Manish Jindal has worn several hats over the years. He spent a decade building and scaling the revenue function at Cloudflare. Currently, he heads the go-to-market teams at DevRev. Manish has the unique experience of working in startups of all shapes and sizes, from pre-revenue to $1 billion ARR.

Now the Head of Revenue at DevRev, Manish was able to share his story with us on our flagship interview series, “Wintage Club Conversations”.

The shock of transitioning from a public company to a young startup

Having joined Cloudflare pre-revenue, Manish witnessed its growth right from securing the first customer to achieving $1 billion in ARR before going public. In his own words, “In my journey from Cloudflare, I saw the company…go from zero to getting our first customer, first $10 million, first $100 million, plus getting to a billion and being a public company.”

He described his experience of transitioning from the structured machine that is a public company to an early-stage startup: “For me, I'm a builder at heart, so I wanted to go back to a younger company and start building again. I felt that I was very prepared as I was joining DevRev. Of course, to my surprise and shock, as humans, we forget what happened 10 years ago, so there was a shock to the system because you get so used to having this whole ecosystem around you to do things for you. You have a person for everything, processes for everything, data available, systems, and tools. When you come to a younger company like DevRev, which was in a very early stage, you have none of that. You must exercise your muscle memory again and take one day at a time.”

PMF plays a key role in scaling sales

Manish was quick to point out the importance of not forcing product-market fit (PMF). "You cannot force PMF.” Companies that fail push their product onto the market without fully understanding if there is a genuine need. Instead, a mindset of iteration is needed: "You have to have the mindset where you have certain pieces and take them to the market, then iterate on them."

As a 'first principles thinker', Manish is not satisfied with templated go-to-market strategies. Instead, he believes in getting the product into the hands of customers to truly understand what works for GTM. He put this thinking to the test at Cloudflare.

Cloudflare adopted a product-led growth (PLG) strategy and sold infrastructure products for as low as $20 or $200 instead of targeting the top thousand companies. He recalled board members questioning this approach, "They’d ask ‘How are you going to build a billion-dollar business by selling something for $20 or $200?’ And my response was, ‘We’ll only win if we have lots of happy customers and the biggest network in the world’.”

It’s important to share value with customers early on

A part of Manish’s strategy involves 'value sharing', a concept not many fully understand. In Manish’s words, here’s how it works:

“When you have a product, you’re providing a certain value, and as a company, you try to capture as much value as possible. But initially, you have to share the value ... give something away and capture it back over time. Balancing being a revenue-generating company with not trying to become a business too fast is crucial.”

What he means is, companies trying to establish themselves in a saturated market, should be willing to pass on a substantial portion of the value to customers, at least initially. "If you provide X value, you might pass 80% of that value to the customer and only capture 20%. Over time, you can capture more value back." Capturing all the value immediately leads to hasty, short-term decisions, especially if the company hasn't achieved PMF.

Unlocking the real power of AI with a comprehensive knowledge map

Sales teams globally are welcoming AI capabilities, particularly for automation and augmentation. Automation can handle many tasks currently performed by humans, like RFPs, order creation, lead assignment, and initial discovery calls, reducing human involvement in routine tasks. On the augmentation side, AI enhances the efficiency of existing teams by providing information and insights for better decision-making.

The real power of AI comes from combining both automation and augmentation. However, as Manish pointed out, augmentation and automation both have different needs and challenges: “Augmentation is about making people more efficient by providing information to make decision-making faster and more efficient. If you have both automation and augmentation, you see the full power of AI as a company. However, for augmentation, you need a knowledge map of all your data, customers, products, and processes in one place. Currently, there are many disparate systems with different data structures, making it complex to stitch all the data together and enable natural language processing across them.”

Despite the complexities of integrating disparate data systems, Manish remained optimistic about the efficiency gains once companies achieve a comprehensive knowledge map.

However, he pointed out challenges in implementing AI in sales and support: “When it comes to using AI to help customers at different parts of the sales or support cycle…the human touch cannot be fully substituted. When you automate with chatbots, customer satisfaction can go down initially because the human touch is missing, even if the answers are faster and more accurate.” AI needs human monitoring, especially in the beginning.

The challenges of selling AI technology

The sales process for AI-native businesses differs from other tech companies that have deployed AI marginally. For starters, AI-native companies need to educate their prospects on the tech and its benefits so the sales process starts with creating awareness and understanding about their product and the problem they are solving. Manish asserted that "Buyers are embracing AI, and selling AI technology is becoming easier. However, there are some challenges when using AI to assist customers in various parts of the sales and support cycles."

Manish agreed that for such companies, the focus shifts from selling features to selling value and outcomes: "Conversations are increasingly focused on the value AI brings. For example, in support, AI can reduce the need for agents and make existing agents more efficient. The discussion then revolves around how much value to pass on to customers and how much to capture."

AI is also expensive due to the infrastructure required. AI-native companies like DevRev have addressed this by building their vector database to reduce costs. This allows them to offer AI solutions at a lower price and capture more value while still being competitive.

Ultimately, the solution's tangible benefits—such as increased efficiency, cost savings, and improved decision-making—need to be showcased.

Standing out in a crowded market

When transformative technology like AI emerges, many companies innovate, but only a few will survive. Manish lent his insights on how companies solving a niche using AI compete with the likes of OpenAI: “Companies that focus solely on making existing AI slightly better are at risk of being outpaced by advancements from major players. To succeed, companies need to build applications that leverage AI to solve specific problems in new ways, rather than just improving existing AI capabilities.”

The primary goal for Manish and his team is to quadruple DevRev’s ARR this year. Beyond this, they’ll focus on “finding a repeatable and predictable sales motion” for effective scaling. Manish maintains a long-term view and avoids decisions that could be an obstacle to future growth.

Check out the full video of our conversation with Manish Jindal .