E17: From $1M to $1B ARR: Ron Gabrisko's Databricks Story

Today's guest is Ron Gabrysko, who is the CRO at Databricks. And Ron has had an absolutely legendary run at Databricks, uh, leading the company from less than $1 million ARR, and they are expecting to cross the $3 billion revenue run rate mark in the fourth quarter ending January 31st, 2025. And in December, uh, Databricks announced they're raising a $20 billion round to fuel additional growth. And prior to Databricks, Ron was the SVP of sales at Axway Software, where he built and led the sales team again from very early stages to an IPO. So I'm extremely excited for this conversation. Hello and welcome to the Revenue Leadership Podcast by Topline. I'm your host, Kyle Norton, CRO at owner.com, and every Wednesday we dive deep into the strategies and tactics being used to drive success by the best revenue leaders in the world. So join me as I sit down with revenue operators to discuss actionable frameworks that you can implement in your business today with no fluff, no sales pitches, and no platitudes.

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And so Ron, thanks for joining. I'm really excited for this one.

Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

So why don't you give people a little bit of your background that I missed? What do they need to know about you?

Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm Stanford MBA, Stanford Master's in Engineering, so probably a little bit different than some revenue leaders, but been at Databricks 9+ years, started less than a million Sales grew it to, I think publicly we're $2.5 billion plus and it's been amazing. It's been super fun. Built the whole company with the founders and amazing team, amazing journey. It's kind of my third successful VC-backed exit and yeah, excited to talk to everybody about it.

Yeah, not many can say that. And Databricks is in sort of the tiniest fraction of companies that are growing, you know, multi-billion-dollar ARR at 60% plus, I read. And so the first sort of warm-up question is, how has the company just overall continued to grow at such a rate when sort of the denominator tends to pull down growth rate pretty aggressively at that point? What's been the secret?

I mean, a big part is you have to reinvent yourself. As a company and as a leader at every single stage, right? So what you did from zero to $10 million, it's way different than $10 to $100, $100 to a billion, to multi-billion plus. And so how you kind of go after each one of those stages and how you transform as a company and as a team is really important to maintain that growth rate.

Yeah. And And on the product side, you guys are, I think you have 6+ different like pretty major products and you've done some acquisitions and the product seems to have also evolved in a pretty significant manner the last few years.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you look at like I said, each of those stages, you could kind of break into how do you need to reinvent yourself based on Product strategy and team. So, you know, we started with one product. We literally did managed Spark in the cloud and now we're a, you know, full end-to-end data and AI platform, right? We've developed many open source projects, many acquisitions, and, you know, it also helps for an amazing fast growth market. But, you know, you have to evolve the product. So, multi-product strategies, you have to develop your go-to-market strategy at each stage. You have to develop your team differently at each stage. So—

Yeah. And so, that is our topic of the day is, in particular, talking about how the go-to-market team has needed to evolve through each of these chapters and really unpacking how you've evolved through those chapters as well. You're almost a decade there now. That is the time span that most companies have 4, 6, 8 CROs. And so really getting an understanding of how you have kept up with the pace of the business to continue to be able to run a team of this scale. And so we're going to split it into sort of two topics. One is how have you reinvented the go-to-market organization from sub-a-million to over $2 billion, $2.5 billion. And then we'll really unpack sort of the leadership personal stuff as well.

Sounds great.

So in your opinion, what are the big chapters? How do you think about from then until now, what were the major milestones and chapters? And then we can unpack how to evolve at each one of those.

Yeah. I mean, I think the first chapter is how do you find product-market fit, right? You have a product, you're excited about it. You know, I think in some ways that's the hardest chapter actually. How do you go from like 0 to 10 million, 20 million, you know, kind of that range to find those early adoptive customers? So that's definitely the first phase. And then, you know, after you find product-market fit, how do you expand, get to kind of the $100 million mark, which is another, you know, I would say milestone that kind of separates a lot of the companies that'll be long-term successful. And then, you know, I'd say third chapter is billion dollars and fourth chapter is kind of multi-billion dollars. So I would break it into kind of those four different chapters.

And so in particular, the going from product market and go-to-market fit. So you've gotten to 10 or 20, clearly there's a revenue engine working there. What, what, what are the biggest differences between that stage and cracking to $100 million, for example? What are the things that companies need to nail there?

Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, your oldest customers are really adopters. So a lot of like super tech forward, because I'm going to just talk about like tech companies, but you know, a lot of them are super— or now you have to branch into, you know, perhaps enterprise segments. Some companies are enterprise. Uh, I think that's an advantage. A lot of companies will start as early adopters. Now they're trying to get more mainstream. And when you go out and sell to enterprises, they have different budget cycles. They buy in different ways. My teams have enterprise sales teams versus, call it emerging or startup sales teams. They're going to need more help, but they also have more money, right? So sales cycles are longer. They also have different requirements, right? They're going to have security requirements. So again, if you look at kind of how they buy, how the product needs to evolve, then how your go-to-market team needs to, you know, evolve. That's how you branch that 10 to, say, 100. We had a similar journey here. Maybe if we can just talk about it a little bit more. We started selling to all the Silicon Valley super tech-forward companies. They love to try new stuff. They love to build stuff, but we were doing $25,000, $30,000 deals. And working really hard to do it. One of the first things I did, you know, as we expanded that team to learn more about the product, product fit, I hired the entire enterprise team really to go meet every single enterprise that was using our open-source product and start to develop that pricing strategy really, right? So a lot of companies are open-source, freemium, a big part of how you make that journey. How do you develop your pricing strategy based on what you learned from your early adopter customers in kind of that mainstream enterprise market? So as an early revenue, you're a big part of how you develop that monetization strategy.

And so what did that look like for Databricks? So you had your first, your initial enterprise reps, how did you figure out pricing to capture enough market share while also not pricing yourself out? It's always such a tricky balance.

Yeah, totally. Even more difficult, I think, as a cloud company where you publish all your prices on the web versus old school enterprise where you kind of, you know, price based on, you know, their budget. You know, first thing is, Like, listen, go talk to as many customers. I mean, that's what we did, right? We had one product. You know, we kind of entered the market around really data science and machine learning. And, you know, we had a great user base there. So go talk to them. What are the other things we can do to expand our product portfolio with things you pay for and things that come up? Security and redundancy and expanded data engineering as a second product pretty quickly. But a lot of that information just came from talking to customers and seeing what are they willing to pay for and then trying to test those call it triggers, first users, what are your alternatives to the market and your competition and how else they could buy. As well as what are they willing to pay? And again, you're trying to maximize and match that value to price ratio early at market. So you're right, you don't want to price yourself out of the market, but you also want a model that's going to continue to expand exponentially and grow.

And how much does the competitive benchmark play into that? Because obviously you guys are in a knife fight with, you know, some big, some big players?

Yeah, sure. I mean, look at the competition. I mean, we're an engineering-run company, so, you know, our original, you know, the original thinking, I would just say, is in general of like technical founders. If we have the best product, it's the lowest price, we get the whole market. But, you know, a lot of times, you know, companies look at low price and they question quality. right? And so, you know, we actually priced a slight premium to the competition, which allowed us to then justify our value. And then that also allowed your sales team to discount if they need to, right? To get to the right person. Again, that positioning, I think, is slightly higher than competition. It's smart because, you know, it shows that you're different. Allows your sales team to justify why you're different. Once you, once you can prove it to the customer, you know, you have the best stuff, then it's, then it's a lot easier to get to the right price point. So.

That makes sense. And so as you became a more mature company, was pricing strategy primarily done internally or do you turn to external pricing consultants or do you have a value engineering team? Like how did the sophistication of pricing strategy change a lot as you graduated from from $100 million to like a billion in revenue, for example?

Totally. It's an entire kind of really strategic, you know, at the company, right? So early days, there's a lot of Ali and myself and Arsalan and some of the other founders deciding like, how should we price, package these things? We mostly did it internally. We used a couple consultants, mostly around packaging if we wanted like survey our customers to see, you know, as your product goes more and more complex, more and more features, you want to make it easier to buy. So you want to put packages based on kind of set buyers, price points. But most of it was done internally without— I mean, we have a pretty sophisticated team, you know, that works on, you know, all pricing strategies. How do we introduce new products? How do we price them? To try to maximize, you know, both revenue and adoption. So it gets really sophisticated as you get bigger, for sure.

And you guys have all the data and analytics to do probably that work in a much more thorough manner. Exactly.

We're doing all kinds of data science and AI to say if we price it this way, what's the adoption look like? We do a preview pricing, what does the adoption look like? And we have literally like PhDs doing pricing and packaging strategy because it's super important. Yeah. That's awesome.

That's really cool.

We have a lot of PhDs here for sure.

So. I bet. Well, aren't the founders 7 PhDs?

