How OpenAI and Google Envision AI Transforming Go-to-Market Strategies Posted on : Nov 28 - 2025

For years, startups relied on well-worn playbooks when it came time to sell their product. But like many other parts of building a company, AI is reshaping how teams prepare to go to market.

“You can do more with less than ever before,” Max Altschuler, general partner at GTMfund, told the audience at TechCrunch Disrupt last month.

The challenge for founders, he said, is finding the balance. While some startups are hiring AI-savvy developers and turning them loose on traditional GTM problems, there’s still no substitute for domain expertise.

“With the right advisors, you can still learn the tried-and-true playbooks. Those haven’t gone out the window,” Altschuler said. “It’s still essential to understand how and why certain marketing fundamentals work.”

Alison Wagonfeld, vice president of marketing at Google Cloud, agreed that the craft of marketing remains critical.

“You need AI knowledge, AI curiosity, and technologists,” she said. “But you also need to understand the purpose of marketing—customer insights, research, and what strong creative looks like.”

Teams that adopt AI, she noted, can move much faster. “You can get more messages into market quickly, and then think more holistically about which metrics you’re driving toward.”

Marc Manara, head of startups at OpenAI, said many early-stage companies are already weaving AI into their GTM strategies—not just to cut costs, but to increase focus.

“Yes, you can do more with less, but you can also work more precisely,” he said. “The level of personalization and signal detection you can achieve with AI is fundamentally different now.”

Today’s AI-powered lead-generation tools can surface prospects that meet highly specific criteria—far beyond what simple database queries allowed in the past. AI is also reshaping inbound marketing, he added, by helping teams qualify and score leads with far greater accuracy.

As startups build their GTM teams, Wagonfeld said, they should rethink what they look for in hires.

“In the past, companies hired specialists—even sub-specialists within marketing or sales,” she said. “Now the priority is curiosity and broad understanding. That’s becoming the top hiring criterion.”