20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko

Summary

Episode Summary: “20Sales: $0-$4BN: The Databricks CRO’s Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History” with Ron Gabrisco

Introduction and Guest Background [04:10 - 05:09]

Harry Stebbings welcomes Ron Gabrisco, the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Databricks, highlighting his impressive journey from joining the company in 2016 to scaling revenue from zero to over $4 billion in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). Under Ron’s leadership, the sales team expanded from scratch to over a thousand globally, spearheading Databricks’ expansion into enterprise, government, and international markets.

Joining Databricks and Early Days [04:19 - 07:05]

Ron shares how Ben Horowitz introduced him to Databricks in late 2015. Initially exploring opportunities with companies like MongoDB and Square, Ben saw immense potential in the early-stage Databricks team, comprising highly intelligent Berkeley PhDs passionate about transforming the world through open-source software. Ron recalls meeting the founders, particularly Ali Ghodsi, the CEO, describing Ali as “like one in a billion” due to his technical prowess and inspirational leadership (05:09).

Building the Sales Playbook and Team [07:15 - 14:00]

Upon joining, Ron was tasked with creating a sales playbook from scratch, as Databricks had less than a million in revenue. He focused on assembling a team of skilled salespeople to explore what customers would pay for. “The first thing I did was like, hey, let's build out a team of people that I know know how to sell, and let's just go find out what customers will buy” (07:51). Ron emphasizes the importance of founder-led sales, stating, “No one can sell the vision and the passion of the company better than the founders” (08:03).

Pricing Strategy and Product-Market Fit [14:00 - 18:00]

Ron discusses the strategic decision to adopt a consumption-based pricing model, allowing customers to start small and scale as they derive more value. “We priced based on consumption so you could start super small, but as you started to consume more, it could get super big” (15:22). This approach minimized customer risk and aligned pricing with value delivered, facilitating significant early revenue growth.

Targeting Enterprise vs. SMB and Scaling [18:00 - 27:00]

Ron explains the deliberate shift to targeting enterprise clients early on, believing it offered more substantial and sustainable revenue streams compared to digital natives and startups. “We made a big bet early on to invest in enterprise because I thought that's where the money was and long-term sustainable for a company” (19:00). He highlights the importance of securing big logos and providing dedicated resources to ensure enterprise success, which later became critical as the company grew.

Hiring Salespeople and Building Sales Culture [27:00 - 34:00]

Ron outlines his criteria for hiring sales talent—intellectual curiosity, technical aptitude, and a strong work ethic. “Find somebody who's smart, intellectually curious, that you trust, you know, is going to work their tail off” (10:11). He stresses the need for salespeople who can teach customers to extract value from the technology, rather than just selling products. Additionally, Ron emphasizes maintaining founder involvement in sales to preserve the company’s vision and ensure alignment with customer needs.

Scaling the Sales Organization [34:00 - 45:00]

As Databricks grew, Ron transitioned from hands-on selling to building a robust sales organization. He shares insights on scaling from a small team to thousands, focusing on developing leaders who can mentor and inspire their teams. “If you have the best team on the planet and you inspire, motivate, mentor them, you get to win” (40:35). Ron also touches upon maintaining company culture during rapid scaling, ensuring that the innovative and gritty startup spirit remains intact.

International Expansion and Partner Channels [45:00 - 56:00]

Ron reflects on the challenges and strategies of international expansion, advocating for transplanting existing talent to new regions to build local culture and expertise. “Take four or five of my best young hungry sellers and say, okay, you're going to go to EMEA for a year” (46:20). He acknowledges that Databricks could have invested more in partner channels earlier, recognizing the importance of establishing strong relationships with large partners as the company scales.

Compensation Plans and Performance Metrics [35:00 - 47:00]

Ron discusses effective compensation structures, ensuring that salespeople are motivated with achievable yet stretch goals. “Goals I want them to be stretch but achievable” (36:31). He highlights the importance of rewarding top performers to drive recruitment and retention. Additionally, Ron emphasizes tracking pipeline and activity over time, understanding that enterprise sales cycles are longer but yield substantial rewards.

AI in Sales and Future of Sales Teams [53:00 - 56:00]

Ron explores the impact of AI on the sales process, acknowledging that while AI can automate tasks like prospecting and research, the human element remains crucial for building trust and rapport. “I don't think you can completely replace humans there” (54:50). He envisions a future where AI enhances the efficiency of sales teams, allowing humans to focus on relationship-building and strategic decision-making.

Competition and Market Positioning [57:00 - 61:30]

Discussing competition with Snowflake, Ron asserts Databricks’ strategic advantages and higher growth rates. “We're three times their growth rate. We've done 250 Snowflake, the Databricks migrations eight of their top 10” (59:32). He believes Databricks will continue to outpace competitors through continued investment in R&D and strategic partnerships, leveraging its private status to remain agile and innovative.

Final Advice and Quick Fire [61:30 - 71:30]

In the closing segment, Ron offers valuable advice to aspiring sales professionals and founders:

1. For Young Sales Professionals:

   • Choose Growing Industries: “Go in an industry that's growing and you're passionate about” (68:17).
   • Focus on Learning: “Go where you're going to learn the most” (68:17).

2. For Founders:

   • Engage in Founder-Led Sales: Maintain involvement in the sales process to stay aligned with customer needs.
   • Invest in Sales Leadership Early: Building strong leadership from the start is crucial for scaling.

3. On Company Culture:

   • Preserve Startup Spirit: Ron emphasizes the importance of keeping the innovative and gritty culture intact as the company scales, ensuring that the team remains motivated and aligned with the mission.

Notable Quotes:

• “Enterprise sales is kind of a system. A lot of people think it's a black box, but it's not. It's a science.” ([07:05])
• “No one can sell the vision and the passion of the company better than the founders.” ([08:03])
• “We priced based on consumption so you could start super small, but as you started to consume more, it could get super big.” ([15:22])
• “Find somebody who's smart, intellectually curious, that you trust, you know, is going to work their tail off.” ([10:11])
• “If you have the best team on the planet and you inspire, motivate, mentor them, you get to win.” ([40:35])
• “We think it's early in the market. I say it's top of the second inning.” ([60:13])
• “Most people think, like, oh, you're in sales. Like, the only people in sales they've had an interaction with is, like, a used car salesman.” ([65:46])

Conclusion

Ron Gabrisco's insights provide a comprehensive blueprint for building and scaling a high-performing sales organization in the SaaS industry. From the importance of founder-led sales and strategic pricing to the challenges of international expansion and leveraging AI, Ron's experiences at Databricks offer invaluable lessons for sales leaders and startup founders alike. His emphasis on culture, team-building, and continuous learning underscores the critical elements necessary for sustained growth and market leadership.

Transcript

[Harry Stebbings]

You are listening to 20 sales with me, Harry Stebbings. Now today we have an absolute unicorn from the sales world. On the show we have Ron Gabrisco, CRO@ Databricks, which he joined in 2016. And check this out. Under his leadership, Databricks has scaled from zero to over $4 billion in ARR. He's grown the sales team from zero to over a thousand globally, leading expansion into the enterprise, government and international markets. I do not know any other CRO or sales leader that has gone from $4 billion leading the charge. Incredible. And this is one of the best 20 sales shows we've ever done. But before we dive into the show today is your finance team a cost center tied up in enforcing policies, bogged down by cumbersome processes and drowning in operational busy work? Well, what if you could unlock seamless strategic finance that actually fuels your business growth? This is why leading global growth companies use Payhawk, the finance orchestration platform that unifies global spend management with conversational A to deliver best user experience for everybody dealing with company spending. Finance teams using Payhawk report a major shift from operational to strategic work. New AI agents for each finance role handle the busy work acting with the same governance as your finance team. Like having a small team of expert assistants that work 24. 7 but also providing an exceptional user experience to your employees. Payhawk is built for growth and enterprise businesses that operate globally. No six month implementations, no consultant dependencies, just immediate finance transformation that scales with your business. Leading growth companies like Vinted, Wallbox and Hundreds more across 32 countries use Payhawk to move finance forward, not just keep up ready to turn your finance processes into a competitive advantage. Payhawk is offering a staggering 30% discount to everybody switching from a qualifying expense management or company card provider. Who mentioned the 20VC podcast? Visit payhawk.com switch to learn and make the intelligent switch today. And speaking of game changing products like Payhawk, there no sales team can be the best without attention. Attention creates AI agents that learn from your best sales conversations so they record your sales touch points across a ton of different areas like meetings, emails, calls, CRMs and more. They then use these AI agents and learn from that data to automate busy work like follow ups, next steps, CRM updates, coaching, scorecards, bluntly all the manual shit that your sales team has to do but takes away from their creativity and closing deals. So stop losing winnable deals to process and start automating. Take the grunt away from your sales team. Use attention.com the best sales teams all are. And speaking of incredible Companies. Let's talk about Brex, the ultimate financial stack for startups. So when Brex was founded, it wasn't just about creating another financial product. It was about solving the really gritty challenges that founders face daily. Let's be honest, building something from the ground up is hard enough without dealing with clunky, outdated banks that pile on fees and leave your cash idle. Brex is different. It's the financial stack that scales with you no matter where you are in your journey. From corporate cards to maximizing your Runway to earning yield on your cash. Brex was designed with founders in mind to make every dollar go further so you can focus on building. And here's what really stands out to me. Brex combines the best of checking treasury and FDIC insurance in one powerhouse account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speed, earn Yield from day one, still access your funds whenever you need. Plus, with 20x the standard protection through program banks, your cash is not just working harder, it's working safer too. It's no surprise that 1 in 3 venture backed startups in the US with companies like Anthropic, Coinbase and Robinhood. My God, these companies are incredible. Trust Brex to help them grow. If you want to join the smartest startups on the planet, head over to brex.com startups and see what they can do for you.

