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Adam Carr is the Chief Revenue Officer at Apollo, where he’s scaling revenue by layering sales on top of a $150M+ ARR product-led growth engine. Previously, Adam helped scale Miro from a PLG-led company into a global sales organization, contributing to its growth into a $17.5B business. He’s known for building systems-driven GTM teams that turn product signals into durable revenue.
Discussed in this episode
- Why PLG is gravity (signals + acquisition) and sales is the monetization layer
- The “one-team” model to prevent PLG vs. sales cannibalization
- Building talent density (and why slowing hiring can be the fastest path)
- Hiring for curiosity, coachability, ownership, and team-first execution
- The “architect / systems thinker” profile for modern sellers
- A new post-sales model: CSMs → technical GTM Engineers + intervention-led journey
- Using customer journey milestones to drive expansion and prevent churn proactively
- AI in GTM: streamlining manual work so humans focus on better conversations
Episode highlights
00:00 — PLG is about signaling + acquisition (not monetization)
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=0
01:30 — “PLG isn’t the monetization way… it’s layering sales.”
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=90
02:41 — Talent density: hire for the next 12–18 months, not just “today”
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=161
04:50 — The soft skills that scaled Miro: curiosity, coachability, ownership
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=290
08:38 — Why Adam hires “architects” (system thinkers) instead of just sellers
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=518
10:41 — The mindset shift: celebrate value realized, not contracts signed
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=641
15:41 — Replacing CSMs with “go-to-market engineers” + an intervention model
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=941
19:14 — Turning PLG signals into PQA/PQL routing (and reducing the “noise”)
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=1154
29:26 — “100M ARR is late” — when to start layering sales into PLG
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTKFZqIU4Dc&t=1766
Key Takeaways
1. PLG is an acquisition channel (not a monetization strategy).
PLG pulls users in via value. But usage doesn’t equal revenue. Sales should activate when product signals show scale potential, then guide the buyer to value across the org (not just for one team). Treat PLG as the top of the funnel, and treat sales as the conversion layer.
2. The most dangerous PLG myth? That sales is optional.
Apollo crossed $100M ARR without a sales org, but Adam is clear: that was the exception, not the rule. If you’re scaling GTM, don’t wait for $100M. The earlier you start layering in humans to systematize enterprise expansion, the faster you’ll compound.
3. To avoid PLG vs. Sales turf wars, build a one-team model.
At Apollo, growth (self-serve) and sales (human-led) run on shared data, shared account ownership, and one customer journey. When everyone sees the same signals and incentives, there’s no “us vs. them,” it’s just one GTM engine.
4. Slow hiring down to avoid performance debt.
Rushing to hit headcount targets can set you back 12 months. Adam missed hiring goals intentionally to align on what “great” looks like, then built a rigorous process around it. The opportunity cost of bad hires compounds more than you think.
5. Look for “architects.”
The best modern sellers are systems thinkers. They understand (or want to understand) how GTM workflows operate – how pipeline gets created, how enrichment works, how inbound gets routed.
6. Value isn’t delivered at signature, it’s realized through usage.
Many orgs celebrate closed-won. Adam shifts the spotlight to customer milestones – usage, activation, success. Sales gets comped partly on credit consumption. The goal is revenue durability.
7. Apollo is reimagining the customer success function, replacing CSMs with GTM Engineers.
Apollo is reimagining the traditional CS model. Instead, post-sales is handled by technical operators who run intervention-based playbooks triggered by product signals.
8. Product signals are the new GTM operating system.
Apollo maps the customer journey by day 7/14/28 and tracks behavioral signals to trigger human intervention. Whether it’s expansion, rescue, or retention, GTM runs on product data. Signal clarity = execution speed.
Follow Adam Carr
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamhcarr
Referenced
- Apollo:https://www.apollo.io
- Miro:https://miro.com
- Box:https://www.box.com
- Dropbox:https://www.dropbox.com
Follow Sophie Buonassisi (Host)
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi
- Website: https://gtmnow.com/
- Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com
Where to Find GTMnow
- Website: https://gtmnow.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/GTMnow_
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now
- Podcast Directory: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast
GTM 173 Episode Transcript
Adam Carr: 0:00
PLG is all about the right signaling. It’s about acquisition.
Sophie Buonassisi: 0:03
This episode explores how to scale growth and revenue by making PLG and sales reinforce each other instead of competing.
Adam Carr: 0:11
PLG isn’t the monetization the way. To be able to really effectively vikise the lotion, it’s layering sales.
Sophie Buonassisi: 0:19
Today at CRO of Apollo, Adam is applying those lessons to a business that costs 150 million ARR, largely through PLG, which is incredible PLG scale. And in this episode, you’ll learn those lessons. All right, let’s get into it.
