GTM 170: 0 Customers → $4B: Inside Snowflake’s GTM Machine with Chris Degnan

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Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer of Snowflake, where he helped scale the company from pre-product to over $4B in ARR and more than $100B in market cap. Over his 11-year tenure, Chris built Snowflake’s go-to-market engine from the ground up, from personally running the first outbound campaigns to leading a global sales organization through four CEOs and one of the largest software IPOs in history.

Today, he advises founders and revenue leaders on how to build high-velocity GTM teams, hire with grit, and scale with discipline. Chris is also the co-author of Make It Snow, the definitive playbook on Snowflake’s go-to-market journey, co-written with CMO Denise Persson.

Discussed in this episode

The early days of Snowflake: selling a stealth startup with no product
How to hire and identify truly self-motivated, gritty sales talent
The lessons from John McMahon that shaped Snowflake’s leadership DNA
How to build sales-marketing alignment that actually scales
The near-death experiences that almost killed Snowflake
What great CEOs do differently, from Muglia to Slootman
The power of focusing on new logo acquisition
The evolution of sales methodologies: MEDDPICC, culture, and curiosity
The truth about AI’s “bubble”, and what’s real beneath the hype

Episode highlights

02:21 — Why join Snowflake pre-product and in stealth.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=141

05:36 — The original outreach script and what resonated with prospects.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=336

06:49 — Scaling from lists to SDRs; Degnan’s “8 meetings per week” rule.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=409

09:11 — Hiring for self-starters; the interview opener: “Tell me your life story.”
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=551

12:49 — The feedback loop that kept a CRO in seat for 11 years.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=769

24:46 — The outage that almost killed Snowflake, and how leadership showed up.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=1486

28:34 — New logo gates every quarter and why it mattered more than anything.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=1714

34:05 — “Customer success is everyone’s job”: removing CS, monetizing PS, driving adoption.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=2045

36:40 — Databricks: where Snowflake ceded ground and what they’d do differently.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=2200

39:19 — Why going public was the right move for enterprise trust.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od_h42fz1gc&t=2359

Key Takeaways

1. Be the student of what you sell.
Chris obsessed over mastering Snowflake’s product (from pricing to contracts) and it gave him credibility with both engineers and customers.

2. Hire for grit, not pedigree.
He learned that big-company sales reps often crumble in startups. Look for people who’ve built from scratch, not those who’ve inherited playbooks.

3. Sales and marketing are one engine.
Snowflake’s growth hinged on alignment between Chris and CMO Denise Persson, measured only by qualified meetings, not MQL vanity metrics.

4. Founders create alignment or chaos.
If you pit sales vs. marketing, you’ve already lost. Founders must design the system for shared ownership of growth.

5. Customer success is everyone’s job.
Degnan scrapped CS as a standalone function, embedding it into sales and SEs to drive true accountability for customer outcomes.

6. Curiosity compounds.
His 11-year CRO tenure (through four CEOs) was powered by humility, feedback loops, and relentless curiosity about what worked and why.

7. Urgency is a superpower.
The best leaders don’t plan for three months from now. They execute today. Denise Persson’s “let’s do it right now” mindset shaped Snowflake’s tempo.

8. Product-minded CEOs win.
Degnan believes the best CEOs are product-first, able to zoom out strategically while diving deep into executional detail.

9. Focus on logos, not just revenue.
Early hyperfocus on customer acquisition created network effects, credibility, and the foundation for Snowflake’s scale.

10. AI is a bubble with real roots.
He sees parallels to the dot-com boom: inflated valuations, but lasting infrastructure that will define the next decade.

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Follow Chris Degnan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-degnan-524470
Make It Snow (book): https://makeitsnowbook.com

Recommended books

The Qualified Sales Leader by John McMahon — Chris credits this book’s lessons for his sales and leadership philosophy.
Abundance by Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler — A life philosophy on optimism and innovation he recently listened to on Audible.

GTM 170 Episode Transcript

Chris Degnan: 0:00

It was like my midlife crisis decision. Um, I didn’t buy a motorcycle. I I joined a startup with no customers.

Sophie Buonassisi: 0:06

That startup was Snowflake. Chris Denyan was the first and only sales hire. Eleven years later, he led sales from zero to over four billion dollars in revenue and helped take the company to a $100 billion valuation.

Chris Degnan: 0:18

So that was I I still kinda am like, I’m in the matrix. I don’t think that’s really happened.

Sophie Buonassisi: 0:23

But the same company that would redefine enterprise data almost died more than once. Chris stayed through the kind of hypergrowth that breaks most people and most companies. The average zero tenure is about 18 months. And you lasted an incredible run, 11 years, through four different CEOs. His secret? Alright, let’s get into it. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Degnan: 0:58

Thanks, Sophie. Appreciate it.

Sophie Buonassisi: 0:59

It is fantastic to have you here. And I don’t actually know if you realize, but eight years ago, to this very month, you actually came on a version of this podcast.

Chris Degnan: 1:09

I did not know that.

Sophie Buonassisi: 1:10

Yeah. It had a different name.

Chris Degnan: 1:12

Yeah.

Sophie Buonassisi: 1:13

It was called Sales Hacker at the time. So GTM Fund’s general partner, Max Ultler, once founded Sales Hacker, grew to about 175,000 members globally before it got acquired by Outreach in 2018. Yeah. And so you were actually on Sales Hacker. You were episode 28.

Chris Degnan: 1:28

That’s funny. It was probably my first park podcast I ever did. It might have been. That’s crazy. Yeah.

Sophie Buonassisi: 1:33

Eight years ago, you sat in, in a way, this very scene. Yeah. And you were at about 100 million in ARR. Yeah. Now you’re projected to have 4 billion in revenue. Yeah. So from when you first sat in the seat at 100 million ARR to 4 billion, we’re gonna essentially go through some of the go-to-market moves, the lessons, the stories that really helped make that scale possible. You’ve actually documented a lot of these learnings in your new book, which I’ve got on the table right here. Thank you. Lucky to pick up a copy and I’m gonna read it for anyone who is not already familiar. It’s called Make It Snow. And we have a bit it available for listeners.

Chris Degnan: 2:12

Awesome. Great.

