On 8 October, Ben Broadley from Sydney lifted the Clay Cup on the main stage at Sculpt in San Francisco.
I watched the finals from Islamabad. And I want to write about it properly, because I think this one matters more than a trophy and a big cheque.
What the Clay Cup actually is
If you haven't followed it: the Clay Cup is a live GTM engineering competition run by Clay.
The numbers from this year's edition, from the official Clay Cup site:
| Clay Cup 2026 | |
|---|---|
| Competitors | 128 |
| Time zones | 14 |
| Rounds | 6, knockout |
| Time per challenge | 20 minutes |
| Finals | 8 October 2026, Sculpt, San Francisco |
| Grand prize | $50,000 |
Every round is a new live problem. Twenty minutes to understand it, build the solution in Clay, and prove it works. No rewinds, no second attempts. Win your matchup and you move on. Lose and you're out.
That format is the point. It doesn't reward the person who knows the most features. It rewards the person who can read a messy GTM problem fast and build something that works under pressure. Which is the actual job.
The three finalists
Ben Broadley, Sydney 🇦🇺 (Champion)
Ben Broadley works on GTM and AI at BamLabs. He came through a field of 128, won his semi-final, flew from Australia to San Francisco, and won the whole thing.
What I liked most was how he talked about it on the way. When he won the semi-final, his post wasn't about the prize money first. It was about the chance to compete on that stage. You could tell he was there to build.
Congratulations, Ben. Fully deserved. 🏆
Leszek Lammel, Warsaw 🇵🇱
Leszek Lammel works in AI GTM operations and practical AI implementation through his own advisory. On his way to Sculpt he wrote about how quickly our idea of what's "possible" keeps changing.
That's a good summary of the whole competition, honestly. Things that would have taken a team a week two years ago, finalists are now building live in twenty minutes.
Avik Ghimire, Nepal 🇳🇵
Avik Ghimire is the founder of enrichflow, where he builds outbound into a predictable system. He flew from Nepal to San Francisco to compete in the final.
I'll be honest, this is the one that hit closest to home for me.
Why Avik being on that stage matters to us
A finalist from Nepal, on the main stage, in San Francisco.
If you're a GTM engineer in Pakistan, India, Nepal or Bangladesh, read that again. I get messages every week from people in Lahore and Karachi who believe the best roles and the biggest stages are only for people in the US or Europe.
Avik is proof that's not true. So is the fact that Clay community members hosted watch parties for the rounds in Lahore and Kathmandu. This field is global now, and the people at the top got there by building, not by where they were born.
I wrote about this in how to become a GTM engineer from Pakistan. The Clay Cup final says it better than I did.
Three things the final tells us about GTM engineering
1. Speed of thinking beats knowledge of tools. Twenty minutes is not enough time to look things up. The finalists won because they could look at a problem and know straight away which part mattered. That's a skill you build by shipping real campaigns, not by watching tutorials.
2. The job has a stage now. A few years ago "GTM engineer" wasn't even a common job title. Now there's a global competition for it, and a live final at Clay's biggest event. Companies don't build stages for jobs that don't matter.
3. Proof is the new CV. None of the finalists won on a certificate. They won by building, live, in front of everyone. I wrote about why that matters for hiring in how to prove GTM skills without a Clay certification. The Clay Cup is that idea, turned into a competition.
Congratulations to all three
Ben, Leszek and Avik: congratulations. And to every one of the 128 builders who put their work out there this year, you raised the bar for all of us.
If you're reading this and thinking about entering next year, my advice is simple. Start building real things now. Run real campaigns, break things, fix them fast. That's the only training that works in twenty minutes.
I'm Malik Sahal, a GTM engineer in Islamabad. I build and run outbound systems for B2B and SaaS companies. If you're trying to break into GTM engineering from Pakistan or India and want to talk it through, message me on WhatsApp. If you want the lessons from a twenty-minute build, I wrote them up in what a 20-minute Clay build teaches. The product news from the same week is in Clay Sculpt 2026: what changes for outbound operators.