Adam Carr: 0:46
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Sophie Buonassisi: 0:48
Absolutely. Now, want to dive in because at Miro, you really scaled from a PLG motion to scaling global sales to a company that was valued at $17.5 billion. And now you’re at Apollo. And you’re really building this go-to-market engine where you’ve got PLG and outbound that are reinforcing each other, not colliding. And so how do you are what are your biggest lessons learned around building these self-serve motions in addition to enterprise sales in a way where they actually actually complement each other as opposed to collide and and kind of cause friction between each other and cannibalize each other?
Adam Carr: 1:30
Yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a great question. It’s something I’m deeply passionate about. For me, you know, uh coming from Murros, you have to deeply respect the PLG motion. And the PLG motion to me is respect the gravity that it has. And one thing that like I truly believe in is that PLG isn’t the monetization uh way. Like to be able to really effectively monetize the motion, it’s layering in sales. So the way I think about it is that PLG is all about the right signaling. It’s about acquisition. And so then when you bring in the sales uh team or the sales approach, you’re now able to take all the signaling and you’re able to now allow the sales org to take advantage of those signaling to drive the right stakeholder alignment in value selling. And so for us, like at Miro specifically, that is what allowed ourselves to accelerate our ability in the marketplace, is that we had this massive demand. We were also able to invest ahead of that from a sales execution perspective.
Sophie Buonassisi: 2:25
Interesting. Super interesting. And I mean, you you certainly accelerated. You went from, I believe, 15 sales reps to over 312 global offices, which is incredible. Like what were the systems, frameworks, mindsets that you held then that you’ve now carried through to Apollo?
Adam Carr: 2:41
Yeah. I think the first thing is um all about talent density. So one thing we spent a lot of time on up on up front was around how do we make sure we not only attract the right talent, but retain that talent, develop that talent. And uh, you know, I learned from uh who I believe is one of the greatest when it comes to hiring. And it was a painful experience during the early days of Miro. But one of the best learning experiences was um underneath the genuine, who was a CRO at the time. And you know, he instilled this like really strong uh discipline around who to hire, when to hire, how to think about the next 12 months and next 18 months. And it it it was it was an incredible opportunity for me to make sure that like that I was honing in on my hiring capabilities. And it, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never hired at the scale or the time, the speed that was needed as we did at Miro. And um, it was constant reviews of interview cycles. And one of the things that is that how do you document the must-haves, the things that you need to have at this point in time that you know that is gonna allow this person to be successful for not just the next 12 months, but 18 months. And also sometimes you hire people that are only gonna be, you know, suitable for the next 12 months or 18 months because the the the evolution of the business is is shifting so fast. So one thing is that we looked at some of the softer skills as well that that allowed ourselves much more confidence of how they could um evolve as well with the company. And it’s um it’s one of the learnings that I apply now at Apollo and how do we think about hiring from the from the from the talent perspective? Because I I believe personally that you can have the the best product, the best process, the best playbooks. But if you don’t have the team and the talent to execute on those, it’s it’s it’s meaningless. Um, and so I was fortunate enough to be part of an incredible talent um, you know, organization at Amiro that we had folks with four plus years of tenure um by the time I left because those folks were hired with the right intent and the right discipline. Um and we were very fortunate to have those people to help us through those years of growth.
Sophie Buonassisi: 4:36
And not to go down too far of a hiring kind of route here, but what were the soft scales? Like, do you have any hidden secrets from how you were building scale? And I think the retention at Miro was incredible, something like over four years. So what’s the secret sauce?
Adam Carr: 4:50
Yeah. I I I I um I think one of the biggest things is just natural curiosity. Like you want folks that are life learners, people that are coming in want to double click, triple check, triple click into like why is that happening? What is, what is, what is, what is, what are the some of the challenges that are in our way? How do I think about that differently? And a lot of the folks have this self-motivation that um they’re very ambitious. And, you know, those that’s what fuels the motivation and drive across the entire organization is like, you know, we’re constantly trying to reinvent ourselves. And this group of individuals were always have this mindset of like, let’s disrupt ourselves before before somebody comes in and disrupts us. Um, but honestly, it comes back to like folks that have, you know, it’s it’s high, I would say high coachability is one. I would say these are all self-starters. These are individuals that have like this entrepreneurial mindset, like folks that have complete ownership and complete accountability of their actions, the things that they’re going after, the the way they look at their business. Um, and the last thing about it is like I would say is that they’re they’re constantly looking, like they don’t care if they have the right answer. They’re looking at others to be able to say, how can we go to conquer this problem together? And so it’s the teamwork that ultimately makes this team work the best. And uh that’s ultimately what I see that if I look back on the folks that we hired, these individuals were not in this alone. It was how do we go accomplish these crazy, these ambitious goals as one collective unit, as one team?
