20VC: Why AI SDRs are BS and Do Not Work | How to Use AI in Your Sales Team and Process to Win Today | What Skills Do All New Reps Need to Have in an AI First World with Amit Bendov, CEO @ Gong

26:14So that's like a very great use case. But I wouldn't let a center proposal for a million dollars. Who knows what it's going to put out there? Even if it works like 98 % of the time really well, that 1%. is a massive race. So you wouldn't let it sign a contract, you wouldn't let it like fire people. So there are those things that... Does it work for low ACV quick sales cycle conversions? It's good. I think that the first thing that will be replaced will be the transaction lii. If I'm selling phones or cell phone plans, that's easy enough as long as there are guardrails and there is like, you know, I spoke with a customer that, you know, we're looking to do like AI that's monitored or supervising the AI.

26:57So it'll be like an AI coach for AI agents. If you follow me. Yeah. You need to make sure because even it works well. You know, there's this famous case about the Canadian airline who's offering like free travel for life or something right now. AI, the agent offered it. They had to honor it. So it's a liability for companies. Who do you say is on top of model wise? We're a bunch. First like we have a lot of our own models. We have probably 40 or 50 gong models. And then we use like Claude, we use like a, or Sonnet, we use like an open AI, which she's most prolifically. We dynamically switch between them.

27:36So sometimes they're good for one purpose or another. Costs are going down, quality is improvement. So we're also monitoring what's out there and what's the best that we could get. What do you not know about how AI changes your business? that you would like to know. I would have posted a real observation that people think is like AI destroying the world, which is a real risk. I don't know. I'm optimistic by nature, but I think it can drive me to theocracy. The way that LLM's work, they're very consensus driven, so they aggregate everything that they've heard and create something. It doesn't create great copy, for example.

28:13So I'm a pretty good writer, I think, maybe not the best, but pretty good. And whenever I try to say create something like Whitty or that it's not it's okay. So the risk is I have someone at the company says okay come up with a strategy for this market and They've actually used like one of the LLMs to generate the plan. That's a terrible idea Because I could get like an average it is sensible it makes sense, but it's not the best plan, right? So how do I know that work strategic work that done by people at my company is not like a product of LLMs? I don't know, dude. I think 90 % of the plans that they produce will be better than the plans that people in your team have.

28:52No, absolutely not. I review them all the time and I... They're okay. They're okay. But with okay, you do not create like an extra -orn -air business. You need the billions to spark the always like the angle that's unique. So yeah, if you want like an okay company, it's okay. I don't know if that changes pretty quickly. I mean, like within a year. If you feed it the right data with the right prompts, I think you're gonna get there in a year. Are you gonna get to like a CRO creating a full and end year long strategic plan? No, but if you're thinking of a more simplistic sales plan. Well, super like, okay, this is the competitor over here.

29:29Create a competitive strategy for me. That's like a simple question. That's what most people do. What you're gonna get is not great. Wow. Yeah. You must have really good people then, because I would... I have really good people. And so I didn't mean that rudely, but I... Maybe I'm negative, but I meet loads of sellers. Most sellers are shit. First, most of our sellers are phenomenal at GONG. I kid you not. And it's not just sellers. Like, I mean, you know, someone in product marketing, I mean, it could be like anywhere in a company, it could be an IT, you know, what should we do? So it's across the company.

30:00And not just really GONG, by the way, it could be like in any company. I call the convergent to meteorocracy, right? That's like a big risk that you should pay attention. I get some work, like sometimes I say, Hey, was this written by an LLM? Because it looks like too sensible, right? Sometimes they're a little bit like, Do you not want that? You know? I don't want that. So can that this week announce that they are doing the discovery where they give everyone a week to try new AI products? Do you not want your team to be actively using AI in that? No, that's an amazing idea. But if you do the creative work, you do your messaging with AI.

