The Exchanges

Q as possible, because they put you in charge of International G. And you did such an amazing job. Brian was telling me all about what a killer you were for them, opening up eight offices around the world. First office in Dublin. Can you talk to me? What are your single biggest piece of advice when it comes to going international? I know it's broad, but I didn't want to

A Yeah. I think the one that I would always keep in mind is, like, international is a huge opportunity for any company. If you look at the S&P 500, which is the 500 largest companies in the U.S. by market cap, half of their revenue comes from outside the U.S. So I would be thinking about, like, international, like, this huge leg of growth. Which I think any serious company that's going to be multi-billion someday should be thinking seriously about. The other advice I would give you, and because we went through this, is we were going to open Dublin in 2012, but we shelved the idea because our retention metrics were not great. Our, uh, gross retention was, like, low seventies. Essentially, the economics were not ready to make that big investment to open an international presence.

AI assessment note: “shelved the idea because our retention metrics were not great”

Q So that's really interesting. So with the different methods that we have today, PLG, digital CS, would you still advise companies to go international as early as you did?

A I would, uh, as long as your core market has good economics. If your core market doesn't, then, understandably, hold off. Like, you're not ready to go in, go into a completely different region. I would also add, when you go international, like, you're going to get some signals, Harry. Like, the markets pull you in. It's not like, you know, you wake up one morning, and you're like, alright, it's time to go international. So, for example, in our case, In those days, we had signals with, like, partners in the UK who were doing great. We were getting inbound leads, just not from the U.S., but from lots of English-speaking Europe. So in some ways, almost like with the work we were doing in the U.S., it was resonating in other parts of the globe, and the market was pulling us in. So the market was pulling us in, and what we ended up doing is like, alright, before we opened the office, I ended up hiring a bunch of young dads who would show up at four a.m. in Cambridge. Because they wanted to get home at two p.m. to be with their kids, and we were like, let's validate that demand. So we were selling early in the morning from Cambridge, calling into the U.K., and we proved out that pieces that we can acquire and retain them before we actually ended up opening Dublin in 2013.

AI assessment note: “I would, uh, as long as your core market has good economics.”

Q Can I ask you what broke in the HubSpot scaling of sales teams?

A What broke when scaling HubSpot's sales team? There are a couple that come to mind, Harry. Like, if I just maybe use international as an example, One of the things we saw like when we went to Germany is our English content that we were creating. Half of our leads coming in from Germany, prospects in Germany, were reading our English content. That was actually really cool because we were able to get a fair amount of demand just from English content and even before we started localizing into German. So that helped us like, all right, we can get a sales team going, but we also knew we needed to invest in German content to fill the funnel with more leads that will get found by a German content and just not through our English content. Where it did break is we underestimated that effort in Japan, because in Japan, only one percent of Japanese prospects were getting found by our English content. So we had to, like, I think we overestimated the speed at which we could get that Japanese funnel going, and it took us a while to get it going, and I believe it's in a great place today.

AI assessment note: “Where it did break is we underestimated that effort in Japan”

Q as possible, because they put you in charge of International G. And you did such an amazing job. Brian was telling me all about what a killer you were for them, opening up eight offices around the world. First office in Dublin. Can you talk to me? What are your single biggest piece of advice when it comes to going international? I know it's broad, but I didn't want to

A Yeah. I think the one that I would always keep in mind is, like, international is a huge opportunity for any company. If you look at the S&P 500, which is the 500 largest companies in the U.S. by market cap, half of their revenue comes from outside the U.S. So I would be thinking about, like, international, like, this huge leg of growth. Which I think any serious company that's going to be multi-billion someday should be thinking seriously about. The other advice I would give you, and because we went through this, is we were going to open Dublin in 2012, but we shelved the idea because our retention metrics were not great. Our, uh, gross retention was, like, low seventies. Essentially, the economics were not ready to make that big investment to open an international presence.

AI assessment note: “we were going to open Dublin in 2012, but we shelved the idea because”

Q And so then we have, like, good enough CACs to LTVs, and we're like, you know what, we're ready to go international. What did HubSpot do really well to enable the international expansion to be a success?

