Horizon is an executive leadership conference for B2B revenue leaders, hosted by Growth Operations Firm, an Elite HubSpot Solutions Partner. The first Horizon took place on October 29, 2026 at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California, near Monterey. It brought sales, marketing, customer success, finance and RevOps leaders together for one day on change management, AI adoption and go-to-market.
The biggest takeaway: AI isn’t the hard part of transformation. Context is.
| |
Horizon 2026 at a glance |
| What |
Executive leadership conference on change management and AI for B2B leaders |
| When |
October 29, 2026 |
| Where |
Asilomar, Pacific Grove, California (Monterey Peninsula) |
| Host |
Growth Operations Firm, Elite HubSpot Solutions Partner |
| Speakers |
Scott Brinker (chiefmartec), Jen Spencer (SmartBug Media), Andy Jolls (Roxology), Adam Wainwright (HubSpot), Apollo.io |
| Next event |
Horizon 2027, early registration open |
An executive conference built around change
On October 29th we hosted the first Horizon at Asilomar in Pacific Grove.
Horizon was an incredible experience.
Different companies. Different leadership roles. Different personalities, from all over the country. All focused on the one thing there’s no room left to avoid...
Change. And how to actually do it.
It felt like Growth, live.
Why we built a leadership conference in Monterey
Here was the question we were really asking.
Could a small but mighty firm convince a cohort of leaders to fly and drive to Monterey for a full day of thinking differently?
Not a trade show. Not a pitch fest. A day for sales, marketing, customer success, finance and technical leaders to sit in the same room and talk about the hard stuff.
We did it. And it felt great.
I live a few miles from Asilomar. Growth has made its home here. Opening the day inside Julia Morgan’s 1915 chapel, right on the coast, was a moment I won’t forget. The whole point of the place is to throttle back... and quite literally look at the horizon.
Change management starts with going first
I opened by asking everyone to look around.
Sales leaders. Customer success. Finance. AEs. Technical teams. All in one room.
How often does that happen inside our own companies? Is finance talking to sales? Is marketing hearing what CS hears?
Not often. And definitely not often enough.
Most days it’s the Spider-Man meme. Everyone pointing at each other, passing the blame without sharing the information.
Then I told our story, because I wasn’t going to ask anyone to change without owning that we had to do it first.
A year ago, Growth was fine. Clients were happy. The team was strong. But fine isn’t fine enough.
In Q2 our leadership team agreed to rebuild our services from the ground up. Our clients expect us to know these AI tools and use them to get better results, faster and more securely. If we couldn’t do that inside our own walls, what business did we have doing it for them?
So we went first.
It turned into a rebuild of our quote-to-cash, our service operations, and how we work with clients and each other. A growth spurt, a pivot, a reorg and a rebuild, all at once.
We thought we’d be done by the end of Q2.
Now double it. Then double it again.
We’re only just finishing now. And time was the cheapest thing it cost us. Big change touches capacity, money, morale and client trust. If anyone tells you it won’t, they’re selling something.
Why context, not AI, is the hard part
A few nights before Horizon, I sat with Amber and Rick and went through every AI project we’d started and stopped this year.
It felt like a pile of failures.
It wasn’t. Every one of them fed what came next.
Our scoping doc rebuild died. It turned into a whole new quote-to-cash process that cut the time by 85%. Amber presented it at HubSpot Unbound.
The tool we tried to build for our strategists’ daily work died too. It became Trail Map, where our clients and our team work together.
The lesson that came out of all of it...
AI was never the hard part. Context was.
Most of what our company knew lived in people’s heads, in calls, in inboxes. What survived was what we wrote down and connected.
Yes, I see the irony of giving you all this context about context.
Scott Brinker on Martec’s Law and context engineering
I met Scott Brinker, founder of chiefmartec and former VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot, by happenstance at INBOUND 2022. Katrina and I sat down to watch Brian Halligan interview President Obama and ended up right next to him. He was remarkably kind to two people he’d just met.
When Horizon got the green light, Scott was the first person I told.
