24th October 2022

Link to podcast + transcript.

Victoria is a GP at Felicis. Since joining Felicis four years ago, she has led investments in Dovetail, Hippo, Ethena to name a few. Prior to joining the team at Felicis, she served as the Chief Revenue Officer for Kabbage, where she has scaled the business to over 100 million in revenue, and through the $850 million acquisition by American Express.

Sajith: Sajith: Good breezy listen / read on sales in startups. Victoria was CRO at Kabbage (acq by Amex) and knows a thing or two about sales. Here she talks about the importance of founder-led sales early on in a startup’s life, when to hand over the sales baton, why you should never hire a CRO early (or before Series C), what to look for / ask the CRO while hiring, and finally, when a startup should consider a PLG motion, and how to plan the transition from pure PLG to adding on the enterprise sales layer.

Founder-led sales

Victoria: I think that founder-led sales is critical in the beginning. Because you’re working hand in hand with your customers to get to product market fit, iron out the product, and get to the point where you can get to repeatability in the beginning. That connection with founders, between the founder and their customer is so critical, and the level of feedback that you’re getting about product is invaluable. And then that’s why I believe in the beginning, certainly at the seed stage all the way to a Series A, it’s super helpful for the founder to still be leading sales; at a minimum, the large deals on the enterprise side.  (Peter Kazanjy, Founding Sales)

Handing over the sales baton; when is the right time for founders to stop selling?

Victoria: I think that it is generally around the Series A where you’re ARR, somewhere between 1 to 2 million. But in addition to that, the important signals to look for or that you have ironed out, it’s two big ones, you’ve ironed out a sales motion, and a customer target, that you know, works. And you can really hand that off to a head of sales generally not yet a CRO, I’ll come back to that point. This tends to happen in mid market deals. And I think it’s fantastic to start to hand that off. And then on the enterprise side, the reality is, is that buyer will still want to spend time with the founder. So there, the handoff is going to be a little bit slower, because it’s still important for the founder to be involved. But when they do bring in their head of sales at that a stage, I have found that it’s more helpful for it to be kind of a director slash VP of sales, the head of sales, and not yet a CRO. I don’t think companies are generally ready for a CRO until they’re further along.