A There were a couple of things we did that I think were really key to our success. One is, when we opened Dublin, it was an expensive investment, and we were like, alright, it's expensive, but it's a big bet for us. So when we opened the office, we actually sent an expat team of five people from the Cambridge office, and we hired five people in Dublin. It was like this one-to-one match, Harry. Like, it was crazy in those days, but we were like, we're picking the right market, we're hiring with great quality, and we're going to give them the right resources. So if it fails, it's not because we didn't do everything we could control, we did everything we could control. So that was one thing we did is just simply like over invest in the early days to get the right team on the ground with the right help.

AI assessment note: “we actually sent an expat team of five people from the Cambridge office”

Q So that's really interesting. So with the different methods that we have today, PLG, digital CS, would you still advise companies to go international as early as you did?

A I would, uh, as long as your core market has good economics. If your core market doesn't, then, understandably, hold off. Like, you're not ready to go in, go into a completely different region. I would also add, when you go international, like, you're going to get some signals, Harry. Like, the markets pull you in. It's not like, you know, you wake up one morning, and you're like, alright, it's time to go international. So, for example, in our case, In those days, we had signals with, like, partners in the UK who were doing great. We were getting inbound leads, just not from the U.S., but from lots of English-speaking Europe. So in some ways, almost like with the work we were doing in the U.S., it was resonating in other parts of the globe, and the market was pulling us in. So the market was pulling us in, and what we ended up doing is like, alright, before we opened the office, I ended up hiring a bunch of young dads who would show up at four a.m. in Cambridge. Because they wanted to get home at two p.m. to be with their kids, and we were like, let's validate that demand. So we were selling early in the morning from Cambridge, calling into the U.K., and we proved out that pieces that we can acquire and retain them before we actually ended up opening Dublin in 2013.

AI assessment note: “I would, uh, as long as your core market has good economics.”

Q Gitu. Everyone would want that, but it requires an insane investment up front to get it over the line. It requires incredible education on partner integrations, that onboarding, how they talk about your product, how they educate customers to your product, and then the lifecycle management of that. I think it's so much more complex than just, like, Hey, when you need more help. Do you know what I mean?

A By the way, I push back a little bit. I don't know if every company would need that help from partners because sometimes companies are building products that are purely like PLG driven all the way from being acquired to renewing. It could be very SMB. Maybe Dropbox is an example. I don't think partners Play a big role in, like, that type of a product. But when you do need services help, and you don't need it to be just your team providing those services help, and you have to keep in mind, partners will just not say, yeah, we're just gonna do what you want us to do. They're like, how do I make money? How do I, like, create more cash flow in my business? How do I make my business more attractive to outside investors? So this is where, like, you need to think about, like, well, what are the services partners can offer? You do make an interesting point, which is, it is expensive, and I wouldn't say you have to always do this, but one of the things HubSpot did in the early days, and to some later stages too, is if you want to become a partner, you need to buy HubSpot. You need to learn the product. You need to learn how to generate leads using HubSpot. So it's almost like you're being treated like a customer. You prove yourself out, and at the right time, you can become a member of HubSpot's partner program.

AI assessment note: “You do make an interesting point, which is, it is expensive”

Q Can I ask you what broke in the HubSpot scaling of sales teams?

A What broke when scaling HubSpot's sales team? There are a couple that come to mind, Harry. Like, if I just maybe use international as an example, One of the things we saw like when we went to Germany is our English content that we were creating. Half of our leads coming in from Germany, prospects in Germany, were reading our English content. That was actually really cool because we were able to get a fair amount of demand just from English content and even before we started localizing into German. So that helped us like, all right, we can get a sales team going, but we also knew we needed to invest in German content to fill the funnel with more leads that will get found by a German content and just not through our English content. Where it did break is we underestimated that effort in Japan, because in Japan, only one percent of Japanese prospects were getting found by our English content. So we had to, like, I think we overestimated the speed at which we could get that Japanese funnel going, and it took us a while to get it going, and I believe it's in a great place today.

AI assessment note: “Where it did break is we underestimated that effort in Japan”

Q In the early days, do founders need to create the playbook, the sales playbook?