Sophie Buonassisi: 2:14

Let’s start from the beginning. You joined Snowflake pre-product, no sales team. Why? Why join?

Chris Degnan: 2:21

I I I joke it it was like my midlife crisis decision. I didn’t buy a motorcycle. I joined a startup with no no uh customers. Um you know, I had um I had uh been in enterprise technology sales, I had worked at companies like EMC, um, and then I went to a startup. Ironically, kind of weird small world, is that the guy that I work for is is is now infamous. Uh he was caught on the KISS Cam on the uh on the Coldplay concert. Oh, yeah. But to his credit, I did learn a lot from him, um, Andy. And um so it the r the benefit of me going to the small company called Avexa was um I I certainly learned to be a second line leader there, as well as um I had this guy, John McMahon, who was on our board. And uh and so uh Avexa got a bought by my old employer, EMC, and a bunch of the John McMahon network wanted to hire me as like a VP of the West or something like that. And it turns out I didn’t really uh like a lot of the uh sales leaders that were recruiting me. And and then I found this um startup called Snowflake. Um didn’t love the name, uh, and it was in stealth mode, but I really liked the founders. I really liked uh the investor, Mike Spiser, and so that got me excited. And you know, I was pretty hesitant still, and then you know, Mike, Mike was trying to close me on um on joining the company, and I and he said, What do you need? And I said, Well, I need someone to be on the board uh who cares about me. Uh and he’s like, Like who? And I said, Well, on my last company, we had this, you know, amazing leader, John McMahon. He’s like, Well, I know John. And and he’s like, Well, someone like him. And like, literally the next day, John McMahon’s on our board. Wow. And he’s like, and so Mike’s like, okay, it took your final objection off the table. And yeah, sure enough. So uh, and it was critical for my part of my success of having John. I could not have done the job without John being on our board. I took a risk, it took a big risk, it took a pay cut. Um, but I wanted to do something fun and work with fun people, and that’s pretty much why I chose the the job.

Sophie Buonassisi: 4:23

Pretty productive midlife crisis. Yeah, yeah. For sure.

Chris Degnan: 4:27

Yeah, yeah.

Sophie Buonassisi: 4:28

I’m sure there are near-death experiences involved, which we’re gonna jump into. But where did the name Snowflake come from? That was already a real convenient dream.

Chris Degnan: 4:35

Um so that so the founders, and I would consider Mike Spiser a founder. Uh, you know, his kids were on the ski team up in uh Tahoe. Um Benoit, uh his kids were on the ski team. They he actually lived in Tahoe and he would commute down to Oracle. Um, and then Thierry, you know, liked to ski. So they all like to ski. Snow comes from the clouds. We were a cloud data warehouse. Um and there’s this uh there’s a a loose affiliation to a schema, a database schema called Snowflake Schema. Uh and so they kind of they kind of took that and made and ran with it and it’s called it Snowflake. And trust me, I did not love the name when I was out there trying, because people were were not very kind to us in in the beginning about our name.

Sophie Buonassisi: 5:20

So Table’s turn.

Chris Degnan: 5:22

Yeah, table’s turn. Table’s turn. Make it snow, baby.

Sophie Buonassisi: 5:25

And so, okay, you join pre-product, you know, no sales team, your number one salesperson in the organization. You’re the first person. What what did those first couple moves look like?

Chris Degnan: 5:36

Um you know, so when I got there, um I I started, you know, just trying to talk to people. Like there was no like I couldn’t sell the product. And and so I started to just try to get feedback. And so I would just reach out to and blindly to a bunch of different people um and and say, hey, this is what we’ve built. And it helped me hone exactly like what the differentiators were. The founders would explain it, like, hey, this is unique. And then I would tell uh, you know, our prospective advisor companies of like, hey, this is what we built. And so that’s that was my beginning. It was just like reaching out and saying, Hey, do you have 15 minutes? Um, I’d love to tell you what we’re building. We’re a stealth mode data warehousing company. We’ve done something really unique where we’ve separated storage from compute and we natively ingest uh the uh semi-structured data. I’d love to tell you, get feedback, see if something you’d use. And um, and so that was my pitch. And I did that a lot, a lot and a lot and a lot. So that was the beginning, and that’s how I got you know into customer conversations.

Sophie Buonassisi: 6:40

Incredible. And how did you start to grow that sales organization, hire the right people, scale the process, really take it from zero?

Chris Degnan: 6:49

Well, so when I started to figure out like who was our ideal customer, um, I then would would start building lists, like literally scraping websites. Now you can probably do this all with AI, but I was doing it by hand, uh, going on job boards and stuff like that. And that was, you know, and then spamming people. And so I needed help uh doing that. Uh so I I hired an intern, Alyssa, Alyssa Wong, who’s still actually at Snowflake, which is awesome. Um, and um, but she was in college at the time, and uh, and so she uh her and I started building lists, and then um I hired a uh an S E uh and then he and I would just go out and you know tell the story. And then from there, um what would happen is I would try to get my goal with every week was to get eight customer-facing meetings a week. So that was my goal. And and so if I got that eight meetings a week, that was great. But what would happen is say I’d go to New York, I would then not be in front of my computer, not building lists, and I’d miss out on getting meetings for the following week. And so that’s when I started uh hiring my first two uh sales development reps. So I hired two SDRs, Jordan and Tom. Um, and Jordan is still at Snowflake, and then from there, uh we uh we started hiring sellers.

Sophie Buonassisi: 8:09

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Chris Degnan: 9:02

Yes.

Sophie Buonassisi: 9:03

How did you ensure and how can founders listening ensure and leaders listening ensure that they’re hiring the right people that are self-motivated?