Sophie Buonassisi: 6:09
Mm-hmm. A little intrapreneurial is almost what I’m hearing, an extractor from there, where people are super motivated, maybe operate in the greater mechanism of a company, but they’ve got that in entrepreneurial bug within the company. I love it. Great secret sauce. Okay, and no doubt you’re hiring a lot of people like that at Apollo now, I’m sure.
Adam Carr: 6:27
We are, we are. And like for I would say for like the first, you know, three to four months of my tenure at Apollo, I’ve been at Apollo now for about nine months. Uh, and it was all about hiring. You know, we had an aggressive hiring goal, like, let’s go triple the size of the sales team. I think it was almost about like like adding almost a hundred sales reps. And before we were able to do that, it’s like, let’s take a step back. Like, let’s review what is the hiring process today? What do the interview guys look like? What questions are we asking? What does good look like? How do we grade those questionings? And so uh that’s we spent a lot of time on that early in my time, is because if we’re not all grounded on what good looks like and how we’re evaluating candidates for the right type of characteristics and qualities, then we are all not on the same page. And that’s what I found early on, is that we weren’t all on the same page. And so I slowed down the process. We missed hiring goals. So I was, I was very intentional that I’d rather slow down the process, miss the hiring goals, knowing that we were gonna build the team with higher quality of talent density for what we needed at this time of scale and growth.
Sophie Buonassisi: 7:26
And I’m sure it requires a lot of, you know, management internally to be able to educate everyone around why we’re missing goals and trust the greater process will get there over time.
Adam Carr: 7:35
Yeah. And the funny thing about it is that like, yes, like you’re gonna, you know, it’s hard, it’s a hard discussion to have. It’s one of those things where it’s hard to say that we’re gonna slow things down, but to focus on quality over quantity, I’d rather, I’d rather take the hit now than take the hit a year from now, where you’ve hired a bunch of the folks that are that are not the right individuals. And it doesn’t mean that like these folks can’t be successful in your company at one point in time, but it’s how do we make sure we’re hiring the right individual for the right time period we’re at in the evolution of our company right now? Yeah. And that’s the hardest part is that some folks are really good at this build stage, are really good at operating with ambiguity and not having all the structure, not having all the process. And so that’s why we have to be really careful of like who are the right folks to hire at this time where we’re scaling, we’re implementing new processes. And there’s a lot of things that are necessarily like we call broken, but haven’t been built yet. And so uh those are the type of people that we’re looking for right now.
Sophie Buonassisi: 8:30
I love it. And I’ve heard you say you look more for architects, if you will, than sales reps.
Adam Carr: 8:36
Yes.
Sophie Buonassisi: 8:37
Tell us more about that.
Adam Carr: 8:38
Super passionate about um this this new mindset. But um, I believe in in for us in this future state of selling is all around how do we find folks that think like they’re system thinkers. So folks that actually, and in my space specifically, are are they they have this natural like like inclination to go deeper into what are the go-to-market workflows? Like, how does data enrichment work? How does outbound work? How does inbound work? And how do these workflows help streamline go-to-market motions? And so I’m looking for system thinkers. They may, they don’t have to be experts in this domain, but they actually want to take the time to learn and they’re in their process thinkers. Because the most important thing that we can do for our customers is deeply understand the go-to-market workflows, the manual efforts that are happening today in the in go to market in general. And then how do we apply those broken processes, those manual efforts into our solution, which helps automate and take away a lot of those manual efforts? And that’s not easy to do unless you think in the right way. And so those are the things that we’re looking for as we’re hiring, as we’re scaling right now.
Sophie Buonassisi: 9:39
Mm-hmm. System mindset. I’m sure that’s an interesting, challenging thing to actually vet for.
Adam Carr: 9:44
It is very yeah, it is. And typically we you go towards like, well, let’s go to the folks that actually have go-to-market um, you know, uh tech selling experiences. But that’s that’s that can’t get us to 100 plus reps. And so part of the ownership is on us. It’s like, how are we scaling the foundations from an enablement perspective? So we invested heavily into enablement. And a big reason for that is like it’s our job. If we’re gonna hire the folks that have the right mindset can think in the right ways, how do we now enable them to be able to go position our product, go position the value that we’re selling to our customers in the right manner in the right way?
Sophie Buonassisi: 10:17
Makes sense. Adam, I’d love to go a little bit deeper in your experience from Miro. And we talked about some frameworks, you talked about impact from your CRO and the hiring process and his diligence around hiring. What about the overall actually company building beyond the hiring piece? How did how does that look different or does it look different than how you’re building now at Apollo?
