Cold calling did not die. It just got acquired for less than one year of revenue. Somewhere, a sales engagement deck quietly deleted its “category leader” slide.
THE DRIVE: Cold Calls Sold Below Revenue
Banzai bought ConnectAndSell for $13.2 million, less than 1× its $14.7 million in 2025 revenue, while inheriting roughly 250 B2B customers and 38 employees. The Triple Bogey of the Week goes to every SaaS founder still pricing their Series A like a downhill six-footer: apparently 4.8 million live sales conversations a year can now be purchased from the used-club rack.
The lesson is not “cold calling is dead.” It is that distribution without durable differentiation is a 320-yard drive into the wrong fairway.
THE FAIRWAY: A 60, Then Major Number Two
Haeran Ryu won the Amundi Evian Championship in a playoff over Brooke Henderson, one day after shooting 60, the lowest round in major championship history. It was her second straight major in two weeks, which is less a hot streak and more a hostile takeover of women’s golf.
No forced sales analogy here. Sometimes a 60 is simply the cleanest dashboard anyone shipped all quarter.
THE GREEN: AI That Refuses to Write for You
Marker emerged from stealth with a $13 million seed round led by Index Ventures to build an AI-native word processor that writes with you, not for you. Its pitch includes a super-thesaurus, fact-checker, and editor living in the margins, backed by angels from Google Docs, Slack, and Hugging Face.
This Week’s Hole-in-One Award goes to the startup brave enough to say the human should still swing the club. Your prospect can smell a one-click AI paragraph before the second em dash.
FROM THE CLUBHOUSE: Frontline Software Gets Paid
Bridgepoint led a €200 million round for Skello, the French workforce-management platform built for restaurants, retail, and other shift-based teams. While half of SaaS is teaching agents to attend meetings, Skello is helping actual humans know when they are supposed to show up.
That is a good reminder for GTM teams: the boring operational pain is often where the shortest putt lives. Got a similarly unglamorous winner or a piece of industry gossip? Drop it at GTM Golf Club.
THE CADDIE’S CORNER: Five Birdies, Still an 81
A 15-handicap on r/golf opened with five birdies in six holes, shot 35 on the front, and finished with an 81. The post has more than 300 votes, and the scorecard looks like a pipeline review where every opportunity changed stage after lunch.
19TH HOLE INSIGHT
ConnectAndSell sold below revenue. Ryu shot 60 and won again. The market’s handicap system remains undefeated: one great round gets attention, but only repeatable shots get the trophy.
Build the swing, not the screenshot.
