a16z Podcast: Embracing Sales

The a16z Show

a16z

Software Eating The World, Technology, Innovation, Science, Disruption, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2015

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Companies founded by a group of engineers often have a deep-seated mistrust of sales -- or more precisely, salespeople. That was the case at GitHub, says CEO and co-founder Chris Wanstrath: It wasn't until their customers started asking for a sales o...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland.
0:03.0	And I'm here in the Situation Room at GitHub here in San Francisco with co-founder and CEO of GitHub,
0:10.0	Chris Wonstroth, and Peter Levine from Andrewson Horowitz, who is also on the board of GitHub.
0:16.0	Welcome, guys.
0:17.0	Thank you.
0:18.0	Hello. Yes. Thanks for having to me.
0:19.0	We want to talk about sales. And GitHub, it may as come as some surprise, actually has a sales organization.
0:26.6	So, Chris, I want to sort of back up and get into why you guys built a sales team, because
0:33.6	at the beginning is my understanding there was not so much love for building a sales team.
0:39.3	Sure.
0:40.3	The simple answer is our customers told us to.
0:43.3	We are our customer-focused company.
0:45.3	We believe in feedback.
0:46.3	We are a product company.
0:48.3	We build things for the people using it.
0:49.3	And for a long time, we didn't have a sales team,
0:51.3	and we were resistant to the idea.
0:53.3	I think now we have a lot better understanding of what a sales team is and why you would use
0:58.6	one and need one at a company.
0:59.8	And a lot of that came to us through our customers.
1:01.9	So let me back up then.
1:03.2	Why do you think you were resistant at the beginning?
	...

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