Adam Carr: 10:41
Yeah, I um there are so many things that I felt that we did really, really well at Miro from a scaling perspective on on the sales and investing in the right resources ahead of time. And I would say that we’re we’re mimicking a lot of those. And uh there’s there’s things we’re definitely doing different though at the same time. And so I think the biggest the thing that like we’re driving right now and building is this mindset shift of impact. And so, you know, in a traditional sales environment, it’s like, well, how much net new business can I sell? Um, and you celebrate the contract closing, and that’s when the wind notification goes off. Yeah. But when reality, the celebration should happen once the customer actually realizes value. And and and we’re in, I would view, you know, even I would say at Bureau’s, like, I don’t believe that, you know, we did a good enough job of connecting the dots between what we sold and then ultimately how it got on board, how it got implemented, and the value that was realized as a result of that. And so uh we’re architecting right now the team and how we go to market is, you know, what we what we sell, we then quickly make sure that we’re implementing. And then we realize and we celebrate those moments of of customer post sales, uh, which I think is really important. It’s like, let’s celebrate as much as we do on locking in the contract, getting the initial um ARR booked, but then celebrating those customer milestones of when they start to get excited about the success they’re seeing with the platform.
Sophie Buonassisi: 12:03
And how are you doing that? Are you incentivizing sales reps differently? Like I know at Snowflake, for example, they were partially consumption-based. So they would actually tie comp for sales reps to consumption to align with that success. But I’m curious what you’re doing, if you don’t mind going deeper on the comp side, it’s how are you aligning people?
Adam Carr: 12:22
It’s a great question. And I um we’re early in this. So, like by no means do we have this all figured out. Right. Um, you know, the the beauty of of what we do today, though, is that we have a seat-based motion and a consumption motion. So uh I think that’s the best of both worlds in a lot of ways. And so with there is incentives for our teams to be able to drive consumption of those credits. And so, because if those the faster those credits consume, the faster they’re able to re-up on more credits. And so I think that we have a balance between the two. And we’re early, but I think that the key difference here is the connected tissue between the selling, the onboarding, and then the handoff to the post-sales team. And so to me, the important piece here is how are we architecting the customer journey? And we spent about six months going really deep when I first joined around the customer journey. And how do we map out the first, like, you know, user signs up on the PLG motion to what is the point where we want to recognize this as a is that we actually captured the account. This is a new logo for our business. And how do we actually get to the end where it’s fully standardized and the customer is an end-to-end workflow within Apollo? And understanding all the different milestones of the customer throughout every step of the journey helps the teams map back to where are we trying to optimize? What areas are we seeing fall off? How do we start to drive better influence in the specific areas that are going to influence the customer at that right time and where they’re at in that journey with us?
Sophie Buonassisi: 13:41
That I mean, incredible. That makes sense. And you went from owning sales at Nero to now a CRO at Apollo owning multiple teams. So how do how are you able to actually influence that more now sitting in the CRO seat?
Adam Carr: 13:55
Yeah. So I I um this is probably the the most uh you know exciting part now because you know, before I only owned the sales function at Nero and helping scale that. And now owning overarching revenue is is a is is a unique opportunity for me. And I view it as uh really exciting. So I can take all the learnings and all the things that I’ve seen and things that have worked really well and things that I would even try to do differently. Um one area that we’re really uh focusing on is this post-sales um, you know, uh yeah, area of of Apollo. And uh, you know, the more traditional way of thinking about this is customer success. And the way that we’re reframing this is that like we’re not gonna have any customer success managers anymore. Um, so there’ll be no more CSMs, but instead they’ll be called go-to-market engineers. I know this is a buzzy word and it’s something that you’re hearing in the market, but I actually truly believe in it. And I believe in this like this this engineering mindset for go-to-market. And uh so what we’re what we’re what we have is these technical individuals. So think of them more like pre-sales SCs, but now they’re on the post-sale side and they own relationships, but we’re we’re creating this intervention model. And what I what I mean by that is that we, because of the customer journey and how we’ve laid out all the steps, we know what should happen when you onboard a customer in the first seven days. What does the next seven days look like? What does the first 28 days look like? What signals do we see that are either positive or negative? And how do we interject the human as well as digital components into that motion to help our customers get back on track? Or if they’re way ahead and it’s really positive, how do we interject sales in the right way to know, hey, they’re growing at faster clips than what we’ve seen? Let’s make sure that we’re helping lean in even more so. And so that’s what we’re architecting right now. And I believe that’s what puts us in control of what can influence both expansion as well as minimize any sort of churn or lack of value realization happening in the motion.
Sophie Buonassisi: 15:41
So you’re removing CSMs.
Adam Carr: 15:43
So there’s so we are repurposing the mindset of a CSM is the way I say this. So I believe in the value of the post-sales function, but we’re making these folks much more um technical enabled. So the mindset is like deeply understanding go-to-market workflows and understanding how our product maps into those workflows. And so then we can have a very much more deeper understanding of the challenges that they’re facing and how to architect the right solution via using Apollo in the right way that actually drives impact. And that’s where we’re measuring everyone is what is the impact that you’re driving with this customer? And impact can be looked at credit consumption, impact, impact can be looking at more pipeline being created for our customers, more meetings, but ultimately what it’ll get to is more revenue.
