I first met Jarryd Lacey at an Engagement Institute conference in Sydney in 2024. We immediately hit it off.
What struck me first was his ability to connect with people. Jarryd’s interpersonal skills had undoubtedly been sharpened over many years in senior sales roles, but they never felt like a collection of techniques or a polished sales persona. They were simply an expression of who he was.
His honesty, integrity, generosity and genuine passion for the community engagement industry were immediately apparent. He understood the people working within the sector, the challenges they faced and the importance of the work they were doing.
A few months later, when an opportunity arose for Jarryd to become involved with Communiti Labs, bringing him into the business felt like an obvious decision.
The challenge: Turning founder knowledge into a sales system
At the time, I had recently transitioned from Chief Technology Officer into the Chief Executive Officer role.
That meant moving from a predominantly product and technical focus into a much more commercial position. I could sell the product, communicate the vision and build strong relationships with customers, but much of our commercial knowledge and process still lived inside my head.
We needed to turn founder-led selling into a repeatable sales motion.
That meant establishing a clearer understanding of:
- How opportunities should move through the pipeline.
- What qualified a genuine opportunity.
- Which deals were progressing and which were quietly becoming risky.
- Who the key stakeholders were within complex government buying processes.
- What actions were required to move each opportunity forward.
- How sales, marketing, customer success and product discovery should inform one another.
Jarryd initially joined Communiti Labs as a strategic advisor, with a mandate to help us operationalise our sales process.
His impact was immediate.
Building a repeatable commercial motion
One of Jarryd’s first achievements was taking the sales process that largely existed in my head and turning it into a visible, structured and manageable operating system.
He helped us define pipeline stages, qualification criteria, deal progression activities, next steps and risk indicators. Rather than looking at the pipeline as a collection of hopeful opportunities, we became much more disciplined about understanding where deals actually stood and what needed to happen next.
Jarryd showed us the difference between possessing sales skills and operating a genuine sales function.
He introduced the rhythms and disciplines required to consistently progress enterprise opportunities: structured pipeline reviews, clearer ownership, stakeholder mapping, follow-up processes, deal-risk identification and greater accountability around next actions.
This was particularly valuable within our beachhead market of Australian local and state government. These were rarely simple or linear sales cycles. They involved multiple stakeholders, procurement requirements, internal champions, budget cycles, pilots, security considerations and differing levels of organisational readiness.
Jarryd understood that environment exceptionally well. He helped us identify the people who influenced an opportunity, understand the role each stakeholder played and tailor our approach accordingly.
Transforming our revenue infrastructure
Jarryd also transformed the way we used our CRM.
Initially, this involved redesigning and rationalising our HubSpot environment. He helped us improve the quality of our data, automate repetitive processes and reduce unnecessary expenditure associated with the way contacts and marketing records were being managed.
The result was a CRM that required less manual work while giving us substantially more useful commercial information.
He also helped connect insights from across the organisation. Information from sales calls, customer research, product discovery and customer success could be captured and used to improve not only deal progression, but also our messaging, product roadmap, marketing and customer experience.
As the business evolved, Jarryd helped lead our move from HubSpot to Attio. This was not simply a migration from one piece of software to another. It was an opportunity to reconsider how our revenue operations should work and remove complexity and cost that were no longer serving the business.
Based on an equivalent four-user setup and the startup pricing available to us, the move reduced our recurring CRM expenditure by more than 90%. Using current equivalent pricing as a benchmark, that represented approximately A$14,000 (around 84,000 SEK) in annual software savings, before accounting for onboarding fees, additional marketing-contact costs or other expenses associated with our former setup.
Jarryd helped ensure the new system reflected the way Communiti actually sold, rather than forcing the team to work around the assumptions of the software.
That ability to combine commercial strategy with detailed operational execution is one of Jarryd’s greatest strengths. He can contribute to a high-level discussion about market positioning or revenue strategy and then work through the individual fields, automations, workflows and integrations needed to make that strategy operational.
Reclaiming almost 1,000 hours of capacity each year
The most significant return, however, was not the direct software saving.
Across the automations, reporting systems, workflows and operating processes Jarryd introduced, I estimate that he reclaimed more than 20 hours of founder and team time each week.
This included time previously spent:
- Updating and cleaning pipeline records.
- Preparing forecasts and revenue reports.
- Creating lists and segmenting audiences.
- Routing leads and assigning follow-up activities.
- Tracking pilots and customer progression.
- Preparing pipeline and management meetings.
- Moving information between sales, marketing and customer success.
- Manually identifying stalled or at-risk opportunities.
Across a working year, that amounted to approximately 1,000 hours of capacity returned to the business; roughly equivalent to half of a full-time role.
At a conservative blended valuation of founder and team time, this represented between A$120,000 and A$190,000 (approximately 720,000 to 1.14 million SEK) in annual productive capacity.
