Grit

Growing up in a farm town in Pennsylvania with a population of just 183 people, Harry Ault had big career aspirations. After working for CitiGroup in management positions, Harry built a successful career as a sales leader in the tech industry. As a go-to-market guru, Harry now serves as the Chief Revenue Officer of DataStax, a data management company. On this episode of Go to Market Grit , Joubin...

Laura Palmer will never forget the first big technology sales deal she ever closed. Having only worked professionally as an inside sales rep, Laura took a leap of faith early in her business career and negotiated a half-a-million deal with a customer while “kind of knowing what I was doing and kind of not knowing what I was doing,” she says.  So when Laura stood up for herself by telling the CEO o...

Throughout his over 18 years working for the Golden State Warriors, Brandon Schneider has held several positions and seen it all. From the depths of rarely making the playoffs, to the heights of making it to the NBA championship five times in a row with three wins, Brandon has held 10 titles at the Warriors — most recently, the role of President and Chief Operating Officer. On this episode of Go t...

By her own admission, Kayti Sullivan was having a “quarter-life crisis” when she realized the jobs she could get with her Masters degree in Early European Art were not careers she had envisioned. What followed for Kayti was the start of an incredibly successful twelve-year run in sales leadership at Yelp — where she traveled the globe and rose through the ranks. Now, Kayti is Chief Revenue Officer...

For Thomas Hansen, chasing a passion was key to unlocking the path toward an impressive career. An avid windsurfer, Thomas started his professional life managing a small windsurfing company in Denmark — an experience where he learned what it takes to succeed. Now, Thomas serves as Chief Revenue Officer of UiPath, a growing business that develops software for robotic process automation — freeing up...

Marcy Campbell knows a thing or two about taking risks.  Over her almost 40 years in business, Marcy’s worked at 11 different startups — building several sales organizations from the ground up. Now, as Vice President of Global Professional Services at PayPal, Marcy employs grit on a daily basis as she leads sales teams on the newest company products. On this episode of Go to Market Grit , Joubin a...

In 2008, when Ryan Longfield took a contracted account executive position at LinkedIn without any prior sales experience, he knew he had to be “all-in.”  “‘I’ll sleep under my desk if I have to,’” Ryan remembers telling a recruiter who asked if he was worried he won’t be able to hit $50,000 in sales in only three months.  Now, after an almost 10-year run at LinkedIn where he worked in five differe...

When it comes to building startups from the ground-up, Brendon Cassidy knows it all: Having held some of the first sales leadership roles at LinkedIn, Echosign, and Talkdesk, Brendon helped position each company for success.  Now, Brendon consults startups on go-to-market operations as founder of his own consulting firm, Cassidy Ventures.  On this episode of Go to Market Grit , Joubin and Brendon...

As Chief Revenue Officer of cloud content management and file sharing company Box, Mark Wayland and his team have taken on a “land, adopt, and expand” business model to attract new buyers across various industries and locations. This strategy seems to be paying off — according to Box, 68% of the Fortune 500 currently use the SaaS company’s products. On today’s episode of Go To Market Grit, Joubin...

Impossible Foods has a mission to eliminate the use of animals in the food system by 2035. With the growing success of the company’s plant-based meat products, such as the Impossible Burger, this vision is becoming reality. Feeling as though the company was “aligned with my own personal mission,” Dana Worth, former VP of Sales at Impossible Foods, joined the company in 2015 before it brought any o...

Just take it from website security industry executive Chris Merritt — the internet was not designed with security and performance in mind.  As President of Field Operations and CRO of Cloudlflare, Chris and his company are dedicated to fixing this problem by protecting websites for a more secure and reliable internet.  On this episode of Go to Market Grit, Joubin and Chris discuss how Cloudflare’s...

After 18+ years working in multiple high-level sales positions at Salesforce, Mike Wolff knows what makes a good leader.  On this week’s episode of Go To Market Grit , Mike and Joubin talk about the leadership lessons Mike learned as he rose through the ranks at Salesforce from a sales development rep to the company’s Senior Vice President of Global ISV Partners. In this episode, we cover: How Mik...