Chris Degnan: 9:11

It’s hard. I mean, I think like if if you hire someone from a big company um to come into an early stage startup, they’re used to this infrastructure being around them. They’re used to having SDRs, they’re used to having, you know, Salesforce. Like I’m there’s a company I’m advising right now where we we hired the uh you know a sales leader in there, and you know, he he walked in and he’s like, Yeah, there’s no Salesforce. All of the context of these customers they’re talking to are in the cell phone of the founders. He’s like, so I have to get an export of their, their, uh, their their cell phone and put it in and build my own Salesforce. So there’s just a lot of things like when I’m looking for is I’m looking for people that have had um are self-starters that have had self-motivated, that have to do things on their own. If you’re working at a large company like Salesforce, there’s this all this infrastructure is already there for you. And so those probably aren’t the best people to hire when you’re building a startup. So you’re looking for people that have that grit. Um, and then there’s questions you can ask and and uh tell me about tough situations you’ve been in in your life. You’re looking for them to where have they overcome tough challenging situations? Um, and and you kind of learn a lot about a person. So there’s there’s stuff that you can ask, there’s experience they have on on, you know, we had a lot of success hiring uh people from the reseller community because they were basically having to represent all these different products and and they were uh they were you know selling them almost as a as a reseller. So that we had a lot of different uh backgrounds, but that worked pretty well.

Sophie Buonassisi: 10:39

Yeah. What’s your opening line in an interview?

Chris Degnan: 10:42

Um I tell me your life story.

Sophie Buonassisi: 10:44

Yeah.

Chris Degnan: 10:44

So I you know, and and so tell me where you were born to to how you got to where you’re at. Uh because I want to learn about you. And I think that’s the thing I want to know. Like, you know, where I don’t care where you went to school, but like, did you work during college? Did you uh, you know, when when you got out of college, what what did you do? Like what were you looking to do? Did you know what you wanted to do? Uh a lot of times, you know, people like hiring, you know, uh uh athletes from college. So you’re just like you’re trying to learn about them. And that’s kind of part of the the story that I I’m looking for.

Sophie Buonassisi: 11:16

Yeah. That makes sense. And then on the inverse, you know, you you you were a snowflake the long time and you recently left, but the average CRO tenure is about 18 months.

Chris Degnan: 11:28

Yep.

Sophie Buonassisi: 11:28

And you lasted an incredible run, 11 years through four different CEOs.

Chris Degnan: 11:34

Yes. I you know, it’s I I sometimes I I still kind of am like I’m in the matrix. I don’t think this really happened, but uh I think um so I asked John McMahon that exact same question. Like, how did I how did I stay in this job? Because I was not really sure about it. And um I think the the thing that he said is, you know, Chris, you would ask good questions, you would take feedback, and you would act on that feedback. So the the thing that uh what happens, um and what I saw even with some of the leaders that that I had hired um as we grew is people thought Snowflake was successful because of them. Um, and that was never the case. We were we were, you know, we were all part of this amazing, we were selling an amazing product, we built an amazing go-to-market machine, but there was no one person in my sales organization that was like responsible for the success that Snowflake had. It was a team effort. And so I think um, I think being self-aware, being getting that feedback, acting on that feedback, and sometimes that feedback was hard, like, hey Chris, you’re screwing up here and and having to make tough decisions is not always fun. Um, but that was kind of I I’d say that in a nutshell is what John gave the feedback that I got from John.

Sophie Buonassisi: 12:49

So yeah, and I mean there’s a lot of founders that ideally are making their first sales higher, and they want that person to be the next Chris.

Chris Degnan: 12:59

Yeah.

Sophie Buonassisi: 12:59

And conversely, a lot of leaders that aspire to have the type of round that you did.

Chris Degnan: 13:04

Yes.

Sophie Buonassisi: 13:04

And so that kind of quality is really interesting and important for people to understand. Yes. It sounds like curiosity if you were to boil it down to something curiosity and receiving feedback while being able to iterate upon it.

Chris Degnan: 13:16

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think uh yeah, being humble uh because like again, you know, I I found that when when we were building the company, um, I I was the same way to uh you know a sales development rep that just started as I was to our CEO. Um and and so what I found was that a lot of times there are good people that we hired along the way that were big company people and they were really they would do well managing up, but then when it came to uh you know managing their team or or being nice to people that weren’t were not were not peers or or hire, they were not. And so I’m very respectful. I don’t like it drives me crazy when the people are super disrespectful. I I don’t have time for that. And that that’s not great, and that can ruin a culture of a company. So I think it’s just like you know, be humble, take feedback, act on that feedback, and act on it quickly. Like you you you have to have a sense of urgency. Like one of the my the my favorite traits of uh Snowflake’s chief marketing officer, Denise Pearson, who I co-wrote the book with, is that she has this high sense of urgency. So like when I’m in a meeting, when I was when I was working with her and I was in a meeting with her, we’d come up with some idea and she’d be like, okay, let’s do it right now. And I’m like, you’re the best. Because like that, like there isn’t like, oh, let’s do it in three months from now. No, let’s do it right now. Yeah. And she’d challenge me, like, you should do this right now. And I think that’s what I uh really appreciate about people is having a high sense of urgency. And and I, you know, sometimes there are companies uh that have sales leaders that don’t have that sense of urgency, and that and then that’s not great for the company. And I think, you know, I advise uh a bunch of different companies. And you know, one of the companies I advise, they had a sales leader um that didn’t have this sense of urgency, and the and the CEO just called me and said, like, hey, I’m trying to get this sense of urgency going. And he’s like, I just he’s not acting on it. And I’m like, well, this is like it’s like a it’s like dating someone. It’s like if you if you date someone and have this trait that’s annoying, it’s only gonna get worse the longer you’re with them. So you you can’t you can’t fix it.

Sophie Buonassisi: 15:32

Isn’t there like a learn to love about you?

Chris Degnan: 15:34

Maybe, maybe, but not not certain things. There’s certain things that will really annoy you. And so that was that was uh some of the stuff that uh you know I picked up along the way. So yeah, uh have a high sensitivity, be humble, work hard, uh be smart about what you sell. Like on like I always say be a student of what you sell. So I think those are some key traits of of uh you know great salespeople.

Sophie Buonassisi: 15:57

And you spoke to Denise, you you both had an incredible growth trajectory together at Snowflake. Yes. And you were aligned at the hip, you went into board meetings together. You know, there’s one thing to hire really humble and great people, but there’s another to actually foster the alignment necessary for growth. How did you and Denise foster that alignment and how can other leaders think about creating that space for alignment?

