# Brex grew through strong hires, broad awareness and better targeting Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/brex-grew-through-strong-hires-broad-awareness-and-better/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Sam Blond](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-blond/) · Sam Blond is cofounder and CEO of Monaco. · Former Brex and Zenefits CRO who co-founded Monaco, the AI-native revenue engine for startups. - Host: [Jack Altman](https://realalpha.app/people/jack-altman/) · General partner, Benchmark · Co-founded Lattice and ran it until 2023, then started his fund, Alt Capital. - Show: Uncapped - Episode: [Sam Blond on the Future of Sales in an AI-Native World | Ep. 54](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/), Jul 14, 2026 - Moment: 14:07 to 18:38 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/brex-grew-through-strong-hires-broad-awareness-and-better/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=847 ## Quote > “what are the companies and people that are **most likely to convert**” > — [Sam Blond](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-blond/) at [17:59](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=1079) · Uncapped ## Takeaways 1. Bring proven sales leaders into the first hires. 2. Build brand awareness before reps reach out. 3. Score leads by company and buyer fit, not count alone. ## About this segment Sam Blond credits Brex's sales results to standout hires, broad brand awareness and stronger revenue operations. Zenefits learned that raw opportunity counts can reward low-quality leads. From “Sam Blond on the Future of Sales in an AI-Native World | Ep. 54”, Jul 14, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [14:20](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=860) Brex's outcomes while I was there as much as anything. Two of which were true at Zenefits, one of which was actually a learning from Zenefits that we started far later than we otherwise should have that we were able to capitalize on early at Brex. Then we can kind of do the same thing if it's interesting for Monaco because it's a different world today than it was in 2018. The three things, the first is like recruiting and building the team. [14:46](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=886) at Zenefits. My first two hires were the top two sales reps at EchoSign, brought them with me. Their names are Matt Plank and Jameson Young. Matt Plank is now the CRO at Rippling. Jameson Young was CRO at Gong. He's now SVP of something important at Rippling in their sales organization. So these are like two of the people that have actually influenced my personal success as much as anything. And then you can just imagine that sort of cascading from there. And so at both Zenefits and Brex now at Monaco, like we just have an incredible sort of like NFL level of players in a sales organization. And I think, you know, we can attribute so much of the success of the go to market organizations of these companies to the people that exist within the go to market organizations. I think the second thing we touched on is we don't have to go much deeper. [15:41](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=941) If you think about early days of Brex, one thing that we did, I think a very effective job of was going out of stealth to like everyone knowing and talking about Brex very, very quickly. And we did things like huge billboard campaigns and gifting campaigns and. fundraise announcements and so much of the stuff that like maybe hopefully like Monaco is known a little bit for today. But you got really loud. I remember that. Really loud. Yeah. And I think the idea was like, we want as close, I don't know if we were as intentional as we are at Monaco today about this, but the idea is that like, we wanted close to 100% of our target market to have heard of Brex. And so then when we reach out to founder, finance leader, controller from Brex, you know who we are. And hopefully you have like some positive brand association with that. [16:30](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=990) So we're very deliberate about that. And I think again, like the concept of creating this demand rich environment was something that we were very deliberate about early on at Brex. The third thing that I think we did, gosh, over time, the like grade improves, but it's benefits. We get something like a D plus from an early stage is like the influence of what would be considered today as revenue operations. And it's just being very thoughtful about, well, here's maybe the easiest illustration of this. Not all leads are created equal. And revenue operations is like far more complex than this specific example. But I think this specific example helps highlight the influence that it can have. Not all leads are created equal. And there's going to be influence both on like the type of company that the lead or opportunity that you are potentially selling to. [17:23](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=1043) there's also going to be influence at like the persona level. So who is the person that we are meeting with? One thing that we did at Zenefits, it was a mistake is we treated all leads or opportunities, two sides of the same coin as being equal. And so we had things like opportunity goals that was sort of the thing that like fed into what is the ultimate outcome of revenue. That was wrong because what we started doing was getting more lower quality opportunities that converted at lower rates that led to less revenue. And so over this year of 2015, which was a more challenging year for Zenefits than certainly the 2014 year, I attribute a lot of that to the diminishing quality of leads and opportunities. And so the thing that we invested in early at Brex was really understanding what are the trends in the business and trying to pattern match to what are the [18:12](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=1092) companies and people that are most likely to convert and applying that learning back to the sort of top of funnel? And where are we pointing our missiles at targeting and acquiring these opportunities? And so then you get the best of all the world. You get a leadership environment with the right type of people and companies that you're trying to sell to.