Latest / The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors / How to Hire a Great VP of Sales Today: The New, Latest Edition with Jason Lemkin (Video + Pod)

Transcript

How to Hire a Great VP of Sales Today: The New, Latest Edition with Jason Lemkin (Video + Pod) · The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.
0:00
SPEAKER_00: Originally,
0:01
SPEAKER_00: this first date was just going to be networking,
0:04
SPEAKER_00: brain dating in the back,
0:06
SPEAKER_00: but we decided to throw together some extra sessions.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: It always happens.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: I asked Christophe to do the bootcamp for VC and I thought, what could I do for bootcamp?
0:15
SPEAKER_00: And I thought I could update some of the earliest things we've been doing for 12
0:19
SPEAKER_00: years on Sastr on hiring a great VP of sales.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: This is some of our earliest content from the early days.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: It really took off.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to take a pause.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: And think one of the 10 mistakes that founders are making today at 2024 when they
0:35
SPEAKER_00: make the classic VP of sales higher.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: And on the old days of SaaS where I made up a statistic, I said 70% of first VP of sales don't work out.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: I think I surveyed 11 people and I think 7.8 of them said it.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: So I think I coined 70%.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: I've done surveys on LinkedIn for thousands of people.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: They've confirmed it.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: And you might think 12 years on, we would be getting better at this.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: We would be getting better at making this critical hire right as founders.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you across my portfolio, across CEOs I talked to, we're not.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: We're just as bad as it, as ever.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to walk through 10 mistakes founders are still making and some things we're getting worse.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: My only hope is that one or two of these stick and you make less of a mistake.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: But the meta point, it took me 11 years to figure out one thing on this.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: 11 years, I'm embarrassed.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: I knew a lot of this 12 years ago.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: It took me 11 years to figure this out.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: It might be one of the 10 points, so it might be redundant.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: But if you make a critical hire and VP of sales or any role at your startup,
1:37
SPEAKER_00: VP of anything,
1:38
SPEAKER_00: it's your fault.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: It's your fault.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: I blamed my first mis-hire as VP of sales.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: I blamed him for not doing the job,
1:47
SPEAKER_00: for hiring terrible people,
1:49
SPEAKER_00: for writing a letter to my board saying I was incompetent.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: I blamed him for that, okay?
1:53
SPEAKER_00: I did until about last year.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: It took me 11 years or 12 years to realize it's my fault.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: I hired him.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: Your VPs, your executives, anyone on your team can never do enough due diligence.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: They can never understand what your go-to-market motion is like,
2:10
SPEAKER_00: what your metrics are like,
2:12
SPEAKER_00: what your business is.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: When I do investments,
2:14
SPEAKER_00: I interview a lot of VPs for the founders at 1 million,
2:18
SPEAKER_00: 10 million,
2:18
SPEAKER_00: 20 million,
2:19
SPEAKER_00: 60 million in ARR.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: And I try to go last.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: I try to be the last one for them to interview.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: And I always ask them like a basic question.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how much revenue the company has?
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how fast they're growing?
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how many sales folks are on the sales team?
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Nine out of 10 of the executives have no idea.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: And we can mock them and we can say,
2:39
SPEAKER_00: how could you have spent eight hours,
2:41
SPEAKER_00: two hours with the CEO,
2:42
SPEAKER_00: one with the CTO?
2:44
SPEAKER_00: How could you not know these things?
2:45
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, the best ones do know.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: But all of a sudden it clicked on me.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: We don't.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: It's our fault.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: We don't qualify candidates out enough.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: We move too quickly.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: We don't do reference checks since March, 2020.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: We want to get it done.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: And it's always our fault.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: The candidate can never knew it up diligence.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: So it's always your fault.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: That's my meta learning that I want to talk through, but okay.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: What are the 10 mistakes or 10 points now?
3:11
SPEAKER_00: This one is newer.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: This does become a vibe.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: What did Paul Graham call it?
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Founder mode.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Did anybody read this?
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Anyone hear of this founder mode thing?
3:19
SPEAKER_00: I think a few people saw it.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Great.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Be you.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Founder mode does not work for sales.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: It does not work for inside sales.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: It does not work for... There are elements of it that work, which we'll talk about.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: There are elements that don't work, but you need a sales team to scale sales.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: You do.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: Founder mode in sales means not exiting sales, and we'll talk about that a bit.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Even if we don't, let me hit it.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: The number one mistake that CEOs, founders make when they hire a VP of sales is they exit sales.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this on Sastr.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: They're tired,
3:52
SPEAKER_00: they've been doing founder-led sales,
3:53
SPEAKER_00: they hire Linda,
3:54
SPEAKER_00: they hire Bob,
3:55
SPEAKER_00: they hire Amelia,
3:56
SPEAKER_00: they hire Jason,
3:57
SPEAKER_00: and they're out of here.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: They leave sales and they disappear for six months and sales goes in the toilet
4:03
SPEAKER_00: because the VP of sales doesn't know the product.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: They don't know the customers.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: They don't know what happened.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: They were never trading.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: They were never onboarding.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: Again and again, founders exit sales when they are VP of sales.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: You cannot do that.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: You have to spend just as much time in sales after you hire someone as you did before.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: So your time should change.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: You should be more of a middler.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: A great VP of sales will grab you and bring you into 10 deals a month instead of
4:25
SPEAKER_00: you having to do it,
4:26
SPEAKER_00: but you'll never get the time back.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: But when I see founders doing,
4:30
SPEAKER_00: which is newer,
4:31
SPEAKER_00: is they're either staying founder-led too long or they're reverting to founder-led.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: They're reverting and...
