YouSaid · the spoken record

Ron Gabrisko

lines on the record: 106
first: 2025-08-04
most recent: 2025-08-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That's where we are. Yeah, we're early days. Like, you know, we've obviously doing well, but it's early days. So we got a lot of work to do, but we're excited about it. Like I said, I think market's amazing. I think we've made a lot of good bets. I think we continue to invest and innovate. We can get there. So I think it'll be one of those iconic companies.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think we're truly now a company then Yeah, it's an iconic company. I mean, how many trillion dollars software tech companies are there? There's only seven or eight, I think. It's funny if you think back like people at Databricks today, it's like, you know, Microsoft people, what were they like back in 1985 or Google people back in 2000?”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, no. I mean, we've been working on it for months and months and months, but when it finally got signed, we were like, you know, me and Ali were like, oh, great job. Good work. High five. No, it was like back to work.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember when he told me we were like on the 13th floor, there was this like little conference room we would like a couch in there. It was like video games in there or whatever. Yeah, in the office”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One day, you know what? I think when Ali and I got the first Microsoft deal signed a pretty amazing day. So that was pretty game changing. Looking back,”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two things one, go in an industry that's growing and you're passionate about. Obviously, I think data and the eyes where it's at today, but if you're going into tech, I'd say going into data in the eyes. So go into a market that's growing and got to be passionate about it too if you're like, oh, that's boring. Don't go into that. Number two is go where you're going to learn the most. A lot of people try to go, oh, I'm going to get this amount of money instead of that amount of money. No, go to where you like the people and they're going to help mentor you and you're going to learn the most because that's the whole thing about your first job or whatever is how do I learn and how do I grow as an adult as a worker as all those kind of things right like that's that's what it's all about”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's funny. No, for sure. I mean, depending on what your life goals are, they have to be in line with your partner's goals, right? Like kids and, you know, what kind of work you're going to do, all that kind of stuff. Like to me, when I look back at just life in general, like having kids is the best thing I ever did, getting married, best thing I ever did. If you do those things right, then it allows you to put your mind and everything into other things. I put it into Databricks. Like I had to make lots of sacrifices, but my family was always there to make sure I was on the right track. So I think balance is probably the biggest thing for me. You know, you didn't really ask, but, you know, work-wise, like certainly I'm sure there's a ton of stuff I can do better in terms of more patience and all that kind of stuff because I'm a hard driver. Yeah, that's my biggest thing is you got to have a little bit of balance too, you know.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great marriage. My wife's like, I mean, I wouldn't be able to do what I do without her. She takes care of everything while I'm here in London or Korea or Singapore or wherever.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I'm all in on Databricks. Like, I spent a lot of time on Databricks. My kids are out of the house, so travel all the time.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, let's do it. The sales leader, most people think like, oh, you're in sales. The only people in sales they've had a interaction with is like a used car salesman. They're like, oh, you have to be slick. I don't think being a sales leader, you have to be slick. Again, I think you have to be knowledgeable and trustworthy. You can be a mentor, right? You don't have to be tough. I'm a driver, but, you know, mentor people, inspire them.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who wasn't that expensive? But, you know, then we went golfing and dinner, and you get to spend that kind of time. Now you have a different relationship with those customers. You got to make sure they're the right customers.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we try to do events like that. Recently, we did spring training events. We had like 30 customers there. Actually, I got to throw out the first pitch for the Texas Rangers.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends on the company. If you're going to sell to an enterprise company and you can get executives out for two hours to do a steak dinner, do it. It's worth it because now you'll have a relationship with those people that you wouldn't have had on 30 minutes over the phone, right?”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have the saying comes from one of my leaders, Michael Harmon, sell from your feet, not from your seat. If you have the opportunity to go meet a customer in person, go do it. If you have opportunity to go do lunch or dinner or go do it, because again, we talk about that rapport. Talk about that relationship with the customer. They want that relationship where they trust you, where they know they can count on you to solve problems for them. Because a lot of times they're making a decision, it may affect their career. It could catapult them way into the future or not. And so they're going to make a decision. Like the more time you can spend with them, spend with them in person, establish their poor, crazy importance.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. In my sales team cares more about who goes to club or as much as who goes to club as like, okay, what's the new commission plan? How does that work? All that kind of stuff. It's that important. Like people would be like trying to lobby for the people that are on the fence. And you create that culture where, you know, everybody wants to get there and it becomes a really fun thing. That's over weekend. Oh, it's over a weekend. Oh, it's fine.