Scaled MongoDB From $35M to $2B - Why He HATES the Word Playbook

Speaker A: Was it as simple as picking up that playbook of execution at MongoDB and just dropping it into.

Speaker B: I actually hate the term playbook. It implies that it's a process that goes with you from company to company. It's exactly the same and you just follow it and you're going to be successful. The reality is that's not what it is.

Speaker C: Today we welcome Dan Barrett, SVP of International at ah, figma. In this episode we talk about how the playbook is being applied in both PLG and consumption models.

Speaker B: My journey at Mongo is a little bit like a stock ticker. If you zoom out far enough, it looks like up and to the right on a daily basis. It was like this. You have good days, you have bad days. It was really hard and obviously lots of learnings. I wasn't being authentic as a leader. The epiphany moment for me was things started clicking for me when I realized that I could only be the best version of me I could be. One of my reps said to me, the reason that we like, work hard is not because we're scared of you, is because we don't want to let you down. And it was like this kind of like m moment. You don't have to intimidate people to drive accountability.

Speaker C: Today we welcome Dan Barrett, uh, SVP of International at figma. In this episode we talk about Dan's remarkable journey from the origin story from Mongo and how he's evolved into becoming one of the most revered leaders in software sales. In this episode we explore how the Playbook is being applied in both PLG and consumption models. We talk about his epiphany moment when, where it all changed for him. And we explore how his breakthrough in authenticity was a turning point for him in his career. This is his playbook. Today's episode is sponsored by Auracel. Intelligently automate every aspect of your sales cycle with the first AI native full stack GTM platform. Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns. I'm Simon Koutis and I'm joined by my co host, Ollie Kune.

Speaker A: Welcome back to the show everyone.

Speaker C: And it's with great pleasure, uh, that we welcome Dan Barrett. Dan, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Great to be here. That was that actually it was a miraculous transformation from. We're just sitting out of a conversation. You came into character. That was actually wonderful to see. It was, it was some something to behold.

Speaker A: You should be on a game show.

Speaker C: By way of an introduction, you are SVP International at figma.

Speaker B: That is correct.

Speaker C: Uh, very, very exciting project and we're looking to. Looking forward to hearing much more about that. But Dan, the reason we're so excited to have you here is because you've been through such an incredible journey. Your career is illustrious. You know, it's. You are revered in our industry,

Speaker B: but

Speaker C: there were some real highs and lows as part of that journey. And you reflect back on kind of a real epiphany moment. And I just want to start right at that point. So take us to that moment where it all changed for you.

Speaker B: Uh, well, firstly, thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here. Long overdue, may I say, but it's.

Speaker A: It's great to have 100% and it's. And, and there is a backstory to this as well.

Speaker C: We'll get to that.

Speaker A: Which we will get on to.

Speaker B: It's not quite as exciting as it sounds, but there is a backstory.

Speaker A: We owe a lot to you though. That's the thing. And we'll tell you more about that.

Speaker B: Means I might get a hat this time. Time. Definitely getting there. So, yeah. So I joined MongoDB in August 2015 as uh, as an RD to run the UK. Previous, uh, to that I worked at ServiceNow for four years, firstly as a rep. I got promoted to be a leader in my last year. So I had the grand total of nine months of leadership experience when I joined Mongo. And uh, and I, I honestly, I thought at that time I was like God's gift to sales leadership. I'd like, got figured out nine months under my belt. I, like, I was, I was, I was ready to go. And then I started talking to. It was actually Joe Morrissey that, um, that recruited me.

Speaker A: Yeah, we spoke to him last week.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, and um, so it was Joe and Carlos. So my interview process was a couple of times with Joe, uh, it was Carlos and then Dave. My final thing was with financial was Dave. Wow. And um, and when I first started talking to. I mean, to cut a long story short, I joined Mongo to join, to um, learn my craft as a sales leader. I realized during the interview process that actually I knew very little about sales leadership. And um, you know, ServiceNow was a great company, but it didn't have, ah, a great structure at that time around sales leadership and in building the skills I needed. So I joined, uh, to really learn my craft as a sales leader. And so I came in. So, uh, I worked for Joe, uh, who then Carlos. Uh, and at that time my peers were like Jesse Green, who's now CRO at Rubrik. Um, there was a smaller mighty team, um, of RDS. Uh, every QBR I did was with Dave, who was the CEO. He's left now, uh, John McMahon. I did, I did 16 straight QBRs with John McMahon. So it was like a baptism of fire. Right? Like you come in and so you come into like, you know, this room. You've got all of these like big personalities. There's a lot of people that came from BMC knew the playbook down. Um, you, uh, know there was, there was also a lot of like similar leadership styles. Quite big personalities. Um, and it's uh, quite intimidating when you first go into leadership and when you first join a new company, you're like, yeah, I'm sure you've had plenty of guests talk about this before. You have this sort of imposter syndrome. But for me it wasn't really imposter syndrome. I didn't really suffer from like a lack of confidence. But I think the biggest thing was like, um, trying to figure out who you are as a leader. And it's very easy when you're early in sales leadership to try and imitate somebody else. And so you see it all the time. Two things. One, they try and be someone they're not, and two, they forget all the things that made them successful in the first place. But the first thing was like the epiphany for me and the early days of Bongo were really hard. We used to joke we were selling insurance for free software because it was like at that point it was open source. We didn't have like a SaaS product. We were selling basically, uh, support and uh, warranty and a little bit of tooling for an open source product that no one really thought was like mission critical workloads. So it was, it was really hard at that, at that point. And um, and you're surrounded by all these big personalities and you know, to you, I often say it's a little bit like my journey at Mongo is a little bit like a stock ticker. It like reflects the Mongo stock ticker. If you zoom out far enough, it looks like up and to the right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: On a daily basis it was like this. You have good days, you have bad days. It was like, you know, it was, it was, it was really hard. And um, you know, obviously lots of learnings and um, the epiphany moment for me just to like cut to the. I guess the, the, the punchline was things started clicking for me when I realized that I could only be the best version of me I could be, but I think I wasn't being authentic, uh, as a leader. And I, and the like the sort of pin drop moment or that kind of moment, M. Was actually one of my reps, uh, said to me once, I can't remember what the context was, but they said to me, um, you know, we, we paraphrasing a little bit, but like, the reason that we like work hard is not because we're scared of you, is because we don't want to let you down. And it was like this kind of like moment. I was like, you, uh, know, just like, you don't, you don't have to like intimidate people, you know, or you don't have to drive accountability. People don't have to be scared of you. They just need to be bought in to you, to the mission, to the standards of excellence, to like, what you're trying to drive. And I think at the moment I stopped trying to be somebody else and start being myself, that was like, the point of which I don't know. I think subconsciously you take the pressure off yourself, you stop second guessing your own, like, gut instinct. And I'm like, very instinctive about a lot of things. Like in an interview, I, you know, I, I pretty much make my mind up in the first 10 or 15 minutes and then I use the rest of the time to validate my, my gut. And over time I've learned to trust my gut more and more. And I think that was like, where that, as a, as a young leader, where that like, friction came in where you, you're sort of overriding your gut and what you think is the right thing to do because you're second guessing yourself or like, well, what, you know, what would Carlos do? Or what would, yeah. What would Joe do? Or what would Don do or whatever. And so, um, you know, I think that was like the, one of the big, um, you know, epiphanies for me. And now like, I would, I would tell you that I think, um, you know, authenticity as a leader and vulnerability are like superpowers for leadership, you know.

