The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
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Oct 10, 2025 Chris Degnan, former Chief Revenue Officer at Snowflake, shares his insights on scaling a startup from nearly nothing to over $3 billion in annual revenue. He discusses the importance of founders leading early sales and hiring savvy leaders for growth. Chris reveals four key lessons from Snowflake’s journey and compares it with Databricks, admitting missed opportunities. He also critiques the concept of customer success as a separate function and emphasizes the need for in-person relationships in sales, arguing that AI will enhance rather than replace sales roles.
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Make Marketing The Sales Supplier
- Treat marketing as a service function that exists to deliver qualified meetings to sales.
- Align marketing to sales by measuring and optimizing for meetings, not abstract MQLs.
Use A Sales Advisor Early
- Bring a seasoned sales leader onto your board or as an advisor before hiring your first sales head.
- Use their judgment to avoid hiring poor sales leaders and to know what 'good' looks like.
Weekly Activity Emails Build Trust
- Insist your head of sales reports weekly activity: calls, meeting names, takeaways and next steps.
- Use transparency and skip-levels to build credibility with product and catch issues early.
