YouSaid · the spoken record

Chad Peets

lines on the record: 77
first: 2026-05-23
most recent: 2026-05-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, like I'm like, oh, this is my guy. And then lastly, John Herring at Vi Capital, and he's a big Elon guy. And the reason I love John is John is a fucking in the weeds VC like I am. Like I've never seen a guy put the hours in like he does. And I think that's true of all three of them. They do the work. They care.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, look, Mike Spizer is still, and he's at Sutter Hill and he's doing his own thing. Mike is so unique, and Mike is unique to me for a number of reasons. One, Mike has the ability to see around corners. Mike sees shit that nobody else sees. Now, you could argue we've had some execution issues around his vision, which we've had, but Mike sees shit before anybody else sees it. Two, Mike is an operator. And he's probably the only guy I've ever worked with that is both a stock picker and an operator. And three, Mike doesn't give a shit. He just wants to win. And he will tell you whatever he has to tell you. He never holds back. The other guy, and there's probably two others. I just met him, Sean Maguire from Sequoia”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely agree. Like, if you look back 10 years from now and you say, over the last 10 years, there's been 15 or 20, whatever the number is, world-class technology companies that changed the technology industry. And we can say for half of those companies, we were instrumental in helping those companies get there. I can't think of anything better than that.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, where do you want to start? Yeah, look, I think the two things that I've learned the most. If I meet with a CEO and he's not a Matana and my mind a Winston type of guy, I can't work with him because if I go in there and say we need to do this, this, this, and this, oh, well, geez, da da da da da. And I look for how often they reach out to me. Like the killer CEOs I work with, I swear to God, Matan is reaching out to me at 10 o'clock at night, 6 o'clock in the morning, Sridha Ramaswamy the same way. So it's got to be a killer CEO. And to the extent that I'm able to figure it out, which is not always good, product, it all comes down to product. If they don't have world-class product, you're going to fucking lose. And so have I had some misses? Yeah, I've had a lot of misses. And it's either one of those two reasons or both at the same time.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I'll take this one up until this point for 30 years, it's been me. So I have a team that handles the recruiting. I handle all the boardwork, all the consulting work, and we're, I think I have seven companies in the portfolio. I can't take on anymore. The reason I was so excited to bring Chris on, A, is because he adds value and so many places that I don't. The reality is operationally, I think I'm pretty good. I've sat on a lot of boards. I was trained by Chris. I was trained by John McMahon. I was trained by Mike Spizer to do the operational ship. But the reality is I've never sat in a seat. I've never been a CRO. Chris is the only CRO in the history of technology to go from zero to $4 billion. And so I think the two of us combined are pretty special. The reason I brought Chris in is I can't expand the business without Chris. We're also making some other pretty critical hires or hiring a guy by the name of Mike Hoss that's going to come help scale the recruiting side of the business and then two other people. So to answer the question right now, it's not scalable. Once we get these additional people in place, it is scalable. But will we ever be a company that's got 30 companies in our portfolio? Never. Have you had a whiff in company? And what did you not see that you should have seen? Fuck, yeah.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you give it too soon Makes it incredibly difficult if you don't scale into it. And then how do you deal with the motion of that person?”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I just had a situation where this came up last week. There is some merit to wanting the title simply because it gives you a level of credibility, both with customers and when it comes to recruiting. So if you give somebody that is in fact the CRO a VPS sales title, you are sending some level of signal to the rest of the market that you don't totally believe in this person. May not be intended, but that signal will be received when you're trying to recruit people.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dolly. I mean, Dolly basically brought the entire team over that we built together at AppDynamics and Zscaler. And because Dolly's Dolly, he brought all of them with him. They were operationally sound. He hires the right people. Wiz is a world-class sales organization.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best private company at scale. Now they were likely, they were recently acquired Wiz had a world-class sales organization under Dolly Rogic.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I'm an A player, is that going to deter me? If you tell me, hey, look, every year we get rid of the bottom 10%. I'd be like, you fucking better. If you don't, I don't want to come work there.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're doing it quarterly. No, it's quarterly. Every quarter. You're looking at the team. Like, you should be able to get rid of 2.5% of your sales organization.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because think, look, every healthy sales organization should be attreting the bottom 10% every year. You should be getting rid of 10% of your sales force every year.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can tell you one of the challenges when you go talk to a CEO about building an enterprise sales organization that becomes controversial is the cost when you say things like for every five reps I need a manager, that's expensive. When you say for every four managers I need a second line manager, that's expensive. When you say things like it's going to take six months before you get anything out of this investment and you're going to invest in 100 of these people and for the first six months of buying these 100 people, you're going to get nothing for it. Companies look at this and they're like, you want me to spend a shit ton of money. And then you say things like, right, and at the end of the year you're going to lop off 25% for attrition. We're going to attrit 25%, which means your forecast is going to go down by 25%. They see these numbers in the first couple years of enterprise sales are very, very expensive. And in this day and age, that is very controversial.