Articles by Gaetan Gachet
A Look Back: Building a Sales Team that Can Go from $0-$50M, Learnings from Algolia (Video + Transcript)Gaetan joined Algolia early on when it was pre-revenue and helped scale the sales team from zero to $50 million. He shares tips from his experience, including: • In the early days, Algolia hired "renaissance reps" who could wear multiple hats. Later they specialized more as they grew. • As Algolia moved upmarket and aimed for enterprise customers, they had to shift from an inbound to an outbound go-to-market model which was challenging. • Gaetan did not initially account for people taking maternity/paternity leave in his models which surprised him. • Gaetan advises companies to write things down and create enablement programs early to capture knowledge from experienced employees. • Algolia started with a 50/50 commission split for reps and increased quotas over time to increase sales productivity. • Gaetan scaled himself by anticipating challenges and talking to peers at more advanced companies. • Algolia's French sales team succeeded in the US by conducting interviews in English, using English in the office, and enforcing an "English-only" rule. • In the early days, Algolia proved themselves technically by building demos and full implementations for customers. • Gaetan advises companies opening a US office to prioritize having enough overlap hours with the US time zones.