About
QC Growth is the embedded GTM team for early-stage startups. We partner with founders to build go-to-market systems, close early deals, and hire the right talent to grow.

Our story
Our founder, Luke Bivens, was a three-time founding account executive. He watched startup after startup make the same mistake: hire a VP of Sales too early, hand off sales before product-market fit, and expect magic. It didn’t work. Luke started QC Growth to help founders skip the pain and build sales the right way, from the ground up.
Since 2023, we’ve worked with dozens of early-stage B2B startups to build repeatable systems, generate real pipeline, and make their first key hires. We don’t just give advice, we operate inside your company, bringing the process, talent, and tools you need to grow.

Mission
Our Mission: To help early-stage founders build sales engines that scale without guesswork, bad hires, or bloated teams.

Clarity over complexity
Meet you where you are
Strategy plus execution
Operations Consultant
Justin Aiken started his career in B2B SaaS, where he learned sales from every angle: prospecting, closing, and the operations work that keeps it all running. Along the way he saw how much every deal depends on what's underneath it: clean data, the right tools, and a process that actually holds up.
Alongside his sales career, Justin built and runs his own business serving luxury multifamily communities, which taught him to design systems from scratch and keep them running day in and day out. Now leading onboarding at QC Growth, he sets up each client's tool stack and workflows so campaigns launch fast and run clean from day one.
Outside of work: mountain biking, kayaking the rivers of East Tennessee and Western NC, and rewatching Lord of the Rings more times than he'll admit.

Founder
Luke Bivens is a founding Account Executive turned founder who’s spent his career helping early-stage companies go from zero to one. He played key roles at Gatsby (acquired by Netlify) and Workpop (acquired by Cornerstone OnDemand), helping build their go-to-market teams from the ground up through to acquisition.
In 2023, Luke founded QC Growth to help founders figure out go-to-market earlier in their journey, bringing the same scrappy, strategic energy that defined his AE days to startup GTM consulting.
Outside of work, Luke is passionate about fitness (currently competing in Hyrox), enjoys tequila and wine, and prioritizes time with his family, including his two kids and wonderful wife. He founded QC Growth not only to help startups succeed but also to create a life with balance between family, work, and wellness.
Luke is a graduate of Northwood University, where he also played baseball.
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Managing Partner and Head of Operations
Former professional baseball player turned GTM operator. I started my career in early-stage sales, working directly with customers across sales and success. After managing large client relationships and closing deals with some of the biggest brands in the world, I shifted focus to the systems behind growth. Today, I run operations at QC helping clients bridge the gap from idea to execution. Jake's background in sales keeps our processes grounded in what actually drives revenue and scale.

Partner and GTM Leader
Nick is a GTM professional that has been working alongside early stage companies for the past decade to accelerate growth. He believes that we’re at inflection point in the world today for how to scale companies. A combination of empathy, strategy and technology are needed for organizations to build a sustainable growth engine. Outside of QC, Nick and his wife started a private microschool to help solve the education problem in America.

GTM Lead
Sam Cartwright is managing partner and GTM leader at QC Growth, where he helps early-stage startups build repeatable go-to-market systems from the ground up.
Over the last couple of years, he has played a key role in guiding founders from idea to $1M+ in ARR, embedding directly into teams to shape their sales motion, aggressively build pipeline, and accelerate early revenue.
Prior to QC Growth, Sam was the Founding GTM Leader at Rally, where he built sales from zero to their $1M in ARR. He has been a multi-time President's Club member, a sales enablement leader, and was the founding SDR at Apollo.io.
Beyond his work with founders, Sam channels his competitive energy into running and writing. He publishes Morning Sports Trivia, a daily newsletter featuring one topical sports trivia question each morning, and is a graduate of Middlebury College, where he studied Creative Writing and was an All-American in track and cross country.

GTM Lead
Andrew Aiken got his start in sales at 16, slinging coffee in a small town in Western NC and learned early that the job is really about people.
That instinct eventually led him to Red Hat, then into two founding AE roles in the developer tools space. Now leading GTM engagements at QC Growth, he's drawn to the messy early stages where nothing is repeatable yet. It scratches an entrepreneurial itch he's had since the coffee shop days.
Outside of work: mountain biking, kettlebells, and aggressive attempts to learn Spanish before the next family dinner. Favorite song: Rasputin by Boney M.

