Cristina Cordova on building GTM playbooks at Stripe, Notion and Linear

Key points

Key takeaways from Peak XV's interview with Cristina Cordova, COO and Head of GTM at Linear (21 March 2026):

• Experimentation becomes a playbook: Cordova said early-stage go-to-market work often starts with uncertainty and impostor syndrome. At Stripe, she tested partnership and sales messages, observed which versions worked for particular audiences, and then turned those observations into repeatable practices. Her advice is to experiment deliberately, accept that some attempts will fail, and use the learning to build confidence in a strategy.
• Bet on customers with a strong point of view: She described an early partnership that appeared to be lost when the prospective customer chose another payment provider. Rather than treating the decision as final, the team investigated the customer's desired product experience and decided whether it justified reallocating scarce engineering capacity. The lesson was to assess whether a customer has a compelling strategy and is growing quickly, not simply whether it is large today.
• Community can become distribution: At Notion, early users began creating templates for their own use cases. The company supported that organic behaviour by connecting creators and building programmes for startups and students. Cordova said the team eventually separated consumer and business priorities: consumer usage could remain free when it helped introduce people to the product and created a route into paid business adoption, while the roadmap stayed focused on the highest-value customer segment.
• Different products need different GTM: Cordova carried lessons from Stripe and Notion into Linear, but did not copy their tactics wholesale. Linear's technical audience and workflow product called for a stronger investment in brand, marketing and video to show people how a new way of working could look. She also argued that companies should use broader market shifts—in Linear's case, the rise of AI coding agents—as part of their positioning.
• Hire for judgement, not polish: Linear uses a three-day work trial for sales candidates. Candidates pitch and demo the product, then prepare an account plan from a customer call. The process tests product understanding, structured thinking and honesty when they do not know an answer, rather than rewarding a polished interview performance or promises about features that do not yet exist.