Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Self-serve GTM reveals lucrative niche verticals that sales-led assumptions often miss

Yasser Elsaid · ⚡️ Competing with ChatGPT and Sierra, building a $10M ARR company — Yasser Elsaid, Founder, Chatbase · May 2, 2026 · at 24:03

Yasser Elsaid, founder of Chatbase, explains why product-led growth provides superior vertical discovery compared to traditional enterprise sales-led targeting.

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“When you're not doing self-serve, when you're doing sales-led, you make a lot of assumptions. You assume, oh, like, of course, like, I'm gonna go into banks, or I'm gonna go into like startups or something like that, which is probably a good idea, but you wouldn't think of going to, you know, like theme parks and like, they do have a lot of volume and they do spend a lot of money because it's a big problem for them. But if you're sales led, like you wouldn't think of that. So I think it is a big benefit to just like put the product out there, market it, and then like see who is willing to spend money and then like work with them or work with them more.”

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