Kyle Parrish, VP of Sales at Figma, outlines what early-stage startups should expect from their first sales leader compared to individual sales reps.
0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.4s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“You need to bring in someone who just has more perspective and playbooks. I don't think it's about copy pasting what those people have done in the past, but it's about coming in, understanding where they're at today. And from first principles, starting to build a foundation, Of a repeatable sales team, not just prove that you can sell a product and bring in some revenue.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Kyle Parrish
Disclosure
Figma maintains a strict zero-discounting policy on its product
“We don't discount the product. It's something we've held to really strongly.”
Kyle ParrishDec 8, 2021▶ 34:1920 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales
Insight
Founder-led sales is inherently unscalable and unrepeatable
“Founder-led sales isn't scalable. It's not repeatable”
Kyle ParrishDec 8, 2021▶ 6:0620 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales
Insight
Hire a sales leader before expanding to three or more reps
“I think if you have hit some level of product market fit, you're seeing traction. You know that there is a market to go grab, and it's a speed game. And like, we need to go do it fast. And you're like, I think that we can support having five salespeople, even,…”
Kyle ParrishDec 8, 2021▶ 6:3620 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales
Insight
Hiring big-tech sales veterans is often a mistake for early startups
“Some founders get, you know, really, really star eyed around, Oh, they were at Salesforce for 15 years. There's such a great fit for my 40 employee startup to come and build sales or come and be the first rep. And I'm not saying that they couldn't be, but gene…”
Kyle ParrishDec 8, 2021▶ 20:0720 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales
PredictionHeld up
Figma's $10B valuation is just the floor for the company
“You know, we're now a ten billion dollar company with the most recent fundraise, but we also genuinely think that that's just the floor. I mean, Figma is going to be a massive company and we're just getting started.”
Kyle ParrishDec 8, 2021▶ 31:4020 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Parrish completed 19 interviews in three days to join Dropbox
“Three days, 19 interviews later, I ended up getting the job at Dropbox”
Kyle ParrishDec 8, 2021▶ 4:2720 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.