30:34You do this strategic plan for the company with AI. I think that's not good. How do you think about how the structure of sales teams changes with AI? There's a lot of supporting roles in sales teams. How do you think about how the actual org structure changes with AI? Self -prospecting by AES. That's a trend. Regardless of AI, I think the whole unit economics for SDRs don't work for like hyper growth companies, not for companies that are growing 10, 20%. So SDRs goes away. Yeah, it'll definitely not be a trend. And this is like independent VR. A lot of companies like EIL is even worth it. I see like how much revenue is generating versus like how many appointments?

31:13So a lot are moving. There's still have SDRs that the value in SDR, they do generate some revenue. Right? So if you're trying to scrape like every 5, 10 % of X revenue, that's great. But they become the best sellers. So we'd go and see like SDRs as a sales school. And we get some are most amazing sellers start like doing nine months as SDRs and then the moving of sales. and then they go to commercial sales, they go to mid -market, then somebody come like monster enterprise sellers. Do you worry if we remove that SDR roll, you'll lose that training? Oh, we will not remove it. It's like, why would we?

31:45We just have to lose SDRs. We know, I think that first, not necessarily us, Gong is growing an incredible pace. So for us, it doesn't make sense. But if companies, SDRs did not exist like 25 years ago. The whole idea, sellers used to do their own prospecting. I remember like, you know, Glendering, Glen Ross, like, you know, here are your leads. That's how it started. But when company started to scale, like in the, you know, early 2000 and incredible pace, people said, okay, you know what, we can't hire sellers fast enough and train them. Let's break the role in you too. We'll have people doing the upstream, the top of the funnel and people like monetizing, right?

32:23The sellers. That's a new invention that actually did not take off like all industries. It's a tech industry thing for hyper growth. Now, it does come with a lot of benefits because you do get like very focused team that knows how to generate appointments and qualified leads and pipeline. But it creates a fragmented buyer experience. People want to know like, what does Gong do or what does the, you know, Figma do and then they have to go through like a series of interviews. What specifically do you learn as an SDR that makes you a weapon later on as a seller? Oh, first like to create your own pipeline.

32:57people don't like called calling. It's an unnatural work for most of us, the fewer rejections, so they get really good. They know how to feature of Cal Cooling. Yes, yes. I think, well, it could be, I don't know what the communication means going to be, but the idea is reaching out to someone, yeah, definitely, you know, you reach to a stranger or create an introduction. Absolutely. I think that'll stay one way or another. So they know how to create their own pipeline. They get a lot of, like I call like abuse, right? And people and they developed the resilience. They know how to position the product.

33:29People say, oh, we already use this, but they build so much strength and resilience. It's unbelievable, right? And they go in the cells. It's almost like they have the hard part behind them. Now it comes the easier part. I do believe that it's a great school, especially for people that did not come from tech. So but now there are companies that aren't growing. Why do you need something that's optimized for hyper growth and have like SDRs and movie. I think we'll have like fewer roles that are more able to do multiple jobs. You know, maybe sellers should be able to support customers as customers succeed.

34:04So I think we'll see like a blend of these roles, like in a one person, almost like a one person band that is doing like multiple roles at the same time because they have the tools to do it, right? They use agents. How much smaller those sales seems? 20 % and 50 % and 75 %? We said 77%. I don't know we can reach the full potential because always be some addition plus there there's a limit like to how much people can actually Absorb just I throw food at you right like unlimited you can't eat all that much So there's a limit to how many customers people can help so most companies they have Quora capacity right if you build a plan let's say your plan for the year You need to generate like 80 million dollars, right?

34:42So you want to make sure your quarter is add up to let's say a hundred million because you know not over was going to hit it so you build some buffer, right? And then most companies hit like 66 % or whatever, 70 % or 70 people hitting 70 % and gone were like at 130 of capacity. We perform like well over 100, I don't know if it's like exactly 120, 130, well above our capacity. So that shows the power of AI to make people more productive and more effective. Can I be right? You said beforehand that I could ask you. Please. Yes. That was a time when you guys were flat. Yeah. Where was it? Tough of a time.

35:17Yeah. What happened there? Uh, yeah. That was like early 2023. Absolutely. This is like dark times where like even that we're we're not growing even like slightly shrinking. So we had it was a combination of things. First like people like bought like crazy in 2022 in the post, uh, go with work. Did you know they were irrationally buying at the time? Uh, no. I have to say like I shared the excitement of everybody to be honest. We're excited. We're drinking a cool aid. And you raised a pretty big fucking round, didn't you? We raised a lot of money. Most of you are still in the bank. Gong is not burning cash.

35:53Like a lot of money if you raised. 550 give or take. I mean, don't take the exact number. Yeah, sure. How much of you are left? That's the majority of it. Great. Hold on. We're not burning. When you raised it, what was the price on that biggest last round? Seven and a quarter. Seven. We like, that's a high price to raise that. It was a high multiple. Definitely the multiples are different today, but still I don't think it's something like, we're thinking like such a big company. If you take like a 20 year view, then yeah, still think like the potential is like far greater. It was a number of things.

36:27First time got tough. We had like a lot of consideration. A lot of like companies in technology business who were hurt by interest rate. So money wasn't cheap. So a lot of our customers would happen like in 2022, they would buy. Let's say that they bought they had like a hundred people and the cells are the gong soap. Okay, like you know How much are you growing? It's a 50 % okay. I'll throw like 50 more license So they bought like 150 seats, right comes the renewal now not only to don't have the 50 now they have like 70 So really high like downgrade and churn so we lost a lot of seat that were not real because company didn't have the growth So that's number one and it was painful second And I think we lost some of our muscle tissue.

37:08Like when we, what I told you about the hustle, like when we were like three people at the company, but all of a sudden people just bought. So our game, like we just gave the licenses and moved on to the next thing. The way we supported the customer was not as tight as you need to, but all of a sudden, you know, CFO shows, ask you like, show me the ROI. Why should I spend on you, right? So we had to learn that things. And the third thing, we had like one product. But we had the conversation intelligence product. Our customers were looking to consolidate on one platform and they said, oh, we absolutely love GONG, but Outreach is giving us both the engagement and the CI or sales law.

37:46So we're like behind, we had the deepest AI technology, but not the breadth of the platform. And company just just couldn't care. I mean, we lost something. The CeroDeadBotGong was out of a job. So there's not even like to so we lost a lot of customers. What are your reflections on that on Brad first? Is that the product for us? We just caught like an in bad timing where we're like hyper growth Like and a lot of like license to people bought and didn't get to use because of the what happened with the economy We're planning to expand the platform, but we this is like okay It's happening now and we're not ready and I assume remember like the old hands call the company was like really tough and And people were not used to death.

38:28Gong is like a rocket sheep. What? We slow down. Like this is like with inconceivable. When you say slow down, what is slow down? Like no growth. Yeah. So slow down. Yeah. Hi, churn. Can I see you're pretty chill, dude. Maybe you're like, just sorry, ice cold is really. But like, are you stressing out at this point internally? No. No. Absolutely not. I think it's important. like this is not the first time. So I've you know, I've experienced like 2000, 2008, COVID, this is the first time you know, the cycles like our second, I know, listen, we have like plenty of cash. When you have enough experience, you know, like a crisis in a crisis, they're like plenty of opportunity.

39:14Just look around, like keep your head up and we knew, listen, we have cash. Our competitors are going to struggle. We're going to step on a R &D gas pedal and develop like crazy. First, we need to, right, to expand the platform, and they're not going to be able to do it. So this is a great opportunity. This is what we're seeing right now. I knew that we're going to win. It's going to take a while. I didn't know how long or how fast, but I was very transparent with the team. No doubt, like, this team is going to win. I don't know how long it's going to take. And we saw, like, first, there was like no growth.

39:45There was like, you know, a little bit, you know, maybe like 3%, and then like 5%, and 10%, and you know, 20%, and 30%, and higher. So the company is accelerating. What did you do to reaccelerate because that seemed like a very cyclical In a nice way it's nice. It's not you But in a bad way, fuck if it's not me. I can't change much So what did you do to reaccelerate? Part of it was us first we didn't have like the products the people wanted so we we we have to develop them in second We really improved how we support customers like that we we measure our usage and engagement. Do they see strategic value?

40:22So we move to outcomes. Did you build a team that's focused on data presentation of outcomes? Absolutely. We have value engineering. This is what they do. And their job is to prove to a CFO. We imagine the most like cold -hearted cynical person out there and prove to them why it's the best investment that they can't do without it. Is it not just another course that makes these businesses more and more margin light. And what I mean by that is when you have like the SDOs and the BDOs and then the A's and then you have the CS team and now we need another fucking team doing value engineering and this is just in the acquisition and retention before we get to product marketing and the margin on these businesses is getting crashed.

41:04Well, we have great margins. Do you think most SaaS businesses have good margins there? Like, because when you see the structure. They did once. Listen, there's a bell curve of companies in summer, you know, top their sales. I'm the bottom of their sales. So not everybody. So you need to understand what makes sense for your own business. Gong is fairly efficient as a business and it's growing fast. So the number one thing you did was expansion of product line. That's probably the most impactful thing. So it took us a year to get something out there that was not even like fully mature and now it's like mature and we also, I think, there's very important thing for us.

41:37I think the biggest benefit that we learned, how to scale from one product to three in our rating like four and five and six products. So to become a big company, we need a bigger solution, which is a skill that the company needs to learn. It's not just like developing a product. How we train the sales team to position it. It's something that they don't know of a sudden. Do you have different sales teams for different products. No, we don't. We don't because we have the benefit that we sell to the same buyer. It's all goes larger to the CRO and sales operations. If we had to have other products for, let's say, maybe like a C -HR or whatever, we're playing very much a verticalized sales team's verticalized products.

42:18Yes. Yes. We have one sales team and we have a subject matter expert so people that are kind of product experts because some of the products are very technical. Like, you know, forecasting, for example, is like extremely nuanced and detailed and a lot of minutia. But do you think we're totally into the world of the bundling of sales tools? You mentioned forecasting there, obviously, Clarice, one of the leading forecasting tools. Does Clarice just get eaten up by you? Listen, Gong, like within a year, added a thousand engagement customers. Most of them are either outright sales law after a group, right?

42:52So think about the pace, like a thousand companies moved to GONG. And we have close to 800 customers on forecasting like within a year. Most of them probably using, you know, nothing or a glory or like, there are a few other smaller companies. So yeah. When you see a competitor like sales loft bought by PE, are you guys all at high -fiving? No, no. There's a couple of reasons why, like 2 .1 billion, it was even expansive by, given what they were at, and two, innovation and product, instantly is degraded when PE buys. I'd be doing a victory laugh in the border. First, I always like the company.

43:26I like the people. They're a good partner for us until we became like a competitor. And even after that, I've not lost my risk. There's another reason I do a victory laugh. Carl's fucking happy. It doesn't make me happy that my competitors are failing. And again, I never saw them as like our ultimate competitor. I'm extremely competitive type. Competition like fires me up. But I'm not obsessed with the competitors, right? right? Because remember the opportunity we're looking at. We're looking at $7 trillion being sold with human labor and sweat that doesn't make sense. Why would I be like, where are you about like a little forecasting for some mid -market enterprise companies?

44:05This is not like the big prize and you should keep your eyes on the prize where you're going and not on the other companies. This is like what we're building. When did you take your eyes off the prize and how do you reflect on that? When did you get distracted by something that shouldn't have distracted you, a shiny object that you shouldn't have spent time on. Not shiny, but sometimes this and there's real. You know where you want to get and there are some things that are real that aren't a straight line to where you want to get and you take a little detour because you need to do it. Building an engagement product, kind of like, took in from salesmafe and outreach, we had other plans that are like even like bigger potentials.

44:43but 2023 came and said, if we don't develop it now, I don't know that we'll get a chance because once it comes, it's like really bruised, like it's very difficult to get over. So we said, okay, like forget the strategic plans. Let's develop this like right now, like really fast. So we crossed this hurdle and then from a par position, a position of strengths, we can continue with our more strategic plans. So this was like a little detour again, it's not a waste and it's created a ton of revenue and strengthen the market leadership position, but it's always like a judgment call between a same kind of the long term vision of the company and some things that you need to do technically, you know, the customer has a problem, right?

45:22You need to take care of it now. You know, realize our customers need like more stability with the system, the system is mission critical right now. So we said we halted like all engineering work for four weeks, no features, right? Just to improve the stability and performance of the system. I hate it, but you gotta do it. security. I mean, you need to invest in security. GONG touches like very sensitive data. We have to be super secure. So you do a lot of things that aren't necessarily the most strategic things for you, but you just have to do it. All of the best CEO is the best resource allocations.

45:53Yeah, I think you can't suck at resource allocation. Right. I mean, it has to be reasonable. The most important thing for the company is the strategy. So I think if the execution is like 80 % okay and a good strategy, you will still win. Yeah, you could do better or worse. There are two things that matter, right? The team, which is basically execution in the market, the market is the most important thing. And this is a strategy strategy. Like what do you sell to whom? And once you're in unique positioning, unique value that you're creating, nobody else. That's the most important thing for the company.

46:26And you, I've seen companies that are doing extremely well and I know the team, they're okay. I mean, they're not bad. They're not phenomenal. And I've seen smarter people that fail. The most important thing is the strategy of the company. In a hypothetical situation, okay, I'm your son and I've just got a job in a sales team and have a great company. And I say, Dad, knowing all that you know now, what do you advise me in terms of building my career starting from the bottom in a new sales team that I wanna grow in? First, I wish that my sons would go on new sales, but the probably will not. Why do you wish they went in sales?

47:01That's a good question. I think it's a very useful skill. I mean, they're doing things that are like as interesting you're not more like in other ways But sales is a very very useful skill in life and again, it's not like selling like a phone You sell ideas you ask me how can a young founder bring like a hot shot? See I wrote right you sell the dream Why do I want to ditch their successful company because it's not exciting and come to your company that you said is like shitty right now You want to sell to investors? you want to sell to your kids sometimes like an idea, you want to promote ideas.

47:36So it is like it is a very useful skill and it takes So what would you advise me as your hypothetical son in this situation? Join like one of the best teams out there Our company is doing a really well and it's good culture and then you learn doesn't matter what the role is Just just a learning experience is way more important than whatever you know Even if it's like at extreme like for free even if they don't pay a while just what you learn is 100 times more valuable than what they're paying you and have fun and pride and make sure obviously it has to be like an ethical company. Do you think that actually being in an open AI at a car sales team is actually useful as an experienced base because it's so non -reflective, you're basically an order taker.

48:19That can kill me for that but it's true. I don't know. I mean, Now I haven't worked there, so I know this is so unique. I think that eventually every company has competition, right? People think, oh, you're just taking orders, but you want to be at a company that is not like, I hope that people think I'm picking up on Salesforce. I say, Salesforce is a great company, but again, like there, it's like already like very structured and then known brain and all of that. So you want to sell to an underdog on one hand, but it's something that will not take off. I mean, that's the right trick, right? if some product are just hard to sell because it's not good or it's not competitive in the market.

48:57You don't want to be there. I totally agree with you in terms of not wanting to be there. One of the reasons you don't want to be there is because of comp plans and a lot of comp plans are based on, obviously, starting a lot of products. How do you think we'll see sales comp plans change in the future? You know, I haven't spent a ton of time thinking about it, but I think there'll be fewer sellers. They could make like a lot more money because they're generating a lot more. So how's the way that you sell changed over time? Well, we're better like in I'm saying you personally me personally. Yeah.

49:26Well, they don't allow me to sell anymore Selling is fundraising selling is hardening. We're not raising funds. I am always like speaking I'm speaking with customers like a lot of time and and I will you still go and close customers? I don't close and the team is doing a phenomenal job. You like to go and close a customer I would, but they don't need me, but I usually go. I'm sorry, I'm so naive here that why does banning off still needed in customers? With customer want, they want the vision of the company and they want access to the person they can decide. So if we're doing like, you know, a large like seven or eight figure deals, the customer want to know, listen, making investment, I want to know when something grows wrong, I can call me it like in the middle of the night.

50:08That's the role that leaders are usually doing in those deals. Plus, sometimes I can make things outside of the ordinary. How customers do you think you have who have that can call you in the middle of the night relationship? Any customer can call me. Like even if it's a 10 ,000 -hour account, like people reach out to me, I respond. Literally, I had like someone reach out to me and LinkedIn, hey, like I'm a starter from YC, I just need two seats, GONG is like I can't afford it, like, and I talk to them. I responded them. No. Absolutely, absolutely, yes. No, you can't have to see. Pay your fucking see -press.

50:43No, I didn't say that. But I said, listen, it is what it is. I hope, let me connect it with a sales team and see. I take a look. So I respond to any customers and I'll get, if it's still her, ask me. Again, there's got to be a reason. Like, not bring me that, you know, we failed to articulate value. Now, Midsum will save the day by with his charm or whatever. You got to do your work, right? But I get on calls with customers like almost any size. When you think about deal wins, what deal win is most memorable to you and why? You know, I told you about the event that we went to an April 2016 and one of the customers that I met was a senior buyer from ADP.

51:23So it's a big payroll in HR company globally, but most in the US. And he asked, he was impressed with AI technology, but I told him like, you know, I don't think we're ready for you. which he actually was pretty impressed because not a lot of people would say that. But we met the following year and then they bought, which was incredible. They were using some other things that didn't work well, so they already had a budget and they bought GONG. LinkedIn was our first customer, a first large customer, early on, before we even thought that we will sell... We said one day we're going to sell to bigger companies, but there was never think an idea.

51:59They evaluated us and they evaluated like a chorus at the time and for those will remember and they said, okay, we decided to go with GONG and they're growing and expanding and that's very exciting. So they're plenty. Not naming names, but what's your single largest contract today? We're definitely now in the seven and eight figure ARU. You're an eight figure What of the Fortune 10 companies used going today? Wow. Yeah. Which churn hurt the most? And what did you learn? Well, I think 2023 was like a very painful moment because I was able to actually use the technology to understand what is going on.

52:42It was like a breakup conversation, right? It's like, listen, we absolutely love going. We have no choice. It's like we choose you or the other guys because they provide like three products and our CFO just wouldn't listen. Companies didn't have a choice. So it was like, you know customer that's super happy and you're still losing them. And so that was like very painful. But the good news, a lot of them are coming back now. So we have a lot of like boomerang employees and boomerang customers. What happens to outreach? I don't know, I wish them the best. Like, you know, I don't want people to feel.

53:14Is this another video? I don't want to comment on them specifically. I think if a company like is in growing fast and doesn't have like plenty of cash that could go like 20 years, I don't know what their cash position. They can't IPO and somehow people need to get paid, right? Whatever the investor. So a P might make sense for there. There are quite a few companies like that. The whole thing is you need to be 20 % grown, profitable to be attractive for P. That's the whole thing. That's the hard part. Yeah. Yeah. So and I don't know like which strategies would want them? Did you ever have an offer to sell sales rules?