Sophie Buonassisi: 16:28
Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, it’s incredible actually, because we’re moving the the resource that we once placed on this initial sale from the kind of pre-sales perspective all the way through to the customer. We’re just continuously getting closer and closer to the customer and success for the customer, which is incredible.
Adam Carr: 16:46
And that’s what I like it. It’s all around impact. How are we driving impact with the actions and activities that we’re doing? And so uh so yes, it’s it’s it’s a fun journey we’re on right now because I believe we’re what you know, we’re pioneering a new way of thinking about our the post-sales motion and how do you make it um effective as far as where folks are spending their time and energy and not just focusing it for like, you know, you know, QBRs for the sake of running QBRs?
Sophie Buonassisi: 17:09
Right. I haven’t heard of anyone actually architecting like that. So we’re super curious to see how it all unfolds and see how you’re building it. Did you know you build it that way when you entered Apollo, or was this something once you were in that you thought, hey, this is this has got to be the way that we bought it?
Adam Carr: 17:24
You know, it’s it’s a good question. I I would say this is much more coming in with like a first principle mindset of like, yeah, how would we build this for our customers within our category, with our product? And where are we seeing things fall off? And what we realize is that our product is like in some ways like complex, like you could call it, because there’s so many things you can do with inside Apollo. You can do from data enrichment to outbound to inbound to deal execution. I mean, we’re in all in one platform. And the hardest part is how do you how do you simplify all the different use cases? And so one thing that we’ve realized is how do we mechanize this from an intervention perspective so that we know what is working, what drives the best value for our customers. And so that’s what we’re spending a lot of time on. And that’s when it clicked for me is oh, well, now we can realize how do we make sure that our teams are focusing on the highest value activities? And we should be able to see that in the data through the customer journey that we worked on.
Sophie Buonassisi: 18:17
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That that is incredible. I’m really excited about this model. I think that there will be many companies that adopt this after you.
Adam Carr: 18:24
Yeah, I’m I’m excited too. And I think there’s lots of learnings. Like, again, by no means are we experts at this. Uh, we’re very much in the early phases of building out the infrastructure and the call to actions. But like we we firmly believe like this is the future. And uh this is how you should shift from like a reactive mindset in regards to how you support your customers to a proactive. And so just to maybe say it in a different way, like, you know, we we shouldn’t be sitting back waiting for you to come to us with a question, with a support inquiry. Like we should see through data, through signaling that you actually need our help. And so that’s that mindset shift that is also happening from uh how we architect the system as well.
Sophie Buonassisi: 19:03
And how does that fit into the greater kind of PLG and sales motion, like overarching space? How does that fit into the overarching go-to-market motion?
Adam Carr: 19:14
Yeah, I think I think it fits into the PLG very well because if you think about product led, it’s all about having like a you get a ton of product level insights and analytics. And so you you deeply understand the the analytics and how the how the users are using your product in which ways. And that now we’re using the same type of signals that that our product teams are using to drive that PLG flywheel, but then now reverse engineering that to see cool, how are we helping our customers be able to be set up for success at scale? And so the DNA is in within the organization already because we’ve been doing that for numbers of years. I mean, when this business was over $100 million at ARR only through PLG with very little sales, you know, we call it rep driven revenue. And so now it’s an opportunity to flip that upside down and say, cool, how do we take what worked really well from our product? product led perspective, bring in this sales excellence, but I call it revenue excellence because it’s not just what the sales team does. It’s how does the overarching revenue team align on the greatness of product led from a signaling perspective to then take that to drive the right high, high value activities within these accounts. And it’s hard because it can get really noisy. And that’s one of the hardest things with PLG is that there’s so much noise happening within these accounts. How do you know where to focus your time and energy? And that’s part of just getting smarter with how we’re establishing PQLs, which is product qualified accounts, um I’m sorry, PQAs, product qualified accounts, and then PQLs, which is product qualified leads, we have to get smarter on what signals that we’re using to start to trigger those actions. And that’s what will then route to the humans to be able to then take action.
Sophie Buonassisi: 20:44
And that’s where to go way back to the beginning, but that’s where that PLG and enterprise motion really intersect.
Adam Carr: 20:51
Yes. Yes. And I I think there’s like lots of ways for us to get smarter with how we’re using AI to be able to continue to filter out the signaling and how does the signaling then relate to the right account, to the right persona and then with the right message, using all AI to be able to do all of that behind the scenes, looking at what is working across our entire account base and all our outreach and all of our close one data to then fuel that to the team. So the team, we can have a higher level of confidence of the actions of the team is taking that we believe will convert at the highest rates. And that’s both again on this on the sales side it’s how we think about onboarding and it’s how we think about our post-sales motion too.
Sophie Buonassisi: 21:27
How do you operationalize that if you think about in top two how Apollo uses AI I heard a lot there, but if you were to distill it down to a few kind of key actionable areas.
