What world-class GTM looks like in 2026

I've been getting so many asks for go to market help.

>> With AI, it's just intensified because [music] you have 10 players pursuing the same market opportunity and so your ability to actually bring the product to market to differentiate yourself from the

competition has become more strategically important than it was previously.

>> I had Jenna Ael on the podcast recently.

One of her tips is you don't want to be focusing on here's the pain and problem we're solving and instead focus on here's how you will be better than your competitors. 80% of customers buy to

competitors. 80% of customers buy to avoid pain or reduce risk [music] as opposed to increase upside, which is a good thing for startup founders to understand. We all love to talk about

understand. We all love to talk about the art of the possible, everything we're going to enable in the future, but that's often really a sale that's going to resonate with another founder.

Everybody else, particularly enterprises, you're avoiding the risk of not making your revenue target next quarter.

>> I've heard a lot about how you think about go to market as a product. We buy

a lot of things because of how we feel about them. The experience that you have

about them. The experience that you have of being [music] sold to will increasingly actually differentiate a company and [music] drive buying decisions if products are only different

at the merger. [music] And so then you really want to create a customer buying journey that feels like very unique experiences. [music]

experiences. [music] >> Something I've heard from so many people you've worked with is that your superpower is building a sales or that doesn't feel like a sales or to engineers. The litmus test I have always

engineers. The litmus test I have always given my sales team is if you are an account executive in my org and I put you in front [music] of 10 engineers at our company, it should take them 10

minutes to figure out you aren't a product manager.

Today my guest is Gan Grosser. Gan was

chief product officer at Stripe where she built their very early sales team from the ground up. She's currently COO at Versell where she oversees marketing, sales, customer success, revenue ops,

and field engineering. Gene has built world-class go to market teams at multiple unicorns and has advised dozens of companies on doing the same. In our

conversation, we go deep on what a world-class go to market team looks like, including what the heck is go to market, the rise of the goto market engineer and how this role is already enabling her team to operate 10 [music]

times faster, a bunch of very specific tactics to level up your go to market skills, [music] a primer on segmentation, how to think about your goto market process like a product, her

favorite go to market tools, her hot takes on PLG and sales comp and sales hiring [music] and so much more. If you are looking to get smart on the latest and greatest in

go to market thinking, this episode is for you. A huge thank you to Claire

for you. A huge thank you to Claire Hughes Johnson, Kate Jensen, and James Deiet for suggesting topics for this conversation and Kelly Schaefer for the connection. If you enjoy this podcast,

connection. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It helps tremendously. And if

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NAD Linear Superhum Dcript Whisper Flow Gamma Perplexity Warp Granola Magic Patterns, Raycast, Shapeyard D, Mob, and Hand, Stripe Atlas. Head on

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>> Jean, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

>> Thanks for having me, Lenny. What I want to get out of this conversation by the end of this to basically have this conversation be the thing that we send people when they're like I want to get better at go to market. I'm trying to figure out what to do in market. We send

them this versus having to hire someone for a lot of money and and usually they can't find amazing people because they're all snatched up.

>> Yeah.

>> So let me start with just the basics.

When people hear the term go to market, what does that mean? What does that encompass?

>> I think there are two answers to this.

Often what people think of is sort of the t tip of the spear of what drives revenue, which is marketing and sales.

For me, I think of it as any function that is going to touch a customer or make a dollar. Um, and actually my remmit at Verscell is that. So that

includes marketing, sales, uh, all of your technical sales roles like sales engineers or, uh, post sales platform architects is what we call them at Verscell. It's customer success, it's

Verscell. It's customer success, it's support, it's partnerships. And the

reason I say that is uh my experience throughout my career has been that those functions often have this vend diagram strategy where marketing is pursuing one

thing. It overlaps with what sales is

thing. It overlaps with what sales is pursuing but not perfectly, which also overlaps with what support is pursuing but not perfectly. Examples of this would be slightly different uh uh

slightly differing segmentation frameworks etc. And so one of the things I think you're going to want to see more in this particular moment is that that become a really integrated life cycle in

particular because I think we're going to see a lot of the functions of go to market get redefined. So we've gone through a period of like hyper specialization in go to market. Uh you

know depending on how you count them there are you know I think somebody quoted like 17 different uh roles within go to market these days. And I

hypothesize that a lot of those are going to start to collapse. And so if you think of go to market more holistically, I think you can kind of go back to what are the jobs to be done

from making a customer prospect aware of of your product all the way through to you know high LTV five years on the platform fully wallto-wall and you're

going to want to map that out and orchestrate it the way you would think about that within your own product.

>> Awesome. We're going to go through that whole cycle of go to market, but so is it safe to say just for most companies that may that are especially starting out when they say go to market that mostly is sales and then there's

marketing as a maybe a smaller fraction of that and then as you become more advanced and grow customer success plays into a tech sales things like that.

Yeah, that's probably where most start um you know is getting sales or frankly just because a lot of companies also start PLG you might actually start with marketing and then you're layering in sales when it's time to do the sales

assisted and ultimately salesled portions. So I think it can depending on

portions. So I think it can depending on your product and your initial target market it can either mean marketing or sales or a combination of those two.

>> Awesome. So essentially it's like how the term go to market tells you what we're talking about. It's how do you take your product to market, get people aware of it, using it, sticking with it?

>> Yep, absolutely.

>> What is most changed in the world of go to market over the last few years?

You've done this for a long time at Google at Stripe. You built the first sales team. Now you're doing that over

sales team. Now you're doing that over cell. What's changed most in the skill

cell. What's changed most in the skill and art of go to market?

>> There are a number of things. So when

consumption-based business models started, I think you saw go to market shift into being meaningfully more consultative because often that first land was the very beginning of the

journey and represented a very small percent of what you were ultimately going to do with that customer. And so

you had to go from being transactional to a lot more relationship based. You

had to more deeply understand what that customer was trying to do so you could align that ultimately to your product. I

think that has uh played out that much more with an AI because right now everyone knows they need to change but they don't necessarily know exactly what they need to change to whether that's

their customerfacing product or their internal productivity and workflows. And

so I think you're seeing a lot more of go to market orgs leaning into the art of the possible best practices helping you actually think things through as if they were a consultant. And so one of

the things you see uh you know more of right now is for deployed engineering which on some level is kind of a rebrand of professional services

um but kind of not and a big part of that is hey how do I actually get into your environment ride alongside you better understand what you're trying to do and then help you actually bring the

technology to life and and learn a lot along the way. Um, often you're not only making that customer successful, but you're then taking all of that back to your product and engineering uh, organization to figure out, okay, what

was generalizable that we ought to build into our offering versus what is something that ultimately is going to be more of a a professional service in the fullness of time. So, I think that has been a a a biggie is is actually just

like really getting embedded with your customer. And then unsurprisingly, um, I

customer. And then unsurprisingly, um, I think bringing AI to bear on the sales process is another big one. And so

you've seen the rise in probably the last like 18 to 24 months um of the go to market engineer um which uh you know different different

folks define slightly differently but it it's kind of bringing one technical prowess to bear on go to market in general so you can have a lot better

tooling data use etc and then two increasingly bringing AI um to bear as well to rearchitect um your workflows um and also So uh make it so it's easier to

have a personalized experience with customers but do so at scale.

>> Amazing. Okay, let's follow the thread on this uh go to market engineer.

>> Yeah.

>> So what was it like before and what are what are these engineers doing at companies?

>> So I think uh maybe like an interesting story to tell. Uh when I when I was at Stripe uh we went to launch an outbound um SDR

function. uh so outbound prospecting and

function. uh so outbound prospecting and Stripe always ran lean. Uh the company at that time had an operating principle which was efficiency is leverage and so if you looked at the sales organization

I was running most companies out there probably would have had 30 SDRs and I was going to get four.

So you know there's no way I was going to do the typical SDR um you know approach and be successful. And so we thought to ourselves okay what can we do? We'll be super data driven. And so

do? We'll be super data driven. And so

we went and we started building project Rosland. Rosland is the scientist who

Rosland. Rosland is the scientist who originally mapped uh DNA. And what this was was effectively a company universe.

So you can think of this as like a massive database. Every row uh was a

massive database. Every row uh was a different company on the planet. And

every column was an attribute about that company that would help you sell to them uh in a more targeted fashion. So at

Stripe, an example would be like knowing that their um their business model was a marketplace was super helpful because that would mean you wanted to sell Stripe Connect versus Vanilla Payments.

