How to Build a Team of A-Players and Scale 0-$35M

Welcome to the Switchgear Show. This is your host, Priyanka, and I'm joined by Ankush Chopra today. Now, Ankush has been a leader who has disrupted legacy tech companies. He has scaled companies from $0 to $30 million ARR. He has built teams from 0 to 100 into the APAC region for leading SaaS companies. I am so excited to have Ankush on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Pleasure, pleasure. Thanks for having me here today. Looking forward to this chat, see if I can add some value as well for everyone. So keen on that, and I'm going to try to live up to the hype that you just talked about as well. So thank you for that introduction.

So in your journey, you've worked with some amazing companies— Qlik, AppDynamics, uh, Zscaler, uh, now at ClickUp. How did you get here? What are some of the scars and battle wounds that you've picked up along the way?

Yeah, look, Working for some of these hypergrowth companies, let's be honest, takes a lot of hard work, right? So that's the first thing I want to say, but they are very rewarding. So if you can do the right things, you can really drive some great outcomes. And that's what I feel like I've done over the last 20 years. But I will say this, the key thing out of all of this, and we'll get into some of the nuts and bolts as we go through, is I've always tried to put the people first and have that people-first approach, really care about them. understand what's important to them, help them achieve that professionally and personally, support them, remove roadblocks, take on feedback, and try to implement it. Because if you can do that, you can then help drive outcomes. I think we get fixated on all these outcomes we need to grow, but we don't concentrate on the inputs all the time to help achieve that outcome. So that's been my overall mantra over the last 20 years.

Oh, that's great. And that's— it's refreshing for you to spotlight that because at the end of the day, I see it again and again when people are leaders are very bent on outcomes and driving a program. Sometimes people get left behind in the process.

That's very true. Yeah.

And so, very keen. So, tell me, I guess, right up. You have built very successful teams. And I've noticed that you've got a methodology for recruiting A-players. What are your thoughts? How do you end up hiring good people?

Yeah. There's this mantra of A-players. Everyone wants to hire A-players, right? That's the goal. And in reality, there's only what, 5 to 10% of the population that are A-players. So if everyone's trying to do it, how do you actually go do it really well? And then we'll cover off some other points as well. But let's start with the A-players. That's the key part. Recruiting is the key part to all of this, right? As you're scaling and making the right decisions. What I find really interesting is I think for hiring managers and leaders, hiring is really the number one skill. Yet you go through university courses, you do MBAs, and no one really teaches you this. And in all honesty, in my first 5, 6 years trying to recruit people, I wasn't that good because I was looking for things such as personality or the way they communicate or the feel that I had and not really thinking about more of a scientific methodology to evaluate people. So it was a little bit more consistent. And it was really only when I got into AppDynamics that I started to apply a framework that I was taught, which was built on ICE. So, what ICE stands for is intelligence, coachability, character, and experience. And using this in all of the different conversations from junior reps, BDRs, all the way up to senior leaders to create some consistency. So, I guess the key question is, what does ICE stand for, right? And how do you go and test it? So, the intelligence piece for me if I was to define it, is around problem-solving ability, thinking on your feet. Obviously, the skill set is important. Curiosity is important as well. And looking at those different factors as you're having those conversations. Coachability. How do you take on feedback? And more importantly, how did you implement it? A lot of people will hear you, right? But are they actually going to go do something about it? Character is very important. If you look at the industries or companies I've worked for, fast-growing, right? So grit, determination, the will, and putting in the effort to ensure success as well is obviously very critical. And then experience. I think everyone knows experience, like, do they have the minimum requirements to meet the job?

Yeah.

So that's the way and the framework I've used. So I wanna ask you, Pri, out of all of those 4, um, components of ICE, what do you think is the most important in the organizations that I've worked for and I'm going to work for in this hypergrowth? What do you think is the most critical? They're all important. What do you think is the most critical?

I love it. You're my first guest who has turned the question on me. I love it. Thank you. I would put coachability up there. I think that at the end of the day, because one of the things is if somebody does not have a learner's mindset, if you don't have a growth mindset, you're dead career-wise. You're going to get stuck no matter where you go. What do you think?