A I do strongly believe that founders need to play an active role In the creation or the co-creation of the sales playbook. And I would also encourage all founders early stages. I don't know, until you get to a hundred or more customers, you need to be on every sales call. Of course, you know, we'll have to figure out, like, are they qualified? Prospects, but if they're qualified prospects, you want to be on sales calls. And I'd say for a few reasons, Harry, one is you're not like filled with dozens of sales reps. You have maybe in the early days, couple, maybe two, three sales reps. And, uh, there's some magic in the early days when a prospect hears from a founder on why they built the product. What is the vision of the product? And prospects know, like, you are a no-brand company. You're in the early days of speaking directly with the founder. So I think it helps, you know, when in those early days. The other is, I don't think founders get everything right on day one. HubSpot didn't get everything right on day one. We made several tweaks, pivots over time. You do need to create that feedback loop. And founders, what better way than to be on a live call hearing about prospects and what challenges they're dealing with So you can create that feedback loop back into the product development.

AI assessment note: “I do strongly believe that founders need to play an active role In the creation”

Q Let's, let's, let's call it an even 800. So my question to you is, it looks like completely up and to the right when you look at HubSpot scaling of their sales revenues. Um, what allowed HubSpot to scale sales so efficiently when you review what you did in the early days in probably that three to thirty million range?

A I would say the inbound engine with, like, we were creating tons of content, That was resulting in leads. Like, that became a machine, Harry. It's still a machine. I really think, when I think about moats that HubSpot has, it's like that inbound engine, its blog, its website. The blog still gets about ten million visitors even today each month. All of HubSpot gets, like, I think, thirty million approximately each month. Like, the traffic and the inbound engine made it really easy to instrument demand Going like this, hiring to service that demand, going like this. So it became very much like, you know, running a calculation to figure out, like, if demand is going like this, let's continue hiring to service that demand, and the ARR just kept going up and to the right. The other one that I would say is what we would call, like, this predictable and scalable approach to growth. Like, we got really good with hiring great sales reps, onboarding them, Coaching them and making them productive. So that whole approach we took of, like, acquiring talent and making them productive was another reason why it worked so well. I think the other one that I think many companies interestingly still don't think about today is a partner ecosystem. I still see so many SaaS companies not digging into, how do I get, like, efficient growth, not just through my talent, But through a partner ecosystem, a…

AI assessment note: “I would say the inbound engine with, like, we were creating tons of content”

Q In the early days, do founders need to create the playbook, the sales playbook?

A I do strongly believe that founders need to play an active role In the creation or the co-creation of the sales playbook. And I would also encourage all founders early stages. I don't know, until you get to a hundred or more customers, you need to be on every sales call. Of course, you know, we'll have to figure out, like, are they qualified? Prospects, but if they're qualified prospects, you want to be on sales calls. And I'd say for a few reasons, Harry, one is you're not like filled with dozens of sales reps. You have maybe in the early days, couple, maybe two, three sales reps. And, uh, there's some magic in the early days when a prospect hears from a founder on why they built the product. What is the vision of the product? And prospects know, like, you are a no-brand company. You're in the early days of speaking directly with the founder. So I think it helps, you know, when in those early days. The other is, I don't think founders get everything right on day one. HubSpot didn't get everything right on day one. We made several tweaks, pivots over time. You do need to create that feedback loop. And founders, what better way than to be on a live call hearing about prospects and what challenges they're dealing with So you can create that feedback loop back into the product development.

AI assessment note: “founders need to play an active role In the creation or the co-creation”

Q And so then we have, like, good enough CACs to LTVs, and we're like, you know what, we're ready to go international. What did HubSpot do really well to enable the international expansion to be a success?

A There were a couple of things we did that I think were really key to our success. One is, when we opened Dublin, it was an expensive investment, and we were like, alright, it's expensive, but it's a big bet for us. So when we opened the office, we actually sent an expat team of five people from the Cambridge office, and we hired five people in Dublin. It was like this one-to-one match, Harry. Like, it was crazy in those days, but we were like, we're picking the right market, we're hiring with great quality, and we're going to give them the right resources. So if it fails, it's not because we didn't do everything we could control, we did everything we could control. So that was one thing we did is just simply like over invest in the early days to get the right team on the ground with the right help.

