Mark Schopmeyer
CaptivateIQ
Mark Schopmeyer built CaptivateIQ after watching spreadsheet-driven commission management destroy a company’s strategy. As co-founder and co-CEO, he’s scaled the platform to nearly 1,000 customers—including Netflix and Stripe—by solving a problem that looks simple on the surface but ruins most revenue teams when executed wrong. His core insight: compensation plans don’t fail because of math. They fail because leaders copy what works elsewhere, ignore behavioral psychology, and lose sight of what they actually want to incentivize.
Mark’s origin story is not glamorous. His first week at BrightRoll, the CFO handed him a task: rebuild the commission structure in Excel. Mark was an ex-investment banker. Excel should be easy.
It wasn’t. Two weeks of late nights, triple-checking numbers, manual data entry, and distributing statements by hand. When he finally finished, the CFO told him he’d be doing it again next month. Mark realized the infrastructure vendors claimed they could automate the distribution but not the calculation. They told him to simplify the comp plan instead.
That’s when the real problem clicked into focus: this wasn’t a technology problem. It was a strategy problem wearing a spreadsheet mask.
Copying a comp plan is like copying a test answer for someone else. It’s not authentic. It could take you in the wrong direction.
Mark Schopmeyer, CaptivateIQ
Years later, after founding CaptivateIQ and publishing research, Mark found that 91% of companies said reps trust their comp plan, yet 64% had a payout error in the past year. Those numbers can’t coexist for long. The gap reveals how little rigor most companies put into this—they inherit structures from larger firms, plug in their own numbers, and hope the psychology of incentives works itself out.
The most common mistake Mark sees is finance teams keeping quotas artificially high because they believe sales reps stop working once they hit 100% attainment. It sounds absurd when said aloud. It is absurd. But Mark has argued this point with CFOs dozens of times.
The logic is spreadsheet-clean: if 80% of your team historically lands at 80% of quota, lowering the quota to match reality means lowering the targets. Finance sees that as a loss of upside. So they keep the quota high, assuming it will motivate harder work.
The psychology says the opposite. Top performers don’t dream about hitting quota. They dream about maximizing their paycheck. The moment they hit 100%, they’re not done. They’re more fired up, chasing 130%, 140%, 180% attainment. They want the biggest W2 possible.
The real cost of high quotas isn’t motivation. It’s strategy misalignment. Mark watched a company with enterprise ambitions incentivize their comp plan for speed and SMB deals. A quarter later, they’d made zero enterprise progress. The comp plan was doing exactly what it was designed to do: it was just the wrong thing.
Nobody who’s been in this role long enough says they just care about hitting 100%. They care about the biggest paycheck possible.
Mark Schopmeyer, CaptivateIQ
Enterprise deals take nine months, twelve months, sometimes longer. A monthly or quarterly quota encourages short-cycle behavior. If your comp doesn’t match your strategy, your comp plan will win every time.
Short-term incentives, or spiffs, work. Mark has seen entire teams rally around a well-designed spiff to close a gap or hit a goal. The problem is execution and communication.
Most spiffs fail in the same way: they get set up with no clear exit. Leadership says “we’re trying something,” but reps hear “this is now part of my comp.” Six months later, when the spiff ends, the team feels robbed. Mentally, they’ve already counted on that money. It feels permanent because no one defined it that way from the start.
The solution is clarity and narrative. Before launching a spiff, tell people why you’re doing it. Here’s the short-term goal. Here’s why we need this. This is an experiment. We’re trying something. If you hit this, you’ll get rewarded. And crucially: this is not forever.
Finance will want ROI analysis. That’s the right instinct. But Mark has seen dangerous spiffs too: incentivizing pipeline to close in the current month when reps already have incentive to close deals as early as possible. Ask yourself honestly: will this change behavior, or will this just be expensive?
You have to start with a narrative and an exit strategy, otherwise the spiff becomes implicit and permanent in people’s minds.
Mark Schopmeyer, CaptivateIQ
The best sales leaders Mark knows tell him when a spiff won’t help. They say: “I’m closing everything right now. What I really need is better competitor enablement, or help with contracting.” That’s the answer you want to hear. It means you have someone focused on the right problems.
AI has erased the skill barrier. Anyone can use an LLM to solve technical problems. This means hiring is no longer about finding someone who can do the job. It’s about finding someone who will.
Most companies don’t screen for culture explicitly. They mention it. Maybe the hiring manager sneaks in a question about values. But there’s no dedicated stage, no one person whose job is to evaluate fit for your actual beliefs.
Mark changed this at CaptivateIQ. One person is dedicated to screening for values alignment. Some companies spread it across the interview panel. But at minimum, it has to be intentional. You can’t assume a great resume means a great cultural fit.
When it goes wrong, it costs more than a mis-hire. It costs leadership time, energy, and clarity. You end up managing someone whose values don’t align with yours. You can’t just tell them to work harder. You’re managing a person, not a problem.
When it goes right, you get people who want what you want. They self-manage toward the mission. They don’t need you to babysit them or referee office politics.
You have to build culture screening into your recruiting process. Too often a great-looking resume slips through because we didn’t care enough during interviews.
Mark Schopmeyer, CaptivateIQ
The layoffs everyone talks about aren’t because AI replaced sales reps. They’re because companies hired too many people during the venture era when capital was cheap.
