Intro: Getting our first hunter customers was impossible, was so hard. Imagine selling with no website stealth, wrote on my LinkedIn profile. Having a good sales methodology behind that was what I think kept us a lot. 11 and a half years. How many actual near death experiences do you think there was? There was one.
Really? Oh my god moment. We were down for four hours, but if we had not come back, we would've been dead. What are the types of things you think about setting up day one? I think number one is having a great enablement. You have to have a sales kickoff. Everybody in your sales organization needs to have a forecast call every year.
These are the things that are the non-negotiables.
Logan: Well, Chris, thanks for doing this.
Logan: So for people that aren't familiar, and I'm sure a lot of people are, but can you give a little bit of your, um, background and, maybe, most relevant, your journey at Snowflake?
Chris: Yeah, sure. So I started Snowflake in November of 2013. As the first sales rep, [00:01:00] we were in stealth mode. And, uh, I was the director of sales, hired by an interim CEO in, in Mike Speer from, from Sutter Hill. And, um, and I worked with a bunch of founders, so I was like the, depending on who you ask, either the 13th or the, the, the 16th employee at Snowflake.
And, um, you know, from there became VP of sales under Bob Muglia. And then Bob then re promoted me to Chief Revenue Officer. Um, and then Frank Sweetman came in after they fired Bob. And, uh, 11 and a half years later I retired or, you know, stopped working at Snowflake most recently in May of 2025.
Logan: you had four different CEOs along the way? I don't know if I've ever heard of anyone, um, actually having gone on that journey, I guess what do you think uniquely, um, allowed [00:02:00] you to survive and then thrive among such different leadership and transitions?
Chris: Well, the, you know, first of all, I think throughout the entire journey I, I probably had imposter syndrome and pro and still do, um, never thinking that I actually belonged, in the seat. Um, so high degree of insecurity along the way. I guess at the beginning, um, when Mike Speer was recruiting me, I, I was really, uh, nervous about working for a company with no products, no, no customers.
No CEO 'cause the founders didn't wanna be CEOs. And so, um, I said to Mike, I said, Mike, it would be great for you to have someone on the board, uh, who's who cares about me, who knows about me. And he said, well, what [00:03:00] do you mean? I said, well, at my last company, I had a, I had a, like a year, a little over a year stint.
Uh, I had spent eight years at EMC, and then I went to a startup in the security software space, uh, called Avea, where a guy by the name of John McMahon, uh, was on the board. And so I got to go know John and really respect the heck outta John. And so I said, you know, it would be great for you to put someone like a John McMahon on the board.
And, and I kid you not, you know, Mike was on the board of a company called Sumo Logic with John, and, and, and had a board meeting the next day, asked John to be on the board of Snowflake and said, okay, I've taken all your objections, you know, off the table. So having a guy like John. Was incredibly helpful when Bob Muglia came on board.
And there, there are two reasons. Number one is Bob had never, Bob had run 15,000 person organization at Microsoft, but he had never managed a, a direct sales force. And, and so, uh, there, [00:04:00] there was a constant friction, um, between finance and, and sales around what productivity means of, of a sales rep. How fast should we hire?
Um, and, and how do we measure? And, and really John helped me deal with that in a number of ways. Um, number one is, are we getting enough leads for marketing? If, if we work, John's like, you've gotta go fix that, or you're gonna get fired. And then he'd say, okay, don't let finance, you know, treat, you know, uh, people who are employed for three months as, you know, a quarter productive or whatever it is that you wanna, or half productive.
They're not productive until six months in a in a day.
Chris: So, so, you know, he, he was really helpful in, in helping me negotiate, uh, headcount, uh, uh, you know, rep to manager ratio se to uh, uh, you know, really the whole, the whole model, the whole sales go to market team, um, and helping me build that out. And that was [00:05:00] so important along the way in the beginning.
So, so Bob, Bob would not believe me sometimes, and then go to John and John would really validate what I was doing. And then I would ask John for a lot of help around what, what does productivity mean? How should I measure this? What does enablement look like? There's a whole bunch of things that John helped me and Bob with.
And then, um, you know. When, when, uh, when Bob got, I mean, I, I owe, I would say, you know, I owe Bob a, you know, a major part of, of my career because even at my retirement party, Bob and Spicer were, were there and, and Bob, you know, uh, made sure to make a point of saying, you know, Mike wanted to bring someone in, um, over me.
Um, and Bob had said, you know, I, I really, you know, I said to Mike, well, what are you looking for that Chris is not doing? And he said that, you know, look, Chris is hitting his number, he's hiring great people. He's, you know, driving a great culture in the [00:06:00] organization. I'm, I'm unsure of what I'm trying to hire for.
And, and really that was o obviously that was meaningful enough for, for Bob to then promote me to the Chief Revenue Officer and then. So I was devastated. I, I mean, really devastated when, when, uh, the board let, let Bob go and, and Sluman, you know, even Bob and I joke, you know, he's, he's like, um, he's like, uh, I, there there was no chance I thought he would keep your job under, under Sluman.
Um, and when, when, uh, when Frank came in, um, you know, he was doing one-on-ones with the entire executive team. And, uh, I walked in and I said to Frank, the very first time I ever met Frank, and, and I said to him, I said, there's really two things Frank that, that I want from you is number one, we have this. We, we were working on a, a, a real first a hundred million dollar deal.
And Bob was right in the middle of, of that deal. Um, and, and, and I said, so I'm gonna need your help, uh, with, with the [00:07:00] CEO of that company. Um, number one. And then number two is we have the best marketing department in the world and you should not mess with that. And, and he's like, wow. He's like, you're the first one of, uh, your peers to walk in here in this one-on-one and not talk smack about you.
You know, the other peer, your other peers. I'm like, well, I got nothing but good things to say about marketing. Now I, I certainly had opinions about other people, uh, in the organization, but, but I think that, you know, set the tone right with, with Frank and, and, you know, ultimately Frank, it took up, Frank and I, they were touch and go moments for sure.
I had to make some material changes under Frank. Like I had to change the, the entire organization, um, uh, you know, midyear in terms of how, how we were structured. I had to fire some, you know, a, a very senior leader, uh, in the team. Um, like, just kinda like that. Um, [00:08:00] and, and so there were some material changes that I had to make under Frank's watch and, and, and we got through that.
So the first seven, eight months were really, really, really brutal. Um, but as I got to the other side, uh, with Frank, he, he and I developed this, this great relationship. And, and ultimately, you know what I, what I would say, what, what why kind of lasted with, with four CEOs was, and I asked McMahon this is, he is like, you know, Chris, you, you, you listen, and then you, you, you, you don't, you, you, you don't come here with like, this is how it has to be.
You're very much humble. You're, you're listening and then you'll take action. Um, and he goes, you know, a lot of people in your situation, as you've seen success, uh, you, you'll come in and you'll say, well, I know what I'm doing and, and, and I'm not gonna listen to anyone else. And I, and I'd say like, you know, I, I would hire people a lot of times more senior than me, uh, working for me.
And I would listen to them. I, I mean, geez, the guy who [00:09:00] ran a PJ for me, uh, in, in John Robertson, he way, way more senior guy than I am. And super helpful in so many ways. And I, he was kind of my, my sensei if you will, uh, you know, towards the end is he, he was really guiding me on a, on a bunch of stuff. And, and, and even with Sridhar, Sridhar came in and he's a very different manager than, than Suman.
Um, he had, he pointed out some pretty big holes I had in the organization. Um, and, and I think when you, you have success sometimes you can get, you know, fat and lazy and, and Shridhar, uh, very much, you know, was like, well, let's, let's look at how do we optimize the sales team. And so I think, you know, we, you know, snowflake had a, a really great, uh, uh, first quarter and, and the results were, you know, just came out and, and or, and, and I was, I was super proud of the performance of the team and I, and I, I will take credit in that.
We had to do some hard things through the course of last year. Um, and those [00:10:00] changes really were difficult, was, was mentally draining. But getting through those now, the organization's set up for success. So, I'm, I, you know, look, I think the, the net net is I'll listen to people, I'll take feedback from anybody.
I, it doesn't mean you're always, I'm gonna do everything you tell me, but at least I'm gonna contemplate it, think about it, internalize it, and then I'm not arrogant enough to say like, you don't know what you're talking about. No.
Logan: Uh, there are a lot of stuff I wanna unpack there, but, um, so 11 and a half years, how many actual near death experiences do you think there was? That that, that it could have gone one way and you ended up surviving, it sounds like at least two-ish that you referenced there, uh, between the sp um, hiring someone over you.
Uh, and then the first couple months, I guess was sluman might have been a little touch and go, but how, how many do you look back on, do you think, you know, there was a fork in the road.
