Key topics in today’s conversation include:
The SaaS(ramp) Podcast explores how tech leaders scale from product adoption to enterprise success. Learn more at www.saasrampmedia.com.
Pete Thornton 00:00
All right. Welcome back ramp. It’s to The SaaS Ramp Podcast. I’m your host podcast Pete. Awesome guest on today welcoming Colin Jones, Chief Revenue Officer at wiz to the show. Welcome, Colin.
Colin Jones 00:18
Hey, thanks so much for having me today. Pete, nice to meet you and your listeners, thanks for your time.
Pete Thornton 00:23
Yeah, appreciate it. This is gonna be a great one for the audience. Like no hiding, like, I definitely reached out to you, like months back when I just happened to be scrolling through, I won’t ruin any surprises. But I saw something in TechCrunch. I was like, Who are they? What are they doing? Who’s that guy definitely had to come, you know, walking through the LinkedIn front door side door, as it were. So we’re really excited to have you on today, unpack the whole story of like yourself with the challenges you’re seeing in the marketplace and everything. But to dive kind of right into it to see if we can get into the heart of the matter. It’s an interesting time here. And wanted to know from you, especially sitting in your position as CRO with what some of the challenges, or maybe the primary challenge you’ve been seeing over the last couple quarters here in the marketplace.
Colin Jones 01:09
Yeah, like most companies in our space, Peter, I think we’re all sharing one very big elephant in the room size challenge. And that is how we are learning from deducing insights from preparing for making assumptions about how the macroeconomic climate is going to impact the trends and patterns and behaviors within our business. And so we’re walking this really tight robe trying to strike that balance between investment to capture the growth that the market opportunity is presenting, but also doing it in a lean and efficient manner. Right? We have from day one been an organization focused on milestone planning, in order to work more investment we have to achieve. And so we’re noticing positive trends continuing in our business, and our pipeline and our revenue and our customer acquisition and our customer growth. But we’re mindful, and what we’re hoping to do is strike that balance, and learn some lessons from other organizations, and try to avoid them. Yeah, that’s yeah, I
Pete Thornton 02:13
I mean, it’s not unknown. You call it the elephant in the room? Like, it’s not surprising at all to hear you kind of say that. And this duality you’re mentioning of like growth or investment versus efficiency? It makes total sense. And that kind of falls on your shoulders, I understand as a chief revenue officer.
Colin Jones 02:31
Exactly. In some sense, it’s an impossible challenge, because there are variables that none of us control. Right. And it’s so we find ourselves leaning into our indicators, our leading indicators, our real time indicators, our forward looking indicators, and ultimately, trying to make the best educated guess to position our companies and our people for success. And it’ll be interesting. I don’t know that any of us will have the truth until maybe three, four or five years from now upon reflection.
Pete Thornton 03:02
Yeah, I know, when it will have all of Oh, of course, that was going to happen. It was going to be this way. Because of this, like all these things, looking back,
Colin Jones 03:09
totally. There’s definitely a moment in time coming where we’re all gonna go. How did we see that? Simply, if we missed on that, right, and so we’ll do everything we can within our control. And all the diligence required to make the best choice in the moment
Pete Thornton 03:23
was not a question like that we’ve thought about or looked at otherwise. And this show, but like, you mentioned, some indicators, like, are there 234 things that you guys look at, in particular, when you’re trying to plan here at the end of the year, look at next year, trying to understand like, what you might want to do, geez, or just like broad things that other sales leaders might be able to be like, Oh, those are great things like a reminder for them.