Mark brought in Carl Ashenbach, CEO of Workday, to discuss this at CaptivateIQ’s user conference. They agreed: you can’t outsource accountability to AI. When something goes wrong, people want to talk to a human who feels responsible. They want to hold someone accountable. A bot won’t cut it. Feedback to a bot feels like talking to the trash.
But Mark sees the role of humans evolving. Entry-level jobs aren’t disappearing. They’re changing. What was a data entry role becomes a data analysis role. What was a manual process-running job becomes a process optimization job.
Mark’s framework is simple: solving problems takes skill and will. Skill has collapsed. There’s no barrier to solving a technical problem anymore. So will is everything.
With AI, the skill’s gone down. The will is what matters now. There are people who don’t want to change, and there’s no role for that here.
Mark Schopmeyer, CaptivateIQ
At CaptivateIQ, Mark has created what he calls “pods”—small teams of five to eight people assigned to solve big hairy problems that couldn’t be tackled before. Two people on each pod switched roles entirely. They had the will to learn and grow. Now they’re solving problems that compound the company’s value.
The only people Mark won’t hire or retain are those who say: “I like what I’m doing. Leave me alone. Let me do 9-to-5.” If you need someone who’s curious, product-minded, and willing to learn, the supply of hard problems is infinite. You’ll make yourself invaluable if you chase those problems.
Mark has interviewed hundreds of executives and leaders. When he walks away from a conversation, he notices two things: does he feel energized or depleted? Can he understand what they were trying to say?
This comes down to clarity and energy. As a leader, you have to bring both. Clarity means you can explain a problem, the stakes, and what needs to happen next—without confusion. Energy means you move the room. People follow clear direction easily. They execute. They don’t second-guess.
When leaders have neither, everything slows. People misinterpret. Projects stall. Reps don’t understand the comp plan. Customers don’t trust the roadmap. It all cascades from the leader’s ability to communicate clearly and inspire movement.
You need leaders to bring energy into a room and clarity about what we need to do. Without both, people either feel depleted or get lost.
Mark Schopmeyer, CaptivateIQ
This applies across functions. You can’t teach clarity and energy in onboarding. These are intrinsic. They’re also non-negotiable for scaling. When you’re building from 30 to 100 people, every hire sets the tone. Bring in leaders who muddy the water, and everyone downstream pays the cost.
CaptivateIQ now has employees in Poland, the UK, Australia, and the Middle East. The biggest risk is cultural dilution. You can’t just say “our values” and expect them to land the same way in Dublin and Singapore.
One concrete example: when hiring in Ireland, Mark realized that Ireland’s startup ecosystem is smaller than its big-company ecosystem. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Stripe, and others set up data centers there for tax reasons, which seeded a large-company talent pool. People recruiting from those companies have different expectations.
When CaptivateIQ uses an employer of record, the offer letter doesn’t say CaptivateIQ. It says the EOR company. Candidates from Microsoft see that and wonder: am I joining a real company or a staffing agency? Will I actually be part of the team?
Mark had to address this head-on. He explained: you’re not working for a staffing agency. You’re part of CaptivateIQ. Here are our beliefs. Here’s how we operate. We’re treating you as a core member of the team, not an external contractor.
Time zones are another test. If your all-hands is 10 a.m. Pacific, that’s 6 p.m. for Poland, 6 p.m. for the UK, and 2 a.m. for Australia. People have lives. If you don’t respect that, they feel like an afterthought. Mark’s solution: swap the time occasionally. Rotate. Show that you value their participation enough to make trade-offs.
You have to respect their considerations and show them they’re an extension of the team, not disregarded because of where they live.
Mark Schopmeyer, CaptivateIQ
This sounds tactical. It is. But tactics matter because they signal whether the culture is real or just words on a Slack channel.
Are you seeing sales reps actually get replaced by agents?
You can't outsource accountability to AI. A lot of the, you know, layoffs that you're seeing is not a reflection of AI, but more reflection of companies overhiring. Solving problems is two things. Skill and will. And you know what? With AI, the skill's actually gone down. There's no more barriers to go solve problems. There will be people who are like, I don't want to change. I just want to be in what I'm doing. Leave me alone. Let me do this day in and day out, 9 to 5. Yeah. Like, I'll be honest, like there's no role for that here. How are you getting the right fits to come in? Um, this is who we hire. I'm your host, Luis Sent, and today I'm joined by Mark Shmmer, co-founder and co-CEO of Captivate IQ. Mark, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. So, Captivate IQ exists because comp plans were broken and you saw that from the inside at Bright Roll which you sold to Yahoo and you know walk me back to the moment you decided the answer wasn't a better spreadsheet it was building an entire company around this.
