For investor-backed B2B SaaS and AI portcos, from $5m to $25m

Win the next decade.

AI rewrote the rules of go-to-market. We find your exposure, diagnose the growth blockers, and coach your leaders on the new rules.

The next decade gets decided by whether your GTM survives this transition. Most boards find out too late. You get to find out now, with fast, board-ready diagnostics, then the advisory to rebuild.

Value proposition⚑ Flag
Market entryClear
ConversionWatch
Traction⚑ Flag
OperationsWatch
Retention⚑ Flag
Unpriced risk
Demand KarmaConfidential
AI GTM Risk Exposure

Prepared for the board of Portco Ltd · Series B · $12m ARR

GTM exposureElevated
Scored on the VECTOR framework
3 red flags raised6 dimensions reviewed
Days, not monthsRead before the next board

The report your next board meeting is missing.

See the diagnostics

Running GTM diligence for investor-backed B2B SaaS since 2021
Multiple exits between the founders · 100+ recommendations on LinkedIn

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Trusted by the VC funds backing UK B2B software

We operate across the critical GTM failure points.

Before the deal, after the close, when growth stalls, and when leadership needs to level up.

For investors

GTM due diligence before or after a deal closes. Protect capital, validate the team, know what you're buying.

For pre-AI portfolio companies

Audit AI GTM Risk Exposure. Clarity on the reality, the gaps, and the priority actions.

For stalling portfolio companies

Diagnose why growth stopped before more money goes in. Cut what isn't working. Rebuild for how buyers buy now.

For boards and chairs

Operator-grade assurance on GTM strategy, leadership and exit readiness. Catch issues before the number misses.

For CEOs

You have a GTM problem and need to know why. You want someone who has seen it before and knows exactly what to do.

For GTM leaders

A clear picture of performance and potential. Uplevel the high-potentials, address the capability gaps.

The first frontier of capital destruction is marketing.

AI changed how buyers buy, and it hit demand creation first. Buyers start with a model, not your website. The gated-content playbook stopped paying. The budget behind it didn't stop being spent.

It starts in marketing. It doesn't stay there. Sales motions built for a self-educating buyer, RevOps that can't attribute anything, customer success measured on activity instead of retention. The decay travels the whole engine, and the dashboards report it last.

We stay in our lane. This is GTM risk, not technical due diligence, and we'll tell you when to bring in the product people. But on the GTM side? We'll show you exactly where the value is leaking. And what to fix first.

Find your exposure
Extract from the Demand Karma report: capital allocationA printed report page. Headline: marketing investment 27% over allocated. Two stacked bars break the review down. People: continue 47%, remove 24%, reallocate 29%. Programmes: continue 36%, reduce 31%, reallocate 33%. Illustrative example; figures vary by engagement.DEMAND KARMACAPITAL ALLOCATIONMarketing investment:27%over allocatedPeopleCONTINUE47%REMOVE24%REALLOCATE29%ProgrammesCONTINUE36%REDUCE31%REALLOCATE33%Illustrative example. Figures vary by engagement.14
An extract from the report you receive.

Here's our angle.

AI didn't make GTM cheaper. It made bad GTM cheaper to scale.

The risk isn't the robots. It's budgets still funding a buyer who left.

Bolting AI onto the old engine doesn't modernise it. It automates the decay.

Not just SaaS. Not just sales.

Most GTM advisors are sales specialists running SaaS-era playbooks. They tune pipeline stages and rep productivity, and stop where the sales motion stops. This disruption lands earlier, in how demand gets created, and it runs wider, through marketing, RevOps and customer success.

We've operated the whole engine, and we know marketing better than anyone advising boards today. We've run AI-native GTM in live companies through this disruption, not read about it. We know what stopped working, what works now, and what a successful GTM leader has to be in this era.

One of us works from Silicon Valley, where the shift runs 18 to 24 months ahead of the UK. The other is in London, where your portfolio is. We import the gap.

Meet the founders
Edwin Abl, co-founder of Demand Karma

Today he partners with VCs, B2B SaaS and AI companies across Europe, the US and Australia. He has worked across a portfolio of 100 or more scale-ups and serves as Operating Partner at Mercia Ventures, the UK's leading VC. He is launching Strategic Differentiation in the Post-Playbook Era, writes at edwinabl.com and speaks at events globally.

Previously, he was CMO at Modulr and a GTM Operating Advisor at Blenheim Chalcot. At Modulr, as part of the leadership team, he helped build the GTM engine from the ground up, supporting its rise as the UK's second fastest-growing tech company in 2020, with £150m+ in venture funding and one of the first B2B digital payments startups. Before that he ran marketing, alliances and GTM for Appirio in Europe, scaling pipeline from $30k to $133m in four years before an exit to Wipro for $500m.