4:40
SPEAKER_00: Look,
4:40
SPEAKER_00: if you've got,
4:41
SPEAKER_00: you're closing million dollar deals and you have two reps working for you,
4:45
SPEAKER_00: it's 500K,
4:45
SPEAKER_00: 400K deals,
4:47
SPEAKER_00: you could probably even get to eight to 10 million being founder-led,
4:50
SPEAKER_00: you don't need that many people.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: But even there, there's too much time, there's too much to do.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: And so I see founders not even thinking about hiring a real VP of sales until eight,
5:01
SPEAKER_00: 10,
5:01
SPEAKER_00: 12 million ARR,
5:02
SPEAKER_00: it's too late,
5:03
SPEAKER_00: there's too many people.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: And I see a new thing with some of the best founders I know who got burned.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: They've had a miss hire for their first set of sales.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: And then their second, sometimes their third.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, frack it, frack it.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm going back.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm rolling up my sleeves, like Paul Graham said, and we're going back to founder led.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: We're at 17 millionaire.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do it all myself.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: I know we have four products and 80 people at the company and I got 11 VCs,
5:27
SPEAKER_00: but I'm going to be the V I was never that good at it,
5:29
SPEAKER_00: but I'm going to be the VP of sales now.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: I tried to do that myself as a founder.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: I lasted four days.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't handle the 12 folks on our team.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't handle it.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: But when you get big, it's too much.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: You can't run outbound yourself.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: You can't do, you can't spend your entire week doing an ABM strategy.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: You can't be in every single deal.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: So if you make a misfire or two,
5:51
SPEAKER_00: And you go back,
5:51
SPEAKER_00: founder,
5:52
SPEAKER_00: because you got no choice because it's your fault,
5:54
SPEAKER_00: but you had to let Jason or Amelia go.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: It's fine for a month,
5:57
SPEAKER_00: a quarter,
5:58
SPEAKER_00: but start recruiting the next day,
5:59
SPEAKER_00: the next week when it doesn't work out.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: You could not go without a head of sales for a year and get from 10 to 20 to 40 to 80.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: There is too much human capital required.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Sales has no efficiencies whatsoever in it.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: You need even more people the bigger you get.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: It has dis-efficiencies of scale.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Software is wonderful.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: In theory, you write it once, it can be read everywhere.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: This has worked great since the days of floppy disks and DVD ROMs.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: It has never worked in sales and never will.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: You will need to hire headcount infinitely, linearly with revenue, and you can't do it without help.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: So this is my advice.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Even if you're not sure,
6:37
SPEAKER_00: buy two million in an era, be hiring your first set of sales, and we'll chat about the mistakes.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't work out, hire another.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: And if you go back to founder-led, don't stay, whatever you do, don't stay there.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: Paul Graham may or may not,
6:50
SPEAKER_00: he's much smarter than I am,
6:51
SPEAKER_00: much richer,
6:52
SPEAKER_00: much better investor,
6:53
SPEAKER_00: but he never ran a founder-led sales company,
6:56
SPEAKER_00: okay?
6:56
SPEAKER_00: He didn't do it.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't mean founder,
6:58
SPEAKER_00: maybe he did,
6:59
SPEAKER_00: but in my mind,
7:00
SPEAKER_00: he did not mean founder mode or whatever it's called to mean you be the VP of sales
7:04
SPEAKER_00: of 23 million in an era,
7:05
SPEAKER_00: or even six.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: Don't go back.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: This is a big mistake.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay, next one.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: And this one is new too.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this was true before that little bug went around in 2020.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was always true.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: But frigging A, it is the truest thing in hiring any VP today.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Whether it was being locked up in our backyards for eight months,
7:29
SPEAKER_00: whether it was the markets exploded in 2021,
7:32
SPEAKER_00: coming down in 2022,
7:33
SPEAKER_00: crashing in 2020,
7:34
SPEAKER_00: there's been so much change in four years.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: We are full of executives that are the jaded, the broken, and the done.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: The jaded, the broken, and the done.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: They need a job.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
7:45
SPEAKER_00: that side hustle as a fractional CXO didn't work out,
7:49
SPEAKER_00: their clients dried up,
7:50
SPEAKER_00: they need a job again,
7:51
SPEAKER_00: they're back out on the market.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that can work, don't get me wrong.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Or the 11 side hustles they were running.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but we've all been through so much.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Here's the issue.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: When we started SaaSter, you couldn't find any VPs.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: There weren't any VPs that had come out of Datadog or Mongo or Klaviyo or Bill that
8:09
SPEAKER_00: are here,
8:10
SPEAKER_00: the CEOs here,
8:11
SPEAKER_00: any of these great companies.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: They just, there were only so many executives when we started SaaSter.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Today,
8:16
SPEAKER_00: there's a hundred public SaaS companies that are all turning over directors and VPs
8:21
SPEAKER_00: and senior directors and senior managers,
8:23
SPEAKER_00: hundreds of them every year.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: And you will want to hire one of them.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: Even folks that are here at Duplo Cloud and Notion, whoever.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: We can read them here at G2, folks.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Great folks will leave G2 or whomever, and you'll want to hire some of them.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And these are great companies.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: But you got to be careful.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Too many folks are jaded, broken, or done.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: And I guess they're the same thing.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: But I'll give you a few tells.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Don't hire these people.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: We need pirates and romantics in your startup.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: You need folks that want to go on this crazy journey with you,
8:50
SPEAKER_00: not phone it in from home,
8:51
SPEAKER_00: not phone it in working 18 hours at home and just managing people.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: You don't need that.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: So number one, don't hire the jaded.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: The one literally four minutes in your interview,
9:02
SPEAKER_00: they're telling you how the CEO or the VC screwed them over.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many times I heard it.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: I crushed it at my last startup that didn't make it and sales went down when I was there,
9:11
SPEAKER_00: but it wasn't my fault.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: It was that stupid CEO who didn't know sales, that dumb CEO, that idiotic meddling CEO.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there's truth in that.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Anyone that says, I'm sure there's truth.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Don't hire them.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna think the same thing of you about three weeks in, okay?
9:25
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna think the same thing of you, okay?
9:27
SPEAKER_00: They may be right, but they're broken.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: The next one, I crushed it, okay?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: I took the company from 1 million to 800 million single-handedly myself,
9:41
SPEAKER_00: but I made nothing because the VCs screwed me over.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: The VCs screwed me over.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: We raised 500 million and sold for 80 million.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't think the VC has screwed you over.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: You sold.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: This is called life.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if the Christoph got into this last presentation.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: You sell for less than you raise.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: No one makes any money.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, Crimea River, but this isn't charity.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: There are no best efforts points.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: There's no participation points, folks.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: This could be half the presentation.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: There's no participation points in SaaS.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry you busted your ass and the company sold for less than it raised and no one made any money.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: That's life.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: You didn't crush it, okay?
10:18
SPEAKER_00: So anyone that tells you the VCs screwed them, it didn't work that way.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: There is no magical deal out there where the VCs 10X their money and this great
10:27
SPEAKER_00: executive you're meeting made nothing.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: I can explain venture map, it doesn't work that way, okay?
10:33
SPEAKER_00: There are times when the VCs get their money back 1X and employees make nothing, that does happen.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's not fair at some level.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: That's not crushing it.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Making one extra money in 10 years as a VC is not exactly crushing it, is it?