Chris: Um, well, as a company, um, there was one really, I. Like, oh my god moment. Um, we, um, so, you know, [00:11:00] when Snowflake was early days, uh, we start, we, we really went ga in in 2015, in middle of 2015. And then, uh, at, in, in 20, in the middle of 2016. So around the August timeframe, we did a midyear sales kickoff to kind of get everyone excited and saying like, look, we we're, we got, things are going great.
And I brought the entire sales team into, we were in the W Hotel in San Francisco, and, um, and Bob Muglia is, is about to come out and Bob's just this incredible motivational speaker he is in. He's awesome. And, uh, he, um, I, I clearly remember this. I'm like, okay. I, I get the team all excited and I see a bunch of people checking their phones and I'm like, what's going on?
And, and I'm like, all right. You know, gimme five minutes. I gotta go talk to Bob. And, and I walk into the hallway and Bob is white. Um, and, and he is like, we're down. Um, and I don't know if we're coming back and, and, and,
Logan: The product was down.
Chris: the [00:12:00] product was down, um, and we were down and, uh, the founders were like, you know, it was like open heart surgery.
They were like trying to like pump the, the heart, um, and trying to revive the product. And, uh, and so that like was scary. We were down for four hours, um, and we thought we had this great company, but if we had not come back, we would've been dead, uh, as a company. And, and I clearly remember that that was a wild moment at, in the middle of a sales kickoff.
And to Bob's credit, I said, Bob, we have a sales team here. You've gotta go tell them. It's gonna be okay. You've gotta make everyone excited about the opportunity and today's credit. You got out there and did it. But that was, that was like a company near death experience. Um, and then, you know, look, I think there, there's always.
You know, I'm sure there's stuff I don't know about where, where people were thinking about replacing you. I think when, even when, when you go through a CEO transition, there is, you know, a high degree of possibility that, you know, [00:13:00] the executive team changes. Um, and when Suman came in, the executive team changed.
I mean, I think that the, the, um, the executive team changed, has changed materially under, under streetar. So it, it happens. Uh, and, and, you know, different leaders come in, come and come and go. But, but yeah, so I think that the, those were the kind of the, the, the big things. When, when, when, when, uh, the, when Bob came in, I, it was, will I be the VP of sales?
But then, uh, Spizer wanted to, you know, bring someone over me and then Sluman, there was, and he even admits there were times where he was unsure if I was gonna make it. Uh, so, so those were the, the ones that I know about.
Logan: Yeah. Yeah.
Logan: Now, if you're, um, advising a company as you're now doing or joining the board or counseling, um, uh, go to market leaders within venture backed businesses, um, what. What are the questions that you view as most important to figuring out, [00:14:00] um, the maturity of the sales organization and where some of the problems and bottlenecks potentially exist?
Chris: Well, there's just some basics that you, you kind of, so, so the good news for me is, you know, I came, I learned a lot, um, of my, uh, in terms of enterprise selling at, when I was at EMC, which is now part of Dell. Um, but they, the, the guy who ran my division was, was a, a, a medic, uh, you know, focused sales leader.
And, and so I learned that the medic sales. Kind of methodology. Um, and, and then there were, you know, constants, uh, that my, my direct manager, uh, uh, was just, you know, maniacal about. And, and that just, those, those things were ingrained in me. And, and, and so that was good. But when you go to these other companies, you realize they're not happening all the time.
Um, and so like, okay, number one is enablement matters a [00:15:00] ton. Uh, so you need to have a world class enablement that focuses on. You know, whether whatever methodology that you wanna follow, but we follow medic or med pick. Um, because of, of course, McMahon was on our board. I came from that methodology, and I, I believe in that, that's a, a great compass, uh, to, to drive, uh, a forecast and understanding, you know, how real deals are and stuff like that.
So, uh, I think number one is having a great enablement, um, and, and, and focus investing in that. A lot of times it's hard because you're a startup. You're, you're, you're not making money, you're losing money. Hiring and spending money on enablement is scary, but it's so critical if you're gonna go hire out a, an enterprise sales team.
And then number two is, it is just like the, the basics. Like you, you would be surprised, um, on things like having, uh, forecast calls. Like you need to have a forecast call every week and everybody in your sales organization needs to have a forecast call every week. Um, and, and [00:16:00] sometimes as, as, as, as snowflake scale, I thought because I did something.
Everyone else was doing it. Well, it turns out that's not even true. So, so you need to like, babysit that and, and in a way figure out how you can micromanage it without being a micromanager. Uh, but forecast calls one-on-ones, um, uh, you know, enablement, like, you know, monthly, weekly enablement sessions, uh, you know, uh, team, uh, your, your, your direct team meetings, uh, tho those are the things that are like the, the non-negotiable.
So like, if, if I'm a, if I'm a, uh, founder and, you know, or, or I do this with, with, uh, the, the companies I advise is like, this is the job description of the VP of sales, SVP of sales, CRO. This is what they're supposed to do. And if they're not doing that, that that's okay. Here is their job description. They need to know that this is what their expectations are.
'cause sometimes these people that are the heads of sales. Don't, [00:17:00] don't come from the backgrounds that, that maybe I came from. So I'll help them like, you know, I, if, if you have a, someone that is really good at selling your product and a really good sales leader but just needs some coaching, that's where I'll come in and say, okay, this is how we'll, we'll we'll shape your, your day and your week and your, your, you, you know, in your month, in your quarter.
These are the things that are the non-negotiables. You have to do a quarterly business, like everybody in your organization has to do that. And these are the things you have to have a sales kickoff. Like the, these are things that people don't necessarily understand. You have to do all, and it's, I, it's kind of weird for me 'cause it's second nature, but those are things that are missing a lot of times, um, in, in organizations.
Logan: talked about enablement, like in laying the foundation for successful failed enablement, uh, within an organization. Like what do those primitives actually entail, uh, and what are the types of things you, you think about setting up day one? I.
Chris: Well look. You know, you [00:18:00] know, in, in full transparency, I think in the beginning of Snowflake, I was the enablement person. So, so I, you know, I, I kid you not like, there, there was a, I remember clearly there was a, one of our, our first BDR hires I hired out of, uh, uh, uh, university of Colorado, um, Tommy and, and Tommy came in and I had to show Tommy what it was, how, how a computer, uh, connected to the internet and then, and like that le and I was like, whiteboarding it for him.
So, um, you know, and, and that's a, that's a kind of that basic fundamental that he, you know, as you're a, a sales leader, you, you actually own, I don't care if you're the head of sales or a frontline sales manager, you own enablement of your team. Ultimately, it's on you. Um, and, and so at the beginning it was on me.
It was on me to show people on how to, how to sell Snowflake. I would whiteboard, uh, the pitch. I record how I, I did that, I would show that to everyone. Um, but it was on me. [00:19:00] I'm a very much a lead from the front sales person, so, or sales leader. So I need to know how to sell the product, and I expect all my sales leaders to know how to sell the product.
If you have a sales leader that, and in you're a, and in Europe at any level of a, you know, startup and, and you know, unless you're like a massive, massive company, you, you need a sales leader that knows how to sell the product. 'cause otherwise, why are, why are they there? Because they're a great operations person.
I, I, I'm sorry. That's not gonna build you a great company. Um, and so, so to me, um, enablement starts with the sales leader and then if you can within enablement, you know, hire someone who's good at, uh, making it a, a full program. Okay. We, we brought in, like, we brought in this company force management to help, uh, you know, show.
Uh, you know, the sales methodology of, of Med Pick, um, and really make that, you know, a, a, you know, a, a real living thing for the entire sales organization. We did that and then we, we institutionalized that in our enablement, [00:20:00] um, so that when a new hire came on board, they, they were going through, they were being trained on what Medic was or Med Pick was.
And so, so you, you can do that through e-learning. Um, but then, then you have to then make sure that it's in the system. So you make sure if you're using Salesforce, you need to have medic med pick, uh, uh, uh, fields that are filled out, um, and really filled out, and you have to inspect those things. There's, there's all sorts of things that, that go into, uh, enablement.
Logan: What, what question If you were a CEO, uh, of a, of a business and at the end of the day there is a scorecard to some extent that is reflective of, um, how a go-to-market team I is doing. Uh, but there's obviously a lot of inputs that go, go into that, that are outside of the global market teams, um, control related to the product and the, the market and marketing as you alluded to, [00:21:00] um, customer success, all these different things all kind of tie in together.
Is there a, a question you would ask as a CEO, uh, that is the most confirmatory on whether or not the blame if you miss a quarter lies within the go-to-market organization versus somewhere else?
Chris: Well. You know, again, going to my, my, my training at, at EMC, the, the way that I I view a, a sales leader, um, in any level, um, is they have to, there's kind of three things. Um, you have to, first and most important thing as a sales leader or any leader, uh, you have to hire great people. So, um, if, if, if you hire great people, uh, you develop those people that will drive revenue.