Leadership is in Peter Kim’s DNA. Since he got his first management job running a Subway on the weekends when he was 14-years-old, Peter has built successful sales teams at companies such as LinkedIn and Advent Software. Now, Peter works as Senior Vice President of Sales at Relativity, a company that is transforming the legal discovery process by streamlining the collection, processing and review...

Dave Justice knows a lot about crisis leadership. Over his almost 21 years in sales, he’s successfully navigated through the dotcom and housing bubble crashes — and now, the COVID-19 pandemic.  After 18 consecutive years working in various sales roles at Cisco, Dave became Executive Vice President of North America Enterprise Sales at Salesforce before transitioning in 2020 to his current role as C...

When Matt Heinz took a quota-carrying sales job in 2011 after having worked in sales leadership, he knew that “it was a step back, from the way that you look at it on a piece of paper.”  But in the end, Matt saw success as he helped turn a company doing $11 million a year in revenue to one that sold for over $5 billion. Now, Matt serves as the Chief Revenue officer of Amplitude, a leading company...

If a customer doesn’t understand how a product will provide a positive impact to their business, will they buy it? It may seem like a simple question — but for Jay Snyder, identifying and communicating such areas of value to customers is a crucial aspect of keeping a business growing. On this episode of Go to Market Grit, Jay and Joubin discuss ways to build respect as a new leader, how to effecti...

No matter how advanced sales technology gets, it’s still imperative for Kevin Knieriem to listen to his gut intuition when it comes to making business choices. And for good reason — his “Spidey senses,” as he jokingly calls them, are always accurate.  But that doesn’t mean that artificial intelligence and advanced data analytics can’t help him and his team make better decisions. In fact, as Chief...

If you ask Ross Biestman about the highest-performing environment he’s ever been a part of, you might be surprised to hear nothing of his time as an investment banking analyst or as a salesperson at Adobe.  Instead, Ross points to his time on the University of California, Berkeley rugby team — an organization that he says instilled team values that he still brings to every company he works with. I...

Cloud-based data storage company Snowflake made headlines this past September when it underwent the highest-valued software IPO in stock market history. For the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, Chris Degnan, this blockbuster success was many years in the making.  Having joined Snowflake in 2013 while the company was still in its early stages, Chris led the effort to build the business’ sales organ...

Global trade is as complex as it is essential to worldwide economic stability. From organizing freight shipped through the air or over oceans, to customs and other governmental red tape, there’s a lot for businesses to worry about when it comes to world commerce.  Just take it from Will Urban, Chief Revenue Officer of the freight forwarding company Flexport — a business creating cutting-edge techn...

When it comes to building a company from the ground up, Qasar Younis has done it all.  A mechanical engineer by trade and entrepreneur at heart, Qasar transitioned from working on cars to building startups, eventually selling his second business venture TalkBin to Google in 2011. Qasar has also helped fund and advise early-stage companies as a partner at Y Combinator. Now, Qasar is the founder and...

Kelly Wright has had a remarkable career in sales, from her early days selling books door to door to joining Tableau as a developing startup and helping them grow into a multi-billion dollar company as a key member of their executive team. Today, she is board director at Fastly, a leading cloud services provider.  In this episode of Go to Market Grit, Joubin and Kelly discuss Kelly’s incredible ca...

Dave Wilner joined Auth0 in November of 2014, and has played an instrumental role in growing the company to $1 billion in valuation. In this episode of Go to Market , Joubin and Dave discuss Dave’s unique career journey, including his background as a former lawyer. They also discuss the pressures and expectations of succeeding in a high profile sales role and how Dave has managed to be so successf...

Atlassian is one of the most unorthodox technology companies in the world. Almost everything the company does is completely different than what you would expect. And yet, the organization has been massively successful and efficient in achieving growth. In this episode of Go to Market Grit, Joubin and Cameron discuss how Cameron built a $44 billion business without a sales team, and some of the com...

Marc Boroditisky brings a unique perspective to the table as CRO of Twilio, as a founder and builder who has led several companies.  In this episode of Go to Market , Joubin and Marc discuss his unique background and journey that led him to Twilio, and how his experience and passions — like his love of startups and discovering product-market fit — have shaped his revenue leadership strategy. Joubi...