[Ron Gabrisco]

You have now arrived at your destination.

[Unknown]

Ron, I am so excited for this dude. I have heard so many great things. So thank you so much for joining me today.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, excited to be here, thanks for having me.

[Unknown]

I've got to start. You just mentioned before this how Ben Horowitz brought you into databricks. Take me to that story. How did Ben bring you into databricks?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, so I met Ben through VC networking and at the time it was kind of late 2015 so I was looking at Mongo or Square or some of those companies and he was like, yeah, this company called Databricks, it's way earlier stage than anything you're looking at but it's got the most upside of any company. In my whole portfolio there's 7 PhD, super smart Berkeley computer guys and they're just a bunch of Berkeley hippies and wanted to change the world so they gave away their software for free and I need somebody to help them build a business. So I met the founders, they were just absolutely amazing. Ali and the whole crew.

[Unknown]

What was that like meeting Ali? Because I think I have a challenge doing the show where I meet Ali today and I'm like amazing leader of Multi billion dollar company. And then I retrofit that on seed founders, and I'm like, well, you're not as good as Ali. And I forget the slope that Ali's been on. What was Ali like then?

[Ron Gabrisco]

First of all, Ali's like one in a billion. This is kind of my third founder, technical founder. He's 100x better than any of them because he can do the technical stuff, but he's also an inspirational leader and he, he knows the business. Back then, he was like, when I joined the company, they were kind of transitioning to him as the CEO. He was actually the VP of engineering, and he was recruiting me. I'm like, that's kind of different. But no, the first thing, when he took over as CEO, he was like, teach me sales. I want to learn sales. So we would sit down and talk about org charts and medpic and how organizations make decisions.

[Unknown]

Can you take me to that? So you sit down with Ali and to teach him sales. What did you teach?

[Ron Gabrisco]

No, I mean, again, enterprise sales is kind of a system. A lot of people think it's a black box, but it's not. It's a science. Especially complex organizations. When you're selling to enterprises, decisions are made not by one person. Usually they're made by committees. Right. So you got to kind of know how to navigate organization, who are decision makers, who are influencers, things of that nature. We talked about medpix, some of the. How do you build a playbook? What kind of reps do you hire? I mean, Ali's 10x smart, right? All the founders are. Their brains work in a different way. So he gobbled it up. Now he's an expert. We'll sit down and he knows exactly. He's amazing salesperson now.

[Unknown]

So I love this in terms of the engine, like, characteristics, the science of it. But when you joined, it was zero in revenue. No.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah. Less than a million.

[Unknown]

Less than a million. Is it an art then? And how did you think about building the first playbook for databricks first?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Like, we didn't really have a set playbook or revenue model. Right. Like, we were creating that. That was one of the things that really was exciting to me coming into databricks was, hey, I get to help build the playbook, build the culture, all those kind of things. And honestly, first thing I did was like, hey, let's build out a team of people that I know know how to sell, and let's just go find out what customers will buy. So a lot of that first kind of stage of a Company called Product Market Fit from a million to 10 million is, you know, we had all these Spark users. They're free, but let's just go talk to them and find out what would you pay for?

[Unknown]

I just want to go back, you said about the playbook there and figuring it out. Founders are told today the founder needs to be the one to create the playbook. And then you bring in the CRO head of sales to run the playbook for you.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Do you disagree with that?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Kind of depends, right? Like, I think founder led sales is really important. No one can sell the vision and the passion of the company better than the founders. Like, Ali was really good at that. I'll tell you a story, like early days, I was, I don't know, 30, 60 days in, and I was like, hey, if we're going to have a big business here, we got to sell the financial services. And so I set up like 10 CIO meetings in Wall Street. You know, I brought Ali, Matei, Arsalan. We're going to go meet all these folks. And we went and met JPMorgan Chase this back in like early 2016. And you know, we were meeting with like their risk management. And first of all, we show up. I get all these meetings like immediately and I'm like, what's going on? And I'm like, well, I have the creators of Spark. We'd show up and there'd be like a hundred people and they just want to take pictures with Matei. So it's hilarious. But anyway, they're like, we'll give you 10 million bucks to put this. And at the time we're less than a million, like our whole first year. Target's like 10 million to put it on Prem. And Ali was like, no way, we're not doing anything on Prem. He couldn't get out of the meeting fast enough. Right. Because his vision and the founder's vision was all around cloud, open source, source and data and AI, which in retrospect was amazing insight on where the market was going anyway. So we just passed on it and J.P. morgan was like, we'll never be in the cloud. And obviously now they're like one of our biggest customers, so they're massively in the cloud. We have Jamie Dimon talking at Data and AI Summit, but again, like that product market fit, I think building that playbook, if you can find the right salesperson as a startup to help you do that, you should. But again, I believe in founder led sales, you got to go meet with customers, you got to understand what Their needs are how to develop the product. That product feedback loop of requirements and what's valuable to customers is incredibly important.

[Unknown]

So we're at like 500k to 2 million in revenue, say, and we're going to hire that salesperson. What type of salesperson do you like to hire in that stage? And for founders listening, do you recommend they hire? Is it the senior head of sales who's been there, done it, is it the juniors? Who should we hire?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean, if you're just hiring salespeople, find somebody who's smart, intellectually curious, that you trust, you know, is going to work their tail off. In the technical field. You got to have technical salespeople, right? Again, I always say salespeople teach, they don't sell. They teach customers how to get value out of their technology. Right. If you try to go for the senior, really senior folk, they're going to want to hire a bunch of people. So you got to make sure you got a bunch of funding to be able to do that. Otherwise get like a great first line manager, somebody you trust, spend a lot of time with them. Because again, salespeople are good at selling, so they're really good at interviewing. You got to know what you're getting. Do a lot of back channels, all that kind of stuff. But get somebody that gets their hands dirty.

[Unknown]

Take me back to. That's an amazing moment. You're at 500k, whatever it is, and you join and you start the sales process with Databrace. What were your biggest lessons from that 1 to 10 million process with Databricks?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Go talk to as many customers as you possibly can. Like we went and talked to hundreds of customers. Second, I hired probably, probably 40 people the first six months. Some of the best salespeople from my network. And I was literally just go set up meetings and find out what people will pay for and get the brand out there.

[Unknown]

Are you teaching them the questions to ask? How to engage with customers?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, we're learning the discovery. Eventually when you build the playbook, you want to know, okay, as you start to scale, what's the discovery guide look like? What questions do I want to ask? How do I position our solution? How do I position the value of it? The differentiators. But it's all about asking questions. Even when I interviewed for databricks, they're like, hey, here's our pitch, give us the pitch. And I was like, okay. So I looked at it and it was a lot of technical stuff. And I was like, well, you don't talk a lot about Value. I talk more about time to value innovation, all that kind of stuff. Like, okay, pitch us. And I said, okay, what kind of company are you in? They said, okay, let's do it. And I was like, okay, what are some of your challenges with data? Okay, what are you trying to do in the future for your business? They're like, are you going to pitch us? And I'm like, I am. You know, it's all about asking questions and trying to find where, you know, we can add value. And so then you build that into a system of repeatable plays and teach everyone, teach them exactly what's the profile we're going after. At that time, I was like, VP of analytics. You know, we run prospecting day every Wednesday just to get meetings. We're trying to get meetings and activity and all those kind of things, which is kind of a cultural thing. Right. You need to know I'm building pipeline all the time. And then here's our value and our differentiators, and you start to build up that customer base.

[Unknown]

So can you take me to prospect?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

How do you structure it?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

What are the lessons on how to do it? Well, for founders listening, literally, we take.

[Ron Gabrisco]

The entire sales team. This is everyone, like, including me. Like, I jump into the pit because we had a lot of younger salespeople, too. But every Wednesday, all we did was prospecting. Because if you tell a salesperson, hey, go prospect four to eight hours a week, just not going to do it because it's painful. It's, like, hard. But you learn so much. And if you do it as a team and you make it interesting, we do it in San Francisco, where the company was founded. I'd get breakfast in the morning. We'd talk about, okay, today. You'd already have to show up with, okay, here are the three to five companies I'm going to research. For each salesperson, I'm going to try to get into these companies. He researched their profiles, and then, okay, here's how we want to pitch. At the time, it was like managed Spark. So here are the differentiators, and we teach them how to pitch. We'd go make phone calls, LinkedIn, emails, all that stuff. Then you break for lunch, like, all right, who got meetings? And then you'd share. Because the collective learning, the faster you can iterate. That's your secret weapon as a small company, is I can iterate super fast and pivot super fast versus a bigger company. That's how things change. But anyway, we'd say, okay, and be like, I got this profile on LinkedIn and I got them with this message. And you teach that to everybody, all right? Everybody else starts trying and so you start learning, okay, what are people interested in? How do I get meetings, all that kind of stuff. And eventually then as you continue to scale that every Wednesday, it's just a muscle you're building. It's like going to the gym. And so I would have winner at the end. We'd either do a donation to their favorite charity or someone might get a cowboy hat today or a bottle of whiskey or something, you know what I mean? So just make it fun and have the team work together and eventually they'll start doing it on their own. You measure the activity.