So the, the, the, the kind of, the, the leading indicators are can they hire, like, [00:22:00] who, who's coming in the door? So, so, so number one, who's coming in the door? Number two is, are they being trained? And then you can look at the leading indicators. So like, you know, there's enough tracking tools out there today that you can see.
Are they going on sales calls? Like. Are they able to go out and get meetings? Um, and then are they able to convert those meetings to sales qualified opportunities? Um, and, and then, you know, from that point on, are, are you then able to make a sales rep productive that is ultimately so, so for, for me, and what measured, you know, my success at, at Snowflake was the, the productivity of, of an individual contributor.
Could we, could we hire someone and get them to do a minimum of, well after six months? So it's not like on the first day of the sixth month, it's the first day of the actual seventh month. By month by month, you know, seven day one of, of month [00:23:00] seven, can they actually sell $250,000 of net new a CB or a RR?
Um, every quarter consistently. Um, and that was the, the ultimate, uh, metric that, that, that I was managed by. Um, and so what was happening is our productivity was going jumping through the roof. So we were seeing, like in, in an inside sales organization, you're gonna see like, I don't know, 400 k in productivity.
We were seeing like a million dollars in productivity from our inside sales team. We were seeing like $2 million of pro annualized productivity out of our sales reps. And that's what got the, the investors excited. Now, on the inverse, the investors were scared of Snowflake. 'cause, you know, uh, there was a time when I actually, um, uh, met with, uh, someone who actually worked at Red Coin is now at Snowflake, who told me, uh, you know, that we needed to focus on, um, on profitability.
And I, and, and Mike Speer was like, [00:24:00] we've gotta get, I. Market share, uh, before we get, uh, before we focus on, uh, uh, profitability. 'cause our competitors are the largest companies in the world and they will kill us if we do not get market share. Um, and we had product market fit. So I think the, the ultimate metric, you know, it's a long story, long story short, is it's, it's the productivity of the sales team.
Logan: Yeah. Got it. Um. As you think about ai, uh, being injected into every organization, I'm curious how you think about that, changing elements of of sales and what types of things you think it could be utilized for versus what's gonna stay true about sales as it is today, as it was five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
Chris: You know, uh, I think what what AI is, is gonna be incredibly helpful with is, is task automation. Um, so task automation [00:25:00] on, on things like, hey, I, you know, I was handpicking at the beginning of Snowflake. I was building my own lists of customers to send emails to. I was sending 2,500 emails, you know, as, as you know, a, a week if I could do it in a day, IWI was doing that.
Um, but that was like very, very manual. Like that's a, that's a thing that you, you know, AI will be really good at. The other thing is like, like even at, even when I was, um, at, at the end of my tenure at Snowflake, you know, we would look at, uh, you know, so because Snowflake's a use a, a consumption based model, uh, we were actually using Snowflake's product, uh, in our, in, in our AI product called Cortex to actually, uh, identify use cases.
By, by, uh, notes that were in, uh, up in, in, in Salesforce that were updated by the, the sales team. So like, hey, for example, how many migrate, uh, data [00:26:00] warehouse migrations? How many data science migrations with Snowflake doing? And we use AI to pick that stuff out and, and say, okay, great. We, we have these leading indicators.
Can we track that? So I think there's just a bunch of, uh, more intelligence that you'll learn about. You, you, you, you know, your sales team coming outta that. I do think that what will not be replaced is the, the relationship because, you know, ultimately people buy from people. Um, and as long as you're selling to another human, uh, they want that relationship.
And, and so, um, you know, I will tell you that, you know, one of my strengths is, is being a passionate salesperson. And, and that, that, you know, I would come in and be controversial about. My competitors sometimes in terms of saying like, good luck, you're gonna fail in six months and I'll talk to you in six months.
But, and they would, and then, then, and then I'd get back to them and, and, and we'd build this relationship and that, that carries [00:27:00] on. So I think, um, the, the relationship part of the sales, as long as you, as the salesperson know what you're talking about, you have to know what you're talking about. You're, you're, and you're, and you build these trusted relationships and you help your customers get promoted and all this other stuff, you'll, you'll end up, uh, being in a good spot.
So I think the relationship, the, the human interaction can't not be replaced, at least for, for the near term.
Logan: In hiring, in hiring sales reps and focusing on that like human interaction, um, what were, what were the things that you would try to tease out in an interview that were non-negotiable for success within your organization?
Chris: So, so we did, we, we did a actual, um, uh, early days. We did a assessments of our, uh, sales teams. Um, so, so basically I took myself and all of the early Snowflake sales people and we all took these [00:28:00] assessments. And in these assessments we were looking for, you know, things that were consistent across people that were successful.
'cause we had, we had people that failed as well. And, and for us it was, you know, high intelligent, highly intelligent salespeople that basically, uh, he, uh, did not trust anybody. Uh, we're very mistrusting of people. Um, and, um, and, you know, high energy and, and sometimes even low social because they, they were out there.
You know, when, when, when, when someone says, yeah, no, no problem, dude, I'll get you a deal. They would all be suspect of that. They'd be like, okay, tell me why. And, and that's part of the, the, the, the, having a sales methodology is like, you're gonna qualify. Like, why, why now? Why, why us? Why anything? Um, and, and those are the things that, uh, you know, really good salespeople start to do is even then when someone says that they're gonna do [00:29:00] something for them, they don't trust them.
And, and I think that was probably, you're looking for that in their, um, in, in their background. So for, for me, you know, like I didn't, when we were early stage, I was not looking for people that managed one account. I, I, I was looking for people show me in the last. Two years, uh, where you've worked and you've successfully opened up new logos.
Tell me about those new logos. How many new logos did you open? Um, tell me about the deals that you lost. Uh, tell me why you lost them. Um, tell me who was your champion when you won? Tell me who was the champion of your, of your competitor when you lost? Like, these are things that you can ask in the interview to start figuring out if they're, if they're BSing, because like they could say, yeah, I won this logo.
Okay, tell me more about that. Like, you could just ask like three levels deep and all of a sudden their story starts to fall apart or it doesn't make sense. Then you're like, okay, this person's full, full of it. So.
Logan: You talked about how the [00:30:00] quality of the team is one of the most important, um, indications of a sales leader, and if they're consistently hiring great, uh, people around them. There's a, there's a tension that can exist between the need to hire people and ramp quickly, uh, with keeping the quality bar high for the totality of the people within the organization.
Obviously, snowflake went through hypergrowth, but how do you think about that tension of needing to get butts in seats, but also making sure that the talent bar stays, um, to a quality that allows the organization to continue to pursue excellence?
Chris: So, so, so first of all, you have to agree on a hiring process, especially when you're hiring fast. So, so, uh. You know, I'll give you an example is I, I am an, I won't tell you the name of the company, uh, but that I, I am an advising in a company right now, um, [00:31:00] that they're in the, they, they need to hire over 30 people, like now, like right now.
And their, their current hiring process, um, has, uh, like multiple stakeholders in it. And at the end, uh, it has a committee, um, uh, like you have to present to this group of people a panel interview. Um, and, uh, they have a 50% failure rate at the pan panel interview. And it's like my head is exploding and I'm like, okay, uh, you can't do that.
Um, number one is, how the heck does someone get to the panel interview and fail? Like, what is happening? In that interview process, like you've got, you've got some fundamental issues there with that. And, and the reason why I hate the panel interview is you, you like getting a group of people together, uh, uh, at any given time is [00:32:00] going to be hard, um, from a, from just a timing perspective.
So if every single person has to be a part of an a panel interview that you hire, you're, you're, you're screwed. If you have to hire quickly, it's okay if you have to hire like one or two people a quarter, but if you're gonna hire 30 people, 40 people in a quarter, no chance. And so you basically have to have a, an agreed upon hiring process that everybody follows.
Um, and there are basic things that you're looking for. We have to have these things in the, in the, um, fundamentals of it. So for us, we did our, our assessment was part of that, that there was the sales rep that we were gonna hire. So the, the way that it worked is you basically have a, a four, effectively four interviews.
You, you have a. Hiring manager's selling on their first interview. They're, they're, hopefully they're talking to someone that is currently employed, unemployed. I'm not super psyched on, on going out and hiring. There's gotta be a really good reason why you're gonna go hire an unemployed person. Number two is, all right, so, so you're, you're selling the hiring manager.
The second interview [00:33:00] is you're buying like, okay, now you're doing the hard interview. Okay, great. Then you're going to have, uh, on the, on the, uh, third interview, they're gonna meet with your manager. Um, and that manager's gonna ask some really hard questions. And then finally it's gonna be the, the, the second or, or, or, or the, sorry, the third line manager.
So in, in my case, I interviewed all of the, in the early days of Snowflake, all of the sales reps. And I was looking for, you know, all these things. Now I had a great recruiting partner, um, that, that, that, um, that worked with me and this guy, uh, by the name of Chad, Pete. So Chad was incredibly influential, um, on it, and he would not.