10:45
SPEAKER_00: That's a 0% return.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Like IRR, it's not that great.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: So you got to let these folks go.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Their related cousin is the broken.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to sell anymore.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: So many sales leaders I talk to don't want to sell.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a theme.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Don't confuse what they did and the beautiful PowerPoints they have and their
11:06
SPEAKER_00: endless discussion of their brilliant process and how they do process and how great
11:09
SPEAKER_00: they are at process and how great they are at managing process.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to sell anymore, but they need the job.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to do it.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Do they want to sell?
11:20
SPEAKER_00: Ask, here's the simple way you can figure out if they're broken.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to do, Jason, your first two weeks on the job?
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Amelia, what do you want to do your first two weeks on the job?
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Brendan?
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I need to set up processes.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Don't make the hire.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: If they don't say go meet frigging customers the first two weeks, do not make the hire.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Anyone that wants to sell wants to be in deals the first day, the first week.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: I want to go, I'm going to get on the road my first week and go meet your top 10 customers.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And then my second week, I'm going to start closing them.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: That's what you want to hear.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: That's what you want to hear, and it's probably true.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: But too many folks worked from that ADU in their backyard,
11:54
SPEAKER_00: got bitter,
11:56
SPEAKER_00: stock went up,
11:57
SPEAKER_00: stock went down,
11:57
SPEAKER_00: thought they were millionaires,
11:58
SPEAKER_00: were millionaires,
12:00
SPEAKER_00: and now they just want to manage a team and not sell.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: There's too many folks out there that just want to manage a team and not sell.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: Do not hire them, they're broken.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: And the last ones which were related to it, they're just done.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: They're really nice.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: They've been a fractional CRO for now four years.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: They went fractional in June when it was easy.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Now we're in September.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: They've been fractional for more than four years.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: And they're nice.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And again, they have great strategy slides.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: They have great triangles and squares and arrows going everywhere and how you
12:28
SPEAKER_00: onboard 700 reps and their patented onboarding strategy.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: But they're done.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: They're done.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Again, simple test for all this.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to do your first two weeks, Christophe?
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Jane, you don't hear them customers.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Don't.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Not even sell, but that's good.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: You want to hear, I'm going to go meet customers.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to get on the road.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go talk to prospects.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: That's what you want to hear.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to bring Brendan and Sam with me.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to bring these two guys with me.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: But that used to be enough.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: But there's too many folks that just want to manage and not work that think they
12:58
SPEAKER_00: have a couple of folks to bring with them,
12:59
SPEAKER_00: which we'll talk about.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: It's not enough, but you want to hear, go meet customers.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we hit this one.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to be redundant because I guess I got it, but I'm going to be redundant anyway.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Because you're all so many, this was not a mistake that I think we made before March 2020.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: I got to say 80% of the VPs of sales candidates that founders that I know,
13:20
SPEAKER_00: invest in,
13:20
SPEAKER_00: work with,
13:21
SPEAKER_00: ask me to meet 80%.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Bring me this guy, gal, whatever, no gender.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: They won't do the sales themselves.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: Again, process, slides.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I have my two weeks right here.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Process, not meeting customers.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: Trust me, it's 80%.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: You got to listen.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: Just because they talk the talk about how it was so great at Datadog and how it was
13:39
SPEAKER_00: so terrific does not mean they will do it anymore.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: They got to do sales themselves.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: How long?
13:45
SPEAKER_00: Probably once you hit $200 million AR, they can get out of deals a little bit.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: But I think most of you are under $200 million AR and maybe not.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not, right?
13:54
SPEAKER_00: There's this classic story that I've told before,
13:56
SPEAKER_00: if you're old OG Sasser,
13:58
SPEAKER_00: and then there's a newer version of it.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: But the classic story was one of our first 10 in the old days, biggest customers was Groupon.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: When Groupon was exploding, they went from zero to 1,500 sales reps in a year and a half.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: They're all using Adobe Sign Echo Sign.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Great, almost seven figure deal.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: So we flew out there in the middle of a terrible Chicago winter.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: It was like January or February.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I had a really thin like track sweatshirts that used to be in back then.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: They're about a millimeter thick from Zazzle.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Wind was ripping through me at 20 degrees in Chicago.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Go up there, the group on hanging out, doing our pitch.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: And next door is frigging Mark Benioff who flew in from Hawaii on his jet to meet
14:36
SPEAKER_00: with then 24 year old Andrew Mason,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: one of his,
14:39
SPEAKER_00: a new $50 million a year customer.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Cause you gotta be in sales.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: He's still doing it.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Mark Benioff said he still goes to Davos every year because he sits at the top of
14:47
SPEAKER_00: one staircase there and he meets with 200 customers and prospects in Davos flying there.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Now, we can't all fly private.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: It is convenient.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: It is convenient.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: But there's a point here, right?
14:57
SPEAKER_00: You got to meet the customer.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: So is it even at 200 million?
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Salesforce is coming up on 30 billion and Mark Benioff is still out there hustling
15:03
SPEAKER_00: and meeting with customers.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: If you're a VP of sales and Gunnar or CRO, pass.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Don't matter what else you like them.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this one, a lot of you are gonna wanna give on.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna wanna challenge me on.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna wanna cut a quarter here.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: You finally found someone that's actually willing to leave their home, okay?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: That's willing to actually go meet a customer in person,
15:24
SPEAKER_00: that's willing to actually sell and not just manage a team.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: You finally found that, it takes you four months.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: But it's not clear they really understand your product.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: It's a little complicated.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: It's environmental SaaS.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: It's a deep type of compliance.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a new type of SOC 7 or 11 or 82.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: And they've never really done security before.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: But half these folks worked at a sales-led company, which they're salespeople.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Like, how hard is it to sell an e-signature or sales loft or outreach?
15:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's easy.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: But if you've already used the tool for the last five years,
15:57
SPEAKER_00: you probably have an intuitive sense of the product going into sell a complicated
16:02
SPEAKER_00: piece of regulated software in a new industry.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: Most people can't make the jump.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: That's an issue in and of itself.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Number one, most important thing, do not give on this.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Everyone is, this is, no one does reference checks since March, 2020.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: No one asks sales reps to do demos before they hire them anymore.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Horrific error.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: And everyone hires a VP of sales that never learns the product until after they start.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: Never.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: There's a company I invested in, I love this company.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: They got to 10 million,
16:32
SPEAKER_00: hired their third VP of sales,
16:35
SPEAKER_00: great guy,
16:36
SPEAKER_00: came in six months in,
16:37
SPEAKER_00: sales were way down.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: But honest,
16:40
SPEAKER_00: most honest guy in the world gets up in the board meeting and he says,
16:42
SPEAKER_00: I gotta be honest,
16:44
SPEAKER_00: I didn't actually learn the product.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: When I started, I thought I could do it.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: I thought I could do it.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: I thought the simple tagline of this company, which is great.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: The tagline is great.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: It turns out you go in, the customers just cut his head off.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to know the deep ways that's integrated with 28 leaders,
16:58
SPEAKER_00: how the workflows work,
17:00
SPEAKER_00: why,
17:00
SPEAKER_00: and importantly for sales today,
17:02
SPEAKER_00: why you would win when they have 10 competitors.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: You cannot walk into a meeting in this world when it is,
17:08
SPEAKER_00: when some areas are in a downturn,
17:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe we're overall in a downturn,
17:11
SPEAKER_00: but everything's harder.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: You can walk in there and think you're going to be a people person when whomever,
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Duplo Cloud or Drada or JustWorks walks in there and they know the frigging market cold.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: They know when you're weak, they know how to fix, they know how to solve your problem as a customer.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: And Mr. Backslabbing Lunch Guy comes in and just wants to talk about, where do your kids go to school?
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
17:32
SPEAKER_00: My kids go to Nueva, which is right over there.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Next.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: I got 99 problems to solve and us talking about sports or the Olympics or the tour
17:42
SPEAKER_00: to Italy ain't solving one of my problems.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: And it just does not work.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: I see folks just get slaughtered in sales when they're not product experts from the
17:51
SPEAKER_00: bottom to the top,
17:52
SPEAKER_00: from the bottom to the top.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: We are all such, we are all every year.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: We are smarter buyers, all of us up and down the stack.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: And you cannot go into that meeting and not know the product.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: It is embarrassing.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: It is embarrassing.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you do, you can't hire a VP of sales that is not willing.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: And I know many will challenge me on this, sales leaders.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: They'll think about this and then they're gonna come back to me three or four
18:14
SPEAKER_00: months later and say,
18:15
SPEAKER_00: you're right.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't let them start until they know the product fold.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't let them start.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Now,
18:21
SPEAKER_00: best of all is literally give them the,
18:23
SPEAKER_00: if you really think they're so great,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: give them the offer,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: agree on the comp,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: agree on the equity and say,
18:28
SPEAKER_00: you know what?
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Now take a month before you even show up and go learn the pro- I don't even want you starting.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: Go to all of our webinars, go do it, do it every UBU.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: You show up October, a Halloween, not tomorrow, and you show up an expert, right?
18:43
SPEAKER_00: And a related point,
18:44
SPEAKER_00: I remember in the early days of Gusto,
18:45
SPEAKER_00: Josh Reeves,
18:47
SPEAKER_00: a very distinctive CEO,
18:48
SPEAKER_00: but I remember he had this thing that at the time I thought was crazy,
18:51
SPEAKER_00: which is when Josh would hire a new executive,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: I think he wouldn't let him work for 60 days.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And I think at this time we can ask them,
18:57
SPEAKER_00: I think we more wanted to make sure they knew the gusto culture.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Like you have to wear slippers in the office, not shoes.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: And there's a certain way of doing business.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that was the goal,
19:06
SPEAKER_00: but there's something to really knowing the company and the product as a leader
19:10
SPEAKER_00: before you start.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: And I just see train wrecks.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: You come into a complicated space and you don't know the product.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite companies I've ever invested in,
19:21
SPEAKER_00: they just broke up with their second VP of sales after over a year.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And they closed their first seven figure deal the other day, seven figure deal a year.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: The VP of sales allegedly was an expert in the industry.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: He had worked at a competitive company before,
19:37
SPEAKER_00: but always had a team of SEs,
19:38
SPEAKER_00: sales engineers and solution architects with him.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Never learned the product in a year for this seven figure deal, they left him outside in the lobby.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: They left him outside because the last big deal, he embarrassed them.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Not because he's not smart or a good person,
19:53
SPEAKER_00: but he could not go in front of a Fortune 500 CTO and talk API and security with
19:59
SPEAKER_00: the Fortune.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: He embarrassed them.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: He embarrassed the founders.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: So for the next seven-figure deal, they left him in the lobby.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: They flew out and they left him in the lobby.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: And that was the right call because he never learned.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can make this work with 10,000 SEs, but most of us don't have enough around.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: So,
20:15
SPEAKER_00: I, this is just me.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you could wing this pre 2020.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can wing it in 2021 when people would buy anything with a pulse in some categories.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you literally could.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't think this works today.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Either make sure they're a product expert before I start force them to do a demo
20:31
SPEAKER_00: that you believe that you would hire or give them a vacation until they start,
20:35
SPEAKER_00: but don't let them start up thinking that they will learn your product on day one.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: We don't have that.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: They'll close nothing.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Related point.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: This one seems so obvious.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: my friends, but it's maybe the most important.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: I know I put it on five, not one or 10, but it's probably the most important point in here.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Whenever a VP of sales doesn't work out with,
20:59
SPEAKER_00: and I talked to the CEO and I talked to the founders,
21:01
SPEAKER_00: the other four things are true.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Were they a product expert?
21:03
SPEAKER_00: No.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Did they really want to sell?
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Nah.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, all these issues came up.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Were they checked out?
21:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Did they bash their last?
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Did they blame the VCs?
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: All these things.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: Then I asked them at the very end, did you 100% believe in Jason?
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Did you know in your heart and soul that she or he would be successful?
21:22
SPEAKER_00: And they always say, no, I never.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: I got tired.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: I'd been looking for six months.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: I needed an answer.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Lemkin was the best one I could find.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: And we all have to settle at some level.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Like Mr. Perfect, Ms.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Dashboards is not the right call.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: But they never believed.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: They never believed.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: And the ones that fly...