Speaker C: So before you had that epiphany moment, right? What were you dealing with? What were, what was, what was. What were you feeling in that moment before that?

Speaker B: I think it's just like pressure, isn't it? You know, you're, um, you know, these environments at these stages can be, uh, very high pressure. There's very high, um, expectations to recruit, to recruit well, for, to, you know, to drive pg, to hit the numbers to be accurate on your forecast. Um, and at that stage, you know, like, we're going to come on to this, like, word playbook company. But I think at that stage, we actually didn't have a playbook. We didn't have really a repeatable path to success. We were still figuring a lot of stuff out at that stage. And so there is a lot of pressure. Um, you know, there's a lot of people that. There's very few people actually that made it from those early days through to, you know, four or five years later.

Speaker A: Yeah. Nine years. Nearly 10 years.

Speaker B: 35 million to 2 billion. I did.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker B: Um, which was.

Speaker A: I'd like to take it back to the. You know, you mentioned this. You know, your experiences with running QBRs with John McMahon. Take us back to that point and, you know, you're in your first QBR and how. What was going through your head and how well it worked and what was the outcome to that.

Speaker B: The first ones, always the first ones. You would get a pass on the first one.

Speaker A: Right. Okay. Second then.

Speaker B: Um, I mean, I. My. My honest reflection on. On looking back at those times was just now with, like, perspective was just like the learning from it. I learned so much, uh, from some incredible leaders. Um, you know, Joe, Carlos, John, uh, Don, Cedric, uh, were like. I mean, I worked basically. I worked for Joe for under a year, then I worked for Dom for four years. Then I worked for Cedric for five years. I know you've had Cedric on.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, on the, uh, on the show. I don't know if you've had Don on.

Speaker A: We've haven't had Don. We've had Dave on. We've had Cedric. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, so I work for some, like, incredible leaders, and so my biggest thing was just like, was like the learnings. Um, I learned so much. Uh, and the stories, the, like, the stories that. That, you know, like from the hard times. You know, like, you just, you. You look back at those m. Uh, you know, some of John's stories, like Gray Boy, the Cat, um, and Carrots. Like, you know, there's all these, like, there's all these little stories and if you. If you like, if, you know, you know, like, it's one of those kind of things.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um. And, uh, yeah, it was a scary. You know, it was a pretty scary place to be. It was like, unforgiving. Um, uh, but also amazing, you know, like an amazing learning experience. So that's what. That's. When I look back, was just like the learnings really was the biggest takeaway.

Speaker C: The intensity of that environment was quite well documented. And you can see how you wanting to change your way could have been quite difficult if you weren't allowed the space. So what did you have to fight through to allow yourself the space? Because I imagine, you know, you're having to take a different approach. So just, just talk to us about that transition.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, um, I'm not sure how conscious it was, um, but I think it comes from like a confidence point of view. I think the point of which you stop trying to be somebody else and you start trusting your gut and start making decisions were like with conviction suddenly you know, I started to become more successful and you get more feedback and so there becomes this like virtuous, you know, virtuous, um, kind of circle where you start making better decisions. I think the whole like, um. One thing I will say is like, you know, I think the, these type of companies have a reputation. It's somewhat based on truth and somewhat based on like folklore. Right. Um, and so you know, I think yes, it was an, you know it was an intense place but some of the stories you hear, it's just like it wasn't it, you know, it wasn't true. Um, so yes, I think um, it was intense, but it was intense because we're all on a mission to, to get better and like to do hard things is, is hard. Right. Like you know, if you want to do something amazing, nothing in life that's worth just truly having is easy. And um, Cedric used to say this thing of like um, you know, fast success, breeze ego and slow success builds character. And so you know, I think, you know, look at, you know, over nine years. It was like a lot of character building moments. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, so reflecting on

Speaker C: that environment and bringing it to kind of the modern world. The industry's changed so much and you currently find yourself at ah, Figma, which Lightning in a Bottle. The PLG motion was kind of exceptional. Really intrigued to understand whether there was a clash of cultures or how you've been able to embrace where you are today and actually the background and how and the marriage of the two. Really intrigued to just go after that and talk a little bit about that. So tell us a little bit about your journey to Figma and um, how you've grappled with some of that.

