Bryan Funk grew a company from $1M in ARR to $100M in just a few years using a go-to-market method I’m convinced will be the killer GTM strategy for 2026 and beyond.
And here’s the part that hit me hardest: He was doing Strike Marketing before the term even existed.
Back in December, I made a very public bet.
I decided that Strike Marketing could become a legitimate category, not just a framework, not just a clever phrase, but a real way of thinking about go-to-market that cuts through the marketing industrial complex.
So I spent eight weeks organizing the Strike Marketing Summit to launch the category into the public eye.
What I didn’t expect was that one of the speakers would completely validate the model…and quietly add a twist that made it even stronger.
That speaker was Bryan Funk.
The Poster Child for Strike Marketing (Before It Had a Name)
At Virtuous Software, Bryan wasn’t just “doing marketing.”
He was heading up category strategy.
Together with the team, he helped launch Responsive Fundraising as a new category inside the nonprofit world, reframing how modern fundraising should work in an always-on, donor-centric environment.
That alone is notable.
But here’s where it gets interesting.
The Book Came First. Not the Product.
Virtuous’s founder and CEO, Gabe Cooper, didn’t just pitch a product.
He wrote the book Responsive Fundraising, laying out the philosophy, the methodology, and - most importantly - the language of the category.
That book did what great category books always do:
It didn’t sell software. It taught a new way of thinking.
Then Came the Event Engine
Here’s the move most companies miss. Bryan didn’t treat events as one-off lead gen stunts. He designed and launched a quarterly virtual summit engine whose sole job was to promote the category.
Not Virtuous. Not features. The category.
Over time, those summits turned Responsive Fundraising from an idea into an established concept inside the nonprofit space.
This is Strike Marketing in its purest form: designed moments that force a market to pay attention.
Speakers Weren’t “Guests.” They Were Megaphones.
Another key detail most people gloss over: Bryan didn’t just invite speakers and hope they promoted. He worked with each speaker before the summit - extensively.
He made sure they understood:
The category context
The narrative arc of the event
Where their talk fit into the bigger story
The result?
The speakers didn’t just deliver talks. They became evangelists for the category.
High-Production Signals Authority
Then Bryan and his team added a powerful signal.
They created a hybrid in-person speaker experience with a virtual audience, flying speakers into Virtuous’s warehouse-style offices, building three stages, and hiring a professional production crew to livestream every session.
It felt less like a webinar…and more like a TEDx-level experience.
Content That Actually Deserves Authority
Here’s the quiet genius part. Bryan created the ultimate expression of Google’s EEAT framework - content rooted in Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
Each summit generated:
Dozens of high-credibility content assets
Enough material to fuel an entire year of marketing
Content sales teams could actually use
What higher authority content can a company create other than what the speakers at their own summits can produce?
The Whole Company Was Involved
One final piece most GTM teams never pull off. Sales reps. Customer success. Marketing.
All were involved in recruiting speakers, shaping topics, and feeding insights back into sales conversations. The category galvanized the company, and got everybody on board with the same mindset, vocabulary and belief system.
The Punchline
Little did Bryan Funk know…he may have been one of the first Strike Marketers - years before the term was ever coined.
If you want to see what this looks like in practice, I highly recommend watching Bryan’s full talk.
It’s one of the cleanest real-world validations of Strike Marketing I’ve ever seen.