21:40
SPEAKER_00: When I hired Brendan Cassidy,
21:42
SPEAKER_00: who we've talked about,
21:43
SPEAKER_00: he's probably here,
21:45
SPEAKER_00: who had been the first head of sales at LinkedIn.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: I had a disagreement with one of my VCs who thought he wanted someone more senior or whatever.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: This was years ago.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: I knew a hundred fricking percent in my heart, he was the guy.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: I knew it for a couple of reasons.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: I knew because I'd done a reference check with him about a year prior and he gave
22:01
SPEAKER_00: me the best insights of any sales leader I'd ever talked to just in a reference
22:04
SPEAKER_00: check for you at recruiting.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: I knew I wanted him, but most importantly, even if I was wrong, I knew I want him.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: So I backed him on anything, wherever he needed help.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, your job as leaders with your VPs is not to tell them what to do,
22:18
SPEAKER_00: It's to backfill them.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: This is where the founder mode comes in,
22:21
SPEAKER_00: not to do their job,
22:22
SPEAKER_00: but to back,
22:22
SPEAKER_00: not everyone can be great at everything.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: So you've got to backfill them.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: If you 100% believe in them and they need you in Chicago,
22:29
SPEAKER_00: a Groupon in the middle of the winter with a jacket on,
22:31
SPEAKER_00: you're going to be there.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: If you don't believe in them,
22:33
SPEAKER_00: They're going to give up on them.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: They're going to fail.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: Don't hire any VP that you don't 100% believe in.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you need to be 100% right, but you have to say in my gut, I love Jason.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: I love Amelia.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: I love Brendan.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: I love Sam.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: No matter what anyone,
22:46
SPEAKER_00: no matter when anyone on my board or any of my,
22:48
SPEAKER_00: even the rest of my team,
22:49
SPEAKER_00: the best ones often your team will be split on because they may be a threat to the
22:52
SPEAKER_00: way things are,
22:53
SPEAKER_00: the way things are.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: But this is the number one, I always have to do to really believe in them.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: No, founders know we have that spider sense.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: of even if we haven't made the hire,
23:02
SPEAKER_00: we know who we think is that your jaw drops the best of the best and don't make the hire.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to work out if you don't believe.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Point six, this seems minor, but again, this is a new one over the last couple of years.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: This mythical full-stack salesperson.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: Mythical full-stack.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: We talked a lot about this with Sam Buon,
23:23
SPEAKER_00: who was Xero of Brex in our Miami meetup earlier this year,
23:26
SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to come back to that in a second.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: This does exist, but it's rare, and it has to exist at birth, okay?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And what do I mean is,
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Today everyone wants,
23:37
SPEAKER_00: there's this meme,
23:38
SPEAKER_00: there's this myth,
23:38
SPEAKER_00: there's founder mode,
23:39
SPEAKER_00: but there's also this full stack AE and full stack BP of sales and zero where you
23:43
SPEAKER_00: know how to do everything.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: You're graded out.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: I do my own outbound.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: I do my own qualification.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: I do, I do my own training.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: I do my own onboarding on my own SC.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: I close everything.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: I go from SDR to close to everything.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: And I get what these walk this.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing more frustrating than a founder than when half your sales team just
24:00
SPEAKER_00: waits for the inbound lead to come.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: And that's all they do.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: They just want the inbound lead to come in and say,
24:04
SPEAKER_00: I want to buy today and then send them a document to e-signature.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: That's half of sales and SaaS.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And I'll share data on this tomorrow.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm not making it up.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: And it drives us nuts when we want this.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And we think we want this full stack person.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: But they're really rare.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Folks that haven't done outbound, they can't learn on your dime.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Folks that haven't done partnerships,
24:22
SPEAKER_00: channels,
24:22
SPEAKER_00: technical buyers,
24:23
SPEAKER_00: in-person price point,
24:24
SPEAKER_00: the points I put at.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't exist for a sales rep unless you trade them from day zero, in which case it's possible.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: But you have to only hire folks that have been full stack,
24:33
SPEAKER_00: that have earned their own soup,
24:35
SPEAKER_00: that have earned their own keep.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Most importantly for VPs of sales, do not expect a full stack VP of sales or CRO to magically happen.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: Ask them.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: If outbound, here's a perfect example.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: This is my real point.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: And I can give you so many stories.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: If outbound is not part of your model,
24:51
SPEAKER_00: if it's 100% inbound,
24:52
SPEAKER_00: then you don't need an outbound expert today.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you want to add it, okay?
24:55
SPEAKER_00: If your model is like 20%, 50%, 80% outbound and you want it to go up,
25:00
SPEAKER_00: And you love this head of sales, but they've only done inbound 0% chance of success.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: What are they going to spend a year learning outbound?
25:08
SPEAKER_00: They're going to go buy nooks or some other tool here and magically turn it on.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: These are great products.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: That alone is not enough.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: If you've never done it before.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: Another huge flag.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: is direct versus indirect revenue.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: How much revenue you get direct or versus partners.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: I just talked with a VP of sales I've known for over a decade that flamed out at a
25:27
SPEAKER_00: SaaS company at 40 million,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: got fired,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: okay,
25:30
SPEAKER_00: at 40 million.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: And I said, what happened to this guy?
25:33
SPEAKER_00: It took me a year to realize half our revenue came from partners in the channel.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: I'd never done that before, he said.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: So not only did it take him a year to figure something out,
25:40
SPEAKER_00: he should have figured it out the first week,
25:42
SPEAKER_00: but he never leaned in on this indirect selling because he was only a direct
25:46
SPEAKER_00: selling guy.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he didn't get, he couldn't be full stack.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: Partnerships, channels, can they sell to a technical buyer?
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Like we talked about where they left the VP of sales in the lobby, right?
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Are they willing to sell in person or only on the phone?
25:58
SPEAKER_00: This sounds, this was a big, this was still a big deal before 2020.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Today, it's a huge deal.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: If you've only sold,
26:04
SPEAKER_00: again,
26:05
SPEAKER_00: from your ADU or from home,
26:06
SPEAKER_00: and your motion,
26:07
SPEAKER_00: and you sell more when you go visit customers,
26:10
SPEAKER_00: and it's true of 96.842% of us,
26:13
SPEAKER_00: and they're not willing to travel,
26:15
SPEAKER_00: they're not gonna start traveling when they magically join you.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: I interviewed almost 40 VPs of sales last year, early last year.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Only two were actually willing to travel.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: You can laugh, only two out of 40.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: My point,
26:28
SPEAKER_00: there's a lot to read into that,
26:30
SPEAKER_00: but my point is don't expect your VP of sales to do these things,
26:34
SPEAKER_00: outbound,
26:35
SPEAKER_00: partnership,
26:35
SPEAKER_00: indirect,
26:36
SPEAKER_00: technical selling,
26:36
SPEAKER_00: travel,
26:38
SPEAKER_00: that if you know you need them,
26:39
SPEAKER_00: if they're already part of your motion,
26:41
SPEAKER_00: ask if they've done it before,
26:42
SPEAKER_00: just be kind.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: How much outbound have you done?