Look, there's no right or wrong. But for me personally, it's that character piece. Because what I've come to over the last few years, I used to think coachability as well. You can be highly intelligent, you can take on coaching and feedback, but if you don't have that tenacity, grit, and will, and that perseverance, it doesn't matter about those 2. That increases the risk of failure without that character piece really high. So I've learned that's now become the most important piece. So they're all great. So how do you actually go and test? I love it. You actually— how do you go and test for it, right? So intelligence, some of the things that I've used is If I'm looking at an IC, we'll run a simulation. So, it could be creating a PG plan, running a conversation with a customer on a discovery call, and then testing those skills. Around coachability, we're giving feedback through the interview process. Do candidates go and implement that? Do they want to get coaching before they do one of these sessions as well? So, that's a measure and a test. Around the character piece—

And that would be— sorry. And that would be available with one of your managers? How are you— yeah.

Yeah, I actually expect that someone would come to speak to me because if someone's really willing to find a job and then try to work in that company, I'd want as much feedback as possible to ensure success. No different to going to a customer meeting. And then on the character piece, that's the tough one. How do you actually go test character in an interview process? What I'm looking for are stories around challenge that individuals have faced that could be in work or personally as well. Maybe it's something as simple as moving countries and setting up a new life, right? That's quite a tricky thing to do. So that could be a test of character. The other part is how much effort do they put in into the process? Are they communicating with me? Are they communicating with other people? And how much effort are they putting into those presentations and simulations as you go through the process? And the last bit is experience. To me, that's the least important. You need to at least meet the minimum requirements of the job. But if you've got a young up-and-comer that's highly intelligent, coachable, and has great character, More than likely that person will be successful. So that's the framework that I've adopted. So you've got this framework, that's great. You've gotta go find these A-players now. So how do you go find A-players in this market? Yes, you can use internal recruiters, external recruiters. I found the network that I've used has led to the most success. So internal colleagues, I think that's a simple one. I think ones that people forget, speak to your customers. Who are some of the best account managers that your customers have worked with?

Yeah.

Speak to your partners.

Excellent point.

Who are some of the best partners that, sorry, account managers that your partners have worked with as well? So don't just limit yourself to internal and external recruiters. You've got this whole network available to you that you can also speak to.

That's really good. And I'm so glad you brought that up around going beyond your internal team to actually talking to customers and to partners because they are seeing and being engaged by people.

Of course.

They'll tell you which reps they see as advisors and which reps they see as pure sellers. Setting up meetings but not delivering value. And I think that is critical because even as an executive recruiter who's done this for 15 years now, sure, you can talk to someone, but what is the feedback around them? What do other people say about them who've seen them in the field of play is often more important than what they say about themselves as well.

Yeah. And you're getting ahead to one of my future points, which is around Reference checks as well. You've got to do reference checks. I think they need to come also from the hiring manager. And a blind reference, I know people get a bit iffy on it, but speaking to people in your network to learn a little bit more, including customers and partners, is critical, right? The data shows that hiring someone is a million-dollar decision. So are you going to bet that on just a couple of conversations, right? That's a big decision. You wouldn't do that with your customer.

Right. Okay.

You've gone through, you've got some of these A-players. I'm not gonna talk about the whole process today. I think one of the most critical elements of the recruitment process is the screening, right? That is the first point.

Absolutely.

Now, if you're not screening very well, you're gonna spend a lot of time speaking to a lot of candidates that don't meet your requirements, and you can save a lot of time with excellent screening. And I'll give you an example. We had a hiring manager once, You're a great person. And I came to them and said, look, we've had these roles open for a while. What's the challenge? And the reply was, I'm speaking to a lot of people. We're very busy, but we just can't get them through the following stages because they're just not suiting what we're looking for. So, I asked a simple question, have you set your criteria? Response, okay. Has that criteria been communicated to your internal and external recruiters? Oh no, not really. So, automatically there's a mismatch, right? So, you've got an expectation, your internal recruiter, an external recruiter has an expectation and there's no alignment. So, how possibly can you really screen very well if you don't have any consistency in that process? So, we sat down, set the criteria, communicated that to the internal and external recruiters, and then really looked at the right candidates that fit the profile. And this was based on E, at least so we're speaking to people that we think are going to suit the organization. That became really critical.

Yes.

And then, Within a couple of weeks, you know, 2 additional people were hired. So, what I'm coming to here is it's really important as a hiring manager to set that criteria and set negotiables and non-negotiables. Personally, for me, a non-negotiable would be continuous short tenure over a period of time. Could be less than 1 year.

Yes.