And so the goal was basically, hey, can we create a Mad Libs, you know, where I will come up with uh sort of a a predefined email template, but 80% of it

will be fill-in- thelank based on the different attributes um of that that customer, right? So if they're this

customer, right? So if they're this industry or this business model, then pull this customer reference, this value prop, you know, send it to this um uh persona, not that. And we were trying to

do this in 2017. And uh it was very hard and didn't actually totally work.

[laughter] Um our ability to like the false positive rate when and we worked deeply with data science like just it just never really got there. And now that

we're literally redoing here at Verscell as we speak and it actually works. Um,

and that's because you can bring AI to bear on it. Um, and so what's different is we now I have a data scientist just like I did back in 2017, but I have a go

to market engineer. Um, whereas before I just had someone in systems that was helping me configure Outreach or Salesoft and my go to market engineer is helping me build an agent. um where

we're coming up with okay well what's the human workflow that you would have done and then how do you encode that um using burcell workflows as an example you know in actual code that's both

deterministic and and less so um where an agent's going out and and trying to replicate what a human might have done um to produce that fill-in- thelank mad lips >> I love the ambition of that project what

is this like eight years ago >> yes it's such a I love the big thinking there we're going to map the entire universe of companies and then here's how we sell to them and then just I'm trying to picture doing that without AI.

It's like crazy to imagine trying that without AI and now it's like so much simpler.

>> Well, the thing that's amazing about that just to geek out on it a second. So

um I I was working on that with a bunch of folks at Stripe um on my team obviously and a gentleman named Ben Salman um who went on to go to Zoom Info and then actually recently just founded

a goto market startup that is basically sort of productizing that concept of a company universe and then layering AI on it on top of it and ultimately his view is actually you'll AI will get to the

point that you won't have to do outbound prospecting because it will just sort of company and product match Um, so it's it's fun to sort of see back in 2017 some of the folks doing that now

work at OpenAI, they work at Anthropic, they also are doing GTM. You've got him starting, you know, a totally AI native GTM um company. And then, you know, here I am at Rousell trying to do the same.

>> Okay. So, what's cool is this is an emerging role and emerging skill that I don't think a lot of people have recognized as something that is happening.

>> Yep. So, one example I'm hearing of what this role does is they automate outbound emails essentially and outbound outreach. They figure out they write

outreach. They figure out they write workflows and agents that figure out here's the company to go after. Here's

how we message them. Does that end up being kind of like an email that's customdesigned and written for this prospect?

>> That's one version. So, so it's it's broader than that really. Um, basically

the the full remit of GTMEN will be to go through each of the different functions within go to market and break down all the different workflows that

they do and then turn those into agents um where you know AI is better placed than the human um to do that task. So

right now we started with uh actually inbound and are now moving to outbound because um that workflow is most legible

and by legible I mean you can basically write it down. It's relatively

replicable, mostly deterministic, so it's more likely that AI will do it well. And we actually built the agent

well. And we actually built the agent and then we keep a human in the loop.

But from there, we're starting to look at outbound. And with an outbound, we're

at outbound. And with an outbound, we're starting more at the lower end of the market where you tend to, you know, have slightly less customization because there's a single decision maker at the company. But I think it will take a

company. But I think it will take a while before we're able to really do that in a very large enterprise there.

or we might use an agent for research but maybe not all the way to actually send a message and that's just within the prospecting function. So other

places that we're looking at this would be um for install based sales. So again

there it's a little bit more deterministic because you've got awesome internal data on what a customer is and isn't using. What's the next best

isn't using. What's the next best action? What's the thing they should get

action? What's the thing they should get most value from? So that's where we're starting to map, hey, what does that ideal workflow look like? But basically,

you want to get to a state where as long as I've been in sales, they, you know, release these annual reports that help us all benchmark ourselves relative to one another. And one of the stats is

one another. And one of the stats is what percent of time do your sellers actually spend in front of customers?

And you know, for the 20 years I've been in sales, it's always been somewhere around 30 to 40%. So the minority of time is actually talking to other humans. And I think we're getting to a

humans. And I think we're getting to a point where with layering in agents, ideally we finally get salespeople to a point where they're actually spending 70% of their time interacting with

humans and we can get the research, the followup, the things that are a little bit more, you know, wrote and don't use the entirety of your human capacity uh done by an agent and then sort of

unleash you to uh go deeper with your customers. I love that this is such a

customers. I love that this is such a great example of where AI is contributing in a very meaningful high ROI way taking on all this work that people that you had to hire say 50 SDRs

as you described to do and now you could do with a lot more. So it's a really cool example of leverage that AI uh gives you. One thing that I know a lot

gives you. One thing that I know a lot of people think about when they hear this is okay I'm going to get more of these really bad emails trying to pitch me on stuff and just like this isn't going to work. I can tell this is AI.

What have you learned about how to do this where people actually receive emails that actually convert and do well?

>> Our processes all always have human in the loop and uh so basically where we'll start is we take a go to market engineer

and we have them shadow the highest performing individual in that function.

And so you can go and you shadow an SDR and you can see oh wow they've got seven tabs open. they're looking up the you

tabs open. they're looking up the you know person on LinkedIn they're reading about the company they're doing chatbt on this they're you know looking in this database to get these sets of attributes

um and so that's how you sort of inform the initial work uh workflow and then what we do is we let the agent make a call so and the specific example with um

with inbound right you have to determine whether or not you think the lead is likely to be qualified and then you have to determine what to say to it and so we'll let the agent make those two calls

It ultimately then does some deep research, pulls in a bunch of information from our databases and crafts a response. But we have a human review all of those and actually hit

send. Now for us, we had 10 SDRs doing

send. Now for us, we had 10 SDRs doing this inbound workflow and now we just have one that is effectively QAing the agent. The other nine we deployed on

agent. The other nine we deployed on outbound. So we got to move them up the

outbound. So we got to move them up the value chain. At some point I think we'll

value chain. At some point I think we'll get to a place where we feel like hey you know the the human reviewer is um saying yes enough of the time that we

feel confident that these will be onbrand targeted etc. But right now uh we're still trying to train um the agent and it you know it incorporates feedback

on what we choose to reject edit etc. >> And you shared that it's already having a lot of impact like you said you had you said 10 SDRs and now one can do the job of 10. Yes.

>> Wow.

>> Um, yeah. And we, so before we did that move, I mean, the other thing that's just incredible about this is the person who built the lead agent was a single

GTM engineer. He spent maybe 25 30% on

GTM engineer. He spent maybe 25 30% on his time of his time on this. Uh, it was 6 weeks before we felt confident going from 10 to one. So, it wasn't like this

was a multi-quarter process. It actually

moved super quickly. Um, so, uh, and then again now we just sort of keep that agent manager sort of working with the agent to get it to a point where we say, "Hey, we're ready to roll." Um, and

actually throughout the process, we also tracked all of the KPIs that you typically would hold an SDR accountable to. So, we were looking at our lead to

to. So, we were looking at our lead to opportunity conversion rate. We're

looking at the number of touches it takes, the time to convert. Uh, and

basically what we were able to do is hold that lead to opportunity conversion rate flat. Um, so the agent is as good

rate flat. Um, so the agent is as good as our humans were, but it's actually condensed the number of touches it takes to convert because it's so much quicker

at responding relative to leads inevitably sitting in the queue or coming in at night time and no one, you know, can get to it. That that type of deal. Um, so, uh, that's sort of, you

deal. Um, so, uh, that's sort of, you know, when we knew it was, uh, ready to pull nine people off and shift them into outbound. That's incredible. Okay,

outbound. That's incredible. Okay,

that's interesting. So, you shifted them to outbound. What I love about this is

to outbound. What I love about this is this SDR that is now doing this is, as you said, doing the things they enjoy more. They're talking to customers more.

more. They're talking to customers more.

They're not doing all this kind of top offunnel row work.

>> Yeah.

>> I don't want to get into whole like jobs AI discussion, but uh there's always been this talk about AI SDRs basically replacing SDRs. It feels like that's one

replacing SDRs. It feels like that's one thing where everyone's like this is 100% going to be AI in the future. Uh what

I'm hearing here is it gives one a steer a lot more leverage and obviously you still need people running the show. T

thoughts there just like do you think AI will replace all this at some point and then I don't know you don't need salespeople.