Yeah. Um it started the moment um you know I made a transition to go from financial services so investment banking into startup operations. I think back then I remember getting advice get some hands-on building experience. So I went to go do that and I think that really resonated my first week where um I was working under the CFO and um he's like look uh we have a new commissions for the year perfect timing. We just installed a new ERP need you to go uh update the file and build a new you know build everything out in uh spreadsheets. And so as a former investment banker, I'm like, "Easy enough." You know, I'm an Excel guru. This should be this should be like an easy win. And for the next two weeks, I was just wrestling with the data. I was up uh late at night. And it was almost like this imposttor syndrome. I felt, wait, I should be really good at this, but I'm struggling with all the data wrangling. Everything's I'm like triple checking with nothing's right here. It just felt like a really stressful job. And then, oh, by the way, uh, there's this manual part. Every part of it was manual, not just the data part, but also sending these statements out to folks. And I remember I had a sales joke. It looked like I got hit by the bus from just like the the amount of stress and like embarrassment I had. And when I got it all done, I was like, "Oh gosh." Like, "Thank goodness." And they're like, "Yeah, you're going to have to do this again uh next month." And I was like, "This can't be how this job needs to work." Like it just feels like this is so manual that in this day and age of technology, we talk about cloud. SAS was becoming a bigger thing back then. There should be this should be all automated. What's going on here? And so looked at solutions and they told us your stuff's just too hard. We only handle the last part which is we could set statements out to people, the calculations. We can't do that very well. We need you to simplify our comp plans. And that was the moment where I'm like none of this makes sense. Super manual. I'm being told by the best of breed vendors, we can't handle, we can't help you, and oh, by the way, we're gonna charge you more than your salary in itself. As you can imagine, there has to be a better way. And so, uh, my co-founder and I got together. He had a similar experience. We said, "Hey, what if we built a solution that we would have used ourselves?" And to be honest, we had one goal, one customer. We'll see where it goes. You know, fast forward, 900 customers, seems like we've been doing pretty well.
Wow. Phenomenal. And congrats on that. Close to a thousand. And uh is that the the goal this year?
Uh yes, there's uh we're pretty ambitious. We've you know multi things have changed quite a bit since our early days, but now we're multi-roduct. Um we started out our journey in techbin market. Happy to share we're now very horizontal across multiple segments including manufacturing, business services, uh financial services including insurance and banks. Um we're also much more global now. with clients in Australia, Amea, uh, and the US. And, you know, we're very proud to say we serve enterprise in a really pretty darn big way. Um, including clients like, uh, Spotify Reddit uh Netflix Stripe uh, and many others.
Love it. So, you mentioned, you know, you you went and found a co-founder. A lot of our audience is trying to figure that part out. How how did you do that? And who did you know like this is the first person you know this is the person I need to go and and and build this with?
Yeah. You know it's it's like a lot of things I think um there's a quote that I remember the early days having founding your co-founding team is like a stars alignment kind of moment. And I credit uh actually Gary Tan before he uh was leading YC, but we were talking to him for advice and he had that that quote that resonated deeply and I think that's very true with the relationships that uh we had for our founding team. Uh Con and I knew each other back in the day of UC Berkeley. Um we overlap, we grant, we were in the same grade and we had a mutual friend um that we were all really close with. he actually would eventually start his first company with that person. And so, um, when we were when I was like leaving my last opportunity, I knew I wanted to go build something, but I didn't know what. And just like anyone, you just do research. You talk to people in your network. You're like, "Hey, I got this this thing I want to explore." And I was using my private equity kind of thematic research uh skill sets to apply to just a variety of ideas. So I went to go talk to people, talked to friends, friends of friends. Call me was one of them and one thing led to another. I remember we walked around the block and we were talking about the idea. And then it was Mark, what are you looking to do? What do you want to what are you thinking about? And I was like, you know, here's what I'd love to be able to to think about doing a startup is kind of why I'm doing this. Um, what about you? He's like, I'd love to do that, too. I want to get back into it. We just started working together. Startups are really hard. It's always easier when you have someone to soundboard with and the rest is history. We uh we uh one thing led to another. Um and we got into Y Combinator and things just accelerated from that.
And how how was the Y cominator experience for y'all?
It was fantastic. Um so for Conway for context, uh he had already gone through Y Combinator through winter 2011. So he was familiar with it, but you know things changed u you know 5 years, six, seven years later. Um we had a fortunate opportunity to talk to some of the partners ahead of time that we knew just from our networks the small world and um it made sense for us to apply and see where things go and we've always had this mindset that look like all things and startups are very much in this case it's hard and if people are going into it just know it's hard it takes a certain type of mentality just to go through it. And for us, our DNA, who we are, we're we welcome help. We know like we have no ego of like, oh yeah, we're the best at what we're going to do and, you know, leave us alone. Like, you know, no, like we know the game is hard. We know the start game is hard. We're going to ask for help. If you're willing to help us, absolutely. It's a small, you know, we'll take it. And that's how we looked at Y Cominator. And it was a phenomenal experience. We got in. um it lived up to the expectations. Um they have amazing pattern recognition. Um seeing at the time it was 1400 startups, what worked, what didn't. And they were able to synthesize all that into really key bullets that even to this day our DNA, our history, our culture is shaped by. You know, build something your customers want. Uh do things that don't scale. These things are still in our DNA. Um especially when we think about new product like those are the two things that we start with. Hey like we have to make sure we're building what customers want. Don't think about the ARR growth first. Think about are we solving a hair on fire pain. Those are like things that I think we still like it's just it's hard to take away of um how powerful those value statements are for any business that's trying to build something memorable.
Love it. I mean you come from you know this finance background and you start your company. You you go to YC now. you know, you've raised from top VCs now, uh Sequoia iconic uh, Asel. So, you know, when when you start raising, do do they start challenging some of those, you know, beliefs that you have or comp plan philosophies and and and culture that you may have formed before?