Colin Jones 03:48
Yeah, a consistent component in our recipe for success and ingredient, I should say, has been the willingness to use the past to predict our future now, when in challenging circumstances when you go from zero to 100 billion plus in 18 months, you lack empirical data. And so we’re looking at some very traditional metrics, like pipeline behavior and conversion rates and growth quarter over quarter, right, but trying to actually understand the pattern, the intimacy, the specifics of each data point in a way that we can apply to our real time state, so that we can do a plus b equals C for what comes next. It’s a challenge. And it’s, I think it’s a challenge that once we’re aware of the two we’ve been, we haven’t hesitated to adjust, right if we get something wrong, or our world has changed, because it is always evolving. And we need to adjust our thought process around those critical metrics to predict the future. We do and we do it quickly. And so that that type of dynamic approach from our leadership team has afforded us more success than even anticipated. Because we’re always watching, we’re always listening. And what used to work is a great data point. But that doesn’t mean it works anymore.
Pete Thornton 05:07
Is there a great point? So like cats out of the bag, if you didn’t know what had happened recently, this is zero to 100 million a are in 18 months, there was a TechCrunch article in August, that kind of released this story. And that was where I had started diving in and under trying to figure out like, what was it that that kind of made this happen, but the genesis behind wanting to reach out and understand more in terms of this podcast. So what I’m hearing you say Gallen is essentially, if you do that, or if you move that fast, or even half that fast, it’s hard to look back and just say, what went zero to one might go from one to two, like you mentioned empirical data, there’s not necessarily a way to just take it and repeat it, but you’re taking the data that you actually can, and just, you know, making the best guesses that you can with the data that you have,
Colin Jones 05:59
yeah, you got it, right, he quit. What can get lost as we’ve set out to be the fastest company to $100 million. Now, that wasn’t a goal. It’s just, we didn’t talk about it, we didn’t focus on it. Our goal was to build a cloud security company that positively impacted the market, our customers, our partners, our friends, our former peers, right? Executives, practitioners. And when you start to watch the business build, actually call it the kindergarten principles. Like we’re very good at listening. We practice it, we don’t believe we have all the answers, we need to learn all the answers. And so for us, not just in terms of the growth of our business, and how we’re evolving over time, but also in how we approach the market and why we believe we’ve been successful is we listened first, we watched carefully, we try to be incredibly thoughtful about the questions we ask. And then we use that feedback, either subjective or objective. We put it on the table and review it all consistently in order to make sure that who we are is where we want to be. And that the only direction for the future is success. And that could be quantitative or qualitative. Yeah,
Pete Thornton 07:09
well put, okay. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. And just as a byproduct, zero to 100 million in 18 months, it’s a good byproduct, leaks. So when you’ve done something like this, and you’re trying to look at how this year has gone and trying to take into consideration, kind of like the some of the macro economic conditions, if you’re considering all things put together, like what would one thing that you would have to get right for your organization for success for next year? And the challenge of this question is one thing, because I know you can probably think of 17 in your mind right now.
Colin Jones 07:44
Yeah. But in terms of how we did it, I think the recipe is actually simple. What’s gotten us here in some capacity is what will be the forcing factor that carries us forward. And what I’m referring to specifically as people, one of the one of the variables, decisions that we got, right early on, is the people, we hired great people, we kept our standards high during hyper growth, we didn’t compromise on level of human being or talent or value structure or skill set and experience, it has always been and continues to remain very high. We like that. Because when people join the work product is excellent. Therefore the customer benefit and value is directly yours. And so looking forward through whether it’s three months, six months, 12 months of pain, we’re going to make strategic investments that might alter the course of our go to market strategy or our routes to market or how we do this that are that those are going to happen because it’s prudent to make those adjustments. But we need people leading those efforts, we need people contributing to those successes or failures or learning and growth opportunities. And so for us, I think the one thing we will never lose sight of and can’t afford to miss in however long this lasts is the quality of human beings and the tone of the professionals we bring into the team to drive us forward.
Pete Thornton 09:10
Yeah, well put. So that’s great. And I assume that moves through the ranks like this are from your individual contributors, right up into the leaders are like the layers of leadership that you might be building at this point. Is this is just one of the wiz core values, or at least like people ops, sales type values.