>> I think on prospecting it can replace a fair amount because the average SDR wasn't doing overly sophisticated

research in the first place. Um, so

where I I think the last part to go as I mentioned will be in deep enterprise prospecting where you know you can be at multiple layers in an org chart. You've

got to pick between business lines. You

got to triangulate those. Um, but uh I I do think for the things that are more repetitive that often don't take that much time to learn and get ramped AI

will be good at that. And in my view, no one like graduated from college and was like, "Yes, I just went to college for four years to become an SDR." It was

more, okay, that's where you are forced to start. But I think the average STR

to start. But I think the average STR could have gone straight into outbound or straight into an SMB closing role.

Uh, and so basically what we're just doing is shifting folks into something that uses more of their full capacity right out of the gates rather than sort

of the uh, you know, the the forcing function of working your way up the totem pole.

>> Awesome. Since a lot of people listening to this aren't sales people, don't have a lot of background in sales, we've used this term SDR. There's also the term AE.

Can you just help people understand what is an SDR? What do they do? What's an

AE? And then what's kind of the role above?

>> Sure. So SDR is typically in charge of generating pipeline. So they're meant to

generating pipeline. So they're meant to talk to prospective customers and uh get them to a point where it is worth

investing time to run them through a sales process. So you t typically have

sales process. So you t typically have two types of an STR. You have an inbound one. So, this is where people come to

one. So, this is where people come to your website, they fill out contact sales, they'll be the first call uh to make sure that it's actually worth a more expensive account executive to go

and run a sales process. Or you then have outbound. So, this is where when

have outbound. So, this is where when you want to grow faster than your inbound demand, they will go out and at this point you probably have a point of view on where you think you have product

market fit. And so they will target that

market fit. And so they will target that part of the market and try to drum up interest from folks who weren't otherwise raising their hand saying, "I'd like to talk to you." So that's sales development, basically pipeline

generation. Account executives are

generation. Account executives are closers. So it's their job to take

closers. So it's their job to take somebody from, okay, hey, I'm interested in learning about your solution. I have

a legitimate problem. I potentially

could make a decision to I now believe that your product is the best in the market and for me and I'm willing to pay for it. And then account executives

for it. And then account executives depending on uh the segments that your company sells into, eg small business, mid-market, enterprise, etc. They may

work their way up the food chain from selling to a smaller company like an SMB or a startup. Those tend to be a little bit more of a transactional sale. You

often have a single decision maker to then going into a mid-market or commercial role where now maybe you have an economic buyer like somebody in finance and a technical buyer like

somebody in engineering to getting into enterprise where you know you now have procurement and you have committees and 10 people have to weigh in and um you know you've got to help them figure out

how to derisk the fact that they're probably migrating from something. So

much more complicated um coordination effort to sell. That was extremely helpful. So, SDR pipeline generation AE

helpful. So, SDR pipeline generation AE closer. Such a simple way of thinking

closer. Such a simple way of thinking about it. Okay, this is great. Uh, going

about it. Okay, this is great. Uh, going

back to the GDM engineer, a few questions for people that may want to try this at their company. What scale do you think it makes sense to start hiring for this role, having someone automate the go to market process?

>> What's interesting about this is it will force companies to be more rigorous about their sales process early. So

often startups when they go from founder sales to say I'm going to have my first salesperson whether that's an actual you know account executive who has prior sales experience or your general athlete

wicked smart who's going to go figure it out you know often founders will just say okay sales is showing up and talking to people isn't you know isn't that what

I just did for the last couple years but actually sales is is more than that it's a skill just like writing code as a skill or building a financial model as a

skill. It's about discovery. So asking

skill. It's about discovery. So asking

all the right questions that help you uh identify challenges and pain, willingness to pay, um you know, etc. Uh and then going through a process to handle those objections and showcase,

you know, where you add enough value such that somebody ultimately wants to hand over some money. So often, you know, startups will get particularly ones with strong product market fit to

pretty significant scale without really having a replicable process. And you

can't really apply go to market engineering unless you actually have a point of view on what best practice should look like. And so I think basically this is going to force folks

to have more of a playbook out of the gates. What's working? What's not? Can I

gates. What's working? What's not? Can I

document it? Do I have content for the different parts of the sales process?

And then you know once you do that which you know maybe 10 people is a good size and scale for that ostensibly you know a GTM engineer can come in and turn that

into an agent. You could also argue that if you know you're a founder who wants to bring in a general athlete profile and that person is technically minded

that you could have a hybrid AE GTM engineer who figures out what their best practice is and then tries to turn that into an agent. you know, that's riding alongside them and making them more

effective as well. So um you know I I don't know that I have a point of view yet on what's the optimal size and scale but I forever have given founders the

advice that uh it's you often want to bring in revenue operations which is basically the analytical arm of sales earlier than you think because having

data having process is actually what gives you insights as a founder into what is and isn't working and so I would argue just like it's a good idea to have that sooner later. Increasingly, it'll

probably be a good idea to have GTM engine and be looking to bring agents to bear on your process uh at the outset.

>> While we're on this topic, just a quick tangent. The advice for hiring your

tangent. The advice for hiring your first salesperson that I usually hear is wait until you're around a million in ARR when you have a repeatable process you can teach someone. Anything there?

Is that does that seem right? What would

you what would you recommend?

>> Yeah, I think that seems about right. Um

I do think uh as a founder you want to stay deeply connected to customers and get it to a scale and get it to a point where you know you use the word there's some repeatability there. I think that's

one of the things that not all founders get right is founders are incredible salespeople right they convinced a VC angel investors to fork over a bunch of money so clearly they're going to

inspire people to buy. But if you're getting to a million in ARR and the set of customers you have look nothing like one another you still have very much like an evangelist sale very much

founder sale versus if you can say hey I now have an ICP here or ideal customer profile eg something you can write down you know we are good uh our product fits

with uh startups with less than 100 employees who are typically building SAS applications right something like that um then they're probably ready to hand

over the reigns. Uh and then what founders have to remember is to actually hand over the reigns. So, you know, you got to enable the person who comes in what is it that you know you're doing

effectively? What's your content? What

effectively? What's your content? What

are the discovery questions you're asking? How are you handling objections?

asking? How are you handling objections?

Um so you can transition that knowledge, but also don't hand them over entirely, right? You want to stay connected to the

right? You want to stay connected to the customer because you still have a fair amount of R&D to do to figure out where are you, you know, where is the product next going to resonate, where are you

getting, you know, stock as you scale, etc. >> To close the loop on the go to market engineer, what's the profile of the ideal go to market engineer, maybe your first

>> what we have found works really well is somebody who uh does have go to market experience. So at Verscell, our first

experience. So at Verscell, our first three go to market engineers were actually sales engineers. So Verscell

hires very technical uh sales engineers.

All of them were front-end developers before they decided they wanted to get into sales. And so we just said, "Hey,

into sales. And so we just said, "Hey, three of you, congrats. You're now

founding members of our GTME team." Uh

and the thing that works well there is uh you know, you do understand aspects of uh what is good GTM? uh what does a process look like? It's been really

interesting actually. Um so the

interesting actually. Um so the gentleman who runs GTM for me um we were going through you know this this lead agent and QAing it uh and you know so

I'm going and I'm looking at some of the responses that we've ultimately uh had had the lead agent send and realized oh I wouldn't have sent that. Um, and

that's because I have 20 years of sales experience and we model the lead agent off, you know, our best person, but our best person who has two years of sales experience. So, it actually is important

experience. So, it actually is important to understand the art and the science of sales and how you bring best practice to bear. So, either you've done it and so

bear. So, either you've done it and so you know some best practice or you're going to geek out on sales, read a bunch of books, learn a thing or two, um, you know, and and try to incorporate some of

those into into your agent development.

>> That is really interesting. So, come

from the sales side, not from the engineering side. And I imagine this is

engineering side. And I imagine this is such a cool opportunity for sales people to do something completely different and move closer to engineering.

>> Yeah, I I mean, we're having a lot of fun with it at uh at Rurell in particular. We basically get to be

particular. We basically get to be customer zero. So everything that we're

customer zero. So everything that we're building with agents, we're building on Versell's AI cloud. So you know these agents are now have multiple steps that

they go through. So we're using Verscell's uh workflow SDK and um workflow offering. We um you know use

workflow offering. We um you know use the AI gateway to call the different models that we use to do deep research um or uh other enrichment that we do.

Uh, so for us it's it's great because we basically sort of bang on everything the engineering team is is building and get to go be a discerning customer before we actually get it out the door to real

customers.