[Unknown]

What ACVs are you selling at that point?

[Ron Gabrisco]

18 to 20 grand. I mean when I came.

[Unknown]

18, 20 grand?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, when I came in it was tiny. But the first say month I was there, we probably did a million bucks because as a more experienced salesperson I could go in and say, okay, how are you using the technology? What's it worth to you? We found some customers that I was like, oh, that's 250k opportunity. But at the time all the deals were 18k. I was like, no more deals less than my Uber bill.

[Unknown]

Oh, dude, I like you. Okay. But there's a lot of founders who undersell and they don't realize they're underselling thousand percent. How would you advise them to make sure that they're not underselling given the knowledge that you have?

[Ron Gabrisco]

We spent a lot of time, early days, like debating how to do pricing. I actually think it was one of the smartest things we did at databricks was we priced based on consumption so you could start super small, but as you started to consume more, it could get super big. And then we expand it to multiple products, all that kind of thing. But if you think about data and AI, data is growing. The number of queries you're going to do grows. So having a consumption based model is super smart. I see this mistake a lot. Like people will be like, oh, I'm going to price on users. There's a cap on users. If the economy goes down, then there's maybe less users. But if you can price based on what's your essence of value, then you can scale while we're sleeping. Which is, that's a big important part of I think how databricks built its pricing model is it's based on consumption. If you use it and you get value out of it, great. If not, you don't pay anything.

[Unknown]

Did you Find in the early days that helped you to sell because people were like, oh, great, removes the risk.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, exactly. So we'll try it out. And actually the one trigger that we did early on was traditional enterprise. You're always selling your services. We developed a thing we called Strategic Customer program, where we'd be like, hey, if you spend 100 grand, we'll give you free resource. Because the biggest was like there was a gap in talent and expertise. Like, our product was amazing, but you had to know how to use it. And so we would add a resource.

[Harry Stebbings]

What's a resource?

[Unknown]

A person.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, a person. Like a smart technical person to be able to set it up, show you the first couple use cases, all that kind of thing. And then once they got enabled, they were like, oh, now I get it. It's pretty cool, right?

[Unknown]

At what level can you do that? Because I think we're in that stage again with a lot of AI tools where bunny enterprises are like, I know it's valuable, I can see that, but I don't know how to implement it. And the integration process is actually much harder for traditional enterprises. At what stage can you do in fds? Fully deployed engineers is like the hot word, thanks to Palantir. At what price point can you do that?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Again, early days, you just need logos. So it depends on your funding situation, but 50 or 100 grand, say 100 grand, okay, give me 100 grand a year, we'll do this pilot, I'll give you a resource to do it. But again, you're trying to get those big logos because now once I, you know, the enterprise market's very much a fomo. You see your competitors, they're doing this with this company. Oh, I better get on board. Go fast to do that, to compete. And so getting those big logos is so important. Early days, like, you need to buy them and you need to put resources in them to make them successful.

[Unknown]

Should you discount to get them? Should you do anything to get those logos? How do you advise early stage companies on getting mega?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean, first of all, enterprise sales is different than selling to digital natives and those kind of companies. You have to realize just the sales process is different. Who you sell to, how you sell, all that. But honestly, there's more money in enterprises because digital natives, they like building stuff. They're going to squeeze you for lower prices. Enterprises need expertise, they need help. I don't know about just heavily discounting, but again, if you build a pricing model that scales that it's base unit, it is based on your value, whatever that is as a tech provider then you can scale it. So start with this one team or this one department, you can scale down the scope of it to get inside. Like director has up to 100k. So find a champion that'll spend that amount of money, give the resources. Even if you just do a pilot.

[Unknown]

Get that logo you mentioned 18k ACVs and then the same month 250k ACVs. So were you doing like, like SMB and enterprise at the same time? How do you think about whether you need to be in one camp or the other?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Early days when I got there they were all in selling to SMB startups, digital natives, Silicon Valley type folks which again we're trying to convince someone to spend 25 grand and I'm like it takes you two engineers. We made a big bet early on to invest in enterprise and we did that early because one, I thought that's where the money was and two, long term sustainable for a company. You have to have an enterprise business. I think there's very few businesses that can just scale based on startups and digital natives. They go up, down, all over the place. You need to make that investment. It's going to take a little longer to pay off. The sales cycles are longer. But you're going to learn a ton too. You're going to learn about when we entered enterprise again you learn all kinds of new requirements about security, how to navigate the organization, even your legal process.

[Unknown]

What should all founders know before they go into enterprise? Because it is a big decision.

[Ron Gabrisco]

A couple things. One, it's a conscious investment, it's a longer term investment. So you need some kind of sales expertise there, experience number one. Number two, they're also going to try to push their custom requirements on you. So you have to be a little bit careful. The security stuff is really important because again if you want to be a mainstream tech provider, you got to know about security and governance and all those things. No enterprise is just going to let them use some tech that doesn't have security. The risk is too big. So you're going to get a lot of that. But you also need to be conscious. You don't want to build something that's just for one enterprise. Right. You want to make sure whatever you're building is going to be applicable to 200 and you know, you get some of these big customers, they can, they can wield a pretty big stick in terms of trying to do custom engineering.

[Unknown]

Should you ever do custom engineering?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I wouldn't do it if it's just for one Customer. Because again as a small company your number one asset, a tech company, is your engineers and you want them innovating on how you build the market and grow the market. If you build something custom just for one customer and nobody else is going to buy it, you might distract your whole engineering team.

[Unknown]

You said you made a very conscious decision to invest in enterprise. What does that actually mean?

[Ron Gabrisco]

In reality it's a decision that's the whole team. Right? It's Ali, the founders. Hey, we're going to go after this segment.

[Unknown]

Does that mean you leave the SMB segment?

[Ron Gabrisco]

We kept that going. We hired a first line leader that would just in Arsalan. At the time he was running sales. One of the founders, crazy smart, technical, gregarious, great leader too, like one in a billion. And he was like okay, I'm going to keep the SMB DNBS going. Which was kind of generating money as we kind of built out the enterprise segment. So we personally did both. It's a handful but I had done that before.

[Unknown]

Can you do both?

[Ron Gabrisco]

You can do both.

[Unknown]

Because I really worry when you see startups that are just going off to enterprise and you have big ACVs but 9 to 12 month sales cycles and then they slip and suddenly you've got nothing.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Well, I mean it's hard. Like I said, it depends on what kind of funding you have. Right. Because eventually your business has to have enterprise. But the digital natives spend a lot of money especially in the cloud, data and AI and they're also going to be the canary and the coal.

[Unknown]

You can do enterprise before 10 million an hour or something.

[Ron Gabrisco]

We did in our first year, which I think we did 12 or 13 million. ARR. We did $2 million deals.

[Unknown]

You did 12, 13 million now.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, we did $2 million deals with enterprise. Again you have to know what you're doing though. I think it is smart to do product market fit because those smaller customers will educate you on the requirements of the future market. Again, the canary in the coal mine. They're always going to be the ones pressing the technology boundaries. Early days enter are going to adopt that as the next phase. But again you got to remember enterprises are going to have another set of requirements that the digital natives might not have around security and all those things. You need to learn about that stuff too.

[Unknown]

12 to 13 million in revenue. Yeah, your sales cycles are not that long then if you're doing 12 to 13 in the first year.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I think early days we had some pent up demand of just, you know, it was probably three to six Months because they were basically free users and we just had to sell them on why they needed to get more of our premium stuff by paying for it. You know. Again, when I joined we had hundreds of thousands of spark free users. I was like, if I can't sell them something, I suck at sales.

[Unknown]

Did you make mistakes in your hiring of your first sales team?

[Ron Gabrisco]

A lot of those early folks were people I knew. Like they were known quantities like I wanted. Smart, hungry, good at discovery, good at customer relationships, things of that nature. But of course when you're, what are.

[Unknown]

The big fuck ups? You see young founders or early stage companies making that 1 to 10 on building the sales team.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Probably the biggest thing is a lot of founders think, oh I hired a salesperson. Now I don't need to do sales because a lot of technical founders, they don't really enjoy sales, right. So I need a salesperson to take this off my plate. I want to focus more on the product and engineering. But ideally you still need to be involved in sales because again, founder led sales requires you to hear about your product. No one's going to be more passionate, passionate about selling your product. You have to still be involved until you can kind of get that, like I said, probably around 5, 10 million bucks where you have kind of a, okay, I know what people are buying. I can build a first playbook. That's the biggest mistake is just don't delegate it to the salesperson because they could mess that up. And that sets you back at least 12 months.

