Sterling Snow
Co-Founder & CEO, Redo · 2 appearances on the record.
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founderexecutiveinvestorhost@sterlingmsnow ↗LinkedIn ↗redo.com ↗
Sterling Snow is the co-founder and CEO of Redo and a venture partner at Pelion Venture Partners. He previously served as the Chief Revenue Officer of Divvy, leading its go-to-market strategy through its $2.5 billion acquisition by BILL in 2021.
22statements → 5claims → 1claims resolved → 4.05/5average certainty → 1.95/5average debate potential → 2said about them ↓
1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 3 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
5 assertions · 10 insights · 6 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Sterling argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Everything Sterling Snow said on the Official SaaStr Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Divvy compensated marketing on closed-won revenue, not MQLs or SQLs
“Marketing, we didn't talk about MQLs or SQLs. We actually talked about closed one new dollars. That's how marketing Was measured. That's how they were promoted and compensated, bonus, all of those kinds of things.”
Snow: Great marketers embrace revenue quotas while bad marketers flee them
“In my experience great marketers love that, and bad marketers run away from that very, very fast. Like, I talk about it a ton in the interview, like, hey, this is how we structure it, and you know, you're gonna be a demand gen person here, and like, this is ho…”
Divvy measured brand marketing performance by total organic revenue
“Brand would have a number and their number was the organic number. Okay. So like I'm saying, okay, you want credit for basically everything. That's fine. The organic number, right? So everything we didn't use performance marketing dollars for that starts to th…”
Snow: Standard SEM spend on Google or LinkedIn won't yield outsized leverage
“You just have to find those opportunities, though, because it doesn't exist in just plugging in money in Google or LinkedIn SEM. Like it doesn't work like that if you're trying to be, if you're trying to find outsized leverage.”
Divvy could have added billions to its $2.5B exit with earlier lessons
“If I could go back to that moment in, in 2018, with everything that, that we've learned along the way, we could have added more, we could have added a couple billion more dollars, I believe, to that eventual exit.”
Divvy required all revenue hires to write reports on Extreme Ownership
“We had everybody who joined the revenue team read the book and write a book report because we believed That extreme ownership at the end of the day was what was going to separate us in many regards.”
Divvy tied sales compensation to customer implementation success, not just logos
“Sales. It wasn't just on new logos. It was based on what they did during their first 90 days of implementation.”
Pushing GTM accountability one stage deeper aligns behavior and accelerates growth
“We would force, we would push everybody's accountability one step deeper in the funnel, because what does that do? Well, automatically, now that, that sales rep who has responsibility for what goes on when they're at the next stage of the funnel and implementa…”
Divvy set board budget numbers with an 80% certainty threshold
“The budget number is what we would essentially present on to the board. This is the board number. This is the number that come hell or high water, we are not going to miss. And there is some conservatism baked into this number, ok? This is the number that give…”
Divvy raised annual revenue targets 12 times in a single year
“When we would focus on a four week interval, we had years where we got to raise our annual target 12 times. And that allowed us to grow much faster than if we had operated in any other way.”
T3B3 feedback frameworks must be bilateral between managers and direct reports
“Now, there's a trick to T-three, B-three. You not only do it for your direct reports, you have your direct reports do it for you. So it's bilateral, ok?”
Snow: Initiatives without an assigned name and number will never happen
“A phrase that we circulated all the time was if it doesn't have a name next to it, and it doesn't have a number, it's not going to happen. Just book it. Like, it will not happen. It is a pipe dream.”
Snow: Teams should sell a manual version of a product before building it
“When you think you've got the idea for the product or the service, you first go out and you sell it. Put together some duct tape and bailing wire version of it. Most of the time it looks like a manual process or service, and you go out and you sell it. And you…”
Operating on a monthly cadence gives startups 12 chances to beat targets
“If your business today runs on quarters, figure out how to run it in months. You give yourself 12 chances To beat and raise, you give yourself 12 chances to correct mistakes, you give yourself 12 chances to have a higher growth rate at the end of the year.”
Startups missing targets must immediately shorten operational reporting to daily cadences
“If something is getting really hard, If you're behind, you need to shorten the cycle even more. So if you're forecasting and you're saying, Hey, I don't think we're going to get there in, in whatever time period you've chosen. We're not going to get there this…”
Snow: Shared revenue targets must take priority over channel lead attribution
“The first thing you have to do is to make that matter just a little bit less. Make it more about the overall goal that you're chasing together than about what portion of this is marketing source? What portion of this is coming from outbound? What portion of th…”
Snow: Competing on economic incentives inevitably triggers a race to the bottom
“It's hard not to race to the bottom if your value is built on on either one of those like underlying economic factors.”
Snow: Divvy reduced CAC by 75% after COVID caused a 30% drop
“And for our business, we immediately, you know, revenue drops 30% overnight, and so we get, we got thrust into that efficiency mindset for just a second during COVID, and then it obviously went crazy again, but during those moments, we had an initiative that r…”
Snow: A single newsletter ad generated 900 Divvy demo requests
“And I remember that day, like it was a very pivotal moment for me. Cause we got like 900 demo requests.”
Divvy went from first institutional round to $2.5B exit in four years
“We went from our first institutional round of funding to getting acquired in, in about four years, right? In a two and a half billion dollar exit.”
Divvy consistently beat financial expectations by landing between quota and stretch targets
“This framework was incredibly powerful for us because we got to beat and raise at a very high frequency. Most of the time, we would Push ourselves and come in between that quota and that goal number, and then we got to raise our expectations.”
The other half of the tape: Sterling Snow's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes on the Official SaaStr Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →
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Appearances (2)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Go to Market Strategies That Led To Divvy's $2.5B Exit with Divvy’s Former CRO, Sterling S | Jul 5, 2023 | 37m |
| SaaStr CRO Confidential: Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond + Divvy CRO Sterling Snow | Nov 17, 2022 | 13m |