I would not describe all of that as a direct cash saving. Its real value was in what those hours allowed us to do instead.
It gave me and the team more time for product development, customer discovery, strategic selling, customer relationships and the difficult decisions that determine whether an early-stage company succeeds.
Jarryd did not simply make administration faster. He enabled a small team to operate with the structure and visibility of a much larger revenue organisation.
Connecting sales, marketing and customer success
Jarryd’s influence extended well beyond the sales pipeline.
He worked collaboratively across sales, marketing and customer success to create a more connected revenue function. This included improving how we segmented and nurtured contacts, how we re-engaged existing accounts and how we introduced fresh opportunities into the pipeline.
Our email and EDM activity became more deliberate and commercially relevant. Rather than treating marketing as a disconnected stream of announcements, we could use what we were learning through sales conversations and customer research to create better messages for specific audiences.
This helped us nurture contacts who were not yet ready to buy, reopen conversations with existing accounts and create more consistent pathways from early interest through to a qualified commercial opportunity.
The Attio environment that resulted supported more than 130 target organisations, dedicated sales and pilot pipelines, automated lead capture, webinar audiences, nurture programs, procurement outreach and separate customer and product-user lists.
It became far more than a contact database. It was the operating infrastructure connecting our commercial activities across the business.
Jarryd also helped us refine our ideal customer profile, sales collateral, proposals, demonstrations, positioning and brand narrative. His feedback was always grounded in what buyers were actually responding to rather than what we hoped they would respond to.
Supporting Communiti’s first sustained wave of commercial success
Jarryd played a major role in the first sustained wave of successful sales, paid pilots, renewals and enterprise opportunities at Communiti Labs.
He helped us better understand the enterprise software-as-a-service sales cycle and how that cycle differed within government. He brought greater clarity to our pipeline, strengthened the way we progressed opportunities and helped us become more intentional about converting pilots and early relationships into longer-term customers.
Just as importantly, he helped us learn from every commercial interaction.
Customer objections improved our messaging. Sales calls informed product development. Procurement conversations shaped our packaging and proposals. Customer success insights contributed to renewal and expansion planning.
The revenue function became a source of organisational intelligence rather than simply the part of the business responsible for closing deals.
Moving from strategic advisor to Chief Revenue Officer
After approximately a year of working with Jarryd in a strategic advisory capacity, we had the opportunity to bring him into the business as our Chief Revenue Officer.
It was a natural progression.
By that point, Jarryd had already become deeply involved in pipeline generation, deal progression, sales strategy, positioning, proposal and demonstration strategy, procurement navigation, customer revenue and renewals.
As CRO, he took responsibility for the broader revenue operation, working across sales, marketing and customer success.
For me personally, this was enormously freeing.
As a founder, it is difficult to step away from an important function unless you have complete confidence in the person taking responsibility for it. With Jarryd, I knew the work would be approached with precision, dedication, sound judgement and genuine care.
It allowed me to redirect more of my time toward product development, customer discovery and the founder-led conversations where I could contribute the greatest value, while knowing that the systems surrounding those activities were safely in Jarryd’s hands.
Jarryd’s lasting impact
Jarryd’s contribution to Communiti Labs cannot be reduced to a single campaign, CRM implementation or closed opportunity.
He helped us change how we thought about revenue.
He transformed informal founder knowledge into repeatable processes. He connected sales, marketing, customer success and product development. He improved the quality of our commercial data and reduced operational complexity. He strengthened our understanding of enterprise and government buying cycles. Most importantly, he helped us create a revenue function that was more disciplined without losing its humanity.
One of my greatest regrets from my time as CEO of Communiti Labs is that I did not bring Jarryd into the business sooner.
Had we been able to apply more of his experience, leadership and commercial discipline earlier in Communiti’s journey, I genuinely believe the outcome for the company might have been different. Communiti Labs may still have been operating today.
That is not something I say lightly.
Jarryd is one of the rare people who combines strategic commercial thinking with a willingness to do the detailed work required to make a strategy real.
He can help a founder clarify their go-to-market approach, challenge assumptions about a pipeline, redesign a CRM, improve a proposal, strengthen a nurture campaign and coach a team through a difficult opportunity. He brings both structure and momentum, while maintaining an unwavering commitment to honesty and integrity.
I would recommend Jarryd without hesitation to any founder or leadership team seeking to professionalise its revenue operations, build a repeatable enterprise sales motion or create stronger alignment between sales, marketing and customer success.
Wherever Jarryd goes next, and whatever he chooses to build, I have no doubt that the organisation will be stronger because of his revenue experience and leadership.
I look forward to cheering him on from the sidelines, and, hopefully, one day having the opportunity to work alongside him again.
More than anything, I would trust Jarryd with the commercial foundations of any business I was building.
That is the strongest endorsement I can give.