>> What a fun time to be alive. I could

tell the the fun that you guys are having just the way you describe it.

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zooming out a little bit in terms of you mentioned tools, some tools that you use. I'm curious just what are kind of

use. I'm curious just what are kind of the state-of-the-art tools within the goto market stack that you love that you'd recommend?

>> Well, so I'm going to have an interesting answer to this. Um, uh, so I'll give you one, and it's not state-of-the-art per se, although that I don't don't mean that, uh, disparagingly. It's just that it's been

disparagingly. It's just that it's been around for for a while now, and and a lot of folks use it. But I think Gong has gotten just meaningfully more interesting in the last year. Um, and

then second half my question I will get into. I think the calculus on build

into. I think the calculus on build verse buy is changing. So all right, Gong. Uh, Gong is incredible because you

Gong. Uh, Gong is incredible because you can run agents against it now. Um, so we take all of our gong transcripts and we

dump them um into an agent called the dealbot. And that dealbot then can do a

dealbot. And that dealbot then can do a bunch of things. So the first thing we had it do was uh lost a lost opportunity

review. So we had just finished Q2. we

review. So we had just finished Q2. we

had, you know, a list of our top losses for the quarter sorted by deal size and we ran it against that and uh it was incredibly interesting. So the biggest

incredibly interesting. So the biggest loss that quarter uh according to the account executive was lost on price. And

when you ran the agent over every Slack interaction, every email, every gong call, it said actually you lost because you never really got in touch with

economic buyer. And when you talked to

economic buyer. And when you talked to somebody about ROI and total cost of ownership, it was clear from their reaction that they didn't really buy

your math. And so really the reason we

your math. And so really the reason we lost was an inability to demonstrate value. Um which you know upon reflection

value. Um which you know upon reflection I've got work to do to build out how we quantify the value of versell uh which actually is very easily quantifiable.

It's one of the things I love about selling this product but we got to codify that for the go to market team.

Um, so that was incredibly interesting and now we run it against all of our lost opportunities and actually do a much better job of categorizing why it was we really really lost and then

either feeding that back into the engineering team or back into marketing sales leadership on hey where are we falling short in the sales process and

so that was awesome but then we're like well it's not very fun to lose so why don't we pull that forward and so we went from lost bot to dealbot And now

the dealbot is running in real time and we basically feed insights into Slack.

Versel is incredibly heavy users of Slack. So we have a channel for every

Slack. So we have a channel for every single customer either opportunity or existing one. And so now we're feeding

existing one. And so now we're feeding insights into that Slack channel which is you know hey you're this far into the sales process and you haven't talked to an economic buyer. You should think

about that. or hey, you just got off

about that. or hey, you just got off that call with an economic buyer. It

didn't sound like it went that that that well. You know, here are some things to

well. You know, here are some things to consider and how you might follow up.

And uh last thing before I pause, the other thing that's really interesting and how we're we're using this too is, you know, we are in this moment, right?

We're like I I have never seen an iteration velocity like exists now in my career. My 20 plus year career has all

career. My 20 plus year career has all been in tech. Um, and so for go to market teams, that's really hard. If you

are launching something every other day, the ability to be enabled on that is actually quite challenging. And so this

uh bot agent um is now also letting us where we're starting to go with it is we'll release something. We'll do our best to enable the team. Then we'll go

run the agent across uh calls, interactions, and we'll diagnose where we did a bad job of objection handling where we're getting stuck. And then at

the end of the week, we can have a huddle and say, "Okay, what are all the places that our agent would suggest we aren't selling effectively?" And then almost like an engineering team, we'll

now run sprints, which is like those are just bugs. They're bugs in your go to

just bugs. They're bugs in your go to market process, so you should not have them. And you know, by the next week,

them. And you know, by the next week, we're going to add content to our objection handling to guide. We're going

to add content to a discovery guide.

We're going to figure out something we need to change about our demo. So on and so forth. So that's early. That's a

so forth. So that's early. That's a

little bit of a preview. Um but but that's where we're talking about taking things right now within our our go to market org.

>> Jean, you're blowing my mind in so many ways. This just sounds so fun and just

ways. This just sounds so fun and just like you guys are going to win is what I'm feeling when I hear all this. Uh

incredible. What I love about this is this AI tool, this agent you built sees things that humans were not seeing. The

fact that you were surprised of just like this is a completely different conclusion is such a big deal. This is

the whole promise of the eye. is going

to do things we aren't even thinking about or capable of. It is I we had a really interesting one of the things we're doing um aber so you know we have an AI cloud so people use that to put AI

native features into their customerf facing applications but they're also using it to build internal applications to improve productivity or outcomes and

we are talking to a very large airline and that airline uh obviously gets tons and tons of support queries so uh of course they would want to go apply AI I

to hey how can we have AI answer these so that our cost to support goes down sort of the obvious thing but the more interesting conversation was actually um with uh one of the sea level executives

who said we also actually transcribe every single one of those support calls and so what I really want to know is why are they calling and how do I make it so

that fewer people call the next week.

Um, and so again, this is now with AI, you can rapidly go through all of that content and actually be able to much more quickly than having a human, you know, in your CRM sort of pick some

status, why it was that folks were calling the airline this week and and what if anything you can do to make it less the case next week.

>> I imagine many people hearing this are like, I need one of these deal bots and los bots. Uh, these are all internal

los bots. Uh, these are all internal products that you all built.

>> Yes. Is there anything that you've learned about making them this good? Any

tips you can share? Here's how to make a really good bot for sales.

>> Yes. Um, so actually that's the second half of my answer that I forgot to uh forgot. That's perfect.

forgot. That's perfect.

>> Which is sort of like build versus buy calculus.

>> Um, so I think one of our learnings is that it's not that hard to build these agents and they aren't that expensive either. So, you know, I mentioned with

either. So, you know, I mentioned with the lead agent, um that was a six- week process with one human, a third of his time. Uh that dealbot, the Lostbot

time. Uh that dealbot, the Lostbot version was like two days. Um like

basically we rifted on it. He had it 40 hours later. Um you know, now we're

hours later. Um you know, now we're continuing to refine it for for the other things I mentioned. Um and and what's also interesting about them is they uh it's you know for better for

worse for Brcell but that uh that lead agent which runs full stack on Verscell will cost us about $1,000 to run for the

entire year. So if you remember I told

entire year. So if you remember I told you we had 10 people in the SDR function. So I'm I'm paying well over a

function. So I'm I'm paying well over a million dollars for that from a salary perspective. I got that down to one and

perspective. I got that down to one and then behind that I have a lead agent that costs a thousand bucks. Um so

that's like a you know 90 plus% reduction in total cost there. Um so and you know there are a lot there's lots of software for for agents on on um out

there right now. And I think one of the things we're learning is because this whole space is so nent, often your own esoteric context, you know, your

content, your workflow is really key to unlocking the power of the agent. And so

I think there's real value in experimenting with your own internal agent development. We may ultimately end

agent development. We may ultimately end up on, you know, better integrated agent platforms in the fullness of time. Um,

or we may find that the CIO increasingly goes from a procurer of software to a builder of software and you'll have an AI AI internal platform with a thousand

agents running across your org. I'm not

really sure yet. Um, but I certainly think um there's value in trying it yourself because you may find that it's meaningfully easier than you think. Um,

and you get returns pretty quickly. So

what I'm hearing here is that you're finding that there are not tools out there to plug and play. The alpha is essentially in building your own stuff.

>> I think that's partially true. And I

think because you also have all these tools proliferating right now, you get into the perennial problem where you wind up with 20 of them uh to do you

know the 20 jobs to be done basically rather than an integrated platform that's doing all of them. Uh I'm hearing this a lot actually when I'm talking to

customers right now where their biggest issue uh in deploying AI is actually just getting through procurement and it's sort of because everyone's got an AI

mandate. You kind of have a blank check.

mandate. You kind of have a blank check.

Uh I recently heard the term of instead of ARR it's ERR which is experimental run rate revenue which is to say you know everyone's out there sort of hey we're going to give this thing a go for

a year and then TBD on whether or not you know we keep it but you know basically you're having to procure 20 different things because most things are getting off the ground and so you know they're solving something relatively

narrow and that'll change in the fullness of time but I do think there's an opportunity to figure out hey where do I likely have a more specific workflow, you know, internally. For

that, it might be will worth worth building your own agent and then maybe for the things that are a little bit more generalizable, you go get something off the shelf.