[Unknown]

And also don't think sales is like a panacea for product market fit. Whereas like, oh well, they didn't sell so it's their fault. And it's like, well maybe you just don't have PMF yet. Yeah, that's not all the sales fault.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Or maybe listen to your customers, you know, two ears, one mouth. And even today, good salespeople ask good questions, understand what the market wants from your product.

[Unknown]

I'm always struck by the dilemma between when you're in those early 110 phase, do you do horizontal? See what resonates with different customer bases, be it financial services, be it logistics, be it healthcare. You name the different, different sectors that we can sell into or do you go, no, we're going to sell to financial services with a verticalized sales team, very tight product marketing and a really honed sales process for financial services. Do you go horizontal and broad or vertical?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean I think you have to start horizontal because you're again learning what's your applicability to the different verticals. I didn't go vertical at databricks till we were probably 500 million plus.

[Unknown]

Right, 500 million.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah. Because like, again, like, you skipped a.

[Unknown]

Few steps that we were at 13.

[Ron Gabrisco]

No, I know. I'm just saying, like, I think when you verticalize your sales team, there's a whole nother level of like, resources and complexity that you're going to add. Right. Because you're going to add industry experts. You need to add that vernacular, add that to your training, to your enablement, your customer stories, all that kind of stuff. Early days, maybe financial services is a place to go. Like, what I learned was financial services isn't in the cloud yet. If we're going to be cloud, we're probably not going to sell financial services. Early days, let's go sell to the folks that are in the cloud already.

[Unknown]

Do you agree that you don't want to educate your customers on the problem? And so, like, for me, I don't want to tell LPs that they should be investing in Venture because it's two steps. Then I need to convince them to invest in venture and then to invest in me. You want people who know that the cloud is where they should be and then, okay, databricks not educating them that the cloud is good.

[Ron Gabrisco]

It might be a little bit different now at the scale we're at. But like early days, if they weren't in the cloud, it was like bridge to door. Let the cloud folks convince them they need to be in the cloud because we need to generate customers and revenue. You spend a lot of time. Time's your most precious commodity. Right. Especially as a salesperson. So don't spend a bunch of time with people that aren't going to buy anything. Right. You need to go find. So the whole world is our prospect at that point. Point. Every customer is potential new customer. One of our qualifying questions is, are you in the cloud? If you're not in the cloud, then you're not ready for databricks. So let the cloud guys fight that out.

[Unknown]

So we're at 13 million in revenue now.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Hold your horses on the 500. That's a shockingly late decision on verticalization. I was like, very.

[Ron Gabrisco]

A lot of companies are still horizontal. They'll still be horizontal. Right. Like, I think AWS just moved to verticals. Right. Right across the whole organization. They're 100 billion. So, like, I mean, again, I think that's another choice you have to make on your strategy when you verticalize.

[Unknown]

So 13 million.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

What starts to change when this Sales team goes from 1 to 10 to now in that scaling to 50, 10 to 50 mode.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah. Now we have product market fit. Right. We have some references. We've seen how customers buy, why they buy. Now we're starting to get into the scale function right now. We can start to build a real playbook, start to train more and more salespeople.

[Unknown]

Don't laugh when you say build a playbook. Do you literally create a doc of questions that they should ask?

[Ron Gabrisco]

FAQs, Totally Discovery Guide. Here are the questions you start with. Here's the profile of the customer we're looking for. Here's the actual profile, the people in those customers. Then here's the questions we need to ask. Here's how we position it during the the first pitch deck. And then depending on your process. Okay, are we going to run POC or pilot forum, depending on what you're trying to sell? Is it intuitive? How to get value out of it, Demonstrate value and then try to close a customer? So you're building out that playbook, you're training everyone on it. They need to know how to do that so that you can rinse and repeat as fast as possible and gather customers.

[Unknown]

I mean this with the utmost of respect. If it's bluntly, that codified. Can we not just get some monkeys to do this? I mean, it's like, here's the customer, here's the profile, here's the questions. I mean, shit, let's just get an AI avatar.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, I know. I mean, a lot of people say like, hey, can we replace sales with AI? And I think there are parts of sales you can replace with AI, like maybe building the playbook, some of those things, once you get those assets. But again, early days, you're creating that from scratch. It has to learn from something.

[Harry Stebbings]

Because if you think about a playbook.

[Unknown]

Creator integrated into gong, it could analyze tone changes in voice, words, semantics which.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Work, and then say, what are the best questions asked? Certainly should be able to use AI to get way better at that. Early days. But the one thing that will always require humans to sell are if humans are buying. Because the buying process is an emotional process. You're trying to choose what problems do you want to solve? What are the most important problems to solve? How do I solve them? Amongst many different options. And a lot of it gets down to if the technologies are okay. This one has some pros and cons. This one has some pros and cons. Who do I trust the most? Which organization do I think can get me there the fastest? If That's a person making a decision. It's not black or white. When bots are selling to bots, then you don't need salespeople. But as long as humans are actually solving problems and buying stuff, you need humans to sell it.

[Unknown]

Going back to the 10 to 15 for you, what broke in that phase?

[Ron Gabrisco]

When you're in this hyperscale phase, which I kind of see with some of the new AI companies, there's some great scaling AI companies is you have to start thinking like traditional business might grow 20% year over year when you're doubling, tripling my staffing and my leadership plan has to be what I need next year. So you can't be like, okay, I'm going to incrementally add reps or leaders. You have to be thinking we're going to do 50 million next year. We're going to do, you know, we did 100 or 250. Like what does my org need to look at at 100 million 250 million. And I need to do that now. So I need to go get those leaders, I need to sell them personally. Why? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get even bigger leaders than I need today. Because once I start building out the team and the leadership now, I can start scaling under interim. My biggest advice is you need to look at least 12 months out because if you're just trying to iterate, you're not going to grow fast.

[Unknown]

Is it ever dangerous to hire ahead of time? And what I mean by that is if you're hiring at 13 million an hour and then you're bringing in people for like a year ahead of time. Sometimes an org is not ready to digest talent. Is that ever the case or is it actually just good to get them in earlier?

[Ron Gabrisco]

No, I think you have to think about that, right? Like what does it take for us, it's like we're going to start to also have an impact on the culture of the company. Like databricks is very engineering to this day. It's very engineering technical culture. When you start adding salespeople, they have kind of a different mindset. So you have to think about how that culture fits into that.

[Unknown]

Do you think sales reps are going operators?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Not the best ones. I mean listen, you go into sales because it has financial upside. The people I'm looking for, they don't ask how much do I make? Early on you got to make sure they love the mission. The most important thing is you're building an army. They gotta love the mission, they gotta love the company first once they love the mission and the company, would you.

[Unknown]

Mind if I came and I just said I am fucking hungry to make money and I will crush it and make sure I hit quota.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean I love the grit and the energy, you know what I mean? But I also thinking like, okay, what happens when you don't? What happens when it gets tough? Are you gonna go to the next company and no, I blame you. Move around for poor leadership. So I mean I look on people's resumes, right? Like if they have a bunch of one or two year stints, they're not long for data breaks. I need people like when this get.

[Unknown]

What do you like to see in a resume?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, again I'm looking for grit, first of all, hard work and grit. Like I want somebody to tell me like, hey, I had some challenges here but I worked through it. I worked my tail off and kicked some ass. Right. I look for technical backgrounds too. Like I'm looking for specific company profiles because I know if I get a salesperson that already has some data AI technical capabilities, they're going to ramp way faster than somebody who's brand new. They got to learn the entire technology space. Right.

[Unknown]

What's more important, someone has sold an ACV size before, a customer profile before or they have the domain knowledge of the space.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Early days, it's the domain knowledge that's more important. Yeah, I think so.

[Unknown]

Why is that?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Because again, you're trying to teach customers how to get value out of your technology. And if you don't add value, like especially in today's world, there's so many technical buyers, they don't really like salespeople. Like the last thing they want to do is talk to somebody who's like, hey, you know, you want to go golfing or whatever. Like they actually want somebody that's going to help them solve problems.

[Unknown]

Do you not just tie that in with a sales engineer?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean we had great, we call it field engineering, but an Arsalan runs that team. It's great team. Right? Right. But I think the salesperson themselves has to add value. In early days it's technical. Now as you get bigger, like we have a hundred million dollar accounts, you know, you need people that know the organization can get access to the C level, all that stuff. But early days, when you're just trying to get logos and early customers, you gotta be able to add value. You gotta be able to teach your customers.

[Unknown]

So hundred million dollar accounts.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

God, I hope they get a customer success rep.

[Ron Gabrisco]

They have lots of people I'm sure they do.

[Unknown]

You kidding me?

[Ron Gabrisco]

That's insane.

[Unknown]

$100 million accounts.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, we just did one for 190 million actually.

[Unknown]

No.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, it's pretty good.

[Unknown]

That must feel pretty great.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, it's pretty great.

