Spotlight: Clay
Learn about what it's like to work at Clay
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What is it really like to work at the fastest-growing companies?
We try to answer that question in the Next Play Spotlight. In particular, we try to find interesting companies and highlight what makes working at them unique. Our hope is that documenting these sorts of behind-the-scenes details (which never make it to press releases) can help you a) discover more interesting opportunities and b) inspire you to think creatively (for your own endeavors).
Spotlight: Clay
This spotlight is on Clay. Thanks to the Clay team for sharing behind-the-scenes details and supporting next play.
We first met the Clay team years ago as they were navigating product-market-fit. Now, as you’ll read throughout this essay, they are one of the fastest growing startups in the world, coming off at $40M fundraise announced on Wednesday that brought them to a $1.25B valuation. If you want to see what product-market fit (PMF) really looks like, check out their wall of customer love.
So how did they do it? How did Clay become Clay? What is it like to work there? We answer all of those questions and more in the rest of this essay.
Scaling any business typically involves some version of the following formula: figure out what makes your customers purchase your product, identify potential customers who you think align with this value proposition, and reach out to them to see if they are interested.
But turning this simple formula into reality has always been painfully complex: teams waste countless hours (nearly 2/3rds of a sales rep's time) juggling different tools and doing manual research just to find and act on basic customer data.
Clay solves this fragmentation by providing what GTM teams have always needed: a complete development environment where they can turn any growth idea into reality. Clay combines 100+ data sources and AI agents with flexible workflows to help teams find and act on the best possible data foundation. Teams can instantly enrich their CRM, launch targeted campaigns, monitor intent signals, and build any other GTM use case: all without complex data engineering or procurement overhead. What used to take months of engineering work or manual research can now be automated in minutes.
Today, over 5k customers including category leaders like OpenAI, Canva, and Anthropic use Clay to power everything from CRM enrichment to highly targeted outreach campaigns. They do this in large part because they believe in the vision: “What would happen if our growth teams could be maximally creative—and spend the least time doing busy work?” Instead of having reps do repetitive, manual, and siloed research in individual tools, Clay helps teams build centralized systems for fast experimentation across the organization.
What’s fascinating as you dig into Clay the product (which you can do so here) and Clay the company (the people, the culture, etc.) is that they share a common bond: a commitment to asking the question: “what infrastructure/systems/etc. could we build that would enable the maximum amount of creativity?”
“You can tell if there is creative freedom at a company because everything looks different. Our sales team doesn't hire traditional sales reps—in fact, I'm the only one on the team that has been in sales. Sales isn't called sales, Clay invented a new role: the GTM Engineer. The team isn't led by a traditional VP of Sales, he has an engineering background. We do reverse demos instead of the standard product walk through. Marketing isn't boring. It's playful. We're in a constant state of experimentation. There's no traditional 1-1s, the feedback loop is just too slow. There's so much more.”
As an aside, dozens of companies are now hiring a “GTM Engineer” - Clay made a job board curating these employers that you can check out here.
“I realized how much creativity is a human need. Clay gave me an outlet to be creative and our mission is to help others be more creative in their day to day. The process of doing that together with customers is the ultimate win-win.”
“Curiosity is a really important trait. There's a lot of product use cases we're just scratching the surface of, and things go best when folks are asking the question "how can we do this better?”
Most people reading this would probably nod their head: “yes, creativity is obviously important.” It’s one thing to write about creativity, perhaps make it a value at your company, but it’s another thing to live it. To actually imbue it into the culture and fabric of the organization.
At Clay, creativity ripples everywhere you look.
In the people:
“Unique energy of the founders (different from your typical tech people); think outside of the box when it comes to solutions + people management “
“The overarching advice I’d give my former self is to lean into the culture—this is a place where experimentation is valued, and there’s space for you to carve out your role and leave your mark.”