AI assessment note: “we actually sent an expat team of five people from the Cambridge office”

Q Okay, so I have to dig, I have to dig in on some elements there. One on the SEO side, that's insane, ten million of thirty million going to the blog itself. Question for you, for founders listening today, is that SEO heavy approach still applicable today in a much more challenging SEO environment?

A I still think it's Something you have to do. Like, I don't think there's, like, a red herring that, you know, you have, like, I do this, and there's a non-SEO approach. I think, you know, 10 years or 15 years ago, it was easy with SEO because the formula was, like, you gotta create content, you gotta create blogs, you gotta think about your conversion paths, but I do think distribution is hotter these days. Like, you gotta think about social, you gotta think about, You know, your presence on LinkedIn. Are your founders and, uh, execs creating content on LinkedIn? So I think the philosophy is still the same, which is it's all about content. But I think the way you think about content, the way you distribute it has gotten really, uh, layered. There's just many more layers you need to think about when it comes to like SEO and content and where do you spread it to get your leads and customers.

AI assessment note: “I still think it's Something you have to do.”

Q Speaking of creating feedback loops, I always think about momentum and building momentum in teams. To what extent would you advise early sales teams to focus on amazing, amazing marquee logos or just getting a load of customers in the door, high velocity flooded with customers, which approach would you focus on?

A It's a good question. And, uh, I'm sure many or some will not agree with me. My, uh, my, if you're in my school, my school will be stop chasing elephants. So, if you are a mid-market company, you have a big addressable market, sure, a large marquee logo is expressing interest, Engage with them, but don't count on them as your answer to hitting your target. You want to still be prospecting into good fit companies who have reasonable sales cycle and which will help you build a predictable pipeline to get to your target. I think the risk is with marquee logos is people just get attracted to the sexiness of a marquee logo, and then you show up in the last day of the quarter Only to realize the marquee logo sales or buying process and buying cycle doesn't match with your sales process. So I would say don't go all into marquee logos. If you're a mid-market company, figure out how to diversify your pipeline.

AI assessment note: “my school will be stop chasing elephants. So, if you are a mid-market company”

Q Should customer success not also share in the financial incentive structure of an upsell or a retention?

A I believe they should. If you have the sales team that is getting rewarded for acquiring customers and you have the CS team that's only being recognized for like Driving usage, but not getting any recognition in the expansion of the customer. Over time, you're going to get CS reps who are like, well, I was the one who helped the customer get the next product or expand into the platform. So I do think when you think about comp plans, you want to be clear about, like, what role do you want your CS team to play? If your CS team is a pure account management team, maybe there isn't something on the Recognition like sales. But if your CS team is a revenue producing team, which is I believe every CS team should be a revenue producing team. You want to structure their comp plan in the form of some kind of a basic variable.

AI assessment note: “I believe they should.”

Q When, when is the right time to invest in CS?

A Just like founders are going to play a role in selling. I do think founders play a role in the really early days with like CS type activities. Like they need to learn. Like, what it's gonna take for a customer to see results and stick around for, for a long haul. In terms of, like, the actual hiring of your first, second CS, Harry, I will think about, like, it in two ways. One is, like, how many customers do you have right now? And think about, you know, like, to provide engagement to those customers, like, Do you need a CS rep or not? The other is like, at what speed are you acquiring customers? Because if you see, you know, customer count getting to a certain point, you should start planning in advance that you do need a CS rep. What I will add that I think is changing now quite dramatically is like, you don't need CS type human engagements. All the time. You can do that through self-service. You can do that through digital scaled emotions, whether it's a chatbot, it could be an academy, it could be help content. So do a lot of that. I'll probably as founder, you know, like try and get your first CS rep so you can get the structure and the process and right, but then don't keep investing in CS reps until you get a foundation of like self-help and knowledge and content in place.

AI assessment note: “get your first CS rep so you can get the structure and the process”

Q Very often people will say, listen, like, you know what? If you go on our website and we're able to promote you as a customer, we'll give you a 20% discount.

A I don't believe in it. And I just think like you are mixing too many variables when your focus should be on what does the customer really need? Like, what is their pain? Connect their pain to a solution. Why are you diluting your value as a salesman by throwing in Testimonials and discounting. And again, you can get to a discount down the road if you do need it to close a gap in budget, but don't play games is the way I think about it. Like if your buyers don't value you as an advisor and value the solution you're recommending through a fairly exhaustive sales process, then I would question whether that buyer is a good fit customer And whether they will do everything they need to do to succeed with your platform.