Yeah, exactly. So, uh, crazy smart. I mean, that was a big part of why I teamed with Uber Extraordinary was, uh, I mean, smart people everywhere and you get company had open sourced it and had like literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of users. We just needed to be able to monetize, provide a product to those customers. But honestly, our founders have engaged me some of the smartest people on the planet. And, you know, a big part of my confidence was like they understood where the market was going. They had a vision. Again, when you look at those three pillars, product, strategy and team, like they were amazing individuals, had an amazing product vision. And so if I could fill in some of the strategy and team things, I thought we could have something big.

Yeah. Good bet.

Smart bet. Thanks.

Yeah. And so let's talk about how the team evolved. And so as you go from, let's call it like startup to scale up, so you're exiting that $10 or $20 million range and getting into like, this thing works, we can hit the gas. How does the team, how does the organizational design change? What were some of the chapters of leadership that you had to go through? I'd love to hear more about team building.

Yeah, great question. I mean, first off, when you go on to say like $10 or $20 to $100 million, you want still gritty startup leaders, right? You need guys and gals that are going to be out in front of customers, you know, getting their hands dirty selling, right? Not a scale motion yet, but you want people that have done that before. So it's great to see like folks that have some startup experience, but also, you know, some expand experience. You're also going to have to think through, you know, where are you on emerging versus enterprise? So as you build out your go-to-market strategy, those tend to be two kind of separate types of buying patterns. And then you're also going to want to just decide, you know, what's your international expansion strategy, right? So here, you know, we built out American as I brought in some pretty experienced honk leaders. And then also built out EMEA and APJ leadership. So that's kind of how we expanded and separated enterprise from like D&B and emerging. And then eventually as we started to scale with verticals and it's even more kind of focused and segmented, but that scaling 10 to 100, you definitely want leaders that have seen that movie before, but also are startup, you know, have startup experience because they're not big company. We're going to still be building everything, right? It's not, you know, here's the playbook, go run and scale it, right? Which is a different segment. And as you get kind of bigger, so.

Okay. And then from like $100 million to— is the next chapter $100 million to $1 billion or $100 million to $500 million? Like when do you start changing the mix of individual from, you know, it's not as startup person fit, it's more like you're trying to grab Microsoft, AWS, Salesforce people? Like when does that chapter happen?

Yeah, I mean, again, it's probably 500 to a billion somewhere in there, right? It's where basically you're going to see your leader, it's either a bigger job than they've ever had before. And they're going to be upgrading or replacing leadership to be able to keep up with that trajectory. And if they can't, if they can't get the right kind of caliber of talent, then they've got a hidden ceiling, right? You have to think through, do you, you know, do you replace them? Do you layer them to, you know, help the business continue to grow? And so I would say that 100, to, you know, kind of $500 billion to a billion. And you got to break that out. Like, American Eagle is going to get there faster than Amea. Amea is going to get there faster than J&J. We kind of have to think through that and how they're expanding their own leadership team as you kind of go through that scale.

So, okay. So the, the next two layers under you, so your direct SLT and then their level of leaders, what's the mix of that between internal promotes, people that you've brought up over the years versus external hires today?

I mean, obviously we hired everybody from scratch, but as you kind of continue to expand, and a big part of the early days was all about how to hire the best of the best, inspiring scale. You're growing 100%, you know, year over year, you're doubling your team. Every team here. So you gotta, you have the best leader and bring in their own networks. That's a huge part of our early success. In general, Joe, I cut out, you know, promotions to about 50/50 because you want, like, we want DataRich to be a destination place. We want people to come here, build their career and share. I mean, you look at like a place like Microsoft, you know, people work there 20-plus years. right? So that's when you want data roots to be. So the only way you do that is to have promotion paths for those people. But also, like, most people as they grow, you know, that's kind of the cult of form system. You also have spots where you're like, this job's bigger than anybody has in the organization. I need to bring in somebody from the outside. Um, and again, you're doubling the team. And when you're growing 50% every year, you're always going to need external to do that pace, right? Exactly.

Exactly. Okay. So roughly like a 50/50 split is where you'd want to land.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. And that brings a good healthy mix of, you know, the people that got you there know how you work, know the market, and new blood too that has more energy and different ideas. And that mix culturally and team, I think, written outright is the thing that keeps you growing super, super fast.

So that makes sense. And I was creeping around on the Databricks executive site, and there's just a ton of people that have been there 7, 8, 9, 10 years. Uh, CMO is 7 years, COO 8 years, you're almost 10. Uh, still led by a co-founder. And so clearly there is an institutional knowledge that's important, and you guys have been able to grow talent at a pretty rare rate. Like, any secrets to— because just the individual in the business 3 years ago, that was a much different size of business and scope. So how do you get somebody ready to run a business that might be like 3 times bigger than the biggest thing they've ever managed before?

