Larry Shurtz is the Chief Sales Officer at Genesys where he oversees the company’s global go-to-market strategies, including commercial activities, field sales and partner ecosystem operations. Larry has nearly three decades of experience in the software industry, from leading Confluent to delivering more than 60% revenue growth and doubling customer count as Chief Revenue Officer, to scaling a 1,300-person team at Salesforce to $2.1 billion in revenue. In Today’s Episode with Larry Shurtz We Discuss: From Robotics Student to $2.1BN Sales Leader at Salesforce How did Larry lead 1300 people to $2.1 billion revenue at Salesforce? What were his takeaways? What did Larry learn about building vertical sales playbooks at Salesforce? Which framework did Larry learn at Salesforce that he still uses at Genesys? Mastering Sales Leadership What are the biggest mistakes sales leaders make on prioritization today? What are Larry’s “3 Rs” to master prioritization? What does Larry think are the most common reasons fast-scaling teams break in sales? Has Larry ever caused bad culture in a sales team? What did he learn from the experience? Does Larry think sales is more art or science? How does Larry blend the two? Building the Best Sales Team How does Larry structure the hiring process for a new sales hire? How big should your recruitment team be?  What are Larry’s most commonly asked questions when interviewing? What were Larry’s biggest hiring mistakes? What did he learn from them? How does Larry structure the comp? How does he get it right? What do most new hires care about today? The Onboarding: The Dos & Don’ts How does Larry structure the onboarding process? Why does Larry onboard new hires with big customers? What is the buddy system? How does Larry tell if a new hire is bad? What are the biggest red flags to look out for? What does Larry mean when he says “You can make all the physical errors, you cannot make mental errors?” Does Larry agree with Max Levchin @ Affirm that “When there’s doubt, there’s no doubt?”

Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful and renowned venture firms in the world. At Benchmark, Sarah has led rounds in Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Medely, Rekki, Glide, Cambly and more. Prior to Benchmark, Sarah was a Partner at Greylock Partners. Before Greylock, Sarah was the first 30 employees at Pinterest. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. In Today's Episode with Sarah Tavel We Discuss: 1. Becoming a GP at The Most Renowned Firm in Venture: How did the process of Sarah joining Benchmark start? How did it progress? What was it that convinced her to leave Greylock and join Benchmark? What does Sarah believe makes Peter Fenton the world-class investor that he is? What does Sarah know now that she wishes she had known when she started in venture? 2. Foundation Models: Is it All Going to Zero: Will foundation models be commoditised? Will 99% of the funding going to foundation models go to 0? How does Sarah view the future of open vs closed source? Why does Sarah believe that all frontier models of the future will be closed-source? Why does the business model of foundation models remind Sarah of the food delivery business? 3. Application Layer: Where $BN Companies Will Be Built: Why does Sarah believe that sustainable value-creating companies will be in the application layer? How does Sarah determine between a wrapper on top of ChatGPT and true product value? Are enterprises opening real budgets for AI today or are we still in experimental budgets? How does Sarah think about how AI companies differentiate when there are so many in the same space of customer service, sales team support etc etc? Why does Sarah believe that it is rational to pay more for these companies when investing in them? What does Sarah mean when she says the future is "selling the work and not the tools"? 4. Inside Benchmark: How the Best Do Venture: What is the one rule that Benchmark is willing to break when doing a deal? Why do Benchmark aim to be the best recruitment firm in the world? Why do Benchmark not agree with the concept of reserves? In a case where Benchmark have lost, why did they lose? How did they change their approach?