Speaker B: Yeah, so um, I mean firstly what I would say is um, you know Mongo actually ended up being a blend of both. Like when I started it was like purely top down. Then we launched Atlas, which was more of a product LED motion. And so we had the marriage of both. Um, and we can talk about that later in terms of, you know, the, the different things that we did. Um, but yeah, as you say, Figma, um, has been wildly successful, was wildly successful effectively from like a single product which is Figma design, which is what most people know is best for um, you know, pretty much built a billion dollar business, um, with a, with an incredibly strong product, LED motion, amazing practitioner like customer love. We genuinely have multiple customers that have Figma tattoos. I'm pretty sure we never had any Mongo customers with Mongo tattoos. I'm not sure, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. Um, and so, but the thing is, uh, two things changed. One is as we started to release more products and became more of a platform, not all of those products were as viral and uh, some of them required more of a top down sale. Uh, also in order to sell a platform, sometimes those things become more of a top down decision. And so our world changed. We became more of a platform that required us to get wider and higher in our accounts. Uh, and then obviously the world has changed quite a lot in the last 12 to 18 months with AI changing the way that people build software. So like the external market has kind of changed a lot. And so you know, really what I spent a lot of time thinking about is like how do you marry the. Because it's not like one's bad and one's good. It's like actually the magic is how you can bring both together. So how do you have a top down that's bottoms up? How do you, how do you, how do you, how do you.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, how do you have a great bottoms up motion? Uh, but combine that with the best of like sales led and you know, what's gone before isn't bad. Like it was actually amazing as what's got us here. It's like how do we build on that as a foundation and marry together the best of both worlds? Because I think if that uh, if you can do that, that's how you really can unlock the most amount of value.

Speaker C: Where have you seen this being done wrong? Because I think there's a. Yeah, that's the question. How, how should you not do this?

Speaker B: There's a few things. One is, you know, lose sight of like customer centricity. So you know, at the end of the day the customer is the center of everything we do and if we have happy customers that are getting value from what we do, that's why the product was viral because customers got value from it and they loved it. And so, you know, where, where I have seen things go wrong in the past is where you're optimizing for like the comp plan and not for the customer. Uh, and so, but I think in general, if you, if you put the customer at the beginning, at the, the heart of everything you do, this is me coming back to my, you know, my brief foray into running customer success as well. Uh, it's like, it's good for me. You know, it's good, good for every sales leader to, to see the other side. Um, so I think that's, that's one thing. Um, I think trying it be one or the other, like, oh, we're just going to throw out product LED and now we're going to be sales LED or vice versa. It doesn't work. Like, you have to, you have to bring both to the same thing of just like, oh, we'll just, you know, you see this, you saw this whole thing. I mean, slack, I think slack with the first one. We don't need salespeople. Eventually they needed sales people.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because product LED sales is great until it isn't. Yeah. Like, you know, as things are growing, then it's, it's amazing. But at some point you reach a, you can reach a ceiling where you need to do things that the product won't do on its own. Yeah. The danger of that is that you realize too late you need to build a sales engine.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that takes time. You know, if you think about like, okay, you know, we, you've, you've built like an amazing product, led hunters and unicorns product, and now you're like, shit, now we need to hire a sales team. Well, guess what? It's going to take you, even you guys, it's going to take you like 3 months to hire great people. Then it's going to take you three months to get them productive. Then you're going to get them PGing and you might have a three to six month sales cycle before, you know, it's 12 months. You're 12 months down the line. And so I think that's where I also see it go wrong, where people realize too late that they need to build, you know, an outbound sales capacity and capability. And by the time they realize it, they're. They're in trouble.

Speaker A: Yeah. I want to take this opportunity to ask you all very kindly to go and hit the subscribe button. Whether you're on YouTube or iTunes or Spotify, it will mean the world to us. If you could hit that subscribe button. It means we can continue to bring you great content, and we'll ensure that you don't miss out on any of our great content. So obviously you were, uh, no doubt hired because of your experience at MongoDB and taking a very top down to now both and getting the best of both. Was it as simple as picking up that playbook of execution at MongoDB and just dropping it into.

Speaker B: That's triggering for me when you say. Very, very triggering for me.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, like, I, uh. The term playbook company has become very, uh, popular.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, you know, thanks to hunters. Someone to do that. Um, but I actually hate the term playbook.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, and the reason being is because I think it implies that, like, on day one, when you, like, you get the golden ticket to a playbook company, they give you this, like, manual.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: You do get the value framework, but that's. That's a different thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: But, you know, you get this, like, book and it teach you everything you need, uh, to be successful in, you know, in the company. And it's like. The reality is that's not what it is. It's not a playbook because I think it implies that it's like, um, it's a process that goes with you from company to company. It's exactly the same and you just follow it and you. You're going to be successful. And obviously there are some elements of that.

Speaker C: Ah.

Speaker B: That are reusable.

Speaker C: But.

Speaker B: But the. You know, if I look. Think back to my time at Mongo, we had at least three transformations, probably four I've joined halfway through. One where the playbook that worked for a couple of years, then stopped working. We need to evolve it. So we had. We, um. We named all of ours, um, uh, as animals. I don't know why Cedric came out with the first one. The first one was Hedgehog. Our first sales transformation was called Hedgehog.

Speaker C: Maybe from the book Good to Great. Maybe was inspired by that.

Speaker B: There was this. I think it was a fable about the fox and the hedgehog theory. Was it the fox? Is that what it is? Okay. Yeah. He was very, um. Uh, he was, uh.

Speaker C: Be good at one thing and focus on your strength rather than.