Chris Degnan: 16:23

Um well, it it it goes number one with transparency, uh is is being honest with each other, um, having that sense of urgency, you know, and I think you know, rolling up your sleeves and and being able to do it. So like when Denise started, she had been a successful chief marketing officer at, you know, at at public companies before. And she came in and we were doing three million dollars in revenue. And and I think I was struggling with our the demand generation function of Snowflake prior to uh Denise uh coming coming into the company. And so I, you know, I was I would I would argue with uh the the previous team around what a definition of like a what a marketing qualified lead was or an MQL. And and so having those conversations for a sales leader is incredibly frustrating. And Denise picked up on that right away and she says, look, listen, um, we’re not gonna talk about what an MQL is. Um all we’re gonna talk about is qualified meetings for your salespeople. Um and and so from there, that’s like the she had me at hello. I’m like, okay, I like this woman a lot. And and uh and so from there, what she would do is, you know, she wouldn’t tell anyone on her team to go do something. She would go and every week sit down individually with this SDR, the individual SDRs, the individual AEs, the individual managers, and tell me and say, tell me what about these leads. Where are they coming from? What’s good, what’s bad, what’s ugly. And she would get that firsthand. And like that, I was so appreciative of that. And I think that’s the thing that I love about people that have had success, of get that that can come down and do the hard things um and not tell people go do this, go do that. No, you do it and see, and then you have so much more credibility when you’re coming in and trying to um, you know, direct things and tell people what to do things like, hey, I’ve done that. And I think that was kind of even on my journey in Snowflake. A lot of the team respected that I was the first sales rep. A lot of the team respected that I knew how to sell the product really well. And I think those were kind of pretty key uh elements of me growing up and and recruiting people and then keeping people at Snowflake and leading from the front that way.

Sophie Buonassisi: 18:32

So and it sounds like a common thread across Snowflake overall. You were in the weeds, you were building the first list. Yes. Denise was in the weeds, sitting down with salespeople, yes, and many of the CEOs also were able to actually get in the weeds. Speak to you a little bit around the the CEOs that you worked under and how they actually got into the weeds, because I know one in particular was good at that.

Chris Degnan: 18:55

Yeah, for sure. Well, and and and that’s a thing that w was was surprising to me. Um, so I joined uh under Mike Spiser, who was really, you know, I guess the acting CEO. Uh he was in one day a week. Uh so it was, you know, it was a pseudo-CEO. And then they hired uh Bob Mugglia. Um and Bob uh had had Ron, he like Satya Nadella used to work for Bob at Microsoft. Bob had an uh a very f infamous uh exit out of uh Microsoft, but he he was a president of the server and tools division. He had 10,000 plus people working for him. Wow. And so he came in and we there was like 30 employees, and I’m like, maybe, maybe, maybe 50. And and he came in as a CEO nine months in my tenure, and I’m thinking, how the hell is this guy gonna be successful? Because he’s been so far up here. He’s had you know assistance, his assistants maybe had assistance, right? You know, so so he just had you know this, and I’m like, no, no way can he be successful. And to Bob’s credit, he was the best. Like we Snowflake would not have been successful without Bob. He invented our pricing, he he helped so many parts of the product, he we borrowed Bob’s credibility um to get in front of customers. There were so many wonderful things about Bob, and Bob got into it. And and I’ll give you a perfect example of of how he he there are two examples is number one, like he came in and wanted to redo the customer contract. So every time we we signed a contract, we had to negotiate the the the contract. And he came in and he he increased the number of pages by like four pages. He he added a thousand words to the contract, and I got furious and I sent him a note and I said, Bob, you’ve you’ve doubled the size of the contract, you’ve increased the number of words by a thousand, you’re screwing us over. And he goes, I have one question for you. I’m like, What’s that? He’s like, Did you read it? And I’m like, no. And so so he’s like, do me a favor, read it. Right. Um, and redline the things that you don’t like about the contract. And and so I I mean, it was just an invaluable lesson that I that I that that gave me is that I read it and maybe better at selling the product, first of all, because I better understood the contract. I I then redlined things and he took the time to actually walk me through, okay, I I understand why you don’t want that, and then we’ll take that out, but here’s why we have to have this. And he walked me through it. And so, like, that was just like this like incredible development, you know, point for me of learning, learning from Bob. And the other thing that he did, which which I I love just being a salesperson, is you know, it’s very public on whether or not you know, salespeople are successful because it’s like you have a quota and are you hitting the company number or not? And and so every quarter from the beginning of time, I would always talk about like, you know, either A, how many people are in beta of the uh uh of trying the product or are we hitting our numbers, et cetera, et cetera. And we we were we were trying to get in um we were trying to get to general availability in June of 2015. And um this was this was like January, and we’re like, okay, these are the feature sets that that we declare, that we declare victory and say we’re generally available. And and and so what Bob did is we every Monday we would have a company meeting. Um, and I would talk about you know the customers I had and what whatever and and the and how we’re doing on deals. What Bob did was he then created this list and then assigned uh each engineer to a feature that was required to for Snowflake Declare generally available. And then in that Monday meeting, he’d be like, hey, uh, you know, Allison, hey Abdul, hey, hey Ashish, how are you doing in this feature? And and those those were incredible engineers that I just listed, but but but I think there were some that weren’t so incredible um that were not executing on those features. And every week they’d get out there and they’d be they’d hate it. They’d be like, Wow, this is terrible. I’m being called out for not doing my job. And to me, I’m like, yeah, I need those features to go sell the product. And so Bob like forcibly he didn’t like he didn’t yell at them, but there was this peer pressure to be like, hey, you know, hey, Joe over there, you’re not doing what you need to do. Go go do it. So yeah. So that there were a bunch, a bunch of stuff like that. So Bob, Bob was like kind of the you know, so much into the details, and you know, Snowflake’s current CEO, uh, Sridhar Ramaswamy, is like in the details at scale that I it’s just unbelievable the amount of information that he can uh take on. Um I’ve never seen anything like it. So there’s different levels, and and Sutman, Souitman was more of a general. Like he he would he would pick up on, he would read the room, he’d read people, like all this stuff really, really well. Um just different different leaders, but all of them incredible leaders.