What—

from a leadership enablement?

Yeah, totally. And listen, we've still— we've brought a lot of— I mean, again, the same things. A lot of the you know, kind of OGs. We also have a lot of folks that add to that, right? Like, we have an amazing CFO, you know, amazing product folks, and, you know, amazing HR people. We brought a lot of leaders to, you know, that are kind of newer too. Again, that whole mix, I think, is really important. So, but, you know, as you're kind of growing really fast, for somebody who's growing up in the organization. It's not bad to bring in new people that would have more experience or different experience to help them continue to grow. Again, if you're growing at this kind of rate, it's still going to open up more and more opportunities. And so a lot of your bigger scale leaders, I did bring in from the outside to help us scale because they've seen that motion, right? Especially when you start getting into multi-billions You know, now we're recruiting from bigger companies that have seen that movie before, right? So having that mix of people that got you there and the people that have seen kind of a bigger movie and put those together, I think, is the secret sauce.

So yeah. And then those external hires help get everybody to the next level because they can teach stuff that folks don't know. And so what have you done to enable your internal leaders to keep pace with that growth? Like, what does the leadership training program look like? Are you guys sending people to external courses? Like, how do you do it?

I mean, we do— I mean, it's the number one thing you can invest in, right, is your people, right? And so we have what we call leadership training. You know, it's kind of immersive by function where, you know, we'll have the founders talk more about kind of the principles of the company, but also kind of how we— what we expect from leaders. In terms of culture, strategy, and setting vision for the team, a lot of hiring, execution, and again, the company values. So we invest a lot in leader training as well as like high potential programs, right? We'll also take people, they're even not like first-line managers, second-line managers, and, you know, put them, you know, give them special slots in this leader training because we want to invest in those people to get them to accelerate their career. And as we do that, they also help accelerate Databricks. So, you know, it makes a lot of sense. But I mean, you have to invest in your people. Like, we're a software company. It's all people, you know? So—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so for you, when you're evaluating, say you've got like a great up-and-coming director and you're thinking about them for a bigger like EVP or VP scope, what are the things that you're most dialed into making sure that they can do for you to assess their readiness for the next thing?

Yeah, we used to have a Brixter Leadership Index. Yeah, we're a lot on data and analytics. We actually pull a lot of this data from survey results or do 360 anonymous reviews every single year as part of culture surveys and things of that nature. Because again, I think people and culture are number one things in a successful company. But we'll also look at Like, you know, I call it 5 pillars. Vision, how do they set a vision for their team? What's their strategy and how they accomplish in alliance with the goals of the company? I looked at their culture and culture results and, you know, attrition, non-regretting, non-regretting. We'll look at, you know, again, like how they're doing hiring, right? Are they raising the bar, bringing in great people? Who are also, you know, well-respected. And then execution, right? I mean, we're in sales, so it's the easiest thing to measure. But we kind of use that framework for leaders across the company, and that's how we assess kind of early talent and how we're doing in terms of helping them grow as leaders.

So, okay. Vision, strategy, culture, hiring, execution. Makes sense.

There you go. 5 pillars.

I like it. Um, and then on strategy, like, how do you unpack who is good at strategy? This is always such a tricky thing because, like, judgment is a little bit like taste in some ways. Like, measuring it is difficult. How do you get to the heart of that?

I mean, to me, I, again, it's not dissimilar that how you develop to go to market strategy companies through these different skills. Like, One, you have to know which from all talk about our strategy. So how are they selling multiple products into their customer base for whatever segment they have? What's your partner distribution strategy, right? Like we spent a lot of time investing in our, you know, we have an amazing relationship with Microsoft, great relationship with AWS, Google, a lot of the SIs. So how are they doing their kind of partner Distribution strategy, you know, those are two really big pillars. How are they doing their territory account strategy? Like, you know, how focused are we on strategic accounts versus names? You know, all those kind of assessments. How do we do funding investments? Like, there's, you know, a number of things we can look at to see, you know, how have they developed that to try to maximize not just the short-term to the long-term value and success in the business.

Right.

Cool.

Nice. I want to flip and talk to reinventing yourself individually as a leader. Like I mentioned, you've been through a journey which is normally like 6 CROs just getting swapped out every couple of years at that rate of growth. How have you individually done it? Like, what's been the secret to keep up with the pace of the business and all of these different stages? Where have you gone to grow yourself?

