Ed Lenta, former managing director of AWS Asia Pacific and now SVP and GM at Databricks, discusses launching AWS's business in Australia.
Insight
Lenta: Enterprise sales injects friction, whereas consumption models must remove it
“Because where enterprise sales is about injecting friction, like value engineering, or proof of concepts, or business cases into the sales process, when you move to a consumption model, it's actually about removing friction. It's about doing exactly the opposi…”
Insight
Lenta: Linear sales hiring models fail across diverse international markets
“It's not enough to take the advice of typically Silicon Valley-based, ah, ah, VC companies and say, well, build a productivity model around hiring salespeople, assign productivity to salespeople, and scale your organization in that way, because it turns out th…”
Insight
Lenta: Scaling revenue purely by adding sales headcount leads to mass layoffs
“Do not make this a game of linear expansion. Do not say, hey, I'm going to have a productivity metric that I assign to salespeople in my organization. I'm going to all, I'm going to just keep hiring salespeople as I want to scale revenue, and one day end up li…”
Opinion
Lenta: Consumption pricing models are best for customers, full stop
“Consumption economics is the way to go, right? Consumption models are the best thing for your customers, full stop.”
What-if
Lenta: VMware, AWS, and Databricks were destined to succeed inevitably
“All of the companies I've worked at, VMware, Amazon Web Services, and now I hope Databricks, they would have been successful with or without me. There was an inevitability. Customers were going to virtualize their data centers. People were going to consume tec…”
Insight
Lenta: Entering new markets requires minimal upfront investment to test demand
“It's necessary in every new market that you work in to go in and soften the beach. To create the conditions where not just product market fit, but where demand is actually starting to be facilitated. And to do that, you want to expire expend as little energy a…”