There are also, uh, VPs of sales that say, I wanna interview 10 people for this one position. Okay. Again, you're, you're gonna fail. So, so Chad would be like, I'm putting one to two people in front of you, and you can say no, but these are the pe Like you've gotta basically figure out are these your people?
And, and he's making sure [00:34:00] he's qualifying that we've done the assessments, he's making sure that he's babysitting that process and we're getting through that process in two weeks. And, and, and when he would get on the phone with the, the, uh, the candidate and, and they were, they'd kind of first they'd him and haw 'cause they're employed.
Okay. You know, Johnny, you're gonna, we're gonna, at the end of two weeks, we're gonna make a decision on whether or not you're gonna work at Snowflake or not. Um, but it's two weeks. So you have two weeks to go through this process and, um, at the end of two weeks, you're either gonna get an offer or you're gonna get declined.
But. You have to make a decision in two weeks. And if they say, oh, well, I just wanna, you know, meet them, get to know them. No, you're not in the process. Not until you want actually to come and work at the greatest company, uh, here's what they're doing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you've gotta get, have a good pitch and all this other stuff.
Logan: It's fascinating.
Logan: I, I've heard you talk in the past about, uh, the board dynamics and maybe, uh, at different points in time, and I [00:35:00] think you were being partially tongue in cheek, but also, uh, entertaining. And I think there's a kernel of, uh, truth in this being somewhat distrusting of, uh, board members and VCs and the interests that maybe investors have versus, uh, executives within the company.
Um, can, can you maybe speak a little bit to, to that dynamic and how you think about as a go-to-market leader, um, interacting with, with investors and board members and, and, and all of that?
Chris: So, so Bob, Bob Muglia, you know, to quote him, said it best is, you know, the board is your friend until they're not. Um, and, uh, and so I, you know. Do not think of the board as your friend. They are not your friend. They, their job is to make sure that the investors, the shareholders, uh, are, are [00:36:00] going to get a return on their investment.
That is their job. And, and if whatever reason, um, they think they're, that you are not going to give them that return, they will fire you in a heartbeat. And I've seen that, I've seen that, uh, firsthand. I, I've watched some, like, you know, again, going through the, you know, uh, Suman transition, uh, with, with Bob, that was, that was wild.
I mean, it was like, boom, overnight. And, and so to me, um, you know, I, I learned a really good lesson. As you know, as the Chief Revenue Officer, I was not trusting of any of the board members. I, I would ask them for help. We had some wonderful board members, everyone from John McMahon, Carl Augh. Um, uh, but, but man, don't think that, I didn't think that they were my friend.
Um, 'cause again, they're in there trying to maximize Val, you shareholder value. And that's what Suman also said to me. He is like, look, do you think the board is? And he, he was just more just self-aware of it than Bob was, is he [00:37:00] just said, do you think they're my friends? He goes, they could care less who I am.
They want to make sure that they're gonna make money and that's it. And if you do not operate that way, you're mistaken. They are not your friend. Um, and so I think I've just kind of gone into that knowing. And so like, you know, look, when Sequoia invested in Snowflake, Carl Chenbo is like world class guy.
He sat on our board and he is now the current CEO of, of Workday. Um, I was very, you know, Carl, Carl came from VMware. They did six month quotas. I had never done six month quotas. And I, I, I would kind of do what VCs do to, to people when, uh, they, they're, they're, they're not really gonna invest in the company and say, that sounds good Carl.
And uh. And so like when, when a VCs, you know, and I've, I've been in plenty situations. There are a lot of VCs that passed up Snowflake, uh, for, for many reasons. Uh, and they would say, oh yeah, that sounds great. We'll get back to you. Um, and that's the, the VC way of saying, I'm not doing anything. Um, we'll get back to you in a week, a month or year, whatever it is.
Um, but not now. And so that would kind of be the thing for [00:38:00] me is I would never be like argumentative with a, a board member, but you, you gotta be careful, uh, because you can't, you can't just, you know, say yes to them and, and not do it. So I would say, I'll, let me think about it. Um, that would be the thing that would, I would never say no, but if I said yes to something, I would go out and do it.
And, and that would be the thing that I would just encourage people to do, is just be aware. Like if they're strongly suggesting something and you don't do it, um, you're gonna probably lose your job. Um, and, and so. Just like when Suman said, okay, um, you've gotta reorg the sales team, um, in the middle of the year when he just arrived.
I'm like, well, can we wait till the end of the year? And he is like, no. I'm like, okay, well there's, I guess I'm doing that right. There's not a, there's no choice. Um, and, and so those are the things that you just have to be very, you know, software. I think, you know, having a high, you know, high EQ [00:39:00] is, is helpful, um, in these roles because you've gotta read the room and you've gotta figure out when, when, like they say something, how much you actually have to do it, because then you'll start to realize.
Logan: It sounds like you had a, a, a strong advocate and mentor in John McMahon, who's, um, certainly a legend in, um, in selling, uh, and uh, in enterprise sales. And obviously the tree, uh, of people that have learned under him speaks for itself. But do you think that's important for a go-to market leader to have. An advocate at the board level, be it ideally someone that's done it before or a legend in their field, but also potentially an investor, just someone that you, you know, is, is in your corner, or was that just a, um, unique set of circumstances to have someone like that, uh, given the connection you had and, and Mike and Sumer Logic that led to McMahon joining Snowflake's board.
Chris: I think it's critical. [00:40:00] I mean, I, I, I think, um, look, I always tell the founders, you don't wanna hi. Like, people always reach out to me and say, I would, I would like. Hey, Chris, I'd like you to be the Chief Revenue officer. And I say, no, you don't. You don't want me to be the Chief Revenue Officer because I'm, I'm not desperate.
Um, I was desperate when I took this job. I was desperate to be successful and that matters. Um, but, but me having McMahon on the board, it was incredibly impactful. Like, there's zero chance I would've made, made this journey without him, not no chance. And so I owe a lot to John because John very much, like I said, coached Bob through different phases and kind of helped me, also helped me recruit people.
So, you know, when I was out there saying, you know, Hey, John McMahon's on our, on my board, it helped me recruit sales leaders. I had John interview people for, for me. Um, and, and so like, you know, I, I would recommend if you wanna build a strong enterprise [00:41:00] sales team, I would recommend having a guy like John McMahon on the board, because I think it's, it, it's just.
It helps on the sales side in terms of recruiting great talent. Um, it knows that, hey, the people that follow medic, uh, they know that you're, you're the godfather of medic is on your board, um, and they wanna learn and you wanna come learn from a great sales leader. Like, these are all the things that, you know, good, good sellers are looking for.
Um, so for me, yeah, it was, I, I would recommend having that. Now what I also have come to find out, especially in the role, the role I'm in now, is that these, there's a lot, there's, there's a ton of arrogance in founders, like these young kids that went to you name the Ivy League school. Um, they think they know all.
And I don't wanna work with those people. In fact, I make it a point of not working with those people because they think they're, they're these unicorns. They built this great company [00:42:00] and, and they could do it their own way. Well, guess what? You could do it to your own, your own way until you can't. Um, and that you can't, is you're gonna fail because you did something so stupid.
You're wasting money, you're doing all these stupid things and, and they're not willing to listen. And so to me, um, I'm looking for humble founders. I'm looking for smart founders. I'm looking for people that elicit feedback and ask for feedback and do stuff. But if you go to someone and say, well, we're unique, and I, my response is, no, you're not.
No you're not. Um, and, and I don't like in the enterprise software space, you are not unique. And I'm like, snowflake was this amazing, magical thing. But we had a sales process and a sales methodology. That, that, that got us like getting like our first hundred customers was impossible, was so hard. Imagine selling with no website.
Imagine selling with, I couldn't stealth mode on my LinkedIn profile. [00:43:00] Those were all things that were really hard and, and having a good sales methodology behind that was what, what I think kept us alive. So, so I think, um, you know, those are all things that, that making sure that the, the, that the founders value sales and, and putting someone like, like a McMahon on, on their board.
They, they should absolutely do it.
Logan: I I'm curious, you, you've, you've worked under a number of, I would say legends in the industry is probably safe to say between Spizer and Sluman and, and McMahon. Uh, these are, these are some of the iconic names. And I, I guess I wanna, um, unpack a little bit of your, your. Biggest learnings or biggest takeaways from some of those people.
Um, so I guess question as it relates to John. What do you think has made John, um, such a, uh, legendary CEO's leader, uh, in what he was able to do at, um, you know, BMC and played logic and PTC, but then [00:44:00] perhaps even more interestingly, such a, uh, legendary sales mentor over the course of the last decade?
