Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blond: AI Will Make Software Development 5x Faster Within Three Years
“We can build software today. Let's call it five X faster than we could three years ago before all of the coding assistance. Well, if that's true faster, yeah, maybe more than probably more, it's reasonable to believe that in three years from now we can build f…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sam Blond Predicts AI Will Fully Automate Transactional Sales
“Transactional sort of commodity like sales will be disrupted in ways that support has been disrupted, where more and more revenue will be generated from just pure models, converting website visitors to revenue without the sales touch. And I think that will con…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Outbound sales drives the majority of Rippling's revenue attribution
“We're going to focus more specifically on outbound, which makes up the majority of Rippling's revenue from an attribution standpoint.”
Disclosure
Blond: Founders Fund avoided AI, health tech, and ed tech deals
“You mentioned AI founders fund didn't really do AI. So even if you were dot AI the last 18 months, it was like a no-go regardless of the success of the business. We didn't love the categories of like health tech and ed tech.”
Insight
Blond: A $1B exit no longer moves the needle for large VC funds
“What you're describing is as Peter described the power law venture, where there can be a series, a, an exceptional company that is raising money at 30 to forty million dollars, which I think is probably the Middle of the road series a right now and a billion d…”
Insight
Sam Blond: Spreadsheet-based sales hiring caused productivity to regress dramatically
“We made decisions based on a spreadsheet. We had a historical data on rep effectiveness in 20, 20 and 20, 21 in finance plugged the number going from 10 reps to 14 reps into the spreadsheet. And the spreadsheet said this was what was going to happen when we go…”
Opinion
Sam Blond: The Days of Work-Life Balance Are Over
“The days of work life balance are over.”
Insight
Demand-constrained SaaS companies close more revenue by firing underperforming reps
“You will close more revenue with fewer salespeople when you are in an environment that is demand constrained.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brex tracked customer spending on Amex by snooping linked bank accounts
“We could sort of cheat at Brex in that we could see the payments that were flowing to other cards. We linked to folks' bank accounts and we could see how much they were paying us and we could see how much they were paying American Express.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Blond: Zenefits generated less total revenue after massively overhiring sales reps
“And so the actual result of hiring a bunch more SDRs and AEs wasn't that we had incrementally more revenue, but sort of less efficient revenue on a per rep basis. We actually had less revenue. We closed less revenue by hiring all of these people because it was…”
Insight
Blond: Cutting Underperforming AEs Increases Total Revenue in Lead Shortages
“If you cut the bottom performing whatever percent of the AE team, what that means is you will give the limited number of opportunities that you do have to performers that have a higher conversion rate and actually convert more revenue or more sales with fewer …”
Insight
Blond: Startups should not prioritize domain experience when hiring sales leaders
“There are only so many really amazing sales leaders that exist to begin with. And if you limit your candidate population to a very small domain, like let's just say property tech or something like that, how many unbelievable property tech sales leaders are the…”
Insight
Blond: Zenefits Erred by Branding Around Fast Growth Rather Than Product
“Embracing this identity around sort of like fast growing tech company raised a bunch of money. That was a mistake. And I think the right thing to do or what to try and do is associate your company with what you do. Had we been known as, you know, the best heal…”
Disclosure
Blond: Brex framed Divvy's advanced budgeting features as unnecessary complexity
“Divi had a sophisticated budgeting tool. There was a feature that Rex did not have. And we actually positioned that as a negative. We said, you're a, you know, 50 person company. You don't want to have a lot of sophistication around rules around where cards ca…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Blond: 2022 SaaS slowdown not driven by budget cuts on new sales
“I am not seeing much influence on a company's ability to sell their product, to acquire new customers. And I am not hearing, you know, one of the biggest Problems today in our business is that potential customers are cutting budget, and they're not able to buy…”
Insight
Blond: Sales Revenue Targets Should Be Set With 90% Confidence
“I set the target with 90% confidence that we're able to hit it.”
Disclosure
Blond: Brex biases hiring away from Tier 1 cities for cost savings
“We have a bias towards new hires that actually aren't in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles. What we categorize as tier one cities because there's cost savings associated with hiring people in lower cost locations.”
Insight
Blond: Location-based pay inherently means getting paid less for identical output
“It's universally applicable that you're getting paid less for producing the same, depending on where you're located.”
Insight
Blond: Startups should not blindly copy ElevenLabs' 20x sales quota
“What works for 11 Labs at 20 X quota, meaning if you are paying a rep a 100,000 dollars a year, they need to generate two million dollars a year. That works for 11 Labs. It does not mean that we pattern match that to all other startups the way that we might, t…”
Insight
Blond: Sales leaders should adjust quotas mid-quarter if reps fall behind
“We can adjust it in quarter to you know, make it more motivating for the team. The last thing that you want is like approaching the end of the quarter in reps, like trying to get to 20% of their number, like talk about a depressing sales environment to be in.”
Insight
Blond: Brand awareness significantly improves outbound AI agent reply rates
“The brand does matter. There are three people in, in this meeting room right now. It's Jason, Amelia, and Sam. And on Monaco, it's Jason, Amelia, and Sam, meaning like an agent that is representing any of the three of us, the likelihood of that getting a respo…”
Opinion
Blond: GTM Agent Market Will Consolidate Into Single All-in-One Platforms
“Philosophically we believe that the like direction of the market is that you just want one vendor in one vendor is your inbound agent, your outbound agent, your insights. And it is all of your agents living on one data plane with full access to all of the info…”
Insight
Sam Blond: Traditional CRM Forecasts Are Fundamentally Wrong Due to Bias
“The only problem is it's entirely wrong. And, you know, you have like a sales rep that is adding their own like subjective Experience about the account. Like they may want to influence the sales manager to think that the deal is going to close, or they may be …”
Insight
Blonde: Early startups can manufacture winning cultures by setting highly attainable quotas
“You can manufacture what I would describe as like a culture of winning or an environment where people are making good money. And what I mean by that is like, you set the quota, you decide what the commission structure is. And if early on, you want to be delibe…”
