The GTMnow Podcast Bonus: ‘I joined Meta at 900, left at 90,000’ — Rick Kelley on Building and Scaling International Sales Teams

6 snips

Oct 14, 2025

Rick Kelley, former SVP at Meta, shares insights from his remarkable journey of scaling the company from 900 to 90,000 employees. He reveals a data-driven approach to market prioritization, centralizing early-stage sales teams for flexibility, and the emergence of gaming as a new global region. Kelley emphasizes the importance of strategic headcount planning before hiring, the role of AI in sales efficiency, and the need for strong leaders who can adapt as organizations grow. His experience offers valuable lessons for startups aiming for global expansion.

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ANECDOTE

Built A Playbook From Scratch

Rick Kelley had no playbook when he joined Meta and was told, “go figure it out.”
He led a data-driven market prioritization exercise to allocate headcount and forecast revenue for every country.

ADVICE

Prioritize Markets With A Scoring Study

Do run an economic study across weighted criteria to score and prioritize markets before hiring.
Use that score to map exact headcount allocation so you can forecast incremental revenue for any given hire tranche.

ADVICE

Centralize Early To Preserve Optionality

Start centralized to gain optionality and move headcount where traction appears.
Shift people between roles or markets quickly instead of hiring in many single-person country pockets.

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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

ZoomInfo is the GTM Intelligence Platform built for sales, marketing, and RevOps.

By unifying data, workflows, and insights into a single system, ZoomInfo helps revenue teams find and engage the right buyers, launch go-to-market plays faster, and drive predictable growth. With industry-leading accuracy and depth of data, it gives your team the intelligence advantage to win in competitive markets.

It’s trusted by the fastest-growing companies and has become the category leader in GTM Intelligence.

Learn more at zoominfo.com.

Follow Rick Kelley

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickkelley/

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.