Chris: I mean, look John, what I think people, people think that John is this like hard ass, and what I would say is. John is, John is. But a, a lot of the guys that that, that actually have worked in a John McMahon sales organization try to be John McMahon.
Chris: And, and John and I have had this conversation, John, is there's only one John McMahon.
Um, and you cannot replicate John. You can take and learn from John and try to do that. So a lot of these guys come out and in fact, one of the reasons that I, I took the job at Snowflake is there was a, there was a bunch of sales leaders that wanted me, that, that actually had, had worked under John at BMC that wanted me to work for them.
Um, and all of them were a bunch of, [00:45:00] and I, and I don't mean to use a bad word, but assholes, they were just arrogant assholes. And I'm like, I'm not gonna go. I just didn't, I was turning 40. I didn't want to go work for these people. I'm like, I, it was, call it my midlife crisis, if you will. But number one is John is not an asshole, John is.
Uh, very, very metrics driven. John is, is is very much like his. He, he has a way about him of figuring out, is this person doing what I'm telling them to do? Are they following the rules? Are they doing, are, do I believe what they're saying? He has this intu intuition that is just hands down amazing. John is hard.
He'll hold you accountable, but he's not an asshole. Now, I'm sure people have been fired by John. I'm sure they're gonna say he is, but, but he's, but he's, he's, he's really a, a, a very good guy that he, he, every time I get off the phone with John, he, I just talked to him the last week. Every time I get off of him, he still says, call [00:46:00] me anytime Chris.
Call me anytime. So he has this way about him that he is, he's a hard ass, but he has some empathy in him. Um, and he's very much, uh, you know, someone that, that will listen. Then act and versus act, you know, and then deal with the consequences later. So I, you know, I, I respect the heck outta John. Um, and, and he's like that.
Chris: And, and Suman is the same way. Suman Superman's like, Hey man. People would say, what's the Frank Superman's playbook? And Frank's like, I don't have a playbook. I, I, it's, it's situational. And I think that's, you know, all these great leaders that I've, I've, I've had to, you know, I've got an opportunity to work with, they have these in these, these intuitions that are just amazing.
And they can, they, they, it's situational leadership. It's not like, this is how you do it there. This is like, you have to be open to saying like, wow, I did it this way over here, but it makes sense that you're doing it this way.
Chris: Like, Soman Soman had such, such a bad experience [00:47:00] at ServiceNow launching Japan.
And he will, he looked to me in the, 'cause I was a sponsor for Snowflake, Japan. He looked at me in depths of my soul, basically saying I had this consultant in saying we should do it. He goes, he, he almost like said, go away to the consultant and said, Chris, are you gonna make this successful? And, and I was like, I had, I was this scary moment and I had to look, you know, Frank in the eyes and say, Frank, I got this.
And I, I was all in like that. I, I had to spend so much time, uh, launching Japan and it was, it was a lot of work, but great. You know, it turned out really, really great for Snowflake. So, so I think those are the, these, these guys are just, have these unbelievable intuitions and, and.
Logan: It seems for, it seems like one of the meta points in that is a level of, um, perhaps self-awareness to not try to recreate, um, what, uh. Like, be John McMahon. It sounds like you, you, you, uh, were able to internalize a lot of different [00:48:00] aspects of what made him successful without directly trying to emulate him.
Is that, is that a trait that you've purposefully hired for or is that a circumstance of your own personality?
Chris: I, it's probably even, you know, goes back to like, you know, you know, you were raised by your parents and there are things that your parents did well. There are things that your parents didn't do well. Um, and it's one of those things of like, okay, I wanna take the good and, and try to make that part of how I bring up my, my kids.
Um. And, and that's, that's no different than, um, but I don't want to, I don't want, I wanna take the bat out. Like I don't, you know, like, Hey, back in the day when I was growing up, you know, you, you get spanked, right? Like, I guess what, that's not not allowed nowadays, right? So you, there, there's, uh, there's different things that you just have to make sure that okay, I, I, I'm gonna learn from that.
And so I think, you know, I [00:49:00] worked for the same guy at, at EMC for eight years. The, I learned so much from him, but there were a lot that I didn't like about how he treated people and stuff like that. But, but man, I learned a lot from him. So, uh, the, you know, to me, I'm so thankful for the guy that I worked for because he taught me so much, some of the fundamentals of sales.
Um, and I think it's just important to any, any leader that you take that good you, you make it your own. Um, and you not be an asshole about it. I think those are the things that you can still, you can still have empathy. You could still be a real human, but hold people accountable and, and, and I think you learn from both your su successes and failures.
Logan: You touched on some element of this with regard to Frank Sluman, but um, I'm curious like what's something that's maybe superhuman about Frank and it's just like, not replicable, um, but something that you admire. And then I'm curious, what is something that [00:50:00] you were, um, able to internalize or you would recommend other people, um, just do that you've kind of learn from him?
Chris: Well, you know, Frank, Frank wrote a book and, and, you know. People were like, did you read the book? I'm like, no, because I lived it. Um, and, and um, you know, FRA Frank, Frank would say things like, he, he, he has this like just innate ability to actually read people hi. His ability to, to read people is just second to none.
Um, and, and he's so, he could, you know, I'm a, I'm a bad liar. Um, and so he would know if I was bullshitting him, he would be like, okay, hey, Deon's not is I, I I, I can read him so well that he, I know whether or not, you know, the forecast is going well, whatever it is. And I, I have a, a, a little bit of, you know, high anxiety about things.
So he, he, he kinda liked that a little bit. Um, [00:51:00] but, but he would, he would kind of then coach me down of saying like, dude, it's okay that you and I are, are worried about things. Um, but you can't let everyone else know. Uh, you can't let the rest of the sales org know that you're, you're super concerned about something.
Um, and so you, you would learn, learn those things is like, okay, you, you need to exude confidence. Frank is a general, like you, you look at Frank, you hear from Frank, you wanna, uh, once you get on Frank's side, you wanna run through walls for someone like that. And I've never seen any, any leader like that.
Frank has this crazy ability to lead. Um, and, and he, his leadership style is, is very much, uh, hard. And so he'd say things like, when there's doubt, there's no doubt. Um, and, and, and he, you know, and, and he'd say like, you know, like, when I'd wanna go launch a, uh, you know, a new, you know, uh, sales group, uh, like a overlay group or something like that, he would say, okay, you know, [00:52:00] silly, stupid things he'd say like, eat like an elephant, poop, like an an, you know, and, and, and so stuff like that.
Like,
Logan: What does that actually mean?
Chris: So it's basically like you're gonna go out and you're gonna, you know, uh, uh, eat as much as you, you, you can, but with a very small, uh, amount of people. Um, and, and, and so I think he, he just would, would very much like, you know, say, Hey, go find someone who, who you can actually get the most leverage out of.
But don't, don't go out and, uh, and hire a, you know, a ton of people until you know that this group is gonna be super successful. Then we'll scale it. But, but he's like, I'm not scaling it until, uh, you know, we we're gonna, until we start to see the, you know, the metrics come out of it. So there were a lot of things that I'd learned from him, um, in, in the process.
Um, and, and again, it's, hi, his book, you Lived it. So he, in every one-on-one. [00:53:00] You know, he would grill me and I, I, he would grill me on all sorts of stuff, but I respected him. I respected how he went about things. He was not a jerk about it, but he was hard. Um, and he held me accountable. Um, and so I, I just, you know, I think that's important for everyone is accountability matters.
Um, and I think that's, uh, something that Frank was really good at.
Logan: Yeah. Interesting. Now what about Mike? Uh, uh, spies? Like what, what, what, what's something that you learned from him and what, what do you think makes him great at what he does?
Chris: Mike is a, a dreamer, um, and an incredible recruiter, probably the best recruiter I've ever met. Um, he convinced me to take that job when I probably, you know, in hindsight, like when I walked in day one, I was like, where, what the hell did I get myself into? But, um, I think, um, Mike, Mike thinks so big. Uh, he would be like, you know, when, when, you know, we were early days of Snowflake.
He'd be like, we're gonna create a hundred billion dollars market [00:54:00] cap company. And everyone in the room would be like, whatever, dude. Like, no chance. And sure enough, we, we have hit over a hundred billion dollars in market cap at some point. Um, and, and I think snowflakes, you know, trending in that direction, uh, again, um, and I think, um, I think, you know, the way that I I look at, um, Mike is he, he, he, he has this really great ability to understand technology and then apply it to the business world and understand how big of a market it's, um, he only wants to chase massive markets.
Um, and I think, and, and he can recruit world-class people. He pe when you get in front of Mike, you're walking out there so excited about what, you know, what he, he just told you. And, and you know, sometimes it's fake it till you make it. And, and, and Mike does a little bit of that, of getting you excited about something that may not be a hundred percent real, but you make it real.
And that was really what, what, what was the magic of sofa?