Yes and no. I think um every VC there's a lot of VCs out there that probably take different approaches um and you know they have different outlooks and also different timelines on what they're working to. I think we've been very fortunate and is part of um what we thought was important and look I'll say this to any founder out there you know look fundraising is hard and um going back to YC No founder is going to help your company in making sure it's successful. That's on you and that's on your team and that's on on what you're building. So I think folks looking to certain investors being like, "Oh, this is going to this is now the ticket to be absolutely not like let's be clear, you know, no investor is going to do that for you."
But what I appreciate about investors and especially when we have is that
there's there's elements of patience. There's elements around encouraging us to build for the right future and for us we're trying to build a a legendary and enduring company which means that it may take some time. It may take uh it may be a journey and we're going to have bumps along the way and you want someone with a calm easy hand to be like it's okay when things are not going well as well as like hey there's just more encouragement. How can we accelerate for you? What can we do? And those are things I think mentally are really important and that's what you want. You want someone you want mental cheerleaders. You don't want people getting in your way, distracting you, you know, selfish objectives. Like those things can be more damaging um to how you build a company and ultimately shapes like, hey, if we're in this for the long term or you know what, we're done after a year or two.
So you're selling that vision to investors where it's like stop looking at this in the next year or two, look at this in the next 10.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean that the absolutely the mindset is legendary. I mean, it's going to sound kind of awkward to say this in the AI world, but you know, back in when we were fundraising, we all knew like building enduring and legendary companies takes time, especially you're trying to do it the right way. I know AI is kind of accelerating that you could build a $500 million business in two years um or 500 million AR business in two years, but I still think that still is the right way to do it. You want to build things on the right foundations. You want to be thoughtful. Are we solving a hair on fire pain? Is there endurance? How sticky and resilient it is. And look, the harder the problem, the harder it is to build a mode around it or or build the the more tactical mode around it. Yeah, it's going to take some time. You know, I wish it could be easy to build a to solve a very technical problem easily and scale really quickly, but we all know like there's no shortcuts in life. Like some of these things just do take time.
Yeah. And you know, you you mentioned something funny. There was like there's no, you know, secret lottery when when you get investment from a a certain VC to make you instantly successful. And you know, I was listening to you on the revenue capital uh podcast where you talked about there's like there's no magic comp plan. You know, there's no secret ticket there or comp plan tool.
That's right.
You implement and a company would just rip. And you know, then you went and published data that you found. Uh you said that 91% of companies say that reps trust their comp and 64% had a payout error, but those two numbers can't be true for long. That's right.
So So you know, has building captivate changed like how you actually pay your team and you know I I presume it makes you even more accountable like when you're publishing these stats and you know now you have your team looking at you saying, "Hey, do do I are we the living stat?" Right.
Yeah, absolutely. I think we have an appreciation to the problem and this it only reinforces this notion that there's no silver bullet to this and I just remember back in Y Combinator a very com common ask would be like what does Salesforce use you know you like you look to these bellweather companies and you're like I just want easy simple and offtheshelf and over time I've just it goes back to the simple truth there's just no easy shortcuts around this um having something like that. It's not a bad idea. It's a good starting point potentially, but you have to remember like these things are built for other companies. They're, you know, they have their own strategy. They have these other things that they care a lot about. So copying it's like copying a test answer uh for someone else. Like it's not authentic. It's not who you are and it could take you in the wrong direction. And I think that's where I've appreciated with comp design. Um, it's a pretty multi-dimensional exercise. Again, it's more art than science. And the idea here is that, you know, what are your cultural beliefs? How do you enable around this stuff? These things are like beyond the comp plan that people forget about. And then within the comp plan, you know, what is it that you are trying to incentivize? What is it that the business cares about? And I've seen it where it's done really well. Like this is our business strategy. Here's what we care about. and we are these are the outcomes we want great when we look at our comp plan are they aligned to that and I think running a comp company um has made it more aware of like the dangers you kind of see companies where you know especially as prospects they didn't do it right and a famous example was we'll mention the name but um they had enterprise ambitions no not a surprise a lot of companies are will say hey you know we want to go to we're mid-market today or SMB and we want to go to enterprise Well, they incentivize our comp plans to shorten sales cycles and go after faster deals. And if what's counterintuitive is like a quarter later, they made zero progress going Enterprise because all the comp plans were doing were incentivized behaviors for them to close more SMB deals. And look, it is a long game to play Enterprise. These sales cycles are nine months, maybe 12 months, heck, even longer. Um, there's probably more folks that have to be buying in. It's a team game to win these deals. That's an appreciation the problem. That's a strategic alignment, but your comp plan may not reflect that. And so if your comp plans are reflecting like close deals this month, like we're going to hold you to a quarterly quota. Well, I mean, and I'm not sure I can't remember if that company had done that, but as a simple example, you can all imagine like nobody's going to go after enterprise if I'm holding you to a quarterly quota or sorry, a monthly quota. Even a quarterly quota, like it's just too short.