>> Are there any platforms or tools you want to shout out that allow you to build these agents so quickly? I know

they sit on Versel. So, shout out Versel, but just uh anything that you point people to to like are these SDR these GTM engineers, they're former salespeople. Are they learning to code?

salespeople. Are they learning to code?

Are they bip coding these agents? How

does that >> uh well the so our sales engineers all have uh CS degrees so they they were engineers um uh in a sales capacity so they're writing code and actually these

agents they're building directly on Verscell um so you get the AI gateway that lets you you know call different models um you have a sandbox if you're

running untrusted code you've got uh workflows that let you build the process you've got fluid compute which lets you um really efficiently use compute when

you need it. Um so so we're just sort of building it from the ground up um here because again it's not that hard. Now

you do need to write code for that. Um

certainly there are a lot of vibe coding tools out there that also give you more um kind of workflow will build builders that are somewhere between fully

wizzywig um almost like drag and drop um and a little bit more more code forward.

Um, so you've got a bunch uh out there along those lines. But, uh, you know, I I do think we've sort of found like one of one of the reasons actually the GTME

team at Verscell can build these agents so easily is because the Verscell platform is making it that easy to use our, you know, framework defined infrastructure and get that agent onto

into production very rapidly.

>> What a neat unfair advantage you all have to do this.

>> Yes, it is. It is fun to like I mean I I do think this company is better than any I've seen at eating its own dog food. Um

and just everyone is constantly we say Verscell builds Verscell with Verscell.

So you're just always looking for ways to hey how can we use our product to go do what we need to do and as a result either understand then what a customer would want or what's missing from our product that we could go make better.

Along these lines, something that's already come across a lot in the way that you describe this stuff is I've heard a lot about how you think about go to market as a product. A lot of people listening to this, as I've said, are product builders. So, I think this is a

product builders. So, I think this is a really uh nice way of thinking about go to market. Uh I'm guessing you've

to market. Uh I'm guessing you've already talked about elements of this, but just what's a way to think about go to market as a product?

>> Yeah, I've always um so I had this realization um probably a little over a decade ago in my career. Um, so my first job out of college was working on Gmail

in 2004. So Gmail launched on April 1st.

in 2004. So Gmail launched on April 1st.

I joined on June 1st. And, uh, as I'm sure you'll remember as well, Gmail was this incredible innovation, uh, you know, massive JavaScript application that didn't really exist at the time.

And it had this gig of storage. It was a full year before Yahoo Mail caught up and even longer before Hotmail and others did. Right? So that that was the

others did. Right? So that that was the level of like technical differentiation between you know Gmail and the next best. And a decade later I you know you

best. And a decade later I you know you had cloud uh computing enabling folks to do stuff that you never would have been able to do previously. And so I kind of

felt like huh like software is starting to commoditize a little bit. Um and so uh you know when when that happens when technical differentiation kind of

narrows what are other things that will differentiate you? Um and you know sort

differentiate you? Um and you know sort of thinking outside of tech like we buy a lot of things because of how we feel about them. Um and so I started to

about them. Um and so I started to develop this thesis that um actually the experience that you have of being sold to will increasingly actually uh

differentiate a company and uh drive buying decisions if uh products are are only different at the margin. Uh and so

if if you believe that then you really want to create a customer buying journey that feels like very unique experiences.

And so we did a lot of this at Stripe and now we're looking to replicate this here. But an example of one of the

here. But an example of one of the things I think we did really nicely at Stripe was, you know, a lot of companies sales sort of the first call after you're qualified, you know, we've

decided you're wortha engaging in sales process is discovery, which is basically let me ask you a lot of questions to try to under uncover pain, figure out where

buying power lies, etc. And so that is kind of boring sometimes for a customer.

You're basically being quizzed um often on the phone. Uh and so what we started to do at Stripe was that first session was a whiteboarding session and we would

actually get together and have you, you know, draw your architecture um for payments um and all the other things that were under the hood to enable you to take money and drive customer

outcomes. And through that we would

outcomes. And through that we would learn a ton about, you know, what was in your stack, what we were going to have to compete with, displace where value lied. But the customer also learned a

lied. But the customer also learned a lot themselves because in many cases they'd never drawn their architecture diagram. And so they left that meeting

diagram. And so they left that meeting with an asset and a sense of like wow this is a really collaborative person who's like deeply interested and helping me like you know develop a mental model

for how to think about this um you know and then we had other things that we we would do. Um so uh that's sort of how I

would do. Um so uh that's sort of how I think about building go to market like a product is basically you need to go through from the first time you become

aware that the company exists to again that sort of five-year heavily retained wall-to-all customer a set of experiences and those experiences can

feel transactional flat boring or they can feel very human personalized and unique. Um, and so, you know, we try to

unique. Um, and so, you know, we try to go map those out and figure out how do you, you know, bring the product to bear, make it really human. Um, and and hopefully that, uh, creates a customer for life in the end.

>> I love that whiteboarding example. Are

there any other examples of what you've done to make it actually work really well in this way?

>> Yeah. Another principle, we really developed this um at Stripe 2 and I brought it to to Verscell was just the idea of adding value at any touch point

regardless of whether or not that customer bought because even if customers don't buy, you often find that if you miss them on that buying cycle, three or four years later when they're

in another buying cycle, they do come back. you know, I was at Stripe for nine

back. you know, I was at Stripe for nine years and so I saw the number of customers that we lost and then half a decade later here they are and they bought. So, um uh that that was sort of

bought. So, um uh that that was sort of another one. So, you know, examples of

another one. So, you know, examples of this that we're doing at Verscell is um we uh you can there's great data on the internet um that helps people understand

the performance of their website and how fast uh your website is um actually impacts SEO and SEO impacts AEO and

everybody's thinking about AEO right now. Um, and so, you know, one of the

now. Um, and so, you know, one of the things we try to do when we reach out is actually give folks insight immediately into how they're performing on an absolute basis, how they're performing

relative to peers. So, ideally, you know, that piqus your interest and you want to learn more from us. Um, but even if it doesn't, you still have insights that you may or may not have been aware of um that maybe make you contemplate

whether or not you've got the optimal setup.

>> Awesome. So what I'm hearing here is uh when you say think of it like a product, it's basically a product person thinks about the experience of their product at every step of the journey. Here's the

flow. Step 1 2 3 4 5. How do we make every step awesome? Keep them going along that journey. And so what you think about is just from the prospect's perspective, how do we make every step of that journey awesome? Continue them

down that journey.

>> Yeah. Yeah. How do you make it be an experience rather than a transaction >> versus just like feel like sales coming at you trying to sell you stuff? Yeah.

>> Okay. Uh staying along this track of being staying tactical, uh I want to go even further there. So what are just some go to market tactics that you find

really effective these days for people trying to just to be more successful in getting people to pay attention to their stuff to buy their stuff? Uh I mean one I would sort of say uh dubtales with

where I just ended but is what are the unique insights that you can bring to bear um about your product or you know how that that customer may be in a

suboptimal state. So I do think

suboptimal state. So I do think investing in in data to tease that out is is one thing. I think the other thing this is is straightforward but often um

not done enough is like a lot of good companies invest in docs um you know good thing to do and but they they stop there and particularly if you're selling

into a slightly larger company doing things like um you know AWS calls it well architected guides um or blueprints uh a lot of customers particularly

larger ones really want to know the best practice for how exactly to implement your product in with their particular setup. Uh, a great example of this, um,

setup. Uh, a great example of this, um, this is from Stripe was, you know, Stripe was excellent at marketplaces.

Most, you know, Lyft, Instacart, Door Dash, they were all on Stripe. Um, and

so Stripe definitely knew the best way to set up payments for a marketplace.

Because we'd seen them all. And so when you then would go and sell a marketplace and, you know, say, "Oh yeah, we've got docs. Go check them out." They didn't

docs. Go check them out." They didn't like that, right? Because they're like, "Hey, every marketplace runs on Stripe.

I don't want to look at generic docs. I

want you to tell me what's the best way to set up payments for a marketplace.

Um, and so I think that's another key thing to be doing. Um, particularly as you move past that sort of solo developer, startup founder as potentially a target uh, audience. Um,

and then I don't know this is a tactic per se. Um, but I do think just a good

per se. Um, but I do think just a good reminder for founders in particular who um are still in that maybe founder-ledd

sales moment is just the value of really good discovery. Uh I often find founders

good discovery. Uh I often find founders are so in you know so excited about uh talking about their product or you know you ask one question and now they've got

a hook of like I can fix that for you.

