How We're Building A GTM Media Engine @ VibeScaling

As some of you know, I started VibeScaling almost a year ago with a few great partners, the main one being a mentor of mine in Cailen Dsa, who is a legend in the early-stage GTM space.

What started as an advisory business with a side blog has morphed into working with most of the seed through series C AI-natives in SF/NYC in four different capacities - advisory (fractional sales & GTM engineering), recruiting (top sales talent), investing (putting in checks into these companies when we’ve earned the right), and media (blog, podcast, events).

For this article, I wanted to write a little bit about the fourth piece, media, and how it drives the rest of our other efforts.

We started VibeScaling as mainly an advisory business (which we still run, but we are more selective about which clients we take on) - one that helps companies, usually in pre-seed, seed, and series A, build momentum before they are ready to hire a full-time sales team.

And while we had grand plans to continue to build this out, there was always a quote that stuck with me:

Or, as Harry Stebbings says, who has done this better than anyone:

I knew that if we wanted to go fast, we could keep building the advisory business.

But if we wanted to go far, we needed to double down on efforts on the content piece.

It was shortly after building the GTM engineering business that I realized we needed to expand distribution to gain leverage in the other areas of the business (recruiting, investing, and advisory).

As with any consulting business, it’s a good model to start with, but it's hard to scale to a big operation without hiring a team underneath. And I had zero desire to build a consulting firm, PTSD from my previous times 😆.

I launched GTMBA around 13 months ago. What started as a passion project became a catalyst for two other components of our media strategy - events and podcasts.

~8 months after launching GTMBA, we threw our first event in SF earlier this summer, and it was a huge hit, with ~100 of the top GTM talent in the Bay Area attending, most of whom were blog readers.

This led to more blog followers, and this growth gave us a huge advantage for our recruiting business, as a ton of top sales folks now follow up and keep in touch after reading the blog, coming to us first when they’re in market.

As the blog grew, it gave us the right to throw additional events to continue to build the community:

I would never have thought that VibeScaling would become a recruiting business, but through distribution, it’s become a huge opportunity for us, helping with GTM build-outs at some of the top AI startups in SF/NYC.

As we scale our investment efforts now, Harry’s quote still resonates with me. We need to continue investing in distribution to be a magnet for opportunities down the road (that we can’t see yet).

Blog —> events —> to now, the VibeScaling Podcast.

The Pavilion & GTMfund folks have built strong businesses and are now doing something similar, weaving media brands into their models (Topline for Pavilion and GTMnow for GTMfund).

I enjoy their podcasts, but what we’re trying to build at VibeScaling is different.

The issue with what they have is that their community doesn’t resonate with me, like at all.

There are too many “shake-down” (shove software down your throat) big-company sellers in both of those communities, and it feels like it promotes quantity over quality.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just looking for something smaller & different.

There’s a growing group of these super ambitious, cerebral sellers + builders we’re seeing join these AI-natives - not Oracle or larger/IPO tech companies, which is what GTMfund/Pavilion cater to (at least in the minds of my network).

At VibeScaling, we’re trying to build the community that we wish we had for ourselves - one that is selective and well-curated with builders who reside in SF/NYC and care deeply about how they sell + are inspired to join and build the modern GTM motion @ AI startups.

As mentioned briefly above, we break our media strategy into three core plays:

GTMBA (Newsletter)

Currently at 2,200 subscribers (growing ~10% MoM), heavily indexed toward GTM folks at AI-natives like OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Harvey, Scale AI, Glean, Ramp, and similar hyper-growth companies.

About 60% individual contributors (mostly experienced AEs), ~20% directors/VPs, and a healthy mix of founders and GTM generalists.

We write about the intersection of GTM + AI + startups weekly. If you’re reading this far down, I’ll assume you’re subscribed, and I appreciate your support.

In-Person Events

These are private, invite-only events in SF & NYC where we host panels & happy hours to bring the early-stage GTM community together to meet & discuss what's working and what’s not.

We’ve thrown around ~6 of these so far in 2025, mostly in a panel format, and bulleting the links again for a few that we filmed:

The VibeScaling Podcast

This, along with our recruiting efforts, is taking up most of my time right now, & I’ve been loving producing it.

See here for episode 1, featuring Todd Busler.

We’re doing this video-led and in-person in studios in SF/NYC, working with a post-production agency to help make it look great.

We want to interview each sales leader at the AI-natives, so if you know of anyone who isn’t on our list yet, let me know (reply to this or slide into the LI DMs).

As some of you know by now, I geek out over the latest and greatest tech tools to help make my life easier - see here for the ones I’m using for our media brand specifically:

Ordinal has been a great tool. I initially heard about them from Peter at Clay.

We record one long-form video podcast, and it helps to send shorts, handles captions, and pushes to YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter with platform-specific formatting.

What used to take tens of hours now takes only a couple per week, and helps me plan out these posts ahead of time to minimize task switching.

Use my link here for 20% your first 3 months.

Claude Projects for research and writing.

Wispr Flow for transcription + saved me 50% of the time typing into Claude.

Everything starts as video, then cascades to audio, written, and social. One recording session creates 15 pieces of content.

Media and recruiting are my two main focuses for 2026, and honestly, I'm so ~thankful~, excited, and fortunate that I get to do this.

We're scaling all three pillars. Weekly articles that nerd out on all things sales + startups + AI. More private events where real conversations and thoughtful networking happen. More interviews of the top GTM leaders, VCs, & founders in early-stage AI.

The goal isn't to be the biggest media brand in GTM. It's to be the most useful and selective one for this holy shit moment that is the biggest paradigm shift since the iPhone.

Content/distribution + speed is the moat you should be pushing for in a highly competitive environment, which is seemingly every market worth competing in nowadays.

Happy Thanksgiving y’all 🫡,

Chris