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that's why you're seeing companies do things that we've never seen before, like offer tender offers, continuing to raise financing and offer secondaries because they're effectively providing the same level of liquidity to their employees that they would get if they went public because otherwise there is no liquidity and they have an issue. So that's a new thing, right? Like you'll actually see CROs negotiate into their compliance that they have the ability to sell annually up to 20% of their shares in a tender offer. I'd never heard of that five years ago. You know, I'm not sure. I think public markets are a good thing. I think the markets are very efficient at telling us what a company should be worth.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. Remember, private markets, you know this takes three guys to set your market price. Public markets take millions of people to determine your price. So is the question, can they go out? Probably. Can they go out at $150 billion? 10% above their last valuation. I'd like to see that.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's a fair question. Snowflake today is worth what $55 billion? So, is somebody going to make the argument to me that Databricks is worth two and a half times Snowflake? Nobody's making that argument to me.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's just different ways of running a business. The way in which that company is run, I've never seen before. It's just different structurally organizationally. Everything is different. And there are times when you're like, how can this work? And then the next thing you know what's working. So it forces me to recognize that although I've seen something be successful in the past, it's not the only way to be successful in terms of how you run the business.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. I mean, working with X has been one of the SpaceX I, which we're now called, has been one of the great joys of my life. It's been, I have learned more. I actually learned quite a bit going back in with Chris, Snowflake the second time, but I have learned more about technology and where I think things are going. So I think the answer is yes.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, likely. And I also just don't know what the world looks like, but there is a world where there are five or six super relevant technology companies and not a lot else. I hope that's not where we land, but you could certainly see a world in which that is where we land. And in that world, there's not a need for a bunch of salespeople because there's only five or six companies.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we're talking about, I mean, some of these compensation things we're talking about, it's not sustainable. What salespeople are currently being paid today is not sustainable. You cannot pay salespeople this amount of money and have a company that's cash flow positive and so on and so forth. Right now, nobody cares because there's so much funding out there and they're just looking at the growth numbers. Nobody seems to care about how much your burn is or anything like that. That has to change. And when that changes, all of these comp models and all of this shit has to change along with it.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My guys are not allowed to send notes. They have to call because it's the same thing. People get inundated with a crew. They have to get the phone number and make the phone call. And so I don't think the day of the sales rep is changing. I just don't. As long as you're selling something that's critical to the business and if whatever it is you're selling, if it fails, people lose their jobs. You have to develop a relationship with a human being to do that.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when it comes to developing forecast and productivity plans, having some flexibility to say, yes, the productivity plan says we can do this, and recognizing that we likely can do more than that and having some flexibility between this astronomical number that they think they have to get to. The data-driven number says here, and being willing to find some middle ground, because the reality is like at factory, we're seeing things happen that we've never seen before. The size of the transactions, the speed in which they are closing these transactions, I've never seen it before.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They hire for it. I mean, it's a big part of it. I mean, they hire for it. You get a very quick feel when you're interviewing there for like what this thing is all about. They talk about mission all the time and they believe in what they're doing. They believe, we believe that we literally are doing things to save the world. Now, you can question that all day long, but that is the belief that we are doing things to change the world.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I'll tell you at SpaceX and XAI, they have done an incredible job of having people that believe in the mission. Clearly, it's not 100%, but everybody there believes in what they are doing and wants to be there, of course, to make money, but they want to be there because they believe in what they're doing.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, just a mentality, like nothing irritates me more when I get into these companies than when I see people whose mentality is, what can I get out of the company for giving the least? Drives me fucking insane. And I will tell you, when I got back into Snowflake, I saw it everywhere. And it just, it's like, look, we are here. We are privileged to get to work for this company. You are here to fulfill the critical role. I can tell you that's how I view my job. Like if I don't think I'm adding as much value as I possibly can, I will leave because I can't live with myself. And I think you have to try to find people that are like that. But there's so many people that are just like, oh, it's a big company. Let me take, take, take, take, take, and give as little in return as I can to get away with it.