Varun Anand is a co-founder and Head of Operations at Clay, a go-to-market data and automation platform used by thousands of companies for data enrichment and outbound sales campaigns [1][2][3][5][15]. Before entering the technology industry he spent several years in politics, holding a succession of roles on Hillary Clinton's staff and 2016 presidential campaign, including special assistant to the communications director, statewide press secretary, and traveling press aide [10][11][12]. He has said that when the campaign ended he decided that building in technology was, for the time being, the higher-impact path to pursue [4]. He subsequently worked on special projects and communications for Jigsaw at Google, led expansion at Candid, and then moved into insurance-technology operations at Newfront, first as general manager of the employee benefits and health insurance business and later as director of operations [6][7][8][9]. He holds a B.A. in political science with a certificate in Spanish from the University of Pennsylvania [13].
Anand has described his path into each of these roles, including Clay, as the product of unsolicited outreach rather than formal recruiting. As a Penn freshman he tracked down the personal email of a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton and sent ten unanswered messages before securing a brief meeting that turned into a job offer [18]. He later used the same approach to obtain a position at Google and, years afterward, to contact Clay co-founder Kareem Amin after using the product during a webinar that no other attendee had joined [18][16]. According to Anand, Clay had originally been founded in 2017 by Amin and a college friend, Nikolai, who spent several years testing different product ideas, including tools resembling Retool and Warp, before Anand joined as a later co-founder and the team committed to building for go-to-market teams specifically [16][18]. He argues that founders searching for product-market fit are constrained less by time or effort than by insight, and has cited Kenneth Stanley's Greatness Cannot Be Planned as an influence on his view that useful ideas emerge from following what is interesting rather than from rigid goal-setting [16].
In discussing Clay's business, Anand has framed the company as an "IDE" for go-to-market teams, a workspace for quickly iterating on and executing growth campaigns rather than a fixed system of record like Salesforce or HubSpot [15]. He has argued that narrow point solutions in the sales-tools market will not endure over time, predicting they will be absorbed as features of larger platforms, while individual data providers will continue to have value [15]. He has also described a broader shift away from traditional CRM interfaces toward flexible data stores such as Snowflake or Databricks, with information delivered to sales representatives at the moment of need [15]. On the topic of scraping and agents acting on behalf of users, he has taken the position that platforms such as LinkedIn should be able to rate-limit automated activity but should not prohibit a user's software agent from acting on their behalf altogether [15].
Anand has also spoken about Clay's early go-to-market motion and its brand strategy. He has recounted that the company originally sold a $200-per-month product through a sales-led process requiring numerous demos, which over nine to twelve months evolved into a self-serve motion requiring little to no demo interaction, driven by rapid, continuous product iteration based on user feedback [16]. He has said Clay invested heavily in brand and marketing before it had meaningful revenue, including purchasing the clay.com domain and commissioning a clay-sculpture artist to produce physical figures for customers, moves he characterizes as authentic to the founders rather than calculated for return [17]. He has pointed to unconventional recruiting for marketing roles and campaigns such as CFO-narrated videos analyzing marketing ROI as tactics intended to capture attention in what he considers an otherwise dull B2B marketing environment [17].
Founded
Insights & ideas
Varun Anand frames Clay as a tool for helping any business find growth in the delta of its TAM, using data providers and LLMs to enrich data with unusual signals, then turning that into "primitives" for creative growth campaigns like personalized ads, outbound, and direct mail [1]. He argues B2B marketing is generally boring and that buyers behave like normal people scrolling LinkedIn rather than reading Gartner reports, which is why Clay invests heavily in brand, including an in-house clay artist and a large brand team, even before the company had revenue, because these choices felt authentic rather than performative [1].
On building companies, Anand describes Clay's mission as evolving from bringing programming power to more people via spreadsheets into helping go-to-market teams grow businesses, a direction reached only after years of unfocused exploration by his co-founder [2]. He argues that early-stage founders are not constrained by time but by insight, and that grinding hard is not equivalent to unlocking the creative thinking needed to find product-market fit, since insight is what enables execution [2].
Experience
- Co-Founder & Head of OperationsClaySep 2021 to Present
- Director of OperationsNewfrontJul 2021 to Jan 2022
- GM, Employee Benefits/Health Insurance BusinessNewfrontOct 2019 to Jul 2021
- Head of ExpansionCandid™Apr 2018 to Oct 2019
- Special Projects & Communications (Jigsaw @ Google)GoogleDec 2016 to May 2018
- Traveling Press AideHillary for AmericaJun 2016 to Nov 2016
- Statewide Press SecretaryHillary for AmericaNov 2015 to Jun 2016
- Special Assistant to Communications DirectorHillary for AmericaMay 2015 to Nov 2015
Education
University of Pennsylvania · Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Political Science, Certificate in Spanish
Media & appearances
- Why Cutting-Edge GTM Teams Are Ditching Traditional CRMs - Clay COO Varun AnandSummation with Auren Hoffman
Varun Anand discusses how cutting-edge GTM teams are moving away from traditional CRMs toward flexible data platforms like Snowflake or Databricks, where data is delivered to reps at the moment they need it. He explains Clay's market positioning as an IDE for go-to-market teams to quickly iterate and experiment with campaigns, and argues that tactical point solutions will not endure long-term while individual data providers and larger platforms will persist.
- Videos
Varun Anand, co-founder of Clay, discusses the original problem Clay set out to solve—bringing the power of programming to more people through spreadsheets as a medium—and how the mission evolved to focus on go-to-market teams. He shares his journey joining Clay after discovering the product through a webinar, details the company's exploration phase before committing to the go-to-market vertical, and reflects on product-market fit, advising that founders should focus on building something authentic to themselves rather than chasing commercial success.
- Going From Blobs to Billions. Clay's Co-Founder Breaks Down ...
Varun Anand discusses Clay's platform and business model, explaining how the company helps businesses grow through data integration, LLMs, and creative growth campaigns including personalized ads, outbound campaigns, and direct mail. He describes Clay's distinctive brand-first approach, including their investment in a clay artist who creates custom sculptures, and discusses the company's hiring philosophy focused on understanding human attributes and values like low ego rather than checking specific qualification boxes.
- How Clay's Co-Founder Cold Emailed His Way into a $3B Startup l Clay COO Varun AnandSummation with Auren Hoffman
Varun Anand discusses how he cold emailed his way into working for Hillary Clinton as a college student, then cold emailed his way into a job at Google, and later cold emailed co-founder Kareem to join Clay. He shares his philosophy on effective cold emails, emphasizing that the goal is to convince someone you can do the job before you've done it by demonstrating effort, research, or solving problems they face.
- Clay's Varun Anand: Why GTM AI is DifferentHg
- Inside Clay's unconventional path to $1.25B: Rethinking GTM ...
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