Speaker B: Yeah, he's very learned, et cetera. He's very.

Speaker A: You're in his life.

Speaker B: These aren't even real books. I had to break it to you. They're not real books. Um. Uh, the second one was Puffin. No idea, because we did. But that was nothing to do with. That was much, much less cerebral. Uh, we were in Iceland. Cedric Thought it'd be a good idea. So it was just after he took over the CRO role and he thought it'd be a good. I looked on the map and thought it'd be a good. It's like neutral territory. It'd be a good idea to bring the US leaders and the emir leaders together in neutral territory. So he picked Iceland in February. Wow.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: If you ever been.

Speaker C: Trump's not involved in that one.

Speaker B: That's Greenland. That's pre Trump. Um, so it was like you know, minus 10, uh, and we were in this off site in Iceland only like light for five hours a day. Uh, and um, one night at a bar they served as puffin. Um. Oh wow. And so that's why we called it puffin. And if you're wondering, it tastes like fishy chicken.

Speaker A: Oh, there we go. Fishy chicken.

Speaker B: I wouldn't recommend it. And uh, then our last one was called Tiger. So anyway, back to the point. The, the, the I think what if you look at the really great, let's call it playbook companies. If you look at the really great playbook companies, actually it wasn't about a playbook per se. It was about having leaders that could apply like first principles of like what they knew about the different disciplines, like recruiting, like PG, like a sales process, qualification, etc. And they were able to like figure out what at uh, that period of time for that company would make people successful. And then how do you tr. And then how do you measure it? How do you, most importantly how do you train and develop people on it? So I think like if you look at the really great leaders in this space, that the most number one common trait is that they're amazing developers of people. They're able to figure out taking something super complicated, make it really simple and be able to train people on how to get great at each of those things. And so when you, like when you see it, it's actually much more around that than it is around. I've got this like repeatable kind of system for excellence which just works forever. It just doesn't. Yeah, it just doesn't.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, I think you know, if you look at a lot of people in the simplest term think that uh, actually a playbook organization is a company that runs medic as a, as a, as a, as a qualification methodology or even a sales framework. Right. Which it clearly isn't. But I think there's so many 10 do that. Right. Which is as you say, it's the people, it's the enablement, it's you know, how we sell. It's the value framework. And all of those create a framework. But every single one of those needs to be evangelized in some way, whether or analyzed. If it's the type of people, such as, you know, people with experience in taking a PLG motion and turning it into a sales, more sales led, you know, motion and having that experience. So you really need to qualify. Or do you, you know, is that how you then take it? So, ah, let's, let's say that we've got this, this play. But how did you go about saying, okay, well, I've got this framework. I'm, uh, now taking on this new job at, ah, figma. Where do I start? So did you actually use some of those guiding principles and some of those frameworks to really understand what you needed to do to go and execute on the, the mission?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you, um. The first thing you do when you come into any new company is you just like, you're observing, you're observing, you're asking questions, you're learning, you're trying to figure out, you know, spending time with customers, spending time with the reps, um, you know, figuring out who's being successful and then trying to understand why. So, um, I'm not sure I'm gonna, I'm not actually gonna name this particular rep because I don't want anybody like, trying to approach them. Uh, you know, because this is my best friend. But one of my.

Speaker C: What.

Speaker B: When I came in the. One of the top reps in one of my segments, they were like, absolutely crushing it. I'm being very coy about who this is, right?

Speaker A: I'm trying to get, I'm gonna get some guesses.

Speaker C: There's a lot of sharks in the room.

Speaker B: Exactly. I'm not as stupid as I look. And so I asked that, I asked the leader, I said, um, you know, why, why, uh, why are they being successful? And, uh, and he said to me, oh, they're. They're better at qualifying out deals than everybody else. And I was like, I'm not sure about that, mate. So I was like, okay, let's look at the data. So we basically he pulled this massive spreadsheet of like, every single, like, you know, how many discovery calls, how many meetings, like, analyzed the pipeline. He came back, he's like, guess what? I was like, what? He's like, it actually wasn't that at all. It's like, oh, really? It wasn't that. It's like, what was it? He's like, it's three things. It's like he consistently hit his like leading indicators, but he focused more on like outbound rather than inbound. So like he spent more of his time focusing on like the best accounts in his patch, uh, rather than just focusing on like MQLs or leads or whatever. And then if you look at the people that he's spending time with, he spends a disproportionately larger amount of time with like founders, cto, CEO, um, head of engineer, like C level and C level minus one. And so I was like, that's really interesting. And then this rd, who's amazing basically then turned that into like his playbook of how he then up leveled all of his other reps. So now uh, like we're kind of building a playbook, right? Like we figured out like what it was, what was like the secret sauce to make this particular segment and team successful. And like now he knows, he's like, okay, now I can make everybody else successful. So next quarter, everybody in his team, sorry, everybody in his team hit plan. Yeah, I'm excited about this. I actually am very passionate about this kind of stuff. Everyone, his teammate, plan. Then he figured out how do I turn that in a way to hire great people and onboard them quickly. So now he can drive people to productivity in three months. So it's just a really good example of where like when you come in somewhere new, there is great stuff happening. It's not like I came in because everything at Figma was bad before. Far from it. Yeah, I mean they built an incredible company. We, they, they. I don't claim credit because they'd already built it by the time I came in. You know, north of a billion dollars growing north of 40%. Uh, and actually insane. The metrics are insane. Um, and so there was so much great things happening over the years to get it to this point. It wasn't like everything was bad, it's just like, okay, the world has changed. What's got us to here isn't going to get us to there and we need to build a little bit more like repeatability into it. So rather than being artistic and people having to figure stuff out for themselves, how do you turn it into more of a system? So that's to cut a long story short, that's what you do. You come in, you analyze and very data driven, look at the data in lots of different ways and then you use your experience of what you know intuitively is going to work. Um, as an example, it doesn't take, it's not much different from one company to another, those people that generate more pipeline are going to be more successful. There's no like the inverse is never true. So it's then just about working out. Okay, well what's working, what isn't, what are the right Personas, what are the right metrics? And then, you know, how do you inspire, uh, and develop uh, people to be successful around that particular discipline or competency? Uh, I think this was a, this is actually a Don. I'll credit Don, credit Don Darcy to this, uh, this one. He always used to say why what? And how. Like when, you know, when you're trying to develop people. Why, like what's that? You know, like you need to get, you need to give people the why. Yeah, uh, I think Cedric, um, Cedric's quote, I'm sure he gave you this one about the, you know, if you want to, to um, if you want to teach people to build a boat. You don't, you know something about that. You don't, you must know. This is like a, this is, this

Speaker A: is one of his.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's about, you know, you don't teach him how to like, you know, chop wood and hammer nails. You teach them to the yearn for the open blue sea.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Yes. That's a, that's a Pesh classic quote. Uh, but it's right like you know, so many people and this is, I think this is like playbook gone wrong is they just focus on the what do more pg. Shout out the scoreboard. It's all about the metrics. That's where it gets a bad name. But actually that's just a means to. The metrics are just a means to the end. It's like, why are we doing this? Because we want to build a legendary sales team that crushes its numbers every quarter. Um, as I say to my team, never forget, sales is one of life's highest callings. We, you know, uh, it's like one of sales. Uh, I just want to tell my mum as well. It's one of those, one of life's highest callings. M. Um, but actually we've come a

Speaker C: long way from the car salesman.

Speaker B: But um, but you know, we, we genuinely sell a product that has huge value that customers love. I mean what a privilege that you, you get to be able to share that with more and more people. So like, yeah, you know, PG is not just self serving. It's like we're actually doing a service to our customers. Um, but you have to, you have to anchor on their why. What's in it for Them what's in it for our customers, How. And then really over, um, over, um, rotate on the how. Because I think that's the other thing is, like, if you really want to teach someone how to do it, it's a lot of work. Uh, I mean, when I. When I came into Figma, one of the things that we wanted to do was to bring some standardization in terms of how we run, you know, our playbooks at figma. Uh, and so we took every single sales leader out of the field for a week in November, then again in March. So we already, like, invested. I don't know how many. We have, like 70 leaders took them out the field for two entire weeks. Like, that's. And we're not. And we are. We are by no means done. Right, but. Yeah, but that's the sort of investment it takes if you really want to build excellence. It's like that. You have to invest in training and developing people to get them good and leaders.

Speaker A: Right. Because this is something that we've noticed that is happening a lot more, but should have been happening a lot more in the past. Leaders having training rather than just focusing on Reps. 100%.

Speaker B: I think I took it for granted at Mongo because it was just like how we operated. And then you realize that, like, it's not. It's not normal. Um, you know, how many companies invest in space of six months, two whole weeks, flying every single sales leader from, like, Sydney to San Francisco and investing that much time in training sales leaders? Very few. Very few.

Speaker A: I want to kind of join these and see if there is a, uh, parallel here in joining the two kind of pillars of this conversation, which is one, authenticity. The second is the playbook, and it's not necessarily a cookie cutter. Do you think, Obviously, you joined MongoDB and you came from ServiceNow, where you didn't necessarily have, you know, the structure in the process. Do you think what helped you create your own authenticity was really getting to understand the playbook in its. On its. Of each of its pillars. So then you're at a point to say, okay, well, I understand the theory now. So actually, when it comes to now building my own playbook and creating my own authenticity around this, do you think that had something to do with it?

Speaker B: Uh, I'm not sure I would make that link, but I think where I would make the link was the incredible leaders I work for.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, I would credit the leaders I work for. Um, you know, I think Don and Cedric had a huge, uh, impact on me, uh, on both of those things because they invested so heavily in development, in teaching me, but also giving me the confidence and the backing to be myself.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, I mean, at points, Don did used to call me a care bear. Um, but it's sweet.

Speaker A: Um, he called me a lot.

Speaker B: He called me a lot of things.

Speaker A: What was your superpower?

Speaker B: Uh, the other thing he used to call me was fancy pants. Um, I do have a certain reputation for the finer things in life. Um, but, uh, hard to tell. But, uh. But in general, what both of them gave me was, um, was a huge amount of confidence to be myself and to. And then the development to, like, train and also the opportunities. Like, I had some incredible opportunities to build some amazing things at, ah. Um, at, uh, Mongo, even though I didn't realize I wanted to do it. Uh, so, like, I, uh. Like my story of how I got into customer success.

Speaker A: I was gonna say that was an interesting point in your. In your career.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, um. I took a little bit of selling on it, I've got to be honest. Um, because I was like, dude, I was like. I remember having this conversation with Cedric. I was like, dude, I'm not sure about this. I'm not sure. I'm like a CS guy. And this was actually just before we went through, like, um, a really major transformation, which was moving to consumption. So we took the entire move, the entire go to market function, from, like, upfront subscriptions to consumption, which was a huge, super interesting transition which CS would

Speaker C: have been right at the heart of.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: Hence why he wanted to position you.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so, like, you know, I. I think when I took it over, we probably had 35 people. We took that to 300 and agree that to 350 people. Wow, your phone's vibrating now. So nice.

Speaker A: It had to happen. I told you, I'm a popular person.

