Sam Blond
@samdblond
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Fmr partner @foundersfund . Fmr CRO @brexhq
Miami, FL
Joined February 2015
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Pinned Tweet
1/ How to succeed with founder led sales:
Last week,
@garrytan
was nice enough to invite me to his home to speak with the current YC batch. The most common topic was founders figuring out how to close the first set of customers in time for demo day.
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I’m not apologizing for my correct assertion that parroting the propaganda of a literal terrorist organization dedicated, in its own charter, to the eradication of Jews is antisemitic. But I would like to parse these claims as thoughtfully as I can, because the situation is
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This is antisemitism (citing Hamas propaganda statistics) disguised as caring for murdered children
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1/ The best outbound campaign we ever ran at Brex (75% demo rate, 75% demo to close):
Brex launched in 2018 as the first corporate card for startups. After launch, when we were still ~30 employees and near 0 rev, we ran the most successful outbound campaign I've ever seen.
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Some personal news - last week was my last week at Founders Fund. Full time investing / being a VC isn’t the right fit for me and I’ve decided to go back to operating. More on what’s next for me later. For now just immense gratitude to FF and all the incredible people and
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1/ The days of work-life balance at startups are over. Here is how to get people working hard again:
This post might be controversial. It shouldn’t be. Startups are hard. The most successful tech companies were built by people working long hours as a competitive advantage.
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Brex ran the most successful billboard campaign of any tech startup in history. The impact was massive for inbound demand gen, near 100% brand awareness in our target market, improved outbound conversion, and more.
Here is what we did, pics included, and how you can do it too:
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1/ The sales tactic that allowed Zenefits to grow faster than any tech company in history (and how you can use it too):
I met Parker for the first time at a coffee shop in the Mission in November, 2013.
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1/ How to accelerate revenue growth at your early stage startup:
I’ve worked with countless early stage startups through consulting (n = 15), angel investing (n = 25), and now as a VC (n = >100). It’s almost universal the primary bottleneck to revenue growth is demand gen.
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How to set company revenue targets, quotas, and compensation for sales people:
It’s Monday at 9a on Nov 1, 2021. Brex’s sales team logs in to join the monthly recap meeting. Much of the team was working over the weekend (the prior month ended on a Sunday) to push us over our
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A simple tip for selling against competitors:
During discovery always ask if they are looking at any other solutions. If yes, who? Before the demo say something like:
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1/ How Brex went from an unknown company to a household name among startups (our target market) in a matter of weeks:
I joined Brex in May, 2018. We didn’t have a website ( read “coming soon”) and there was no publicly available information on the business
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I get a message about once / day saying the outbound champagne campaign we ran at Brex, or a variation I suggest to the founder or sales leader, is the best performing demand gen campaign the company has ever tried. A couple examples attached.
Comment below with a 1 sentence
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1/ Sponsoring events can have a huge impact on customer acquisition and brand. Most companies do it wrong, though. Here’s how to have the biggest impact sponsoring an event without breaking the bank:
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1/ Want the best startup VP Sales candidates in the world? Here’s how to get the list of them.
First, some context. Zenefits was the hottest/fastest growing startup from 2013-2016. We were valued at 4.5B in 2015 (that was a lot back then) and we grew the sales org to >500 people
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1/ More tech layoffs are coming. If you’re in tech sales working <40 hours / week on high roi activity, expect your company to start laying off salespeople. Below are some things you can do to make sure you’re not included.
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When you’re a new executive at a startup, send a weekly update email to the CEO for the first ~12 weeks. Dramatically increases your probability of success for 15 minutes of effort each week.
Credit
@jasonlk
for teaching me this.
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80% of Brex's revenue was sourced from sales outbound. Ashley Kelly and I were responsible for the strategy that led to that outcome. On this episode of the
@saastr
CRO Confidential podcast we share as much as we can pack in 45 minutes on how to win with outbound sales and
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Founders and execs - how to positively impact culture in 30 seconds:
Once a week send an email to someone on your team thanking them for their hard work. Give an example of something you’ve observed them doing and let them know it doesn’t go unnoticed. I tried to do this every
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1/ Two of the biggest GTM mistakes I see startups make that lead to missing revenue targets, declining AE productivity, and, ultimately, layoffs:
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1/ How to do outbound at your startup:
I talk to startups every day about using outbound to generate new opportunities. Almost 100% of them are doing it wrong.