But, uh, excellent salespeople typically, uh, will talk well under half the time in, uh, a conversation because

they're out asking questions, probing, often helping a customer, uh, arrive at conclusions on their own. And so,

learning how to, you know, do five W's, go deep, rather than immediately going into problemsolving mode. You know, if they ask a question, you respond. often

if they ask a question, you should ask a question about the question and then respond, right? So learning to be great

respond, right? So learning to be great at that I I think differentiates people.

>> So the last tip I think there something a lot of I bet everyone could learn is just listen more and talk less.

>> Yeah.

>> On that first piece of advice, this kind of sharing unique insights and how you're suboptimal. Is there an example

you're suboptimal. Is there an example you could share of how you did that?

Maybe a story of just how you convince someone you're selling striper versus sell care. Something you you're missing.

sell care. Something you you're missing.

Here's how this could help you become much better. So with versell the um sort

much better. So with versell the um sort of is giving an example but I'll make it more specific. So um you know the

more specific. So um you know the performance point you can go and look at core web vitals um and so we can actually see the different things um

within their site that are fast uh or you know load correctly etc. So at that we then so anyone can go look that up

but what we can do is actually then help with benchmarking relative to peers. Um

so that's been um a big one that we've gone out and done. The other one that we've spent some good time on is just around helping customers understand

uh MCP servers and when it would make sense to use one. Um, so I think you know those are all the rage but often people don't know how to contemplate them within their own product. So that

was uh another one that that we've gone pretty deep on and then related to the first one is um AEO answer engine optimization uh is actually you know somewhat tangential to Versell right so

we drive performance performance drives SEO SEO is an input into AEO uh but we have spent a ton of time um sharing insights on AEO because we ourselves

focus deeply on it and think we understand it better than many and so again as part of just building a trusted relationship ship. You know, folks may

relationship ship. You know, folks may go from those AMAs or that content um into okay, great. You learn, you taught me a lot and therefore I want Versel to

help me with performance. Um but in many cases, they actually now are just like this is a company that seems insightful.

It seems like one I can learn from and now I'm going to pay a little bit more attention to them and over the fullness of time maybe, you know, they see something that triggers them to decide now's the time I want to go investigate that aspect of Versell.

>> Awesome. So, what I'm hearing here in many ways, and this resonates, I had Jenna Ael on the podcast recently, and it was all about sales skills and how to sell. Nice.

sell. Nice.

>> And one of her tips is you don't want to be focusing on here's the pain and problem we're solving. And instead,

focus on here's how you will be better than your competitors. Here's a big gap and alpha that you can achieve if you use say Versel. So, here's like you you're missing out on speed and you're

going to get screwed in AO and all these things. here's like how you can

things. here's like how you can architect your entire payments art system to be top tier. Does that

resonate?

>> Yeah, it uh there's I I was told this stat. It's round numbers so I can't

stat. It's round numbers so I can't imagine it's entirely accurate but um you know basically that um customers 80%

of customers buy to avoid pain or reduce risk as opposed to the other one out of five to increase upside which is a good thing again for startup founders to

understand. So you know we all love to

understand. So you know we all love to talk about the art of the possible you know uh everything we're going to enable in the future. It's very exciting.

Everyone's visionaries, right? But, um,

that's often really a sale that's going to resonate with another founder. Um,

and for everybody else, uh, you know, it particularly enterprises, you're avoiding the risk of not making your revenue target next quarter, uh, the

risk of having comp, you know, being outdone by the competition, the risk of having brand damage, etc. And so it's really hard actually for uh many

startups to make that pivot because it it feels off-brand. But it does actually drive more buying behavior is setting up

a little bit of that concern that either I might not be well positioned or again through good question asking I know exactly where I'm not well positioned and you can help me derisk that.

>> That is such an important stat you shared. This has come up actually before

shared. This has come up actually before in this podcast that buying people are buying in large part to reduce risk to basically not hurt themselves in their career not hurt the company like that's

a bigger factor in the buying decision then I have this problem I need to solve and okay thank you this solving and the way April Dunford came on the podcast and talked about this of just like like it's such a massive career bet we are

going to bring in product X and it's going to become like Stripe let's say let's not talk about her cell but let's say Stripe we're going to adopt Stripe Right. That's like a huge decision. If

Right. That's like a huge decision. If

it doesn't go well, your career is hurt.

Your manager is going to be mad at you.

It's going to set your company back.

Yeah.

>> So, a lot of the buying decision, as you've said, is I just don't want to screw this up.

>> Right. Absolutely.

>> Okay. Along the line of tactics, something that I know you're a big fan of and uh help people think about is segmentation.

>> Yes.

>> This is something a lot of founders struggle with. They know, okay, I need

struggle with. They know, okay, I need to figure out my segmentation strategy and here we're going after. Can you just kind of give us a primer on segmentation? what people should know

segmentation? what people should know about why this is important and how they might approach this.

>> Yeah. So, segmentation is basically how do you carve up the world of companies that exist on the planet uh to reason

about them where they buy differently.

So, I'll give um I'll give examples from from Stripe and Burcell to bring this home. So, a very very typical company

home. So, a very very typical company segmentation is small, medium, large.

That's a rational way to do things. Uh

small, you often have a single decision maker. Medium, you know, a small team

maker. Medium, you know, a small team and large, it's complex, it's a committee, etc. Um so the buying process does change across SMB, mid-market,

enterprise. Um but if you stop there, uh

enterprise. Um but if you stop there, uh you are likely missing. Okay. But what

are the things within your offering that also change the way something gets sold?

So at Stripe um there there were two ways we further cut the business. Way

one was so think of segmentation as as a graph. So x-axis was size um so small,

graph. So x-axis was size um so small, medium, large. Yaxis was growth

medium, large. Yaxis was growth potential and that was important for Stripe because it was a consumptionbased business. So if you were going to grow

business. So if you were going to grow at 200% yearon-year, you were more valuable to Stripe than if you were going to grow at 8% year-on-year. And so

we wanted to spend more time, spend more money um going after the 200% growers than the 8%. So that was one that informed your strategy on who you targeted. And then for Stripe, the other

targeted. And then for Stripe, the other thing that we cut it was business model.

So are you a B2B? Are you B to C? Are

you B2B T2B? Eg a platform or B2B TOC eg marketplace. And why is that relevant?

marketplace. And why is that relevant?

Well, if you're B2B, you are going to need business payments, right? credit

card was useful for a PLG function, uh, PLG sale, but you were going to need a wires, etc. And you probably had a recurring business, so you were going to want Stripe billing. You know, if you

were B toC, that's consumer, so you're going to want consumer payments. Apple

Pay is super important. If you were in the like the platform or the marketplace, you were going to buy our connect product. Um, so it helped us

connect product. Um, so it helped us basically then craft uh a more targeted and replicable sales or sell sort of similar deal. So small, medium, large

similar deal. So small, medium, large buying uh complexity. We also do the same thing on growth potential because we are similarly a consumption based

business. But for us um a couple other

business. But for us um a couple other things on uh the x-axis we layer in uh promote which is uh one of the things

that is observable is um traffic site traffic on the internet. So Google

publishes a crux score which is basically they have a bunch of data in Chrome and so they know that Lenny's site gets you know a millionx the amount

volume that Jean's site does.

>> Um and so um basically if you're a small company but you have super high traffic that's going to be more complex is going to make more money and so we want to

promote you. So great example of this uh

promote you. So great example of this uh would be OpenAI. Open AI I forget these days how many uh employees it has. Let's

say it's 3,000. It's probably more than that at this point, but so that's going to put it in uh the mid-market at most companies, but they're a top 25 traffic site on the internet. So for us, that's

going to push them in our enterprise because we need to go uh you know lean in with a much uh you know a more in-depth sales process. And then the

other thing we layer on is uh workload type. So, if you are an e-commerce

type. So, if you are an e-commerce company, that's going to be a very different sale. We're going to have to

different sale. We're going to have to you actually use different language. You

talk about product uh listing pages and product description pages and you've got an order management system as the back end. Super different from a crypto

end. Super different from a crypto company where, you know, you might be running soup to nuts uh on AWS. And so,

again, that helps us start to then have a really different uh buying content for you. Okay, this is awesome. So,

you. Okay, this is awesome. So,

essentially what you do is you break up this universe going back to your original story at Stripe into uh help you sort essentially which companies are most likely to buy your product and what you're coming up with is these attributes that are

>> y >> uh correlated with they are likely to be great potential customers.