Speaker B: Um, yeah. So, you know, I had the opportunity, and actually, it was. Looking back now, it was the best thing I ever did, I could have ever done because it just broadened my skill set. And, like, I ran an entire global function, whereas, you know, like, I ran northern Europe. It was like 75 people. It was a big. It was a big business. I was a third line leader running northern Europe. But then when you get to, like, effectively own, like, the strategy, you know, presenting to the board once a quarter, like, gave me such an amazing opportunity. So, yeah, we. I built. And. And at the time, uh, our retention was actually. This is not well known, but our attention actually wasn't that great. Our grr. Was. Was. Was not Great. Um, and I think this is a, this is a good, it was a really good um, opportunity to apply these like first principles of like. Okay, well I know how to run a sales process. I know how to like inspect the right things to focus on the key leading indicators. And I just applied that. Not the playbook, but the understanding of the mindset.

Speaker C: Yes, the mindset of it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And like build out the same capabilities and competencies and like, you know, we, we improved retention by probably 14 points in two years. Saved $197 million in ARR. Uh and built an amazing CS team. Super uh, proud like they're incredible. And then I built our product, ah, LED sales org. Um, that James Kirk ran that for me. Uh, was a 200. Who's with you now? Who's with me now? Yep, there's a fourth, fourth company on the trot. Yeah. Um, and I was gonna say was

Speaker A: he your super, was he your super seller or leader that you mentioned earlier?

Speaker B: No, no, he wasn't there.

Speaker A: Sorry James.

Speaker B: It wasn't him. Um, he would have, he wouldn't have given me a cop out answer. Qualify now. He would know better than that. But you know, when, when we took out that business, it was basically a, you know, $150 million self service business that we sold a bit of PS and we turned that team into the most productive sales team at MongoDB. Um, you know, we were driving incredible productivity and most importantly it became like a talent factory. So we were taking like it was the first rollout of sales development. We're teaching them how to run a sales process, how to pg. Uh, and um, built that team into as I said, like a real talent factory for the rest of the business. Then I built our account management function from the ground up. I built our renewals function from the ground up. And so coming back to that kind of original point is like you get to apply the learnings of, you know, all these amazing leaders and all these experiences and the good and the bad and the mistakes of which I've made like thousands, um, and, and be able to try it for yourself. And so like that's where you, you know, you just learn these, the, the muscle of like how to come in, how to look at things, how to analyze, see the opportunity, trust your intuition, marry that up with data and science and, and, and build a vision and, and go through these kind of transformation programs.

Speaker A: Just taking the conversation, you know, slightly off piste in a way. But you know, when leaving Mongo, was it a tough decision? Because obviously you speak you know, you. I can feel the energy and how you talk about it. Your journey from, as you say, coming in as a pretty, you know, average leader. Not saying you. That's the word I'm looking for. But, you know, you grew so much and obviously you built a great team. You knew the business really well. Help us understand, you know, the mindset of saying. And why did you know that now was the right time to move on, um, from. Or when was the right time to move on from?

Speaker B: So, I mean, I think, firstly, all good things have to come to an end. And so I think nine. One of the remarkable things that I think about the Mongo story was how long that crew stayed together.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Is pretty unusual for, like. For that. The majority of the crew stayed together for at least six or seven years. I was there for nine years. Uh, eight years was like, you know, when Cedric came from. Cedric. From when Cedric came into the end was probably eight, eight years. Very unusual. Usually it's like four years. You know, everyone's fully invested and everyone leaves. Um, that's like the usual. The usual period. It was pretty unusual, I think. And that was a really. A credit to the fact that we will continue to grow and learn and develop.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And enjoy working together. We're a really tight crew. Uh, but I actually had, like, a moment. So it's post Covid, early 2021, and I actually felt like I was getting burnt out, Right. And Cedric, uh, Cedric, um, said to me, I'll just, you know, take a sabbatical. Uh, you know, take some time off. You'll be fine. You know, you're just a bit burnt out. And it was just when we went into second lockdown in the UK and I was like, dude, what am I gonna, like, what am I gonna do? Sit at home, like, argue with my wife? I can't even go to the gym. So that's actually the time when I moved into the CS role. And, um, within, like, weeks, if not months, months, if not weeks. I got my mojo back. I got my energy back. And I realized I went through a lot of, like, self reflection and did a lot of, like, self development. And I realized it just. I wasn't getting energy from the role anymore. So I love building, scaling, transforming. That's like what I get my energy from. It's what I love doing. I think it's what I'm best at. Uh, the like, execution. Steady state is just like, I can do it for a while, but I rapidly start to. To sort of lose energy from the job. And so I could see the signs of like, you know what? I, you know, I would love to leave on a high and look back rather than like, get to the point where I'm burnt out or I'm negative and, you know, the team deserve better than that. So I was like, I haven't had more than two weeks off since I started work in 2001.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: So I was like, I'm going to take, I'm going to take some time off. So I took six months off, learned to scuba dive, went on some bougie holidays, like midweek lunches with my wife.

Speaker A: You know, just like it was fancy pantsing out.

Speaker B: It was really, it was really cool. It was a really nice experience. Um, and, uh, so, yeah, I. Was it a hard decision? It was hard to leave the people.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but I still, you know, still speak to, to those people now. And so, you know, I think you. It's not, yeah, you're not leaving those.

