CLAY NATION

HOW LEAD-GENERATION SOFTWARE FIRM CLAY BUILT A $5 BILLION COMPANY SELLING SAAS WITH A SOUL.

- BY JENNIFER CONRAD

ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT, an after-work crowd of about two dozen people gathered in the second-floor event space of a luxury apartment complex in San Diego's Carmel Valley neighborhood.

The decor was vaguely midcentury modern, and the tables were strewn with notebooks and baseball caps from Clay, a fast-growing B2B software company that helps users identify and create targeted outreach for sales prospects.

The group, known as a Clay Club, included power users, solopreneurs, and executives who were curious about how AI could supercharge their businesses. There are more than 90 such clubs around the world, in locations as far afield as Cape Town and Amsterdam.

“Clay is a very revolutionary product that made my life so, so much easier,” says David Shamula, the host of San Diego’s Clay Club. “It’s a little nerdy; it’s a little complex,” he adds. As an early adopter, he felt a kinship with people he met in the company-run Slack channels. When Clay introduced user clubs, he jumped at the opportunity to take part in an IRL community.

Attendees snacked on Chipotle burritos as they took notes by hand of the evening’s presentation. No one touched the bottles of red wine stationed near the sink—the San Diego crowd might be too health conscious, joked Shamula, whose tech consulting firm, Outbound Partners, helps other firms with Clay implementations.