Logan: Hmm. Do you, do you think there's advantages to actually [00:55:00] being in stealth for an extended period of time? Having, having lived it with Snowflake, I.
Chris: Um, it certainly made it hard on me.
Chris: The, the, so the reason, um, the reason that Mike wanted, uh, snowflake to stay in stealth was because we were going after architecturally, we did something very different, um, than anyone had ever done. And it was hard. And, you know, as, as we interviewed Bob Muglia, Bob Bob came from, uh, years of, of working at, at Microsoft.
And you know what, what Bob has said is there's probably like, you know, 50, you know, 10 to 20 people in the world that can build a database from scratch. Now, some of those people sit, sat inside of IBM on Microsoft. Um. We luckily had three of those people that were working at Snowflake in our, in our three, three founders.
Um, and, and he said [00:56:00] it's really, really hard to invent. Like most of the databases, like Amazon had launched, uh, had bought some source code of a, of a legacy database of, and launched it. And there was an actual, another, uh, data warehouse startup, um, I'm forget the name of it, that, that, that, uh, uh, when Amazon launched Redshift, they completely steamrolled the company.
And the reason they steamrolled the company, there was no, no competitive moat. Um, they were, they had taken a, an open source, I think it was open source Postgres, and just throw, threw it out there and said, okay, we're gonna make, we're gonna make this a data warehouse. And, and that just didn't, didn't work.
Um, and, and so, um, you, you need to have this competitive remote. So Mike was, and that's something that I've learned by the way, when I, when I talked to like. Seed companies. Um, that is the thing that I, I wanna look at the most is like, what is your competitive mo? Technically, I don't care if you have a great business idea, it doesn't matter to me.
Um, but you need to have a [00:57:00] great world-class technologists, uh, that are building those competitive mots. Luckily, snowflake had really, you know, Benoit and Siri, uh, who were the original co-founders that had built Oracle, were had some core principle built, uh, you know, par parts of the Oracle database. And they had some core principles that they had were so married to, and, and they were like, this is what we're going to build, uh, for Snowflake.
And it turns out that, that those principles mattered. And so, um, Mike knew that, um, that's why he wanted us to stay stealthy because he didn't want, he wanted to have an 18 to 20 month, uh. Technology, uh, headstart in front of people, so that's why he did it. Um, it made it hard on me, but, but it, it also kept the competition at bay, um, um, in terms of knowing what we were doing.
Um, and that's, that's was, and, and people didn't even [00:58:00] believe us or what we had done because building a, as I said earlier, building a database from scratch is hard. So as we started to get out there, you actually had to show people all this stuff. And, and the, and so the, the competition, the cloud providers, uh, they, they didn't know what we were doing.
I mean, even if they did, they didn't believe we could do it. And, and that's why, um, uh, uh, it was, it was helpful that that's not always the case. That that, that that stealth matters. But again, you know, to SP's credit, if you wanna build a big company, you have to have a deep competitive moat. Uh, and then you have to get, uh, market share before your competition gets prod.
And that was really, his whole theory is, okay, get. Building a world-class product and then get market share, and that's, that's ultimately what drove the success of Snowflake.
Logan: Snowflake. Uh, we were fortunate to be involved, uh, along the way and as it sits here today, I am looking, uh, I sitting at a $71 billion business stock is, uh, [00:59:00] right around two 12. So a nice little run over the last, uh, bit under. Shri ours leadership and a lot of the work that, that you put in place over the course of the last couple years.
Logan: Um, I, I don't know the right characterization or how you would articulate this or how it has been articulated, but, um, there was, there was a point in time that, um, snowflake was, was materially ahead and scaling way faster than, um, Databricks was, who I think has become like one of the principle competitors, uh, out there, or like another business that's doing, um, exceptionally well.
And, uh, and a lot of this initial AI movement, Databricks was able to do a good job capitalizing on. I'm curious, having, having. Lived that experience as an executive and one of the key people at Snowflake, um, what did you learn from, from that experience and what would you [01:00:00] recommend about, um, I don't know, paranoia for competitors or things that you would advise for companies going forward?
Chris: I mean, I, I, I certainly have a lot of passion around this subject. Um, you know, look, we, we were, we were, you know, years ahead in terms of market share, um, with Databricks, and there was a point where we actually were partnering with them, um, for, for a short bit. Um, but, um, you know, ultimately, um, snowflake, we optimized Snowflake to go public.
Um, and that meant, you know, creating leverage in the, in the sales team, uh. And also the engineering team. Just the whole company. So you're creating a, a, a, a, you know, a more profitable, uh, company. Um, and, you know, Databricks, even to this day is private. They're not profitable. Like examples are, like, they just bought, uh, a company called Neon where they, they paid over a billion [01:01:00] dollars for, for Neon.
And, and Snowflake had offered, we just bought, snowflake, just bought a company. It's public information called Crunching data for 250 million. Well, we had a, they had a deal to buy, uh, uh, neon as well at, at a similar price point. And Databricks doesn't care about profitability or dilution to their shareholders, so they just go out and buy, and buy and buy and buy.
There's, there's, there actually is some, uh, um, goodness that comes outta what, what Databricks is doing because they don't care about those things. They can go build these, these massive engineering teams. So snowflake's about a billion dollars ahead, rough on top of about a billion dollars ahead. In revenue.
Maybe it's, it's, it's, the gap is closed a little bit, but, um, they, they, their sales team is two times the sales size of the sales team of Snowflake. Their engineering team is two times the size of the, the team of, of, of Snowflake Snowflake's a public company. Now we, snowflake has to operate and generate free cash flow and, and show, you know, show they're doing that, [01:02:00] doing all these things to run a successful business.
Databricks has to do none of that. And there seems to be a, you know, a very much, uh, a willingness for people to continue to invest at really crazy valuations of a non-public company that has no intentions of going public anytime soon. And I think what, what the, the, the miss on Snowflake behalf, uh, was that, you know, our North Star was to be this cloud data warehouse.
We hit that North Star, the number one cloud data warehouse. We won, we won. And we should have kept going. And we should have put, we should have put our, our foot on the gas and we should have run right over Databricks. And we should have launched a notebook, a data science notebook. So if I diagnosed, uh, and I did diagnose where, where Databricks is getting into our vast customers.
Uh, were they, they were getting into the data science, uh, uh, uh, team, and we weren't getting access to those people and those data scientists were then building a [01:03:00] bunch of, you know, uh, workflows or, or ETL jobs with Spark. Geez, if we had only done that, if we only built a a a a notebook, if we only had hosted Spark, but there were some core principles the engineering team didn't wanna do.
If we had done those things, data Rich would've been dead. Dead. We would've killed them. Um, and we, we gave them air and, and we gave them air because we didn't, we didn't build out, you know, some of those functionality and we waited too long. Now we have those capabilities, but Databricks has a huge headstart.
But we had a bigger sales team, bigger customer base, more loyal customer base, uh, less complex product. We, we could have killed them and we gave them air. And it's really unfortunate. Um, I think, uh, that we, we did, um, because I, that was a huge miss and that was, that was on like, Hey look, this is always, you know, uh, you know, looking in the rear view mirror is always easy, um, to say like, Hey, you [01:04:00] know this, we didn't know it at the time, but geez, we, there were some decisions we should have made earlier around, around some stuff that we missed and we gave them life when we could have just crushed 'em.
Logan: I, I, I'm curious, like those were there, that's the diagnosis. Um, at the, the, the tactical level of like, how it sort of played out, I guess at a zoomed out strategic level is, is the lesson, just stay paranoid about all your competitors always and think through the low probability scenarios that might play out.
Or h how do you, um, if you're, if you're a founder listening to this and trying to think about how to actionize that for themselves, what, what lesson did you take away that might be a little bit more zoomed out?
Chris: Listen to your customers. I mean you, if you listen to your customers, um, and understand, like never be in a situation where you're telling a customer, this [01:05:00] is how it has to be. Be in a situation where you have to listen to your customer and you take their feedback and you act on your, that feedback. So the, the, the, the customers were telling us, okay, this is why we're bringing in Databricks.
Okay, why? Well, our data scientists need a world-class data science tool set. Okay, great. They have a world-class notebook. We could have bought, we should have bought a company. There's a great company called Hex. We should have bought Hex. Uh, and we didn't because it wasn't core to, uh, snowflake. So, so to me it's don't be arrogant enough to think that your customers, you know, um, know better than you.
They do know better than you. 'cause they're buying, they're speaking with their wallets, uh, and, and you sh you have to listen to them. And if you give these companies air, then it is what it is. And that's what we did. And so I think, you know, to, to any founder out there is like be curious and, and be humble and take feedback.
'cause if you don't do that, there [01:06:00] is going to be someone, I don't care who you are, this is going back to like, you know, meeting some of these, these founders of companies is like. They think they're unique until they're not. And, and it's just like, you know, like I said, with Bob Muglia, the board is your friends until they're not.