26:44
SPEAKER_00: How much partnership sales have you done?
26:45
SPEAKER_00: How much channel sales have you done?
26:47
SPEAKER_00: How much traveling did you do at your last job?
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Do you mind?
26:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love it.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: Like I can't stand being at home.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: My husband drives me nuts.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Great.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: But you got to ask this.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Don't just smite.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: The meta point is don't assume they will do all of it.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Most VPs of sales zeros either won't have it or don't want to.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: The next couple ones, and then we can take questions with our remaining time.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: This one's an oldie.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: This one hasn't changed.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: Some of this stuff is, I think, new vibes since 2020, especially since 2023.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: This one slide, I think I wrote in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2024, 2025.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: But man, this is brutal, my friends.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: This is brutal.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: A mishire in a VP of sales sets you back a year.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: The only thing that's changed in my learning as we started it is it's your fault, not theirs.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: It is your fault if you make a mishire.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: You did not do enough diligence.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: You did not spend enough time in person.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: You did it over Zoom.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: You did not understand that actually they've never done channel sales.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: They've actually never done outbound.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: You did not understand that they are not
27:51
SPEAKER_00: They've never sold to a technical buyer before.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: They've never sold in your industry before.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: You skip too many steps.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: It's your fault, but it will set you back a year.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: Why?
28:00
SPEAKER_00: A couple of things.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: The first one is when you make a true miss hire sales always goes down.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: It happened to me.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: It happened to half the people here this week or more.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: You go in in the product led stage.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: You're not a great seller.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: You're not a perfect closer.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: The product cold, the customers love you.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: And then you disappear from sales and you bring in someone that doesn't know your product.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: What do you think happens?
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Sales goes down, those deals don't close.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: Even worse, she brings in or he brings in two reps that don't know the product either.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Now you've got three new sellers on your team that don't know the product or the industry,
28:30
SPEAKER_00: throwing them at deals where if just you and Linda did it together,
28:33
SPEAKER_00: they all would have closed.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: They all would have closed.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: So it gets worse and then they hire three and then they hire 10 and all your money's gone.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: And then what,
28:43
SPEAKER_00: after a month and then Saster says only give them 30 days,
28:47
SPEAKER_00: but no one believes it,
28:48
SPEAKER_00: even though I wrote that post and you give them 60 days and 90 days.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: And then you're in, if you have any investors, they say Jim's a nice guy.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: He's pretty good.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: They're bored.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: Who's talked to him twice.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Give Jim another quarter.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: So now you're six months in seven months in,
29:02
SPEAKER_00: and then you go to let Jim go a month,
29:03
SPEAKER_00: seven,
29:04
SPEAKER_00: and he changes your mind.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Cause he's a good sales guy and it's nine months and he's hired 10 people.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: And then you finally move on from Jim and it, and you start your search for six months.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: You've lost a year and millions of dollars.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: This avoidable story is again and again.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: So look,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: there are certain miss hires or,
29:22
SPEAKER_00: or mistakes you're going to make that are very,
29:24
SPEAKER_00: there's the old saying push down or do the mistakes that are reversible,
29:27
SPEAKER_00: slow down the big ones that are irreversible.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: This one's in the middle.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: It's not irreversible, but boy, it's damaging.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: So when you're tired,
29:35
SPEAKER_00: when you've been looking for six months,
29:37
SPEAKER_00: when you've honestly interviewed 30,
29:39
SPEAKER_00: you're not pretending you've interviewed 30 candidates like we do,
29:42
SPEAKER_00: but you've really interviewed 30 and you meet with Jason and you're not 100% all in,
29:47
SPEAKER_00: just realize,
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Push on and find someone you love in life, in hiring, as a co-founder.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Find the one you love because you're going to lose a year when you settle.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: It's not worth it.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: You think settling is good.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: You think, look, I know I'm tired.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: I know Jason's not the greatest VP of sales, but at least I'll have somebody
30:07
SPEAKER_00: There is a little bit of rarefied air between very good and great.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: That's taking risk.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: But when you settle, sales will go down.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: All the money will be gone and they'll hire 10 terrible reps.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: It's not worth it to buy yourself two weeks of mental relief of having made the hire.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: It's not worth it.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: You'll lose a year.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: And these ones are updated versions of older points, but I got to tie it all together.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: So we've all done it.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: This mistake we actually,
30:32
SPEAKER_00: we used to make in the early days of SaaS for all time because we didn't have all
30:35
SPEAKER_00: the veterans.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have all the folks that had come out of Mongo and Salesforce.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: And actually we had folks from Salesforce who started SaaS, but there wasn't enough others.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, there's a hundred public SaaS companies to recruit from.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: So in the old days, we would hire folks that were too junior to do the role.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Now we're hiring hundreds of folks that are broke and burnt.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: but certainly have the title on their LinkedIn.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: But still, what are you going to do?