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just think it's hard to find the types of people harder, I should say, to find the types of people, particularly outside of the UK, in Europe, that are willing to put the effort in that I think is required to be successful. I just think it's challenging and I think it's very difficult to fire people in Europe, as you know. I mean, you want to hire in Germany or France and Spain and decide you want to fire somebody, it's next to impossible. And so having things like performance management and so on and so forth are challenging. I think Europeans have a different expectation in terms of work-life balance. I'm not saying it's wrong. It's just different. And I think that can make it challenging.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love to work and I love to win and I love to be around people that are smarter than me and I love to build incredible companies. I love it.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a cultural issue, at least in the US. I mean, if I look at the US, we're just as a country, we're soft. People have forgotten that we actually have to work hard to achieve the things that we've achieved in the U.S. I won't speak to Europe because you know how I feel about Europe. So I think it's far more broad than just salespeople. I think it's an issue. But I will say over the last year or two, I'm seeing it swing back. Like some of the founders we've talked about that I've worked with, I mean, personal situation. I'm working 70 hours a week. My wife talks to me not that often because she's super pissed about the hours I'm working. I'm like, you don't understand. Everybody I'm working with is working 70 hours a week. That was not the case a couple years ago.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely changes how you think about the sale, too, because in the traditional world it was go book a deal and walk away. And the sales guy didn't have to care. As we experienced at Snowflake and I'm experienced at every company, you can't have that. The rep has to be invested in the long-term relationship with the account because they have to ensure that the account is in fact consuming. Otherwise, they'll go book a deal, walk away and the account doesn't consume and the company's got gross retention problem. So you have to tie some of their compensation. Most of it's still to the booking events, but you have to tie some of it to the consumption so that they are incented to make sure that they don't overbook deals and at the same time that the customer is actually consuming what they bought.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think if you're an API company, for example, it absolutely changes because you're talking about customized solutions. And so it makes sense to have customized solutions specific for a vertical because you can go in there and repeat that motion. I think for out-of-the-box products, it's less relevant, but we're certainly seeing, I'm seeing it happen faster than it has in the past.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, but are they doing more than setting meetings? Are you talking about actually closing transactions where they transform it into an inside rep? Are you saying the SDR function of just setting meetings is still the same, but their productivity is higher because of AI?”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's pretty tough. Like if Anthropic, for example, when they were at their 380 valuation, they were offering reps, call it a million two. I'm not an investor in Anthropic, but if I recruited for them, I would make the case all day that you can 10x that stock. I think anthropic's a $4 or $5 trillion company. So if you're a sales rep and they're offering you a million two and you can look at that and say, I'm going to have $6 million in four years, how do you tell someone good conscience not to do that?”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on what you're talking about learning what. If you're talking about learning how to be a great salesperson, I don't think you're going to get that ananthropic. If you're talking about learning how to sell the products of the future, you're right.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's crazy It's a really difficult thing. I've been on emergency calls literally to discuss this. And the problem is you can't compete financially. What they are paying people is so far above what everybody else is paying, you can't sit there and just counter these people.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a bubble. This to me is a bubble. And honestly, anthropic is inflating that bubble. Not that they're doing anything wrong. They just have so much money they can spend. And so they are setting benchmarks that the rest of the market is trying to keep up with.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're not even in the ballpark. You can see CROs today, and I'll leave the companies out. I know CROs getting $100 million packages.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, like you get North America to the point where it's operating and you have some level of confidence and you have a good leader that can run North America that frees your CRO up, Chris, to go open other markets. You start with EMEA, then you go to APAC, but you do them sequentially so that you're not spread too thin. I agree, that has changed. I'm seeing companies open up everywhere simultaneously. And I think it's really challenging because it also depends on the CRO. But say you have a CRO that's not accustomed to doing that, which is the case with most of them. It can really stretch them.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Mike's amazing. And McMahon was the same way. Like John would come in. I sat on four or five boards with John. John opens his mouth when we're talking about sales. And honestly, that's where I learned from. So when I'm sitting in a board meeting, when we're talking about what I know, I'll say what I have to say. And then I don't say shit.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best board members that I sit on boards with are the ones that know something in particular, product for example, and add a lot of value in a particular area on that board and offer their input and are involved in the business enough to have a point of view, which means not just showing up at the board meetings, actually have conversations with people inside of the company in between board meetings, and so they combine the knowledge that they've gained with the expertise that they have, and they use that to actually add value. But they also understand their swim lanes. The board members that drive me fucking nuts is like when I'm sitting in a board and I have some guy on the board that's a VC that doesn't know fuck all about sales that wants to chime in when we're talking about sales and give us his suggestions and start asking questions. I'm just looking at the guy, can you just shut the fuck up?”