GTM 153: Building Technical Growth Machines & Signal-Based Selling with Austin Hughes

Austin Hughes is the founder and CEO of Unify, a platform helping high-growth teams turn buying signals into pipeline. Previously, Austin led the growth team at Ramp, where he scaled the org from 1 to 25+ and pioneered a product-led, experiment-driven GTM approach. With a background in investment banking and venture capital, Austin brings a uniquely analytical and first-principles mindset to modern B2B growth.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Why you should run marketing like product
• Distribution is a startup's best friend
• How Austin’s content strategy turned LinkedIn into a hyper-efficient channel
• Why the best growth hires today are ex-engineers or investors
• How AI is redefining go-to-market motions

Highlights: 

04:00 Ramp’s growth org: running 100+ experiments per quarter

08:45 Why LinkedIn became Unify’s silver bullet

11:30 Austin’s content creation workflow (and why he doesn’t use AI to write)

13:00 Technical vs. traditional growth marketers—how to hire for impact

17:00 Using Unify to merge 1st & 3rd-party data into a signal pipeline

20:30 How automation + human-in-loop GTM creates leverage

24:00 Austin’s Carta example: what perfect relevance looks like

27:00 What broke in outbound and why signal-based selling is the fix

32:00 When startups should start ingesting signals

36:30 Culture of experimentation: “failure is just a data point”

39:00 How Unify is using AI internally for GTM and support ops

43:00 What’s coming next: AI-relevant messaging, BDR collaboration tools

47:00 The end of traditional marketing roles—and what comes next

Guest Speaker Links (Austin Hughes):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-t-hughes/
• Unify: https://www.unifygtm.com/

Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
• Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi

Where to find GTMnow (GTMfund’s media brand):

• Website: https://gtmnow.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow/
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/GTMnow_
• YouTube: /@gtm_now
• The GTM Podcast (on all major directories): https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast/

Thanks to our Sponsors: 

TriNet
Founding a company is hard enough. Navigating payroll, benefits, and compliance shouldn’t slow you down. That’s where TriNet comes in. They work with startups and scaling businesses to help take HR off your plate, so you can stay focused on building product, growing revenue, and hiring great people - the go-to-market engine. B2B companies like Hivebrite and Equilend trust TriNet to help handle the infrastructure of their workforce, so their teams can focus on execution. Sponsor Link:

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.