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Ali Ghodsi

20 statements across 5 episodes · 8 bullish · 3 bearish · 5 people on the record · first statement Jan 14, 2021 by Ali Ghodsi · said 64 times in 16 episodes since 2021 · across every show →

On the record as a speaker too: Ali Ghodsi's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.

Mentions by year

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (18), David Meyer (8), Lucas Swisher (3), Chris Degnan (3), Jason Lemkin (2), Shiv Rao (1), Martin Casado (1), Aaron Katz (1)

tap a year for its mentions
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048202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
007.54158202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 12 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
2025 32 mentions in 4 episodes 8 per episode
2023 13 mentions in 1 episode
2022 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2021 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Ali Ghodsi, oldest first

Jan 14, 2021
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ghodsi: Startup burn rate averages $200,000 per employee annually
“If you hire 10 people, you're probably burning, you know, something like two million a year. If a hundred people, you're probably burning twenty million a year.”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 11:49 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 neutral
Insight
Ghodsi: Jack-of-all-trades talent essential early, harmful in later stages
“In the early phases, you're looking for these people that are just really smart. They can figure things out, and they can roll up their sleeves, and just pretty much do anything. They can do a decent job at pretty much anything. Those are the kind of people th…”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 10:32 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ghodsi forced Databricks executives into annual 'sky is falling' downside scenario planning
“So during the years when Databricks was sort of growing super fast every year, I would force the executive team every year to do this sky is falling exercise.”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 4:48 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021
Insight
Ghodsi: Startups only need a dedicated Head of HR at 100+ employees
“But I kind of think around hundred employees plus is when it starts mattering a lot to have really sort of strong head of HR.”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 23:45 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 positive
Insight
Ghodsi: Hire executives who scaled revenue from $0 to $20M twice
“The other thing is, you can pick people who have a proven track record of having done it twice. Taking a company from zero revenue to twenty million. If they've done it twice for products that had similarities with your product, chances are they can probably d…”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 19:34 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 neutral
Disclosure
Ghodsi: Databricks requires teams to present lowlights alongside victories
“I would always ask, hey, can we also list what are the lowlights? For everything that we list that we're celebrating, please list also what's not going well. Because those are the things that we're not paying attention to, and those are things we need to fix, …”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 7:10 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 negative
Insight
Ghodsi: Hands-on execution is an anti-pattern in late-stage startup leadership
“Rolling up your sleeves and doing it yourself is actually an anti-pattern at our face, because that means you're solving it in an ad hoc way.”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 31:19 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 negative
Insight
Ghodsi: Explosive growth masks operational and process flaws in startups
“Success masks all problems, so you can do really, really well, and you don't need to do all your homework. You don't need to get All your ducks in a row. You can get away with cheating in a lot of things, a lot of processes, a lot of things that, you know, if …”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 6:04 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 positive
Insight
Ghodsi: Startups should secure at least two years of runway
“Raise money if you can, but make sure you have runway. I mean, at least two years. Ideally more.”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 13:24 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 positive
Insight
Ghodsi: Finance leaders are crucial early GTM counterbalances to sales spending
“The finance function will be a counterbalance. So find the right finance leader that works well with your sales leader to make sure that there are checks and balances. Finance leader will make sure that the bottom line also still works out, that you're not bur…”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 21:59 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 neutral
Insight
Ghodsi: High-growth companies outgrow most employees' career evolution capabilities
“High growth companies actually mostly outgrow most people's careers. The company's changing so fast that you can't in your career keep up with it. You need to change too fast to keep up with it.”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 33:45 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 negative
Insight
Ghodsi rejects gut instinct, favoring cerebral processes for startup decisions
“I don't believe in gut feeling. This is just my personal sort of leadership style. When people tell me, you know, ultimately you have to have a gut check and you make that gut decision and ultimately you sleep on it and the answer comes to you and so on. I don…”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 34:18 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021
Insight
Ghodsi: Great enterprise sales leaders can reach $5M ARR regardless of product
“I think if you have a really, really good sales leader on the enterprise software side, they should be able to get you to zero to five million revenue or so, regardless almost, of your product.”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 25:47 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Jan 14, 2021 positive
Insight
Ghodsi: Startups should hire a sales leader before hiring marketing
“The recommendation, actually, that we got was hire first the head of marketing, because, you know, the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is you need a marketing person to create the story and write the marketing material, otherwise the salesperson that you…”
Ali Ghodsi Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 20:20 20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market
Nov 1, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Meyer: Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi insists on deep founder involvement in product work
“And I tried that for the first six months at Databricks. And that's not what Ali wanted to hear. He didn't want me to go off and do something and then show him how awesome it was. You know, he wanted to be deeply involved and have the founders deeply involved …”
David Meyer Nov 1, 2023 ▶ 1:10:25 David Meyer: Why You Should Hire People Who Aren’t In Product Already | E1076 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 1, 2023
Disclosure
Meyer Operates on Implicit Approval Model with Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi
“It's oftentimes, I send a lot to him that I don't necessarily get responses on unless he disagrees.”
David Meyer Nov 1, 2023 ▶ 1:05:45 David Meyer: Why You Should Hire People Who Aren’t In Product Already | E1076 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 4, 2025
Assertion Supported
Databricks rejected a $10M on-premise deal from JPMorgan to stay cloud-only
“They're like, we'll give you ten million bucks to put this, and at the time, we're less than a million, like our whole first-year target's like ten million, to put it on-prem. And Ali was like, no way, we're not doing anything on-prem.”
Ron Gabrisko Aug 4, 2025 ▶ 8:54 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
Aug 4, 2025 positive
Opinion
Ron Gabrisco says Ali Ghodsi is 100x better than other technical founders
“He's a hundred X better than any of them because he can do the technical stuff, but he's also an inspirational leader and he knows the business.”
Ron Gabrisko Aug 4, 2025 ▶ 5:34 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
Oct 10, 2025 positive
Opinion
Degnan: Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi's noisy strategy works
“Ali at Databricks, he shouts pretty loud and he's done a good job, and I don't necessarily agree about how he goes about doing things, but It's worked for Databricks.”
Chris Degnan Oct 10, 2025 ▶ 54:17 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
Jan 8, 2026 positive
Insight
Lemkin: Going public enables Databricks to execute tens of billions in M&A
“Maybe at some point, even if you're Revolut, if you really want to do deals for real, it's, there are limits to private stock in cash, and if Databricks goes public, and it's worth two to three times Snowflake, it can buy, it may be able to buy the parts of it…”
Jason Lemkin Jan 8, 2026 ▶ 1:14:44 Groq’s $20BN NVIDIA Deal | Why Sam Altman Doesn’t Care About Dilution & Invisible Unemployment 2026 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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