Yeah, no, great question. I mean, first of all, you know, I used to be super, I think, super humble. You know, everything that I've accomplished, everything that Peter Briggs has grown, has been based on a team, right? Like, one of my my own cultural principles is teamwork makes the dream work, right? Selling's certainly a team sport. So that's what a big part of it, right? So I spent an incredible amount of time, not just with my sales leaders and the sales team, but with the founders early days and then with the exec team. And, you know, we're constantly thinking about how do we get better? You know, we're not always celebrating. I mean, I love data brains, like I'm a brickster for life, but like you also want to be able to look at, okay, how can we improve? What are the new market opportunities? All those kind of things, right? So at each stage, you're having to figure out, okay, what's holding us back from the next stage, right? So from 0 to 10, it's a lot of, let's get those early customers going, product market fit. You know, how you develop the pricing strategy. But as you build out the team, now we're going to, you know, start to shift into other, you know, how do we develop the playbook? What kind of investments do we make? What's holding us back? And as an individual, you know, part of it's like, how do I recruit? How do I hire? How do I fire? How do I operate the business? Like each one of those requires You know, differences there. And I think great leaders, the number one thing against everything else is you got to hire other great leaders. And so you're going to feel it if you can't get the best of the best to kind of follow you and help you build your business. And so each step, you don't have to know it all. You'll see leaders, you know, they'll hit like a ceiling and you'll need to reinvent. Again, your strategy, your vision, but a lot of your hire. Like, that's why I think, you know, hiring the best of the best and continuing to grow and bring in new people is really important as you scale the business.

So let's use pricing as an example. You're trying to figure out how to evolve the maturity of pricing, you know, to a— in a scope that you haven't done before, are you leaning on people in your network?

Is it books?

Do you have an exec coach? Like, where have you gone personally to like learn all these new things that, you know, there's no instruction manual for?

I mean, first of all, you go find the best, best people that do pricing, right? We went and hired people from like Google and stuff like that, right? So like, at some point, it goes beyond the founders, exec staff. I mean, our CEO is incredibly still involved, the product pricing and strategy. But again, you have a whole team that kind of has developed that, right? But, you know, in that call it tweener stage, you know, as we were scaling, a lot of that is like getting a room with the smartest people in the company that have access to customer data, have access to our usage data, and start to talk about, okay, how do we Go to the next level of product strategy and that pricing strategy. And again, I just want input into that from, here's what I see at customers, here's what I think they would buy, here's I think how they would buy it, here's how the competition's gonna respond. And so a lot of those things around strategy I think come into play as being the kind of voice to the market, voice to the customer, as you kind of go into those conversations. So. I don't really have books on pricing strategy, but like I said, I think there's a lot of good papers out there. I think we tend to look at what's the propensity to spend, segment your customers, understand what's the propensity to spend, focus on the customers that have the highest propensity to spend and build a pricing model that matches price to value. So find the underlying variables that turn with value, build a pricing model that matches that. So it's all going to start with user base.

Yeah. And so if like a theme I'm sort of hearing is it feels like you've figured a lot of stuff out and grown as an individual based on the caliber of people at Databricks. Like it doesn't feel like you're looking externally that much. It feels like you're really, you just have so many smart people in a room that you're doing like an iron sharpening iron type of thing and figuring out a ton of stuff from first principles. Is that sort of like a first principles?

Is like one of our biggest company principles, right? But when we do understand, like get to school, like, hey, We could use some help doing this. Like, we're talking about pricing strategy. We're like, this is getting bigger. We have a billion-dollar business, and we're tweaking little things that mean tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. There's got to be a better way to do this. We're like, let's go— there has to be people that this is all they do, and they've developed it for the hyperscalers or big companies. Go find the best of the best, bring them on. Like, the expansion of that team with that level of expertise piece where early days, always founder and, you know, the other execs. And now, you know, you're like, hey, we need somebody to, you know, fix this particular thing because again, it's one of the kind of blockers for our next stage of growth. Go hire the best of the best in the market that knows exactly how to do that thing and has done that before. So, so we keep expanding that. Kind of, you know, that team to, uh, be able to—

you're just making— you're making that room better and better. And it's all about sort of the internal collective intellect of Databricks versus, you know, I think a lot of people need, you know, I— because I interview folks and they talk about their exec coaches help them, help them level up and this and that. But I think Databricks sounds unique in the fact that you just have a different level of, a different caliber of talent internally that you don't even need to look externally nearly as much as some places.