[Unknown]

Do you put a slack message out?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Especially when we're selling 18 grand? Yeah, you know, not too bad.

[Unknown]

Can buy some Ubers.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, not too bad.

[Unknown]

Okay, so we're going 13. We have this process. Where are we at the end of year two? 50.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, 30 to 40, something like that. We did a 3 to 4x the next year. Yeah, somewhere around that. So we might have got to 50.

[Unknown]

Did the leadership team put pressure on you to hit targets?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean Ali and I kind of built and the founders, the early days of the company. Right. He basically built out the product and engineering and helped me build out the go to market and stuff like that. And Ali's one of those guys, he wants to set the target as high as possible. And early days, I'm trying to make sure, well, let's make sure people can make some money too. Right. So there's always that tension.

[Unknown]

What are your biggest lessons on setting comp plans effectively? Because it is important. People make money and feel like they're winning thousand percent. What are your big lessons?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Early days, you got to make sure that salespeople are crushing their numbers and making money because that's going to be your best recruiting engine. When you're trying to sell a company that has small revenue, you need people to take a leap of faith. They got to hit the believe button. So I was like, who's going to be my first million dollar earner? And I would make sure that that person does that because you know what the best reps I would try to hire, they go, has anybody made a million bucks? And then they're like, can I meet them? And then they're going to determine is that possible to replicate early days people have to be blowing out their numbers and making tons of money. And it's a great recruiting tool. Now what does that mean?

[Unknown]

Do you set them deliberately? Low goals. So they hit them and then they become low goals.

[Ron Gabrisco]

But I want to make sure they're achievable goals. Goals I want them to be stretch but achievable. And I'm going to make the plans pretty rich, you know what I mean?

[Unknown]

And their plans are like 4x salary. How do you think about setting?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean a normal enterprise rep, you know, you're going to pay 300, 350K. So if they blow it out you want them to make 3x. In the early days we were doing big commit deals. I mean like I said, I had one guy make a million bucks in the first year and then scale it and now we probably have 20 guys make a million bucks in the sales team. But you always have to have those big earners because it's part of the reason they're in sales is because they want the big payday.

[Unknown]

Wow, 20 make a million dollars plus. Have you ever lost a million dollar plus person?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean eventually people are like, hey, I want to go to the next startup and try to do that because we have great retention. But as you scale, you have to be a little bit smarter too on how you spend your commissions, what changes.

[Unknown]

You just get tighter.

[Ron Gabrisco]

We have 1400 reps now we have 5000 people in sales. So like, you know, there's a certain budget we have to have on commission. So we'll schedule a plan. We know this many people are going to make 200%, 150, you know, you model it out, it's pretty sophisticated because now you have big numbers. It's not like you have 20 people.

[Unknown]

Do you ever look at it and go like it's fucking nuts. Like 5,000 people. I remember when it was me and ali like selling 18 grand deals. Is it nuts?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, it's funny world. Yeah, it's awesome.

[Unknown]

Okay. And so we have that, we have those million dollar people. Great. When you look at them, say the 20, are there things where you're like, I see that non conventional or unconventional trait in most of them. Slash all of them.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah. Like I said, I talk a lot about grit and hard work. You know, my dad was a construction worker, my mom was a math teacher. They taught me like hard work overcomes talent every single day. So I'm looking for, that's the special quality I'm looking for is like, is this person going to put in the extra hours, have the extra grit when times get tough? Are they just going to stay in the office longer, make more phone calls, that kind of thing?

[Unknown]

Do you think there's many salespeople like that? Today I am with dear friends with Jason Lemkin from Sasta. I love the man. Really. My father in venture probably hate that and say I'm his older brother, but he's considerably older than me and he's always like, no, Harry, sales reps don't want to work anymore. They don't want to work, they want to die. Dial it in and go home. Do you find that the sales reps of this generation are not willing to work as hard as they used to.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean that won't work on my team again. That's the kind of culture that I try to build. And again, I think if you're a good salesperson, you asked me did we lose any older bricksters? Eventually somebody's like, hey, I'm a startup person. I like to work at startups. I don't want to work at a 9,000 person company or 10,000 person company so they go to a startup again. But at the end of the day, I think that's what we have to teach that next generation of sellers because it's going to get even more competitive. Work your ass off out. Hustle everyone.

[Unknown]

Does it get harder to hire the hustlers as databricks becomes an incumbent?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I think databricks is a once in a lifetime type company. It will be a trillion dollar company. Somebody in that data and AI space will become a trillion dollar company. And we're the innovation leaders. I think we can do it. Part of that when you think about getting talent at this level of scale because we skipped a couple stages now is we have to become a destination company. People have to be like, I want go to databricks because I can build my career there because someday I want to be a CRO or a CEO or whatever and they're going to teach me about how to do that in the right space better than anybody. Think about Microsoft early days or Google early days. A big part of getting talent is you have to become a desktop destination company. And I think databricks is doing a pretty good job of that.

[Unknown]

I love that. In terms of being a destination company, how did the type of sales leader that you needed to be change from 10 to 100 million? An arrow?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, I mean 100 million now you got a lot more process, a lot more enablement. I don't know everyone, I can't just reach out and make sure I get involved in the deals. And so a big part of it is how do you build that leadership team? Again we talked a little bit about like what do you need in the next 12 to 24 months? So you need to build leaders so that they can effectively develop talent. My rule is like if you have the best team on the planet and you inspire, motivate, mentor them, you get to win. I mean we have a great product which is also a massive advantage for us. But that's the number one thing you can do is if I put the best team on the field and they're well coached and inspired. I'm going to win.

[Unknown]

What have been your biggest lessons on building a successful leadership team with databricks?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, so. So I think a lot of it's like again, the profile and cultural mix. We talk a lot about first team. First team's the company. So sales leadership. The higher you go, the more it's got to be about the company. You're not there to just make sure your people are successful or, you know what I mean? It's got to be, okay, here's our company mission. We're together, we're going to do it. And so I think that camaraderie and how you build that team and how you build the culture is as important as anything else that you do in sales. People need to feel like they're part of a special mission.

[Unknown]

When was the culture at databricks the worst and what went wrong?

[Ron Gabrisco]

The worst. I thought we've always had a great culture. Honestly, I can't really say we had bad culture.

[Unknown]

When was there a challenging time?

[Ron Gabrisco]

As you scale bigger and bigger, one of the keys I think is probably how do you keep that early day culture? It's such a huge advantage when you're a gritty, innovative startup. I think we've done a good job actually at databricks keeping that. That's a big part of the founders is like we want to be the innovators, the disruptors, the cool nerdy kids, you know what I mean? That's what we want to be. And so keeping that culture where you have grit and all that and not becoming a big company, that's a challenge. As you scale, how do you keep that and not become a big company where people are just. It's bureaucratic, it's process, it's. It's the management team versus the workers. But I think we've done a pretty good job of that. I think our culture is second to none. It's a big part of why we're.

[Unknown]

Successful in the 0 to 500 billion range, which is a huge range. What did you not do with the benefit of hindsight you wish you'd done?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I started to invest in the partner channel. Much bigger partners are interesting, right? Especially the big partners, big SI partners. At that point, we had already done Ali and I did the deal with Microsoft, which became kind of pretty historical, I think in legend. And it's still Microsoft's our biggest partner. It's an amazing partner for us, but you got to start thinking through channels and partner strategies. And when you're so small, you're always thinking, how do I get these partners involved? But you're too small. They're like, go away. But once you start getting scale, you need to start investing early days in partners.

[Unknown]

And so you didn't do that early enough.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Well, I think we could done it earlier. Yeah, absolutely.

[Unknown]

I think a lot of founders see channel partnerships is like the panacea. We're going to have a partnership with Salesforce and it's going to be like, boom.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

What are the secrets?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Early days, that's hard to do.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Like I would say, if you're less than 50 or 100 million, like, you need to build a strong direct sales channel and then you can build the partner channel. But at 500 million now, we should be scaling, moving stuff through channels. Right.

[Unknown]

What does it take to do partner channels, Rich? Pretty well.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Good question. Because sometimes, like partner leaders, they're like sales leaders that didn't make it sometimes. So I try to actually hire VCs.

[Unknown]

Which is founders that didn't make it.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I like to hire people that have strong sales acumen, sales leadership, a lot of the same qualities that want to build out channels. Because again, me as a CRO, I'm a sales leader, but. But I also spend, you know, 30, 40% of my time with partners because I want to build that channel. Right. And so it's a skill you need to learn when you're trying to build a massively scalable business. And so, you know, just getting the person that's always been in partnerships, sometimes it's a little bit dicey. I'd rather find somebody that's done some sales and done some partnerships. They've done it, you know, thoughtfully to build their career. So, I mean, I think that's important to do.

[Unknown]

Okay, That's a fantastic one. So that's what you maybe didn't do that you wish you'd done earlier. What did you do that you wish you hadn't done? And what are the reflections on that?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I think we did a lot of stuff. Right. Like, I think when we expanded internationally, I think we did it at kind of the right time.

[Unknown]

When did you do that?