Colin Jones 09:27
Absolutely. It’s across the company left to right, top to bottom, right, like we do believe in delivering on the expectations and outperforming the expectations culturally and philosophically, we want it to be a part of who we are, because that represents success, success for our customers success for our partners success for our employees success for our company. And so they focus on the level of investments made early on to build a sustainable and scalable, scalable people acquisition model and not just acquisition but return. In short, right, like, you don’t have this level of success with having all these people on staff already, right. And so we’re trying to introduce new magical, special resources to an incredibly talented special pool that we have already. And so we’ve been hyper focused on providing for and finding great people from day one.
Pete Thornton 10:18
So just this is a little off the cuff. To put this in perspective for anybody. I’m a postman right now, two years ago, 250 employees, over 700 employees now, this range from Arr, like 25 million to 100 million annual recurring revenue, a lot of this in a self serve motion, adding the sales serve motion over the past 18 months or so, like, I know what that feels like from an enablement perspective. On the onboarding and ongoing enablement side, we’ve grown a team really fast. I can only imagine. But do you have some snapshots in your mind? If you look back? And you’re like, or charting? Can you give us a one year or two year perspective?
Colin Jones 10:58
Yeah, yeah, look, at first congrats to you. And the entire postman team to your jersey is incredible, all by itself. So congrats. Congratulations on all your success to date on what’s to come. Secondly, like, I reflect back to the very early days, where as a revenue leader, sales leader, like, the initial assumption made is you need to go build a team of sellers, you need to go establish product market fit for us, I remember looking at the data, I remember going through hundreds of customer engagements very early on, and thinking there’s something here, did I expect it to be what it is? No, but did I know that the opportunity was very real, and that if we didn’t build, like you think about cloud security, it’s evolving its dynamic, every single day, the competitive landscape, the customer environment, the problem statement, the value proposition, right? Everything changes consistently. And so our ability to enable the train coach, right on an ongoing basis was imperative. And so one of my first hires was an operations leader to lead our onboarding and enablement efforts, because I just prioritized it that way. And there were some sideways looks at the time that are the best use of resources for a very small team. But I had, we had a bigger vision for ourselves and knew that the business was going to require it before anyone else anticipated that you’d look back. And I think this is part of my background, right? I don’t have a degree related to tech in any way, shape, or form, right? I like to build houses, like high rises, Legos, but I’m a builder. And so but I physically, like physical application of the sense building, and then subsequently got into tech and have applied that logically to companies whatnot. But the point is, the two things you never mess around with as a general contractor, plumbing and electricity, the two utilities you need in any physical infrastructure to make them go. And I look at operations, revenue, operations, enablement, development deal, desk, whatever the case is, as the plumbing and electricity of our operation of our organization. And so we’ve invested there early and often, to make sure that we’re providing the infrastructure to support the operation at scale for our people, and for our customers,
Pete Thornton 13:24
is a really good analogy. And we got to dive in there, we got to kind of double click here. So every morning, this is a strange aside, but like every morning, it’s my cousin’s favorite cars, and they like to come in, pick me up, it’s 4:55am. Depending on where we’re going, we go off into this crazy bootcamp workout. I don’t know the weather, it’s just it, whatever. You just go in, and he just picks me up. He’s like, You ready? I’m like, I’m barely awake. But he’s a commercial, like a commercial VP. And so he I always hear the stuff I get in these enormous trucks that I do not drive one up, they pick me up, you know, and they’re always talking about this stuff. And always hear this in my half day’s morning, you know, head into these workouts, and they talk about this thing about the plumbing, the electricity, and you don’t mess with them. And they’re building these huge things in this area in South Carolina where I am booming out so it ‘s funny, I’ll be like, Hey, listen, these guys in tech, they understand you too. I’ll tell them. They’re so excited. Because anytime I speak, they’re like, What are you talking about? Lauren? I’m like, It’s my day job. A lot. It’s fantastic. Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great analogy. So maybe if you would take us back to like, you’re sitting in a seat that a lot of people would like to sit in, it’s a sales, lead seat, a CRO seat. And I know you’ve had to, you know, take your time and move through various roles before including like a physical building, which is like a very interesting little sidebar to this. So what kind of personal and professional experiences have kind of led you to this leadership role? It was,