Sophie Buonassisi: 23:43

So it’s a common common thread here around some of the most success exceptional leaders being able to balance the strategy, but also be in the details needs.

Chris Degnan: 23:55

Totally. I I think you can get too wrapped up in the details sometimes. I think you have to think about like it, and I think my opinion about what makes a great CEO, I do think that product leaders make the best CEOs. People always ask me, like, hey Chris, do you want to be a CEO? And I I no, the answer is no. Um and and I I think product leaders are are great because they they have to think, you know, in the future. They have to think about have a vision for the company and stuff like that. So yeah, I think those are things that that are um incredibly important to the company. Um and so that’s why I I I I I think highly of of product leaders.

Sophie Buonassisi: 24:33

Super interesting point. Yeah. And you did a lot right along the journey. But there’s also all the stories behind the scenes of any high growth company. Yeah. What were some of the near-death experiences at Snowflake?

Chris Degnan: 24:46

Yeah, I mean, the I the one of the the classic ones, you know, that was was quite scary is we had so we went generally available in June of 2015, and and our first full fiscal year as a generally available product was um was in 2016. And um, and so we were we did a half year of three million dollars, and then we were on the path to to have really great growth the following year, and it was going really well. And we had started to hire a bunch of sellers. So I I I thought, you know, it’d be great to have the sales team, you know, come in, get them together, and do a rah-rah mid-year. So we did a mid-year sales kickoff in San Francisco at the W Hotel. And we, you know, I get in front, and there’s, I don’t know, maybe like 50 people um in the room, and and I’m, you know, talking about how great what what all these exciting customers, what how great it is. And you know, a lot of the sales jobs, their their phones are going off. And and then I’m like, okay, we’re gonna uh bring Bob Bob in, and Bob’s gonna speak, but I you know, Bob wants to talk to me. So I go out into the hallway, doors are shut, Bob’s white, and I’m like, what’s wrong? He’s like, we’re Snowflake was down, and we are we’re software as a service, we run the service. Right. And he’s like, Snowflake’s down, and we’re in one region in AWS US West, and he’s like, I’m not sure we’re coming back. And and I’m like, I just telling everyone how great a company we are, and we like the the founders can’t get like they’re like open heart surgery, like trying to like make the heart pump again. Yeah. And uh and so I looked at Bob and I said, Bob, uh, we’re gonna come back, and I need you to get out and uh instill confidence in the sales team and tell them it’s gonna be okay, and tell them we’re gonna build this great company. And to his credit, he flipped the switch, got out there, got everyone excited, and four hours later we we came back online. So it was a pretty incredible um uh experience and and wild, wild. That was that was as close to death as as we came. But I mean, I remember being um so f Fidelity was a a big uh early adopter of Snowflake. They did they did a lot of press around us and stuff like that, and and so this is just as people were taking meetings again from COVID, and uh I went out to go meet the the CIO and the CTO of Fidelity in Boston at the same time. And I walk into their office, to this is my first meeting with them. And I walk in the office and I’m looking at them and they’re like, and all of a sudden their phones are going off, and they’re like, hey, uh Snowflake’s not working right now. And and I’m like, uh, okay, I’m about to I’m trying to get a deal from these guys. And I’m like, uh, okay, and I’m texting like CEO, I’m texting the you know, the engineering team, and it was just like one of these stupid mistakes where someone forgot to uh renew a uh a license key for our encryption or or flip the encryption key. It was so dumb, but it brought the entirety of Snowflake down again. So there’s like those types of experiences you’re like, oh my God, like you know, we’re lucky to be alive. And I’m I’m super grateful, um, especially for our earliest customers at Snowflake that took a risk that stayed with us because there were some bumpy times. There was a lot of outages we had in the beginning, and and they stuck with us. So I’m super grateful for that. So yeah.

Sophie Buonassisi: 28:10

Incredible. Yeah, those are those are some scary times.

Chris Degnan: 28:13

For sure.

Sophie Buonassisi: 28:13

Yeah, and I mean some scary times, but also some some really incredible and strategic go-to-market moves along the journey.

Chris Degnan: 28:22

Yes, yes.

Sophie Buonassisi: 28:24

Reflecting back on the journey, what were some of the most pivotal moves that you did or things that you remember from that go-to-market evolution?

Chris Degnan: 28:34

Yeah, I I think so the the focus uh of um new logo acquisition was super important. And and so, you know, when when I started um at Snowflake, Mike Spiser, the reason and the reason that we stayed as a stealth mode company for a while is is Mike was super paranoid because we were competing against the largest companies in the world. We were competing against an Amazon product and we had Amazon as our our our back-end uh service. And so he he’s like, we have to get market share before the the the competition gets product. And so, okay, understood. And so my hyper focus as a company was every single sales rep um would have a a uh gate of they would have to get depending on the segment that they covered of customers, they’d have to get between four and eight new logos uh in a in a quarter. Um that was uh really strategic because like getting the forcing to get customer after customer after customer, getting to use the product, that was that was um and hiring sales reps that had experience opening up new logos. These were these were critical things that we did in the beginning. Um and and and candidly, like there were times you know, at the company where we got lazy and we took our eye off the ball on customer acquisition, and that hurt the company. And and and unfortunately, Shridar uh had you know helps helped us rectify. That as he came in, and we’ve been and so flakes reaccelating that customer acquisition uh strategy. But I think that’s the most important thing for us from a go-to-market standpoint was acquiring new customers. That I mean and the hyper focus and and celebrating that. Like celebrating that uh, you know, even so like to this day on on earnings calls talks about the number of global 2000 customers that they have, number of that they’ve added and and stuff like that. And Wall Street reacts to that. So super important.

Sophie Buonassisi: 30:29

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and expansion is a big thing that right now a lot of companies are focused on. Yes, acquisition, but expansion, I’m curious your thoughts. Like, of course, acquisition applies now broadly, but how do you think about the balance as you’re advising companies now and startups between acquisition and expansion and upsell?