We started with Martec’s Law. Technology changes exponentially. Organizations change logarithmically. Six months ago, when we planned this conversation, it felt almost too obvious. Now it’s the conversation everyone is having.
The gap between those two curves isn’t a tech problem. It’s an organizational one.
Scott’s shift from prompt engineering to context engineering landed hard in the room. And he shared early data from a survey of 106 marketing leaders on the organizational side of context, before it goes public. That’s the kind of thing that only happens in a room this size.
Then Martec’s Corollary. If organizations are slow to change, the changes they do make are slow to copy.
Anyone can buy the tools we use tomorrow. Nobody can buy the year we just had.
Workshops on leadership, AI in go-to-market and RevOps
From there the day split into working sessions.
Jen Spencer of SmartBug Media led leadership and people change.
Andy Jolls of Roxology led AI in go-to-market.
Adam Wainwright of HubSpot led revenue operations.
Apollo.io shared what’s coming on their horizon.
We closed the afternoon with a “What have we learned?” panel with Scott, Jen, Andy and Adam. That conversation deserves its own post, and it’s coming once the video is ready.
The through line in every room was the same. The tools are moving fast. The people and the process are what’s slow... and that’s where the work is.
Three change management actions for your leadership team
The risk was never that people would leave Horizon without ideas. It’s that they’d leave with ten and follow up on none.
So we asked for three.
Pick your change. One you should make, and one you’re afraid not to make. Drop the second.
Write it down. What does your company know that only lives in someone’s head?
Un-silo it. Ask someone in a different role, at a different company, how their team sees the customer. Then go home and ask your own team the same question.
If you weren’t there, do these three with your leadership team this week. They work just as well in a conference room in your own office.
What’s next: a digital extension
We’re small but mighty, so we’re still rolling out follow-ups.
One thing I wish I’d thought of sooner: a digital extension. A way for the people who couldn’t make the trip to still catch those lightning-in-a-bottle conversations.
Next year.
Horizon 2027: dates and early registration
Thank you to everyone who left their normal day-to-day, their families and their work to spend the day with us at Asilomar. And thank you to Scott, Jen, Andy, Adam and Apollo for giving the room so much.
We’re still confirming dates with the venue, but we’ll be back in 2027.
Early registration is live. https://thehorizonretreat.com/
Change is hard. Doing it together makes it a little less so.
Onward and upward.
Horizon conference FAQ
What is Horizon?
Horizon is an annual executive leadership conference for B2B leaders across sales, marketing, customer success, finance and RevOps. It’s hosted by Growth Operations Firm, an Elite HubSpot Solutions Partner, and focuses on change management, AI adoption and go-to-market alignment.
When and where was Horizon 2026?
Horizon 2026 took place on October 29, 2026 at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California, on the Monterey Peninsula.
Who spoke at Horizon 2026?
Scott Brinker of chiefmartec joined Christopher Nault, CEO of Growth Operations Firm, for the opening fireside. Workshops were led by Jen Spencer of SmartBug Media, Andy Jolls of Roxology and Adam Wainwright of HubSpot, with a session from Apollo.io.
Who should attend Horizon?
Executives and senior leaders at mid-market B2B companies who are leading change inside their organizations. That includes sales, marketing, customer success, finance, operations and technical leaders.
Is Horizon a HubSpot conference?
Horizon is hosted by an Elite HubSpot Solutions Partner, and many attendees run their business on HubSpot. But it isn’t a product training event. It’s about leading people and process through change, whatever your tech stack.
What is Martec’s Law?
Martec’s Law is Scott Brinker’s observation that technology changes exponentially while organizations change logarithmically. The growing gap between the two is one of the biggest management challenges leaders face today.
What is context engineering?
Context engineering is the work of capturing and connecting what your organization knows, so people and AI can act on it. It’s the shift from writing better prompts to giving AI better information about your business.
When is Horizon 2027?
We’re confirming dates with the venue now. Early registration for Horizon 2027 is open. [Link]
Can I attend Horizon virtually?
Horizon 2026 was in person only. We’re planning a digital extension for 2027 so leaders who can’t travel can still take part.