Yeah. It's so like is there a time where you know the board is disagreeing with a company on this and and you you've had to step in and and show data or like how you know cuz because sometimes companies may be shortsighted um because they need they need to make that number that quarter but you know to to really make change they need to to think about you know years ahead. So what like what what does the data show? I think what I see more often than not. I think people can put together it's more of an awareness. So the biggest issue I see is the downstream implications. So it's kind of like if you had a crystal ball be like if we did this plan what would happen? And I think that's a hard game and that's a hard thing. That's where I think experienced consultants can help provide those those uh nuances where I see uh so that's part one of what I see and I think that's where you know folks like us can help give a little bit more here's some perspective and some watch outs um where I see folks really fall down on their sword um it's when a they don't they design a program and they don't realize like there's all this followth through that needs to happen. A comp plan itself could just be this document. Did you enable it correctly? Is there a culture around this? Is a comp plan too aggressive? And so what ends up happening a lot of times when we talk to prospects or even, you know, just customers is that the comp plan itself may be a good idea to come from a good place. But did the reps really understand what were the motivating factors? Where is it that the business cares about and how is that built into this plan? Is this a believable plan that is achievable? And that's actually one thing I see more often than not. People get a plan for whatever reason. It's more aggressive uh aggressive in terms of targets, quota, you name it. And they're the teams don't feel motivated. They're not being shown here's how you win and here's how you get there. And so a big belief that I have and this maybe controversial or not, you want as much of your team past quota. And I've had this argument with some folks especially from folks on the finance side. There's this belief in finance and look I I come from finance so I can empathize and I can say this so you know I have permission to say it. Finance I think sometimes can look at things from a a unit economic perspective and overly so in a spreadsheet math. They'll be like, "Look, we got this population here and you know, typically it's 80% of quota and you know, et so I don't want to lower quota because that means I want have to lower the targets
and it's a little bit it makes sense on a spreadsheet.
You 100% hitting quota."
Yeah. Exactly. Like the thing I I've had these arguments is like look we have to remember this thing is to motivate people and what finance misses is they have this false belief that like when they're at 100% they're going to not continue working. They're done. It's it sounds comical. It sounds like wait really but like I've had argues many times with finance leaders where they're like yeah like look spreadsheet math we don't want to lower quotes because as soon they get the quote out they're done. And I'm like, you don't understand how the game works. Nobody, anyone who's in this role long enough will say like, I just care about getting 100%. They care about getting as big of a W2 as possible. Meaning, they as soon as they get to 100%, they're even more fired up. They want they want to they want to
they want to have the biggest paycheck. They want to have they want to go into 130, 140, 180% of attainment. they're not going to stop. And in fact, they're even more motivated, they're even more aggressive. And when you see that, when you see that like bloodthirst for better or worse, you start to realize like why more and more companies adopt performance-based plans because when you tap into that that motivating behavior, I think as humans, uh, we just love to be validated in some capacity and ideally financially rewarded for it. Yeah. you start to see like wow that's where you get more potential or you're untap you're tapping into that potential for every human to do more than the minimums
be beyond sales are you seeing more companies implement variable compensation where other areas they they wouldn't wouldn't have before
absolutely I you know in go to market you're seeing it more widespread you're seeing it in back ops um more folks are tying to you know company level numbers or um more specific speific KPIs that are in their territory. Post sales is really common. Um I think there's a lot of behavior uh that people feel like look that's probably the one that's more that it feels like it's more within control of directives like we want you to focus on customer love or we want you to focus on NDR or you know retention you name it. And so uh a lot of companies are adopting performance-based plans across the board and I think it's a good thing. I will say like like all things you want to be thoughtful around it and you know there's always this question what are we trying to solve for here what are we trying to motivate and also how do we want to administer this how do we make this scalable both from quota design comp to make sure that look this is working the way it's it's intended so when you do it well I've seen performance uh get unlocked and more closer alignment to the strategic goals um But when done poorly, I have seen it be a double-edged sword. It makes it confusing. It's uh you know, people feel like am I incentivizing the right behaviors? I'm I know the company wants this, but my comp plan says this. Which one is it?
So thoughtfulness, I can't stress like is paramount in our industry
for for sure. I mean, it's it's uh you know, when I'm designing a comp plan, you know, I go to our CFO and say, "Hey, look look at this. Does this look good?" and you know we plug it in a spreadsheet but it you know there's certain elements to it where if I'm thinking the value for a company in 5 years and what it's going to be worth what kind of products we we should we be selling more the ones that are more sticky and and that have less churn. So it but but our comp was actually rewarding another product. So it's it it's very fascinating that that you say this and and really timely where um it's so easy to get wrong, right? It's it's so easy to incentivize a wrong behavior by just looking at a spreadsheet um and doing math rather than than thinking long term.
Yeah, 100%. And look, I think the thing I always remind people, you have to motivate them to do it right. And it sounds silly. It sounds like, oh, duh. Like that's like business school 101. Look, when we're all busy, we all have a million things to go work on and there's so many priorities. It can get really, you know, confusing on what that is. Even if you're midc quarter, like one thing I like to do is like, look, if we're coming up short on a goal, let's put a spiff. Let's motivate people. Let's get people fired up and, you know, locked in on how we close the gap to where we need to be. See it time and time again where everyone rallies. And that behavior is a very powerful behavior. And it's something that you have more control than you realize. Um, otherwise, look, telling someone and yelling at someone to be like, "Go do more. But there's no reward for it. At some point gets tiring. Like you may do that for the moment, but you keep doing that and they're just like, geez, what am I doing here? Like working my t my tail off and there's just no upside upside everyone else is getting. Like yeah, that's not feeling good. Whereas people feel like, hey, if I if I went above and beyond for you, is there something there for me? Maybe it's a promotion, maybe it's more equity, or shoot, like you're giving me more of a cash payoff through this spiff. Yeah, I'm going to feel good. and I'm gonna feel good because I feel like I did the right thing and I got rewarded for it. Like amazing dopamine response.