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. In fact, I've threatened to walk away from companies because they said, we're going to go raise it this number. This is the forecast we need to have to get to that valuation. So that's what we're going to do. And I'm like, literally, I've said to companies, if you go do that, I will leave because we are not going to hit that number. I'm looking at the number of salespeople. I'm looking at the productivity plan. That number is not realistic. You might get lucky and get there. Forecasts are not supposed to be lucky. You're supposed to put a forecast out with some level of certainty that you can get to that number.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is what I deal with every time I come into a company. They're like, well, we have to get to this number. I'm like, it doesn't work like that. We have a bottoms-up approach. We'll tell you what you can do. You can't say this is the number we have to get to, get us there. It just, it doesn't work.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, RAMP is, remember, there's a couple things that go into ramp. Number one is the sales cycle itself. So to define a rep as productive, right? A productive rep, if the productivity per rep is a million dollars per year, the first quarter they're productive is the first quarter you can expect them to do 250. So first of all, you have to people get this definition wrong all the time. Like the second a guy does a deal, he's productive, incorrect. It's the first quarter in which they hit their full productivity number. And so if you have a sales cycle that's six months, how do you get the ramp time less than six months? You can't. So the two things that go into shortening ramp time are the sales cycle itself and then the enablement of the rep. So there's two things that go into it. You can do a good job of getting the enablement to happen within 90 days. But if your sales cycle is six months,”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think you can pick a revenue number, but if you're going to have 10 or 15 reps, for example, if you have five reps, you don't need it. But if you have 10 or 15 reps and you're going to 50, you better have it.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a company out there that I've brought into almost everyone on my portfolio companies called Revlogic. And all they do is build enablement programs for early stage companies.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, there's all sorts of rules you have to break to do that. For example, you never want a new manager to have less than five productive reps. You can't scale the organization from 100 to 300 or not have that. What I mean is if I have a manager, he's got five reps on his team, he or she, three of those reps should be productive, two can be new. But if you try to hold that, then you start running out of places to put reps. So now all of a sudden you have to do things like I could have a manager that has six reps. Each of those six reps has been with the company for less than 90 days. Shit starts to break when you do that. So your ratios get messed up. Your enablement could have issues. You start cutting territories too quickly. Hey, Mr. Rep, you came on with 50 accounts. Six months later, you have 10 accounts. So can it be done? It can. But if you're going to scale that quickly, the market better be massive and you better have a product that everybody wants to buy.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Snowflake was the first company we had ever seen where we couldn't hire fast enough to bring the productivity number down. No matter how fast we hired, it kept going up, which is like, that's when we knew.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, not quota, but each quota is a function of compensation, productivity. Each rep is able to generate $2 million in new ACV. We're going to have 100 of them, so we can do 200. So you still have to use that approach, but then you have outlier deals.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It could be 300, it could be 400. It's super hard, like forecasts have always been data driven. You take a productivity model and we can pretty much tell you with 90% certainty historically where you're going to end the year based on what you're getting per rep, how many reps you hire, what the attrition rate is, what the ramp rate is. And so you build those. The problem is in this world today, first of all, doubling is not good enough. So going from 50 to 100 five years ago, everybody be super excited. Today you go from 50 to 100 a year and you might go out of business. It's just a different world. And so you have to have some balance between you can't throw out the old way of doing it, the data driven, because I've seen companies try to do that. I've seen them raise off of numbers where they say, we did 50 last year. We're going to do 300 this year. I'm like, great, back it up. How? How are you doing 300? Show me the numbers. We just feel like we can do 300.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every CEO conversation is can I work with this guy? Is he a killer? You're kind of, and I'm sure, and he's feeling me out too. And I oftentimes will refer them to our interviews and say you should watch this. You understand what you're getting with me because I'm not everybody's cup of tea. A lot of people watch that and say, yeah, we shouldn't work together. We're good. And say that. Oh, for sure. Oh, we know, man. You're fucking crazy. Listen, that's why I told you to watch it. The other ones will be like, this is exactly what we need in the organization. So that's a good qualifier. And then I'll go through their sales organization and say, look, I've gone through the sales organization, particularly your chief revenue officer. I can't work with him or her. So in order for me to come in, you have to come.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We get equity. I mean, there's cash that covers just the expenses of the recruiting because the guys on the recruiting team are the best recruiters in the world. Bar none, but they're not cheap. So we have to collect cash to cover their expenses. The way we make our money is we get an equity grant tied to four years. And they say the same thing to everybody. Like, look, we're going to get in there and you're quickly going to realize that we are going to change the outcome of your company. You will see after a month exactly what you're getting. By the way, if you don't, no problem. You fire us.”
2026-05-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source