BONUS: ‘I joined Meta at 900, left at 90,000’ — Rick Kelley on Building and Scaling International Sales Teams
The GTMnow Podcast
What Skills Did You Prioritize for EMEA Leaders?
Rick discusses initially prioritizing language skills, then shifting to senior managerial talent with local contributors below them.
This bonus episode dives into how Rick Kelley helped scale Meta’s global sales organization (from 900 employees to 90,000) and the playbook behind building high-performing international teams.
Rick Kelley is the former SVP of Gaming and App Monetization Solutions at Meta and Managing Director of Meta Ireland, where he led a $1B+ revenue organization and played a pivotal role in building out Meta’s go-to-market teams across North America and EMEA. Over his 15-year career at Meta, Rick was instrumental in driving international expansion, especially across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—helping to localize strategy, scale high-performing sales teams, and bring new ad products to market. Today, he advises founders on global GTM execution, sales hiring, and how AI is reshaping the future of commercial organizations.
This is a clip from the full episode with Rick, an inside look at how Meta built its $1B EMEA business and the lessons every GTM leader can apply to scale globally.
Discussed in This Clip:
- The exact framework Rick used to decide which EMEA markets to enter first
- How Meta built a $1B+ regional business from just three salespeople
- The power of centralization in early-stage go-to-market
- Why you should plan every headcount allocation before hiring
- Creating “optionality” in your sales org to weather change
- How gaming became Meta’s fifth global region
- When to localize sales teams versus staying centralized
- Why AI can make sales more efficient—but can’t replace relationships
Highlights
00:12 — Scaling Meta: from 900 to 90,000 employees
01:22 — How Rick Kelley built Meta’s mid-market sales org from scratch
02:15 — The data-driven framework Meta used to prioritize global markets
04:50 — Why startups should build expansion plans before executing
07:52 — Centralized vs. in-country hiring: Rick’s take for startups
09:49 — The importance of sales ops and forecasting discipline
13:32 — Hiring leaders who scale with you, not limit you
14:59 — How AI will reshape (but not replace) sales relationships
16:09 — From zero to $1B: lessons in efficiency, cost, and culture
This Episode Is Brought to You By
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Follow Rick Kelley
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.
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