[Ron Gabrisco]

We probably started to do that to EMEA, maybe 100 million plus 100 to 250 million. And then we were in APJ probably, you know, about 250 million plus. You have to do that thoughtfully, though.

[Unknown]

Any lessons on how to do international expansion, Mark? It's hard.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, it's hard because there's a lot of different things. You have to translate your culture, your playbook. You have to have leadership there that you trust. One of the big lessons I learned is you want to transplant some of your talent. So I literally, when we opened Emea, took four or five of my best young hungry sellers and said, okay, you're going to go to Emea for a year. It's going to be a great experience for you. You need to help them build the muscle over there and build the culture over there. Right. And me personally too, I, you know, I'm doing multiple trips, one a quarter over there to get that going. Same thing with apj, like, transport some existing talent, helps build the culture, all those kind of things.

[Unknown]

So what do you think of the big mistakes you see people doing when they go international?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I think some do it too early because, you know, again, it's going to spread your focus, your sales leadership, but it's also going to spread your focus for your product. Like you're going to see new requirements come up up in Asia or new regulatory requirements, depending on where you go. So I think the biggest mistake is people go early before they've really got that product market fit because they, you know, hey, they have a couple customers in emea, so let's go support them. And now, now again you got to think about like, you know, I have a limited team. You're constrained by your resources, like where do you want them focused? So I think that's probably the biggest mistake I see.

[Unknown]

I find people go too early into enterprise and often. And the hard thing I find with enterprises, the sales cycles mean it's tougher to determine success with reps because they're just longer before you have close. How do you think about measuring rep effectiveness and what are your biggest lessons in what it takes to do it? Well, how do you know if I'm.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Good for enterprise or for any rep?

[Unknown]

Does it differ?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I think it does slightly just based on the sales cycle. But I think up front I'm looking at pipeline and activity. The number one thing I'm going to look at is this person getting the right meetings. Are they building the right pipeline? I got to make sure I'm inspecting that too. So, you know, early stage sales leader, you're going to want to go, hey, I'm in your territory this month for this week. Set up as many meetings as you have. And if you got one or two meetings, probably don't have a great salesperson. Right. So you're going to see them in front of a customer. Do they ask good questions? Does the customer want to buy from them?

[Unknown]

Is there a right amount of Meetings. I know it's really granular, but like we mentioned Dagnan before. Dagnan was always like, to me, when you get to my age, the memory goes. But he said it's like six or eight. I can't remember what it is. But you can't do more than six or eight because you need to be researched, you need to be informed. Six or eight is the max.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Do you agree with that?

[Ron Gabrisco]

You know, we sit at the bar at like five a week is kind of the minimum. So, you know, five to 10. He's probably right. And that's six to eight. That's not a bad metric. But again, you do want to make sure you prepare. It's just like any other sport.

[Unknown]

Okay, so you have five week. Let's just roll with this. You have five a week, 20amonth. Do you have like an expected close? Right.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I'm building opportunities, right? So at least 25% of those should turn into some kind of opportunity. And now I'm going to work that opportunity. And you know, they're going to close at different rates depending on that organization where, how can I get budget things of that nature?

[Unknown]

Do you worry about selling, setting goals that can be played? And what I mean by that is you're like, Harry, I want 20 meetings. I'm like, okay, 20 meetings and my qualification process goes down. How do you think about effective goal setting which can't be played?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Eventually I'm going to see pipeline and closures. But you're right, there's a delay. There's a 6 12, maybe 18 month delay on that. But that's why the first line manager and the sales leader is so important. Because I'm an go assess those meetings myself. Again, if you think about it, you need pitchers and batters, right? So. Or catchers and batters. I don't know what, you know, I guess for cricket here, you need bowlers and batsmen. Yeah, bowlers and batters.

[Unknown]

So we didn't play rounders in this country.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I know, I know. But I'm a baseball player. So if you think about it, the reps, like when I was first there, I was like, just get me as many meetings as you can. Just put in there and be like, oh, we're going to deal with J and J. They're like, who do you want to meet with? I was like, anyone with a J and J email address. Because I'll be able to assess, like, is that person got juice? You know, is there an opportunity? How do I navigate the organization? So again, go take as many Meetings as a leader.

[Unknown]

So you will join that call and let them run it?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yep.

[Unknown]

Okay, so you're not running that call.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Correct.

[Unknown]

And you sit in and you just listen?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah. As long as it's going well.

[Unknown]

Okay.

[Ron Gabrisco]

And if it's not going well, I'm going to step in and try to help Open.

[Unknown]

Where does it not go well?

[Ron Gabrisco]

It depends on the rep, their preparation, are they asking questions? When you think about what's a successful sales meeting, we haven't even talked about that. The basics of selling, it's like, have I generated some rapport? Do they trust me? Have I generated interest? Have I identified challenges and have I driven to an objective? What was the objective of my meeting? Was it to get a next meeting? Was it get a poc? Was it get an introduction to somebody? So you need to have a game plan on all that. So you've had to research the company, the opportunity, the people you're talking to, their LinkedIn profiles. So a good meeting is somebody who really is prepared. Again, it's like any Sport, you practice 10x more at least than you play. So if you have a one hour meeting, you should be preparing for it. Ten hours.

[Unknown]

So funny. There's a Usain Bolt interview, which is amazing, and he says, I trained 10 years for nine seconds.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Seconds. Yeah, there you go.

[Unknown]

Exactly me.

[Harry Stebbings]

That's a bad ratio.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah. I mean, think about the Olympics, right? Like, these people train their whole lives and it's over in split second. Right.

[Unknown]

Honestly, unbelievable. Going back to that, what it takes to do a good meeting. I'm so glad you broke it down in that way. I know it's kind of facile of me to ask, but what do you find works in building rapport?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean, get to know somebody, right? Like, be intellectually curious about their background and.

[Unknown]

But like, I find a playbook when I feel like someone's running a playbook on me, it doesn't build rapport. And so like, for me, my job as an interviewer is to build rapport too.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

But to make someone feel safe.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And like, you know what? He's not here to get me and he's open to. That's all. Talk about my mother having Ms. Or anything like that because you're like, oh, I feel like I'm getting to know this guy.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah. Be a little bit vulnerable. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Unknown]

Any lessons for you on like, how you built were poor other than like, oh, whereabouts are you in the world? Oh, it's rainy in London. Ha ha ha.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I'm definitely not a Weather talker. Normally I usually talk about, you know, where did you grow up? What are you interested in? What are your family? I mean, you got to start small. You can't be like, oh, do you have any cancers we can talk about?

[Unknown]

That's a savage job.

[Ron Gabrisco]

No, but again, it's like, you know, how do you, how do you try to get to know somebody, right? Get to know about them. I think a lot of people are influenced by where they grew up, their families. I like to ask about that because I think a lot of people are like, family is a super important thing. So I want to get to know about that.

[Unknown]

Do you find people lie about being a buyer because you want to know if they have budget and if they're the buyer? Do you find that people overinflate their own status within companies?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean, listen, I'd never ask somebody, do you have budget? I'm experienced enough to know what's going to happen. I'm going to get that information eventually. But like, listen, everybody wants to be important, so let them be important. The reason they have in that position is because they have some decision authority. I've done literally billions of dollars of software deals and thousands of deals. I kind of know how organizations work and I'm there to teach how to get value. And I'll ask questions like, oh, do you have to do a value case for this? How does that work? How does that process work? Who has to approve that, that who has buying authority? Once you've established rapport, you can get a lot more deeper on that kind of information on how to navigate the organization. But you can't really have that discussion until you've added value.

[Unknown]

How does AI change the sales process, do you think? Do you use any AI tools today in the sense?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Oh, we do, yeah. We use perplexity, we use glean. We actually built some of our own AI, like a sales AI assistant. Our sales AI assistant. If we're like, hey, how do I get funding for an on prem migration from Microsoft? You can just ask and it'll tell you the process on that. We use perplexity. We'll do a lot of our upfront account research. Tell me how this customer uses data and AI. How would they get the most value out of databricks? You can get a lot of information on that. And then our sales assistant will actually take that data or take that conversational stuff along with our count data. It'll say, oh, they've been growing here. They've been spending on this product. They're working on this initiative. Oh, I, I also see in the press they're interested in cybersecurity, stuff like that. Right. So you can use AI to really accelerate all that research and get smarter. Because again, the smarter you are on that customer, the more interesting questions you're going to be able to ask to try to find an area you can add value.

[Unknown]

So content preparation, sales process. In terms of outbound, will we see outbound not die, but be replaced by AI? In terms of email outbound literally being done by AI, I don't know if.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Completely replace it, but certainly I think outbound stuff, the AI is actually better at it than humans, in my opinion, because it'll also learn what works faster. Right. Like that whole iteration process I did early on with hey, everybody's going to do prospecting day. If I start setting up a bot to try to ping people to get meetings, it's going to learn what works and what doesn't work faster. It's than I can get a team of humans together. Now, that being said, you want to learn that, but it needs to be informed. Right. I don't think you can completely replace humans there.