And that depends on role. Leaders might have a couple more, which is okay. But if you're hiring for more junior roles, consistent short tenures is definitely a non-negotiable for me. And then achievements on a resume as well. How have they been performing year on year? People are gonna miss, right? There's gonna be tough times, especially in these current conditions, but missing every year is not really setting yourself up to be an A player. Some negotials might be, I like ICs that have come from a BDR background cuz they've got good, strong pipeline philosophies.

Yes.

But that can be a non— it can be negotiable, right? Or a medic background cuz I'm based on value-based selling. But again, that can also be taught. So I have criteria that are must-haves. And criteria that we can negotiate on. But explaining that to who you're working with is critical to save time on interviews and then really get that screening part right.

Yeah. And that's so good that you have addressed that both with the manager, the intake process, and your internal, external stakeholders, because this is a multi-threaded process. There are people involved even as somebody who's been an agency recruiter for a long time, I can tell you that the managers that invest time with us upfront are going to get the best results as against the quick call saying, hey, I'm looking for an AE who sold into the banks. Who do you have?

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, let's talk a little more. Because really, at the start of the process, one of the things that I advise as a best practice with some of the of the top 30 cloud scalers over the last 5 to 7 years, some of them that I've worked with closely, we've implemented a concept around a scorecard.

Hmm.

And the scorecard just gets exactly what you've said on 5 to 7 criteria on the intake form, meaning basically, whether it's internal recruitment, external recruitment, or a first conversation, you'd really want to grade this person on the E, So that you can qualify out or in and then spend time interviewing on the I, C, and C, like you just said, right? And because— yeah, go ahead.

And I was going to say, that's where we spent most of the time when we first had our conversations, really bedding down exactly what we're looking for, because we don't want to waste your time as well.

Yes, absolutely. And so that when you do that, you then avoid the, the other Biases that come in and you end up—

Correct.

Someone who's got a great personality. How often do people act, we just like this person, but you're ignoring all these red flags, which are staring at you. So, the other thing I wanted to quickly say was another really useful framework around, specifically for salespeople, is the 3 Rs, which is results. Number 1, what is the results that the rep says that they have done? Number 2, What are the results that the organization, they can validate, club and other recognition? And number 3 is results. What do others say that this person has done? Right? When you have those 3 points, that at least takes that component. So, excellent. This is really good.

I'm just going to leave you with one final thought on recruitment before we move on. If I'm interviewing for IC roles, the key skill for me is test pipeline generation. I can help people sell. I can't help or make anyone do pipeline generation, right? I can give advice, but that's solely got to come down to the rep. And if you speak to the best reps, that's what they do day in, day out, pipeline generate. Like, it's great to work for the big banks and have the experience, but are they doing the hard work to create pipeline? If I'm looking for a leader, I'm looking for recruitment skills. Can this individual go and recruit? Because if you can recruit really well, Half your problems are solved.

Yes, absolutely. Gold. Thank you so much. That's really good. All right, so let's now move. You've got, you've secured a good hire, but let's move on to the next phase from an onboarding point of view. What are some of the best practices that you've put into place?