AI assessment note: “I don't believe in it. And I just think like you are mixing too many variables”

Q Do you ever do discounting? One way to get people to move faster is say, hey, you know what, Gitu, I, and you can be honest, Gitu, I need to hit my plan. You know what it's like. Um, let's not give you 25% off if you sign in the next week.

A Yeah, I hate that. I hate that. And I do not like discounting. I do not like to lead with discounting. And it is a disservice to the customer and to the company and to you as a rep to lead with discounting. There is a place for discounting, but it should not be so prominent in your sales process unless you've gotten to a point where clearly there's a need, ah, they need to solve that need, but they have a gap in their budget, and you structure the discount to help them get maybe the first year, but the discount goes away in the second year. And maybe other sales leaders believe in discounting, but I am very opposed to discount.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I hate that. I hate that. And I do not like discounting.”

Q Everyone says BDRs and SDRs is, is dead now. The cold outbound, the cold email, cold LinkedIn. So, 2015. Do you agree or do you think that's a glib statement?

A I would not fully agree with it. I would partly agree with it, with it's not the most efficient go to market when you have pure cold calling with BDRs. But when you get much more Sophisticated. You think about your target market. You think about your target lists. You think about, uh, first party and third party signals that you can get today when buyers are researching solutions like yours. So you're not doing a pure outbound, pure cold call. What we would call like almost like all bound, Harry. It's a mix of inbound and outbound whereby you're knocking on doors, but it's the right doors. When you speak with them, You know they have some pain, and this is where it comes back to, like, how do you enable your BDRs and AEs to be able to have those type of conversations when they don't know your brand, but we know there is a pain that they're trying to solve.

AI assessment note: “I would not fully agree with it. I would partly agree with it”

Q Should customer success not also share in the financial incentive structure of an upsell or a retention?

A I believe they should. If you have the sales team that is getting rewarded for acquiring customers and you have the CS team that's only being recognized for like Driving usage, but not getting any recognition in the expansion of the customer. Over time, you're going to get CS reps who are like, well, I was the one who helped the customer get the next product or expand into the platform. So I do think when you think about comp plans, you want to be clear about, like, what role do you want your CS team to play? If your CS team is a pure account management team, maybe there isn't something on the Recognition like sales. But if your CS team is a revenue producing team, which is I believe every CS team should be a revenue producing team. You want to structure their comp plan in the form of some kind of a basic variable.

AI assessment note: “I believe they should.”

Q Very often people will say, listen, like, you know what? If you go on our website and we're able to promote you as a customer, we'll give you a 20% discount.

A I don't believe in it. And I just think like you are mixing too many variables when your focus should be on what does the customer really need? Like, what is their pain? Connect their pain to a solution. Why are you diluting your value as a salesman by throwing in Testimonials and discounting. And again, you can get to a discount down the road if you do need it to close a gap in budget, but don't play games is the way I think about it. Like if your buyers don't value you as an advisor and value the solution you're recommending through a fairly exhaustive sales process, then I would question whether that buyer is a good fit customer And whether they will do everything they need to do to succeed with your platform.

AI assessment note: “I don't believe in it. And I just think like you are mixing too many variables”

Q Let's, let's, let's call it an even 800. So my question to you is, it looks like completely up and to the right when you look at HubSpot scaling of their sales revenues. Um, what allowed HubSpot to scale sales so efficiently when you review what you did in the early days in probably that three to thirty million range?