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1/ How we 3x’d SDR productivity with 1 change at Brex:
80% of Brex’s revenue was sourced through sales outbound. The 2 teams doing outbound were SDR and AE.
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I’ve never met with a company that spends too much time with their customers.
Go visit your customers in person.
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10 common mistakes startups make that result in slower growth:
1. Focusing on middle of the funnel when the bottleneck is top of the funnel. Look at reps calendars. Are they busy with multiple customer calls every day? If not, you have a demand (and/or p/m fit) bottleneck.
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Average performers can be more dangerous for a business than poor performers. This is especially true in leadership positions.
Poor performers are fired quickly. Average performers can skate by for years compounding the opportunity cost of not having someone great in the role.
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6/ When was the last time you received a bottle of decent Champagne and a handwritten note out of the blue? It works. Come up with the equivalent that is on brand for your company and try it out.
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1/ How to scale revenue faster at your startup (and how most startups get this wrong):
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Let's gooo!!
I've been fortunate to watch
@typesfast
build one of the most iconic tech startups of the last decade,
@flexport
. He's an A+ founder, friend, and now colleague.
Ecstatic to welcome Ryan to
@foundersfund
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@garrytan
@amasad
I don’t know PG personally, only reputationally, but have always thought very highly of him. I did not come away from reading this tweet feeling sympathy for the awful murder of innocent children. I came away believing the intent of the tweet was to highlight the “at least” 100x
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How to tell if you’ve hired the right sales leader:
4x in the last week I’ve had a conversation with a founder wondering if they made the right VPS hire after 3-6 months. The fact we were having this conversation is bit of a red flag, but here is what I told them to look for:
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The most common conversation I'm having right now with founders and sales leaders is: how can we grow revenue faster in the second half of 2023?
This is my step by step approach to answering that question:
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Your investors should be both an sdr and an exec recruiter post p/m fit. There’s no bigger impact an investor can have at this stage of the business than adding revenue (sourcing opportunities) and helping build an incredible exec team.
I was fortunate to have
@jasonlk
introduce
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I meet with sales reps and sales leaders every day. They often ask me for advice on how to become CRO at the next
@brexHQ
. Here’s what I tell them:
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1/ The 3 most important sales performance metrics, when and how to track them, and what good looks like:
Revenue is the most important metric in the sales org. For high gross margin software businesses, this should be top line revenue (ARR).
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New pod!!
Almost every startup I speak with underinvests in revenue operations. They could be growing faster and more efficiently. I screwed this up my first time as a VP as well. I now attribute much of the success of the sales orgs I’ve worked with to strong rev ops.
I
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People underestimate the impact incentives have on outcomes.
Several of the most impactful changes I’ve made are related to getting incentives right. This is true for both employees (ie targets) and customers (ie referrals, posting on social).
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1/ How to recruit the best sales leaders in the world:
I recently did a post on how to source the best VP of Sales candidates in the world. Several folks asked that I follow up with how to recruit them. This is that post.
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1/ A common conversation I’m having with founders and sales leaders right now: how do I know the right number of salespeople to have on my team?
Here’s an easy way to do it:
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You’re no longer bashing the competition, you’re doing something the buyer asked you to do.
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1/ A short guide to growing revenue in your customer base (I’ll answer q’s in the comments):
Net dollar retention is one of the most important metrics in determining the value of a tech business. Yet 100% of startups I meet with underinvest in their customer base.
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“you mentioned you were also looking at (competitor). During the product demo I can either focus exclusively on our product, or I can highlight differences between us and (competitor). Which do you prefer?” 99 times out of 100 they will say the latter.
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5 things you can start doing today to generate more revenue at your startup:
1. Set up a formal referral program. You should know which customers love you - incentivize them to refer their network.
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New Pod!!
@jvassil
is CRO at Toast, a company where he's led sales from $20M ARR to >$1B. So many amazing insights in this episode, including:
- Customer segmentation and territory design
- Leveraging customer referrals and channel partnerships to generate new customers
- The
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An easy way to leverage your happiest customers to generate new ones:
When a customer goes out of their way to help your business - positive post on social media, refers a potential customer - reward their behavior by sending them something nice. Even if it’s just a handwritten
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4/ 1. Qualify the buyers level of interest. At the end of the first call/demo, after you’ve described the problem you’re solving, and shown your solution to the problem, ask them something like: “how high of a priority is this for you?”
