Make It Snow: Key Takeaway for Founders

Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer of Snowflake, where he helped scale the company from pre-product to over $4B in ARR and more than $100B in market cap. Over his 11-year tenure, Chris built Snowflake’s go-to-market engine from the ground up, from personally running the first outbound campaigns to leading a global sales organization through four CEOs and one of the largest software IPOs in history.

Today, he advises founders and revenue leaders on how to build high-velocity GTM teams, hire with grit, and scale with discipline. Chris is also the co-author of Make It Snow, the definitive playbook on Snowflake’s go-to-market journey, co-written with CMO Denise Persson.

Discussed in this episode

• The early days of Snowflake: selling a stealth startup with no product
• How to hire and identify truly self-motivated, gritty sales talent
• The lessons from John McMahon that shaped Snowflake’s leadership DNA
• How to build sales-marketing alignment that actually scales
• The near-death experiences that almost killed Snowflake
• What great CEOs do differently, from Muglia to Slootman
• The power of focusing on new logo acquisition
• The evolution of sales methodologies: MEDDPICC, culture, and curiosity
• The truth about AI’s “bubble”, and what’s real beneath the hype

Episode highlights

00:02:21 — Why join Snowflake pre-product and in stealth.

00:05:36 — The original outreach script and what resonated with prospects.

00:06:49 — Scaling from lists to SDRs; Degnan’s “8 meetings per week” rule.

00:09:11 — Hiring for self-starters; the interview opener: “Tell me your life story.”

00:12:49 — The feedback loop that kept a CRO in seat for 11 years.

00:24:46 — The outage that almost killed Snowflake, and how leadership showed up.

00:28:34 — New logo gates every quarter and why it mattered more than anything.

00:34:05 — “Customer success is everyone’s job”: removing CS, monetizing PS, driving adoption.

00:36:40 — Databricks: where Snowflake ceded ground and what they’d do differently.

00:39:19 — Why going public was the right move for enterprise trust.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: BoomPop

We’re deep in event planning right now, as no doubt many of you are.

Whether it’s an offsite, conference, or any other kind of event,BoomPop makes that happen with end-to-end planning all in one place.

They handle everything from venues to experiences, so you can focus on the delights of meeting in person, not the logistics.

Being part of GTMnow, you’re eligible for full-service event planning for just $99 per person (terms apply). Head to boompop.com/gtmfund to explore seamless support for your events.

Follow Chris Degnan

• LinkedIn:
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-degnan-524470Make It Snow (book):https://makeitsnowbook.com

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.