Podcast Summary: SaaStr 825 - How the AI Era Has Directly Impacted Marketing and Sales with Snowflake‘s CMO and Founding CRO

Podcast: The Official SaaStr Podcast
Episode Title: SaaStr 825: How the AI Era Has Directly Impacted Marketing and Sales with Snowflake‘s CMO and Founding CRO
Date: October 15, 2025
Host: SaaStr Host
Guests: Denise Persson (CMO, Snowflake), Chris Degnan (Founding CRO & Advisor, Snowflake)

Overview

In this engaging episode, the SaaStr Host sits down with Denise Persson (Snowflake’s CMO) and Chris Degnan (former CRO, advisor to Snowflake and multiple AI startups) for a focused discussion on how Artificial Intelligence has rapidly transformed go-to-market strategies, sales, and marketing. Drawing from Snowflake’s own meteoric growth and practical AI implementations, Denise and Chris unpack critical success factors, cultural necessities, and tactical AI use cases—framing actionable lessons in scaling SaaS organizations. Special attention is paid to Snowflake’s internal AI journey, building agentic models, data governance, and organizational adaptation in the AI era.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Importance of Company Culture and Top-Down AI Mandate

[04:26] - [07:14] Denise Persson

• Curiosity and Experimentation: Cultivating a culture that encourages curiosity and experimentation is crucial for successful AI adoption.
  • “Company culture… is really a make it or break it factor for AI success. You really need a culture of curiosity and an environment where people are really encouraged to experiment.” — Denise Persson ([04:26])
• AI Council Approach: Rather than everyone experimenting independently (which leads to duplication and chaos), Snowflake formed an "AI Council" with representatives from every marketing function to pilot and scale use cases.
• Executive Buy-In: AI MUST be a top-level strategic initiative:
  • “If the CEO doesn’t put AI as a top strategic initiative… you’re basically sending the signal that this isn’t strategic enough for our organization.” — Denise Persson ([06:17])
• Balanced Innovation: Best outcomes come from combining top-down leadership with bottom-up innovation.

2. Building a Data-First Foundation for AI

[07:14] - [10:15] Chris Degnan

• Data Governance as Prerequisite: Success with AI relies on having centralized, trusted, and governable data.
  • “AI is only as good as the data that it gets.” — Chris Degnan ([08:12])
• Security and Compliance: Enterprises are cautious about exposing sensitive data (PII, PCI) to external AI tools; Snowflake restricts data/model access as needed.
• Unified Platform: Snowflake evolved from a pure data warehouse to an all-encompassing platform supporting structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data for analytics and AI.

3. AI Use Cases in Marketing at Snowflake

[10:15] - [15:40] Denise Persson

• Widespread AI Adoption: 90% of the 450-person marketing org uses AI, with “in the range of 90% time savings for a lot of different tasks.”
• Key AI Projects:
  • Campaign Agent: Real-time ROI tracking, campaign optimization, digital ad spend efficiency, customer/prospect segmentation.
  • Compete Agent: Real-time competitive intelligence for both sales and marketing, generating tailored talking points by competitor, industry, and use case.
  • “It’s really hard to enable both the marketing and sales organization to compete against every single competitor at every single use case and at every single industry level. For instance, that agent has been pretty game changing for us.” — Denise Persson ([12:03])
  • Pipeline Forecasting: Predicting pipeline health quarters in advance—allows precise allocation of marketing resources.
  • AI-Driven Lead Scoring: Millions of leads scored more granularly and effectively.
  • Localization: Automated copy adaptation and document localization for global operations, significantly improving speed and cost.
  • Content Production: Interview scripts, video scripts, customer interviews—90% reduction in preparation time.
• Quarterly “AI Day”: Sharing new tools, learnings, and practical tips across the marketing org.

4. Structure and Function of the AI Council

[15:40] - [18:47] Denise Persson

• Formation: Started by Denise, led by Hillary Carpio (“kind of… best leader to run this group”).
• Membership: Volunteers, typically deeply invested in tech and AI, devote ~20% of their time to council activities.
• Influence: Cross-functional representation; acts as AI champions and testers, invests in member learning and exposure to industry best practices.
• Budget: AI spending lies within functional teams, while some tools come at no additional cost.

5. Proprietary AI Model Development & Organizational Alignment

[18:47] - [23:00] Denise Persson & Chris Degnan

• In-House Development: AI agents built using Snowflake Cortex, leveraging LLMs from Anthropic, OpenAI, and others as needed, by a shared internal “intelligence team”.
• Centralized Data/Analytics Team: Led by Chief Data Officer Anahita Tesvi; composed mainly of data scientists and product specialists (not marketing or sales staff); supports all GTM (go-to-market) functions.
• Rationale: Avoids siloed analytics development, accelerates the rollout of solutions org-wide.

