Hunters and Unicorns

Hunters and Unicorns | Playbook Universe - Marina Ayton #005

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns: The Playbook Universe.

We’re here to showcase leaders within the Playbook Community and explore their formulas for success. We aim to uncover:

· What their non-negotiables were in propelling forward their career

· The importance of dynamic hiring

· The most effective methodologies utilised when scaling successful teams

Today we are joined by Marina Ayton, Regional Director for the Majors UK + Ireland for Zscaler. In this episode, we explore Marina’s formula for success both as an IC and as a leader. The last eight years have seen Marina surpassing 200% of her target consistently year or year and inspiring her teams to all hit the President’s club criteria.

Marina shares the importance of thinking BIG for her own ambitions and to that of her teams, and why challenging the status quo is imperative when driving your own career within the software sales space at any level. Whilst serving as a Regional Manager for AppDynamics during Cisco’s acquisition, Marina shares her professional experience and the importance of adaptability and agility.

Now at Zscaler, she discusses how hiring diverse teams, focussing on tenacity and revisiting the company vision with the team contributes to her success in building world class sales forces. Marina’s ability to articulate the importance of creating the right work environment where teammates feel safe to fail, illustrates why she and her team will keep on succeeding. This podcast uncovers how best to utilise the formidable playbook community network.

DEAR FUTURE CRO | by Culture Crunch x GrowthQ - Kat Salazar

The team at Hunters and Unicorns is excited to announce their pop-up podcast collaboration bought to you by Culture Crunch and GrowthQ. 

Titled ‘Dear Future CRO’, we talk to dynamic and diverse sales leaders and listen to their advice for tomorrow’s CROs. 

“Dear future CRO, your job is to create and lead cross-functional teams focused on revenue generation and that is a role that will always be evolving. And because of the rapidity of that evolution, more than any other leader, I would encourage you to invest in yourself and your teams by bolstering transferrable skills, which measurably bolster culture and strengthen financial performance because these skills encourage people to be better performers, hands down and predictably.” 

Today we are joined by Kat Salazar, CEO & Founder at weThink, to talk about her incredible career journey and how her unique life experiences led her to identify a huge problem with traditional approaches to education and inspired her to start weThink, an intelligence software platform built to help people and organizations thrive in team-based environments. 

Listen to discover how transferable skills directly impact the bottom line of every company and learn strategies for identifying the skills that optimize the way people learn and perform in teams. With advice to present and future revenue leaders on how to recognise and engage with soft skills to create better career progression and placement for employees, Kat shares her unique tactics for galvanising office culture, increasing employee performance and propelling sales teams forward. 

 

DEAR FUTURE CRO | by Culture Crunch x GrowthQ - Larry Satterfield

Hunters and Unicorns Productions

Dear Future CRO - A Culture Crunch and GrowthQ collaboration

Join the GrowthQ Community: www.growthq.co

The team at Hunters and Unicorns is excited to announce their pop-up podcast collaboration bought to you by Culture Crunch and GrowthQ. Titled ‘Dear Future CRO’, we talk to dynamic and diverse sales leaders and listen to their advice for tomorrow’s CROs.

“Remember that you're a CRO because you were a great sales leader and being a great sales leader is the first priority of the CRO. Don't forget the things about sales leadership that are important - building high performance teams, giving great sales coaching to the sales leaders, and talking to the customers of your organization. You are the top salesperson in the organization with access to every customer and every top salesperson so take advantage and understand what's working in your organization and what's not.”

Today we are joined by Larry Satterfield, retired Sales Leader at Jazz Networks, to talk about his professional career from learning the sales playbook back in the eighties, to becoming the Sales VP for companies like Dell, Tanberg, and Cisco. Leading with the philosophy of “lift as you climb”, Larry has solidified the science behind sales growth and competitiveness and is currently coaching CEOs and CROs across the industry, consistently creating opportunities and sponsors for the next generation of future revenue leaders to shine. Join in to listen to Larry’s expert opinion on how to transition from sales to leadership as well the value of mentorship and sponsorship, and what it can do for your company. Sharing his strategies for increasing diversity and minimising unconscious bias in the hiring process, Larry talks about his personal journey from the bottom to the top and offers valuable advice to young professionals looking to get into leadership positions.

DEAR FUTURE CRO | by Culture Crunch x GrowthQ - Paula Hansen

The team at Hunters and Unicorns is excited to announce their pop-up podcast collaboration bought to you by Culture Crunch and GrowthQ. 

Titled ‘Dear Future CRO’, we talk to dynamic and diverse sales leaders and listen to their advice for tomorrow’s CROs. 

