Jacob Downey, GTM engineer in Toronto
I'm Jacob 
. I plan go-to-market for B2B SaaS teams and
build it in
HubSpot, Clay, Salesforce, Claude, Zapier and whatever else you run.
Fractional GTM leadership and hands-on builds for companies between $1M and $100M ARR, from positioning and pricing through to the routing rules.
Teams I've worked with and consulted for
Where I've done the work
Demand gen and GTM leadership, with my hands in the stack at every stop. Along the way I've generated more than $50M in pipeline and helped take a company past $100M ARR.
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BettermodeHead of GTM
Community software for B2B companies. I run go-to-market and build the HubSpot and outbound plumbing underneath it.
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DealMakerDirector of Demand Gen
Fintech for companies raising capital online. I built the GTM stack and the demand gen function from scratch: HubSpot, Clay, paid media and attribution.
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JoleraDirector of Demand Gen
Managed IT services. Helped scale the business to an ARR milestone, then rebuilt pipeline reporting and the forecast ahead of M&A diligence.
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PostBeyond, then InfluitiveSenior Demand Gen Manager
Employee advocacy software. First demand gen hire at PostBeyond, then carried the function through the Influitive acquisition and merged the two stacks.
The system I end up building almost everywhere
It runs before anyone's logged in. Pick a step to see what it does and where it usually breaks.
Signals Who's in market
What happens
Job posts for SDRs, a new sales leader, a funding round, repeat visits to the pricing page. I pick the few that have actually come before closed deals in your CRM history.
Where it usually breaks
Too many signals. Twenty weak ones bury the two that predict anything.
Clay Enrich and score
What happens
Firmographics, headcount and tech stack go on the account, then a score. Anything already sitting in an open deal gets dropped, so no rep cold-emails a live opportunity.
Where it usually breaks
A score nobody checks against closed-won. Six months later it's ranking accounts on vibes.
HubSpot Route and sequence
What happens
Owner and territory rules assign the account. The contact goes into a sequence whose first line mentions the signal that fired.
Where it usually breaks
Routing rules written once and never touched after the sales team reorganizes.
Slack Tell the rep
What happens
A reply or a high-intent visit posts to the account owner with the context attached, so they can act without opening five tabs.
Where it usually breaks
Alert fatigue. When everything pings, reps mute the channel.
Meeting Booked and logged
What happens
The meeting gets booked through HubSpot and tagged with the signal that started it, so attribution still reads right a quarter later.
Where it usually breaks
Meetings booked from a personal calendar link. Then nobody can say which signal worked.
Four ways to work together
Pick one or combine them. Most people start with whichever one is on fire.
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GTM strategy and advisory
Fractional GTM leadership for B2B SaaS between $1M and $100M ARR. We work out positioning, ICP, pricing and packaging, then the motion that ties them together. If a board meeting or an acquisition is coming, I've been through two exits and know what diligence asks for.
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Demand gen and outbound
Paid, CRO and lifecycle programs built around one question: what's the next dollar worth, and where should it go? On the outbound side, my signal-based Clay engines process 10K+ accounts a month and have generated 40% of SDR pipeline.
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Revenue and marketing ops
Lifecycle stages, scoring, routing and attribution, built the way you would if you had six free months. Then the forecast and weekly cadence that keep sales and marketing arguing about the same number.
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AI, integrations and migrations
Claude and ChatGPT wired into how the revenue team really works, plus small internal apps where nothing off the shelf fits. My last company-wide AI rollout raised productivity 30%. I also take the unglamorous jobs, like moving Salesforce or Marketo into HubSpot without losing history.
Tools I've run in production
Real pipeline has gone through every one of these. I'll work in whatever you already have.
CRM and automation
HubSpot
Salesforce
Marketo
Data and signals
Clay
ZoomInfo
6sense
Paid
Google Ads
LinkedIn Ads
Meta Ads
AI
Claude
ChatGPT
Gemini- Custom apps
Glue and code
Zapier
Make
JavaScript
Node.js
Postgres
Team
Slack
Notion
Asana
Jira
GitHub
From people I've worked with
“Jacob is a true operator and has an in-depth understanding of marketing technology. A great asset for anyone building or enhancing a marketing system. Dependable, with great attention to detail.”
Daniel KuCEO, PostBeyond
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“Jacob is a world-class marketer and an even better person. Generous with his time and expertise.”
Lauren Pazzano, Sr. Implementation Manager, Together -
“Jacob is an absolute star. Beginner to expert of a new tool almost overnight.”
Anna Litvinova, RevOps Director, Revenue Optimization -
“Could always be counted on to go above and beyond: telling customers' stories, running high-value webinars, training the CSM team on marketing attribution.”
Sarah Beatty, Director of Customer Success, Spellbook
Short bio
For podcasts, events and anyone writing an intro.
Jacob Downey is a GTM engineer and the Head of GTM at Bettermode, based in Toronto. He has spent ten years in B2B SaaS across demand generation, customer marketing and community, hosting webinars along the way and owning the CRM and automation stack in HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo and Clay. These days most of his work is custom AI applications for revenue teams. He builds internal tools on Claude and OpenAI for account research and routing, and ElevenLabs voice agents that let reps rehearse cold calls. Before Bettermode he was Director of Demand Gen at DealMaker and Jolera and a senior demand gen manager at PostBeyond and Influitive. He has also consulted for the B2B marketing agency Foundation.
Let's talk.
Book 30 minutes and tell me what's breaking. If I'm the right person to fix it, we'll work out how. If I'm not, I'll tell you who is.
contact@jacobdowney.com