So talk to me about spiffs and you know how do you do them well and and get people excited and fired up and then you know still be able to come next month without a spiff and be able to go and perform.
I think it always starts off with communication and clarity like hey we're doing something and here's the why. So there's a narrative there's a narrative that there's something that we want to try out. We're experimenting. This is not to be permanent. This is just to like, hey, we feel like there's a a short-term goal that we want to try out and this is why we want to do it. And look, we realize um this is probably asking more from you. Um this is not this is your day your you have your day-to-day, but you know, we want you to know that if you do this really well, uh you will get rewarded for it. And so I think when these things are done well, I don't see any backlash with like, hey, it changes or whatnot. where it backlashes is when stuff gets forgotten. I've seen spiss kind of just go on autopilot. You leave it in there and then it almost feels implicitly like hey was this always there and now it becomes kind of car the comp plan. So when you eventually do change it maybe one or two years later then folks are going to be like well I made this last year why are you taking this away from me? Because you know mentally they're thinking wait a minute like this was always there. So that's usually where it falls down short when it comes to designing a spiff. I I think it just comes down to what are you trying to solve and what motivational behaviors do you have? And then if you have finance in the room, what budget do we have to work with? And that's key because this stuff can be expensive. And so there is an ROI analysis. We do this really well. What do we do? Do we grow faster? Are we hitting our targets? Are we showing something financially that we feel really is a powerful unlock or is this like a throwaway spiff? And look, I think one thing that can get too dangerous is when there's no shortage of good ideas everywhere. It's when we can't answer clearly, is this actually going to change anything? And that's a int actually an intellectually honest debate. What will this change from the status quo? A danger I've seen is like look, people are going to spiff um and a deal quarter or like pipeline like a late stage pipeline and close it in this month. I don't know what to tell you, but like my argument and belief is that look, if you're a rep, there's nothing stopping you from trying to close those deals in period. Now, there may be some like perverse behavior, you know, for how you design comp plan, they may like push to the next quarter, but like I rarely see that. If you're a rep, it's a hard game as it is. You're like, I'm trying to make quota, I'm trying to make president's club, you name it. So, to me, that's duplicative. like there's already an built-in incentive to close the deals in the period that you want to close. So that's an example where like hey we should have a debate. We don't know for sure but let's have an intellectual honest debate. Do we think this is going to change a motivational behavior? And honestly sometimes it's just fair to ask your mid-level leaders or even a trusted group of folks if this would affect do you think this will do anything or do you think we're better time spent investment spent? somewhere else.
I I love that word.
Better you.
I do. You think this is gonna next time our head of sales asks for a spiff, do you think this is going to do
Yeah. And look, the good folks would be honest. You're like, "Look, I'm closing everything right now. Like, as much as this would be nice, like it's not doing anything for me, but what I really could use is better enablement. I'm, you know, I've got these deals. I could use help around these competitors or look, I'm I'm stuck in contracting. I could really use this stuff. This stuff will make sure the deals get into the period. Cool. Like that's that's that's a that's that's the right answer.
That sounds like a dream a dream come true. How do you find more more hires like that that don't want spiff but want more enablement? Uh
culture man. Then it's uh comes down to culture. You got to find people who are in it for the long term. And then you know what? One thing we haven't talked about that you know could be another conversation is what are we trying to do at the end day? It's motivate people. And there's multiple ways to motivate. You know, obviously we're doing, you know, uh cash or financial incentive motivation, but there's equity motivation, there's career pathy motivation, there's pride motivation. There's multiple ways to get folks fired up to do the right behavior. And that's where motivation becomes more of an art like, hey, what is the right way to incentivize the long term versus optimize for the short term?
So, you're talking, you know, culture. Are you sharing your values and a lot of your culture during this in initial screening and interview process or is it in the later stages? How how are you getting the right fits to come in? A lot of the founders that we talked to now, they're saying that, you know, the the bar has been raised significantly, especially now with AI, and it's it's become harder to to go and and bring people on to their team. Now
I look for stuff like culture um it's not rocket science but it is like you got to walk the walk and you have to build it into your recruiting process first and foremost like do you have a screen that's screening for culture values do your um that could either be a separate one person is screening that's how we do it one person is dedicated to company values or you You know, sometimes like it's a fast process. You have the hiring manager or several folks screening for parts of that in the conversation. At a minimum, it needs to be part of the hiring process to make sure like, hey, is this person just going to be a good fit for what we care about? Are they aligned? I can't stress this enough, like it starts with who you're hiring, what are you hiring? Like, is there consistency around that? The biggest thing that can like really push people back um is that too often times you hire someone who looks really good on resume and experience, but they're just they're not it's not the right cultural fit. There's clash, you know, whatever happens, but like as you all know, like we have so many more things to go do in a day. We just want to get the work done, move on, figure out the next problem to solve. We don't have time to babysit. We don't have time to do what I call grade school politics. often time that's a failure in how we screen for culture and or like even decision- making. How do we think about decision making? Was this person just fast and loose or did we stress they wanted them to be ownership mentality and thoughtful? What are questions that we want to ask that demonstrates that? Too often times like these things are hard to appreciate until you have made wrong hires who look like the right hires and then you realize like it started with how did this slip through the interview process and if you look at the notes you're like we just didn't care enough.
