First M.

Anton van RhynGTM Engineer

Building GTM systems from first principles since 2015.

I’ve carried the number, built the teams, and built the systems they run on.

See what I build Work with me

Most GTM engineering starts too far downstream.

Creating an advantage starts earlier

How much of the market can you see that your competitors can’t?

Which buying signals can you catch before they do?

Before I build anything, I measure the market underneath it.

Illustration. Real measurements are published by source.

  1. Establish ground truth

    Build a verified sample of the companies that actually exist in your market.

  2. Measure coverage

    See which of those companies your current data can find.

  3. Measure qualification

    See which ones it can actually identify as buyers using the signals that matter.

  4. Build what’s missing

    If the existing data works, use it. If it doesn’t, now we know exactly what needs to be built.

I publish the measurements by source, with the method, so you can see the gap for yourself.

That gap is where the advantage lives.

Built from the customers you actually close.

Once I know what’s missing, I turn what your best customers have in common into a buyer model, then build the system around it.

Model
Turn your best customers into observable qualification criteria and signals.
Discover + qualify
Find companies across the sources that matter in your market, combine those sources into a single account view, and keep the source, reasoning and confidence attached.
Watch
Keep the market current. New companies flow in, companies that stop fitting flow out, and buying signals surface as they happen.
Deliver
Put the accounts, signals and reasons inside the systems your team already uses as fields, tasks and actions.

This is one application of how I work. Whatever the GTM problem, I start with what the team is trying to accomplish and build the system the problem actually requires.

This system isn’t worth building for every market.

Worth building when

  • you sell high ACV B2B deals
  • your buyer market is fragmented or poorly indexed
  • qualification depends on signals that aren’t standard database fields
  • someone on the team already owns the CRM and account universe
  • one better account or one better timed conversation is economically meaningful

Not worth building when

  • your market is already well covered
  • your target audience is obvious and easy to buy
  • the real problem is messaging, activity or closing
  • deal values are too low to justify custom engineering
  • you just want a static list

If your market is already well covered, the bottleneck is somewhere else in the GTM system. That’s still the work.

Same pattern, four companies.

  1. Carsy

    2015–2016

    Built software that crawled dealer auction inventory, pulled valuation data and published roughly 100 consumer listings per day, letting us create demand before owning the inventory.

  2. Huron

    2016–2019

    Ran a 20 person research team serving 50+ B2B clients. Found that prospect lists built from public sources outperformed bought databases, then built software around the workflow.

  3. Wavo

    2019–2026

    Turned that operating insight into software and data infrastructure covering 3.4M+ U.S. ecommerce businesses and supporting roughly 1,000 connected customer mailboxes at peak.

  4. First M

    2026–present

    Today: start with the GTM problem, identify the data or system that should exist, then build and run it.

Work with me.

Build + run

I build the system around your market and keep it current. You own the buyer model and the data.

Embedded

Bring me into the team to own a GTM engineering problem end to end, from diagnosis through production.

Full-time

If you’re hiring a GTM Engineer to solve problems like these, I’m open to joining in-house.

Start with three customers.

Send me three of your best customers. I’ll build an initial buyer model from them and measure how much of that market your current data can actually find and qualify.

If there’s a gap, I’ll send you a sample of the accounts in it. If there isn’t, I’ll tell you that too.

Three of your best customers

A company name or website for each.

Hiring a GTM Engineer?

Send me the job posting instead. I’ll send back the first thing I’d build.

Send me the posting →