Chris Degnan: 30:47

Sure. Um yeah, I think so Snow Like, so and a lot of companies now are are um use case or sorry, um consumption models. Um so Snowflake’s a consumption model, and so you know, we we focused, you know, on uh on just getting the customer first. And so it and that typically an acquisition was really a almost like a paid pilot. Our average deal size, even at you know, when I left, was depending on the segment, anywhere between 40 and 60,000. So these weren’t like huge deals. It was just like, hey, there’s a there’s a paid pilot that we’re gonna do. And so um we did that, and uh, and and and and then you’d land the customer. And and and that was we would only sell one thing, a snowflake credit. So so there was no necessarily other features to to sell. There was use cases. So then so then what you start to do is is try to identify use cases and then have the sales team, both that sales engineer and the sales rep, um, put that in in uh Salesforce, track the the you know, the the the use case win. Are we winning it? Are we losing it? Are we selling professional services with it? Um so that was a huge focus of ours. And and and really because the sales reps got paid both on a booking of a new deal, but also consumption, they were highly motivated to get the customer to do the deal, but also get the customer to successfully use the product. So uh so I think um what I would say to founders is make sure that the the sales team is incented not only just to acquire new customers, but also to make sure the customers use the product. That’s that’s the biggest thing is you don’t want just these hitmen to come in and do a deal and then leave because that that becomes problematic and and the the sales rep doesn’t really care. And a lot of times what people do is say, I’m gonna have this customer success team take over. Well, what happens like if the customer success team isn’t getting responses, they’re not that maybe you have to almost resell the deal a lot of times. If competition came in, they have a new CIO that came in, something like that. So I think you know, giving the the sales team uh a quota uh on expand on consumption or expansion is incredibly important. Um and then it’s also on the company. So you know, I spend time with founders talking about pricing. Um, and you know, you know, a lot of times maybe they they’re just trying to when you’re building a company, you’re just hoping that companies pay you something to use your product. And so there’s a lot of mistakes that founders can make early on um around pricing. And and so you you don’t want to you know sell everything in in the first deal. You want to figure out how to modularize your pro pricing, or if you have consumption base, then then that’s and then you can go and focus on different use cases, certain things that you have to look at as you’re pricing the product. And so I spent time now with founders talk thinking through okay, you can add these features, you can add these modules, or or or this is how you uh forecast use cases and stuff like that. A lot of different ways to do it.

Sophie Buonassisi: 33:44

Yeah, that makes sense. And I I know you preferred that sales continuity as opposed to passing off to customer success. And I’ve seen that pattern with a lot of companies like Customer with a K, for example, where CS and sales have the same ownership to create alignment. Yes. Is that do you think that scales? Like a snowflake scaled to the point that it it did.

Chris Degnan: 34:05

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I I so so when Frank Slootman came in, he he um he he I didn’t have customer success. I didn’t have professional services. Um and then he put that under me, underneath me. And so when Frank came in, he uh he he said, Hey, look, you you’re gonna take over customer success, uh, you’re gonna take over professional services. And he said, on customer success, it’s costing the company uh three million dollars. So therefore, Chris, it’s costing you, your budget is your it’s three million dollars, and it’s only gonna grow if we scale this function out. And so then I’m like, okay, let me go figure out what they do. And and I would interview uh, or I went and you know, asked the people in customer success, like, what do you do? Are you technical enough to be an S E? Are you are you good enough to be a sales rep? Are you, you know, all these other things? And the answer was they’re helping a customer um find the right people in the organization. They’re helping a customer look at you know the the documentation or training, but they don’t have any particular skill that’s gonna like help the customer use the product. They’re just kind of a navigating person through the organization. So I got rid of it. I said, uh, we don’t, you know, you can go apply for other jobs at Snowflake, but you’re we’re no longer having customer success because ultimately, you know, as as Frank Superman would say, and and Mike Scarpelli, the CFO, would say of Snowflake was hey, look, the customer success is the job of everyone at this company. Um and you don’t you you need to put it on the sales rep and the SC. The SCs are incredibly important. And then we had a professional services team that um we had to build, and they built all of our um uh you know, our training materials, they bit built our best practices on how to implement the product. And so we would sell professional services. So from my standpoint, our PS organization was built from the ground up, not as like this huge revenue generation, but it was cost neutral. So we would say, okay, we’re not gonna lose money on our professional services team. And I would say when we would sell professional services in a deal, the customer would be way more successful. So then the sales rep started to realize, like, okay, I need to get professional services in these deals. And that was a that’s how we looked at customer success. Is it’s not that I don’t I’m against it, I’m just against free. Like I there has to be some value, and the customer has to pay for it.

Sophie Buonassisi: 36:20

Yeah. For sure. I love that model. That’s great.

Chris Degnan: 36:23

Yeah.

Sophie Buonassisi: 36:24

And you know, you mentioned near death experiences beforehand, what you did well. What were the moments in a way, now looking back, that would have been really pivotal in terms of competition? You know, there was Databricks, there were others in the picture. Like, what did that look like?

Chris Degnan: 36:40

And yeah, I mean, I I think there’s, you know, look, hindsight’s always 2020. It’s super easy to like Monday morning quarterback, you know, all the mistakes we made. But I think um there there were a couple of things. Is I think number one, uh Snowflake was the we we had to go to market engine, um, and we were building this machine to go out and and acquire a bunch of new logos. There were two things that we were missing in the marketplace, um, and that Databricks gravitated to. Databricks, uh a lot of a lot of uh data engineers wanted to use Spark as a as a you know as an analytic platform. And so Databricks kind of did really well there. Um and and then they also had these data science notebooks for data scientists. And if Snowflake had built a Spark connector and and done uh a data science notebook, and then at the same time the sales org, if we had continued to scale the sales org and focus on new customer acquisition, I think we would have pretty much put Databricks out of business. And and we so we gave them an inch and they took a mile, and they’re they’re obviously a very successful company. The other thing that you can argue is like they’re they’re successful, um, and they don’t have they’re not public. So a lot of the things they say don’t have to be 100% true publicly. Um whereas a public company, you’re you’re very much uh you have you have to say things that are true. Like Databricks does a lot of reselling of uh uh AI technologies. So like they resell open AI, they resell um other other uh AI technologies. Those that’s like a reseller business. That’s like a single-digit margin business, but it’s top line revenue. They’re not reporting to to Wall Street on their their margin. Snowflake has to do that. So Snowflake could not do the same things they financially that they can do. And so there’s an argument, like if the private markets will fund you, there’s a argument to stay private for as long as you can if you want to build this ginormous company. And it’s worked well so far for them. So I know there’s a bunch of things along the way that on the sales side, I wish that we had focused we had done more, been more aggressive. On the product side, I wish we had been more aggressive. Um, but at the same time, we also did a great job on competing against the the three uh uh cloud service providers and and while building on top of their platform, whether it was competing with Amazon’s Redshift product or EMR, or there’s competing against the different variations that Microsoft has or Google’s uh BigQuery product on top of their platform. That says a lot about the the how great of a product we had, and we built a really strong uh uh go-to-market motion on doing that.

Sophie Buonassisi: 39:16

It’s credible. And do you think going public was the right move then for Snowflake?

Chris Degnan: 39:19

Um it it it it it was uh it was it was super helpful um that it gave us credibility. So so what what would happen when I would try to sell deals, so customers would put us as the as the back-end product um to their their their product. So we would we backend a customer-facing analytic application. And if as a private company, people didn’t necessarily trust us. Um and and so they’d ask us for our financials in the event we went out of business, they wanted our source code and all this other stuff, when which we would do, we would not give them our source code. So so so yeah, so once we became public, we I almost it was like validation to the market that we were this like real company. And so that helped. And and being we were the largest uh software IPO, I think still are, I’m sure one of these um AI companies will crush us and come out, but we were the largest software IPO ever. And that also was like, okay, this is a juggernaut. And so then people were were more comfortable betting on us. Yeah, and for the employees, it turned out really well. I mean, never in my wild imag wildest imaginations did I ever think that Snowflake would would would get over a hundred billion dollars of a market cap. And we did, and that was like crazy. Like on the IPO day, you just watch the stock go up and you’re like, holy cow, like what is happening, right? Um and so that was a really cool experience and it gave liquidity to the employees. So for the employees, I think it was great. I think uh, you know, from a company validation it was great. Um, but yeah, there are some benefits, you know, pluses and minuses to being public, for sure.

Sophie Buonassisi: 40:57

Makes sense. Makes sense. And you mentioned AI companies coming in and potentially, you know, having even larger of an exit and liquidity event. Yeah, for sure. You have lived through the dot com bubble. Yes. Boom. Yes. I’m curious what you think about AI now. Do you think that we’re in a bubble?

Chris Degnan: 41:15

Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Um the I mean, we are, um, and there’s a lot of there’s a lot of and you know, s partnering with with different venture capital firms, seeing how they value these AI companies, it’s it’s bonkers. It’s crazy the evaluations that that people are getting. Um and it will eventually have a reckoning. But um, you know, I I heard someone say this on CNBC the other day. There there were some um great things that came out of the internet. The internet is more powerful than ever today. You know, um the dot-com bubble was the beginning of that. Um and and so there was a lot of terrible companies. I worked for some of those terrible companies. Um, but at the end of the day, that you know, the internet powered Google. The internet powered so many different things that, you know, like AWS and and and uh or Amazon and and there’s all these things that came out of the internet. So yes, uh there is a bubble, yes, it will pop. Um, but um there are real things with AI. Like, you know, I you know, I’m I’m I’m partnering with uh uh you know uh uh two AI companies in particular that are doing a bunch of automation. So partnering with this company called Giga ML, they do customer service agents and they’re legitimately replacing, you know, cut call centers um in in some of the largest companies in the world. And that’s that how that will have a bot like a uh a bottom line impact to those companies because the the the these large, large Fortune 500, they’re reducing the amount of people they need to hire. So that’s a that’s a big deal. Um there’s a code company called factory.ai, same thing. They’re helping people develop code um uh without having to have a bunch of engineers. So there’s there’s a bunch of efficiencies that will come out of AI. Um and and so, yeah, there, but there’s also a bunch of bloat, and there’s a bunch of companies that probably won’t make it. And and so it’ll be interesting to watch for sure.

Sophie Buonassisi: 43:06

Definitely.

Chris Degnan: 43:06

Yeah, definitely.

Sophie Buonassisi: 43:07

And now you’re advising a lot of companies since you left Snowflake.

Chris Degnan: 43:10

Yes.

Sophie Buonassisi: 43:11

Super tactical, but I’m curious what you’re seeing in terms of sales methodologies because you know, eight years ago when you were on the sales hacker podcast, which GTM now acquired in 2023, so we rolled it up under this brand, you were talking about MedPick. And it’s so funny because you were describing it. The interviewer had never heard of it, and you were describing it because it was quite new.

Chris Degnan: 43:31

Yeah.

Sophie Buonassisi: 43:32

And now it’s so commonly known and practiced. I don’t think there’s a sales leader out there that doesn’t know it, even if they go by a different sales methodology.

Chris Degnan: 43:39

Yes.

Sophie Buonassisi: 43:40

What are your thoughts on sales methodologies for companies you’re advising or other sales leaders? What’s kind of best practice?

Chris Degnan: 43:47

You know, I I’m a fan of I’m still a fan of MedPick. Um, and I think it’s it’s just like if think of MedPick as your compass to to getting a deal. Like you’re out in the woods, you’re you’re lost, you can go to the MedPIC to kind of figure out like, do we have these things um to get the deal? And I think that that methodology is super important. So I’m I’m a huge uh fan of of you know the building sales organizations who have medpic as their the back end. And it’s candidly when I interview sales leaders, yeah, I’m looking for that. Like what like what experience do you have? What sales methodology, how how um, how diligent are you in managing your team behind that sales methodology? So those are things that are incredibly important. And so I I do think that um that even now as I’m interviewing sales leaders, I am asking them what what methodologies do they use? It doesn’t have to be medpic. I’m not like, oh my gosh, this you if you don’t have medpic, you’re you’re not gonna be great. But tell me about whatever methodology you’re using and and how how uh how how do you manage your team by that? And that’s what I’m looking for from a sales leader.

Sophie Buonassisi: 44:53

So yeah, because we commonly get across the GTM fund portfolio, a lot of companies that are looking to hire sales reps that have strong methodology, irregardless of what type, but just strong training around a methodology. So it’s interesting to hear that you are are kind of averse to different types too.

