Welcome! I’m Simi Shah, and every other week, I dive deep into the journey of a South Asian trailblazer. If you enjoy this issue, please like it above and share with friends!
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Hot off the Pod 🎙️ Renu Gupta: VP of Sales at Thrive Global
It's not all that often we see South Asians in sales. This week, Simi welcomes Renu Gupta, the VP of Sales at Thrive Global. Listen to the episode here!
Renu is a seasoned sales executive who’s traversed some of the most ambitious tech companies in the world — namely, Slack, Dropbox, Google, and Cisco. Currently serving as the VP of Sales at Arianna Huffington’s famed company Thrive Global, Renu previously served as a Director of Sales at Slack for Large Enterprise. There she built the sales team and closed Fortune 100 customers. A trailblazer in two traditionally male-dominated arenas (sales and tech), Renu has a record-breaking repertoire. In this episode, she shares how she got her start and paved her path to the C-suite.
Excerpts from the pod below:
Thrive Global is focused on tackling the burnout epidemic. It’s quite a departure from previous companies you’ve worked at like Slack and Dropbox. What compelled that decision?
It was serendipitous. I've always worked at organizations that specialize in employee productivity tools. I'm sure a lot of the readers and listeners here use Slack. It's a game changing productivity tool, especially in a remote world and also if your teams are dispersed. The same goes for Google and Dropbox. With Thrive, we're focusing on the people behind those employee productivity tools. So it's a lot more fulfilling because instead of talking about how to get your teams to work faster, harder, or more collaboratively, we're talking about how you take care of people so that they can bring the best versions of themselves to work. It's been a really, really exciting experience for me.
We sometimes forget that sales is often a thankless job. It's a lot of effort, a lot of hitting specific targets. What keeps you motivated?
I actually would disagree with that because with sales, when you close a deal, you are directly impacting the bottom line. Your team is responsible for ensuring that customers are return, that they engage, and that they use your product.
At the organizations I’ve been at, we drive that culture to make sure it's not a thankless job. We use Slack to celebrate wins. We also make sure that the teams that helped us get these wins are part of those celebrations. It helps make it inclusive, beyond just the sales team, and beyond just closing the deal and moving on. With software, especially, you want to make sure that the revenue is predictable and that it’s renewable, so I think that there really is no true ending to the sales cycle. There is often short term memory when it comes to sales because it’s like, “Okay, you closed the deal. What’s next?” So to combat that, we do these things and express gratitude to everyone that supported the sales cycle.
You've achieved a great deal in your career at Slack, Dropbox, Google, Cisco, and now Thrive. What's been your proudest moment?
That's a hard one: the first thing that came to my head was my son scoring his first goal in soccer! I don't know if I have one in particular. Going back to the very beginning, getting chosen as one of the 25 fresh grads (out of 2000 applicants) in Cisco’s Sales Rep training program. It set the stage for my career. Getting through the Google interview process and getting the job as an account executive — that's a proud moment. Having an interview with Arianna Huffington and getting this job is another one. There's been so many good ones: like closing the largest deal at Dropbox and holding that record for some time. Seeing my team at Slack break every record — biggest deal, biggest contract size — over and over again. There are so many moments to be proud of.
Catch the full episode on Apple, Spotify, or here!
Catching Fire 🚀 what we’re following 👀
🇮🇳 How You Can Help India’s Covid Crisis
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🌎 Scenes from South Asia
The Dalit community: the invisible warriors of India’s covid crisis. PM Modi’s party loses a key state race. Australia bans citizens from coming home.
The big deal: Even when imposing travel bans, it’s incredibly rare for countries to bar their own citizens from re-entering. Australia’s policy is unprecedented for democratic countries and is cause for concern.
📺 In Culture
May marks AAPI month — here’s the history and how to celebrate. Netflix’s latest hit, Shadow & Bone stars a variety of actors of South Asian descent.
🎵 Listen to emerging South Asian artists.