Inside QuestDB’s Enterprise Sales Motion: Why They Keep Engineers on Sales Calls
Most enterprise software companies separate engineering and sales teams. QuestDB does the opposite. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Nicolas Hourcard revealed why having engineers lead sales conversations has been crucial to their success with major enterprises.
The Technical-First Sales Approach
Despite selling to “pretty large companies, listed companies worth more than $50 billion market caps,” QuestDB maintains an engineering-led sales process. “Having too many salespeople on those calls wouldn’t be that beneficial,” Nicolas explains. “Sometimes I bring my co-founder CTO, sometimes we bring engineers as well in the calls because the questions are highly technical and this is the kind of thing they need to know about the product.”
Organic Growth into Enterprise
Their enterprise journey began naturally through their open-source adoption. “It was people coming to us already using quest db open source, and they’ve been asking us the same things over and over,” Nicolas shares. These consistent requests – particularly around distributed setups, replication, and security features – shaped their enterprise offering.
The YC Influence on Sales Hiring
Their approach to scaling the sales team follows Y Combinator’s advice: “Hire more as you make more AR.” As Nicolas describes their hiring philosophy: “We hire when we feel like we desperately need to hire more. It’s not like, oh, I’m feeling a bit stretched, maybe we should hire a bit more here and there. It’s like, I cannot function like this anymore.”
Building Enterprise Features
The decision about which enterprise features to build came directly from user demand. “Can I have a distributed setup with multiple database instances that can talk to each other? We call that replication and security features and stuff like that,” Nicolas recalls their customers asking. “Therefore we knew what we had to build. It was just about timing.”
Metrics That Matter
QuestDB tracks two critical metrics in parallel:
- Open source adoption and awareness
- Revenue growth
As Nicolas explains, “Without open source adoption and without seeing that growing very fast, it would be difficult to maintain the go to market engine.” The relationship between these metrics is crucial because “if you have a bit too much focus one, then the other starts suffering a little bit and vice versa.”
Technical Credibility in Sales
Their sales process heavily emphasizes technical authenticity. “We’re never going to make bold claims, say we’re the best without evidence and without a very technical explanation of how we got there,” Nicolas states. This approach resonates with their technical buyers who need to understand the deeper capabilities of the product.
The Future of Their Sales Motion
While they plan to expand their sales team eventually, they’re in no rush. More traditional sales roles might come “probably around series b, something like that,” Nicolas notes. “But yeah, it’s not immediately. Anyway, now we’re really still focusing on building the best possible product and we just need focus on engineering.”
Key Lessons for Technical Founders
QuestDB’s approach to enterprise sales offers valuable insights for technical founders:
- Let technical excellence drive sales conversations
- Scale the sales team based on necessity, not projections
- Build enterprise features in response to clear demand
- Maintain technical credibility throughout the sales process
- Focus on adoption before aggressive sales scaling
Their story challenges conventional wisdom about enterprise sales. Instead of building a large sales team early, they’ve succeeded by keeping engineers central to the sales process, focusing on technical excellence, and growing their sales function organically in response to demand.
For technical founders building enterprise products, QuestDB’s experience suggests that maintaining technical authenticity in sales conversations might be more valuable than traditional enterprise sales tactics. When your buyers are technical decision-makers, having engineers who can speak their language might be your strongest sales asset.