Eilon Reshef
Co-founder & Chief Product Officer, Gong. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineerinvestorLinkedIn ↗gong.io ↗
Eilon Reshef co-founded Gong in 2015 alongside Amit Bendov, leading product and engineering for the revenue intelligence platform. Prior to Gong, he co-founded the e-commerce infrastructure SaaS company Webcollage, which was acquired by Answers in 2013.
1shows
1appearances
26statements
2resolved
2supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything Eilon Reshef said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Entering existing software categories requires product completeness rather than product-market fit
“In this case, I don't think you're looking for product market fit because in the end of the day, product market fit is for a category, right? Do you need forecasting software? Well, I do. I already have one. So it's more about call it like maybe product comple…”
Virtual AI representatives will not replace human salespeople within ten years
“So I don't think they're going to go away. I mean, people are like, oh, can a virtual rep call you and sell you something? It's like, I'm not going to pick up the phone for what the next 10 years, but certainly make their work much more efficient.”
Startups should defer unit economics and custom infrastructure until Series B
“I'll tell you about unit economics when we get to round B or C right now. I want to improve product market fit, right? So the idea was like, keep it very lean, almost no sophisticated stuff, but make sure you get those precious sales conversation in front of t…”
Early-stage founders should not prioritize getting paid by initial design partners
“I think early stage, I would not worry about payment as a key thing.”
Reshef: Winning competitive deals is much harder than satisfying design partners
“Building to call it like outcome to make sure it provides the outcome is any way easier. You work with the design partner, you build it together, you see that you get the outcome. Building to make sure you can actually compete successfully, win 50, 60, 70, 80%…”
The Superhuman product-market fit metric can be misleading for multi-product expansion
“I think superhumans at 40% is a threshold of some sort. I think ours were like 80 maybe. It was nice, but I think it was, I think we over read into this because I think you asked the question of people who actually use this piece of the product. So you very ea…”
Reshef: GPT alone will not help companies sell more
“Obviously people think that, you know, GPT is AI, but GPT is not going to help you sell more.”
In 2015, 30% to 40% of mid-market sales calls happened over video
“I would probably want to say 30, 40% of calls were, at the time, it wasn't even Zoom, right? It was Webex and BlueJeans and all sorts of names. Sales were happening. Obviously it was more hybrid than now, mostly for mid-range customers.”
Most VCs initially rejected Gong because they believed CRMs were sufficient
“Most VCs did not want to invest in Gog in the beginning. They're like CRM is good enough. It's a done deal. You don't need any more sales tools.”
Gong initially avoided the term 'AI' because buyers were afraid of it
“It wasn't about AI at the time. I mean, we didn't even use the term AI because people were scared of AI, but it was a lot around more like sense efficiency.”
Deploying a call-recording bot today would require 50 enterprise security reviews
“Luckily for us also at the time, people weren't as aware of
Security is there now. So I was like, yeah, sure.
Bring it on.
I'll try it out, which today I think you'd probably have to pass through 50 security reviews.”
Reshef: Objective software metrics eliminate sales reps' defensiveness and speed self-improvement
“If your manager told you you're speaking 70%, you're gonna be like, no, you didn't time it right. It was necessary. The customer just didn't respond, whatever the excuses are, but when software shows you 70% and then 65 and another called 80, obviously you cou…”
Gong converted 11 of its 12 free beta design partners to paid
“So we had like a 12 design partners. We got them through a network and a consultant we had worked with, and then we all, it was all free... We called all of them and said, hey, beta is over. We're starting to charge something. That was six months into the comp…”
Strategic roadmaps should be 80% vision-led; tactical roadmaps should be 80% customer-led
“I think the strategic roadmap is maybe 80% quote unquote vision. The tactical roadmap is probably 80% customer led”
Gong allocates engineering resources: 50% core product, 25% adjacent, 25% net-new
“I'd probably say in most cases, you probably, we probably do like 50% in the core product, 25% in new, and then 25% in net new, which is, call it, constructed to lead. Some years maybe we've done a little bit more of net new, and some years we're like, okay, w…”
Reshef: Webcollage would have fared better with founder-led sales for 5 to 10 customers
“So I wish we had said at a time like more founder led for the first five, 10 customers probably would have been in a much better shape because sellers are not as successful. They're not as knowledgeable, and then you don't get enough feedback.”
Gong was founded to automate the manual review of recorded sales calls
“What they found out is if they were, they started like recording the sales conversations to understand what's going on. And if they listened to dozens of them, eventually they got lots of good cues. And at the time he was like, there's gotta be a more efficien…”
Reshef: In 2015, Sales Tech Had Dozens of Tools Versus Hundreds in Martech
“I was looking at the marketing landscape and there was like dozens or hundreds, hundreds, literally hundreds of companies anywhere from campaign automation, whatnot, and sales really had dozens, which is not a lot. And my thought process at the time was sales.…”
Reshef: Gong's initial beachhead strictly targeted North American English B2B software
“Initially, we were like super focused. I think we're probably one of the most crazily focused companies in early stage. We're basically aiming software companies located in North America, selling B to B somewhere between a ticket size of a thousand dollars and…”
Gong's earliest product-market fit signal was user complaints about missed recordings
“The first indication there was a strong product market fit were Probably nine out of 10 complaints were, how does, how come you didn't even record this call? This call was not recorded.”
Every Gong product manager actively works with 6 to 12 design partners
“Each one of them is working at any point in time with probably somewhere between half a dozen to a dozen design partners. So if you think about just like how many design partners does Gong have at this point in time, 20, 24, that's quite a bit, and we haven't …”
Reshef: A hired AE's first deal proves sales repeatability
“I was like excited when a first AE sells his first deal. That's a big thing for a company, right? It's not like me selling. It's somebody who has been trained and can convey the value. There's some repeatability element to it.”
Gong reached $2 million ARR in its first full year of selling
“Yeah, probably, if I remember correctly, I'm never sure about the numbers because it was a while, I think the second year, like the real first full year of selling, selling business were like a two million dollars ARR, which is not bad for your first year. And…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Eilon's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 IN DEPTHLEDGER | Co-founder & Chief Product Officer, Gong | 1 | 26 | 100% 2/2 | full record on In Depth → |