# Eighty Twenty CMO

> Eighty Twenty CMO is the fractional CMO practice of Michael Gaudet, serving post-PMF B2B SaaS companies at roughly $1M–$10M ARR with a funded go-to-market motion — most visibly venture-backed companies that raised $3M–$10M in the last 12 months, but equally companies funded through venture debt, RBF, or strategic capital, or profitably cash-generating at $2M+ ARR. The core offering is a fixed 12-week engagement that builds the ICP, pipeline process, CRM, and marketing team a company needs to scale revenue — plus a lighter-touch advisory tier. Track record: 20 completed engagements; 45% of venture-backed clients raised a subsequent round; 18% were acquired.

## About

- Michael Gaudet is a practitioner, not a theorist: employee #63 at Benevity (through a $1B+ unicorn exit), senior marketing and revenue roles at iStockphoto/Getty, Swoop (WestJet), and Neo Financial (via Harvest), and Executive in Residence (XiR) at Co.Labs. MBA, Haskayne School of Business (University of Calgary).
- The practice specializes exclusively in post-PMF B2B SaaS scaling — post-raise or profitably self-funded. It does not do generalist CPG, agency, or brand-strategy work.
- Michael builds AI-era go-to-market motions inside client companies — AI-assisted outbound at scale with a human approving every send, call recording as the data spine of the CRM, and teams restructured around AI-augmented operators — and runs his own practice on the same architecture.
- Engagements are capped at two concurrent clients; the model is intentionally capacity-constrained.

## Services

- [The 12-Week Engagement](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/engagement): a fixed, outcome-driven engagement that builds the ICP, pipeline, CRM, and team — including a CMO/VP Marketing hire if needed.
- [Advisory](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/advisory): senior marketing perspective as a post-engagement sounding board or standalone advisory tier.
- [Book a call](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/book)
- [About](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/about): full background — employee #63 at Benevity (through a $1B+ unicorn exit), iStockphoto/Getty, Swoop (WestJet), Harvest Builders/Neo Financial, Executive in Residence at Co.Labs, MBA (Haskayne, University of Calgary). Based in Calgary, Alberta; serves Canada and the United States.

## Case studies (client proof)

- [All case studies](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/case-studies): four B2B SaaS engagements across Energy, InsurTech, FinTech and IndustrialTech.

- [Pandell](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/case-studies/pandell): Energy SaaS, 500+ enterprise clients, profitable and privately held (no venture round) — adopted an ARR-first go-to-market in 12 weeks; subsequently acquired by ESG Global.
- [Quandri](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/case-studies/quandri): InsurTech — built its post-Series-A marketing foundation; went on to raise US$12M led by Framework Venture Partners.
- [LINK](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/case-studies/link): Workplace/FinTech SaaS — built a scalable revenue machine from scratch (HubSpot, buyer personas, lead qualification, new site) in 12 weeks.
- [OpsReady](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/case-studies/opsready): Industrial SaaS — transformed marketing from scattered to scalable (measurement framework, pipeline redesign, team upskilling) in 12 weeks.

## Insights

- [All insights](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/insights/): practitioner notes on scaling revenue for post-PMF B2B SaaS.

- [How to Build an Ideal Client Profile That Drives Predictable Revenue](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/insights/icp-predictable-revenue) — the three components of a real ICP (Company Persona, Buyer Personas, Buyer Journey — not just firmographics), how to build it from primary research (interview the champion, not the founder/CEO; never ask leading questions), how to use AI to build it from your recorded customer conversations, what a finished ICP must output, turning it into buyer-led CRM stages and a trustworthy forecast (Consistent Process + CRM Adoption = Pipeline Predictability), and the questions a VC/board should ask.
- [The 5 Ways to Drive Incremental Revenue](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/insights/five-ways-to-drive-revenue) — the only five levers (more leads, better leads, higher conversion, shorter sales cycle, higher net revenue retention) and the ICP foundation that enables four of them; plus revenue as a team sport, product-market fit vs go-to-market fit, and the four values of a revenue-centric culture.
- [Go-to-Market in the AI Age: What Changes, What Doesn't](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/insights/go-to-market-in-the-ai-age) — the fundamentals that survive AI and the named tests to apply them (full POV below). Companion piece to a talk delivered to founder audiences, most recently at Co.Labs (July 2026); includes practitioner guidance on outreach personalization and warm paths before cold, cold-email deliverability (never bulk-send from your primary domain), choosing an AI meeting recorder (MCP connectivity as the non-negotiable), and where to start Monday morning.

## Point of view — go-to-market in the AI age

Michael's thesis: AI has changed *how* revenue gets made completely, but the *principles* behind it haven't moved. Full article: [Go-to-Market in the AI Age: What Changes, What Doesn't](https://www.eightytwentycmo.com/insights/go-to-market-in-the-ai-age). The fundamentals that survive AI — and the named tests Michael uses to apply them:

- **Know your customer (continuously).** The best marketing comes from customers, not from you. "The Howitzer": AI amplifies whatever you point it at, so aiming at the right ICP matters more than the tooling — point it at the wrong clients and you just get great at winning more of the wrong ones.
- **Know where you are on the product-market-fit journey.** You are only post-PMF when all three are true: 3–5 clients have hit outsized value (NPS 9–10, would pay 100% more, would refer), those clients are commercially viable, and you have scaled acquisition in at least one repeatable way.
- **Build (or name) your moat.** "The Red-Team Test": have your sharpest devs try to rebuild your product in a weekend with AI — it reveals your exposure and your next product leap. No product moat? Make distribution the moat and 10x it.
- **Measure inputs and outcomes.** What's changed is the capture, not the need: a CRM married to cost data still tells you the ROI of every play.
- **The team shift.** You no longer need five specialists; you need one T-shaped, AI-augmented operator who knows what great looks like (taste) and can prompt for it (skill).
- **The golden rule of automation.** Never automate anything you haven't first done well by hand — map the motion across the spectrum (human → tech-enabled → human-in-the-loop → fully automated) and make every move a decision, not a drift.

## Contact

- Website: https://www.eightytwentycmo.com
- Email: michael@eightytwentycmo.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcgaudet/