David Katz - VP, Sales @Tessian (Formerly @Intercom, @Dropbox, @LinkedIn) - The Art, Timing, & Tactical Guidance for Moving SaaS Upstream, Full-Stack Commercial Teams - Functional Hiring Best Practices, Team Prioritization & Stakeholder Engagement

Guest:

David Katz - VP, Sales @Tessian

(Formerly @Intercom, @Dropbox, @LinkedIn)

Guest Background:

David is the Vice President, Global Sales @Tessian - Tessian has raised $60m from legendary security investors like Sequoia and Accel and have over 150 employees located in New York, San Francisco and London.

Prior to Tessian, David was the Senior Director, Global Sales & Customer Solutions @Intercom - Responsible for the Account Executive, Account Management, Sales Engineer and Customer Success teams (100+ people) Globally across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

Before joining Intercom, David was the Director, Mid-Market & Enterprise Sales @Dropbox - Responsible for a regional direct sales team of more than 40 Mid-Market and Enterprise Account Executives working out of HQ (largest P&L globally). 

Prior to Dropbox, David was Manager, Mid-Market Sales @LinkedIn.

Guest Links:

LinkedIn

Episode Summary:

In this episode, we cover:

- The Art, Timing, & Tactical Guidance for Moving SaaS Upstream

- Full-Stack Commercial Teams - Functional Hiring Best Practices

- Team Prioritization & Effective Stakeholder Engagement - Mistakes, Lessons Learned, & The New Mindset

- Talent = #1 Priority - Evaluating & Onboarding Top Talent

Full Interview Transcript:

Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to The Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest growing companies. Enjoy!

Naber:  Hey everybody. Today we have David Katz on the show, DKatz as he's lovingly known. David is the Vice President, Global Sales @Tessian - Tessian has raised $60m from legendary security investors like Sequoia and Accel and have over 150 employees located in New York, San Francisco and London. Prior to Tessian, David was the Senior Director, Global Sales & Customer Solutions @Intercom - Responsible for the Account Executive, Account Management, Sales Engineer and Customer Success teams (100+ people) Globally across Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Prior to Intercom, David was the Director, Mid-Market & Enterprise Sales @Dropbox - Responsible for a regional direct sales team of more than 40 Mid-Market and EnterpriseAccount Executives working out of HQ (largest P&L globally). Before Dropbox, David was Manager, Mid-Market Sales @LinkedIn. Here we go.

Naber:  DKatz. Awesome to have you on the show. It's great to see your bearded face. How are you?

David Katz:       I'm great, BNabes. And for those at home, you should also clarify what our full names are, although nicknames are great. I think I once called you just BNabes or even beautiful Nabes.

Naber:  I dunno if you remember that. I mean that would've been, that's going pretty deep back into the archives of my history and memory.

Naber:  Haha, that's pretty good. If you called me beautiful, first of all, I think I do remember you calling that, second of all, you may be the only person that's ever called me that. So if I don't remember, that's pretty bad cause that's an amazing story for myself. Thank you for that. Appreciate the confidence boost as we get started. And I'm just looking, I'm just looking to match your beard skills and your hairstyle. I feel like you've nailed the combo. I feel like you've really nailed the combo.

David Katz:       So for those at home that are just listening to the audio, if you went and actually just googled David Katz at Tessian or found me on LinkedIn, you'd see this shiny bald head. And yeah, I mean when we worked together, I had some hair, but maybe one or two of the things we'll talk about is the high pressure environments I put myself in more recently that caused me to lose all said hair. But I say like, dude, this look without a beard and glasses to soften it up. Like, if you could imagine this, without glasses. I'll take them off so you can see and then imagine now, if you take those things away, you're getting into the Doctor Evil territory. And I don't know if that's necessarily all look that is inviting and encouraging of future conversations. So anyways, I appreciate that.

Naber:  Yeah, it's an evolution. I'm sure that it feels right that Dr Evil is what you're moving towards in your life. But I'm sure you've perfected the morning routine pretty well with the head, the beard, the glasses. Like it's gotta be a pretty solid morning routine at that point.