GTM Partner - Digital Health
Kori Bivens is QC Growth's Healthcare GTM Leader, bringing over a decade of experience driving growth for digital health companies. Kori spent the past 10+ years at Red Ventures and RVO Health, where her journey in health began after the company acquired Healthline.com — one of the leading consumer health media properties in the country. From there, she built deep expertise across the full healthcare ecosystem, including a joint venture with Optum and running multiple technology services businesses on both the provider and health plan sides.
Throughout her tenure, Kori held progressive leadership roles culminating in Vice President, where she carried multi-year P&L responsibility and led growth through performance marketing, product development strategy, and operational execution across more than a dozen businesses.
Kori is a proud Michigan State University alumna, where she was a standout volleyball player, 2x Big Ten Defensive POY, 3x AVCA All-American, and was inducted into the MSU Athletic Hall of Fame in 2025. Outside of work, she is passionate about health and fitness and loves spending time with her husband and two kids.
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GTM Partner - Devtools
Shane O'Connor is a GTM leader with 5+ years building developer-first go-to-market engines for API and infrastructure companies. He's led enterprise growth at Scalar, Tyk, and SmartBear - closing 6-figure deals with technical buyers, ranking as a top AE globally, and contributing to a 10x ARR run at Scalar as its founding commercial hire.
At QC Growth, Shane works directly with early-stage dev tool founders - helping them get visible where it matters, make the right noise in the right communities, and build GTM that respects how developers actually buy.
His philosophy: the best product shouldn't be the best-kept secret. Inferior products beat superior ones all the time - not because they're better, but because they're louder and they show up in the right places. Shane's job is to fix that.
Outside of work, Shane is based in Cork, Ireland. When he's not busy pretending to be a dinosaur or wrestling with his two boys - he's watching The Pitt, Peep Show with his fiancee Hazel or running his monthly meet-up for dads called "Lads2Dads".

GTM Sales Lead
Ben has been running GTM strategy games & execution for small teams his whole career, first with years as a theater producer, ending that chapter on Broadway, and now in technology since the 2010s where he's been having a blast collaborating with founders and C-suite leaders to solve outbound problems.

Partnerships and Operations
Will played Division I baseball for two years at Arizona State University before transferring to the University of Michigan, where he played for another two years and graduated. He brings a competitive mindset and team-first approach from the field into his work in growth and partnerships at QC Growth.

Founding GTM Engineer
GTM Engineer @ QC Growth & industry certified cybersecurity pro. I bridge the gap between strategy and execution by building, automating, and scaling the technical systems that power sales, marketing, and customer success teams.

GTM Recruiter
Keith brings a unique combination of elite sales performance and recruiting expertise to QC Growth. As the founder of Battle Tested Sales, he's helped seed through Series B startups build their foundational GTM teams, with a proven track record of placing top sales talent at high growth companies.Keith's recruiting approach is informed by his own success as a top performing sales rep. This firsthand experience allows him to identify the traits that separate A players from the rest. Keith specializes in helping founders make their most critical early GTM hires, roles where getting it right can accelerate growth and getting it wrong can cost months of momentum.Outside of building teams, Keith and his wife are passionate about rescue animals, hiking, and hunting for sea glass along their local beaches. They prioritize family time with their son, and are thrilled to finally have a Patriots team worth rooting for again after a few rough years.

GTM Architect
Atharva builds the stuff founders don't see but can't grow without. Hand him any GTM problem and his first instinct is to open a Clay table.
He was doing GTM engineering before the title existed. Somewhere between RevOps and building onboarding/outbound systems for startups, the industry gave a name to what he'd already been doing for years.
Atharva believes GTM engineers are really product managers for revenue systems. You build it from scratch, watch what's working and what isn't, fix what breaks, and keep shipping features until it scales. At QC Growth, he turns the strategic ideas and wild growth plays that GTM leads and founders dream up into systems that actually run. His job is to keep the engine tuned, the gears moving, and the growth on pace.
Atharva holds a Master's in Information Systems, which he mostly uses as an excuse to build more systems. Outside of work, you'll find him traveling, hiking, or (let's be honest) tinkering with another GTM workflow.

QC Growth is an embedded go-to-market team for Seed to Series A B2B software founders. A fractional pod of operators builds and runs the full motion: strategy, outbound infrastructure, messaging, campaigns and reporting.
QC Growth was founded in 2023 by Luke Bivens, a three-time founding account executive, after watching startup after startup hire a VP of Sales before product-market fit.
QC Growth is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and works with venture-backed startups across the United States.
We operate inside your company rather than reporting from outside, and our operators have sold in the verticals our clients sell into: developer tools, AI, healthcare and deep tech.
Whether you’re selling your first deal or hiring your first rep, we’re here to help you grow smarter.
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