Breaking the Mold: The Power of GTMfund’s Operator-Led Model

There is no clear playbook on how to succeed in venture. Venture capital is ever-changing, and compelling investors have a differentiated lens on how they support the success of their founders. In today's market, founders are looking for more from their investors—they need true partners who understand the intricacies of scaling a business.

Fresh off the announcement of their $54M Fund II, I sat down with GTMfund Partners Paul Irving and Scott Barker to unpack their approach to venture investing. With a network of 350+ go-to-market executives and a unique operator-led model, GTMfund is redefining what founders can expect from their investors by activating hands-on LPs that help propel startups to even greater success.

Responses have been edited for clarity and length. Full conversation can be found here.

What is operator-led VC and how does it differ from traditional VC models? What inspired you to take this approach?

Scott: Capital has become a commodity for the best founders. You need to provide something beyond a dollar—real, tangible support that helps them scale their business.

Starting GTMfund felt organic. We were fortunate to have spent the better half of a decade building relationships with the best go-to-market operators on the planet. We saw that we could play switchboard operator and introduce those folks to each other and to top founders.

Our operator-led model means we raise a large portion of our fund from highly skilled and highly experienced operators. We've built a fund where Chief Revenue Officers and Chief Marketing Officers aren't just investors—they're active partners. They provide go-to-market support, real-time insights, and operational expertise to our portfolio companies, giving them real skin in the game.

Paul: We saw that one of the primary concerns keeping founders up at night was go-to-market.

On one side, there were GTM leaders who were incredibly knowledgeable and experienced and could add value to founders but didn't know how to get access to those companies and, on the other side, there were founders that wanted that invaluable insight but didn’t know how to plug into those networks to get that support. From the early days, we always viewed ourselves as uniquely positioned to bridge that gap, help facilitate that knowledge transfer, and add value to both sides.

Can you describe the GTMfund “flywheel”? How does this uniquely support your founders and LPs alike?

Scott: Our flywheel is about creating a living, breathing ecosystem. We’ve defined it as 3 parts with having the fund, media, and our community all working together.

For founders, this means we’re doing more than just writing a check. We’re also providing hands-on support from world-class experts and exposure to our media channel’s 50,000 audience members. As an example, our Slack isn't just a communication channel—it's where founders and operators share playbooks, solve problems, and build real connections.

On the LP side, we've created multiple incentives for our operators. They're not just investing—they're learning, networking, and often finding new career opportunities. We've had about 20 of our limited partners join portfolio companies as employees, turning investments into transformative career moves. One example being the Head of Revenue at Shopify. We connected him with one of our founders as a CRO advisor and they hit it off so well that he left Shopify to join the startup full time. It was a huge win for both sides.

What go-to-market challenges are you seeing most often in today's startup landscape and within your portfolio companies?

Paul: The challenges that seem to come in waves. Right now, there are a few key areas where founders are seeking support.

Hiring remains a massive challenge. We recently helped a founder navigate their first sales team hire—connecting them with experienced revenue leaders who could guide the process. We're also seeing complex challenges around partnerships, SEO, and finding hyper-specific advisors.

To address these challenges, we've started hosting monthly sessions where we bring in experts to workshop these specific topics with our founders. Our network allows us to match founders with exactly the right expertise at the right moment. It's about providing targeted, actionable support exactly when they need it.

How did your fundraising and distribution approach change between Fund I and Fund II?

Paul: It was more of an evolution than a big change. We leveraged an AngelList Rolling Fund in Fund I, which was the perfect vehicle to scale up GTMfund in its first iteration. It allowed us to build our network, add revenue leaders, and raise and deploy capital simultaneously—which was crucial for getting early points on the board and building relationships with founders.

For Fund II, we transitioned to a traditional closed-end fund with institutional support. This allowed us to be more intentional about our portfolio construction—how many deals we're doing, our check sizes, and the overall fund size. We worked closely with AngelList throughout this transition, and their team was incredible in supporting us.

Scott: On the fundraising side, we wanted to double our size, but realized operator capital doesn't scale infinitely. We're maintaining our core of 300 top-tier operators, keeping them about 20% of our capital, but they aren’t necessarily writing multi-million dollar checks. This required me to build this new muscle of fundraising from family offices and institutional investors to supplement and meet our goal.

What advice would you give to other firms considering an operator-led model?

Paul: Play to your strengths. Find the unique value in your network. We want founders to say, 'You should talk to GTMfund—they're the best at go-to-market support.'

AngelList has unbelievable data on this, but venture is still a power law game, especially early stage venture. Seek out the people in your network that would want to be involved, find out what would incentivize them to be involved, and start. Lean on your network to help you get access to the very best founders and the very best teams, giving you an opportunity to invest in them and then winning allocation. You don't need a massive team. We're only seven people, but we can provide incredibly targeted support by leveraging our network strategically.

What excites you most about the current venture landscape?

Scott: I’m personally spending a lot of time focusing on AI's potential to transform 'unsexy' industries. We're investing in companies using AI to revolutionize sectors like customs brokerage and telecommunications—areas ripe for true digital transformation.

As someone who spent a lot of my operating years at a software company that sold primarily to software companies, I saw we were fighting for incremental efficiency gains—2% improvement here, 3% there. But when you look at other areas of the economy, you're talking about true digital transformation again. Knowing you have the opportunity to change a vast majority of how an entire business operates is incredibly exciting. It reminds me of when we all moved to the cloud, years ago. I think we're at that point again, with AI particularly, when you get outside of our software B2B bubble.

Conclusion

For additional insights or to share the conversation with others, you can find the full conversation with Paul and Scott, including a live Q&A from the audience, below.

We’re proud to partner with GTMfund as they continue to grow with each new fund. Learn more about GTMfund by following them on LinkedIn and subscribe to GTMnow to access their trove of online content resources.

Curious to learn more about how they and 25K+ funds and syndicates are leveraging AngelList? See all of our offerings for funds here.