Where Have All the Unicorns Gone?

As we wave goodbye (and a bit of good riddance) to 2023, tech industry layoffs are at a record high. Sales and Marketing teams are burning through revenue. And most VCs will tell you that there's no more money to be had.

Yep, it's been a WTF kind of year and some of us are more than ready for 2024 to begin, hoping that the general vibe will change. But it does make you wonder, how did we even get here? There were so many unicorn tech companies before -- where did they all go?

Of course, we could blame the pandemic or economic downturn, after all, "macro-economic climate" should have been the phrase of the year, but that would be short-sighted. The revenue growth problem is far more complex than a single event, no matter how large.

Let's take a little jaunt down memory lane, shall we?

In 2014, We Believed in Magic

About ten years ago, we saw the rise of the tech unicorn. Privately held companies achieving billion-dollar valuations commandeered the news. Remember? Everyone wanted a sprinkle of that magic dust and we believed we had the power to get there, provided we got our GTM functions right.

The B2B landscape became obsessed with unicorns and looked to these luminaries as examples of how sales and marketing teams should be run. And it was fun believing the hype. Until cold, harsh reality spoiled it all. Namely, the media calling out astronomical burn rates.

Even so, many of us adopted a sort of selective reality, collectively stuck our fingers in our ears, and yelled "La la la la la" to drown out the noise. Even as we got the popcorn out and watched shows like Super Pumped and WeCrashed.

But reality got harder to ignore.

The Pandemic Exposed a Major Problem

To add fuel to the unicorn trash fire, the pandemic hit, which not only changed the way GTM teams operated but also made painfully clear the major inefficiencies in Marketing and Sales that were contributing to $2T in wasted revenue.

Post-apocalypse, there were no more conferences, which meant no more in-person networking. Sellers lost the face-to-face interaction that historically was an integral part of the sales process, especially for larger opportunities where multiple stakeholders needed to be involved in the buying decision. On an even more tactical note, sellers could no longer look up and call main corporate lines to prospect new customers with everyone working from home -- leading to the very annoying and unwelcome practice of bombarding customers on their personal cellphones... but I digress.

Sales needed Marketing's help. Badly.

It Was All Happening So Fast

Customers were transforming and sellers were at a loss. Customers who were in the market for a product or service began doing all their research online, causing sellers to lose control over the process. No more calls, no more swag, no more sporting events or luxurious dinners. This whole remote situation was fueling the rise of product-led growth (PLG), making digital marketing all the more integral to the "new normal."

But Sales and Marketing were inherently disconnected. So disconnected, in fact, that they didn't even speak the same language. Content used different tones and vocabulary. Value props varied widely. Both teams had opposing views on why customers should actually choose one product over another. The list goes on...

It was a nightmare that we thought was temporary, but the sales process would never be the same.

Shortly after the lockdown, McKinsey & Company reported that 70-80% of B2B decision-makers prefer remote sales, and TrustRadius said that 87% of buyers want self-serve sales options. GTM teams had to adapt to drive qualified leads, but it became clear very quickly that even the best Marketing and Sales teams were not aligned.

Revenue dwindled, as a result -- leaving us all wondering, what were GTM teams doing back in 2014 that drove their companies to unicorn status? And there came our collective revelation: Because funding has dropped, unicorns are going extinct. This is because unicorns built solely by GTM teams don't exist and they never really did.

The TL;DR: even back in the unicorn heyday, valuations were inflated due to endless VC funding, but burn rates were massive -- because of disconnected sales and marketing teams. Now that we're in an economic downturn, companies don't have the safety net that comes with "raising another round." So the pressure is on Marketing and Sales to deliver, and the odds are stacked against them.

A Horrifying Game of Musical Chairs

2023 has been the year of the "Go-to-Market Shuffle", because executives cannot accept the unicorn-adverse reality (or however you choose to categorize it).

So, they continue to train marketers and sellers in the old siloed ways, setting them up for failure. Tech companies have become a revolving door of revenue talent, hiring great people on a good Q1 and firing them a few months later when Q2 goes south. As a direct result, these companies are not accelerating revenue, they are burning right through it. As they always have. Only now they are blaming their talent and not the system that got them there. Which is totally messed up.

2024: The Year of Marketing and Sales Alliance

Silo culture has been so massively ingrained in our GTM teams that it is hard to know where to begin the integrating process. But if we want to start operating like well-oiled revenue-driving machines, Marketing and Sales teams don't simply need to align, they need to form an alliance.

By this point, you're probably thinking, where the hell is he going with all of this?

Molly St. Louis and I have been at the forefront, watching all of this unfold for the better part of the past 5 years. Using our combined superpowers around branded content and revenue enablement, we helped build the #revenueoperations category during our time at Clari, which was recognized earlier this year by Deloitte in the 2023 Technology Fast 500 growing 264% from 2019 to 2022.

Earlier this year, we decided to build a business that would help companies drive that Marketing and Sales alliance. After working with a few companies in recent months, we're now ready to share with many others. Stay tuned for our next article about how we can help you accomplish this.

If this post resonated with you so far, we should talk. Send me a message to learn more about our processes that will help your GTM function become a world-class GTM team.