Yeah. I think the other part, Joe, is like, I mean, we're also like doing stuff. You do as stuff. We have email all like, hey, check out what this product's doing or this competitor. Has anybody thought about this? Right? So like collective, like thought leadership or innovation is from the whole organization. It's not just the central, like, brain trust or whatever. We're trying to get as much information as possible from systems, from all our people to make, you know, the best decisions, make moments work. We personally, I have an exec coach. I love the guy. Yeah, I do. The biggest thing I like about an exec coach is, you know, nobody that works for you is going to tell you exactly how they see you. So you get really good, raw, realistic feedback on how people view you and how you can get better. I always say feedback's a gift, you know, whether it's good or bad, it's a gift. And you can use that to help yourself grow. So.

How long have you been working with an exec coach?

I mean, I've done it on and off now for a few years just to like, you know, again, early on we invested a lot because I wanted to be able to grow and be a bigger leader. And as I've gotten bigger and bigger, you know, I kind of use some of those same lessons, you know, and, you know, but we also do like ready to do some leadership things or have inspirational speakers at different events, things of that nature. And like I said, it put me in a place where, you know, you learn about yourself. It's a lot of self-reflection on, you know, what are my strengths, what are the things I need to work on, and then consciously wanting to work on those things as you grow.

So, yeah. What's been the biggest personal unlock from working with an exec coach? What was your big epiphany from the last couple of years?

Oh, wow. I don't know, probably like patience and listening. Like, you know, I'm a highly passionate, high-energy, you know, smart guy and just being patient. You know, everybody kind of communicates or does things in a different way. And so, you know, I really, you know, just tried to learn You know, listen and be patient. I think that helps you in all walks of life, but I've seen a lot of patient, a lot of revenue growth, but no, no, that's a separate topic.

So I laugh because I had a great exec coach a couple years ago, and I always tell people, like, the big thing for me was, was learning to be a little less of a bull in a china shop, and patience was like the big thing, and, and understanding where other folks might be coming from. It's, it's funny, the wiring that's in us. Like if you want to be successful in this job, impatience is sort of a prerequisite, but then at some point, that strength, which is definitely being a strength in my career, becomes a weakness and I probably adjust.

You have to have good balance, right? You have to know where to use these. I think every great leader has different superpowers. You know, I have folks that are amazingly inspiring. I have other folks that are just off the charts smart. Other people who, you know, get along with everyone. It's how you use different superpowers to try to, again, hire the best and inspire them, mentor them, coach them, motivate them to, you know, be their best selves.

So— Yeah. And one of the things that I heard from a leader in your org was One of your superpowers is inspiring a growth mindset. This guy's a couple of years into Databricks, and I was like, what were the big ahas and unlocks? And his comment was around growth mindset. Everybody has this expectation to get better. And how have you intentionally made that a part of your culture? Because I can hear it in you, and it sounds like it's such a thing in the company, but what have you done to get people to live this this growth mindset?

I mean, I think part of it's like, I mean, Dataverse is in a really special place. So like, as you become successful, it becomes easier to attract people who, you know, have great ideas, share those ideas, share success, which has been a great part of our, you know, our company and our flywheel. But we also start from first principles, right? So like, Even me, but you know, when I came in, every exec was like, hey, we're going to do it this way because this is how I've always done it. And at DataWork, like, no, wait, wait, let's understand what we need to do and why we should do it. And maybe there was a better way to do it. So a lot of innovation, even like our plan or our revenue model, all those things came from first principles, right? And so, yeah. You know, when you come in, it's not just— don't just bring your playbook you did before. We want people that have seen a movie and a great experience and a great network, but we're also going to try to innovate on each part of that business because, I mean, that's fun. I mean, that's why you do this kind of stuff. You know, nobody's growing at this rate at a multi-billion dollar company. So we get to innovate every part of the business, not just product, but our go-to-market strategy, our pricing strategy, our help strategy. You know, it's everything. So, uh, so that's amazing. And if, if you love that, love innovation, you love running super, super hard, and like, you know, this kind of culture in Databricks is a great place for those kind of entrepreneurs, people.

So, so it's really the high— it's hiring. It's just like making sure you get this archetype of person and in your culture, then that is reinforced and sounds like it's empowered and unlocked.

Yeah. The culture is like, let's debate. You know, we used to call it a culture, but we would debate these decisions. You know, if it's a two-way door, like, let's get the data, make a decision, move fast. It's a one-way door, we want to try to make the best decision possible, not analysis paralysis, but It doesn't necessarily be the reason people, well, that's how it's always been done. It's not a reason we do things at Databricks. And so being able to stand up and defend your ideas and/or why we should do it differently. Again, we're always looking at what can we improve? What can we do better? What's our blocker in the next step of growth? And so those ideas come from everywhere. right? From all the way, uh, here at Databricks.

