February 2025 – COMBOVAR

The playbook for viral data storytelling

Hello and welcome to The GTM Newsletter by GTMnow – read by 50,000+ to scale their companies and careers. GTMnow shares insight around the go-to-market strategies responsible for explosive company growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind these strategies and companies.

The power of combining data and storytelling

With so much information available, how do you get your audience to care about your content? One way is through data storytelling. The practice of boiling down large amounts of information into clear, shareable graphics is driving incredible impact for some companies.

To learn more about it, we spoke to Peter Walker, head of the insights team at Carta. Peter is an industry veteran known for unearthing juicy information about the startup industry that people love to discuss. His posts on LinkedIn get thousands of likes and hundreds of comments and reposts. At Carta, his team draws upon proprietary data to produce social media posts, a newsletter, and a podcast.

We spoke to him about the importance of data storytelling, how to get started with it, and tips on how to run a successful data-driven content strategy.

Why data storytelling is so important

While Peter worked in data visualization at early stage startups, he moonlit at The COVID Tracking Project. This was during the early days of the pandemic, when everyone was trying to make sense of a lot of new information. There, he learned that data graphics can help create clarity out of noise. When they’re readily shareable, they can also contribute to a conversation and convince audiences who may have different viewpoints.

Data gives you a solid backing and credibility for what you say. That is the power of data. Done well, data storytelling brands you as a thought leader and instills trust. For customers, making a purchase from your brand is much easier when they already trust you.

Common misconceptions about data content marketing

Misconception 1: You need a lot of data

Good stories don’t necessarily need a ton of data to tell. You could focus on a space where there’s not a lot of data (either your own, or public data), and create content in that space. That way, there’s less competition for the topic you’re creating content around.

Misconception 2: You need proprietary data

You don’t need to produce a lot of your own data. You could also tell a data story by using publicly available numbers, but telling a clearer story using those numbers. For example, there are companies that have more data than Carta, but Carta’s posts go viral because they know the content their audience is interested in consuming.

Misconception 3: Less is more

Simply putting out one big quarterly data report won’t work. You need to put out content often in order to achieve visibility and engagement.

Carta puts out insights 4-5 times a week. Producing more content is more effective because you get more feedback, quicker. As Peter explains: “Each one of these graphics has a chance to go viral in a way that a quarterly PDF is just not going to.”

Misconception 4: Posting a lot is harder than posting quarterly

While it may seem counterintuitive, putting out more content is actually easier than creating less. If you’re in the data that much, then the story just becomes much more natural. You start noticing connections among the data. In the beginning, it took Peter more than an hour to create one LinkedIn post. Now, he can do it in 25 minutes.

If you’re struggling with this at first, try blocking off dedicated time every day to make a data graphic. When Peter was getting started, he had a block on his calendar from 8-8:40am simply titled “create something.”

How to get started telling stories with data

Now that we’ve established that any startup can use data to tell stories that promote their brand, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do that.

1. Build one graphic for social media

Creating one simple data graphic and posting it on one or two social channels is the quickest way to enter a conversation in your industry. Peter advises trying to do this at least 2-3 times per week. The repetition of content creation will help you get better at it.

Don’t be worried if you have a few months of low engagement — that’s normal. Focus on just one or two channels and don’t switch courses before you have enough time to build your presence on those channels. In his first few years at Carta, for example, Peter’s team decided to just focus on LinkedIn and the newsletter. Now, they’ve only expanded to a podcast because they can trust that those two channels will continue to perform well.

2. Use both data and graphic design tools.

Effective data stories make sense of the numbers, but also look clear and well-designed. Here’s how Peter creates content for a post:

Use SQL to get a clean data set. (Note that if you want to produce insights off your own data, you have to anonymize customer data to protect sensitive information).
Upload that data and build graphics in a database tool. Peter prefers Tableau, but Looker and Flourish are other good options.
Export the graphics to Figma. There, you can edit headers, footers, colors to make the design on-brand, and arrows pointing to areas you’d like to call attention to.
Write the post that will accompany the graphic and post it on social media. These posts are usually a mix of fact and opinion.

3. Listen to people in your industry.

When you’re starting out, you can get story ideas by listening to sales calls, reading customer success reports, and talking to other founders. The point is to make sure you know what people are interested in talking and reading about, so you can have a better shot of creating stories that will get engagement.

There are two types of stories the Carta team tells:

Ongoing stories (such as how valuations change quarter-to-quarter).
“Newsjacking” stories (as Peter calls them), which jump into a public conversation. For Carta, that can be a debate on X about whether Miami is a good place to found a startup. For a newsjacking story, Peter builds a graphic within the hour and either posts it publicly on social or DMs it to the people having the conversation.

4. Engage with your audience.

Read the comments on your posts. Comments give you a sense of what people are curious about and discussing. They’ll also let you know if you’ve got something incorrect.