>> Y >> do you recommend using this uh xyaxis as the approach versus something else like a spreadsheet with like five columns like I don't know how do you start?

there's probably something to be said for X and Y like I do think size is going to play into most buying decisions and then these days there is a fair amount of you know consumption um

happening so there'll be aspects of this that I think are somewhat universal but I think uh basically like when I came to Burcell new product market product offering for me it's a new market I had

a lot to learn but this is one of the first things I did in the first 30 days um and so basically I sat down uh with the gentleman man Obby who leads data

science here and uh you know said okay what what drives revenue so what are what are the things that you can look at xanty about a customer to know this

person's likely to pay us $100,000 versus a million those that's probably going to be part of a segmentation framework and then similarly okay uh

where can we how how what attributes would we look for to cluster where we seem to be winning repeatedly And that was how we ultimately got at okay crux rank is going to be super

important. Um because what you pay for

important. Um because what you pay for cell is correlated with your traffic.

And then workload type was super important as well. Um so uh you know and for for Brazelle when we did that it was really interesting um because you know

we saw wow like we have a lot of penetration and ecom not not that surprising actually uh given that we you know drive highly performant sites and

ecom having a super fast performance site really matters um but you know at the time if you looked at as an example in enterprise SAS companies uh we didn't

have a lot penetration. Um, even though you would have thought, okay, front-end cloud, very developer oriented, of course, software companies would be on us. Um, but in enterprise, most of those

us. Um, but in enterprise, most of those companies built that SAS offering before Verscell existed. And so, you know,

Verscell existed. And so, you know, migrating 200 or two million lines of code, you know, to Verscell, that that's a big lift, right? Um so it helped us really understand where are we winning

where are we not you know and now uh as an example like uh in within SAS companies and enterprise we're actually seeing a lot of interest in the AI cloud because those are some of the earlier

adopters of hey let's add AI native functionality to our existing SAS app.

Um and so again it helps us figure out what to target where.

>> Okay so essentially you're doing kind of this regression analysis on what's working and then here's the attributes that are most correlated with >> success. Uh something I always recommend

>> success. Uh something I always recommend when founders ask me for how do I figure out my CP? How do I figure out where to focus? I my heristic is just think of

focus? I my heristic is just think of three attributes that narrow them down.

So it's like series A company with that's angelled that's a marketplace something like that. I feel like a good like just rule of thumb just to start.

>> I think like beyond three I like you know that's getting pretty detailed and reasonably speaking you're not going to cut like you have five sellers so you're going to put one seller in five

different segments. So I I do think

different segments. So I I do think three is something you can reason about.

The other thing I'll say on this topic that I think is really important is a lot of times folks think segmentation is a go to market thing. I really think it's a company thing. So when you join

Verscell um I actually deliver and every new hire's first week one of our company values is KYC know your customer. Um and

I deliver the KYC SE section. um and uh you know talk through our segmentation framework how our customer base maps into those segments because it's really important as you know those new product

managers leave the room that when they're building something they think to themselves okay I'm building a new back-end product who is this targeted at is it targeted at an enterprise or um or

a startup um you know basically do I have a point of view on where I'm trying to win and why um and if you're doing that out of the gates then it's much much easier to then speak the same language with the go to market org and

figure out okay how are we going to take that to market in line with the other motions that we we have in play.

>> Okay, this is a great segue to uh there's a couple other things I want to talk about. One is something I've heard

talk about. One is something I've heard from so many people you've worked with is that you are amazing at building a go to market org that works really well with product and engineering. So I'll

read this quote from your former colleague Kate Jensen. She said that your superpower is building a sales or that doesn't feel like a sales or to engineers. So the question she suggested

engineers. So the question she suggested asked just like what does it take to do that? What are the ingredients to

that? What are the ingredients to building a sales or that engineers and product teams really like working with?

>> The litmus test I have always given my sales team is if you are an account executive in my org and I put you in

front of 10 engineers at our company. It

should take them 10 minutes to figure out you aren't a product manager. And

what I'm trying to get across is you need to have incredible product depth.

And uh the reason for that is twofold.

One, it gives you credibility with the product and engineering org. And two, I also believe that the best go to market orgs on the planet are equal parts

revenue driving and R&D.

And the reason I emphasize the latter is if you think about a product management organization, you know, you may have a UXR team, you know, out doing research.

Product managers certainly should be out talking to customers. Well, if I have a 20 person sales team, think of the number of customers that we talk to in a

week. And so, if we can do an excellent

week. And so, if we can do an excellent job of translating all of that, uh, feedback into signal and then feeding

that into the road map, um, you know, we can be actually an extension of the product management org. Um, but that takes being really good at discerning signal from noise, understanding when

something is an objection that should be overcome versus a, you know, a a market an opportunity in the market. So, uh, I think I think those things have helped.

>> I just love this as a product manager, maybe former product manager. I don't

know what the hell I am these days. Uh,

I just love the idea of the salesperson like you not knowing the difference between a product manager and a salesperson. The most classic challenge

salesperson. The most classic challenge is sales orgs ask for all these features. Yes. NPMs are constantly

features. Yes. NPMs are constantly having to push back and think about does this fit into everything. So it feels like that's a big part of this is to understand that deeply.

>> Yeah. You want a sales uh you want a sales org that can think like a general manager. So you know that's not just

manager. So you know that's not just trying to get deals done but is trying to help build a business. And so again, knows when to say no, knows when to objection handle versus knows, hey, I've

actually heard this on the last three calls. And I I do think this would be a

calls. And I I do think this would be a really big unlock that would make us more competitive, you know, would be something that new that nobody's doing.

So, um, you know, I think that takes looking for a profile that both has sales skills, but also is going to think with, you know, that product mindset.

>> I love that. Okay, so another quote uh from Claire Hughes Johnson, former podcast guest, amazing sales leader. I

worked with you at Stripe. She said

something along these lines, but a little different. That Gina is probably

little different. That Gina is probably the best go to market person at connecting with product and engineering, deeply understanding the product and providing the most valuable input to her counterparts of any I've ever seen.

[snorts] It sounds like just another ingredient here is just sales feeling like a real partner to product engineering. actually not just being

engineering. actually not just being like, "Hey, do these things for me," but actually feeling like a partner.

>> You know, ultimately company strategy is is basically product strategy meets go to market strategy,

right? Um, and so I spend, I guess, as a

right? Um, and so I spend, I guess, as a goto market leader, I'm constantly trying to figure out, you know, how do I make more money more efficiently? And

you typically do that by having a winning product in the market that is well commercialized. And so that means

well commercialized. And so that means that I I really lean into thinking about product strategy and thinking about pricing strategy. Um because if those

pricing strategy. Um because if those two things are optimal, you're you know, you're going to win more often and there'll be less friction um in it. Um,

and so that's sort of where you got to put as a revenue leader like a GM hat on. Um, and not just think how do I

on. Um, and not just think how do I sell, but actually how do I how do I enable the the insights I'm getting from talking to customers constantly to have

the company strategy be more effective.

Speaking of product, going in a slightly different direction. PLG productle

different direction. PLG productle growth was it felt like it was very hot for a while where everyone's like you got to go PLG. That's the only way to win now. It's impossible to do sales.

win now. It's impossible to do sales.

There's no uh the future is PLG. It

feels like that's gone away in in large part. Obviously still companies grow

part. Obviously still companies grow through PLG and work through PLG. What's

just kind of your thoughts on PLG and when does it make sense for a company these days to actually think this is how they will grow for a while? I I think a lot PLG is makes sense for a lot of

companies at the outset unless you are very explicitly building a product for enterprise. Um so Sierra as an example,

enterprise. Um so Sierra as an example, right? Like they are very clearly going

right? Like they are very clearly going after global 2000 or you know some something close to that. So PLG is not going to be overly useful to them because they are trying to win eight

figure deals from day one. But for a lot of products um folks are targeting a startup audience at the outset and then they're adding more functionality so that they can ultimately continue to

scale up market. So I think PLG is still super relevant. It's a it's a major

super relevant. It's a it's a major driver of Versell's growth. It was a big driver of of Stripe's growth. The thing

that folks get wrong is um it does typically have a ceiling. So people are generally not going to, you know, go

give a give you a million dollars via self-s served flow. So at some point, um, if you want to sustain growth rates, you're going to have to have your deal

sizes get bigger and bigger. And where I I think folks get stuck is uh waiting too long on PLG because it does take a while to build a replicable sales

process and a sales process which often you're getting fed by inbound at the beginning and then you got to add outbound. It takes a while actually to

outbound. It takes a while actually to turn outbound into a predictable engine.