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you have enough of a sales team, where because President's Club is like 10, 15, maybe 20% of your people are going. But if that's only two people, it's not a President's Club, right? So you got to have at least, I don't know, 50 or 100 people, at least in sales before you join a President's Club, because it's also like if you're an engineering company, because we bring MVPs too, engineer side of it's going to be like, what sales going on like a holiday for top performers? If you think about the sales mentality, you're competitive. You want to be one of the best. You want to be one of the top 10, 15%. So it's usually kind of a slightly later stage thing. I would say you got to be 100 million plus to do it. You have to be smart about how you invest in it. And the whole idea is create a special experience for the salesperson and their spouse. Get that spouse where they're like, wow, Databricks is amazing company and you got to make.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, early day founders, what I've seen is they'll do the whole company and off site, but it's not a president's club, right?”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's cool Well, there's so many companies that have big IT and outsourcing in India. And so we built a whole academy there to train all the Indian partners, WIPROS and the Emphasis and train a million people there.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our brand's gotten really good now as we started to spend more on brand. I think we should have done more of that early marketing and brand. I want to press even more on partners. You know, we'll fund $200 million and projects to partners this year, but I would spend even more in partners and distribution, training. We just started Databricks India Academy. You know, we'll train over a million people.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Massive. It's massive, right? We think it's early in the market. I say it's top of the second inning. And so if we can continue to pour money into innovation and R&D and sales and distribution, we're going to grab more market share and again get further ahead of them.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Five plus years, in my opinion. You know, we bet on the future early days. We bet on AI. We bet on the lake house. We bet on open source. They're just dipping their toe into that. And if you look at it too, right, we're three times their growth rate. We've done 250 snowflake to Databricks migrations, eight of their top 10. We're doing pretty well in that market. So I think we're the future. And the founders made some really smart investments in technology bets in R&D to make sure we're well ahead of them. And so we'll continue to invest. It's great being private too, right? We get to overinvest in R&D, overinvest in sales.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cloud's a little bit more even distributed, although GCP, you'd still say it's kind of a distant third, right? But AWS and Azure kind of neck and neck, that's a big battle. Getting back to the competition snowflake question for us, like, it's kind of good to have somebody that's trying to make you better. And I'm ultra competitive, right? Like I'm an athlete. So the reason I do sales is because I love competition, right?”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll win. We'll crush everyone. No, but I think, listen, and the biggest player gets 80% of the market, right? And the other ones get to get past.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, you need competition, otherwise, you don't have a market, right? Especially early days. If nobody else is selling into your market, like, you know, what's the point? I don't think there's 15 companies that'll survive in the traditional thing is there's three companies. There's three clouds. There'll be three AI players. I think there'll only be one data and AI player Databricks, but there'll probably be three.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think cursor is super impressive. I think they're growing crazy fast. Like I use AI for engineering and coding. They're doing really well. So, I mean, we'll see, you know, if they can sustain it, I hope they can, but it's, you know, super impressive what they're doing for sure.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I answer that They all have different challenges. The zero to ten for me was probably the most fun. It was tough, but I was like, I can sell ten million dollars of something to literally anyone. You know what I mean? Like all I have to do is figure out what they want to buy. That $10 to $100 million is pretty tough scale because now you got a little bit of product market fit, but now you really have to get into that enterprise motion, start getting referenceable customers, get them to speak about you. I really enjoyed that phase for sure. Then the hundred to a billion. Now you're getting partners involved. Distribution channels, you're scaling the sales organization. So now it's, you know, you're getting into the scaling function. We just did $3 billion last year. I think we'll be $10 billion in a few years. So now you're in hyperscale and a different set of challenges. So each one I've enjoyed because they're different. I think the 10 to 100 is one of the hardest things. Now, the hyperscalers in AI, they're like.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, as long as humans are buying software, I think you need humans to sell software. So we definitely use AI to become more efficient, but we're going to hire quite a few folks because we're going to go big.