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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“I think Databricks is a once in a lifetime type company. It will be a trillion dollar company. Somebody in that data and AI space will become a trillion dollar company and we're the innovation leaders. I think we can do it, right? And so part of that when you think about getting talent at this level of scale, because we kind of skipped a couple stages now, is we have to become a destination company. People have to be like, I want go to Databricks because I can build my career there because someday I want to be a CRO or a CEO or whatever. And they're going to teach me about how to do that in the right space better than anybody. I mean, think about like Microsoft early days or Google early days. A big part of getting talent is you have to become a destination company. And I think Databricks is doing a pretty good job of 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 mean, that won't work on my team. Again, like, that's the kind of culture that I try to build. And again, I think if you're a good salesperson, you ask me, like, did we lose any older brakes? Like, eventually, like, somebody's like, hey, I'm a startup person. I like to work at startups. I don't want to work at a, you know, nine thousand person company or ten thousand person company. So they go to a startup again. But at the end of the day, like, I think that's what we have to teach that next generation of sellers because it's going to get even more competitive. Work your ass off, out hustle everyone.”
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, like I said, I talk a lot about grit and hard work. You know, my dad was a construction worker, my mom was a math teacher. They taught me like hard work overcomes talent every single day. So I'm looking for, that's the special quality I'm looking for is like, is this person gonna put in the extra hours, have the extra grit when times get tough? Are they just going to stay in the office longer and make more phone calls, that kind of thing?”
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 it was me and Riley, he's like selling 18 grand. It's funny. I know. Isn't it nuts? Yeah, it's fun. It's fun amazing.”
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
“Know we have 1400 reps now. We have 5,000 people in sales. So, there's a certain budget we have to have on commission. So we'll schedule a plan. We know this many people are going to make 200%, 150. You know, you model it out. It's pretty sophisticated because now you have big numbers. It's not like you have 20 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
“I mean, eventually people are like, hey, I want to go to the next startup and try to do that because we have great retention. But as you scale, you have to be a little bit smarter too on how you spend your commissions”
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
“Mean a normal enterprise rep, you know, you're going to pay $300, $350K. So, you know, if they blow it out, you want them to make 3x. In early days, we were doing big commit deals. I mean, like I said, I had one guy make a million bucks in the first year and then scale it. And, you know, now we probably have 20 guys make a million bucks in the sales team. But you always have to have those big earners because it's part of the reason they're in sales is because they want the big payday.”
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
“Not logos, but I want to make sure they're achievable goals. I want them to be stretch, but achievable. And I'm going to make the plans like pretty rich. You know what I mean?”
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, you got to make sure that salespeople are crushing their numbers and making money because that's going to be your best recruiting engine. When you're trying to sell a company that has small revenue, you need people to take a leap of faith. They got to hit the believe button. So I was like, who's going to be my first million dollar earner? And I would make sure that that person does that because you know what? The best reps I would try to hire, they go, has anybody made a million bucks? And then they're like, can I meet them? And then they're going to determine, is that possible to replicate? Early days, people have to be blown out their numbers and making tons of money. And it's a great recruiting tool.”
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, Ali and I kind of built in the founders the early days of the company, right? Like he basically built out the product in an engineering and helped me build out the go-to-market and stuff like that. And Ali's one of those guys, he wants to set the target as high as possible. In early days, I'm trying to make sure, well, let's make sure people can make some money too, right? So there's always that tension”
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, not too bad. I can buy some Ubers. Yeah, not too bad. Yeah, 30 to 40, something like that. We did a three to four X the next year. Yeah, somewhere around that. So we might have got to 50.”
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
“There are lots of people. I'm sure they do. Are you kidding me? That's insane. Yeah, we just did one for $190 million, actually. No, yeah, it's pretty good.”
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, we had great, we call it field engineering, but an Arsan runs that team, it's a great team, right? But I think the salesperson themselves has to add value. In early days, it's technical. Now, as you get bigger, like we have $100 million accounts, you know, you need people that know the organization can get access to the C level, all that stuff. But early days, when you're just trying to get logos and early customers, you got to be able to add value. You got to be able to teach your 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, I think so Because again, you're trying to teach customers how to get value out of your technology. And if you don't add value, like especially in today's world, there's so many technical buyers. They don't really like salespeople. Like the last thing they want to do is talk to somebody who's like, hey, you know, you want to go golfing or whatever. Like they actually want somebody that's going to help them solve problems.”
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. Again, I'm looking for grit. First of all, hard work and grit. Like, I want somebody to tell me, like, hey, I had some challenges here, but I worked through it. I worked my tail off and kick some ass, right? I look for technical backgrounds too. Like I'm looking for specific company profiles because I know if I get a salesperson that already has some data, AI, technical capabilities, they're going to ramp way faster than somebody who's brand new. They got to learn the entire technology space, 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
“So, I mean, I look on people's resumes, right? Like if they have a bunch of one or two year stints, they're not long for Databricks. I need people like when this gets.”