“The back and forth in the comments is where a lot of the magic happens.” Comments have become the basis of many of Peter’s posts. He has a Word Doc with 200 questions that can inspire future posts.

Another way to engage with your audience is to DM other thought leaders. Peter will create a graphic and DM it directly to a VC on X with a note saying he hopes it’s useful for them. He says while it’s impossible for him to track this, one sure sign of success is if founders and VCs share his graphics with their peers in private WhatsApp groups. That’s how he knows that he’s got his thumb on the pulse, and is contributing to the conversation.

Tips to make your insights strategy shine

Create content from a human, not a company.

If your primary distribution channel is social media, the algorithms favor humans over companies. Human authors can also take a personal view and engage with others in the comments in a way companies can’t. Peter’s own experience bears this out: While posts on Carta’s LinkedIn page generate dozens of likes, those on Peter’s personal LinkedIn will get thousands of likes.

Writing from an individual’s point of view allows people to establish their own voice. It allows other people to approach individuals with questions and ideas in a way they wouldn’t approach a company.

When hiring a data storyteller, look for passion and curiosity.

When looking to make your first data storytelling hire, you could hire either a marketer who wants to dive into data, or a data scientist who wants to become a storyteller. Whichever one you choose, the main quality to look for is someone who is excited and curious about the industry. For example, if that person doesn’t get the job, they would probably write a personal Substack about it anyways

Stay the course

Be prepared to shout into the void for at least 3-4 months. It’s an inevitable part of the process. Eventually, however, if you keep doing it and get better at it, some of the right people will find your content and you’ll gain traction.

Like many brand-building activities, the vast majority (80-90%) of startups will stop producing content after 3 months. But, according to Peter, 6 months is the minimum amount of time to put out data insights if you’re going to commit to it.

While it may seem like a lot of work, especially at first, data-driven content creation doesn’t have to be hard. The good news is, the more you do it, the easier it will become — a positive flywheel for a marketing practice that can be a really effective tool in building up your credibility and brand.

GTMfund Toolkit

We spilled the beans on how we’ve become a Superhuman customer, and the response across our GTMfund community Slack and social channels was a clear testament to how Superhuman has been a game-changer for efficiency among leaders and teams. A few of the messages:

Superhuman is generously offering the GTMnow community exclusive access to 1 month free on the platform. If you add any teammates in January to your team, they’ll get a free month too.

To claim this offer, go to www.superhuman.com/gtmnow

More for your eardrums

Casey Woo is the Founder and CEO of Operators Guild, an invite-only community for professionals in strategic finance and operations roles. He is also the General Partner and Founder of FOG Ventures. He is a seasoned, multi-stage operator, bringing over two decades of experience in investment banking advisory, public equity investing, high-growth operational and military leadership roles. His last role was the CFO of Landing, where he oversaw the company’s Finance, Legal and People operations. Prior to Landing, he served as the Global Head of Strategic Finance at WeWork.

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GTM 132: The Rise of the Operator + GTMfund $54M Fund Announcement

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts by searching “The GTM Podcast.”

Startup to watch

Armada – announced a collaboration with Aramco Digital and Microsoft to deploy the world’s first Industrial Distributed Cloud to accelerate real-world AI and digital transformation efforts around the world. This marks a major milestone in advancing AI-driven automation, real-time computing, and digital transformation.

Closinglock – announced a $34M Series B round. This round will support their mission to power and protect real estate transactions in the U.S. To date, Closinglock has prevented over 8,250 fraud attempts and saved buyers and sellers more than $1.2 billion in avoided losses.

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If you learn something from every failure, you can take a win from something that initially seems like a loss. Because of what executive leadership learned from what seemed like cutting criticisms, Crunchbase is now improving their product in a more intelligent, intentional manner.

Why Net Retention Rates (NRR) are all the rage for AI investors. AI startups are reaching revenue milestones faster than previous generations, but investors worry many won’t sustain their growth and are looking for indicators of long-term viability. As a result, they are focusing on net revenue retention rates, with Writer standing out for achieving rates above 120% in the past year.

Hottest GTM jobs of the week

Revenue Operations Associate at OfferFit ((Remote – NA & LATAM)
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Customer Retention Manager at Owner (Remote – US/Canada)
Account Director at Atlan (Remote)
Revenue Operations Manager – US at Crossbeam (Remote – US)

See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.

If you’re looking to scale your sales and marketing teams with top talent, we couldn’t recommend our partner Pursuit more. We work closely together to be able to provide the top go-to-market talent for companies on a non-retainer basis.

Upcoming digital live event

On February 26th (and available on-demand exclusively for registrants), seasoned operator-investors will share how they got started, how they source and evaluate opportunities, what they’ve learned from their best (and toughest) investments, and more.

