David Berk

I'm a go-to-market and talent leader who has spent my career at the intersection of revenue and people — the two things that ultimately decide whether a company scales. I started out in executive search before launching my own search firm in 2009, which was later acquired by Hired. At Hired I led across Sales, Marketplace Operations, and Insights, then went on to run go-to-market and marketing organizations at venture-backed and publicly traded technology companies including Harri and Porch. In 2018 I founded Beacon Talent — not to build another recruiting agency, but to partner with ambitious founders and operators and make talent a genuine competitive advantage. That path gives me an unusual combination: I've owned the revenue number, scaled GTM teams, and built the talent and hiring engines beneath them. I work across SaaS, HR tech, and marketplace businesses, and I care most about helping the leaders I work with build for the long term. What I can help with: Go-to-market strategy and building/scaling GTM teams Talent acquisition and hiring strategy for high-growth startups Standing up a talent or people function from scratch Org design and making talent a competitive advantage

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  Building a team

  I build teams with the same rigor I bring to GTM. Using the mission-outcome-competencies framework, I define each role around the outcomes it must drive and the competencies required — tying every hire to business objectives and measurable impact rather than headcount for its own sake. From there I build the talent pipelines, evaluate for genuine fit, and close top candidates. The result is teams resourced deliberately and built to deliver.

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  Go to market strategy

  I bring a structured, end-to-end approach to go-to-market. I start by defining the ideal customer profile and the right sales channels to reach them, then use the business model canvas to map value propositions to each segment. From there I test and iterate quickly, establishing the unit economics that prove a motion can scale before pouring in spend. The result is a GTM strategy grounded in evidence — built to find product-market fit and grow profitably.

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  Growth marketing

  What makes me effective at growth marketing is that I build systems, not one-off campaigns. I've designed B2B lead gen engines end to end — lead identification and enrichment through high-converting outreach — using tools like Clay and Instantly to reach the right accounts at scale. I pair that with performance marketing for efficient demand and SEO for compounding organic pipeline, treating the whole funnel as one connected system that turns interest into revenue.