Kyle Norton is the Chief Revenue Officer at Owner, the fast-scaling restaurant SaaS platform valued at over $1B. Since joining from Shopify, Kyle has helped grow the company from $2M to $50M+ in ARR by instilling a high bar for sales talent, building RevOps early, and driving a disciplined go-to-market strategy. A podcast host himself, Kyle shares deep expertise on sales hiring, leadership, and GTM AI, while keeping his focus on building a generational company.
Discussed in This Episode
- Why Kyle let go of half the sales team just 45 days in
- The importance of setting a high bar for sales talent and cultural fit
- Investing in RevOps and data foundations far earlier than conventional wisdom
- How to reduce churn by narrowing ICP and saying no to misfit customers
- Lessons from running hiring retros to assess interview process effectiveness
- The balance between remote vs. in-office roles for scaling GTM teams
- How Owner approaches AI in go-to-market, starting with data over “shiny tools”
- Kyle’s leadership philosophy: servant leadership and building for growth
Episode Highlights
00:44 — Owner’s journey from $2M ARR to unicorn
02:01 — Kyle explains why he fired half the sales team just weeks into the role
04:56 — Why Owner set a sky-high bar for early sales hiring
08:13 — Kyle’s case for bringing in RevOps “too early” and why it paid off
12:39 — Reducing churn by saying no to 30% of potential customers
15:57 — Why hiring fit matters more than a candidate’s “pedigree”
21:49 — What Kyle learned from running hiring retros on interview data
30:25 — Owner’s AI GTM transformation: starting with third-party data
48:34 — Kyle’s take on the remote vs. in-office debate for sales teams
54:53 — His leadership philosophy: servant leadership + relentless coaching
59:19 — Kyle’s essential reading list for sales leaders
This episode is brought to you by our sponsors:
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Guest Links
The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.