“Dear future CRO, think about how you are contributing to building quality teams, investing in talent, investing in people's development, thinking about what it is that you need from your team of people, your leaders, your individual contributors to deliver on the result that you have because when you think about it in that concept, you'll do different things on a daily basis than you would if you're only thinking about your responsibility to deliver.” 

Today we are joined by Paula Hansen, President and Chief Revenue Officer at Alteryx. With over 25 years of experience in SaaS, we discuss Paula’s incredible career trajectory, including her transition from engineering into sales in the early years of her career and how she married her passion for knowledge in the technology space with interpersonal skills to forge a clear path to her current role. 

Listen to this episode to discover Paula’s experiences and personal journey through the ranks as she enlightens us with strategies for establishing a successful career in sales and offers her advice on how to cultivate mutually beneficial mentorship relationships, develop new sponsorship opportunities, remove unconscious bias across interview panels and nurture diversity of perspective in today’s sales environment.  

Sharing tactics and tips on how to scale your leadership career, Paula offers real-life examples from within the walls of world-class organisations to support and accelerate the careers of next generation revenue leaders.  

 

 

Hunters and Unicorns: Playbook Universe - Hash Choudhuri #004

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns: The Sales Leaders Playbook.  

We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. 

By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover: 

• Why engagement is critical  
• The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion  
• How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players 

Today we are joined by Hash Basu-Choudhuri, General Manager of EMEA at Cribl. In this episode, we discuss Hash’s history in the observability industry, his experiences as first man on the ground opening up EMEA operations at Cribl, and the business plan he executed against to introduce the 18-month-old startup to a brand-new market and territory in 2021.  

“Credibility, integrity, and trustworthiness are three things that I think will always stand you in good stead, whether you're in this business or any other business and I've never compromised on those three. You say what you're going to do and do what you're going to say. That's number one. Number two, it's the team, it's never about one man, it's about working together in unison and then, let’s be honest, it’s about the product.” 

Taking us from the early days of cutting his teeth at Sybase – to joining Splunk in the middle of an economic crisis in 2008 – through to his current adventure at Cribl and the entrepreneurial drive that led him to this role, Hash opens our eyes to the change mindset required to succeed in the fast-paced Observability sector as we discuss the benefits of his deep technical background and the key drivers that push him to accept new challenges and continually reinvent himself in different areas of business.  

With a variety of tools and techniques for propelling an upward career trajectory in the tech space, listen to this podcast to discover the foundations that enabled Hash to accomplish success as well as his strategies for building sustainable, repeatable, and high growth business. 

LIFE WORK ALIGNMENT | Culture Crunch - Corean Canty

LIFE WORK ALIGNMENT | Culture Crunch - Corean Canty

 

Welcome to Culture Crunch.

We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:

Why engagement is critical

The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion

How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players

Today we are joined by Corean Canty, Executive Coach, Workplace Well-being Expert, and Former COO with over 20 years of experience in the Media and Marketing space, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out why we need to place wellbeing at the centre of our organisations to attract and retain top talent, bring out the best in our employees and maximise business outcomes.

“Good company culture is life centred. We hear a lot about people first and human first and I am very much aligned with that but one thing I've recognized over many years is that, whether you're selling a product or a service, all businesses are in service of life, yet the people in the businesses usually end up last on the list.”

Whilst many assume that wellbeing is a "soft" issue and not a management problem to solve, Corean draws our attention to the impact of the pandemic on company culture and how it created a power shift from employer to employee and a new perspective of wellness in the workplace. Thanks to the pandemic, employees are now in the driving seat and employers need to be flexible, listen and talk to their people, and identify how to make their organisation a more appealing place to join and stay.

Citing the U.S. Surgeon General’s new guidance around strengthening workplace well-being, Corean takes a deep dive into why mental health and comprehensive wellbeing strategies need to be a top priority in contemporary workplaces and offers advice to leaders on how to create space for feedback and collaboration with their workforce to drive change, increase retention and positively impact performance.

In relation to her experience of hyper growth industries specifically, Corean highlights the need for business owners to address the “pace and pain gap” and harness the power of pause - the pressure to hit financial numbers may tempt many leaders to focus only on the balance sheet, but Corean believes that the key to peak performance is, paradoxically, a long and restful pause. She encourages leaders in organizations large and small to embrace the cyclical nature of business growth and incorporate time for reflection into their strategy to avoid burnout, diminishing returns and employee attrition.