Adam Carr: 21:37
Yeah. I think the biggest thing is like AI has got to be part of the like the the DNA in the in like how you operate. Yeah. And it just can’t be like a silo. And I think part of it is that everyone says oh like even AI and products is like oh it’s just add-on. It’s like it’s got to come across the entire system. And to be honest, like you know, we call it Apollo and Apollo. Like we have to be the best at our own product. True. And and part of that is like how are we using our product to be able to streamlate our outbound efforts. And so that’s how we use it to be honest within our day-to-day efforts is that we’re using Apollo. We’re using Apollo to drive our outbound motion. And when I think about how we’re using AI in other ways, like we’re really big on using conversational intelligence to be able to help us look at and score and understand like how are these conversations happening? What signals are we hearing from our customers? How are we hearing our reps? What are the best reps doing? How do we take those characteristics of those reps to be able to apply those to our enablement program so that we can start to refine that to know that our confidence level of training and and and development of our teams is going to continue to go higher and higher.
Sophie Buonassisi: 22:37
Yeah. And what about you personally? Do you have any favorite AI use cases?
Adam Carr: 22:41
Ah that’s a good question. I um so I’m I’m I’m big on like using like uh so for example like I I use ChatGPT uh I I think they’re all great in their own way and I um but I I have a project and I have a project for myself and I feed it everything. And I think this is like the thing that I it’s a love-hate relationship because I I love using it in in ways that I feed it information and I feed it information because it helps me um refine my thinking. But it’s one of my biggest peppes is when I actually see you can just tell things are written in AI. Yeah. And and and that’s the part that I I I you know I wish folks slowed down a little bit more and like didn’t just feed something one prompt and then take it and then put it into a document and say, hey, here’s the the finished um outcome of that. But it’s like let’s refine that and put that in your own words. And I think that’s where there’s a huge opportunity right now is like humanizing those efforts. But I’m a firm believer in like I don’t I don’t believe like AI will like I you know totally transform the way that like selling happens. What and what I mean by that is I don’t believe AI is going to eliminate the the need for sellers or even SDRs in that way. What I what I believe is that AI will help streamline a lot of the manual tasks. So I believe all the manual tasks that the SDRs or AEs would have to go do will now be streamlined. So then an AE and SDR can actually just focus on the the human element of that, which is like okay, is this the right message? Does this resonate? How do I focus on the quality of conversation so that we can get better at discovery. So all the work leading up to that is what we’re trying to automate and so that we can have our teams focus on running better quality conversations.
Sophie Buonassisi: 24:13
Yeah it is uh it feels a little bit funny to say that AI is making everything more human, but in a way it is it’s bringing humanizing sales to another degree.
Adam Carr: 24:25
It is it is and I I I firmly believe that and I think that that’s a big part of how we’re going to market too and how we’re helping our customers like democratize the complexity of go to market is like how do you bring the best of both worlds together. Yes. And I think that’s the level of like where we’re at right now from maturity perspective. Maybe it changes in 10, 10, 15 years from now that like you’ll have robots calling you and you’ll actually want to engage with them. But like I think we’re far away from that.
Sophie Buonassisi: 24:50
Very, very true. Yeah we could be eating our words in quite a few years but it sounds like the commonality between everything is best of both worlds. Like you said the human aspect, the AI aspect, same thing with the PLG motion, enterprise outbound and sales motion like really meaning in the middle seems to kind of be that that sweet spot for you.
Adam Carr: 25:06
It is the sweet spot. And I think the, you know, I get a question a lot even internally is like you know, no, how is AI going to change our organizational structure? How is AI going to change the jobs that we have? And I I view as like I believe view people as as at the center of it all. And that’s why I come back to the same concept of like we have the best playbooks, the best processes, the best product, but you got other people. Yeah. And so like you know, yes, will we become smarter with how we deal with support? Yes, will we become smarter with how we can do account research and better messaging that based upon relevance of signals that we get through the system 100%. But you’re going to still need that human piece of the puzzle. And I I just believe that humans want to interact with humans at the end of the day. And so but we need to equip our humans to be the best they possibly be with the right context, the right information to be able to have the best you know conversations at the end of the day, whether it’s support, whether it’s sales, whether it’s post sales, whether it’s coaching uh all those pieces how do you tee up the right level of relevance uh to make those conversations as effective as possible.
Sophie Buonassisi: 26:02
There’s this question that people often ask around the debate of remote versus in office work and it’s would you rather your competitor be working in office or remote? Most people say rather than be remote. And there you have it there’s your answer right there oftentimes I feel like it there’s the same thing in a way. Would you rather your competitor be using AI to talk to your prospect or talk to them directly as a human. I we’d rather them talk to them as a robot. We don’t want them to talk as a human. So there’s still your competitive edge there. Yes. Even though we do have the capabilities oftentimes to leverage AI to do stuff yeah and I think it it’s all about the right time at the right place.
Adam Carr: 26:37
And um you gotta meet your customers where they want to be and I think there’s there’s multiple different mediums to make that happen. So it doesn’t mean that sometimes you don’t want to just talk to a chat that you know you can get to the quick answer. But there’s a certain point in time you want to trigger that. And I think that’s part of what we’re learning right now is what is that trigger? How do we you know for this we don’t do too much AI for the sake of AI. And that kind of comes back to my one of my pet peeves is like you know using AI to to generate you know strategy or content, even though you’re influencing it but like you you the human element is still needed.
Sophie Buonassisi: 27:05
Yeah a hundred percent and now Apollo got to over a hundred million ARR PLG motions cell sermonly.
Adam Carr: 27:13
Yep.
Sophie Buonassisi: 27:14
What does this next stage look like?
Adam Carr: 27:16
Yeah I uh the next stage is leveraging the power of PLG. And um I spoke about this a little bit earlier it’s just it’s just the gravity of this PLG motion and this flywheel that we have in place as it’s an acquisition model. And so now now it’s our opportunity to bring in this like let’s call it revenue excellence um into the equation of how do we actually now capture and monetize the massive flywheel we have of the acquisition of PLG. And it starts with like using PLG as as signals. At the end of the day we have a ton of signals individual users uh you know multiple teams how do we take those signals how do we aggregate that up so that our sales teams can actually take the signals take the information and context and develop a strategy to align stakeholders of those organizations. And by aligning those stakeholders you can actually position value appropriately. And that’s the job now is like we can take the signaling which is the bottoms up motion, understand what’s happening from an end user, multiple teams and then now layer in the tops down. And the tops down to where is where the sales comes into play, building out the proper business cases more that traditional mindset of of enterprise sales or uh you know non-plg sales. And that’s what gets me excited. That’s what got me excited you know going to Miro. And it dates back just like for some context like, you know, I was at box when there was the Dropbox and box. And for me I was like wow like what if these two companies just had that same you know motion where you can leverage the bottoms up but then go tops down. And like and that’s what we built at Miro and that’s what we’re building here at Apollo. And I I’m super excited about it because I believe we’re uniquely positioned in this marketplace where there’s not that much technology out there, especially in the go-to-market space that’s at our scale that has this this massive product led flywheel. And so that’s what’s going to be really interesting for us of of layering an outbound appropriately within the organization to be able to scale the uh sales organization.
Sophie Buonassisi: 29:06
So over 100 million AR from a PLG motion is that the right number that startups should be thinking about as they look to transition into more of a sales led motion too is there a number that you’d recommend companies to start building the dual motion or is it very dependent between each company?
Adam Carr: 29:26
I I that’s a great question. I would say we’re very late to the game on the human element. I would say it’s it’s pretty remarkable that we’re well past I mean we announced this you know like I think almost five months ago that we surpassed 150 million in revenue and um I would argue that like you know we should be way further ahead of the game than we are now. And I think that’s what’s interesting is like for a company that’s already at over 100 million that is predominantly you know product led, that you know we’re now just building out the the foundations of it this like sales led motion. Now there’s been salespeople here for for a while, but the scale and the level investments has been and not the same that it could be. And I think that’s what’s interesting is like that’s the opportunity now. And so I would going back to your question of like when is the right time I I’m way earlier than 100 million. Uh you know and I think it’s I don’t know if there’s like an actual figure is it like five million, 10 million like you know I remember when I started at Miro like you know I think we were right around like 10 million of um of ARR overall and um very very little of that was human led um and that I think it was almost like you know two million like plus or minus here is a long time ago. But the point there is that like you know even then like you know I think that they could have accelerated even earlier with the with the rep-driven type of mindset and the human mindset of like how do you actually scale it because it takes time. And I think that’s part of it like building the right infrastructure to support the uh a sales org to be able to do it in the right way with the right messaging, the rolling out the right processes like, you know, we you know in both places now, you know I’ve been part of like you know relanding you know the sales process like implementing our qualification framework, which we in both places we’ve used MedPIC. And then our our sales methodology is force management and command of the message. And so those things take time to build properly and to align the entire company because a lot of times you know you know I feel that companies fail by by rolling these out when it’s just a sales thing. It’s got to be an entire company mindset of how that works and how does that align to the customer journey. How does product think about that? So I I would say the earlier the better, but I think you have to make sure you have product market fit appropriately. And I always think it’s important to have a few folks early on really incubating and testing the zero to one when it comes to how does the human intervention apply to the product led set.
Sophie Buonassisi: 31:35
Great advice. And you mentioned you’re now over 150 million which is incredible. Congratulations how do you ensure that that flywheel of PLG of sales are not pitted against each other we touched on parts of that but how do you really get the mechanics of the flywheel working yeah yeah so yeah we’re significantly over 150 um and to me it’s like this one team mindset.
Adam Carr: 31:58
I think it’s really important is like you have to align like in our world like the growth team right now is is the owner of the self-service like let’s call bucket um and the acquisition side of things. And so you have to think about okay how do you align the product let’s call it the PQAs or PQLs and that’s like that’s all around the growth flywheel. And so it comes back to the journey. And I think if you do not understand like okay the role of the self-service side is like how do we acquire these new users or teams? How do we go from free to paid? Like there’s a whole funnel and that and and that funnel is where you start to really understand the levers that you can pull. And the only way to do that is when you have joint alignment between the both the self-serve side and the human side. And the human side I call that is like the rep-driven side or high touch side, however you want to frame it, but you all have to align on the ultimate goals and where the handoffs happen. And in some cases you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re building one up as you’re taking from it. And that’s where it can feel a little bit competitive. And one of the funniest things that I that I see is in our closed loss reasonings, you always see in this product led and in in sales led motion or product product led sales coming together is the biggest competitor is self-serve. And I think it’s so fundamentally flawed when you view your competitor as self-serve because self-serve it’s like a love-hate relationship in some cases because it’s like well I’m losing a self-serve because there’s not enough differentiation between the plan types. But that’s what’s that’s what the beauty of it is is that you want to unlock the value through usage. And then you want to monetize on top of that. Once there’s enough value realizing happening is like how do you then unlock value as you scale your product across multiple teams, across organizations, et cetera. And so I think that’s the that’s the really interesting you know problem that we’re we’re so trying to solve is like how do you make sure all sides look at it in the right way from the right lens because it depends upon what role you have.
Sophie Buonassisi: 33:50
Yeah. And I’m sure a lot of that comes down to incentives like we talked about earlier.
Adam Carr: 33:55
Yes, exactly. And ultimately like it’s how you set your goals. And for me it’s like that’s why we got to focus on like how do you create extreme clarity that that’ll help you get to the like the truth of like what actually matters and then it allows you to drive accountability across your function. And so those are the things that we’re looking at is how do we set proper goaling? How do we march toward those goals? And it and for us we use an OKR planning process to make that happen. And that’s what helps unify the whole team together and creates clarity as well of like okay great this these are the North Star goals. How do we mechanize the teams, the the the the the reports that we look at to be able to help go drive those outcomes.
Sophie Buonassisi: 34:30
Mm-hmm a system. Just like they’re building yeah exactly systems across different scale.
Adam Carr: 34:35
Yep.
Sophie Buonassisi: 34:35
And I mean you you’ve got the systems mindset yourself. Are there a lot of books that have influenced you throughout your life career it’s a good question.
Adam Carr: 34:45
I I I know it’s funny I think that like a lot of what’s influenced me has just been through leaders that I’ve worked for and um and worked for and around. And so like I’m just someone that’s constantly learning and trying to understand like oh that’s interesting. Like so it’s really pulling from the the experiences prior and the learnings but like you know a lot of this too is pulling from the team. And so that’s one of the things that comes back to like like hiring and talent and you know you have to hire people that are smarter than you in many different areas and experts that do you know their own domains. And so that’s a part I think what makes this such a special you know environment that we’re operating in now at Apollo and at Miro and other companies that it’s the team that we’re surrounding ourselves by. And and everybody has a level of expertise which allows us to come up with these fresh ideas and ways of looking at things. And like one good example of that like we were talking about recently is like this concept of like scorecards. Scorecards, everyone knows what a scorecard is, but we’re instrumenting it in way that I actually haven’t seen done before. And it’s like you know we have ultimate high level productivity which we call L1. And it could be like as simple as like you know um ARR per employee, for example. But then it’s like the L2 metrics are like efficiencies. It’s like ratios or conversion rates and then L3 metrics are like activity metrics. And so like they all influence one another but we’re actually taking that concept and applying it through the whole like like like go to market organization. And that’s helpful because then we can look at all the roles in organization to find out what is working, what isn’t working and it kind of comes back to like how are we architecting the system to work for us so that we can actually be in control of the business.
Sophie Buonassisi: 36:17
I love it. I love it. Well I can’t wait to see what the future has in store here as you continue to build you’ve gone from 100 to 150 and no doubt we’ll be celebrating another milestone soon.
Adam Carr: 36:27
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah there’s a lot of interesting things I think that you know part of this I love like you know hearing from the podcast too of like how others have done it. And I think there’s so many ways and things that we’re we’re actually doing because of other folks before that you’ve had another podcast ad that like we’re able to learn from as well.
Sophie Buonassisi: 36:42
That’s the goal democratize access to insight from people who have been there and done that. So thank you for joining us today. This has been fantastic.
Adam Carr: 36:49
Yeah thank you for having me.
Sophie Buonassisi: 36:50
Absolutely