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'd love the grit and the energy. You know what I mean? But I also think in okay, what happens when you don't? What happens when it gets tough? Are you going to go to the next company?”
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
“Not the best ones. I mean, listen, you go into sales because it has financial upside. The people I'm looking for, they don't ask, like, how much do I make early on? You got to make sure they love the mission. Like, the most important thing is you're building an army. They got to love the mission. They got to love the company first. Once they love the mission and the company,”
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, I think you have to think about that, right? Like, what does it take for us? It's like we're going to start to also have an impact on the culture of the company. Like Databricks is very engineering. Even to this day, it's very engineering technical culture. When you start adding salespeople, they have kind of a different mindset, you know. So you have to think about how that culture fits into 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
“When you're in this hyperscale phase, which I kind of see with some of the new AI companies, right? There's some great scaling AI companies is you have to start thinking like traditional business might grow twenty percent year when you're doubling, tripling. My staffing and my leadership plan has to be what I need next year. So you can't be like, okay, I'm going to incrementally add reps or leaders. You have to be thinking, we're going to do 50 million. Next year we're going to do, you know, we did 100 or 250. Like what does my org need to look at at 100 million, 250 million? And I need to do that now. So I need to go get those leaders. I need to sell them personally. Why this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get even bigger leaders than I need today? Because once I start building out the team and the leadership, now I can start scaling under them. You know, my biggest advice is, 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
“But the one thing that will always require humans to sell are if humans are buying because the buying process is an emotional process. You're trying to choose what problems do you want to solve? What are the most important problems to solve? How do I solve them amongst many different options? And a lot of it gets down to if the technologies are, okay, this one has some pros and cons, this one has some pros and cons. Who do I trust the most? Which organization do I think can get me there the fastest? If that's a person making a decision, it's not black or white. When bots are selling to bots, then you don't need salespeople. But as long as humans are actually solving problems and buying stuff, you need humans to sell it.”
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, no. I mean, a lot of people say, like, hey, can we replace sales with AI? And I think there are parts of sales you can replace with AI, like maybe building a playbook, some of those things. Once you get those assets, but again, early days, you're creating that from scratch. It has to learn from something.”
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. Discovery guide. Here are the questions you start with here's the profile of the customer we're looking for here's the actual profile the people in those customers then here's the questions we need to ask here's what how we position it during the first pitch deck and then depending on your process okay are we going to run poc or pilot for them depending on what you're trying to sell is it intuitive how to get value out of it demonstrate value and then try to you know close a customer so you're building out that playbook you're training everyone on it they need to know how to do that so that you can rinse and repeat as fast as possible and gather 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
“Now we have product market fit, right? We have some references. We've seen how customers buy, why they buy. Now we're starting to get into the scale function, right? Now we can start to build a real playbook, start to train more and more salespeople.”
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
“A lot of companies are still horizontal. There'll still be horizontal, right? Like, I think AWS just moved to verticals, right, across the whole organization. They're a hundred billion. So like, I mean, again, I think that's another choice you have to make on your strategy when you verticalize.”
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
“Might be a little bit different now at the scale we're at, but like early days, if they weren't in the cloud, it was like bridge to door. Let the cloud folks convince them they need to be in the cloud because we need to generate customers and revenue. You spend a lot of time times your most precious commodity, right? Especially as a salesperson. So don't spend a bunch of time with people that aren't going to buy anything, right? You need to go find. So the whole world is our prospect at that point. Every customer's potential new customer, one of our qualifying questions is, are you in the cloud? If you're not in the cloud, then you're not ready for Databricks. So let the cloud guys fight that out.”
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, I know. I'm just saying, like, I think when you verticalize your sales team, there's a whole nother level of resources and complexity that you're going to add, right? Because you're going to add industry experts. You need to add that vernacular, add that to your training, to your enablement, your customer stories, all that kind of stuff. Early days, maybe financial services is a place to go. Like what I learned was financial services isn't in the cloud yet. If we're going to be cloud, we're probably not going to sell financial services early days. Let's go sell to the folks that are in the cloud already.”
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 think you have to start horizontal because you're again learning what's your applicability to the different verticals. I didn't go vertical at Databricks till we were probably 500 million plus, 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
“Or maybe listen to your customers, you know, two ears, one mouth, and even today, good salespeople ask good questions, understand what the market wants from your product.”