[Unknown]

Also, in a world of infinite outbound, does value of it not go down? If you know that you're being outreached by an AI, does the value of that not go down?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I don't know. I haven't thought about it. It's still early days, but you're probably right. I mean, even now, how many emails and LinkedIn posts do you get? Literally thousands. So which ones kind of go to the front of your box where you even take a meeting? A lot of it's going to have to do with your brand and your message and what's happening in the market and how much you know about their company. Right. Again, that's what I think AI can do is if I really know what's going on inside that person, inside that company. You're right. You might need a human to actually put a human touch to it, but it's probably going to give you the content to get them potentially interested better. Right.

[Unknown]

Will you have more or less sales reps in 5 years time?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Again, as long as humans are buying software, I think you need humans to sell software. So we definitely use AI to become more efficient, but we're going to hire quite a few folks because we're going to go big. Did I answer that question?

[Unknown]

Yeah, you did. Brilliant. When you look at the different stages of the company, what was the hardest? You can break it up into 10, 100, 100, a billion, billion and beyond, which was the hardest.

[Ron Gabrisco]

They all have different challenges. The 0 to 10 for me was probably the most fun. It was tough, but I was like, I can sell $10 million or something to literally anyone. You know what I mean? All I have to do is figure out what they want to buy. That 10 to 100 million is pretty tough scale because now you got a little bit of product market fit. But now you really have to get into that enterprise motion. Start getting referenceable customers, get them to speak about you. I really enjoyed that phase for sure. Then the 100 to a billion, now you're getting partners, involved, distribution channels, you're scaling the sales organization. So now you're getting to the scaling function. We just did 3 billion last year. I think we'll be 10 billion in a few years. So now you're in hyperscale and a different set of challenges. So each one I've enjoyed because they're different. I think the 10 to 100 is one of the hardest things. Now the hyperscalers in AI, they're like blowing through 100 million. Right. Like some of these companies, they're crushing it.

[Unknown]

Which one are you most impressed by?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I think cursor is super impressive. I think they're growing crazy fast. Like, I use AI for engineering and coding. They're doing really well. So, I mean, we'll see, you know, if they can sustain it. I hope they can, but it's, you know, super impressive what they're doing, for sure.

[Unknown]

You, you know, you have been in a fight against Snowflake.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

What are your biggest lessons on selling against competition? Everyone has competition. Says one of the biggest things I've learned today, investing, is that before you used to have two or three competitors, Databrace and Snowflake, say now there's 15 competitors for everything.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

What are your biggest lessons for founders on how to sell in competitive markets?

[Ron Gabrisco]

So, first of all, you need competition, otherwise you don't have a market. Especially early days. If nobody else is selling into your market, what's the point? I don't think there's 15 companies that will survive. The traditional thing is there's three companies, there's three clouds, there'll be three AI players. I think there'll only be one data and AI player, Databricks. But there'll probably be three every other market.

[Unknown]

Three market.

[Ron Gabrisco]

We'll win. We'll crush everyone. No, but I think, listen, and the biggest player gets 80% of the market, right.

[Unknown]

And the other one's, you know, it depends in consumer. That's the case in enterprise, it tends to be the opposite. Tends to be much more distributed.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I haven't seen that. I mean look at Salesforce. Look at ServiceNow.

[Unknown]

I mean you look at Cloud and.

[Ron Gabrisco]

You'Re like AWS Cloud's a little bit more even distributed. Although GCP, you'd still say it's kind of a distant third. Right. But AWS and Azure kind of neck and neck. That's a big battle. Getting back to the competition, Snowflake question for us. It's kind of good to have somebody that's trying to make you better. And I'm ultra competitive, right. Like I'm an athlete. So like the reason I do sales is because I love competition. Right.

[Unknown]

How far behind are they?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Five plus years in my opinion. You know, we bet on the future early days. We bet on AI, we bet on the lake house, we bet on open source. They're just dipping their toe into that. And if you look at it Too right, we're three times their growth rate. We've done 250 Snowflake, the Databricks migrations eight of their top 10. We're doing pretty well in that market. So I think we're the future. And the founders made some really smart investments in technology, bets in R and D to make sure we're well ahead of them. And so we'll continue to invest. It's great being private too, right? We get to over invest, invest in R and D, over invest in sales.

[Unknown]

Do you think you've benefited from being private in a way that they haven't had the luxury?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, massive. It's massive, right? We think it's early in the market. I say it's top of the second inning. And so if we can continue to pour money into innovation and R and D, into sales and distribution, we're going to grab more market share and again get further ahead of them.

[Unknown]

Where have you not spent or have not spent as much that you would like to spend more of in the future?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Actually our brand's gotten really good now as we started to spend more on brand. I think we should have done more of that early marketing and brand. I want to press even more on partners. You know, we'll fund 200 million in projects to partners this year. But I would spend even more in partners and distribution training. We just started Databricks India Academy. You know, we'll train over a million people.

[Unknown]

India Academy?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, Databricks India Academy.

[Unknown]

Fuck me.

[Harry Stebbings]

That's niche.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, it's cool.

[Unknown]

Wow.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Well, there's so many companies that you Know have big IT and outsourcing in India. And so we built a whole academy there to train all the, you know, Indian partners, wipros and the emphasis and train a million people there.

[Unknown]

So what are your biggest lessons in what it takes to do Presidents Club? Well, if I'm an early stage founder.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Should I do Presidents Club and what do I need to do to make it good?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean early day founders, what I've seen is they'll do the whole company and off site. But it's not a president's club. Right.

[Unknown]

What stage should you do president's club.

[Ron Gabrisco]

When you have enough of a sales team where because president's club is like 10, 15, maybe 20% of your people are going. But if that's only two people, it's not a president's club. Right. So you got to have at least, I don't know, 50 or 100 people at least in sales before you join a president's club. Because it's also like if you're an engineering company because we bring MVPs too Engineer side of it's going to be like what sales going on like a holiday for top performers. But if you think about the sales mentality, you're competitive. You want to be one of the best. You want to be one of the top 10, 15%. So it's usually kind of a slightly later stage thing. I would say you got to be 100 million-plus to do it. You have to be smart about how you invest in it. And the whole idea is create a special experience. Experience for the salesperson and their spouse. Get that spouse where they're like, wow, databricks is amazing company and you gotta make sure you go next year.

[Unknown]

I always say the power of pillow talk is so valuable.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, true. Totally. And my sales team cares more about who goes to club or as much as who goes to club as like okay, what's the new commission plan? How does that work? All that kind of stuff. It's that important. Like people will be like trying to lobby for the people that are on the fence and. And you create that culture where you know, everybody wants to get there and becomes a really fun thing. So.

[Unknown]

And just data breaks his sales go to.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Well, it's over a weekend.

[Unknown]

Oh, it's over a weekend. Oh, it's fine. Oh, fine. It's been a power of pillow talk I think is so valuable because when they come home and moan I just not. But remember we did have a great time and Ron was so lovely to us.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Well, listen, we're. I Asked for a lot. Right. They're traveling all the time.

[Unknown]

Does remote sales teams work? You said there about kind of the pipeline building, the prospecting day, that being there in person.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, we have. The saying comes from one of my leaders, Michael Hartman. Sell from your feet, not from your seat. If you have the opportunity to go meet a customer in person, go do it. If you have the opportunity to go do lunch or dinner, go do it. Because again, we talk about that rapport. Talk about that relationship with the customer. They want that relationship where they trust you, you. Where they know they can count on you to solve problems for them. Because a lot of times they're making a decision, it may affect their career, it could catapult them way into the future or not. And so they're going to make a decision. The more time you can spend with them, spend with them in person. Establish a rapport.

[Unknown]

Crazy expensive state dinner not done. Because a lot of people are like, oh, that's so last year.

[Ron Gabrisco]

It depends on the company. If you're going to sell to an enterprise company and you can get executives out for. For two hours to do a steak dinner, do it. It's worth it. Because now you'll have a relationship with those people that you wouldn't have had on 30 minutes over the phone. Right.

[Unknown]

Do you know what I miss? I miss golf days.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I look at the golf, I don't get to golf with me.

[Unknown]

I love four hours on a course.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, that's rare. Totally rare.

[Unknown]

But can you imagine if you had four of your biggest enterprise customers hacking out with each other, hanging out with you, shooting the shit, no phone.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, we try to do events like that recently. We did spring training events. We had like 30 customers there, actually. I got to throw out the first pitch for the Texas Rangers, and then.

[Unknown]

It only cost you 5 million bucks.

[Ron Gabrisco]

It wasn't that expensive. But, you know, then we went golfing and dinner and, you know, you get to spend that kind of time now you have a different relationship with those customers. You got to make sure they're the right customers. So who.

[Unknown]

Who performed at your last president's club?

[Ron Gabrisco]

We said we weren't going to talk about this.

[Unknown]

Are we not allowed to talk about that?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, no. I don't know if that's public or.

[Unknown]

Not, so we don't have to.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Maybe it is. I don't know. I mean, last year we had Flo ride. It was awesome. Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was amazing.

[Unknown]

I heard that Ali did a breakdance to it.

[Ron Gabrisco]

He did not.

[Unknown]

Oh, he did not. That was fake news.