Well, you you grew really fast, right? So presumably you had to make some mistakes in in the beginning to to get better at where you're at and then establish more of more of a process and not and not repeat those again.
Yeah, absolutely. Um, look in even to this day like mistakes are always nuanced and I don't want to call it mistakes and it almost like sounds too negative. The thing I I I think humans are very capable and one thing that I often see is for ourselves it's that it's usually what it comes down to like why did something work out? Did we set them up for success? Was there good leadership direction? cultural alignment. Um, these things are really important and oftentimes when we have to, you know, it just is not working out. My honest take is it's probably more us than them.
Yeah.
You know, it's I think
you want to build a legendary company. Not everybody wants to to be a part of that.
Yeah, that's right. And I think it's more often not, you know, our hiring process, was it pretty robust? Did we take shortcuts? Did we kind of move too fast here? And so, um, and look, that still happens to this day, but it goes back to like there's always these same core foundations when we do these things well, when you have clarity, cultural alignment, um, are we asking the right questions relative to the role, you know, do people have clarity on what their roles are when they're hiring? When you do that really well, your chances of, you know, not finding the right person are pretty low. And um you know I think that's how we've been able to benefit in large part still you know we hire a lot and you know it's really hard to instill that culture continuously. So you have to remember it's like not a oneanddone. You can't just be like we're going to talk about this at the next company all hands and then we're good. It's constant cultural alignment cultural values. You have to you know not just have it be a part of your hiring process your performance review process. You're talking about the company level. you're awarding people and highlighting where people are showing up to represent those company values. It's a multi-stage uh elaborate process.
And how how has that evolved now that you have customers internationally? You mentioned in Australia, AMIA, I saw that you have, you know, developers in Poland and and staff in the UK. So, how how have you kept your culture while expanding globally? I think a lot of it is some of the things that I I mentioned um like it's it starts with how you hire. So no matter what no matter what country like you can always start with the person I'm talking to on the other side knowing I need to respect their norms and that's important. So you know one thing that's nuance about international is that yeah you have you may have to change things. Certain countries have certain norms that um are going to be different. So being aware, being conscious, being intentional about look, you know, some of our company values we may have to fragment and there's actually this own country that's
is there is there anything specific that that comes to mind
kind like the one this gets a little bit overly scientific but I've learned that like take Ireland Ireland um there is a startup community but there's a much bigger big company community.
Oh wow.
There's a lot of work days there's a lot of Amazon. There's a lot of Google's much more of those companies because Ireland used to serve as this like juncture where if you need to do a European data center you know you set up your your team in Ireland
Facebook used to have or they they still might right
they still might like and you know can there's all these like tax incentives that brought all these companies in. So Ireland was a home base
Microsoft and you name it Stripe uh etc. So what happens? Well, these big companies set there and that's that's how it seeds the ecosystem for startups, but it is still a larger company game. So when you're recruiting there, you're recruiting with this nuance that you're recruiting from a big big big company. And you know, a simple example, we use uh a third party to help us do uh employment of record. Well, when you're a big company, it says Microsoft on your um offer letter. when you're using employee record, it says some other company. It's not your company. It's,
you know, uh the other company and that could freak people out. They're going to be like, "Is this a real company? Is this, you know, am I joining like this company or am I working for a staffing agency? Like, what's going on here? And am I going to be treated well? Like I I'm I'm already going to sense that I'm a I'm not part of the company because I'm not even working for that company." So the cultural values that's like simple nuances of like look you even though you're international even though you're in a a different country you are a part of the company here is our our beliefs our values etc etc and that's that's a simple example
to a simple example where like optics can really lead people down their own narrative and you have to like instill like no no no no no like we're we at least our company beliefs you are part of the team that's no different time zones is really big. Um, we have a lot of folks in Poland and um, you know, it's easy to be like, "Oh, we got our next engineering sync is like at 10:00 or company all hands 11:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time." Well, how do you include folks at a different time zone where that may be like 9:00 p.m. their time on a Thursday or Friday? like all of us, we probably have things to do on a Friday at 900 PM.
Yeah.
So, you have to respect that culture, but you also,
you know, you need to find people who are willing to sign up for that stuff. So, those are more tactical in terms of HR, administrative. Um but I do think how like the importance of respecting their own considerations like whether it's hey I want to feel like I'm a part of the company to the time zone aspects will make me feel like I am a part of the company or I'm just like somewhere in some country being disregarded and like my life and considerations aren't being a part aren't being considered. That's the stuff that you need to bring into the conversation. and be like, "No, we're going to change things culturally. Even though we're US based, we think you and this country is really important. So, we have to do things different. We're going to try to find a time zone that makes sense. So, you are an extension of the team, so you can make these things. And so, we're all going to make trade-offs to make sure we can make this work for you."
Perfect. So, I I was at Zaster this year. Um, so your your home is full of billboards, ads, uh, fire SDRs, your AES, hire hire agents, you know. So are you seeing that? Are you seeing sales reps actually get replaced by agents? Um, you know, and how how does that evolve your mission now at at Captivate?