So that's a big— how do you reinforce it? Like, how do you make sure that in the culture people are thinking from first principles, that debate, uh, and Socratic method is there? Like, are there things specifically you have put in place to ensure that it thrives and stays?

I mean, a lot of that stems from Ali and the founders. Like, they sit down, were very purposeful and thoughtful about the culture principles, and then we've evolved those over time. And we talk a lot about them too. So in our leader training, in our onboarding, we talk about the culture principles, where they came from, why they were important to you. Databricks and our culture. And so the match of the people we hire with those culture principles is one of the most important things we look at. If you're going to be a great fit at Databricks, you know, are you going to get promoted and all those things? And so Ali and Arsalan and the rest of the founders talk a lot about first principles, on sales, on events, on lots of decisions. And again, that reinforcement You know, never go into a meeting thinking, hey, it's going to be a short meeting, have the answers, and here's the data. Like, it's going to be a discussion, you know what I mean? So I think that's top round, and it's been adopted by the whole company. And, you know, if you love that kind of stuff, then you love Databricks. And if it's not a great fit, you might be awesome at someplace else. It just might not be a great fit for you at Databricks, right?

And so do you have a culture and values interview stage or like how do you operationalize that in the hiring process?

Yeah, part of how we interview, like when we fill out a scorecard, like how they do it, it's not just, hey, walk me through your experience, whatever. It's like, give me an example of, you know, how you use first principles. You know, we talk about bias for action and we talk about you know, keep the bar and hire me. So, you know, how do you hire? How do you make sure you continually get the best of the best and, you know, continue to upgrade your team? Like those are, those are important. How we interview and screen candidates and how we rank candidates. That's a good fit for DataRix for sure. So, and again, our promotions too, like in our perf promotions, we're constantly talking about How do they share with the culture principles of the company?

Nice. We've just recently weaved this in, in a, in a more systematic way where every hiring scorecard has our values assessment. We've weaved questions in that specifically try to, try to tackle those, those areas. So, uh, glad to hear that.

I think you have to if you want a cohesive— not cohesive, but if you want culture to be a competitive differentiator, you need to interview for that. But step one is sit down as a management team or as a founding team and be super thoughtful about what kind of culture you want to develop. If you get that right, then you can get the right people, and then that's going to build upon itself. You have to be really thoughtful that, you know, hats off to, you know, a lot of founders and Ali and the exec team on, you know, I think, I think they did a great job with that.

So makes sense. And cohesive is a fair word. I mean, I think you obviously want to avoid an echo chamber and just sort of a monoculture, but you need a level of cohesion to make sure that your collective energy is roughly pointing in the same direction.

Totally.

It's, it's, it is. I know we want to have a variety of opinions, but at some point, there's common things that we just all have to agree to or this thing is not going to work because they're too foundational to how we operate.

Yeah, totally.

What was the hardest transition for you to personally make as you went from 10, 100, 500? Was there a particular stage where you had to change the most or adapt yourself that's really memorable?

Oh, so I think the scaling motion, like I would say billion-dollar plus. For me, I love Databricks. You know, I feel like I helped build it and I was involved in pretty much every big strategic decision of the company. Pretty intimately involved. As we get bigger and bigger, a couple shifts happen, right? Like, you're not going to be able to be involved in all the decisions, right? The really, you know, one-way or what do we do with partnership, these kind of things, certainly. But there's lots of decisions going on that are really important that, you know, you just got to trust your teammates on. The second is scale. Like, you have to be super thoughtful on about repeatability, efficiency, whereas earlier stage, again, you're just driving top-line growth. And so as you start to get scale bigger and bigger, you have to be pretty thoughtful about repeatable processes, making sure everybody is doing, you know, how we do sales, how we do positioning, how we position the product certifications. Everything's really about scale. Repeatability. And so, you know, that's been, that's been fun. I actually think in some ways it's easier than the earlier stages, but it's different. It's a different set of things that you have to do. Again, those 4 stages, there's, you know, differences in product strategy and team that you need for each one of those 4.

So, yeah. And as you get Databricks type of velocity and critical mass, getting to just go hire literally the best people in the world for a craft. You know, very few, everybody says, oh, we want to hire the best people, but there's not enough best people to go around for all these companies. And being in your position, you can actually do that, which I think is a very unique advantage.