Like, you just have to be self-aware. You have to listen. And if you do not listen and you do not read the tea leaves of why is something happening, um, then you're missing out. And I think, um, there, there, it's hard because as you're building a company, there are things that can distract you. Like, like for Snowflake, it, we, I, I clearly remember we went into this meeting in, at one of the major investment banks early on, and they'd say, this was when private cloud was a big thing.
And they were like, Hey, you know, we've been trying to build what you guys have built. Uh, when are you gonna run in the private cloud? And, and our founder, Benoit was like kinda master, uh, Yoda. And he said, he said, you know, hey. You'll go to the public cloud ever before we go to the private cloud. And sure enough that investment bank was [01:07:00] our first real big investment bank customer and still a big, uh, snowflake customer to this day.
So, so I think, you know, the reality of it is, is like there are some bets that you have to make that, that like, okay, core principles, like, Hey, I'm not going to build on the private cloud, or I'm not gonna build in the data center. Whatever those things are tho those are some core principles that you kind of have to agree on.
But there are other things that you have to be willing to, you know, give up and, and sacrifice, and sometimes you miss on those bets.
Logan: I'm curious, what are the things that was implied, um, in your diagnosis of, of Databricks and how they were able to execute in a, um, in, in a great, um, way with regard to some of the bets that they've been able to make?
Logan: Was some implied advantages or maybe explicit advantages in being in the private markets and not having, um, the, the same, uh, uh, quarterly cadence and, and [01:08:00] public, um, rhythm of needing, uh, investors to be on board to the same extent that that happens in the public markets.
Um, one can, can you unpack that a little bit and do, do you think that the, uh, the implication of that is that companies actually should stay private longer, uh, when they're taking some of these more ambitious bets? Or where do you fall on that, um, side of the, the spectrum?
Chris: Look, there are a lot of things I don't think Databricks is doing well. Um, so, so I, I can't say like, and, and, and again, if I'm a shareholder, if I'm an employee, like even like, these are things that you just kind of don't understand it. Especially when you're like a, like maybe a, a a, a, a frontline person.
Um, maybe you're a sales rep or a, a, a, a frontline engineer or something like that. Sometimes you don't think about these things. But like at, at, at the same market cap that Databricks is trading in the private [01:09:00] market, um, this is prior to this neon acquisition, they, they were trading at about roughly 90, $90 a share at the same price point.
Snowflake, um, was trading in about $130 a share because they, they're more dilutive. They, they, they, they, they don't have any cash to buy companies, so they buy it with equity. Um, so, so, so they dilute and, and so they're, they CEO. He, he thinks he's doing the right thing. Maybe he is. But I've talked to a lot of VCs and say, show me a company that's ever been private for this long and, and, and been successful and, you know, in the long run.
So again, at some point the investors are gonna force his hand to go public at some point because they want liquidity. Right now in the, in this world, there is, you know, a, a, a decent sized private market for a bunch of companies. A bunch of Elon Musk companies are, are, are private companies, but they have a liquidity.
OpenAI has liquidity, so like, I don't know if it's right or [01:10:00] wrong. Um, but, but again, um, if, if you are going after huge markets, AI is a huge market. So philanthropic, open ai, uh, acts, ai, uh, they, they, they're going after these, like, I don't know the size of their market. It's ginormous. Um, there's some niceness of being private because you do not have to worry about.
Things around profitability, um, or path to profitability. As long as investors will give you money, and I think Databricks is in that boat, is they, they continue to almost imply they're gonna go get the profitability, but they, they're not. And they're continuing to lose money. So to their credit, they can go buy companies, they can go buy, they can go spend three x more than what, uh, snowflake will buy on a company.
They've done it multiple times. They bought a company called Tabular Snowflake, had a deal to buy. Tabular. Like there's a bunch of stuff that they, they can do that, that Snowflake couldn't do. So there, there is some validity in what they're doing. Um, whether [01:11:00] or not that's right, time will tell. I, I don't know.
Um, I'm not, I'm, this is not an area where I'm gonna be an expert.
Logan: Going from the private to the public markets, um, what changed for you most in terms of how you ran the day to day of the business? And ultimately, do you think it made Snowflake a better business than it was in the private markets, or is that. Kind of a narrative that, that you think VCs maybe put out there to try to get liquidity.
Chris: It's not just for the VCs, it's for the employees. I, I, I mean, look, you know, you, you, you work at, I don't know what the average tenure of an employee is. You know, look, you know, an average tenure for head of sales is probably 18 months. You know, for me to do it for 11 and a half years is, is probably, there's not, not a lot of longevity historically in, in heads of sales.
So, you know, I think it's most important for the employees to have liquidity because there are [01:12:00] so, there, there's so much. Of your wealth that can be built in this one company, and if, if you can only sell 10% of your stock, um, you know, it, it, you know, and that's typically what happens in a, in a, in a privately traded company.
It's hard, especially if you want to go do another job at another company because you're, you're kind of handcuffed, you know, with these companies. I think so to me it's not just for the, the VCs to me, it's, it's all, it's also for the employees and, and, you know, can, can you create wealth for these employees, especially when you're, you know, if you've been there from the beginning for, I mean, I can only imagine some of these employees that have been at Databricks for a long time.
They, they've been able to sell some, but in theory, I could sell all of my stock in Snowflake, um, if I wanted to. Um, and, and, and they can't. Uh, because there's, there, there are some handcuffs, you know, put on you when you're, you're traded as a private company, so. To me, uh, having liquidity, um, is, is [01:13:00] really important I think for employee retention, employee morale, um, and, and, and stuff like that.
I think that's probably the most important thing Now, um, I, in terms of operating the company, um, day to day, yeah, I mean there, you know, look, we have quarterly earnings. Uh, we have things that we have to make sure that we, we focus on and there's, there's a bunch of, you know, things around profitability.
You know, wall Street cares about free cash flow, so we had to make sure there are things that we've had to do to make sure that we hit those free cash flow targets and, and making sure that we off operate in a lean fashion. Um, which, which again, ca can be good for the company and the shareholders.
You're generating shareholder value, and I think this is to sridhar credit, he's, he's Reaccelerating growth at a publicly traded company and running a lean, lean machine. I think he's a, a world-class operator and he's doing a great job. It's a lot harder. His job is a lot harder than, than the, than than Ali's at Databricks because he doesn't [01:14:00] have those, those things that he has to think about.
Logan: You're, um, you've had a great partnership, uh, with, with your longtime, uh, counterpart, uh, at c at the CMO role within Snowflake. So much so that, uh, I think you guys are. Working on or writing a book, um, together about that relationship. And I don't wanna, um, give away the totality of the insights in the book and people should read it, uh, when it comes out.
But I'm curious, what, what is the kernel that has made that relationship so successful? And, um, what would you, uh, pass along to, uh, other companies that are trying to make those sometimes competing, um, uh, responsibilities or roles, uh, work well together? I.
Chris: Yeah, so, so, you know. I I talk about this all the time with, with the companies that I advise and, and, um, and I, I [01:15:00] learned this from, from, again, Frank Sluman. When I, when I asked when, when Snowflake went public, we became tech famous. Snowflake did. And, and a lot of the executive team came, became tech famous.
And so I got a lot of requests to, to be on, whether it's advisor or board or whatever. And, and I went, I had to get Frank's approval and uh, and I went to Frank and he said, you know, look, um, it'll be a, a really good thing for you to do. 'cause you'll see how messed up you didn't use messed up. I just won't, I won't see what the other word he said.
Logan: Uh, you can, you can say, I think we have the explicit tag on, uh, on, on our Spotify and Apple account, so I think we we're comfortable here.
Chris: you'll see how fucked up other companies are. Um, and, and so, uh, she, and, and, and I'm, I laughed. Um, and, and so then I, you know, my, one of my first advisory roles, I was like, holy cow. The CEO, uh, almost relished the friction between sales and marketing and would create this awful, you know, competitive [01:16:00] situation between sales and marketing.
And, you know, uh, when, when we were growing, I was doing my own gen demand generation. I was like the demand generation machine for Snowflake. And that was, and, and John McMahon was like, dude, you're gonna get fired if we don't fix this. Um, and so that's when we went out and hired Denise and she's a demand generation focused CMO and the first thing that she did, 'cause I was arguing with the, the previous regime around what a, what an MQL was, what, you know, what an SQL was like, how many of the M QLS should I see?
All this other stuff? And, and she said, I'm gonna stop right now, the day one. Um, you are, um, my customer. Um, and, and we're gonna talk about meetings. We're gonna talk about qualified meetings, and that's all we're gonna talk about. Um, and, and then she would go and sit down and I, I, I ran the SDR team. She would go sit down with the SDRs, then she'd go and meet with the, the, the sales team and [01:17:00] say, okay, tell me about the leads you're getting from the SDRs.