Colin Jones 14:50
It should come as no surprise that I’m a byproduct of having wonderful people at wonderful companies around me. Right and so I can name individuals I can cherish variances. But what dawned on me very early in my career was that I just needed to seek the counsel of the right people needed to work, and identify and evaluate opportunities based upon the people that are at these companies, and how they can make me better and how they can challenge me. I didn’t care about what my title was or what my role was, I just wanted more, I wanted more exposure, I wanted to learn, I wanted it to be coached and developed. And so I very quickly prioritized who my boss was over anything else, right? And then secondly, there’s a lot of people that will come to me and say, troll, like, how did this happen? Right? It’s like a prerequisite. And what the promise I always made to those individuals was, you’d never have to worry about my performance, no matter what my job is, I will outperform the expectation. And by doing so I feel like I’ve earned the right to ask for your coaching. And so I’ve always had, as a part of me, and what I wanted to do in this industry, right, I always knew that I needed to earn the opportunity to ask for help to ask for more, when it starts a big six, right, like coming out of college, late 2000s, what a tremendous amount of opportunity out there. And I got one, and it was to be a BDR. Learn how to smile and dial right, learn how to connect with people and introduce our software to them and see if it’s of interest. And I loved it. Like your point, I didn’t have any relevant experience. So I had to take all of what I did have and try to translate it and apply it into tech. And as a result, I felt like I had a fresher perspective, because I just saw it differently. By nature. It’s a bit sexy, you can think about the Chip Davis’s or Alan Peters of the world. True leaders who they watched what I was willing to do to help us be successful and we’re more than willing to reciprocate and giving the opportunities and coaching and then I worked through one of the best enterprise sellers at a company called blaze it we are a service now service management partner and loose Alfie’s his name like Lou never second guessed, right, he built my a build up myself competence in a way that I carry with me today and try to offer to others. But you know what you’re doing, you work harder than anyone else. And then the true culmination for me was Jim Sibbett, that you will understand what it was like to be a leader, a servant leader to flip the org chart upside down and be in service of everyone else, every single day, all day? And how learning to make others successful will ultimately benefit me. But don’t question it. Don’t think about it. Don’t worry about it. Be willing to be there for your people. And the rest typically takes care of itself amongst a whole host of other lessons. But there’s a few. Yeah, that’s
Pete Thornton 17:54
tremendous. I love that. That’s really cool. A question be like, where did you learn about this, like this prerequisite, like this thing that was, it feels like it was innate, you’re like, oh, there’s a plus. And I know I will outperform? Because that said, that almost comes from a tank of experience somewhere else, even if it’s not in tech, somewhere else. And then, and by doing so I can ask you a few questions. Is there an athletic background? Do you have any? Did you pursue academics at a high level? Was there something in your younger upbringing?
Colin Jones 18:25
Yeah, looking at academics is an interesting example. I’m smart enough to know I’m not smart enough, right. But I never saw that as an excuse. I saw it as a challenge. It just meant I needed to outwork everyone else in order to perform in order to recognize my potential. And so a lot of this stems from my upbringing, ethics, for sure. Any sport you want to play. I mean, I’m passionate about athletics. And I played soccer at one level as I matured, but you know, like, my mom was a single mom. And I’ve shared this story and I don’t think people understand the true impact. But she had three boys, we were easy, it just got done. Like whatever it was, we made it happen. And it’s a part of me that I take a lot of pride in. I don’t look for excuses. I’ve never looked for a way out. I’ve always thought the harder it is the more I’ll dig in. I think radical acceptance in application of yourself. Is the only thing we can give Right? Steve Prefontaine said it is like giving anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. And I always have. I just always felt that way. If I’m going to do this, you’re gonna get all looks nice. That’s awesome.
Pete Thornton 19:34
Is Okay, interesting. There’s sometimes a nugget underneath. And that sounds like we’re at from like the upbringing. Got some brothers y’all probably always Tanglin single mom, eventually making your way into D one and anybody who quotes me some Prefontaine if they give me the suicide pace thing like the face the suicide face, and today’s a good day to die, I’m like, Oh, you’re crazy. I love it. Let’s work together.
