Filling the top of an enterprise funnel from zero

A full corporate pipeline in the first six months, built on an events motion and a go-to-market system that didn't exist when I started.

For: Aucctus
As: Go-to-Market Lead
When: 2026 –
Site: aucctus.com

The challenge

Aucctus builds an AI operating system for enterprise innovation: agentic engines that take an innovation team from a raw idea through market and customer intelligence, testing, financial modelling and portfolio prioritisation. Weeks of research in minutes. The product is real and the team behind it has a decade of Fortune 500 innovation practice.

What it didn't have when I joined was a top of funnel. Innovation leaders inside large companies are hard to reach, harder to get in a room, and every one of them has already been pitched a "generic AI wrapper" this year. My mandate is narrow: fill the funnel, through outreach, events and whatever creative means work.

What I do

An events motion, from nothing. We host an event every few weeks: dinners, workshops, breakfasts. Small rooms, innovation leaders, a demo and a conversation instead of a deck. Around those we work the largest innovation conferences in the world, InnoLead and Innov8rs among them, running booths and the after-events where the real meetings happen.

Demo calls. Every first meeting is built around one question: what are you being asked to prove this year, and what's slowing you down? The answer decides which parts of the product we show and which we leave out.

A go-to-market system, built from scratch. There was no CRM worth inheriting, so I built our own: events, marketing, pipeline management and the follow-ups between them in one place, with AI agents doing the drafting and the remembering. It's what lets one person run an enterprise pipeline without dropping threads.

What's happened so far

In the first six months the funnel went from empty to a full corporate pipeline, sourced almost entirely through the events and the system above. The conferences turn into booked meetings rather than badge scans, and the hosted events are the most reliable way to get a buyer into a real conversation.

What I'm still learning

The lessons so far are all logistical, and all avoidable: material and equipment missing on the day, events timed badly against the buyers' calendars, and invites that go out too late. Every one of those now lives as a checklist in the system, so the next event doesn't repeat them.