53:46No, no, no. Will you have attempted by an offer? Listen, someone comes like, oh, like you're just like a trillion dollars. Like, you know, everything is something we consider. I'm not naive, but you can't have it like even as a plan, right? I believe in controlling your own destiny. We have like a great company. We're really in the early innings and we're growing. We're generating cash like we don't need anything like. Do you want to be a public company CEO? This is not something that is like a personal desire. I mean, it makes sense for going to become a public like one day as some people invest in a company and need to see a return.

54:21but I don't think it's like, you know, some people see it as like their mission in life. Certainly, it comes with a lot of like sure the IPO is kind of cool and some people get paid, but there's also comes with a lot of like restrictions on what the company can do and the flexibility and more your attention goes. Do I in it the next generation of AI or like focus on, you know, 3 % EPS like on this quarter that I mean, we have expanding secondary markets which provide equity more and more. On secondaries, different founders have different takes on them. If you're advising a founder friend on yours or more, do you know now about secondaries that you would advise them?

54:58What advice would you give them? Well, it's actually like a pretty good, pretty good option. There are companies not a lot, but that are growing fast. So you go public for either you need cash, you want the brand recognition to come. And it does come with more brand recognition and some liquidity. Many companies don't need the cash they have enough and they're generating cash. So that's like one second liquidity is is a good option with secondary. Now the market is actually evolving and the brand okay like it's real but let's say you know if you think about the cost of and of being a public company, take the money and buy super bowl ads.

55:34So there's a lot of alternative ways to get the publicity that aren't don't come with the restrictions. But secondary Very, yeah, don't go crazy with valuation. Something's a little bit of an ego thing, right? Then you want to think about the next round, so you don't, because otherwise it can create problems for employees down the road. What are you at ARR -wise now? 300 or? Oh, we crossed 300 last year. We're not sharing what it is, but we're well over. Because if you apply the TANX multiple, Bill Gert is a genius, I think, a loved man. And he always has the TANX multiple, which is kind of the heuristic and finance that holds true, do you worry about what it takes to get back to the 7 .2 price or not?

56:15No, no, no, because the difference is like how much time? If you believe that the company has like trillions of bars of potential market value, then it could take like a year, two years, five years or ten years. What, with some, the question, do you see it becoming like one day, does it have a position to become like a hundred billion dollar company? Then all of a sudden, it doesn't matter. Just take high enough altitude and we're not pricing the company right now, we're not doing it. So you ready to equate fire with me on that? I've got to. Should I be nervous? Absolutely. Bring it on. What do people most get wrong about going today?

56:48It's a call recording. You know what the funny story? Before I started, I had call recording. We're like recording and I hate listening to recordings. I wanted to a solution that will use AI so I don't need to listen to conversations. So it's the insights that's generated from the data that is the real value and now the action automation. Which compass to do you most respect and why them? I think some both sales force and Microsoft are incredible companies. You would put Microsoft as a compass to it. They're also, Microsoft is also a great partner. They have some revenue intelligence capabilities with their own.

57:26So they're a good partner. They're integrating GONG as part of a co -pilot, but they have in their CRM. So, every day in CRM is both a partner, sales force is a partner, Microsoft partner, HubSpot is a partner, but they also have their features that are competitive with GONG. What $500 purchase most changed your life? Oh, I love the question. Alright, you know, how's like $250? Sure. My bows quite comfort earphones. Why? I spend like half of my life on airplanes and it makes such a huge difference. like come out of the airplane like so fresh that just noise cancelling is unbelievable. It makes like huge, I don't go anywhere without them.

