come to the conclusion that this is only possible to build within a greater “platform” (or as a compound startup )." — What we learned building Groundswell - by Brendan J Short.
  8. On Being Liked Versus Loved: Brendan J. Short: "We worked with ~30 customers, and in the end, candidly - they liked us, but they didn’t love us." — What we learned building Groundswell - by Brendan J Short.
  9. On Customer Discovery: Brendan J. Short: "Before we started the company, we did nearly 100 customer interviews (not hyperbole), that’s a lot!" — What we learned building Groundswell - by Brendan J Short.
  10. On DIY Being Good Enough: Brendan J. Short: "Most companies can use reverse-ETL or a BI tool and get 80% of the way there, and that’s good enough for them." — What we learned building Groundswell - by Brendan J Short.
  11. On GTM Engineers as Leverage: Brendan J. Short: "I believe that in the AI-era, a GTM Engineer (or whatever you want to call it) is one of the best ways for a modern GTM team to get leverage." — The Signal: Most Companies Are Using GTM Engineers for "Automated Outbound." The Best GTM Teams Aren't Stopping There.
  12. On Early Adopters of the Role: Brendan J. Short: "Semantics aside, I believe most GTM orgs will adopt the role in the next few years and the early adopters will gain a competitive advantage." — The Signal: 5 Ideas from 2025 That Changed How I Think About GTM
  13. On Needing Clay Experts: Brendan J. Short: "I don’t think you have to have a GTM Engineer or Clay expert to use Clay." — The Signal: 5 Ideas from 2025 That Changed How I Think About GTM
  14. On Scaling Without Headcount: Brendan J. Short: "And, I believe, in part, AI is accelerating the importance of the GTM Engineering role - to help companies scale GTM with AI & automation, instead of headcount" — The Signal: How to Become a GTM Engineer (8 Resources)
  15. On Start Building: Brendan J. Short: "This may seem like a cop-out, but I believe it’s the best way to become a GTM Engineer — or a better GTM Engineer." — The Signal: How to Become a GTM Engineer (8 Resources)
  16. On Hacking on AI to Learn: Brendan J. Short: "I am hoping to spend ~half a day a week hacking on AI projects, to learn." — The Signal: How to Become a GTM Engineer (8 Resources)
  17. On Agents Needing My Context: Brendan J. Short: "I don’t want to use your agent inside your platform because you don’t have access to all of my context." — The Signal: I don’t want to use your agent, I want my agent to use your thing
  18. On the Car Navigation Analogy: Brendan J. Short: "You could build a perfectly good nav system for a car, but it doesn’t know my home address, numbers of people I may call while driving, or what I was listening to this morning." — The Signal: I don’t want to use your agent, I want my agent to use your thing
  19. On Sales Being AI-Proof: Brendan J. Short: "I’ve said this many times, and will continue to beat this drum: Sales is an AI-proof career." — The Signal: I don’t want to use your agent, I want my agent to use your thing
  20. On an AI Writing Policy: Brendan J. Short: "Clay instituted an official AI Writing Policy that I think everyone should adopt (or create their own version)." — The Signal: Why “GTM” is not just a rebrand of “Sales” (sorry, Paul Graham)

On Creativity, Mindset, and Personal Growth:

  1. On the Abundant Mindset (Rick Rubin): Short closes his "Micro-Campaigns" newsletter with a quote of the week from Rick Rubin's The Creative Act: "A river of material flows through us. When we share our works and our ideas, they are replenished. If we block the flow by holding them all inside, the river cannot run and new ideas are slow to appear. In the abundant mindset, the river never runs dry." — The Signal: Brendan J Short, "Micro-Campaigns" (Oct 25, 2024).
  2. On Being Early: Brendan J. Short: "We think that the number of PLG companies will grow significantly over the next 3-5 years, but we may just have been a bit early" — What we learned building Groundswell - by Brendan J Short.
  3. On Data Readiness: Brendan J. Short: "Most companies have lots of data in their cloud data warehouse, but it’s not in an “analytics-ready state.”" — What we learned building Groundswell - by Brendan J Short.
  4. On Transparency: Brendan J. Short: "So, in the spirit of transparency, my co-founder and I decided to publish a public “post-mortem.”" — What we learned building Groundswell - by Brendan J Short.
  5. On Not Building a Media Company: Brendan J. Short: "When I started writing this newsletter, I wasn’t trying to build “a media company.” I genuinely did not think I could (or wanted to) do this full-time." — The Signal: 10,000 (Thank You)
  6. On Nichemaxxing: Brendan J. Short: "I am building for a small group of people—by design (“nichemaxxing”)." — The Signal: 10,000 (Thank You)
  7. On Documenting What Works: Brendan J. Short: "The GTM playbook is changing, and I want to create the place that documents what’s actually working." — The Signal: 10,000 (Thank You)
  8. On Sharing Unfinished Ideas: Brendan J. Short: "Today’s post is a concept I’m still working out in my head, so feedback is very welcome!" — The Signal: "Micro-Campaigns"

The majority of these learnings are derived from Brendan J. Short's newsletter, "The Signal," and his appearances on various podcasts.

Learn more:

  1. Hunting Alpha in GTM Strategies with Brendan Short - Predictable Revenue
  2. Customer Led Growth - Apple Podcasts
  3. How Salespeople Use Data, Salesforce vs. Snowflake, and How LLMs Are Transforming Sales with Brendan Short of Groundswell
  4. "Micro-Campaigns" - by Brendan J Short - The Signal