How Clay Expanded Beyond Early Product-Market Fit: A Jobs-To-Be-Done Lens

Finding early product-market fit was crucial for Clay, but it didn’t happen overnight. In its early days, Clay experimented with different approaches before honing in on its strongest use case. Initially, the team envisioned Clay as a powerful, flexible data tool for a broad audience. However, they soon realized that trying to serve too many use cases diluted their impact.

To gain traction, they narrowed their focus to outbound sales teams—specifically, agencies and startups that relied on lead enrichment for prospecting. This strategic shift allowed them to resonate deeply with a well-defined customer segment, providing immediate value and driving early adoption.

Find out more about Clays Path to PMF: https://review.firstround.com/clays-path-to-product-market-fit/

But product-market fit isn’t a final destination—it’s a foundation for hockey stick growth. The real challenge for Clay was scaling while keeping that strong market fit intact.

Using a Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) lens on Clay's product evolution reveals how it segmented, expanded, and refined its product for sustainable growth. This framework helps us see how Clay transitioned from early product-market fit to long-term scalability.

Clay had to maintain the pull of early product-market fit and reach new customers

JTBD Can Help Startups Scale Strategically

JTBD helps businesses understand why customers use a product for specific jobs. As companies grow, they face three key questions:

• Which steps in the current job need urgent improvement?

• Which customer groups need help that aligns with our core product?

• Which related jobs are underserved and can offer expansion opportunities?

  
  

Clay's journey shows how startups can apply JTBD to scale strategically, ensuring every expansion meets real customer needs.

1. Early Product-Market Fit: Owning a Core Job-to-Be-Done

Initially, Clay positioned itself as a data enrichment tool for agencies and startups, focusing on a specific outbound sales job:

Customer Group: Agencies and Startups

Job: Enrich Existing Lead Data for Outbound Sales

Rather than spreading itself thin across multiple segments, Clay focused on outbound sales teams. This narrow focus created a strong foundation, as Bruno Estrella, Head of Growth Marketing at Clay, explains:

“If you try to push everything to every prospect in every way possible, you'll lose. We initially targeted outbound and data enrichment. That’s where we succeeded. We needed to understand where we win effortlessly in the market, how big that market is, and where we can go next.”

By mastering this core job, Clay built traction and validated demand before expanding.

2. Expanding to Adjacent Job Steps: Growing Without Losing Focus

After establishing itself in outbound data enrichment, Clay identified adjacent job steps in the same ecosystem. Instead of seeking entirely new markets, Clay expanded into related sales automation functions:

Customer Group: Agencies and Startups

Job: Optimize Outbound Workflows

Clay moved upstream and downstream in the sales workflow, helping teams with outreach sequencing, personalization, and CRM data optimization. This stepwise expansion ensured new features fit seamlessly into existing user workflows.

By following this approach, Clay added value to the same customer base before broadening to related jobs. This disciplined approach allowed it to scale without losing focus.

3. Expanding to Related Jobs: Broadening the Proposition

As Clay strengthened its position in outbound workflows, it looked for natural extensions that would allow it to serve its users more comprehensively. The logical next step was to support inbound enrichment and CRM enhancements, ensuring that sales and marketing teams could optimize their entire customer engagement process.

Related Jobs: Inbound enrichment and CRM enhancements

Customer Group: Agencies and Startups

By expanding beyond outbound sales workflows, Clay created a more holistic solution for its existing customer base. Instead of just helping with outbound prospecting, it provided tools to improve the overall data quality and workflow efficiency across inbound and outbound channels. This broadened proposition strengthened customer retention, increased product stickiness, and allowed for more significant adoption across different teams within organizations.

4. Ecosystem Marketing: Turning Users into Advocates

Clay used an ecosystem marketing strategy instead of relying on paid acquisition. By collaborating with creators, agencies, and integration partners, it amplified adoption through trusted industry voices.

Bruno Estrella says:

“Most of these folks don’t think much about revenue share. What they care about is a brand association with us.”

By enabling partners to create content, run experiments, and integrate Clay into their workflows, the company turned job executors (agencies and experts) into brand advocates. This increased adoption and secured long-term retention.

5. Aligning Marketing with Customer Workflows

Many early-stage startups rely on a single go-to-market strategy (either self-serve or sales-led). After finding product-market fit, Clay needed a hybrid approach:

• It started as a self-serve tool for smaller teams.

• It then layered in a sales-led motion for enterprise customers with GTM Engineers.

  
  

This hybrid approach allowed Clay to meet different job executors' needs while maintaining efficiency. Emily Kramer, Co-Founder of MKT1, explains:

“If you’re onboarding someone during a sales call and they feel like they’ve already made progress, why would they go elsewhere? They’re already in the product and understand it.”

By meeting users in their workflows, Clay made adoption easy.

6. Evolving Clay’s Positioning: From Tool to Platform

Clay’s flexibility brought a challenge—balancing broad capabilities with clear positioning. Initially, it focused on outbound sales workflows, but as adoption grew, it changed its narrative:

• Early Positioning: Outbound Sales Data Enrichment

• Evolved Positioning: “Go-To-Market Development Environment” for Sales & Marketing

  
  

Emily Kramer highlights the importance of controlled expansion:

“We’re trying to show that you can do anything in Clay. But one reason we’ve been so successful is that we didn’t try to go after everyone with everything.”

By anchoring its value proposition in a specific job and customer group before expanding, Clay ensured a smooth transition to a comprehensive platform.

7. Increasing Customer Feedback Loops to Refine Job Execution

Clay didn’t just collect customer feedback. It used it to shape its growth strategy. Its Slack community of over 18,000 members provided real-time insights into customer jobs and outcomes, driving both product development and marketing decisions.

Mishti Sharma, Head of Product Marketing at Clay, emphasizes this approach:

“They give us the most insightful product feedback because they’re in the product all the time.”

By continually refining execution based on direct customer insights, Clay kept its product beloved and effective as it scaled.

Final Thought: Strategic decisions need market precision

Achieving early product-market fit was a key milestone for Clay but it’s just the beginning its growth phase. The real challenge lies in sustaining and scaling that fit without diluting the core value proposition. Clay’s journey exemplifies the importance of focusing on specific jobs, expanding thoughtfully, and leveraging deep customer insights to drive decision-making.

For founders looking to scale beyond early product-market fit, the lesson is clear: Master the job. Scale into adjacent jobs. Expand customer groups. By applying the JTBD framework, startups can navigate this journey with precision, ensuring each expansion strengthens their market position rather than weakening it.