​Your first few sales hires can make or break your growth trajectory - and yet most founders get it wrong. This panel brings together 2-3 experienced sales leaders who've built teams from the ground up to share what actually works when hiring for sales at every stage.

​Whether you're making your first sales hire or looking to bring on a VP of Sales, this session will cover:

• ​When to hire your first salesperson vs. doing it yourself

• ​What to look for (and what to avoid) at each stage of growth

• ​How to evaluate candidates when you don't come from a sales background

• ​The difference between hiring individual contributors and hiring sales leaders

• ​Compensation structures that attract the right talent without blowing your budget

​Walk away knowing how to build a sales team that actually scales with your business.

​Speakers

​Julee Held

​Julee Held has built and scaled revenue engines at some of the most influential names in enterprise tech - Salesforce, Databricks, Yext, and DataStax. With a career defined by turning scrappy sales teams into world-class operations, she brings hard-won, practical wisdom that works at every stage: from zero-to-one startup chaos to nine-figure enterprise scale.

​Julee doesn't just talk theory - she's lived the messy, high-stakes reality of building pipelines, coaching reps, and architecting the systems that actually move revenue. Whether you're trying to hire your first enterprise rep or restructure a 50-person org, she's done it, debugged it, and scaled it. At Raleigh-Durham Startup Week, Julee will share what the playbooks rarely tell you - the decisions that compound, the mistakes that cost quarters, and the frameworks that actually stick when growth gets hard.

​John Rosar

​John Rosar is the CEO of Revgen, a company that drives ROI for growing businesses by using proven, cutting-edge sales tactics. Since founding Revgen in 2017, John has led the company in providing outsourced SDR services, staffing qualified SDRs, and offering an online prospecting course to help sales teams achieve exceptional results. With over 14 years of experience in the sales industry, John specializes in helping SDRs book qualified meetings through his proven 5-step cold calling system, which has delivered outstanding outcomes for more than 100 B2B SaaS clients. He is passionate about coaching the next generation of sales professionals and fostering a diverse, inclusive culture in the workplace. John believes leadership is a privilege and is committed to delivering effective training for both sales and leadership teams.

​Matt Williamson

​Matt Williamson is a seasoned entrepreneur and startup operator with 20+ years of experience building, launching, and scaling software businesses. He is the founder of Prediktiv, a consultancy that helps startups and growth-stage companies with product launches, go-to-market strategy, revenue growth, and venture fundraising.

​Previously, Matt founded Windsor Circle, a predictive marketing platform for e-commerce retailers that was acquired by OSG/WhatCounts in 2018, and Plum CoOwnership, which enables groups to purchase vacation homes together. Earlier in his career, he was part of Bronto Software’s early management team, helping scale the company from roughly 10 to 100 employees and drive significant growth in revenue and deal size, contributing to Bronto’s $200M acquisition by Oracle in 2015.

​Matt has been recognized with honors including Google Demo Day, Entrepreneur Magazine’s Elevator Pitch, an Inc. 500 ranking (#351), and Triangle Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 and Top Companies to Watch. A proud double Tar Heel, he earned undergraduate degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MBA with honors from UNC Kenan-Flagler, where he served as class president. He’s also a longtime Habitat for Humanity volunteer and former board president of Orange County Habitat (NC).

​Moderated by Chris Leithe

​Chris Leithe has owned pre and post sales and marketing for multiple 8 figure businesses, helped the Citrix ShareFile sales team scale from 30 to 300 reps, Adwerx scale fro $10MM to $27MM, and built out B2B, Enterprise, and B2B2C motions for FoodSmart (recently acquired for over $200MM). He now helps founders and CEOs build and monetize social media audiences, find leads, close more deals, and scale sales teams.

​Location

​Raleigh Founded North Street — Cafe

​509 W North Street, Raleigh NC 27603

​Questions?

​This session is part of Raleigh-Durham Startup Week. Click here to learn more about the event, plus get answers to your FAQs.

​Track Supporter

​​Thank you to Bank of America for supporting the Revenue Track at #RDSW26!