The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:39:29 · Max Freeman, Harry Stebbings
[00:39:29] S0: It's tough, but it's right. If you join a sales team that doesn't have your leader or your SVP that into the weeds holding you accountable, that's probably a bad sign. [00:39:43] S1: Talk about holding you to account. Let's say I come out of these ninety days. Okay? I'm ready. I'm unleashed in the wild. Carlos, who was the head of sales at Eleven Labs, said that they get 20 x quota. Now it was a slightly slightly popular clip. How do you feel about that? What is, like, good to you? And how would you advise founders listening? [00:40:05] S0: I sort of lean in the camp of Degman on this one, where if you're that efficient, you're probably leaving money on the table and you need more reps. Now, I think the old school thought, you know, that the snowflakes and the mongos used to run of, you know, four to one or five to one, that's too low. I think depending on our segments at ramp, it's anywhere from seven to 12. I think that's pretty healthy. [00:40:29] S1: It's a lot. I want you to pay me more if I was doing 12 to one, dude. [00:40:33] S0: I know. We might have to cut that Pay [00:40:35] S1: me pay me double, and then it'll be six to one. I know. I agree. [00:40:38] S0: We we might have to cut that part out. I don't know if our inside sales reps actually know that some of them are, like, 14 to one.
00:40:38 · Max Freeman, Harry Stebbings
[00:40:38] S0: We we might have to cut that part out. I don't know if our inside sales reps actually know that some of them are, like, 14 to one. [00:40:46] S1: They are a 100%. I think it's good. You want, like, the hunger games of competition. Okay. So for me, it's like an early stage company, though. I'm in the six to 10 range now is where I kinda need to be hitting to be in a... You are a performance sales team. [00:41:00] S0: I think that's right. [00:41:01] S1: And, like, ramp time, how long do you give me to to ramp post boot camp? Because, obviously, boot camp kinda getting my feet on the ground. How long do I get to ramp? [00:41:09] S0: Again, it depends on the segment. Our down market sellers, inside sales reps, sixty days, commercial reps, ninety days, mid market, four months, enterprise, five months, and our strategic enterprise is a six month ramping schedule. The reason why those ramping schedules exist in that way is just due to cycle length timing. How quickly [00:41:29] S1: do you know if someone's not very good?
00:41:29 · Harry Stebbings, Max Freeman
[00:41:29] S1: do you know if someone's not very good? [00:41:31] S0: I think it's actually fairly simple to get a pulse check on if someone is gonna be good or not. I think there's a direct correlation in onboarding with sellers that are annoying and sellers that are not. And when I say sellers that are annoying, they are constantly asking questions 20 fourseven. They're very thoughtful. They're talking about account strategy, they want to pick your brain about pipeline and getting you to send emails on their behalf, they want to ask you product questions, and it's never ending. There is a direct correlation with that person being incredible. The inverse is not always true, but I think the folks that are quiet, not asking any questions, or asking questions that any AI bot or Notion bot can answer, usually, that's gonna be weak signal. [00:42:18] S1: I I totally agree. I always say that, actually, the quality of a founder is very obvious. The quality of the questions founder asked at the end of an interview with a VC or [00:42:25] S0: a meeting with a VC. That's why I intentionally leave at least ten minutes in an interview for them to fire away at me. [00:42:32] S1: Because it tells you... People think... Like, my partners often say, why why are we spending so much time answering that question? Like, because it's... You don't get it. I'm actually measuring them. They go, tell me. You've got four partners. Is it an equal vote in the IC, or how do you guys think about investment decision making? That's quite a
00:42:32 · Harry Stebbings, Max Freeman
[00:42:32] S1: Because it tells you... People think... Like, my partners often say, why why are we spending so much time answering that question? Like, because it's... You don't get it. I'm actually measuring them. They go, tell me. You've got four partners. Is it an equal vote in the IC, or how do you guys think about investment decision making? That's quite a [00:42:49] S0: smart question to ask, Rafaan. I think about it the same way. I think about an interview where I intentionally need to give them at least ten to fifteen minutes to fire away as if they're trying to sell into me. And so I get some sellers who will say, hey, Max, I spoke with Scott on your enterprise team. I know he's number one right now. The reason why I think he's doing really well is he walked me through his process. Here's how I think about sales and why it's uniquely very similar to what it is that Scott's doing. That makes me a really good fit for this role. In the same way that you're breaking into an enterprise account. If I'm a seller and I get on the phone with a CFO, hey, mister CFO, I spoke with your controller. These are the pain points. These are the challenges. Here's how I think RAMP can uniquely solve some of these said challenges. It's the same thing that I'm trying to ascertain. [00:43:39] S1: Can I ask you? You've mentioned Dagnon quite a few times. Dagnon always says to me, like, I think customer success is bullshit. Like, it should be paid for professional services. And I'm like, I'm not sure if he's right. Do you think CS is bullshit and it should just be paid for?
00:43:55 · Max Freeman
[00:43:55] S0: I have like a slight spin on that. But look, I believe enormously in customer success as an outcome. And as a result, we've decided to make customer success an organizational construct in our business, and they're highly technical. Some of them are CPAs by trade. They're proficient in ERP and accounting systems. And so it's almost an extension of the customer's accounting function in ways that I don't think you can replicate with a professional services business. And the economics of our product work such that we can subsidize a lot of that work. And so, look, think there's a lot of value that that team drives for us. And while that might work for Snowflake, I don't think it's the right decision for us at Ramp. You kind of have to think of customer success as the economic engine that is going to drive NDR for your portfolio of customers over time. And so we want to be hands on keyboard, we want to own the outcome because at the time of the initial transaction, that deployment is so incredibly important because if we knock it out and we do well and we deliver value, guess what? We earn the right to over time sell more and more products. In Ramp today, there's no shortage of new products. We have to think through how can we thoughtfully cross sell, upsell, and expand, all with the goal in mind of driving financial impact and operational efficiency for our customers. But guess what? If you don't do that perfectly at the onset, it's going to be increasingly difficult to earn your way into selling more products over time.
00:45:30 · Harry Stebbings, Max Freeman
[00:45:30] S1: The hard thing about, I find, the expansion is forecasting. It's difficult to forecast expansion, number one. But I find forecasting stage is, like, freaking impossible. The volatility inherent within our ecosystem is so high. Growth rates, we can never. How do you think about forecasting today as a leader? And what's your advice to founders and leaders, sales leaders, on how to forecast in 2026? [00:45:52] S0: I'm the beneficiary of having an unbelievable counterpart in finance. His name's Asher, who has built pretty ridiculous systems and models around forecasting such that they are consistently within a 5% delta across the entire business. And so [00:46:11] S1: When you've been biggest delta, what did it not see?