58:05What is the most non -obvious, but hugely important skill for CRO to have? The ability to look at things sometimes from the sidelines, like sometimes there are problems or something great going on and I think for leaders in general, the ability to almost like have like an outer body experience, I just retouch yourself emotionally. It's like, what is going on here? Understand kind of what's the deeper issue and then fix it and improve. What do you know is bad, but continue to do anyway? Check my email first thing in the morning when I get out of bed. I try to be disciplined not to do it all the time, but sometimes I just can't resist.

58:44Do you get up early? Really early, yeah. I don't sleep a lot. How early? Usually between five and six. When did you go to bed? Midnight, 1 a .m. Like, and you just never needed much sleep? I don't know if I need or not, I just don't sleep a lot. Like, I come with a wake up with a lot of energy and I guess my body needs like very little sleep. What's the biggest challenge or worry that you have today? Well, right now, hiring. Like, we have like 200 open positions and we're behind. So Jason, Jason on our show today said that B2B AI hiring will be the single biggest as progment 2025 and 2026. He did.

59:20Okay, you know what? I'm filling it first hand. But he also was blunt. He was like, listen, if you are not open AI cursor and through pick, you know, Matt or Matt, good fucking luck. Even if you've got a super exciting vision, you don't have budget. Matt is paying 10 million an hour. Yeah. Engineer. We're not too far behind, but definitely I need to like step in and make sure that would you pay five million for AI engineers? No, I mean, we're not a foundation AI company. We're an AI application. Gong uses AI. I want every engineer at Gong to become excellent in AI. I'm telling you this. It's like, Cursid does too.

59:56And that pang through the nose. I've no idea what they're doing. But we're not even in the same market. Does that work? No, you say the hiring pipeline. No, I'm not filling it. But you have 200 open applications. Yeah. But they're progressing. I mean, we're hiring people. We're just cross 400 engineers today. will go and have more engineers or less engineers in 10 years time. More. Why do you say that? Well, because the business would outgrow, right? So yeah, they're using AI like everybody's like vibe coding. Okay, that says like, you know, today like maybe like 10, 15 % productivity improvement.

1:00:30But the business is growing in a much faster pace. So I would need more if I can see is the opportunity. Being a CEO is a very demanding job. Being a husband is also a very demanding job. What's your biggest advice on marriage? The most important decision in your life, like who do you choose as a partner, right? This is like more important than the VCs or employees. Oh my God, yeah. By far, so choose well. Think of it really as a partnership, right? That's like, there's a bit like helping each other give and take compromises, but choosing well is like super important. What compromise did you make that was the most challenging to make?

1:01:06Oh, now I'm gonna get in trouble. I don't know. It's like, you know, sometimes it's like little things and if you have like enough of them over time things can then to pick up volume Because it's a little like a retention. So there's nothing major right now that feel I'm I'm Compromising we've been together together like not necessarily the mayor's like almost 30 years now So it's working really well. 2030 was going then Air always company had count boys hit me We are now working on a plan how quickly can we cross the billion in ARR and they're like different vets but they're not the we think within a few years we can get there.

1:01:45But the most important thing is that our vision is to become the revenue AI operating system for companies, right? That's the central system that we move from like a data entry world to a system of intelligence that runs the entire organization and we wanted to be used by a more diverse set of companies. So we're expanding the industries that we're in and want like every company to be benefit from AI. So selling becomes easy. You just need to compete on having the best products. Incredibly direct and aggressive question of me, which is a yes or no. When you sat down with your team for the billionaire or bat, is your bat before or after 2030?

1:02:29Before. Yeah, absolutely before. Where did your batland? Now the question is like I'm not getting to the introduction but how fast there is like things that are like Extremely aggressive and and and still aggressive, but a little less I'm it listen at the beginning you said that I could ask any question I did that very literally so I appreciate you answering very directly. Yeah, you've been fantastic Dude, I really appreciate the time so thank you for joining me. My pleasure. It was fun But before we leave you today, is your finance team a coscentre tied up in enforcing policies bogged down by cumbersome processes and drowning in operational busy work?

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