Speaker A: You just sort of the Environment, MongoDB, especially the area that you were operating in that organization, you know, doing 10 year, almost 10 years is a, is a, is a, is a big, you know, it's a big commitment. Right? And so. And um, there's lots of people that go through that. You know, how, how did you sustain for such a long duration from a, you know, how did you keep with it? Obviously, you know, you mentioned the burnout piece, but, but how did you, how were you able to continuously, you know, keep up that, uh, energy and just that work ethic that comes with all of that? Because lots of sacrifices are made. Right. Family wise and.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, um, yes. But the thing that is, I think is misunderstood is that, you know, you, you do it because like, you want to do it because you want to build something amazing, not because, like, people are putting you under pressure to do it, per se. And Cedric actually used to run this development session around operating rhythm. And, uh, he would always say that, like, the first building block of building an operating rhythm is like looking after your own health. So be like, this is the first thing that goes in then like your family, basically you put your own oxygen mask on first before helping other people. Uh, and so it was kind of drilled into us like pretty early that it was our responsibility. No one else was going to do it for us. It's our responsibility to look after ourselves. Was it hard? Yes. You know, day to day, it was like the stock ticker now with, with, um, perspective and distance. I'm like, yeah, it was hard, but it was amazing. Um, and I Don't think I could go back to like a. I couldn't go back to like a 9 to 5 job. Like, it would just be. It'd just be boring. And I'm just like, I just. It kind of rewired, um, you know, how I work and how I operate and I love what I do. I mean, I, like, someone said to me the day, oh, it must be like, really hard, you know, all this travel. I was like, I mean, sure. But I mean, I get. I get. I get to. I get to fly around the world. Um, you know, spending time with the team at the front of the room, training people, helping people be successful. Like, you see the glint in rep's eyes when they leave the room, excited about, you know, an opportunity that we've just brainstormed. Like, I mean, what a privilege. Like, what is like an amazing job.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and so, yes, it's hard. Yes, we work hard, but I think, uh. I think it's, uh. I can't remember the quote when they said, like, in. If you. If you, um. If you find a job you love, you never, never work a day in your life, you know, just doesn't mean every day is amazing. But, you know, I think in general, if you're passionate about what you do.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you love the people you work with, I mean, it's like, it's not that hard. It's the worst things you could be doing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's funny, obviously I said at the beginning of this conversation that there was an interesting story. And. And the interesting story is. Is the Hunters and Unicorns was really born. Was. Came from my first interaction with you. And I remember I was probably.

Speaker C: Do you remember that?

Speaker B: I do remember.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It was at Coworth Park.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker C: And was that part of a test, by the way? Why Coworth Park?

Speaker A: That's near your house. It's a great place.

Speaker B: It's like. It's my equivalent. Jeremy. Jeremy's was, uh, Penny Hill Park, Calif. Park was my equivalent.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I remember. And, uh, we again, you know, when I'd been doing recruitment for about five years. And, um. But we were doing in a very traditional recruitment way, which was, you know, hiring people based upon a Rolodex of contacts and domain experience. So we were just kind of like,

Speaker C: uh, we were serving the cybersecurity market at the time. Sales and pre.

Speaker A: Sales. Exactly. So Gartner was kind of our navigation. And I think there was a point and somebody turned around to say, oh, there's great. You know, there's Loads of business over at MongoDB. Go and try and you know, break into that business, business. And M. I remember Cold calling you and I remember it, you know, not being my best conversation that I'd ever had. Um, but it was something that came from it and we then, we then ended up meeting in Calworth park and I remember you sitting me down and talking to me about why somebody would come and work at MongoDB, which is where then the story came of how many great people. You took me Back to John McMahon. M. You took me back to um, Blade Logic and you explained all these great leaders and I remember walking away from that, from that, from that meeting, first of all, you know, sweating like a, you know, like anything. But it was very nerve wracking meeting. But, but I came away from it thinking, oh my goodness, what, what an environment. I came and sat down with you and said Simon, I've. I've discovered this. You know, I've just been explaining this and, and our whole conversation then to go and back channel John McMahon and kind of build that whole ecosystem around it to see what this world was about. And so a big thank you and to any of our audience that have, you know, enjoyed the series that we made, it's all down to Dan. So, um, yeah, you'll get your share, your share payout.

Speaker B: So I'm still waiting, I'm still waiting for the commission.

Speaker A: You get a hat by the end of today though.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker B: But it's an interesting story. It's an interesting story if you know, if you go back to like the origin story, right, and, and John and Blade Logic and Dave and all those guys, uh, and you look at the, you look at, you know, why they went on to be so successful. It wasn't because they got this book, uh, is because John invested in, you know, building something amazing, developing, hiring incredible people and developing and teaching them how to, to be incredible leaders. And so that's, that's really why, um, you know, why that. And I think you'll see that again. Like I'm, I'm, I mean you're already starting to see it with Mongo. Like so many of the leaders gone on to do are uh, going on to do like big roles in other companies. I think you'll see the same thing and it will be the true test of like, is it a really great playbook company? Yeah, yeah, like the true ones will because they, you know, they had just this culture of amazing people being developed consistently and continuously, um, staying together for a long time. And you'll start, you'll see these kind of like, pockets of talent that come out of that. And that's why. And that's really what we're trying to build. You know, build at, uh, figma is like, you know, yes, there are plenty of great places you can go and sell software. There are undoubtedly lots. Um, but, you know, how many places are there where you can really learn your craft and work with a whole load of people that are super invested in building the skills you need not just to be successful for one year, but to build a career? And so joining Mongo, um, changed not just the trajectory of my career, but it changed my life. Uh, I don't say that as like a, you know, in a cliche way. It genuinely changed my life. And so, you know, my, my motivation, the reason I get out of bed in the morning, is to give people that same opportunity. I want other people to have an opportunity where they'll never want for a highly paid job ever again. And they can learn the skills to, to go on and like, almost just like, you know, extend, um, the legacy. What an amazing thing to, to, to be able to do is just like you teach people and inspire people to go on and build the next generation of incredible sellers and sales talent by investing in, you know, developing and inspiring and motivating people to be the best versions of themselves they can be as kind of full circle back to the authenticity, because at the end of the day, that's all you can be is like the best version of yourself. And so our job is to try and, you know, bring that out in people.

Speaker C: Uh, I'm curious to hear your opinion because, you know, the privilege of the different environments and the versatility of the different types of roles, you know, it's a changing landscape right now. Do you think that this crew will still be able to survive that, or do you think it's under threat? What's your hypothesis around some of the changes we're seeing right now in the industry?