A I would say the inbound engine with, like, we were creating tons of content, That was resulting in leads. Like, that became a machine, Harry. It's still a machine. I really think, when I think about moats that HubSpot has, it's like that inbound engine, its blog, its website. The blog still gets about ten million visitors even today each month. All of HubSpot gets, like, I think, thirty million approximately each month. Like, the traffic and the inbound engine made it really easy to instrument demand Going like this, hiring to service that demand, going like this. So it became very much like, you know, running a calculation to figure out, like, if demand is going like this, let's continue hiring to service that demand, and the ARR just kept going up and to the right. The other one that I would say is what we would call, like, this predictable and scalable approach to growth. Like, we got really good with hiring great sales reps, onboarding them, Coaching them and making them productive. So that whole approach we took of, like, acquiring talent and making them productive was another reason why it worked so well. I think the other one that I think many companies interestingly still don't think about today is a partner ecosystem. I still see so many SaaS companies not digging into, how do I get, like, efficient growth, not just through my talent, But through a partner ecosystem, a…

AI assessment note: “I would say the inbound engine with, like, we were creating tons of content”

Q Okay, so I have to dig, I have to dig in on some elements there. One on the SEO side, that's insane, ten million of thirty million going to the blog itself. Question for you, for founders listening today, is that SEO heavy approach still applicable today in a much more challenging SEO environment?

A I still think it's Something you have to do. Like, I don't think there's, like, a red herring that, you know, you have, like, I do this, and there's a non-SEO approach. I think, you know, 10 years or 15 years ago, it was easy with SEO because the formula was, like, you gotta create content, you gotta create blogs, you gotta think about your conversion paths, but I do think distribution is hotter these days. Like, you gotta think about social, you gotta think about, You know, your presence on LinkedIn. Are your founders and, uh, execs creating content on LinkedIn? So I think the philosophy is still the same, which is it's all about content. But I think the way you think about content, the way you distribute it has gotten really, uh, layered. There's just many more layers you need to think about when it comes to like SEO and content and where do you spread it to get your leads and customers.

AI assessment note: “I still think it's Something you have to do.”

Q which is, there's just a lot more options in terms of format. Can I ask you, on the partner program, I hear you, but I worry that a lot of founders will go, partner programs, that's our holy grail. And they're often a lot harder than people think. They require a lot more investment. What stage should one think about partner programs? And What is required to do partner programs?

A Well, I would say the stage you should start thinking about a partner program is when you have clarity on what role partners can play with your product. If you're a very transactional product, like you're probably not going to get partners to like bundle services on top of HubSpot because the way they make money is through retainers and services they offer to their client. In the case of HubSpot, it worked really well because we needed partners to create, help customers create content, landing pages, do analytics, and the same thing has played out in all the other hubs that HubSpot has offered over the last many years. So I would say, think about it when you're clear that there's a need for other people to help your customers succeed. And other people could be just not like service providers. It could be app partners. It could be ecosystem partners. So that's probably the stage that I would start thinking about partners.

AI assessment note: “stage you should start thinking about a partner program is when you have clarity”

Q Speaking of creating feedback loops, I always think about momentum and building momentum in teams. To what extent would you advise early sales teams to focus on amazing, amazing marquee logos or just getting a load of customers in the door, high velocity flooded with customers, which approach would you focus on?

A It's a good question. And, uh, I'm sure many or some will not agree with me. My, uh, my, if you're in my school, my school will be stop chasing elephants. So, if you are a mid-market company, you have a big addressable market, sure, a large marquee logo is expressing interest, Engage with them, but don't count on them as your answer to hitting your target. You want to still be prospecting into good fit companies who have reasonable sales cycle and which will help you build a predictable pipeline to get to your target. I think the risk is with marquee logos is people just get attracted to the sexiness of a marquee logo, and then you show up in the last day of the quarter Only to realize the marquee logo sales or buying process and buying cycle doesn't match with your sales process. So I would say don't go all into marquee logos. If you're a mid-market company, figure out how to diversify your pipeline.

AI assessment note: “my school will be stop chasing elephants”

Q Speaking of coin operated and those coins keep coming, any big lessons on sales comp plans for sales teams?

A Big lessons would be, at the end of the day, I would say a sales comp plan just drives behaviors at the end of the day. Like, if you don't get the comp plan right, you're just going to end up with, like, potentially, uh, Bad customers. Bad behavior. Bad culture. I would also add, when you think about sales comp plan, think about, like, what phase of growth you are. And as a business, like if you're an early stage founder, early stage company, like velocity matters, like you might have a sales comp plan that is a bit more indexed towards like just simply raw acquisition. But as you grow bigger, you're going to start like thinking about like retention, cross selling, upselling. So think about how does your comp plan also evolve as the company and it's Phase of growth also evolves.

