There are two markets in AI : applications & infrastructure. Bardia Shahali has built sales teams both : first at Fireworks AI from roughly $3m to roughly $400m, & now VP of Sales at Granola.
In our conversation at Office Hours earlier this week,1 we talked about the differences in building modern sales organizations in each domain. Here are three takeaways :
Watch the full conversation on YouTube : Office Hours with Bardia Shahali
“You can close an eight-figure deal in two weeks.”
At Fireworks, whose customers are AI-native companies growing at extraordinary rates, single deals can reach the tens of millions with a very fast sales cycle. The counterpoint is competition. Every inference provider chases the same accounts. The stakes are higher & the competition more intense.
“But each rep, the quota they can carry is just multiples higher.”
“We used to set like comp plans on an annual basis…Now we’re setting comp every quarter because things change so much from quarter to quarter.”
Second, annual planning in an environment this dynamic can be a challenge : products evolve faster, model capabilities reach a new zenith every 45 days,2 & the competitive landscape shifts quickly.
“If you have a small team, then you’re not putting in the extra effort to go after, to do a little bit of outbound.”
Last, the risk of understaffing is a lack of emphasis on outbound & expansion. At the infrastructure layer, FDEs (forward-deployed engineers) & SEs (sales engineers) pair with AEs (account executives) to invent new acronyms I need to define within parens. Still with me?
In reality, they pair to deliver a highly complex product. At the application layer, the AE & CSM (customer success manager) deliver software similar to the previous era, but with higher productivity & typically faster adoption/expansion.
There’s lots more to the 15 minute conversation : on-target earnings numbers in the AI era, on-boarding, burnout, usage-based pricing at the app layer. Watch the full episode here. Office Hours with Bardia Shahali
I’m grateful to Bardia for sharing his insights at Office Hours!