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
“Probably the biggest thing is a lot of founders think, oh, I hired a salesperson, now I don't need to do sales. Because a lot of technical founders, they don't really enjoy sales, right? So like I need a salesperson to like take this off my plate. I want to focus more on the product and engineering. But ideally, you still need to be involved in sales because again, founder-led sales requires you to hear about your product. No one's going to be more passionate about selling your product. You have to still be involved until you can kind of get that. Like I said, probably around five, ten million bucks where you have kind of a, okay, I know what people are buying. I can build a first playbook. That's a biggest mistake is just don't delegate it to the salesperson because they could mess that up and that sets you back at least 12 months.”
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
“A lot of those early folks were people I knew, like they were known quantities. Like, I wanted smart, hungry, good at discovery, good at customer relationships, things of that nature. But of course, when you're”
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 early days we had some pent up demand of just you know it was probably three to six months because they were basically free users and we just had to sell them on why they needed to get more of our premium stuff by paying for it. You know, again, when I joined, we had hundreds of thousands of Spark free users. I was like, if I can't sell them something, I suck at 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
“Yeah, we did two million dollar deals with Enterprise. So again, you have to know what you're doing though. I think it is smart to do product market fit because those smaller customers will educate you on the requirements of the future market. Again, the canary in the coal mine, they're always going to be the ones pressing the technology boundaries early days. Enterprises are going to adopt that as the next phase. But again, you got to remember, enterprises are going to have another set of requirements that the digital natives might not have around security and all those things. You need to learn about that stuff too.”
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, it's hard. Like I said, it depends on what kind of funding you have, right? Because eventually your business has to have enterprise. But the digital natives spend a lot of money, especially in the cloud, data, and AI. And they're also going to be the canary in the coal.”
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
“Kept that going. We hired a first line leader that would just, you know, in Arsalon at the time, he was running sales, one of the founders, crazy smart, technical, gregarious, great leader too, like one in a billion. And he was like, okay, I'm going to keep the SMB DNBs going, which was kind of generating money as we kind of built out the enterprise segment. So we personally did both. It's a handful, but I had done that before.”
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 wouldn't do it if it's just for one customer. Because, again, as a small company, your number one asset, a tech company is your engineers and you want them innovating on how you build the market and grow the market. If you build something custom just for one customer and nobody else is going to buy it, you might distract your whole engineering team.”
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
“Couple things. One, it's a conscious investment, it's a longer term investment. So you need some kind of sales expertise, their experience, number one. Number two, they're also going to try to push their customer. So you have to be a little bit careful. Like the security stuff is really important because again, if you want to be a mainstream tech provider, you got to know about security and governance and all those things. No enterprise is just going to let them use some tech that doesn't have security. The risk is too big. So you're going to get a lot of that, but you also need to be conscious. You don't want to build something that's just for one enterprise, right? You want to make sure whatever you're building is going to be applicable to 200. And, you know, you get some of these big customers. They can wield a pretty big stick in terms of trying to do custom engineering.”
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 when I got there, they were all in selling to SB startups, digital natives, Silicon Valley type folks, which again, like were like trying to convince someone to spend twenty-five grand. And I'm like, it takes you two engineers. We made a big bet early on to invest in enterprise. And we did that early because, I mean, one, I thought that's where the money was. And two, long-term sustainable for a company, you have to have an enterprise business. I think there's very few businesses that can just scale based on startups and digital natives that go up, down, all over the place, right? So you need to make that investment. It's going to take a little longer to pay off. The sales cycles are longer, but you're going to learn a ton too. You're going to learn about like when we entered enterprise, again, you learn all kinds of new requirements about security, how to navigate the organization, even your legal process.”
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, first of all, enterprise sales is different than selling to digital natives and those kind of companies, you have to realize just the sales process is different, who you sell to, how you sell, all that. But honestly, there's more money in enterprises, right? Because digital natives, they like building stuff, and they're going to squeeze you for lower prices, right? Enterprises need expertise. They need help. You know, I don't know about just heavily discounting, but again, if you build a pricing model that scales, that its base unit is based on your value, whatever that is as a tech provider, then you can scale it. So start with this one team or this one department. You can scale down the scope of it to get inside. Like director has up to 100K. So, you know, find a champion that'll spend that amount of money, give the resources, even if you just do a pilot, get that logo.”
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
“Know again, early days, you just need logos. So it depends on your funding situation, but 50 or 100 grand, say 100 grand, okay, give me 100 grand a year. We'll do this pilot. I'll give you a resource to do it. But again, you're trying to get those big logos. Because now once I, you know, the enterprise market's very much a FOMO. You see your competitors, they're doing this with this company. Oh, I better get on board, go fast to do that, to compete. And so getting those big logos is so important early days. Like, you need to buy them and you need to put resources in them to make them 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, a person, like a smart technical person, to be able to set it up, show you the first couple use cases, all that kind of thing. And then once they got enabled, they were like, oh, no, I get it. It's pretty cool, 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, exactly. So we'll try it out. And actually, the one trigger that we did early on was traditional enterprise, you're always selling your services. We developed a thing we called strategic customer program where we'd be like, hey, if you spend 100 grand, we'll give you free resource. Because the biggest thing was like there was a gap in talent and expertise. Like our product was amazing, but you had to know how to use it. And so we would add a resource.”