AI assessment note: “a sales comp plan just drives behaviors at the end of the day.”

Q Do you see now CFOs bundling spend moving towards much fewer providers than we used to?

A I do see, uh, a wave of consolidation. Customers are looking to simplify their tech stack. And I just think, uh, You know, there was some research done by HubSpot not too long ago where SMBs had a tech stack of about 250 apps. It was nuts. It was crazy. And we're seeing a wave of consolidation, or at least while I was at HubSpot, is like, how do I simplify? How do I connect the dots? Because companies and CFOs naturally are like, well, we need our investment to lead to efficient growth. It needs to be more durable and sustainable growth. And you can't do it when you have 10 different solutions disconnected, cobbled together. So they're like, well, how do we bring it all together so we can create alignment Between our go-to-market teams, so we can find out, like, the work marketing did, did it result in an ROI on that marketing investment. The customer sales acquired. Did they get the right usage and expansion? So I do think having like a unified tech stack makes a difference.

AI assessment note: “I do see, uh, a wave of consolidation. Customers are looking to simplify their tech stack.”

Q When, when is the right time to invest in CS?

A Just like founders are going to play a role in selling. I do think founders play a role in the really early days with like CS type activities. Like they need to learn. Like, what it's gonna take for a customer to see results and stick around for, for a long haul. In terms of, like, the actual hiring of your first, second CS, Harry, I will think about, like, it in two ways. One is, like, how many customers do you have right now? And think about, you know, like, to provide engagement to those customers, like, Do you need a CS rep or not? The other is like, at what speed are you acquiring customers? Because if you see, you know, customer count getting to a certain point, you should start planning in advance that you do need a CS rep. What I will add that I think is changing now quite dramatically is like, you don't need CS type human engagements. All the time. You can do that through self-service. You can do that through digital scaled emotions, whether it's a chatbot, it could be an academy, it could be help content. So do a lot of that. I'll probably as founder, you know, like try and get your first CS rep so you can get the structure and the process and right, but then don't keep investing in CS reps until you get a foundation of like self-help and knowledge and content in place.

AI assessment note: “think about, like, it in two ways. One is, like, how many customers”

Q Do you ever do discounting? One way to get people to move faster is say, hey, you know what, Gitu, I, and you can be honest, Gitu, I need to hit my plan. You know what it's like. Um, let's not give you 25% off if you sign in the next week.

A Yeah, I hate that. I hate that. And I do not like discounting. I do not like to lead with discounting. And it is a disservice to the customer and to the company and to you as a rep to lead with discounting. There is a place for discounting, but it should not be so prominent in your sales process unless you've gotten to a point where clearly there's a need, ah, they need to solve that need, but they have a gap in their budget, and you structure the discount to help them get maybe the first year, but the discount goes away in the second year. And maybe other sales leaders believe in discounting, but I am very opposed to discount.

AI assessment note: “I do not like discounting. I do not like to lead with discounting.”

Q When you look back with the benefits of HindsightGT, what were some of the biggest mistakes that you did in the international expansion?

A I would say as we expanded, uh, Globally, Harry, you know, we use this framework that we would call, uh, operational complexity and, uh, the size of the market. You can almost think of like, alright, I pick a country and I say, is it easy or difficult to do business in it? I would call it the operational complexity. Then I would say, okay, for that country, what is my TAM or addressable market? So we graded every country on complexity versus TAM, and you can almost like look at a series of bubbles. On the left, the US, big TAM, blue in color because it is low complexity. On the other end, you have something like China, big market, but red in color because of the complexity. And in between, you've got France, Germany, Spain, and all the other countries. Our playbook really worked great in those countries that were closer to the U.S., like Germany, France, South, Netherlands, Australia. But as we went to the right where the complexity increased, let's say Japan, one of the mistakes we or I made is that playbook of sending an expat team was not an option, Harry, because of the language in Japan. Like, they obviously, you know, didn't speak Japanese. So I was not able to send that expat leader to Japan like I was able to do in Dublin and Sydney. So I had to hire from day zero, day one, all local. It was hard to do that tiger team approach. And some of our early hires in Japan, they…

AI assessment note: “I fell into that pothole because I was hiring like I was hiring in the US”