Edwin Abl
Co-founder · Silicon Valley
Josh Morse, co-founder of Demand Karma

He is an expert in building and scaling Go To Market performance globally for B2B SaaS and AI companies. Josh's expertise in creating durable GTM execution comes from his experience as a GTM leader of VC portfolio companies scaling from $3m to $50m+.

He knows how to align GTM functions with each other, and the business, at different stages for effective and sustainable growth. How to leverage AI and other technologies to increase efficiency and efficacy. He has achieved multiple successful exits.

Previously, Josh was a Chief Revenue Officer and a Chief Marketing Officer of VC portfolio companies. Building and transforming GTM strategy and execution through leadership of Sales, Marketing, Sales Development, Partnerships and RevOps for durable performance.

Josh Morse
Co-founder · London

One engine. We audit all of it.

MarketingSalesRevOpsCustomer success⚑ FLAGWATCHWATCH⚑ FLAG

The disruption enters through marketing and exits through your retention number. Auditing one station and calling it a GTM review is how risk stays unpriced.

Marketing

Demand creation moved inside the model. Buyers meet you through what an LLM can retrieve: your point of view, the problems you own, the proof you've published. Gated PDFs and MQL waterfalls aren't on that list.

Sales

The agentic buyer arrives mid-cycle, pre-educated and comparison-armed. Discovery scripts written for 2019 get eaten alive. Sales' new job is the judgement calls a model can't make, and closed-lost data that actually gets read.

RevOps & GTM engineering

RevOps graduates from dashboard janitor to GTM engineering: the agentic workflows, the data plumbing, the decision loops the new engine runs on. If nobody owns this seat, nobody owns growth.

Customer success

When switching takes a week, retention is the moat and CS stops being a support function. Aligning the whole engine around the customer is the point, and churn is what prices your exit.

Holding all four together around the customer is the job of the AI-era GTM leader. That's what the Demand Karma Method develops.

Things we've actually found.

Capital allocation

£700k of annual GTM spend. Roughly £200k of it wasn't connected to the sales motion at all. Same value, materially less burn.

Sales & RevOps

We asked for the closed-lost analysis and got a shrug. Nobody had read why deals actually died in over a year. AI was eating their lunch and the CRM couldn't say so.

Customer success

A renewals book carrying most of next year's plan, run reactively by the most junior person in the company. Nobody could name the top ten accounts' health.

Anonymised, obviously. Ask for references on the call and we'll connect you directly.

The questions keeping boards awake.

Chairman
  • Do we have the right GTM operating model?
  • Are we positioned in the market to win?
  • Do we have the right people in leadership roles to deliver?
Investor
  • Will this company be viable in three to five years?
  • Is capital allocated in the right places?
  • Is the CMO or CRO actually any good?
CEO
  • Is my marketing working? And if not, why?
  • How do I lead GTM now AI has removed the execution constraint?
  • Are we set up to leverage AI, or just picking up use cases ad hoc?

If these are your questions, the diagnostics answer them. And if you're the CEO reading this: better to commission the mirror than have it commissioned about you.

Fit matters more than the fee.

Half of a good diagnostic is knowing when to run one. Here's who we're built for and why, and who should save their money.

Built for
  • Investor-backed B2B SaaS and AI portcos, $5m to $25m. Big enough that the engine matters, young enough that it can still be rebuilt
  • Chairmen, investors and CEOs who own the number. The diagnostics are written for the people accountable for the outcome, not the department
  • The twelve-months-after-the-cheque moment. New targets, new scrutiny, old engine: exactly when the risk is largest and still fixable
A bad fit
  • Pre product-market fit. The engine you'd audit is about to be redesigned anyway. Fix the product story first
  • Under about $5m ARR. You need founder-led selling and one very good marketer, not a diligence. Come back after the next raise
  • Shopping for an agency. We tell you what to fix and who should do it. We don't run campaigns or CRMs
  • Looking for validation. If the decision is made and you want a report that agrees, cheaper options exist. We report what we find

Unsure which side you're on? That's what the first call is for.

Real words, real cheques

Adam Said, Investment Manager at Octopus Ventures

"Demand Karma is one of the best out there on go-to-market in enterprise SaaS. Engaging and efficient."

Adam Said, CFA
Investment Manager, Octopus Ventures
Gareth Lewis, CEO and co-founder of Delio

"The DD project was pretty unique. It got the job done and enhanced my thinking on what to do post-investment."

Gareth Lewis
CEO & Co-Founder, Delio
Mike Reid, Founder and Senior Partner at Frog Capital

"When it comes to B2B SaaS marketing, Demand Karma hits the sweet spot. Clear, methodical, well thought-through."

Mike Reid
Founder & Senior Partner, Frog Capital

Know your exposure. Then win the decade.

Start with the exposure read. The next board meeting is a good deadline.

Book a call