Colin Jones 19:58
Why live with the possible can play
Pete Thornton 20:01
with one leg shorter than the other. All right, we’re definitely gonna put some. It’s amazing I hit it from somewhere. So like, it’s interesting to dig in. So appreciate you sharing that. That’s awesome. No,
Colin Jones 20:12
I appreciate the opportunity for these people to mean a lot to me. So thanks for giving me the spotlight to shout them out.
Pete Thornton 20:19
Yeah, 100%. About wiz like with this unbelievable growth. So we definitely need to learn a little bit more about wiz, like what wiz does we know in the cybersecurity space, but what’s the context for hyper growth? There are a lot of cybersecurity companies, they do well, but they’re competitive as well. Like it’s not an empty industry. It’s not a brand new thing. So what is it? What happened? Like? How does it go? Like it goes? And, you know, just any context you can give around that would be helpful for the audience? I’m sure.
Colin Jones 20:53
Yeah, the framing of it is that it begins at our pasts, right. And not just my past, but our executive teams past our CO founding teams, or teammates and wizards past. So our founding team founded a company at olam that was acquired by Microsoft and that Microsoft, they became responsible for internal and external security. And obviously, you know, the consumption of public clouds is growing. And as security executives and practitioners they’re aware that security is critical infrastructure that is breezy, dynamic, and assembled in nature. And so they recognized this gap, they had a big problem to solve for themselves. And that in talking to peers and other leaders around the industry, I noticed that everybody was struggling with it. And so they made the courageous decision to find ways to build this tech. But the way in which they went about doing it, for me, is what makes the difference. They didn’t sit in a room and say, This is what we should do. He’ll go build this right, they went and taught for months to other leaders, other practitioners, others experiencing this same gap, the same problem statement about what do we need to look like? And actually to truly solve it? How do you truly solve this problem, right? And so that philosophical approach of let’s sit down and ask questions and listen and learn first from others who are smarter than us. And then we can apply that into the creation of this solution for me is a game changer. The second piece of this is, we were founded during the pandemic, like, in a lot of ways the perception was, this is a terrible time to start a company. But it also accelerated the enterprise’s movement to cloud, right, public cloud consumption across the major players skyrocketed out of necessity, working in remote distributed environments meant you needed to lean heavier on Cloud to drive your revenue streams to drive your business forward to drive employee engagement. And so you have this perfect timing of we just recognize this problem and have been working with others to build a solution for it. And now everybody in the world is experiencing every company, every entity, every government is dealing with this challenge. And then you introduce the go to market teams. And what I love about our co-founders and what we still apply every day, or try to our best is, we know that cloud infrastructure security is an issue. We know that these things, these core principles of the issue need to be addressed. But we also know it’s going to change over time. So let’s approach customers not to sell them, let’s approach customers to understand if they’re having an issue with the same things and want a partner to solve it. And so from our philosophical approach to it to the timing of it, to the way we engage with and try to be a partner to everyone in the industry, the recipe was the check in the people and then the timing came right along with it.
Pete Thornton 23:58
Okay, this is really interesting. So I’m trying to hit the high points back. So this is a team, a founding team that was already a tight knit team. And so they understood how that worked, they kind of had been through the fire once before, to the point where Microsoft wanted to acquire, and they and then they, at that point, had to kind of experience even a further challenge of being yet another organization. And, they uncovered a challenge there. This was something that they were experiencing, so they kind of had to scratch their own itch as a smart team as a smart group of people. And like, in that kind of togetherness, so they had some challenges they wanted to solve. And then they furthered that by going around and asking, like more questions, more questions. Is this a challenge you’re having? As well as, as opposed to the echo chamber that you can get in? This is the thing that I have. I know everybody’s gonna love it. You know, I don’t know what the example from Shark Tank would be. But it’s something that’s natural. No, it turns out like other people actually have that thing. totally
Colin Jones 24:59
right. And I think it’s a mistake that we all have made at some point in our journeys, right? It’s, hey, this is we got it. This is it. And it’s why I’m so appreciative of our approach, because the focus was never on the business. The focus was on the problem that customers were trying to solve. The focus was on building a great company of wonderful people, we always thought the business the byproduct would come if we did all the things that the basics, the fundamentals, that first principles, if we executed those the right way, we thought the business would be an achievement that came alongside it. Sure did.
