How We're Scaling Vercel's GTM Motion Through A 9B Valuation w/ Nick Bogaty, CRO @ Vercel
The Crew PodcastShow Notes
Nick Bogaty is the CRO at Vercel, and he got there on one of the least linear paths in enterprise software. He spent roughly a decade in open source, including helping create the book file-format standard behind modern e-readers, and then ran product teams at Adobe. He moved into go-to-market at App Dynamics, first running post-sales, then stepping into the CRO seat after the company's acquisition by Cisco, where he helped scale the business from roughly $120M to $700M in ARR. It was at App Dynamics, that a self-described product guy (and history major) fell in love with the craft of sales. After a few CRO runs, he landed at Vercel six months ago to help answer the two questions he cares most about: how people will design, and how people will build, in the AI era.
Discussed In This Episode The non-linear path from open-source product guy to enterprise CROThe App Dynamics SKO that made him fall in love with salesThe "value pyramid": why great sellers talk about the customer's company, not their ownHow App Dynamics scaled from $120M to $700M ARR without the best productThe operational cadence behind predictable pipeline (and why two customer meetings a day is the floor)"Show me the receipts" and how to test whether a candidate drove the growth or rode the waveThe coachability red flag he watches for in the first interviewWhy he joined Vercel: how people will design and build in the AI eraSignal-based GTM and turning plug motion and open-source momentum into enterprise dealsBuilding Athena, Vercel's homegrown GTM engineWhy the most creative way into a company is to build something and show it
Timestamps (0:00) From product guy to CRO: Nick's non-linear path (4:31) The App Dynamics SKO that converted him to sales (6:53) The value pyramid: make it about their company, not yours (10:48) The operational cadence behind $120M → $700M ARR (12:16) Winning enterprise with the 4th-best product (14:24) "Do you have a mole in my company?" (17:20) The hardest part of sales: discipline (18:04) Why Nick joined Vercel: how we'll design and build next (21:03) Adobe's font team and why taste now wins (24:24) Collapsing GTM headcount with AI agents (26:50) Was it the rep, or the rocket ship? (29:30) "Show me the receipts" (33:42) Selling the mission to someone who isn't looking (35:32) The coachability test in every first interview (37:39) Weekend warriors and signal-based GTM (39:23) Turning ground-up momentum into enterprise deals (41:18) Usage vs. commitment in a consumption world (43:56) The sales team Nick admires most: Datadog (45:36) Building Athena: Vercel's homegrown GTM engine (47:45) The most creative way to get a sales team's attention
About The Crew Podcast The Crew podcast interviews GTM leaders and investors at top AI startups and early-stage companies. Every week, host Chris Balestras, partner @ Crew (an advisory, recruiting, investing, & media firm for seed through series C AI-natives) sits down with GTM operators from the fastest-growing AI natives and SaaS companies to break down what's actually working in go-to-market today. No fluff, no theory - just honest, tactical insights from people in the trenches building the next generation of AI breakouts.
About Crew Crew is an advisory, recruiting, investing, & media firm for seed through series C AI-natives & fast-growing SaaS startups.
Where to Find Crew LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crewgtm YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thecrewgtm Newsletter: https://www.withcrew.blog/ Website: https://www.withcrew.ai/
More from The Crew Podcast
Glenn is the Head of Strategic GTM at OpenRouter, an AI infrastructure platform that helps businesses access and route requests across AI models, optimizing for factors like cost and performance.
Most companies hire sales reps from the hottest logos and hope they work out. Rich Liu has built sales teams at Meta, MuleSoft and Navan, and his rule is to hire for the sale you're actually running. In this episode he breaks down how MuleSoft turned hiring into religion, why a great rep can fail in the wrong motion, and how Navan rebuilt its go-to-market when COVID took travel revenue to almost nothing.
Brendon Cassidy is the founder of Cassidy Ventures, where he operates, advises, and invests in startups, helping founders with everything from demand and pipeline to their first VP of Sales hire. He was one of LinkedIn's earliest employees, then ran sales at EchoSign alongside Jason Lemkin through its acquisition by Adobe, and later at Talkdesk. He was involved with Gong from its inception and has worked with 100 to 150 companies across SaaS and AI, including Higgsfield AI. He started his career in recruiting and got out after a mentor told him that if you stay in recruiting long enough, you're a recruiter. Today he spends his time as a sounding board for founders and CEOs making the hires that shape their go-to-market.
Steve Pascucci is VP of Global Sales at Outtake, the Series B, AI-native security company building a trust layer for the internet. Backed by CRV and ICONIQ and recently named a Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startup, Outtake protects the world's most recognizable brands and executives from impersonation and threats across the public internet, social media, and the dark web. Before Outtake, Steve spent nearly a decade at Cloudflare, where he was the first outside sales leader hired, helped build its first sales teams, led the push into enterprise, and then built out the global go-to-market for its Zero Trust product. Earlier in his career he built new hire enablement at govtech company Granicus. He grew up in Port Washington, Long Island, and is now based on the West Coast.
Live from Hudson Yards: Crew's first-ever live podcast, recorded at the AI GTM Paddle Club Event at Reserve with roughly 150 of New York's best GTM operators in the room. Crew's twelfth event in two years, and the first one on a padel court.