Alex Fine is the co-founder of Understory, an all-bound marketing agency serving B2B SaaS companies. Since going full time in October 2023, Alex has scaled Understory from $6K to multiple hundreds of thousands in monthly revenue. The company is a Clay Studio Partner and operates with a team of 26, delivering services across automated outbound, paid ads for LinkedIn/Google/Reddit, and revenue operations.
During our conversation, we talk about how Understory finds arbitrage on paid social, how they have built out the team, how Alex automates every manual step of his sales process to close $1M+ ARR per month by himself, and much more.
In this podcast, we discuss:
How Understory uses Clay for list enrichment to improve their LinkedIn match rates
Why agencies develop GTM engineering expertise faster than internal teams, and how anyone can leverage their learnings
How a LinkedIn post with three likes helped Alex find Understory’s head of GTM engineering, Naufal, and what makes Naufal so effective
The complete automation stack Alex uses to close >$1M ARR per month as the solo rep
Why founders are the best clients to work with, and how to avoid action paralysis at larger companies
Episode highlights:
Understory uses Clay to enrich ad audience lists before uploading to LinkedIn, improving match rates from 60% to 90%.
Alex discovered Naufal Nugroho, now Understory’s Head of GTM Engineering, from one of his LinkedIn posts describing a system he had built with complex enrichment workflows using 40 different APIs in Google Sheets.
Alex built a complete sales automation stack that handles pre-call research, post-call follow up, and CRM hygiene. Before calls, a Lovable app uses Perplexity APIs to send digestible research to Slack. After calls, an N8N automation reads the call transcripts to determine call type, then generates follow up emails in Alex’s writing style using Claude, creates next steps with timelines, and builds statements of work in PandaDoc. This saves roughly an hour per deal and enables him to handle seven sales calls per day.
Alex’s loves working with founders because they’re willing to break things and test rapidly, focusing on results over pristine brand image.
Understory has implemented MCP connections with Claude on platforms they manage like Instantly and LinkedIn ads. This allows their team members to query campaign performance, identify trends, and generate reports through natural language (even dictated, using Wispr Flow). These systems have proven so valuable, that clients have been asking for Understory to start offering their operating systems as a service.
Where to find Alex:
Transcript details:
(00:00) Intro
(03:20) Alex’s background and path to co-founding Understory
(06:06) Understory’s evolution from offering LinkedIn ads to full stack GTM services
(09:51) Using Clay for paid media
(12:40) Hiring philosophy for paid ads roles
(15:47) Common GTM gaps at different company stages
(19:17) Why companies use agencies
(21:24) Why Alex loves working with founders
(22:59) Incentivizing play, failure, and experimentation
(26:36) How Understory found their Head of GTM Engineering
(28:57) Characteristics of the best GTM engineers
(32:11) Understory’s onboarding process & company knowledge sharing
(34:05) Alex’s complete sales automation stack
(37:47) What is currently exciting Alex the most about Understory’s future
(43:55) Why not to put GTM engineering in a box
(44:42) Favorite underrated software tool, growth hack, and conclusion
For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast and to recommend any guests, email noah@thegtmengineer.ai