Pete Thornton 25:35
Good guess. That’s fantastic. Yeah, that’s really cool. And the partnership approach, that was like, just, I mean, it’s the way everybody wants to sell. But kind of putting it as one of these fundamental pieces in building the house of just going and coming up alongside finding out if this is the challenge, like focusing on the challenge and, and then focusing on whether or not they would like a partner to move forward and solve it over time, it’s just a different approach. Like, you can just call it a slightly different paradigm. But it does make a massive difference. I would say like even the feel of it, as you kind of explain it, versus being like we have a software, it’ll solve your problem, press that button, and it’ll do the thing. You know, it’s different. It’s like a transactional field versus like, a bit of a 360. And like, you’re in it together kind of feel,
Colin Jones 26:23
you hit the nail on the head, when you think about with cybersecurity at large, right, 1000s of startups, the 10s of 1000s of companies, I don’t envy our customers or partners position like it is so hard to understand and know and make decisions, what’s best for their business to solve any particular problem at any given time, right? And so you can enter the fray with everyone else, or you can stop and make a concerted decision, that is, he can have a conversation with you about what we’re up to and see if it’s relevant for you. Can I get your feedback on our thought process? Can you help me understand what it is like to be on your team to solve this problem, just changing the tone in the approach, I think is what resonated with the market at large and afforded us access to opportunities that simply don’t come this early, very often. And so, engage with empathy, try to understand customers need help, they don’t need to be sold to. And then you acknowledge it, right? Like you said, you will help fast the pace, the velocity and the significance combined, are unprecedented. And so when I tell the customers the same thing, I know we’re going to make a mistake. When we do I will call you and take ownership of it, and explain what happened. And then make sure that it never happens again, because I’m your partner, your success is my success. And I think the ecosystem, the industry needs more of that at large, like customers need our help.
Pete Thornton 28:01
Yeah, I like the approach. And you made a good point, like, because it was so early for this many customers to trust you with that. So there’s something there that’s really resonating, because Because again, when you’re talking about I mean, 818 months, maybe call it two years or something like that this is a company founded in the pandemic, to gather that much trust that early, there’s something to that approach that must just really be resonating. So that’s, that’s excellent to hear. I have some friends in cybersecurity. I’m not there personally. But I have a good friend who went from when we were on the phones, that that that fateful, BDR position that you spoke of, what a like a, oh, character builder, that one is best friends, like in tech, or we were just in the same pod, as BDRs. And you hear everybody’s cold call that everybody’s doing the same thing all the same time. But when he went off to, he made the transition, went to Mountain View, started working for CrowdStrike. And like he’s done really well there. But it’s a different style of thing. Like that’s a different size of company and a different time period. And, you know, and things like that, and so know what his approach is, so it’s just different. So it’s like, that’s just a good thing to kind of like mentally note, as far as that goes.
Colin Jones 29:13
Yeah, playbook theory, right. We’re all different, our companies are different, our tech is different, our approach is different. That’s okay. But we call it wisdom, find the Wiz wave for you for your company. Like the world needs more innovation, and not just on the product side, but also on the go to market side.
Pete Thornton 29:32
So I’ve heard The Wiz way and wizard now wizards was the name of the team member. So that’s cool. We’ll find it there. You mentioned some already. So if you got a chance to call them out, then that would be just the place to do so. But you talked about a lot of gratitude for your mentors along the way that you actively sought them out. And then you know, made them a promise. Like I’m gonna give you the effort. I’m gonna give you the performance in return. Ask some questions at the appropriate time. So you mentioned some names there. anybody else to add to any of the thank yous for a lot along the way for all the hands up and things that we all get?
