SaaStr 364: Figma's Head of Sales, Kyle Parrish on Why Scaling From 0-1 In Sales Is So Damn Hard, The Biggest Lesson From Moving Sales Outside Core HQ & How To Create A Performance Led Culture

Kyle Parrish is the Head of Sales @ Figma, the company that helps teams create, test and ship better designs from start to finish. To date the company has raised over $132M in financing from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, a16z, Index, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins to name a few. As for Kyle, prior to Figma he spent over 5 years at Dropbox achieving some incredible milestones including launching and scaling the Austin, Texas office from 3 to 80 people and being responsible for growing Dropbox’s leading partner ecosystem. Before Figma, Kyle spent close to 3 years as an Account Executive at ADP. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Kyle made his way into the world of SaaS and sales and came to be Head of Sales at one of the fastest-growing companies in Figma?
• Kyle was in charge of creating the Austin, Texas sales team @ Dropbox, what were some of his biggest lessons when it comes to moving sales outside of HQ? What worked? What did not work? At what stage does culture and process really start to break?    
• Why is it so hard moving from 0-1 in sales? How does Kyle advise founders when it comes to making your first sales hire? Does Kyle agree that it has to be the founder who develops the sales playbook? How does one create sales targets that are both ambitious but also achievable? What is the balance? 
• What does it take to create a performance led sales culture? Where do many people go wrong here? How is the best way for sales and product to work together? What can one do to proactively make those discussions with sales and product both frequent and productive?   

Kyle’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What is the hardest element of Kyle’s role today with Figma?
2. What would Kyle most like to change in the world of SaaS today? 
3. What does Kyle believe that most around him disbelieve? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-364-with-figma-head-of-sales-kyle-parrish/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Kyle Parrish

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