Yeah, so we've recruited these A-players. We now need to onboard them, right? I think one of the critical metrics for any organization is reducing ramp time of new starters. A, it helps make the employees successful, it helps business, and it helps growth. I find it very surprising still in this modern day that people turn up on the first day to the office, no laptop, no system access, have no idea where to go. And that doesn't really set up a great employee experience, right? I think these are just simple things that need to be done. They sound basic, but they're still not done very well. So how do you give an employee great experience? On the first day that they come into the office. So number one, like I said, get all the laptops, get the system access all sorted. That's number one. And then meet them in the office if you can. People are returning back to the office. Let's see if you can do that. If it is remote, then have that meeting ready to go on the first day. I would suggest just doing a coffee meeting online if you can for the first 20 minutes and then really set the stage. I've just joined ClickUp on the first day. I'm nervous as well, right? I'm meeting people for the first time. I'm trying to get used to a new environment. So everyone is going through this. So how do you make people feel comfortable? Reinforce why you hired that individual, right? We hired you for a reason because you are great and you're gonna do great things here. You're joining this company because you think it's great and I think it's great. And here are the reasons why the company is great. And then the third bit is to set the expectations, right? This is how we operate here. These are some things to think of and you're getting aligned and on the first page from day one. The second part of that is I think we should be setting the schedule for new starters. Just think about this. You walk in as a new rep or leader and your hiring manager and your leader has got 3 or 4 customer meetings set up for you that day, 2 or 3 partner meetings set up for you that week, a whole bunch of internal meetings set up with stakeholders, marketing partners, et cetera, and your week is ready to go. That takes off some of the burden from you as a new starter. You get really excited and you get a whole bunch of momentum. We had a new starter in Japan a little while ago, and on his first day, I just happened to be there. That helped as well. So I got to meet him, which was nice. But he had 2 customer meetings on the first day, partner meeting the next day, a couple more customer meetings, a team event on the first day. So we set up that week really well and he was buzzing, right? He was excited. He's found a great company. And then on the back of that, not coincidentally, He went and generated 10 new customer meetings in the first month. So he's already off and running, right, with pipeline. And that's the key part as you're starting. So I'd say that's the best practice. Another best practice is spend an hour each day with your new starter. Now, some people might think, is that micromanaging? That's a lot of time. But think about it. If you're hiring A-players, they want to speak to you. They want feedback. They want to be coached. They want to learn as quickly as possible and soak it all in. So I don't think that's overdoing it as long as you set it up correctly. If you jump on the call and say, hey, how are you? And have you finished all these tasks? It's not really adding value, right? But if you can say, what questions do you need? I have, what help do you need? Okay, you ran through these modules today. What help do you need within that? Here's my perspective and come in with a training concept to run through. It could be sales process or whatever it may be. That's adding value and helping people ramp quickly. Another component to that is in the first couple of weeks, help with the meetings with that new starter. Don't send them by themselves, right? They don't even know what good looks like yet, right? They might have run meetings before, but not in the current organization. So do the prep together, run the meeting together, show what good looks like, run feedback after, and then slowly transition into the new person running those meetings. Because again, I think that will really help people ramp more quickly because They're all, everyone's trying to learn initially.

That is so good. I wish I had that when I first started out in sales rather than being sent to the, just to nobody knowing what was happening.

The last one I'd say on that as well is, you know, define the objective. My rule of thumb is if you can go book 10 customer meetings in that first month, it's difficult. It's not easy. And if you think about it, if 5 of those opportunities turn into, sorry, 5 of those meetings turn into opportunities, which is around the conversion rate, And then 5 of those opportunities turn into 2 or 3 POVs or trials or POCs. And then 50% of those convert, you're thinking about 1 or 2 opportunities. So that 10 is really critical because if you start with 5, it could end up with 0. And again, we're trying to ramp people more quickly, make them productive, make them successful. So those conversion rates are critical and generating that pipeline the first month is really critical.

I really like that because I can't tell you how many 30, 60, 90-day plans that I've seen where that's sitting in month 2 or month 3. And if you are stuck with someone who talked a good game, but actually can't create pipeline, you are already in month 4 assessing what didn't happen in month 3, right?

Correct.

And you've just lost so much time where this person is just doing enablement without action is information that's lost.

Yeah.

So that's great. I think that's fantastic.

Yeah. And just get a win in the first couple of months, first 3 months, even if it's $2K, $3K, $4K, whatever it is, get the win because it gets the monkey off the back. You understand how to process things internally and you just get the feel of winning as well. Whatever it is, try to get a win in the first few months.

Yeah. My first ever sales manager when I was a rep, when I closed my first deal, he took me out for a drink. And I still remember it today because he validated my existence as a quota-carrying rep by saying, this is a special day. Let's just go out.

Celebrate!

Yeah. Yeah. So that's great. All right. We've talked about recruiting. We've talked about onboarding. Tell me a little bit more around the overall development. You mentioned about a PG plan. So tell me more about development plans, getting people now beyond onboarding, setting them up for a great first Yeah.