Speaker B: I, uh, think it's a great question. So, um, I think a few things. The world is changing, but right now the world still needs incredible salespeople, even more so than before, I would say. So is AI, you know, coming for our jobs? Thankfully, not quite yet. I think, uh, this. And it's kind of, it's kind of ironic, you know, all this. Like, there's. I don't know, I don't know if you agree with this, but I feel like there's a lot of, like, clickbait on LinkedIn right now. There's a lot of like it's so much too much. Yeah, it's just got, it's got like very. Every day you read it's like oh my God, I'm just like, I mean if you believe what you're reading it, there's only going to be two software companies, only two companies left on the planet, anthropic and open AI. None ah of us are going to have a job. You can be in this like dystopian kind of reality where I'm all for

Speaker A: it

Speaker B: but, but the reality is these companies are hiring developers, product managers, designers, salespeople like by the boatload. And so like we're not quite, we're not quite there yet. Um, so I think is the world going to change? For sure. Um, but I think the core skills of you know, people buying from people. Yes. You know AI is just a tool like anything else. But like I think especially for many of the AI companies now, um, it's actually not a product LED motion, it's a traditional top down enterprise sales motion because this stuff is complex. It's not like product lab where you just switch it on and it goes viral. Need four deployed engineers and you need to get C level buy in. And so I'm not worried, I'm not worried that uh, this world isn't going to uh, uh, isn't going to survive. But just coming back to the original point, so I'd cut you across but just to come back to the original point is this is where the real understanding of what a playbook company really means is so important. Because in two years time is what's working now at figma going to work? Probably not. We're probably going to have to adapt and change as the, you know, we're moving to more of a consumption model. So historically figma's been a seat based license, increasingly becoming a consumption, more of a consumption um, based model or a blend of both. So our playbook is going to have to change but that's what makes it exciting. You know, that's the, that's the, that's the joy of like the job. So I think for those leaders and those companies that, that understand what it's really about which is like figuring out for that moment in time for that company what's going to make people successful and to be able to, to repeat that, you'll be absolutely fine. For those people that are still like dusting off their book they got in 1999 and trying to apply the same thing, maybe not.

Speaker A: So obviously figma is a really exciting company. Um, obviously you're making a lot of noise in the market at the moment. What does the future hold for Figma? And whereabouts are you on your mission?

Speaker B: Uh, it's a great question. So I'm just coming up for a year in uh, it's been uh, a pretty wild 12 months. We've been through an IPO. Um, the world is changing very quickly in terms of the way that people build software. The reason that figma's been so successful is because it's like multiplayer. So the unique thing about figma was we had this infinite canvas that could bring people together to collaborate in this sort of multiplayer environment. And that's why it went so viral and it's why it's so loved. And so in a world of AI where people are in a terminal, it's like the complete opposite of collaboration. And great products are built by people collaborating by product design and uh, engineering collaborators together and increasingly now agents. And so in a world where building code has never been easier and less of a differentiator, uh, design, craft and deciding what to build and not just like how to build it will be the thing that differentiates average companies from great companies. And so we have this incredible opportunity to be at the heart of where teams come to collaborate, where it's designed backed by code. Whether you start in code, whether you start in design doesn't really matter. And so we have a huge tam, uh, that's growing by the day. We're in a really competitive market. Like every day someone will come out with something that's kind of somewhat competitive. But I think it's just a validation of what an amazing market we play in. And so I think for anybody thinking about what their next career move is and why you would join figma, I think we operate in one of the biggest markets in SaaS in a time of unprecedented change, precedented change with a uh, company that has so much customer love that uh, you know, I'm consistently shocked when I come out of custom meetings of just like how um, how loved figma is. But in an environment where you can come and learn your craft as a salesperson, uh, and be invested in by, by leaders that are not just have the skills but have the passion and really care about building great sales talent. So I uh, think it's a great place to be. I can't promise you easy, um, but remember nothing in life that's truly worth having is easy, um, but I can promise you an opportunity to grow your career and um, uh, to build something amazing.

Speaker C: So Dan, this is the point of reflection. What's been an incredible session. It's been absolutely fantastic. Long time coming given that you were ah, part of our origin story and it's taken us the best part of 6, 7, 6, 7, 6, 7 years to get you uh, Um, it's taken that long for us to actually get you on the show, but I think it's longer.

Speaker B: You know, I told you I'm pretty low key. I don't do many of these things

Speaker A: and uh, normally it's paid for, isn't it?

Speaker C: But I think, you know, today's session has been, it's been so good to get into the detail because Dan, you are someone that's had such a multitude of experience and even though you've, you've been based out of emir, that international experience, cross domain customer success, plg, um, the, the various renaissance of Mongo through those, those different stages, you've had so much experience and we know how highly regarded you are within the network and just your, your, your perspective and your insight has been so well received and we're so grateful that you've taken the time to um, to spend with us today and just want to say a massive thank you. We wish you the very best of luck. We're rooting for you. We wish you all the success and um, yeah, massive thank you for joining us today.

Speaker B: Thanks. Thanks for having me on. Uh, it was a pleasure. It was even better than I was expecting it to be.

Speaker A: You know, you had fairly low expectations,

Speaker B: looking forward to this moment for a long time. So uh, it was great. It was great to be able to do it. And um, you know, I think if the, if there's like one person that watches this and comes away and is able to be like authentically themselves and it helps them unlock like their superpowers, then like it would be a great investment in time for me.

Speaker A: So I appreciate that Dan. Um, so to all our uh, listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. If you like what you heard, please do subscribe to our various channels on iTunes, YouTube and Spotify. All the links will be in description Description below. Uh, and we look forward to welcoming you back for another session very soon. Thank you and goodbye.