Um, and then she created her whole demand generation program around making sure that we got qualified meetings. Um, and, and to me that was like, she treated me as customer number one. She treated our sales team as her customer. Um, and she trained her entire team to treat us as, as the customer. And so, to me, revenue matters the most.
I mean, I don't care. Whatever anyone says in an enterprise software company, um, I don't care if it's ai, whatever it is, you, revenue matters. And, and so. She knew that and she said, I gotta get you in front of customers and prospects and generate pipeline for you. And, and, and that was the start of this wonderful partnership that Denise's Denise and I have had.
So yeah, we are writing a book, um, about our journey. Um, because like you, there are so many founders that don't have never managed a sales and marketing team that think there's friction. And they should say, well, [01:18:00] this marketing team team is gonna generate this many leads. You guys aren't touching those leads.
That's a constant. And she would always be like, no, we're, we're not having that conversation. Her and I would have it privately around, okay, what's working, what's not. And each one of us would take action and, and even like, take action on people. So if there were people that were cancerous to either organization, we would make changes based on feedback that we would get from each other.
So we just built this really close relationship. Um, on working together. And, and I think that's incredibly important, is having a good, a, a great go-to-market organization involves both sales and marketing. Sales can't do it alone without marketing. Um, and I think that was the, the really important thing that kept snowflake's, um, engine going.
And Denise is the best in in demand generation in, in, in the one of the top, if not the top, uh, uh, chief marketing officers in, in the software space. Um, and so I was super lucky to get to work with her and her team, and she built a world class team underneath her
Logan: When does the, when does the book actually [01:19:00] come out?
Chris: coming out this fall. Um, let it Snow. I think that's the, the name of it. So I think, I think we're gonna go with that. And, uh, and it, and it is, it's, it's kind of a biographical, you know, you know, story of snowflake, but told in, in the, in how we built the, the go-to-market machine of Snowflake. Um, so we're excited about, about it.
Yeah.
Logan: Uh, well, I will encourage, uh, people to, uh, to check it out when it comes out. Snowflake has been, uh, a prolific source of, um, of, uh, books that, that thus far, I guess, with Frank's book as well. And so I, uh, yeah, excited to read it. Um, so I guess maybe we can wrap with a few rapid fire questions. Uh, and I guess the first one, do you think, um, sales led and product led sort of the PLG motion, do you think those things can truly, uh, coexist within a business?
Or does one of those ultimately, uh, win out in the fullness of time?
Chris: I think, I think, [01:20:00] um. It would be, it would've been great if we had, you know, A-A-P-L-G motion first. Like, Hey, that would've been great if we had a bunch of leads, uh, that were coming in, um, that people were using the product first. Um, we, we, we were com you know, there was complexity to our sales motion. We were selling a database.
Um, and, and so, uh, we needed a very much a hands-on approach to doing it. And so we focused on scaling out the, the, the go-to-market engine and, and built the whole, whole team around doing proof of concepts and stuff like that. It worked out well for us if you cannot PLG at the same time. So, so what we did is we focused initially on, you know, a hundred percent guarded, you know, on who could touch the product, when they could touch it, all this other stuff to then, you know, driving a self-service motion, so more of a PLG motion that, that came later.
Um, and, and, uh, Denise then focused her the, the, the marketing team's effort on, [01:21:00] on driving people to the self-service portal so that people could sign up. Um, it, it, you know, look, there's nothing that like more awesome than getting highly qualified leads that are in the pipeline eventually. Even if you're a PLG LED organization, you need an outbound motion.
You need, you know, uh, to, to, to continue to scale your, your your org. So I think they absolutely should coexist. Coexist. If you, if you're, if you're having a ton of success right off the bat with PLG, lean into that. Eventually start in your mind, like, think of the likes of philanthropic philanthropics, you know, building out their go-to-market machine now.
Um, but they were very much A-A-P-L-G led, uh, uh, organization. They have a huge consumer business, but they are focused on selling into the enterprise now. And, and so, um, I, I think there's, there's a ton of that that, that matters. And I, I, you know, I'm not gonna say any one is better than the other, but, you know, invest, get, get, [01:22:00] you know, uh, get market share as fast as you can, but you're gonna need the other one eventually.
Whether that's, uh, the PLG or whether that's enterprise, uh, software. If you aspire to sell into the large enterprise, you're going to need those motions.
Logan: What's, what's one tactic or adage or something in enterprise sales that sounds smart, but you actually believe is, uh, totally incorrect or maybe just very overrated.
Chris: The products sell themselves. I mean, you know. People, people think that, you know, it was easy selling snowflake. I I, you know, even, you know, when I would do new hire trainings at, at Snowflake, even like the last new hire training, I, I did, I, I, I told the people in the room, there are people in this room that will fail.
Um, because there are, they're, you, you, like, there are basic fundamentals that you have to do to be successful in a sales job. So the core [01:23:00] fundamentals were, for me, we had a great product. You have to go tell that story eight times a week. So eight face-to-face meetings a week is like, you gotta do it. And by the way, it's grunt work.
It's to pick up the phone and cold call people and ask them to meet with you. They don't wanna meet with you. Right. And force your way into a, a, an opportunity. Those, those are things that are, that, that people think are easy because, and that was a, a huge misperception of Snowflake. People would come into Snowflake thinking.
Look at how great that company is. I remember talking, there's plenty of sales leaders that we've hired that have said that to me on the outside looking in, it looked really, really easy. But in, and the reality is like every day we're knife fighting. And so I was looking for where I couldn't hire people from a Salesforce and have them be really successful at Snowflake because Salesforce is, is like 98% market share.
They don't know how to open up new logos. Uh, they know how to like, you know, [01:24:00] manufacture, you know, deals around pricing structures and relicensing things and stuffing other products into the deal. They do not know how to create demand. They do not how to sell through an actual campaign. And so, to me, that's where I, it, the big difference is, is uh, is actually, uh, figuring out, like, do the, does a person, does a salesperson have the ability to generate their own demand?
And close deals, because to me, like that's the, the misperception that this journey, snowflake was this super easy journey. It was never easy.
Logan: Hmm. Um, I, I guess as we, uh, as we hop, uh, I'm curious, like what's the biggest red flag that you see when talking to a founder, um, or an early sales team that makes you think they, they just don't have the, um, the understanding of [01:25:00] what it's actually gonna take.
Chris: Again, it's, it's, it's arrogance. I, I, I, I, I just, there's this founder I've met a couple times of a, a, a company that's doing quite well, um, but doesn't believe in traditional sales. Um, and, and I'm thinking to myself like. Okay. Um, like, you know, better than, you know, I don't know how many years of enterprise, uh, selling there is.
I, I don't, I don't think you do. Um, and I think it goes back to being arrogant. Um, if if you think you're, you're, your shit don't stink, uh, you're wrong. And, um, I, I think again, like it comes back to the, my favorite founders to work with are people that want feedback and act on that feedback and are humble enough to, to admit that they're wrong and act quickly.
Um, and if you do not do that, I don't wanna work with you. Um, because I think that's like the, the reality of it is, is like, you know, [01:26:00] you can, you can, because you have a great product, it can get you to a place, but that place will come to an end and it's better to get ahead of it, um, and, and make sure you have a great product and a great go to market organization together.
And that's when you really can crush it.
Logan: Um, I guess, uh, one final one as we, as we wrap, um, what has you most excited today as you start to move into more, um, board, uh, roles and advisor roles for business? What's the, what's the thing that gets you most excited? I.
Chris: Finding the next Chris Nan. I mean, I wanna, I, I mean, I, I was, I was, um, no one, I was a frontline sales manager at EMC, I was a second line manager for a hot minute. Um, and you know, there were a lot of people that developed me, um, from Bob to Frank, to John McMahon, to Carl Esheba, um, even Shridhar. Um, and, and so to me, um, I [01:27:00] want to develop, uh, the next generation of sales leaders.
And to me that's the most exciting part that, that I get. People always say, Hey Chris, you wanna be a CEO? Absolutely not. I do not wanna be a CEO. I wanna help. Um, build great go to market organizations and I want to help develop the, the next great sales leaders. Like, to me, that's, that's what gets me up out of it.
Logan: Hmm. Well, Chris, thanks for doing this. This is great. Uh, I, uh, have a ton of, um, respect and aberration for how you've, uh, led throughout the Snowflake journey and as, as an investor, a long time investor, I guess, at RedPoint and a. Personal investor as well. I'm super appreciative of all the, the hard work you've, you've done and so excited to see, um, what, what these next chapters look like for you.
Chris: Awesome. Well, Logan, it was great talking to you. Thank you for your time and thanks for having me on your, on your podcast.
Logan: Awesome. Thanks [01:28:00] Chris.