With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to this podcast to discover Corean’s strategies for supporting and facilitating a contemporary workforce, diminishing unconscious bias, and increasing productivity through communication, understanding and flexibility.

THE EVOLUTION OF LEADERSHIP | Culture Crunch - Harsha Jalihal

Welcome to Culture Crunch.

We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:

- Why engagement is critical

- The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion

- How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players

Today we are joined by Harsha Jalihal, Chief people officer of MongoDB, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out why we need to focus on the human element in this age of technology to increase productivity, reduce attrition and create better business outcomes.

“Every business problem in any company boils down to human behaviours. It's why so many CEOs and C level execs talk about how much time they spend dealing with people issues. Especially here at a MongoDB, we've got all the other raw material - we've got a great product, we've got a great business model, we've got all the things we need to run a successful business - when problems arise, it always boils down to human behaviour and that understanding of human behaviour is what we bring to the table. My goal is to get managers to learn how to do that well so they can then make decisions more independently and not rely on HR to tell them what to do.”

Sharing key leadership lessons with us in this interview, Harsha explains the ongoing cultural challenges being faced by organisations in the tech space due to the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. She describes how the melding of people's personal and professional lives has resulted in the development of a new leadership paradigm and emphasizes that the skills required for a future in tech are actually human skills: e.g. communication, empathy and cognitive thinking. As technology continues to change at an accelerated pace, Harsha believes that the key to good company culture is educating leaders and managers to understand human behaviour and set the tone from the top down. Outlining how high growth environments can have both positive and negative impacts on company culture, Harsha offers advice to forward thinking leaders on how to embrace change whilst preserving core company values.

“A lot of leaders, particularly in companies they have built or seen grow from ground up, tend to want to protect the culture, sometimes at all costs, and that's not necessarily a good thing. For me, it’s not about protecting it, it's about keeping the conversation about culture front and centre in your business strategy conversations.” With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to discover Harsha’s future-proofed solutions to increasing revenue and productivity by bringing culture and core values to the centre of your business conversations.

ENGAGING A DISPERSED WORKFORCE | Culture Crunch - Jenny Kang

Welcome to Culture Crunch.

We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:

Why engagement is critical

The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion

How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players

Today we are joined by Jenny Kang, talent partner at Battery Ventures, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a dispersed digital world and find out how leaders can move beyond ticking the diversity checkbox and ensure they are achieving their goals of elevating DEI and creating better workplaces.

“I think that most companies that have a true commitment to diversity and inclusion understand that diverse workforces and diversity of thought and experiences lead to more innovation, stronger company culture, higher retention, and better business outcomes. But I think that we still need to hone that message correctly and we still have work to do to engage the market in the right way in terms of how we approach candidates and how we position these values.”

These days, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are at the forefront of hiring conversations, however, while many businesses are working toward equity and inclusion, minorities continue to face challenges in the tech industry. As someone from a diverse background who has transitioned into tech from a seemingly unrelated industry (before starting her career in executive recruiting, Jenny was a defence attorney), Jenny has first-hand experience of how the unique perspectives and experiences brought to the table by a diverse workforce can generate product innovation, better decision making, and stronger teams.

Offering strategies and tangible steps for business leaders across the tech landscape, Jenny talks us through how to drive real inclusion and diversity by redefining hiring profiles, taking a multithreaded approach to recruitment and being openminded to people from non-traditional backgrounds. Emphasising the need for authentic communication and genuine commitment to core company values, Jenny’s number one tip for leaders across all industries is that in order to infiltrate company culture, demonstrate a genuine commitment to DEI, and introduce new behaviours, change must come from the top-down.

Listen to discover how to demonstrate DEI mindfulness in your hiring process and why promoting these values throughout your organization is the only way forward. Jenny provides vital advice to help you connect and engage with a dispersed workforce as well as a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture and propel business growth.

The information contained herein is based solely on the opinion of Jenny Kang. This material is provided for educational purposes to cover industry or sector trends, and it is not, and may not be relied on in any manner as, legal, tax or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by Battery Ventures or any other Battery entity.