30:57
SPEAKER_00: So you can't hire the SVP from Salesforce or Mongo or Trulio that doesn't want to sell anymore.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: You can't make that hire.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: So you can go for that perfect Goldilocks person that has everything at the right
31:08
SPEAKER_00: moment in time and the right hour in their career.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
31:11
SPEAKER_00: they have an offer from OpenAI and Cohere and Glean and Notion,
31:14
SPEAKER_00: but they still want to join your startup they've never heard of.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Of course they do.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: Of course they do, because you're such a great founder.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: But so that Goldilocks person probably doesn't exist.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: So when you decided the SUV from Datadog is wrong, they got fired because he never left the ADU.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: And you decided Mr. Goldilocks doesn't exist.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: And you realize you got to hire a stretch.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: You got to hire a kid.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, this kid may be 60 or maybe 26.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: But what I mean is you got to hire someone on their journey with energy that's
31:40
SPEAKER_00: going on the way up because this is their shot to be your head of sales.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Of course you do.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Of course you need a stretch hire.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: But there's just one thing you have to do when you're stretch hire.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to have the full package.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: They may not have worked at the right place.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: They probably even got fired once if they're a pyrodramatic and passionate.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Getting fired from every job in sales is probably bad.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Getting fired just once, a good sign, just once.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: But you cannot, the whole point, going back to the first point of
32:06
SPEAKER_00: why you can't stay in founder-led.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day,
32:09
SPEAKER_00: if you can actually sell and you can learn the product,
32:11
SPEAKER_00: you can get on the run,
32:11
SPEAKER_00: you can talk to customers,
32:12
SPEAKER_00: you can do the sales process yourself as a VP of sales,
32:15
SPEAKER_00: not skip it because you want to be a manager,
32:16
SPEAKER_00: but do it yourself.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: Then it all becomes about human capital.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: I've got to grow the sales team from two to four to eight to 16,
32:22
SPEAKER_00: 32,
32:22
SPEAKER_00: 64,
32:22
SPEAKER_00: 128,
32:24
SPEAKER_00: because our revenue is doubling each year.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Whenever it's growing, you have to roughly grow headcount with your revenue and sales.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: You can't avoid it.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: 500K quota, 800K, 400K, it doesn't matter.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: You can't increase it to 4 million.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: It don't work that way.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: So if your yielded quotas for an 80 is 500,000 and you want to add 5 million to bookings,
32:43
SPEAKER_00: you need 10 scaled reps.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to add 50 million, you need 100.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: You can't get around the math.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: So at the end of the day,
32:50
SPEAKER_00: if they know the product and they can sell,
32:51
SPEAKER_00: the most important thing is recruiting.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: VPs of sales are the best recruiters on your management team because they're constantly recruiting.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: So make sure, even in a stretch candidate,
33:01
SPEAKER_00: that they have hired two to three salespeople that hit quota before.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: Not 20, not 200, but it's not enough if they inherited a team.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: It's not enough if they were on a sales team.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: It's not enough if they were an SDR that got promoted to manager but never hired
33:16
SPEAKER_00: any of the SDRs that reported to her.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: They have to have hired two people and made them successful.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: If they can figure out how the hell to find two people in this crazy world
33:26
SPEAKER_00: where everyone really wants to work 10 hours a week from home.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: If they can find two people that can get quoted,
33:30
SPEAKER_00: they can eventually find 200 for you,
33:31
SPEAKER_00: because it's hard to find two.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: So ask them who the two are nicely, and then say, hey, can I go talk with Pooey and Robbie?
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Just ask.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: And if they're any good, they'll connect you
33:43
SPEAKER_00: on the meeting and you call them up and just ask the question, how was it working?
33:47
SPEAKER_00: How was it working with Brendan?
33:48
SPEAKER_00: What was it like?
33:49
SPEAKER_00: How did he find you?
33:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he hunted me down, right?
33:52
SPEAKER_00: He hunted me down at this event.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Here are those great thing.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: He lured me out of this company and I closed 600 K with him the next, in the next 12 months.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Great story.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: How'd you do it with Robbie?
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Here are those stories.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: No one does this anymore.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to do this because you want to believe that LinkedIn is going to
34:08
SPEAKER_00: work out because you're tired.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to do this because you're worried what you're going to hear.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: You're worried that they'd never really hired two reps before,
34:15
SPEAKER_00: that they don't actually know how to recruit.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: Because the folks that don't, you know what they do?
34:19
SPEAKER_00: They show up.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: First, they work on their process slides for a couple of weeks.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: Then they tell you they're going to spool up a few recruiters they worked with
34:27
SPEAKER_00: before that they never really worked with before.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: And so three,
34:30
SPEAKER_00: four months later,
34:31
SPEAKER_00: they've hired two bottom of the barrel reps from some recruiter they don't know.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Great.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: That gets you nowhere.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: I've said it before, but it's worth saying again.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Any great sales leader always has a couple folks ready to go with her the next day.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: And I know you gotta be careful with this word this day, but it's true, this word.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: They groom them.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: They groom them.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: The best sales leaders are meeting with tons of folks up and down from SDR to AE to senior.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: And they're asking, I wanna work with them.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: I wanna work with them again.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: Or they're meeting with VPs of sales that leave a hot startup.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: Who is the best person on your team?
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Linda, Amelia, and Stacey.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: And they go meet with them.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: Because it's half the job at scale.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Half the job is recruiting.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: So if they can't bring two good people with them, they'll never do it.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: And just go talk to them.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: I ask so many CEOs this question.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you hired Jim.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Does he have any to bring with him?
35:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jim's got a couple of great folks to bring with him.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: Did you talk to them?
35:26
SPEAKER_00: No.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: 80% chance those folks aren't coming with Jim or they don't exist or...
35:32
SPEAKER_00: They were somebody worked with, it's not true.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: You gotta talk to the two.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: If they can hire two great folks, they can hire 200.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Think about it, it's true.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay, an ultimate point.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm forgetting what the ultimate point is, but this one's so important.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: This one is so important.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: If you guys have investors, they're, listen, they're right on many things.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: They're almost always wrong on a VP of sales.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many boards I've been on,
35:58
SPEAKER_00: how many startups I've been on where every single VC is wrong.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: They're all wrong.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: All of them.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: They're all wrong.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: They all love the handsome six foot four paratrooper that talks the talk in a deep
36:10
SPEAKER_00: voice and looks good in a button down.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: They love them.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: And he talks quota attainment and quota metrics and funnel management and
36:20
SPEAKER_00: And he talks the talk, and he's got a, I don't know what a baritone is, but he talks all the great.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: I had 111.6%, and I was at 11 president circles.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: I was at the, and I love them.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: And I was at, I knew Reed back when at LinkedIn, and I knew whoever.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: I knew them all.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: I knew Tiago at TalkDesk, and I knew them all.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: Then your board falls in love with the name dropper, paratrooper.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: They love them.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: They don't know.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: They don't know.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: And why?