“I admire Everett Berry, Head of GTM Engineering. He's an engineer by trade and hasn't traditionally built a sales organization like this before. And he's doing exceptionally well. I'm learning just as much from him as a traditional VP of Sales. Exceptionally supportive and is actually in the field selling with us and running deals. Most VPs are not doing that.”
“George, our head of support, inspires me every day. This is his first time managing a large group of people and he is such a kind and empathetic manager. He also is a crazy hacker and has built some insane tables in Clay for support use cases.”
In the office:
“Our colorful office sits right in the middle of Chelsea, surrounded by the best of New York's culture, cuisine, and landmarks. We designed it for collaboration and creativity.”
“We have a pool table in the new office that has spurred the creation of an intra-company pool league. One of the PSS' even created an ELO ranking score of all the players and their games using Clay.”
“We threw a pizza crawl where we visited all of the best Pizza spots in town when we crossed $1M in revenue. It was incredibly fun, and we invited friends and colleagues to attend with us.”
In the extracurricular activities:
“There's always SOMETHING going on. Soccer leagues (which apparently we're amazing at?), run clubs, kickball. A Mariachi band coming to play at 4PM on a Tuesday as a farewell to a departing coworker. Yoga, DJ Fridays. Companies coming through to discuss collaborations, reading groups, new folks starting. The only constant is change (we get things done though, in spite of the fun chaos :)).”
“Clay is open minded. What other company will throw a holiday party at the House of Yes and make it floral themed? Incredible.”
“A great story that comes to mind is our recent holiday party. We hosted it at House of Yes (which already preps you for the kind of vibes we were going for) – and there was a medley of creative performances to kick off the night, followed by *everyone* breaking it down on the dance floor, from new hires who had just joined last week to the founders themselves. We take our work seriously, but don't take ourselves too seriously.”
“The company culture is incredibly fun, lighthearted, and creative. We do DJ fridays at the office, and have half a dozen people at the company who will hop on the decks and spin some beats for the end of the week. We do regular outings as a team to fun offsites. Lunch is provided at the office, and dinner too if you find yourself working late. We're a default in-person culture with the ability to work remotely whenever you need to.”
“Our first hackathon was "INSANE! SO GOOD!"” “This was so much fun! We were amazed by the speed-to-shipping, the creativity, and how user-centric these ideas organically were! (Truly "solving customer tears")” You can see a video about it here.
Beyond caring about creativity, it is obvious in talking to team members (and also just looking on Linkedin seeing people talk about the company) that they are REALLY into the product - what it does and how it impacts customers.
“A lot of time with customers & building cool things in Clay. It gets addicting. So much, I started a newsletter called 'Claymation'. I take interesting workflows and teach others how to build them in a weekly post.”
“If you want to succeed while working at Clay, my biggest piece of advice is to get really good at Clay (the product). Give feedback on how it can get better. Get creative and build. Help customers do the same thing.”
“We really do spend the majority of the day with customers.The rest of the time, we're providing product feedback, building in Clay, sharing learnings with the rest of the GTM Engineering team, and figuring out how to do new things with new integrations that get rolled out.”
Many of the people who joined the team actually previously were customers.
“I absolutely loved the product - we implemented it at my agency and saw massive productivity boosts across all our teams. Also it was so much fun to work in, building new creative workflows, opening up new and interesting outbound strategies for our clients.“
“I had met Varun and Matthew Quan while giving product feedback. That same day, Varun invited me to Clay's holiday party, where I let Varun know that I was leaving for a new role soon where I was excited to build our entire stack with Clay.”
“I joined back in January 2022 because I was a customer through my previous startup, and I believed in the vision + problem Clay was solving for revenue teams. I'd built my own bootstrapped solutions to these problems, but Clay was a real software opportunity to change that RevOps landscape.”
“Before I worked here I used the tool. It was the first experience in my career where I was just absolutely stunned by the value. I've used many no code tools, and played with design tools like Figma - all of which felt fun. But Clay felt both fun and extremely relevant to the work that I knew.”