Yeah, I had a good conversation with um we had a user conference a couple about a month ago now and I brought in the CEO of Workday, Carl Ashenbach. We had a really really good conversation on this topic and one thing that we both agreed with in his background he used to run sales teams for really really large companies like VMware um sales is really hard to replace. There's you can't outsource accountability to AI. There's something about when something goes wrong and we've all seen this like I get a lot of companies try to automate you know left and right automate customer service. There's nothing that makes you more mad, especially when things are not right, than talking to someone who doesn't empathize and isn't like you can feel like you're holding them accountable to what was said or done. And it just feels like, you know, any feedback just going to go to the trash. So, I think go to market, look, there's going to be parts that it will probably evolve and change. Maybe you don't need as many because those roles are being repurposed to something else, but those roles are still more orchestrational roles, but I think core sales will still be really important because we just want that accountability. And maybe we get there, but it just feels like uh resolving it for accountability. I don't think AI will ever get to that, at least the way that we as humans would expect.
I I love that. Yeah, we we need somebody to be accountable and and a robot is not going to to be it. Uh have you replaced anybody like with with AI?
Funny enough, I don't believe in replacing folks like and look, I think one thing that we talked about at the conference, a lot of the, you know, layoffs that you're seeing, you know, this is what the feedback was shared is not a reflection of AI, but more a reflection of companies overhiring.
That's
that's a quote. So um you know not my quote but someone else who sees this a lot um and I think I agree with that. I think what uh is happening is I do think entry level jobs and a lot of jobs are evolving and so what we well I'll talk about what we do as a company what I see I look at the every folks every person at our company and it's become more clear like humans humans and what are humans really capable of and I I've just had this bigger appreciation that humans are very adaptable and more capable than you ever realized. And so something I share with the company is like look at the end of the day solving problems it's two things skill and will and you know what with AI the skills actually gone down there's no more barriers to go solve problems and so it's more will
what I believe yeah so what I believe is actually there's many more people here when they if they choose can actually be more impactful with AI and some examples there's some opportunities where I've taken someone and be like, "Look, you're great in this role, but I actually think you're much better in this new role where I want you to lead this AI initiative." And so, there's a couple people where I created what's called pods, and I want them to solve really big hairy problem and challenges that I previously could not have done, and it's been fantastic. They're actually now probably a team of five to eight around these pods with two full-time that have re, you know, switched their roles entirely. I believe there's many more people at our company that can do that and create this role.
We're creating new roles, applying people differently. And again, the part that I always remind people because sometimes, you know, I get pushed back, hey, this person can't do that. I'm like, it comes down to skill and will. If they have the will, like we're like, let's go see where it goes. The only time I do think it won't work out in my own personal assistant is when that will is not there. And look, there will be people who are like, I don't want to change. I just want to be in what I'm doing. leave me alone, just let me do this day in and day out, nineto-5, and I don't want to change. Yeah, like I'll be honest, like there's no role for that here. Whereas, if you are open-minded, if you're product curious, there's going to be there's like any ask any CEO, there's endless problems to go solve, and there's endless problems to go create huge ROI within the company that we couldn't previously have done before. You're going to make yourself valuable if you're starting to attach yourself in that direction. And you just need to be curious. You need to be open-minded. You need to be constantly learning. You apply these things, dude, you've got the will.
I love it. I love it. So, Mark, as we wrap up the last one for you here, I'm a founder looking to hire. I just closed series A. What What is my, you know, what is one piece of advice you can leave me uh with if I'm listening to this podcast, trying to, you know, go from 30 people to 100 in the next year?
It's a lot of pieces of advice. Um, like uh I'll I'll say the ones that like that come up to me when I think about hiring and uh look, I'll preface this like everyone's going to have their own hiring principle or I only look for this quirky thing. I don't know. I'm not a big believer in a lot of that stuff. But there is something I go back to a lot that has helped me hire good leaders. And um again, this may not be universal. this may not be helping you find your next office admin like I don't know TBD but um leadership I do think a lot about and that's really you really want to get that right above all and it comes down to clarity and energy when I talk to executives I can't tell you how many times where I walk away where I'm like I feel depleted I don't feel energized I feel like my mind was wandering somewhere else or I'm like carefully listening I'm like, man, there's just so much content. I'm having trouble understanding what are they trying to tell me. And look, sometimes it's me. Like, I don't know, maybe it's a long day. Sometimes like, yeah, they're just very verbose. Clarity and energy have served me really well because I think as leaders, that's also what you expect out of them. You need them to bring energy into a room and get people fired up. You also need to bring clarity, direction. Here is a problem. I'm going to explain it really carefully and and clearly for you. Here's also what we need to go do. If you can do that, people follow directions really easily. People get things done more clearly. If you're doing the opposite, people are like misinterpreting things or they're going off in the wrong direction or, you know, the project just hit a standstill because we didn't provide that clarity. So, look, that's serve me really well. I highly encourage um those things,
clarity and energy to build legendary companies. Mark, thank you so much for being on. This is exactly what Who We Hire is built for.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
My pleasure. Where can folks go find you?
Uh well, I'm all over LinkedIn nowadays. Um but otherwise, you know, feel free to reach out to [email protected]. Feel free to add me on LinkedIn. I'd love to be able to, you know, catch up with folks. there's more questions. I'm always happy to either chat through email, LinkedIn, or even happy to to give some time hopping on a call, helping out the next generation of founders.
Phenomenal, Mark. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