So you've hired them, you've onboarded them, and now it's this constant ongoing development. And it's like I said earlier, right? Care about people, develop them, coach them. It's such an important mantra. That's what A-players love. So on the development piece, you've got to have a development plan as a starting point, not something that's got 10, 15, 20 points. I see these development plans because nothing will get achieved. So the real critical part is goal. First of the individual, what do they want to achieve? And also, what is their why? What is driving them each day to get to that next position or get to some point in their life? I think that's really important. What are their skill sets today? We're so quick to jump on weaknesses. We forget to think about what is this individual's strengths? What are they good at? Because that could dictate the next position as well. Also, everyone wants to be a leader. Sometimes I don't think everyone thinks about what that actually means. Part of it is you've got to be a psychiatrist at the same time, right? It's not just leading people. Skill set, where do they want to go next? And then what do they think that skill set is to get into that role? And then what are 1 or 2 things to work on this quarter that's going to help move the needle? Not 10 or 15 things, 1 or 2 things. And then keep coming back to that every week, every fortnight, see how people are tracking. So, that's moving forward. So, that's in the development plan piece. Regular feedback on the job is critical as well. You look at leaders and they might not give feedback for 3 or 4 months in a performance cycle. I don't wanna talk about performance cycles at the moment. I'm not a big fan of them because I think people wait for that opportunity to offload everything. But constant, regular feedback on the job, day in, day out to help, that could be positive or that could be constructive as well. We also forget to give positive feedback, right? Yeah. Hey, you did a great job in that meeting. What a great outcome. And these are the reasons why. Let's keep running that behavior into the future as well to drive success. I think another key part is projects, special projects. If you can get A-players on key projects as well that are a little bit outside of their day-to-day job, that also helps motivate and teaches new skills. Maybe you need to run a new PG program or try to work with partners more. Getting them involved in that project is also helping develop skills.

Right.

And I run weekly enablement or fortnightly enablement as well. Again, on different skills, could be discovery, pipeline generation, Negotiation, whatever it may be. Again, that just keeps the skill sets moving forward. But the one I really want to double-click on is the one-on-one. So for me, the one-on-one is the biggest coaching opportunity that you have. And what you regularly see is the one-on-one turns into a forecast call really quickly. And the one-on-one is not a forecast call, right? It's a coaching opportunity. So some best practices around that. I run one-on-ones every week, same time. Uh, with whoever I'm running the one-on-one with. You see this a lot. One-on-ones get moved different times. And if you think about it, Pri, if we were having a one-on-one and I moved it every week, how would that make you feel on a week-by-week basis, right? How much importance am I giving you in that one-on-one? The second bit of that is prepare. Again, you see these people come in these one-on-ones, they spend half an hour and they don't really drive an outcome or any actions for the week or a plan. So the preparation is key, at least 30 minutes every week to prepare. Now, if you're a leader and you have 6 individuals on your team, yeah, that's a significant amount of time, right? It's 3 hours. But if it's the most important meeting of the week, it needs to be respected in that way as well. And then as a leader, I'm thinking about what are 1 or 2 pieces of value that I can deliver in that meeting so the individual can walk away with something that's valuable, right? Because it's got to be going both ways.

Well, let me interrupt you here. What should a good agenda look like for a one-on-one? Give me some specifics.

Yeah, no, I'm just about to get into that. So the way I would run a one-on-one, check in. Again, remember, we're all humans, right? So understand what's going on. I'm always curious into people's lives and what's happening. It comes naturally for me. It doesn't come naturally for other people, but check in, understand what's going on in their life, check in on the weekends, whatever it may be, right? Have that human interaction. Then I'm offering what help that individual needs. So is there anything I can help you through the week? Then I would prepare as a leader on pipeline generation. Are there some areas that I can provide advice in? What's the pipeline plan for the week? I might look at white papers or reference stories from other customers that might be relevant to the person that I'm speaking to. I'm then looking into the opportunities of that individual's business and having a look at, are things moving forward? Are we speaking to the customers or clients enough and providing that advice? And again, I expect the person to do the same. And then a plan for the week. So if I'm to summarize all that, check-in, help needed, how can I help in pipeline generation? How can I help with opportunities to move forward? What's the plan of the week? And then risks. 45 minutes every week, same time without fail, unless the sky is falling, for whatever reason there may be, right? I think an hour starts to get a bit long and half an hour to me is too short. You don't actually get into the meat of the one-on-one. If you need to run a forecast call, just to remind everyone, it's not a forecast call. If you need to get more into the forecast, you can have separate meetings for that. And to me, that's the biggest coaching opportunity, right? 'Cause it's every week and it's prepared.

Absolutely. Now that is so good. I'm gonna take that away and I'm sure that's gonna be a really good framework because a lot of people, Either make the mistakes, because I hear, I get to hear people complain every day, people who aren't happy where they're at. And it's either not being seen and heard by their manager because they will cancel 2 or 3 out of 4 times because, oh, you know what you're doing, you're experienced, or situations where they've said that they're just not getting any value back. And it's very much a one-way, I'm informing you of what's, when this deal is going to close. And beyond that, you have no interest in me, right?

And think about it, if I'm an individual coming to a one-on-one that's based on that, I don't want to turn up for that one-on-one. And as a leader, if you're talking 70% of the time as opposed to listening 70% of the time, there's definitely a problem.