[Ron Gabrisco]

No, he did not. He did not. He did not.

[Unknown]

That would be too good, though.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Although he is fun.

[Unknown]

Dude. I love that. Listen, I've so enjoyed this. Can I do a quick fire with you?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Sure, let's do it.

[Unknown]

Okay. There's so many places I could take this. Let's start with what's the biggest misconception people have about CROs, the sales leader?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Most people think, like, oh, you're in sales. Like, the only people in sales they've had a interaction with is, like, a used car salesman. They're like, oh, you have to be slick. I don't think being a sales leader, you have to be slick again. I think you have to be knowledgeable and trustworthy, worthy. You can be a mentor. Right. You don't have to be tough. I'm a driver. But, you know, mentor people, inspire them.

[Unknown]

You have such a great voice as well.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Oh, thanks.

[Unknown]

Yeah, you're like kind of like a husky. A Matthew McConaughey.

[Ron Gabrisco]

I appreciate that. I think I look just like him.

[Unknown]

You know what? In 10 years, I'm chasing my hero. I'm like, just talk to me. Wrong. This could be a meditation. That's awesome, dude. Where are you weakest as a sales leader today? Where do you think you need to spend time?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I mean, I'm all in on databricks. Like, I spent a lot of time on databricks. My kids are out of the house, so travel all the time.

[Unknown]

Is that a hard or marriage?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I have great marriage. My wife's like, I mean, I wouldn't be able to do what I do without her. She takes care of everything while I'm, you know, here in London or career, Singapore, wherever. So what's your biggest.

[Unknown]

Warren Buffett said the most important decision you make in life. Life is the partner you choose to spend your life with.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

What's your biggest advice to me on partner selection? I told you at the beginning.

[Harry Stebbings]

You were like, how am I?

[Ron Gabrisco]

This is hilarious. That's funny. No, for sure. I mean, depending on what your life goals are, they have to be in line with your partner's goals. Right. Like kids and, you know, what kind of work you're going to do, all that kind of stuff. Like, to me, when I look back at just life in general, like, having kids is the best thing I ever did. Getting married, best thing I ever did. If you do those things right, then it allows you to put your mind and everything into other things. I put it into databricks. I had to make lots of sacrifices, but my Family was always there to make sure I was on the right track. So I think balance is probably the biggest thing for me. You didn't really ask, but work wise certainly I'm sure there's a ton of stuff I can do better in terms of more patience and, and all that kind of stuff because I'm a hard driver. Yeah, that's my biggest thing is you got to have a little bit of balance too.

[Unknown]

I never had much patience. That's why I called it the 20 minute VC. Are you kidding me? I am for this question. Your adopted son and I'm 23 and I'm entering a sales org. First job. What's your biggest advice to me as a 23 year old entering sales for the first time? Bright eyed.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Two things. One, one, go in an industry that's growing and you're passionate about obviously I think data in the eyes where it's at today. But if you're going into tech, I'd say go into data and I. So go into a market that's growing and gotta be passionate about it too. If you're like, oh that's boring, don't go into that. Number two is go where you're gonna learn the most. A lot of people try to go, oh, I'm gonna get this amount of money instead of that amount of money. No, go to where you like the people and they're gonna help men to you and you're gonna learn the most because that's the whole thing about your first job or whatever is how do I learn and how do I grow as an adult, as a worker, as all those kind of things. Right. Like that's what it's all about.

[Unknown]

Penultimate one. You can go back to any day in the databricks journey. What day do you go back and relive?

[Ron Gabrisco]

Relive. Oh wow. That's a great question.

[Unknown]

Thank you. I'm a podcaster. Yeah, I've had some time on this.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah. They didn't even give me heads up.

[Unknown]

On this thing to you. Like, oh, that's a. It's a great sales process. You're like, no.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Kind of my job one day. You know what I think when Ali and I got the first Microsoft deal signed was a pretty amazing day. So that was pretty game changing. Looking back, do you remember where you were? I remember when he told me we were like on the 13th floor there's this like little conference room. We would like like a couch in there. It was like video games in there or whatever. So in Databrace. Yeah. In the in the office and they.

[Unknown]

Called you up and they're like, congratulations, you have a partnership.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Well, no, no. I mean we've been working on it for months and months and months. But when, when it finally got signed, we were like, you know, me and Ali were like, oh, great job, good work. High five. Did you do it at big tree dollars? No, it was like back to work.

[Unknown]

And put on any Taylor Swift.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Back to work.

[Unknown]

No.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

So shake it out.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, no, well, I'm more of a rap guy anyway.

[Unknown]

Listen, when you hit a trillion, Taylor can perform at president.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, there you go. She's expensive though.

[Unknown]

She's pretty expensive. But a trillion is quite a lot of money. That's a goal for you.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Totally. I thought that was a pretty good day though.

[Unknown]

Oh, that's a pretty great day.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, that's a cool day. Yeah. Yeah.

[Unknown]

Okay. Ten years time, final one. Where is databrick standing? Your mom mind?

[Ron Gabrisco]

I think we're a trillion dollar company.

[Unknown]

Then in 10 years.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, it's an iconic company. I mean how many trillion dollar software tech companies are there? There's only seven or eight, I think. It's funny if you think back like people at databricks today, it's like Microsoft people. What were they like back in 1985 or Google People back in 2000 when they started?

[Unknown]

Is that where you think you are in that journey?

[Ron Gabrisco]

That's where we are. Yeah. We're early days. We've obviously doing well but it's early days so we got a lot of work to do but we're excited about it. Like I said, I think market's amazing. We've made a lot of good bets. I think we continue to invest and innovate. We can get there. So I think it'll be one of those iconic companies.

[Unknown]

Listen, Matthew McConaughey, it's been wonderful having you.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Thanks for having me.

[Unknown]

Honestly, shows like this are why I love doing what I do so much. So seriously, thank you so much for being so open and this has been amazing.

[Ron Gabrisco]

Yeah, thanks for having me. I loved it.

[Unknown]

Dude, you are amazing.

[Harry Stebbings]

I mean, are you kidding me? He has been the head of sales CRO from 0 to 5 billion in revenue. What a hero. That was such a fantastic show to do. If you want to see more, you can find it on Spotify. I'd so appreciate it if you like the episode and left a review and.

[Unknown]

Make a huge difference.

[Harry Stebbings]

But before we leave you today, is your finance team a cost centre tied up in enforcing policies bogged down by cumbersome processes and drowning in operational busy work. What if you could unlock seamless strategic finance that actually fuels your business growth? This is why leading global growth companies use payhawk, the finance orchestration platform that unifies global spend management with conversational AI to deliver better best user experience for everybody dealing with company spending. Finance teams using payhawk report a major shift from operational to strategic work. New AI agents for each finance role handle the busy work acting with the same governance as your finance team. Like having a small team of expert assistants that work 247 but also providing an exceptional user experience to your employees. Payhawk is built for growth and enterprise businesses that operate globally. No six month implementations, no consultant dependencies, just immediate finance transformation that scales with your business. Leading growth companies like Vinted, Wallbox and Hundreds more across 32 countries use Payhawk to move finance forward, not just keep up ready to turn your finance processes into a competitive advantage. Payhawk is offering a staggering 30% discount to everybody switching from a qualifying expense management or company card provider. Who mentioned the 20 VC podcast? Visit payhawk.comSwitch to learn more and make the intelligent switch today. And speaking of game changing products like Payhawk, there no sales team can be the best without attention. Attention creates AI agents that learn from your best sales conversations so they record your sales touchpoints across a ton of different areas like meetings, emails, calls, CRMs and more. They then use these AI agents and learn from that data to automate busy work like follow ups, next steps, CRM updates, coaching, scorecards, bluntly all the manual shit that your sales team has to do but takes away from their creativity and closing deals. So stop losing winnable deals to process success and start automating. Take the grunt away from your sales team. Use attention.com the best sales teams all are. And speaking of incredible companies, let's talk about Brex, the ultimate financial stack for startups. So when Brex was founded, it wasn't just about creating another financial product. It was about solving the really gritty challenges that founders face daily. Let's be honest, building something from the ground up is hard enough without dealing with clunky, outdated banks that pile on fees and leave your cash idle. Brex is different. It's the financial stack that scales with you no matter where you are in your journey. From corporate cards to maximizing your Runway to earning yield on your cash. Brex was designed with founders in mind to make every dollar go further so you can focus on building. And here's what really stands out to me. Brex combines the best of checking treasury and FDIC insurance in one powerhouse account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speed, earn Yield from day one and still access your funds whenever you need. Plus, with 20x the standard protection through program banks, your cash is not just working harder, it's working safer too. It's no surprise that 1 in 3 venture backed startups in the US with companies like Anthropic, Coinbase and Robinhood. My God, these companies are incredible. Trust bracks to help them grow. If you want to join the smartest start startups on the planet, head over to brex.com startups and see what they.

[Unknown]

Can do for you.

[Harry Stebbings]

As always, I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible episode coming on Monday with Anton, founder of the fastest growing company in the world.

[Unknown]

Lovable.

[Harry Stebbings]

0 to 100 million in seven months.