Episode 40 - Christmas Cognoscenti Interview with Mark Stouse
Welcome to What's Broken in GTM and How to Fix It with Louis Fernandes and Simon Daniels. Each week, together with occasional guests, we explore the challenges that face go-to-market leaders in SaaS scale-up businesses and suggest solutions to common issues.
The Christmas Cognoscenti mini-series to close-out the year continues. Last week Louis and Simon spoke to Mark Sherwood Edwards from Clearview Legal who let us know afterwards that he felt one of his final answers wasn’t his best work so he wrote-up a better version in his Oh Lawdy! newsletter! We though the original was fine, you can judge for yourselves…
This week we are joined by Mark Stouse, CEO at Proof Causal.ai to introduce us to the exciting world of causal analytics. Here’s the TL;DL (“Too Long; Didn’t Listen) in case you don’t have time for the whole episode: Most GTM metrics are correlative, not causal, and that means most SaaS companies are optimizing for noise, not impact. Causal analytics identifies what actually drives revenue in an open, noisy system, quantifies the time lags between activities and results, and tells leaders where to invest for sustainable compounding growth.
Listen on as we explore how causal AI transforms go-to-market strategy by replacing correlation-based assumptions with cause-and-effect insights. Mark emphasizes that most GTM outcomes depend on factors beyond immediate control, making traditional short-term tactics ineffective. With deal cycles lengthening, CAC rising, and attribution models failing, leaders must adopt analytics that reveal true drivers of performance. Causal AI enables this by modelling dynamic systems, operationalizing insights, and guiding decisions like a GPS. Finance teams increasingly mandate its use Mark tells us, reinforced by global regulatory demands. For CROs, the path forward is to learn, experiment, and leverage results to scale adoption.
Other mentions in this episode:
Simon’s LinkedIn AI analytics post
Mark’s article LinkedIn archive
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