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I haven't thought about it. Still early days, but you're probably right. I mean, even now, like, I mean, how many emails and LinkedIn posts do you get? Literally thousands, right? Like, so which ones kind of go to the front of your box where you even take a meeting, right? A lot of it's kind of have to do with your brand and your message and, you know, what's happening in the market and how much you know about their company, right? Like, again, that's what I think AI can do is if I really know what's going on inside that person, inside that company, you're right. You might need a human to actually put a human touch to it, but it's probably going to give you the content to get them potentially interested better, right?”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if completely replaced it, but certainly I think outbound stuff. The AI is actually better at it than humans, in my opinion, because it'll also learn what works faster. Right? Like that whole iteration process I did early on with, hey, everybody's going to do prospecting day. If I start setting up a bot to try to ping people to get meetings, it's going to learn what works and what doesn't work faster than I can get a team of humans together. Now, that being said, like you want to learn that, but it needs to be informed, right? I don't think you can completely replace humans there”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, we do. Yeah, we use perplexity. We use glean. We actually built some of our own AI, like a sales AI assistant. Our sales AI assistant, if we're like, hey, how do I get funding for an on-prem migration from Microsoft? You can just ask and it'll tell you the process on that. We use perplexity. We'll do a lot of our upfront account research. Tell me, you know, how this customer uses data and AI. How would they get the most value out of Databricks? You get a lot of information on that. And then our sales assistant will actually take that data or take that conversational stuff along with like our count data, right? Like it'll say, oh, they've been growing here. They've been spending on this product. They're working on this initiative. Oh, I also see in the press they're interested in cybersecurity, stuff like that, right? So you can use AI to really accelerate all that research and get smarter because again, the smarter you are on that customer, the more”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, listen, I'd never ask somebody, do you have a budget? I've experienced enough to know what's going to happen. I'm going to get that information eventually. But like, listen, everybody wants to be important. So let them be important. The reason they have in that position”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but again, it's like, how do you try to get to know somebody, right? Get to know about them. I think a lot of people are influenced by where they grow up, their families. Like I like to ask about that because I think a lot of people are like, you know, families super important things. I want to get to know about that.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm definitely not a weather talker. Normally, I usually talk about where'd you grow up? What are you interested in? What are your family? I mean, you got to start small. You can't be like, oh, do you have any cancers we can talk about or anything? Because”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly Yeah, I mean, think about the Olympics, right? Like these people train their whole lives and it's over in split second, right?”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends on the rep, their preparation. Are they asking questions? You know, when you think about what's a successful sales meeting, we talked about that, like the basics of selling. It's like, have I generated some rapport? Do they trust me? Have I generated interest? Have I identified challenges? And have I driven to an objective? What was the objective of my meeting? Was it to get a next meeting? Was it get a POC? Was it get an introduction to somebody? So you need to have a game plan on all that. So you've had to researched the company, the opportunity, the people you're talking to, their LinkedIn profiles. So a good meeting is somebody who really is prepared. Again, it's like any sport. You practice 10x more at least than you play. So if you have a one-hour meeting, you should be preparing for it ten hours.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know, I know. But I'm a baseball player. So if you think about it, the reps, like when I was first there, I was like, just get me as many meetings as you can. Just put in there and be like, oh, we're going to deal with J and J. They're like, who do you want to meet with? I was like, anyone with a J&J email address because I'll be able to assess like is that a person got juice? You know, is there an opportunity? How do I navigate the organization? So again, go take as many meetings as a leader.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Eventually, I'm going to see pipeline and closures. But you're right, there's a delay. There's a six, twelve, maybe eighteen month delay on that. But that's why the first line manager and the sales leader is so important because I'm going to go assess those meetings myself. Again, if you think about it, you need pitchers and batters, right? So, or catchers and batters. I don't know what, you know, I guess for cricket here, you need me.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building opportunities, right? So at least 25% of those should turn into some kind of opportunity. And now I'm going to work that opportunity. And, you know, they're going to close at different rates depending on that organization. How can I get budget, things of that nature?”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, we set the bar at like five a week is kind of the minimum. So, you know, five to ten, he's probably right in that six to eight. That's not a bad metric. But again, you do want to make sure you prepare. It's just like any other sport.