New episode on the Crew Podcast - Steven Boone, VP of Enterprise GTM @ Perplexity, one of the fastest-growing players in AI right now.
Also, shoutout to our sponsors for this episode, Metaview & Attention. Been awesome working with both of these teams for recruiting, and now infusing as part of our media arm.
Both incredible products used by a bunch of the AI-natives we work with.
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Some of our previous guests:
GTM Roundtable: The State of AI-Native Sales w/ Clay, Parallel, Avoca & Profound, see here
Eleanor Dorfman, Head of Commercial Sales @ Anthropic, see here
Pat Forquer, CRO @ Legora, see here
Graham Moreno, VP of GTM @ Parallel
Tomer Chernia, VP of GTM @ Cursor
Liam Mulcahy, Head of Sales @ Parallel (former GTM Operating Partner @ Kleiner Perkins)
Becca Lindquist, Head of Sales @ Clay
Nick Bogaty, CRO @ Vercel
Kyle Parrish, former VP of Sales @ Figma
Ghazi Masood, CRO @ Replit
Evan Cassidy, VP of Sales @ Decagon
James White, VP of Sales @ Rogo
Mark Ebert, SVP of Revenue @ Profound
Rob Saliterman, VP of Sales @ Harvey
Bardia Shahali, VP of Sales @ Granola
And many more in the pipeline - if you know any good leaders who fit this, shoot me a DM/reply/email [email protected]. We’ll keep openings rolling and be super open to suggestions for similar guests.
We film in-person in SF & NYC at legit podcast studios and have retained a stellar post-production agency, so the quality will be high.
Steven’s Background
Steven Boone is VP of Enterprise at Perplexity, where he joined about five months ago and now runs sales, customer success, consumer and enterprise support, forward deployed engineering, and rev ops.
He got there without ever carrying a bag.
After starting out in law school, he moved through product marketing and rev ops, ran go-to-market at a seed-stage legal tech startup, then served as chief of staff to the CRO at Twilio before making a deliberate jump from Twilio’s product-led motion into top-down enterprise sales at Zuora.
Since he arrived at Perplexity, every rep he has hired has closed a deal in their first 30 days.
Discussed In This Episode
Why he focuses on what his background didn’t give him, and the instinct he had to learn from great reps
How support tickets turn into some of Perplexity’s best enterprise opportunities
What enterprise means at Perplexity, from large companies to two-person shops building their whole business on Computer
Leaving product-led Twilio for top-down Zuora, and the “new brick in the wall” test he uses for every job
Earning credibility with an enterprise sales team when you’ve never carried a bag
Productize it or white glove it: where a human belongs in the sale
The complexity versus margin-adjusted ACV chart, and breaking the line the right way
Why killing the first discovery call can shorten a sales cycle
Torn apart by AI: running reps through a full loop of prep, follow-up, and coaching
Why Perplexity sells without sales engineers
His favorite interview question: how explicitly are you grading me?
Green, yellow, red: capacity planning when the plan changes every day
Key Timestamps
(03:12) A nontraditional path to the revenue seat
(09:51) What Perplexity sells, from search API to Computer
(26:09) Complexity versus margin-adjusted ACV
(28:13) Kill the first discovery call
(31:44) Torn apart by AI
(36:12) Why Perplexity has no sales engineers
(42:36) Interviewing for clarity of thought
(46:54) Green, yellow, red capacity planning
Thanks for tuning in!
If you enjoy it, please give us a rating, review, or follow on Spotify/YouTube/Apple Podcasts - it really helps us grow this.
For those who are new, my name is Chris Balestras, co-founder & head of talent, media, & brand @ Crew - a GTM recruiting, media, and investing firm, working with seed through series D AI-natives to help them grow.
Where to find Crew:
We work with many of the hottest AI-native startups in various capacities, and for those who are interested, shoot me an email at [email protected] or a DM on LinkedIn.
🫡 cheers,
Chris