Chris Degnan: 45:12

Yes, yes.

Sophie Buonassisi: 45:13

It’s more about the actual muscle.

Chris Degnan: 45:15

It’s it’s the muscle. It’s it’s are you actually getting up every single day? Are you actually you know, you know, diligent about it or not? And I think that’s that’s the big thing that you you really have to um you know ask and look at. Because there are the the people talk about it, it’s like almost like values. Like, you know, you can put values of your company up on the wall and say those are our values, but do you are you living our your values? And that’s the same thing on the methodology. Are you living you know the methodology? That’s really important for me to figure out.

Sophie Buonassisi: 45:43

For sure. For sure. And now, you know, what is what does life look like post-snowflake after 11 years?

Chris Degnan: 45:52

You know, it’s it’s crazy. Um, it’s weird to not like have uh a number that I’m chasing every quarter. Um but you know, I I I I you know what I’ve what I’ve recognized about my my experience at Snowflake is I think the my most favorite uh time at Snowflake was probably the the zero to you know call it 150, 200 million dollars. That was like the most exciting time. There was so much desperation, yeah, but that’s what I really enjoy. Um and not the you know, I’ve you know, obviously I’m I managed the the sales team where this year they’ll they’ll do north of four billion dollars. That’s that’s something that I manage to. Um I managed a large organization, but I think the skill set that that’s really good for those types of organizations is more like an operations person. And that’s not I don’t love doing operations. I like being in deals, I like closing deals, I like competing. That’s like and that and when you’re doing that at a early stage startup, that’s like the fun. And so so so now I pretty much am advising companies in that in that range, the zero, like literally have no revenue all the way up to you know $200 million or $150 million in revenue. And that’s where I spend my energy. So um, and so that’s what I’m doing is I I’m I’m busy, but on my schedule, on my terms, if I don’t want to do something, I don’t do it.

Sophie Buonassisi: 47:09

And you documented the entire go-to-market journey in this book.

Chris Degnan: 47:12

Make it snow.

Sophie Buonassisi: 47:13

What do you hope that anyone reading this book takes away if you could just say one thing that you hope that they get away from this book?

Chris Degnan: 47:20

Um I I you know, look, I think that Denise and I, you know, when when stuff like became public, uh, we we got a lot of people who wanted us to be advisors. They we became pseudo-tech famous. Uh and and so I would get I and I still get a lot of emails saying like, hey, hey, you know, how do I do this? Should I do this? So I think there’s there’s there’s there’s multiple um uh examples where I would say that we talk about how we built the company and and the things that the the the less the do’s and don’ts. And I think the thing that you know Denise and I, you know, recognize when we became advisors to companies is the dysfunction that founders can create between sales and marketing. And so, you know, one of the things that that you know Denise and I have this had this wonderful you know working relationship, which you know, Slootman, um I I would have to go to Slootman and say, hey Frank, I’m I’m being asked to be an advisor to this company. Is it okay? I’d have to get his approval. And he’s an intimidating dude, and I and he’d say, um, he’d say, you should, because you’ll end up seeing how screwed up other companies are. And I was like, okay, whatever, dude. And he was right. Like, you know, it like sometimes it’s like it’s like, you know, you you have a bunch of friends, they’re, you know, they’re married, they have kids or whatever, and you’re like, you know, oh, their lives are perfect, but then you get in the inside, it’s like, oh, it’s not so perfect. And that’s the same thing with with companies, is like they’re all screwed up. Every single one of them.

Sophie Buonassisi: 48:46

Grass is never greener.

Chris Degnan: 48:47

It’s never greener. And so I think that’s the thing that that I’m uh uh it was it was helpful for me to see. And I think that’s what I’d say to founders is like, you don’t want to have this competitive, like sales is doing this and marketing is doing this. No, they’re they’re the go-to-market team. Partner together, build a great go-to-market machine. Um, and if it’s not working, understand why it’s not working. But if you’re a founder and you’re creating this like animosity, like, hey, marketing is creating a bunch of leads, but you know, sales, you’re not closing those leads. Well, okay, let’s dig into why. Don’t don’t make each other just, you know, throw, throw up, you know, scoreboard type numbers and and don’t understand why you’re not getting what the end result you want. So I think that’s the biggest thing that Denise and I focused on was the partnership and what we focused our partnership around on the go-to-market side.

Sophie Buonassisi: 49:32

Yeah. I mean, that is the go-to-market engine, like you said. That’s right. So that alignment is critical. That’s right. Super valuable. And you’ve been on the writing side of a book. Are there any books that you’ve consumed and read that have been particularly impactful in your career?

Chris Degnan: 49:45

Um in my career. Well, I mean uh Yeah. No. Um V V so John McMahon, you know, he he’s you know, uh someone I really look up to. Um, and he has the qualified uh sales leader that that he’s built. I I’m a I I I don’t love reading, I do audibles. Uh uh and I just you know listen to a book, really just a life book, uh, about the you know the economy and stuff like this called um Abundance, which I think is a super cool book as well. So there’s stuff like that. But I think um um I I you know I love biographies, I love learning about people and stuff like that. I love listening to podcasts.

Sophie Buonassisi: 50:23

Well, this has been fantastic, Chris. Really appreciate the time. I’m glad we could run it back eight years later under a different name, having acquired sales hacker, but here we are on the other side.

Chris Degnan: 50:31

Well, I appreciate you. You’re so super kind for having me. Thank you for having me, and it was great to speak in you.

Sophie Buonassisi: 50:36

Absolutely. Wonderful speaking with you. Where can people follow along your journey? Obviously, the book, but LinkedIn.

Chris Degnan: 50:41

LinkedIn. Uh yeah. Um I I try to I’m trying to be better about posting stuff on LinkedIn and stuff like that. And yeah, like reach out via LinkedIn.

Sophie Buonassisi

Sophie Buonassisi is the SVP of Marketing at media company GTMnow and its venture firm, GTMfund. She oversees all aspects of media, marketing, and community engagement. Sophie leads the GTMnow editorial team, producing content exploring the behind the scenes on the go-to-market strategies responsible for companies’ growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind the strategies and companies.