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This is your green light to sell hard against your competition. When you’re about to point out a weakness of your competitor, preface it with: “you asked that I highlight some differences between us and (competitor), and this is a big one.”
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How to ask your investors for customer intros:
Most founders send an investor update at the end of each month with a sentence that reads something like: we’d love potential customer introductions to (buyer at target market).
Then nothing happens. No introductions are made.🧵
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5/ 300 x .75 = 225 demos. 225 x .75 = 169 new customers. The total spend was ~$19k (15k for Champagne, 2k for handwritten notes, 2k for task rabbit delivery).
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1/ How to increase conversion rates and generate more revenue for your business:
I joined countless sales demos while I was at Zenefits. The most memorable one was with a new hire AE giving one of his first demos.
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FF portfolio company made a clone of me. I’ve been playing with it - crazy how accurate it is with sales / GTM responses. Try it out at
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5/ Or: “how impactful would this be for you?” Focus your efforts on those that answer high priority. You’re likely wasting time on the others. If you’re consistently hearing this is a low priority or low impact, it’s signal you haven’t found p/m fit and should adapt your offering
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2/ We ran a report in Pitchbook to determine seed through Series B startups in the Bay Area that raised a round in the last 6 months. We had a list of ~300 companies. We purchased 300 bottles of Veuve Clicquot at ~$50/bottle.
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Interesting observation posting the same content on Twitter and LinkedIn:
Twitter = engagement from founders and VC’s
LinkedIn = engagement from non-founder employees
Applications for both 1) what type of content to post where and 2) which platform to use for customer
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You can tell a lot about a candidate by their follow up during the interview process
When a sales candidate sends a follow-up email 2-3 days later,
I just assume that’s about as quickly as they follow up with most leads
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When you’re ready to hire your first head of sales, do not hire a player coach. You will end up with someone who is mediocre at one or both.
If you want a leader, hire a leader. If you want a rep, hire a rep.
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March / Q1 investor updates are the best I’ve seen in 2 years. Seems the tech party is back on
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6/ Caveat: you need to create a positive environment where people want to work hard. Celebrate the wins, pay people well, etc. This is table stakes. That’s not enough, though. People still like “working” from the beach.
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4/ Shortly after delivery, our CEO followed up with an email asking if they'd be open to a demo. 75% said yes (or had the right person in their company take the demo) and 75% of the demos converted to customers.
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7/ Avoid things like “I’ll follow up with some information and we can go from there.” Or “let’s talk in a week or two after you’ve had time to discuss this internally.” In my experience those deals often go nowhere. If you’re not closing the deal, at least close for the next step
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9/ Create a document that outlines the happy path for how a customer should onboard and buy. Share it with the buyer. Customize it for their specific buying process. Frame it as “this is how we’ve seen others successfully deploy (company name).”
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12/ 4. Create fomo. “We’re accepting 10 companies in this pilot program. 6 of the 10 spots are filled. We expect the other 4 to fill quickly. You’d be perfect for the program based on our conversations. Please let us know your level of interest so we’re able to plan accordingly.”
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3/ There is no one in the world better than you at selling the vision of your product and company. Sales is hard. Keep going. Hopefully the below is helpful.
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9/ Positively reinforce hard work. Recognize people who are setting the bar here. Make effort one of the criteria for people receiving promotions (obviously not the only or primary criteria). IC's emulate their leaders. Leaders need to work hard.
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3/ We delivered the bottles along with a handwritten note from our CEO (this can be automated) to the founders of the companies that raised. The note read something like "Congrats on your recent fundraise! We know how hard it is to build a startup and we're rooting for you."
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10/ For example: Step 1: product demo and qualification. Step 2: demo with all stakeholders. Step 3: 2 week free trial (outline what happens during the trial). Step 4: if we deliver on our promise during the trial, move forward with pilot program at 50% discount to list price.
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One of the most common conversations I have with founders and GTM leaders at tech startups is around staffing the sales and marketing team(s). What hires should we make and when? What does a great demand gen hire look like? How do we measure their success? What are the highest
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2/ If there were more opportunities for us to work, we would be growing revenue faster. The math is simple: if you double opportunities and everything else remains constant, you've doubled sales. And it's far easier to double opportunities than it is to double conversion rates.
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15/ Never simply pay for a sponsorship and show up to your booth. It’s what most companies do, and the reason events “don’t work for them.” Events work. You just have to do them correctly.
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1/ New Pod!!