I agree. Very good. Hey, this is very useful. Before we wrap up, I'd love to get your thoughts on the experiences of scaling up into Asia. I think you've had some really Good experience around that. Give us some best practices from that.

Yeah, so I'll just give my thoughts on Asia and how to enter different markets. So for companies coming in, it's usually American companies coming in trying to scale out through APJ. I'd always start in Australia first. It's the most similar in terms of culture. It's probably the most technologically advanced in our region, and you can innovate here. You can try different things and really see what works. From there, I'd be looking at India. This is what I'm gonna do. Look at India next. Again, becoming very technologically advanced, huge market, huge businesses, huge brands. So if you can make Australia successful, get those logos, get those references, and then I'm gonna think about India next as well. Plus their cloud adoption is just exploding, right? With the use of AWS and Microsoft. From there, I'm gonna think about Japan. Now everyone is so enticed by Japan, 3rd or 4th largest economy in the world based on What list you look at, lots of businesses to go after. You can really make it successful or could really fall over. I've never really been in a business where it's been in the middle, and we'll talk a little bit about more about that in a second. And then I'm looking at Southeast Asia next. I might go into Singapore a little earlier because again, it's quite similar to Australia in some. You need a great partner set up into Southeast Asia and probably people in region. So it's an investment, right, into the future. I'm not gonna talk about China today, right? That's a whole nother beast in itself. So we'll leave that for a separate day.

Yeah.

Then entering these markets, number one, you've got to hire a great rep based on what we talked about before and probably a technical resource, but it's a slight tweak, right? You need to hire someone that can really operate by themselves and can probably do a little bit of everything as well. And that's what I did both at Appd and Zscaler first, and then get the partners right. If you're going into a country and you've got one person covering all of India, think about that, right? So, Can you help then build one or two great partners to cover that a little bit more? And I think we make this mistake with partners that we see them sometimes not as an extension of our team and that we have a new tech, it's a shiny toy, we're the best, we should be the center of your attention because we're the best new tool. But think about it, a partner, especially a large one, what have they got? Thousands of product lines to sell. How are you going to differentiate when they're hearing vendors' pitches every day? And what I've learned over the last few years to build a great partnership is really think about what's in it for the partner. Why should they adapt your technology to take to their customers? What's the goal for them and can you help them with that goal? Could be increasing profit margins, could be driving revenue, could be adopting more cloud services, could be increasing service revenue. So what is it that's in it for the partner that's really important to them and how can you help them with that with a differentiated value proposition? If you don't do that, you'll never get that traction. And that's how to really spread across different countries and do it quickly. And that's what I've done in the past.

That's really good. Really good. In terms of, you've given me a great overview of the overall process, right? And some very good specifics. Tell me some of the mistakes that you've made, which have led to the wisdom that you share, right? Because often you do it wrong.

I've made a lot of mistakes. This is definitely not perfect. It's a lot of years of learning and then refining and making it better and better each time. So I'm gonna leave you with 3. Number 1, don't hire too quickly as you're entering new markets. I've made that mistake before. You hire really quickly, you bring on a whole bunch of salespeople or SEs or whatever it may be, and you don't spend enough time ramping them and to make everyone successful. So, you know, get a cohort in, make them successful, get a cohort in, make them successful. The challenge when you do hire too quickly as well and you're building the layers is you get a lot of new on new. So you have a lot of new people, leaders teaching new reps new skills, and it just makes it a little bit slower and makes it a little bit more tricky. So be very cautious in how you're building those layers as well within an organization because it does take time. The third bit, have an ecosystem to support. I talked a little bit about partners. If you're just going to throw salespeople at a region and expect it to be successful, It's not gonna work, right? You need marketing to support, partners to support, customer success to support, services, et cetera. It's gotta be across all different parts of that ecosystem. I'm not saying you need to hire all in day one, but if you're gonna add 5, 10, 15 ICs into that market, you need to have supporting services to help. Otherwise, it's too much of a grind.

Outstanding. Ankesh, I've learned so much from this conversation today. I love frameworks because frameworks are actionable, whether it was the 3 Rs that I mentioned or ICCE that you mentioned, and really just integrating that into our daily practice of work. Because the better we can make every single part of what we do better, we end up just making the whole better. So thank you so much. You've been very generous. I've really enjoyed this conversation, and I appreciate you for joining us today.

Well, look, thank you very much. I hope I've added some value, and I appreciate your time as well. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you.