What it really takes to win in the US - Honest lessons from Natalie Johnson

US expansion is one of the fastest ways for a venture-backed SaaS company to accelerate growth…or blow up months of momentum, burn a painful chunk of cash, and leave a trail of “scar tissue” behind.In this Making the Grade episode, Tom Glason sits down with Natalie Johnson, a seasoned revenue leader who’s lived the 1 to 10 million ARR journey multiple times - across the UK and the US - and now leads revenue at one of Europe’s fastest-scaling AI companies, AutogenAI.In this episode, Natalie unpacks what actually works when expanding into the US, why outbound still works and why AI is not an IT rollout but an organisational transformation that rewires how modern revenue teams operate. If you’re scaling through the messy middle and considering the US leap, this one’s packed with battle-tested guidance you can apply immediately.📚 Episode Chapters01:15 - Lessons from two scaling journeys 03:12 - US expansion mistakes 16:26 - Navigating the messy middle 26:08 - Autogen AI’s Growth Engine  30:46 - Outbound strategies that actually work 35:34 - Hiring Revenue Leaders in 2026⛳ Mentioned in today’s episode: AutogenAI: https://autogenai.com/uk/Glyphic: https://www.glyphic.ai/🎧 Continue listening… Make sure you listen to Season 1 Sean Williams - From $60m exit to building an er-defining AI company Enjoyed today's episode of Making The Grade? If you took something valuable from the episode, we'd love for you to... ✔️ Leave us a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. ✔️ Share your ideas or guest suggestions with us at [email protected]✔️ Stay in the loop with the latest from Making The Grade and ScaleWise by following us on LinkedIn or YouTube. See you again next week!