GTM industry events

Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:

The GTM Workshop for AI Founders (GTMfund event): March 25, 2025 (San Francisco, CA)
More GTMfund 2025 Events TBA (global)
Spryng by Wynter: March 24-26, 2025 (Austin, TX)
Pavilion CMO Summit: April 17, 2025 (Atlanta, GA)
SaaStr Annual: May 13-15 (San Francisco, CA)
Web Summit: May 27-30, 2025 (Vancouver, CAN)
Pavilion CRO Summit: June 3, 2025 (Denver, CO)
Pavilion GTM Summit: September 23-25, 2025 (Dallas, TX)

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This newsletter was entirely written and edited by Sophie Buonassisi and Scott Barker (not AI!).

The post The playbook for viral data storytelling appeared first on GTMnow.

7 Top CRO Tips on Annual Planning

Hello and welcome to The GTM Newsletter by GTMnow – read by 50,000+ to scale their companies and careers. GTMnow shares insight around the go-to-market strategies responsible for explosive company growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind these strategies and companies.

7 CRO tips for smarter annual planning

1. Set core goals and bet on “S-Curves”

Owner’s 2025 plan revolves around two key elements:

Core Initiatives: A set of seven essential strategies that, if executed well, will drive the planned revenue growth (for Owner in 2025, 2x revenue growth).
S-Curve Bets: Three experiments designed to unlock future growth beyond the current year. They also future-proof the existing year.

“S-Curve bets help us anticipate market saturation or operational bottlenecks before they happen. If demand gen slows, conversion rates drop, or outbound outreach hits a wall, these bets ensure we have new growth drivers ready.”

2. Plan for attrition – talent planning is just as critical as revenue planning.

A major mistake companies make is assuming 100% of their team will hit 100% of their quota, which rarely happens.

Key capacity planning elements:

Losing a mid-market rep can cost a company 35-40% of their quota capacity for the year. Even with a talent bench ready, ramp-up time significantly impacts revenue attainment.
Quota buffers should range from 5% to 35%, depending on the company’s growth stage and risk tolerance.
Retaining top performers is essential. As the job market heats up, assuming all top talent will stay is risky.

“If you lose a top performer, their quota still needs to be met. Without a strong talent bench and retention strategy, you’re scrambling to reallocate pipeline and onboard a replacement—losing valuable momentum.”

3. Design a plan with the future in mind, where you want to be

Help Scout’s annual revenue plan is a collection of activities that drive toward Iconiq’s Enterprise 5. By using these benchmarks, we ensure that the capital we’re allocating toward growth initiatives is efficient and keeps a longer-term view in mind:

ARR Growth: How quickly are we growing and which growth levers do we need to add?
Net Dollar Retention: How well are we retaining revenue?
Rule of 40: How are we managing spend relative to our growth?
Net Magic Number: How efficient is the Sales and Marketing spend?
ARR Per FTE: How efficiently is the team scaling to support the revenue?

This plan is made possible by clear inputs (key activities) and outcomes (results) that drive the company towards those key metrics.

“A revenue plan without clear inputs and outcomes is not a plan.”

4. Set unreasonably ambitious goals (but know your team)

The best companies set aggressive goals – not because they always hit them, but because ambitious targets drive outsized outcomes.

That said, goal-setting is situational:

Winning teams thrive on stretch goals. If a team has strong momentum, pushing for aggressive targets fuels performance.
Struggling teams need confidence-building goals. If a team had a tough year, setting more attainable (but still difficult) targets can rebuild belief and execution discipline.

“Building a growth company is an unreasonably hard thing to do. The goals need to mirror that.”

5. Stay the course, communicate and make progress visible

Most companies announce their key initiatives early in the year and only revisit them quarterly. This isn’t enough.

Best practices for visibility:

Frequent updates in all-hands & team meetings. Tie back discussions to initiatives—what’s coming up, what conflicts with them, and what needs realignment?
Celebrate early milestones. Momentum matters. Showing progress keeps teams engaged and aligned.
Make deliberate course corrections. If an initiative needs to be dropped, communicate why, what was learned, and where the focus is shifting.

“Stick to it. Too many companies change course too often – adjust deliberately, based on data and feedback.”

6. Align internal and external partners

Successful annual planning goes beyond the revenue team and requires alignment across all key stakeholders.

At GitHub, primary GTM plays serve as the foundation for not just Revenue, but also Product, Marketing, Finance, and other teams – all internal and cross-functional partners. These plays ensure that all functions are driving toward the same objectives.

External partners are just as critical. A well-aligned channel strategy ensures partners understand key objectives and GTM motions, making them more effective in the market.

GitHub runs a virtual Partner Kickoff, leveraging content from their Revenue Kickoff, so partners show up to customers fully aligned and prepared to add value.

“When internal teams and external partners are aligned, the entire GTM motion becomes more effective”

7. An annual plan is a living document

An annual plan is a hypothesis, not a rigid contract. The best CROs adapt based on market feedback, internal insights, and evolving priorities.

“No one expects their annual plan to be 100% right. The best planning processes treat the plan as a testable hypothesis—adjusting as new data emerges.”