E26: Signals That Separate Great Companies from Risky Bets with Neal Patel, CRO of Crunchbase
The Revenue Leadership Podcast with Kyle Norton
Release Date: 03/26/2025
The Revenue Leadership Podcast with Kyle Norton
, EVP of Global SMB and Emerging Products at Salesforce, joins Kyle Norton to share what it takes to lead through change at scale. Over 17 years at Salesforce, Adam has navigated market cycles, evolving go-to-market models, and now the rise of AI—while building and inspiring high-performing teams. He explains how to stay relevant as a leader, scale culture across thousands, and embrace mindset as a competitive advantage. Kyle and Adam also dig into Salesforce’s AgentForce strategy, how AI is transforming sales execution, and why adaptability is the most underrated leadership skill. Thanks...
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Jason Wolf, President of FullStory and former CRO at Ping Identity and SAP Ariba, joins Kyle Norton to share how companies unlock step-change growth by entering new markets, building new capabilities, and aligning cross-functional teams. Jason has led revenue growth from $200 million to $1.6 billion and brings hard-won lessons from scaling globally.
He explains how to time multi-product and multi-region moves, validate new growth bets, and build strategies driven by customer pull rather
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Most GTM teams operate in straight lines. Sangeeta Chakraborty believes they should function more like product organizations, with constant iteration, testing, and learning.
In this episode, the former CRO of Miro shares how applying product management principles helped her design go-to-market systems that reflect the full customer journey. She explains how her team ran structured GTM experiments, embraced cross-functional collaboration, and built systems for long-term customer growth. K
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In this episode, Kyle Norton sits down with Hayden Stafford, President and CRO at Seismic, to unpack what it really takes to transform a company from a single-product business into a true multi-product platform. Drawing from his experience leading global teams at Microsoft and now steering Seismic toward half a billion in ARR, Hayden shares the go-to-market, organizational, and cultural changes required t
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Is enablement the most overlooked growth lever in sales? Luke Arno thinks so—and he’s got the track record to prove it.
In this episode, Kyle Norton talks with Luke Arno, CRO at Transcend and veteran of Salesforce, Box, and Segment, about how great enablement can drive real sales productivity. Luke breaks down his three-part framework—onboarding, ongoing development, and in-the-moment fiel
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What happens when a company completely replaces its SDR team with AI? In this episode, Kyle Norton sits down with Mike Donahue, CRO at 11X, to unpack how digital workers—AI agents named Alice and Julian—now generate over 90% of the company’s pipeline.
Mike shares how 11X is pioneering an AI-native go-to-market model, where full-cycle reps are supported by centralized agent orchestration, and where growth marketing owns what used to be outbound sales. You’ll hear how AI is reshapi
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Most product-led companies hit a wall when they try to add sales-led growth. Too often, the motions clash, teams misalign, and growth stalls. So, how do you scale revenue without sacrificing your product-led roots?
In this episode of The Revenue Leadership Podcast, Kyle Norton sits down with John Eitel, former Global VP of Sales & Success at Canva and CRO at Demandbase, about how to success
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In today’s episode, Kyle sits down with Florin Tatulea, Head of Sales Development at Common Room, to discuss the evolution of outbound sales in the context of AI and technology. Florin shares insights on the importance of understanding signals and intent in sales, the changing profile of sales reps, and the role of RevOps in strategizing outbound efforts. The discussion highligh
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Kevin "KD" Dorsey is the Chief Revenue Officer at Finally, an all-in-one accounting and finance platform that recently raised $200 million in Series B funding. KD joins the show to discuss real-world examples of how he uses AI in his day-to-day: from developing internal AI agents to evaluating his team's calls.
New episodes of The Revenue Leadership Podcast with Kyle Norton drop every Wednesday
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Kyle is joined by Ryan Milligan, VP of Sales, Marketing, and RevOps at QuotaPath, to discuss sales commission planning. They dive into the essentials of creating effective comp plans that align with business goals, the importance of incremental incentives, and how to drive desirable sales behavior. Ryan shares insights from h
info_outlineWhat should CROs really be looking for when evaluating their next move? In this episode, Kyle sits down with Neal Patel, CRO at Crunchbase, to unpack how revenue leaders can vet companies like investors—by looking past vanity metrics and digging into signals that actually matter. They cover how to evaluate long-term viability, the importance of alignment with executive peers, and why being asked to "just run your old playbook" is a red flag.
The conversation also dives deep into how AI is disrupting traditional go-to-market models, how Crunchbase is using predictive data to reshape its strategy, and why the GTM stack of the future might be smaller—and smarter.
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Key chapters:
(00:00) - Introduction to Neal Patel and Crunchbase
(02:28) - State of the Market and AI's Impact
(11:01) - Navigating Macro Conditions as a CRO
(14:26) - Crunchbase's Shift Towards Predictive Analytics
(23:27) - AI's Transformative Role in Go-to-Market Strategies
(30:12) - Future of GTM: Embracing AI and Relationship Building
(36:18) - The Importance of Team Innovation
(41:55) - Navigating Company Selection as a CRO
(46:05) - Building Relationships in Leadership
(52:15) - Evaluating Market Potential and Company Goals
(57:05) - Understanding AI's Impact on Business Strategy
(01:01:00) - Red Flags in Company Selection
(01:03:51) - Key Traits of Successful CROs