Product led growth vs sales led - how to find the right balance?
Strategy for launching new products.
These topics and more with
@Atlassian
CRO, Cameron Deatsch, on this episode of the
@saastr
CRO Confidential Podcast (links below)
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7/ 1. Working hard should be ingrained in your culture. This starts with the interview process. Set the expectation you’re working on building one of the biggest tech companies ever and if we’re going to be successful, it’s going to require a lot of hard work.
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2/ Yet somehow sub 40 hour work weeks, I would argue the bare minimum a startup employee should expect to work, have become the norm under the guise of work-life balance.
How did we get here?
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.
@HarryStebbings
is the Mahomes of tech podcasts. I had a blast with him on
@twentyminutevc
. We covered a ton of ground on scaling a revenue org, including:
- Who, when, and how to hire salespeople
- How to approach outbound, paid, events, and other demand gen channels
-
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6/ 2. Attitude. Be a positive influence on everyone around you. Share your wins with the team. Ask your manager what you can take off their plate and/or how you can help improve morale on the team. Don’t complain - instead offer solutions to challenges you’ve observed.
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1/ New Pod!! (links below)
Every startup I speak with underinvests in their customer base. Most GTM resources are allocated to new customer acquisition over churn prevention and revenue expansion in the base. This was certainly true at Brex as well. Until we fixed it.
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New pod!!
Any founders or sales leaders looking to bring on early customers - this is a must listen.
@ExploreOmni
was founded 12 months ago and has scaled to 50 companies in trials, 10 paying customers, and 20 employees (3 in GTM) while building one of the most technically
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2/ Depending on the specific situation, my advice was flavors of the concepts I describe below.
First, if you’re an early stage founder doing your best to close your first customers, find comfort this is the way almost every successful tech company starts acquiring customers.
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6/ 2. Always close for the next step. Whenever you get done with a meeting, do your best to have your next meeting on the calendar and specific action items that will happen between now and that next meeting.
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At Brex we tracked our win rate when we went on-site vs not. When a sales rep went on-site it increased the likelihood of closing the deal by ~3x.
@jasonlk
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@jasonlk
@garrytan
@pt
One of the strongest endorsements I’ve seen for
@ycombinator
is
@parkerconrad
going back for a 2nd time with
@Rippling
even as a 3rd time founder
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New Pod!!
Colin Jones is CRO at the fastest growing SaaS company of all time (0 - $100M ARR in 18 months) -
@wiz_io
. Hear how Colin was introduced to the company, how he recruited his first sales hires, how they generated demand for the product, what it was like changing their
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There are more exceptional sales leaders looking for new roles right now than I’ve ever seen. Great market to be hiring a VPS+
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15/ 4) Your first campaign should have messaging that is short (<8 words) and explains your product offering. Don't get creative until you have confidence the audience knows who you are and what you do.
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16/ Many of the YC founders I was talking to were selling to other tech companies in SF. Default to meeting those people in their office or a coffee shop if you can.
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13/ 5. Optimize for active paying customers, not price perfection. For your first set of customers it’s more important that you are charging than what you’re charging. Come up with what you believe is a reasonable long term price for your solution.
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15/ 6. When possible, meet your prospective customers in person. Even if it’s not scalable. You’ll greatly increase the likelihood the deal closes by building a relationship with the buyer.
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7/ 3. Take on additional work. Proactively fix things that are broken. Have an impact on the business and your team outside of generating revenue. Be the person your manager comes to when they need something done.
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13/ This sounds like micromanagement, and maybe it is, but especially if you have employees working from home and underperforming, it should be the new norm. END.
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8/ This means we work long hours. That’s not for everyone, and if it’s not for you that’s totally fine, but we want to set this expectation upfront.
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Just had my 3rd conversation this week with a founder looking for advice on setting company revenue targets. I did a
@saastr
talk on this topic ~18 months ago. Sharing here in hopes that it's helpful for others in the same position:
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3/ Pre-Covid everyone was in the office. It was obvious when people were coming in, leaving, hustling, etc. Then everyone went remote. The crazy macro of 2020-2022 created an environment where employees, especially those in sales, could work half as hard and make twice as much $
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So many resources available for going from zero to one. Very little available for scaling go-to-market.
We constantly hear about the challenge of finding product market fit and that is right.
But we don’t spend enough time talking about the challenge of moving away from founder led sales.
Wow, it is fricking hard.
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