I joined Clay because I absolutely love the product and learned the team behind it is a truly delightful group of humans. Working in marketing ops at Rippling, I felt like Clay gave me superpowers, and now I get to play a small role in bringing that feeling to thousands of Clay customers. For a product and ops nerd like me, my time at Clay really has been a dream come true.”
While they are too humble to say it directly, perhaps at least some of the reason Clay has been able to build such a loved product (by both teammates and customers) comes from the thoughtfulness and care of their founders: Kareem and Varun.
“Kareem feels like a very different founder than most. My experience with founders is they're often VERY intense - Kareem has this calmness to him that always feels really authentic, and the whole company feels it too.”
“Varun (other co-founder) is the perfect complement to Kareem. He's energetic, passionate, and excitable to the point that he often (unintentionally) intimidates new hires. His zest for life and work + pace keep the company running at an incredible throughput though – and he has the heart of a teddy bear.”
“Kareem has a very thoughtful style. He's great to brainstorm with, and has a wealth of ideas around product direction, the state of the business, and company culture. He somehow manages to juggle all of this, and still be nice to work with.”
“The clearest thinker I've met. This is what struck me when I first met Kareem. I immediately thought about the quote from Feynman, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool”. Kareem is someone who does not fool themselves.”
“Kareem is a very non-traditional CEO in the sense that he doesn't have a loud personality or an ego that fills up the room and leaves little space for others. He has a quiet ego, and is great to work with on thinking through tough problems, or being creative about how you solve problems.”
“Every leader is also a doer. We don’t have leaders that just lead and don’t also get on customer calls, answer customer tickets in our queue, write code, and sell to customers. Our leaders walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk.”
This thoughtfulness trickles throughout the culture - you’ll hear about how thoughtful, smart, and kind people are at every level of the organization.
“The culture is the best I've experienced. Our people, brand, and events folks really really care, and put on amazing events (and put out amazing swag :)). Folks are enthusiastic, always willing to help each other out, and always down to bounce ideas off of. I didn't expect to want to come into the office every day of the week, but it happened!”
“It’s just a fun place to work - I've made friends here that will likely be friends for life.”
“From a personal standpoint, it's very similar to burning man for anyone familiar. It's "hard fun". It will push you, challenge you, and be an emotional rollercoaster – but you'll grow an incredible amount as a human if you put your heart into it – and you'll build a roster of incredible colleagues + friends for life.”
Clay recently announced a Series B expansion round from existing investors led by Meritech, bringing them to a $1.25B valuation (last year they announced a Series B from Sequoia). They are going through a particularly fast-growing period.
“This is a place where things are always evolving. Don’t wait for perfect clarity before acting—sometimes you’ll need to step into the unknown, make your best judgment, and iterate as you go.”
“Clay is an incredibly good fit for people with high agency, desire to learn and grow fast, and a penchant for dynamic environments. At the rate that Clay has grown (and continues to grow) - the company "dies" every quarter or so. Mourning that death every quarter is a bittersweet moment. You're happy about the incredible growth, new structures, and evolving culture of the company. But you're also left sad about the company that you used to work at, and the things that you've lost along the way. Clay has been incredibly fun, and incredibly challenging, at various points over my almost 2 years at the company. But the fun and the challenge changes rapidly from month to month. It's not for the faint of heart.”
“People who have a "roll-with-it" kind of energy — given how decentralized our decision-making is, it's important to be comfortable embracing a bit of chaos at our current stage of growth. But equally as important is the ability to be receptive to feedback and collaborate with team members to build trust and move things forward in a manner that we're collectively excited about.”
“While the company is driven by a bold vision, it’s not about hustle for hustle’s sake. The culture supports balance, personal growth, and the idea that great work comes from a healthy, sustainable pace.”
Clay is hiring for every role: engineering, product support, product management, sales, marketing, product design, operations, and more. You can learn more and apply here.
Thanks for reading! If you’re looking for more opportunities, you can check out previous editions of next play.