“You always have to put your business at risk, because your business is at risk.”
That’s one of the most important lessons Mark Roberge learned as HubSpot’s first chief revenue officer. Now, as a Harvard Business School senior lecturer and co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, he helps companies figure out when and how to scale sales teams the right way.
Mark joined us on the ZoomInfo Labs Podcast to share insights on scaling sales, the flaws in venture capital, and the future of AI in go-to-market strategy.
He also covers:
- Why so many startups blow it on sales team timing
“There’s a lot of irresponsible growth out there. Everybody falls in love with that story that makes the front page of TechCrunch. But there’s 100 other stories where they tripled the sales team overnight and went under.” - What non-operator investors don’t know
“They’ve never run a company before. They’ve never led people. They’ve never built a culture. They’ve never hired and fired. They’ve never rolled out a strategy. And it’s broken.” - What Stage 2 does differently
“We take a career investor and team them up with an operator and form a pod, and they invest together. From the opening introduction of the company through the diligence process, through the selection, to the onboarding, to the boardroom — the two people do it together.” - Why founders need a diversity of viewpoints
“Just make sure you have both views — the investor view and the operator view. As long as you can do that across funds, great. But just make sure you have that.” - What too many founders miss about GTM
“There’s a lot of inappropriate cutting and pasting around all of go-to-market strategy. You have to be really hyper-focused on your context.” - How AI is already shifting GTM org charts
“Right now, the humans are on the front line doing the work, and they’re enabled by technology. This might switch — where technology is doing the work on the frontlines and the humans are behind the scenes just tweaking it.”