So I think where you see companies hit walls is just when they don't add the sales portion of it soon enough. So

essentially every company ends up having to build a sales org. Some start

productled and then at sales. Some just

start sales and and and have it from the beginning.

>> Yeah, I would I would agree. There are

um you know there are probably some good examples of like large vertical SAS platforms that are are SMB but even they wind up with like a you know velocity

sales team. So um yeah I don't I don't

sales team. So um yeah I don't I don't know that I can think of like a hundred billion dollar company that's PLG only.

Yeah, like it just feels like a big like you're losing you're leaving money on the table even if you are growing really fast. I know Lastian was a long time PLG

fast. I know Lastian was a long time PLG company but uh but eventually uh to calm down I don't know if that's the right way to put it. Okay. Um you mentioned pricing. I know you have strong opinions

pricing. I know you have strong opinions on pricing and pricing strategy. What's

just like a couple tips you might share with someone thinking about how to price their product?

>> Uh yeah. So I uh this kind of the theme but uh I think the first thing is like you got to think about pricing like a product. Um so it's another one where um

product. Um so it's another one where um it it actually really matters how you choose to price a product. Um do you

really understand where customers are going to drive value? Do you really understand where you incur costs? and

are you doing a smart job of aligning those things? You know, you've got lots

those things? You know, you've got lots of examples of companies grossly underpricing um because you're sort of afraid to charge for the value that you actually provide. I think there are a

actually provide. I think there are a lot of examples where people default to including a premium strategy without that actually being a strategy. Uh like

a good example at Stripe, we launched Stripe billing years ago. um it had a premium strategy because that's what you do and then we sort of looked at it and we're like you know actually integrating

straight building takes a little bit of work. So if you do that you're probably

work. So if you do that you're probably going to stay and so we killed that killed that uh killed the free trial to zero downside. Uh so you know that's

zero downside. Uh so you know that's that's another one. Um, at Verscell, we've been going through that transition where, you know, we're a consumption-based uh business model

ultimately, but for at the outset, we basically kind of bundled that into what looked like a SAS-like price. And, you

know, as we've added a lot more functionality, that that wasn't working anymore. Um, and so we did an

anymore. Um, and so we did an unbundling. Um, and right now actually

unbundling. Um, and right now actually we we did a pretty substantial pricing change in in August where we have an enterprise at a pro skew. And if you looked at the enterprise skew, it's

called enterprise for a reason.

Enterprise and actually um about half of the folks on the enterprise skew were startups, which suggests that there's stuff in the

enterprise skew that a startup really wants. So we kicked a lot of that stuff

wants. So we kicked a lot of that stuff out of the enterprise skew and made it so you could buy it self-s serve online and what do you know people are so you know so now that's like really driven a

lot of growth in our PLG funnel which is awesome for startups because it let it's super efficient they they can just buy things they want that it's awesome for us because you don't have to have a human intermediate that so you know

getting all of these knobs really tuned uh is a a key to both a great customer experience and optimal revenue outcomes.

S maybe just one more question before we get to our very exciting lightning round. It's going to be a combo

round. It's going to be a combo question. Uh I hear you have a hot take

question. Uh I hear you have a hot take on kind of sales comp, how to comp sales people that's different from other people and also who to hire when you're hiring folks in sales. Can you just talk

about your takes there?

>> I struggle with sales comp because um uh you know it's all about pay for performance which I'm obviously uh a fan

of. Um but it is um it makes your

of. Um but it is um it makes your organization less flexible because you basically have to decide 12 months in

advance these are things I value. Um and

particularly in this moment that could be different. Um as a great example of

be different. Um as a great example of this uh when you know we wrote the sales plans for this year at Verscell the AI cloud did not exist. we were selling our

front-end cloud and we were selling vzero and you know introduce the AI cloud halfway through the year. Now we

had all sorts of good ways to still incentivize that. Um but um you know I I

incentivize that. Um but um you know I I think um you want to be able to be innovative and pivot and um you know

when you have a well-designed sales plan um uh or you know a very structured sales plan that that can be challenging.

So that's that's a little bit of of my hot take is just I'm trying to figure out how do you have the upside of sales of you know motivates people. It's a

quantitative function which is great but also the flexibility to change your mind because I think a lot of companies right now are having a hard time doing annual

planning. So so that's one. Um on

planning. So so that's one. Um on

profiles I have always valued what just sort of a diversified portfolio. Um, so

I I strongly believe that sales is a skill and so you want sales people with actual sales experience in your organization, but I think there's value

in pairing them with um more non-traditional backgrounds, in particular a consulting or a banking um, you know, background. Those folks are

really good at uh, you know, more quantitative and analytical aspects of sales. So getting into that

sales. So getting into that consultative, you know, part which I think we talked about at the at the outset. Um, and so I find that when you

outset. Um, and so I find that when you mix these together, uh, the sort of, you know, consultant banker profile realizes, oh, wait a minute, sales is a

skill and I didn't really have it. Um,

and so they go learn from, you know, your, uh, your account executives with that background. And then your AES learn

that background. And then your AES learn more about, okay, how do I think about a P&L? how can I talk to a CFO? You know,

P&L? how can I talk to a CFO? You know,

how do I present a TCO analysis more effectively? Um, and so just creates a

effectively? Um, and so just creates a much richer learning environment where people are bouncing ideas off each other.

>> That is awesome. I love that strategy.

Okay, final question. Just is there anything else you wanted to share?

Anything else you want to leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

>> Oh man. Um, I feel like we've been very thorough.

>> I think so, too.

>> Yeah, I'm going to You stumped me on that one.

>> Okay, that's the goal. With that, Gan, we reached our very exciting lightning round. I'm going to make it very quick

round. I'm going to make it very quick because I know you got to run. Uh, I'm

gonna ask you just two questions.

>> Okay.

>> One is uh I'm gonna skip to your life motto. Do you have a favorite life motto

motto. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to find useful in work or in life?

>> I do. Um I I actually have found that I'm known for saying a handful of things um that I didn't necessarily realize it, but when you leave an organization, people tend to, you know, tell you what

stuck with them. But there is one that I think I'm I'm known for saying growing up. My mom always said to me, when the

up. My mom always said to me, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

And um I, you know, in sales, you're always going to have a quarter when you're not on pace. And so that's one that I feel like I pull on um not

infrequently because uh you know there's in my view there's another another version of this my mom also would always says was where there's a will there's a way. So you know I think you can always

way. So you know I think you can always choose to find a path forward even when that's not uh super clear.

>> I love these. Okay last question. Uh, I

read that you were a very competitive diver in college early on. Uh, I'm just curious if there's something you learned from that experience that you brought with you that helps you be as successful as you've become.

>> Um, well, I mean, first of all, I should say I was I was uh generally coming in like third place out of three on my team. So, um, you know, I I managed

team. So, um, you know, I I managed managed to to do it in college, but uh, that that was the extent of that career.

Um so I do think so diving is a precision sport and it is a repetitive sport and it is also a sport where uh when you land flat on your back and

literally as you are swimming to the side of the pool like welts are forbing on it you uh always 100% of the time will be forced to immediately get back

on the diving board and do that exact same dive again. And so I think that has a lot of stuff that's transferable. um

to to work and to sales. So, you know, for me, I I just have an obsession with excellence and within sales, sales is about replicability. How do you drive

about replicability. How do you drive predictable outcomes? Um you know, how

predictable outcomes? Um you know, how excellent are you at your ability to forecast? Um and so I think I bring that

forecast? Um and so I think I bring that to bear within sales a lot. Um and then similarly, like you get a lot of nos in sales. Um, and so, you know, I another

sales. Um, and so, you know, I another phrase that a sales guru said to me once uh or in a training was yeses are great, nos are great, may will kill you. And

so, how do you get really comfortable that no is a great thing? And that just gave you data and now you can go do something with it.

>> This is a really uh inspiring and uh empowering way to end the conversation.

Jean, thank you so much for being here.

>> Thanks so much for having me, Lenny. It

was a lot of fun.

>> Bye, everyone.

Thank you so much for listening. If you

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