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 spent a lot of time early days debating how to do pricing. I actually think it was one of the smarter things we did at Databricks. I see this mistake a lot. Like people be like, oh, I'm going to price on users. There's a cap on users. You know, if the economy goes down, then there's maybe less users. But if you can price based on, you know, what's your essence of value, then you can scale while we're sleeping, right? Which is a big, important part of, I think, how Databricks built its pricing model. It's based on consumption. If you use it and you get value out of it, great. If now you don't pay anything”
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
“eighteen to twenty grand. I mean, when I came Yeah, when I came in, it was tiny. But the first, you know, say month I was there, we probably did a million bucks because, you know, as a more experienced salesperson, I could go in and say, okay, how are you using the technology? What's it worth to you? We found some customers that I was like, oh, that's 250K opportunity. But at the time, all the deals were 18K. I was like, no more deals less than my Uber bill.”
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
“Share because the collective learning, the faster you can iterate, that's your secret weapon as a small company is I can iterate super fast and pivot super fast versus a bigger company. That's how things change. But anyway, we'd say, okay, I got this profile on LinkedIn and I got them with this message and you teach that to everybody, all right, everybody else starts trying. And so you start learning, okay, what are people interested in? How do I get meetings? All that kind of stuff. And eventually then, as you continue to scale that every Wednesday, it's just a muscle you're building. It's like going to the gym. And so I would have winter at the end. You know, we'd either do like a donation to their favorite charity or someone might get a cowboy hat today or a bottle of whiskey or something. You know what I mean? So just make it fun and have the team work together and eventually like they'll start doing on their own. You measure the activity so.”
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
“Literally, we take the entire sales team. This is everyone, like, including me. I jump into the pit because we have a lot of, you know, younger salespeople too. But every Wednesday, all we did was prospecting. Because if you tell a salesperson, hey, go prospect four to eight hours a week. Just not going to do it because it's painful. It's like hard. But you learn so much. And if you do it as a team and you make it interesting, you do it in San Francisco, you know, where the company was founded. I'd get breakfast in the morning. We'd talk about, okay, today, you know, you'd already have to show up with, okay, here are the three to five companies. I'm going to research for each salesperson. I'm going to try to get into these companies. He researched their profiles. And then, okay, here's how we want to pitch at the time. It was like managed a spark. So here are the differentiators, and we teach them how to pitch it. We go make phone calls, LinkedIn, emails, all that stuff. And you break for lunch, be like, all right, who got meetings?”
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
“Everyone teach them exactly what's the profile we're going after at that time. It was like VP of analytics. You know, we run prospecting day every Wednesday just to get meetings. We're trying to get meetings and activity and all those kind of things, which is kind of a cultural thing, right? You need to know I'm building pipeline all the time. And then here is our value and our differentiators. And you start to build up that customer base.”
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're learning the discovery. You know, eventually, when you build the playbook, you want to know okay, as you start to scale, what's the discovery guide look like? What questions do I want to ask? How do I position our solution? How do I position the value of it, the differentiators? But it's all about asking questions. Like even when I interviewed for Databricks, they're like, hey, here's our pitch. Give us the pitch, right? And I was like, okay, so I looked at it and it was like a lot of technical stuff. I was like, well, you don't talk a lot about value. I talk more about time to value innovation, that kind of stuff. Like, okay, pitch us. And I said, okay, what kind of company are you? And they said, okay, let's do. And I was like, okay, what are some of your challenges with data? Okay. What are you trying to do in the future for your business? They're like, are you going to pitch us? And I'm like, I am. You know, it's all about asking questions and trying to find where we can add value. And so then you build that into a system of repeatable plays and teach.”
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
“Go talk to as many customers as you possibly can. Like we went and talked to hundreds of customers. Second, I hired probably 40 people the first six months. Some of the best salespeople from my network. And I was literally just go set up meetings and find out what people will pay for and get the brand out 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
“I mean, if you're just hiring salespeople, find somebody who's smart, intellectually curious that you trust, you know, is going to work their tail off. In the technical field, you got to have technical sales people, right? Again, I always say salespeople teach they don't sell. They teach customers how to get value out of their technology, right? If you try to go for the senior, really senior folk, they're going to want to hire a bunch of people. So you got to make sure you got a bunch of funding to be able to do that. Otherwise, get like a great first line manager, somebody you trust, spend a lot of time with them. Because again, salespeople are good at selling. So they're really good at interviewing. You got to know what you're getting. Do a lot of back channels, all that kind of stuff. But get somebody that gets their hands dirty.”
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