Mar 28, 2024 · 43m · in-depth
A masterclass in founder conviction | Eilon Reshef (Co-founder and CPO at Gong)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of First Round Capital's 'In Depth' podcast, Gong co-founder and Chief Product Officer Eilon Reshef shares how founder conviction, rapid user-centric prototyping, disciplined market targeting, and pragmatic AI applications propelled Gong from an overlooked seed-stage idea into a category-defining $100M+ ARR revenue intelligence platform.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Brett holds 1.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Brett as informed peer 3.3 Guest teaching 3.2 Guest disagreement 1.4 Brett pushing back 1.4
speaking balance: gold is Brett, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 14:45 Dismissing premature investor demands on unit economics
Eilon aggressively recounts rejecting an early investor's push to build custom speech-to-text engines, telling them unit economics belong in Series B or C rather than early validation.
Hardest push from Brett ▶ 22:52 Challenging the difficulty of Gong's Series ATodd directly presses on Eilon's claim that fundraising their Series A was tough, arguing that near-perfect design partner conversion and extreme retention should have made it effortless.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 29:50 Differentiating product completeness from product-market fitEilon reframes the multi-product discussion by clarifying that entering existing categories requires solving product completeness and competitive win rates rather than discovering zero-to-one PMF.
Brett holds their own ▶ 27:39 Operationalizing abstract roadmap frameworks into engineering allocationTodd drills into Eilon's 80/80 roadmap framework by forcing a concrete translation of how an engineering team of 100 actually splits capacity across core versus net-new bets.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Brett as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Brett pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Origin Story of Gong | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Todd introduces the conversation and asks baseline contextual questions about the 2015 sales tech landscape. Eilon provides historical context on how Sisense's blind spots inspired the founding of Gong. | |
| Finding the Initial Beachhead Market | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Todd asks what provided conviction before AI became mainstream, prompting Eilon to reframe conviction as self-belief in the face of widespread investor skepticism. Eilon details selecting a narrow initial tech beachhead. | |
| Building and Testing the First Prototype | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Todd inquires about the 0-to-1 building phase and MVP creation. Eilon details building a scrappy bot on Webex using third-party transcription tools before presenting it to early prospects. | |
| Overcoming Monitoring Concerns with Rep Value | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Todd probes into rep pushback regarding surveillance. Eilon explains how immediate personal value like talk-ratio feedback neutralized Big Brother fears, and recounts brushing off investor demands for early unit economics. | |
| Recognizing Early Signals of Product-Market Fit | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Todd asks how early product-market fit manifested. Eilon highlights an unexpected metric: intense customer complaints whenever unrecorded calls occurred, showing deep dependency on the tool. | |
| Converting Design Partners into Paid Customers | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Todd explores how to manage early design partnerships and pricing transitions. Eilon describes Gong's disciplined design partner approach and converting 11 of their first 12 partners to paid contracts. | |
| Navigating a Challenging Series A Fundraising Round | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Todd pushes back with surprise that Gong faced headwinds during their Series A despite sterling metrics. Eilon breaks down investor confusion regarding call center software overlap and addressable market size. | |
| Product Expansion and Roadmap Resource Allocation | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Todd asks how Gong balanced founder intuition with customer feature requests. Eilon outlines his framework of an 80 percent vision-driven strategic roadmap alongside an 80 percent customer-led tactical roadmap. | |
| Managing Hypergrowth and Launching Multi-Product Offerings | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Todd asks about entering multi-product territory. Eilon educates on the nuance between category PMF and product completeness when launching SKUs into established competitive arenas like sales engagement. | |
| Evaluating Multi-Product Adoption and Customer Metrics | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Todd inquires about success metrics for new products. Eilon explains using the Superhuman disappointment metric while cautioning against over-indexing on it without factoring in customer reach. | |
| Pragmatic AI Application vs. Foundational Models | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Todd asks about modern LLM developments. Eilon clarifies that foundational models alone cannot solve enterprise sales workflows without specialized context, human-in-the-loop interfaces, and data integration. | |
| The Future of B2B Sales and Automating Drudgery | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Todd asks about the future of B2B sales and founder advice. Eilon cites the 77 percent unproductive time spent on sales drudgery and advises founders against premature scaling based on hard lessons from his first venture. | |
| Founder Superpower: Genuine Curiosity | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Todd closes with personal superpower and resource questions. Eilon attributes his success to authentic curiosity across unfamiliar domains and recommends classic startup literature. |
Statements from this episode (26)
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.…”
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.”
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 first MVP was a Webex bot that used third-party transcription
“I put together myself, like the first prototype, I kind of forced myself to remember how to code, and then we put together a very basic software system, and what it did, it basically joined Webex calls as a bot. You'd see like a bot on the call, and what it ba…”
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…”
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…”
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 …”
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.”
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…”
Eilon Reshef personally closed only two early deals at Gong
“I probably close one or two. Two deals, not more than that in all of the relationship kind of stuff.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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: 66% to 75% of Gong Engage buyers are cross-sold customers
“Gong Engage is Also initial motion. I think right now is two thirds or 75% of customers are existing customers. So it's still a lot of cross sell versus new business”
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.”
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.”
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.”