6. Sales-Specific AI Use Cases and Technical Enablement

[23:00] - [30:49] Chris Degnan

• RevOps & Intelligence: RevOps remains, but is now supported by the intelligence team; collaboration ensures all business teams operate from the same data.
• Solution Engineer Upskilling: Universal certification and AI-enabled demo tooling (e.g., Cursor AI) allow rapid, tailored customer solutions.
• Task Automation: Focus on deploying AI to automate repetitive, manual, or low-value tasks. Example: AI-powered support saves “418 hours per week”.
  • “I view [AI] as a task automator… If there’s mundane tasks or things that humans have to do, I think AI is doing a great job of automating that.” — Chris Degnan ([27:28])
• Raven - Go-To-Market Assistant: AI-powered internal assistant for sales and leadership that queries all customer data (structured & unstructured) in real-time:
  • “You can go to Raven and ask… ‘Hey, I’m going to see XYZ customer, tell me what’s happening’… Instead of going to dashboards, Salesforce, or other apps, you have this centralized tool.” — Chris Degnan ([29:41])
  • CEO and leaders use Raven for comprehensive, rapid account prep.

7. AI Tool Governance and Adoption Controls

[31:48] - [34:23] Denise Persson

• Security Above All: No AI tools go to production without security and governance review.
• Experimentation is Encouraged, but Adoption is Controlled: “You cannot just implement any application in production at scale. It takes time here to get those reviewed.” ([33:08])
• Snowflake Marketplace: Preference for AI tools built on Snowflake for integrated governance and ease of use.

8. AI’s Impact on Sales and Marketing Hiring

[34:23] - [37:11] Denise Persson & Chris Degnan

• Emphasis on Aptitude Over Existing Skillset: Snowflake prioritizes hiring lifelong learners with curiosity and adaptability.
  • “It’s more important to hire for aptitude… If you’re a curious life learner, you can learn everything.” — Denise Persson ([35:10])
• AI-Relevant Branding Attracts Talent: Companies seen as AI pioneers have no shortage of talent, especially among younger professionals eager to join the space.

Notable Quotes and Moments

• On Culture:
  “Company culture… is really a make it or break it factor for AI success.” — Denise Persson ([04:26])

• On the Need for a Data Strategy:
  “There’s no AI strategy without a data strategy. You need… all your data unified in one place… in order to build these AI experiences.” — Denise Persson ([37:33])

• On AI for Task Automation:
  “I view [AI] as a task automator. If there’s mundane tasks or things that humans have to do, I think AI is doing a great job of automating that.” — Chris Degnan ([27:28])

• On Top-Down Leadership:
  “If the CEO doesn’t put AI as a top strategic initiative, it’s not going to be seen as a priority for employees either.” — Denise Persson ([06:17])

• On AI and Competition:
  “It’s really hard to enable both the marketing and sales organization to compete against every single competitor at every single use case and at every single industry level. For instance, that agent has been pretty game changing for us.” — Denise Persson ([12:03])

• On Hiring:
  “It’s more important to hire for aptitude… If you’re a curious life learner, you can learn everything.” — Denise Persson ([35:10])

• On AI Market Relevance:
  “If you’re an AI relevant company and you have a good story… there’s a ton of interest. People in general are wanting to come join the AI revolution.” — Chris Degnan ([36:06])

Key Timestamps for Reference

• [04:26] — Culture’s role in AI success, AI Council formation
• [07:14] — Building a secure, governable, enterprise-scale data layer for AI
• [10:15] — Deep dive into AI use cases in Snowflake’s marketing org
• [15:40] — Structure, leadership, and composition of the AI Council
• [18:47] — In-house development of AI agents and intelligence team centralization
• [23:53] — Sales-engineering enablement and AI’s impact on RevOps
• [27:28] — AI as task automator philosophy
• [29:41] — “Raven” internal tool for sales/account intelligence
• [33:08] — Governance and security of AI tools and experimentation boundaries
• [34:23] — How AI shapes sales and marketing hiring
• [37:33] — Closing summary: “No AI strategy without a data strategy”

Final Takeaway

The episode offers a paradigm for modern SaaS companies navigating the AI era: Combine executive mandate with grassroots innovation; build a unified, trusted data foundation; invest in tailored, task-focused AI agents; rigorously gate production use with security and governance; prioritize learners and adapters in hiring; and be your own “customer zero” to turn innovation into marketable, tested solutions. As Denise closes:
“It’s people making AI happen—identify those change agents… and have them kind of lead the way. But at the same time, it’s so important to have that top-level endorsement and engagement as well.” ([37:11])

To learn more:
Grab Chris and Denise’s book, Make It Snow, or connect with Denise on LinkedIn.