GTMnow · Oct 21, 2026 · 40m · 32m saved
With Aviv Canaani, CRO and CMO of Datarails
Five years ago, inbound leads at Datarails were so rare that an analyst emailed them to the SDRs once a week. Today 90% of the business comes in inbound.
Aviv Canaani, CRO and CMO of Datarails, told Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow that the company got there with LinkedIn memes, a niche finance podcast and a rule that a channel is judged on the cost of closing a deal, not the cost of a meeting.
"Back then, the company was really at the very beginning — it was 90% outbound. Five years later, the company is now 90% inbound."
Aviv was Datarails' first marketing leader, then took over sales, and now runs the whole revenue funnel for a company that has grown roughly 30 times since he arrived.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 40 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Datarails flipped from 90% outbound to 90% inbound in five years and is now rebuilding outbound on top
Aviv judges every channel on cost per closed deal, not cost per meeting
"98% of marketing is just noise," so a B2B startup has to compete for attention with celebrities and politicians
Brand ROI is measured four ways, and his VP of Brand is the only report with no revenue KPI
Aviv argues one leader should own marketing and sales because there is only one funnel
Datarails declared its own FP&A category dead and relaunched as a "Finance OS"
"You are not Steve Jobs": a startup has to earn attention, because nobody is lining up for it
1. From Outbound to Inbound
Aviv joined Datarails as VP of Marketing, recruited by a co-founder who had built and sold WalkMe for $1.5 billion. The company had about 50 to 60 people and a couple of million dollars in ARR, and it sold almost entirely through outbound.
He invested in two things at once: a humorous brand voice on LinkedIn, inspired by Gong, along with a niche FP&A podcast; and paid media on Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. Within months, inbound deals started to arrive. Both channels worked until the 2022 tech downturn.
Datarails' outbound team kept producing leads that no longer closed
"What we noticed is that the outbound team was still generating as many leads and opportunities as they used to, but they weren't converting to deals as much as inbound. So we decided to double down on inbound." — Aviv Canaani
Aviv framed that as the focus a small company has to choose. The test he used was the blended cost of winning a customer.
Aviv Canaani measures channels on the cost of closing a deal
"At the end of the day, it's not the cost per meeting, the cost per opportunity — it's the cost for closing a deal." — Aviv Canaani
Datarails is now profitable after a $70 million Series C, has grown about 30 times since Aviv joined, and was named the top startup of the year by The Information. It is now rebuilding an outbound motion on top of the inbound base.