Yeah, for sure. The longer we keep that, the faster we'll grow. So yeah, yeah, the next data still didn't come along. So yeah, for sure.

Well, it seems like you guys have, have, uh, predicted where the market is going in a few, uh, interesting ways that the advantage will, will sustain itself for at least a couple more years.

Uh, oh, I think this will be a trillion-dollar company. I mean, I hope it's the biggest tech IPO of all time, you know what I mean? But, uh, you're definitely on track for that. The vision and the strategy of market. I mean, it helps too that data, I think, will be one of, you know, the biggest generational shift in technology in our lifetimes. But I think Databricks is the innovation leader there. But I mean, we have the right foundation, you know, and again, it's how do you continue to evolve and make sure you remove the blockage for that next stage of growth.

So yeah, you have the right to win, that's for sure.

Yeah, exactly what we expected.

So yeah, would you— off-topic question, but, uh, would you say that execution is the only real moat? Like, some people talk about, you know, network effects and, you know, product, product is a moat, but over time, especially the way that these markets are changing so quickly, Is ultimately like the way that Databricks becomes a trillion-dollar company as opposed to a couple hundred million-dollar company, is it just execution as the durable long-term advantage?

Well, yes, I would say yes, but I mean, it's product execution, it's GTM execution, right? I think any of these advantages, how you mentioned like a product advantage or network effect, You know, unless you have like monopoly, uh, over a particular market, uh, people are going to catch up. Like, yeah, I mean, any— I mean, look in history, right? It's like, uh, you know, every single— even operating system, new people come in. Like, you know, Clouds, Street Players, Clouds. Like, that used to be before NASA. Hardware folks, IBM, HP, right? Like every single wave of technology has replaced the previous one pretty much. I mean, even companies like Microsoft have to reinvent themselves to get to that next major growth, right? And so I think companies in our stage are even more vulnerable. So, you know, our ability to execute and continue to evolve and reinvent ourselves will make it so we continue to grow. Otherwise, people hit a ceiling, or companies hit a ceiling because they stayed with the same thing for too long, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We'll do a quick lightning round and then we got to wrap. What do you think separates a good CRO versus a great, like a truly exceptional one?

Hiring culture, hiring culture. How do you hire the best, motivate them, inspire them? And the people you get hired today might not be the best people you can hire tomorrow. We're continually at that and try to build some of those.

So I should have expected that answer. I'm getting that theme, which I love. What did you learn much later in your leadership career that you wish you had known in the early stages of of your executive career?

Oh, that's an excellent one, actually. I think a lot of this stuff, you know, this is as I've gotten bigger and bigger, or you can't personally make sure every— you can't know everybody, you can't make sure everyone's successful. Whereas when you're smaller, you can kind of reach down and help them win a deal or pick them up. And so those things, then how you hire your leaders and how you train them to do those things, to develop the same type of culture and positive coaching, that becomes incredibly important. And I've really tried to lean in a lot on the leader, so the leader, leader screen, all those kind of things to make sure as you continue to scale, like, that translates all the way down to A, and they feel connected to me and to the organization. So.

Cool. Last question. What's the best thing you've read in the last 12 months?

Oh, business book or personal?

Whatever.

Oh, all right. I mean, I've read, uh, uh, Kobe Bryant's book. I loved it. Um, marketing. Um, I thought I read Think Bigger. Think Bigger's a great marketing book. I think it's my number one, uh, marketing book.

It's been on my list forever. I gotta, I gotta read it.

Yeah, it's really good. I read a lot of like sports biographies. Like I love Alter Payton's biography is probably one of my favorites. If you haven't read it, definitely pick it up. He's an amazing human, not just a football player. But I love sport analogies for life, certainly for sales, for life around teamwork and humility and failure, all those kind of things. So, you know, I take a lot of that to how we even culture here. And so, I love those books around people that have done just absolutely exceptional things.

So, cool. Well, we're over time, so we'll wrap here. But Ron, this was awesome. I knew it was going to be good. And there was like 6 different topics that I could have spent an hour with you on that came up today. So, I really appreciate you taking the time and doing this.

Yeah, it was fun. Thanks, Kyle Norton. I really appreciate it. And yeah, awesome job. So I really enjoyed it and it was fun. I could talk to you for another hour or so. Yeah. Well, next time we'll do a part 2.

Thank you for listening to the Revenue Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe and you can find a link in the show Notes, and be sure to leave a 5-star review, share it with your network, and please join me next Wednesday for another great conversation.