Colin Jones 30:08
Yeah, look, I would call it appreciation. Right? And some of them, I won’t name, but they will know who they are . I appreciate them for what they’ve contributed to my journey to helping me achieve the goals that I set for myself. And for our teams. The one that I’ll call out is actually my current team, like our current wizards, right? I think every day, I learned so much from them, they positively impact us that, you know, they don’t get the label of mentor or coach very often, but like, how crazy talented they are, and what I learned from them, and now they make us better and how I grow as a result of having the privilege to be their teammate every day. Are people like our wizards? And this was one that I don’t want to admit, because they mean a great deal. Nice. Yeah.
Pete Thornton 30:54
I definitely got that. That’s a good point out right there. Hey, I’ve interacted with one of them. That may be sitting close to you right now. She’s great. Yeah. You can hear
Colin Jones 31:07
the big smile you just made her day. Thanks.
Pete Thornton 31:09
Yes, she did hear. That’s awesome. Okay, that’s fantastic. And then we have one more question. And this is always funny when this is a SaaS rant podcast. And so, but we have so many different personas here. So it kind of means something different to each person. So sitting as Chief Revenue Officer at Wiz, what the SaaS rant means to you.
Colin Jones 31:31
It’s interesting in 3d about this question, you can answer it any number of ways, right? So I’ll personalize it, because that always makes it more impactful. And to do that, I think about what my responsibility to our teams to our people to our company is. What is my responsibility every single day? For me? The answer is the same data to both questions meeting. SaaS ramp is planning for preparing for coaching to make sure that your people are in positions to be successful, and that your business can capture the opportunities presented, and your company is the best it can possibly be. And turning the dials and making the right decisions at the right time, depending on where you are in your journey. What inflection point you’re leaving or arriving at. That SaaS ramp, right, like not taking the playbook but creating the playbook for success over and over again, depending upon where y’all are in your journey. I think that’s my responsibility to continue. And I think I’ll answer the question today.
Pete Thornton 32:32
Preparation. Yeah, I love it. That’s spoken like a true leader. That’s really good. I had a surprise last question that I thought was really good. And that would have been the perfect place to end it. But I always ruin it. I have to know where on the field you played? We’re doing the World Cup. It’s World Cup time. We’ve got some crazy World Cup happening. Have you even played soccer? So where do you find yourself?
Colin Jones 32:55
Wherever they would let me is the true answer. It didn’t matter. I just wanted to be on the field, right. So I bounced around from position to position from forward in the back over the course of my tenure. But I was lucky I was surrounded by better players. And so depending on the situation, or the game plan, coach would insert me here or there and I did my job the best I could to support the coach,
Pete Thornton 33:18
I will never let you down. So in return, I’m going to ask for as much playing time wherever you put me on the field as possible. I’m sitting another thing
Colin Jones 33:28
that you know how slow I am. So make sure you hype me, right. Like, you can’t argue with the results. So yeah, there’s a fantastic experience and I’m
Pete Thornton 33:37
logged number Wireshark thanks for the extra credit there to the audience. I hope you’re also soccer fans because it is the World Cup so sorry. We’re not talking SEC football for once. Okay, today. A little bit about soccer on this one to call. Thanks for being a great sport on that one too. And, and really appreciate your insights today. Your team’s lucky to have you on board. And thanks again for your participation in sastra.
Colin Jones 34:04
Yeah, Pete, thanks so much for the opportunity today and I look forward to catching up again soon.
Pete is an award-winning hypergrowth SaaS seller and enablement leader who built the enablement function at unicorn Postman from $25m to $100m ARR over two years. These experiences have led to his current role driving revenue through Gong-led enablement programs as Head of Partnerships at ramp{ant}, a Gong services partner. Pete loves to host thought leaders who are also innovating solutions to rapidly changing go-to-market challenges.