David Katz:       Less than five minutes.

Naber:  Nice. Awesome. That's what I like to hear. Every, every guy wants to hear that. All right, so let's hop into a couple things. One, we'll go through some personal stuff first. Mr Smarty pants grew up in New Hampshire, went to Syracuse, some interesting history, interested in debate, and government, and voracious reader obviously, and I'm sure that started at a really young age. So we'll talk about all that fun stuff as a kid, what you were like, then we'll hop into the professional stuff, talk about some of your superpowers, talk about tech businesses you've worked with, and ultimately get into your superpower mindset as well as methodology, and some frameworks around some of the things you're really good at. Sound okay?

David Katz:       Yeah, let's do it.

Naber:  Awesome. let's start personal first. So 5,000 population town lake Winnipesaukee. I'm totally gonna screw up any one syllable that I'm sure. So, you grew up in that town. Let's talk about what was it like being DKatz as a kid? What were you interested in? And what were some of your hobbies and things you were good at growing up?

David Katz:       I was a high energy and devious child, but not like in a malicious way. Like I wasn't getting arrested or lighting Barbie dolls on fire, per se. But I was a bit of a menace to society or to my teachers at least. I definitely was always pushing the boundaries of what I feel like I could get away with. And I feel like that's pretty much just continued throughout my entire life. Let's just see how far we can push this. And now I'm being penalized by having a two and a half year old that's doing the same thing. And what my mom used to tell me as a kid, whic is now coming true, which is, I hope you have a son just like you someday. For better, for worse, that's coming to fruition with my two and half year old. So yeah, I mean you said it, I grew up in a small town, 5,000 people. And it was an amazing, beautiful place to grow up. It just wasn't super diverse. Like there wasn't a lot of opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different things. It was a it was a very touristy environment that I grew up in. The population would grow by like 10x in the summer. People love to coming up to the lake. I mentioned to you earlier, Jimmy Fallon named his daughter after Lake Winnie, this lake I grew up on. It's just like a beautiful, nice, small town that kind of grew up on. But yeah, always interested in government, government affairs, and debate. I had this amazing teacher in high school, Mr Zoolof, who was very supportive and encouraging. I just felt a strong connection to. And, from taking classes with him, decided to really pursue a career in political science and public policy, or this thought I wanted to. So that's when I went to school for up in the upstate New York at Syracuse University.

Naber:  Very cool. Shout out to Mr Zoolof off. I like that. So one more thing about, DKatz growing up. What were you interested in? What was the first thing you did to make money? Tell us a little bit more.

David Katz:       Yeah. So, I was very interested in extreme sports growing up, or what I thought were extreme sports at the time. So it was a bit of a daredevil. I spent a lot of time in the emergency room. But I was very into freestyle skiing, wakeboarding, mountain biking, hiking, climbing, pretty much anything where I could lose a sense of gravity for some small period of time. I really enjoyed as a child. And it wasn't until my twenties where I started having real serious injuries that I didn't rebound from so quickly, and I decided maybe need to slow down. But yeah, I mean like I was a bit of a speed freak. I wanted to go, high and far in the air in whatever I was doing. So, outside of school and things I was interested in politics. I was really most first and foremost interested in just, thrill and just kind of chasing that feeling, as a kid.

Naber:  Okay. So I have a hundred questions on that stuff, but we've got to move on so I won't indulge in my own curiosity. So you're going through high school, you're making a decision to go to, upstate New York, Syracuse University, The Orange, which I think is like one of 11 schools that have a mascot that don't end in "S", I believe, something like that. One of 10 or one of 11. We don't need to go through the trivia, but that's actually a fun trivia question. So why do you make that decision to go to Syracuse? Walk us through what you were like for a couple minutes while you were at Syracuse.

David Katz:       Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I didn't get into Georgetown, which was my number one. And I just, I didn't get it, and I was pretty bummed about that, honestly. I just really wanted to be in DC. I really wanted to be in that, that environment cause I really want to study political science and public policy