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it does slidey just based on the sales cycle I think up front, I'm looking at pipeline and activity. The number one thing I'm going to look at is this person getting the right meetings? Are they building the right pipeline? I got to make sure I'm inspecting that too. So, you know, early stage sales leader, you're going to want to go, hey, I'm in your territory this month for this week, set up as many meetings as you have. And if you've got one or two meetings, probably don't have a great salesperson, right? So you're going to see them in front of a customer. Do they ask you questions? Does the customer want to buy from them”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think some do it too early because, you know, again, it's going to spread your focus or your sales leadership, but it's also going to spread your focus for your product. Like you're going to see new requirements come up in Asia or new regulatory requirements, depending on where you go. So I think the biggest mistake is people go early before they've really got that product market fit because they, you know, hey, they have a couple customers in EAS, so let's go support them. And now, again, you got to think about like, you know, I've limited team. You're constrained by your resources, like where do you want them focused? So I think that's probably the biggest mistake I see.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard. Yeah, it's hard because, you know, there's a lot of different things. Like, you have to translate your culture, your playbook, you have to have leadership there that you trust. One of the big lessons I learned is you want to transplant some of your talent. So I literally like when we open Amia took four or five of my best young, hungry sellers and said, okay, you're going to go to Amia for a year. It's going to be a great experience for you. You need to help them build the muscle over there and build the culture over there, right? And me personally, too, I'm doing multiple trips, one a quarter over there to get that going. Same thing with APJ, like transport some existing talent helps build the culture, all those kind of things.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we did a lot of stuff right. I think when we expanded internationally, I think we did it at kind of the right time.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd like to hire, you know, people that have strong sales accept and sales leadership. A lot of the same qualities that want to build out channels. Because again, like, you know, me as a CRO, I'm a sales leader, but I also spend, you know, 30, 40% of my time with partners because I want to build that channel, right? And so it's a skill you need to learn when you're trying to build a massively scalable business. And so, you know, just getting the person that's always been in partnerships, sometimes a little bit dicey. I'd rather find somebody that's done some sales and done some partnerships. They've done it thoughtfully to build their career. So, I mean, I think that's important to do. Okay,”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good question. Because sometimes, like, partner leaders, they're like sales leaders that didn't make it sometimes So I try to actually hire”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Early days, that's hard to do Like, I would say if you're less than 50 or 100 million, like you need to build a strong direct sales channel, and then you can build a partner channel. But at 500 million now, we should be scaling stuff through channels, right?”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started to invest in the partner channel much bigger. Partners are interesting, right? Like especially the big partners, big SI partners. At that point, we had already done, Ali and I did the deal with Microsoft, right? Which became kind of pretty historical, I think, in legend. And it's still, you know, Microsoft's our biggest partner. It's amazing partner for us. But like, you know, you got to start thinking through like channels and partner strategies. And when you're so small, you're always thinking like, how do I get these partners involved? But you're too small. They're like, you know, go away. But once you start getting scale, you need to start investing early days and partners until you do.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you scale bigger and bigger, one of the keys, I think, is probably how do you keep that early day culture? It's such a huge advantage when you're like a gritty, innovative startup. I think we've done a good job actually at Databricks keeping that, right? Like that's a big part of the founders is like we want to be the innovators, the disruptors, the cool nerdy kids. You know what I mean? Like that's what we want to be. And so keeping that culture where you have grit and all that and not becoming a big company, you know, that's the challenge is you scale. How do you keep that and not become a big company where people are just bureaucratic, it's process, it's, you know, the management team versus the workers. But I think we've done a pretty good job of that. I think our culture is second to none. It's a big part of why we're successful.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think a lot of it's like, again, the profile and cultural mix, right? We talk a lot about first team. First team's the company. So sales leadership, the higher you go, the more it's got to be about the company. You're not there to just make sure your people are successful or, you know what I mean? It's got to be, okay, here's our company mission. We're together. We're going to do it. And so I think that camaraderie and how you build that team and how you build the culture is as important as anything else that you do in sales. People need to be feel like they're part of a special mission.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, 100 million now, you got a lot more process, a lot more enablement. You know, I don't know everyone. I can't just reach out and make sure I get involved in the deals. And so a big part of it is how do you build that leadership team? Again, we talked a little bit about like, what do you need in the next 12 to 24 months? So you need to build leaders so that they can effectively develop talent. My rule is if you have the best team on the planet and you inspire, motivate, mentor them, you get to win. I mean, we have a great product, which is also a massive advantage for us. But that's the number one thing you can do is if I put the best team on the field and they're well coached and inspired, I'm going to win.”
2025-08-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source