Hunters and Unicorns: Playbook Universe - Marjorie Janiewicz #003

“I had a pretty good sense of how to build and run teams successfully, but the MongoDB experience helped me see how granular that process can be, how you can recruit, develop, and execute on a day-to-day basis based on the playbook that can really unlock fantastic results. I spent about three years at MongoDB under their leadership and it propels the way I look at running sales organizations and most importantly driving great business outcomes for companies.”  - Marjorie Janiewicz Hunters and Unicorns shares the playbooks from leaders, founders, executives and investors from high growth technology companies.   In this special edition series The 33 CXOs we investigate the greatest success story in the history of software sales. Discover how thirty-three sales execs from one organisation, BladeLogic, became CXOs in the world’s 100 fastest growing technology companies. We uncover the stories and playbooks of the most prolific sales leaders in the industry.  Today we are joined by Marjorie Janiewicz, Chief Revenue Officer at Foursquare. In this interview, we discuss Marjorie’s evolving mission and vision as she leads Foursquare’s global go-to-market strategy as well as her incredible career trajectory working with word-class innovative software companies and how she has risen through the ranks to become the deeply respected enterprise software sales leader that she is today. “The playbook we've been talking about in practice is an enterprise playbook. It is designed to extract bigger business value, to justify premium. So as a CRO deploying the playbook to attack very large accounts in financial services, retail, all the way to sales cycles in government public sector, I think the playbook had given me the foundation to understand the steps in the sales process, how I think about how customers are buying, and how I think about mapping our sales motion to it. The playbook gave me the foundation and empowered me to know that I could do this.” Marjorie learnt and mastered the playbook under the tutelage of Dev Ittycheria and Carlos Delatorre during her time at MongoDB. We discuss the incredible impact that MongoDB had on Marjorie’s career and how the ground breaking methodology and principles of change management gave her the blueprint she needed to channel her appetite for disruption into a successful career leading transformational SaaS initiatives. Offering advice and guidance to current and future leaders, Marjorie discusses the key challenges facing tech businesses today and highlights how the ongoing evolution of the playbook has provided business owners with more visibility and tracking capability than ever before. Providing strategies and guidance on how to lean into the methodology during times of change, Marjorie also puts forwards her views on the topic of inclusion and diversity in the tech space and draws our attention the playbook’s capacity for unlocking the talent pool via training and enablement and accelerating the career paths of diverse individuals. “Sales is a profession, like anything, it's a craft you can master, and I think more than ever, thinking about the economy and the world we live in, it’s just a wonderful place for anyone that has smarts, hunger, and an appetite to excel.” In this vodcast you will discover:  Marjorie’s journey to embracing change - how the playbook provided foundations for Marjorie to become a well-rounded CRO The fundamental mechanics of the playbook and how to adapt the methodology to fit different industries and customer profiles Diversity and inclusion – the playbook’s capacity to unlock the talent pool The effects of the current recession on the software market and what changes we should look out for With over twenty years of international software and SaaS sales experience, Marjorie is a true builder. Her customer first orientation and collaborative approach to scaling has enabled her to bring different organizations together towards one sales motion, deliver value to customers, and drive ongoing improvement. We discuss Marjorie’s journey to embracing change as well as her plans for the future and excitement for the next phase of growth at Foursquare. This wide-ranging discussion is essential listening for those with an interest in sales strategy, as well as anyone with a passion for the technology space.

POWER, ACCESS + PRIVILEGE | Culture Crunch - Eugenia Chiang

Welcome to Culture Crunch. We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement.

By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:

Why engagement is critical

The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion

How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players

Today we are joined by Go-to-Market Strategy and Operations leader Eugenia Chiang, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out how a work environment centred around diversity, equity and inclusion can inspire teams, improve recruitment and retention of talent, and foster innovation.

“Through acceptance, you can gain awareness so you can drive change in behaviour. Companies with tangible DEI practices are more likely to have higher performing teams and better company results. Furthermore, much of the changing behaviour in society also aligns with tech's ethos in challenging status quo and creating a better future for all of us, and that's another way where tech can also play a role in that societal change as well.”

Providing eye-opening statistics and examples relating to racial and gender discrimination in the workplace, Eugenia draws our attention to the need for cultural evolution in the SaaS sector and offers tangible steps for business leaders to start embracing a DEI growth mindset. With over fifteen years of experience in leading diverse teams and defining organisational vision across high profile, high growth companies in the tech space, Eugenia has witnessed first-hand the challenges associated with protecting and propelling DEI in this ever evolving fast-paced sector.

Whilst the competitiveness and high-performance of this industry naturally lends itself to an acute focus on company culture, Eugenia reminds us that improving DEI is not a one-day task and that in order to create positive cultural changes, we need to address our own deep-rooted biases, outlook and habits before trying to impact societal or systemic issues.

With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to this podcast to discover Eugenia’s strategies for creating a sense of community and belonging in your workplace, whilst inspiring your team and peers to achieve their full potential. The work may be challenging at times, but the rewards—both for business and for your employee culture—are well worth the effort.