36:44
SPEAKER_00: One, most of VCs have never done sales.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: They've never done it and they don't know.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: So they give you terrible advice.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: The subtler one is,
36:53
SPEAKER_00: There's more and more VCs that were CEOs and were founders back in the day, and those are great.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: All things being equal, pick one of them.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Not that big a deal,
37:01
SPEAKER_00: we could talk about it,
37:02
SPEAKER_00: but it's nice to have a VC who was a founder,
37:04
SPEAKER_00: a successful founder.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of reasons that's comforting.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: There's only so many slices of your cap table you can give up.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: It's nice to have a successful CEO.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: The problem is the company they founded 12 years ago with a million dollar ACV in a
37:16
SPEAKER_00: different industry is not yours.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: It's not the same product as selling to restaurants at 2K a year.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: It's not the same.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: And just because they know sales doesn't mean they know your sales.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: So they give you bad advice too.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: They're mapping it.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: That's so common.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: So again, just listen to your VC's investors.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that they won't have a few good, but I just think 87.2% of the time,
37:40
SPEAKER_00: They just give you the wrong advice for VPSO zero.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: So be nice, nod your head, say thank you.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: But if your gut is, if your gut isn't a hundred percent, don't make the hire.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: And again, if your gut is a hundred percent, they tell you it's the wrong hire.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: Tell them, thank you.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: I'd still make the hire.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Last one.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: And then with whatever time we have left, I think we have time.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: I'll take any questions you guys want.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: This is new.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: It's old.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: This is old.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: but it's new because in that earlier slide,
38:11
SPEAKER_00: I talked to so many founders have given up and gone back to founder led sales.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: They've given up.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: They've given up.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: It's not just, they made one bad VP of sales hire.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: They made two and they're burned and they're tired and they lost,
38:22
SPEAKER_00: they burned half the money and they lost a year and they did it twice.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: And they realized, shoot, I'll just do the million dollar deal myself.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: I'll just go up to the customer and close it myself.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: I've been doing this for five years.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of it.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: Was just emailing with the CEO I invested in this morning.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: got the company to 20 million, 2015, 2020.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: So from 2015 to 2020, he got it to 20 million, and then he went to 20 million, and then 20 million.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: Went through three,
38:53
SPEAKER_00: then went to founder,
38:53
SPEAKER_00: and finally found his guy,
38:56
SPEAKER_00: got back to 40% growth,
38:57
SPEAKER_00: not 100%,
38:57
SPEAKER_00: but back to 40% growth,
38:59
SPEAKER_00: and sold his company for 300 million.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: He was that third VP of sales.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Gave up for a couple of years.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Gave up.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Went into founder-led sales at 20 million in the desert.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: Did it all himself.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: But there was churn and there were industry issues.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: So for every new customer he brought in, he lost one.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: And he was bailing out the boat, but he didn't have the help.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: And he couldn't... Those two bad VPs of sales and the terrible COO, he couldn't get over it.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: And then he finally found the one he loved.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: And going from zero to 40% and having a company that had no value to 300 million, pretty big change.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: So...
39:33
SPEAKER_00: My point is she is out there.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: She is out there.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: There are, even in today's world, there are ambitious folks, sales,
39:42
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't breed ambition the way it did before March 2020, but it still breeds ambition.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: It's competitive.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: The best folks want in sales, want their shot.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: They want their chance.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: They want the chance.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: They want the bar.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: They want the big equity.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: They want the chance to put that VP of sales on their resume.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: They want their shots, time in the sun, especially if they worked under a great one.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: What you'll find is the really charismatic, successful VPs of sales
40:07
SPEAKER_00: Like on my own team,
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Sam Blahn,
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Brendan Cassidy,
40:09
SPEAKER_00: why are those folks the heads of revenue at Rippling and Brex and so many other companies?
40:13
SPEAKER_00: They're all our team and so many leaders.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: Gong, why did our team?
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were great.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: They were very good, but they also were breeded to want to be Brendan or Sam.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: They wanted it and they went out and they've become the CROs at 10 iconic leaders
40:27
SPEAKER_00: from Rippling to Gong to Brex and others.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: They wanted it.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: So these ambitious folks are out there
40:34
SPEAKER_00: Even if, and give them their shot, keep interviewing a hundred and
40:40
SPEAKER_00: If you don't think there's a great VP of sales out there, it's because you've never worked with one.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: This is maybe the last point I'll make and take a break.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: This was an old,
40:49
SPEAKER_00: maybe one of the best blog posts I ever read in my entire life was years ago,
40:54
SPEAKER_00: a guy named Joe Kraus,
40:55
SPEAKER_00: who you won't know,
40:56
SPEAKER_00: but he founded Excite,
40:57
SPEAKER_00: which was an early Google competitor that got bought for billions.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: And then he founded an early collaboration company bought by Google.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: And one of the first things he wrote when he was at Google is,
41:07
SPEAKER_00: If you don't think you need a great general counsel, it's because you've never worked with one.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: You think legal is stupid.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: You don't see the point.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: It's wasting your time.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: But when you've worked with a great,
41:15
SPEAKER_00: when you're growing and you have a million contracts and risks and you've worked
41:17
SPEAKER_00: with a great lawyer,
41:18
SPEAKER_00: you're like,
41:19
SPEAKER_00: Jesus,
41:19
SPEAKER_00: that's great.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Turns out, I've rewritten this for us.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: It's true of everything.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: So many great CTOs today think they don't need a VP of engineering.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't want, I don't want someone that just does process and wears a blazer.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: You don't need that.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: But if you've worked with someone that is amazing,
41:35
SPEAKER_00: you will never go back when you've worked with a great VP of engineering,
41:38
SPEAKER_00: you will never go back.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: So many folks today are like, oh, I'll be the VP of product forever.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't need someone that like is working on a pixel in Gmail.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Understood.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever worked with a great VP of product that could walk into an enterprise
41:52
SPEAKER_00: customer and make that workflow work and close that six-figure deal with you?
41:56
SPEAKER_00: Once you have, you've worked with an amazing one.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: Have you worked with a VP of product that went out and in his first two weeks met
42:00
SPEAKER_00: with 50 customers and came back with 10 insights you didn't know about your customers?
42:05
SPEAKER_00: You probably have and I have.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: Then you'll want that VP of product.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: Same with marketing and it is true with VP of sales.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: If you are burnt,
42:12
SPEAKER_00: if you made two mishires and you're a little bit broken like Andy in that story,
42:15
SPEAKER_00: like many of us are,
42:16
SPEAKER_00: And you don't want to, you don't want to get off the floor and you want to stay in founder mode.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: Trust me, there are the ambitions out there.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Go find them.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: You will find them.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: There are the ambitious.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Your product.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you do some weird regulatory thing for wastewater management,
42:31
SPEAKER_00: or maybe you do some weird,
42:33
SPEAKER_00: really weird part of,
42:34
SPEAKER_00: of defense security or really weird part of the tech stack that people aren't interested.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're doing advanced Fortran integrations and you think you can't find anybody to do this.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: You will find somebody.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: You will find somebody if you're tenacious that loves it.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: Your product is, you're not that special.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: Your product isn't that special.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: Your moment, the way you're bringing these elements together, very few things in software are new.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: You will find your person, keep hunting.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: So those are my 10.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.