Aug. 10, 2026

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Cross functional and organizational dynamics for a CRO (AJ Tennant)

AJ Tennant, Founder of Tenacity Capital and ex-CRO at Glean, spent three years scaling the company to $100M+ ARR. The hardest problems were rarely in the sales org. They lived in the CEO relationship, the board room, and the R&D roadmap.

He shares how he and CEO Arvind settled their AE to SE fight, why GTM strategy is entirely the CEO's remit, and the board-meeting lesson that changed how he brings decisions forward.

Topics discussed:

Reforming QBRs into future-focused problem solving
Extending recognition beyond sales to engineers
Resolving the CEO and CRO fight over solution engineers
Why GTM strategy is entirely the CEO's remit
Giving the board pipeline generation accountability
The board-meeting lesson on strong points of view
Building CEO and CRO trust through time and meals
Aligning R&D when moving upmarket into security-heavy deals

Business

Investing

English

United States

Use API to fetch this episode in JSON

IN THIS EPISODE

aj tennant

Edit these tags

TRANSCRIPT 🔗

Are you the producer of this podcast? Add a podcast transcript

Need Audio-to-Text? Transcribe with Listen411 in Just 60 Seconds

SEARCH PAST EPISODES

Search past episodes of StepOne.

Embed this search bar to your website

OTHER EPISODES IN THIS PODCAST

Why Your API Is Your Moat (Mohit Aron)

April 21, 2026

Mohit Aron has spent nearly 20 years watching technology shifts play out, and his read on AI moats is blunt: the fundamentals of competitive advantage haven't changed, the tools just have. Most founders are asking the wrong question entirely. With AI agents increasingly acting as the primary interf…

00:16:46

SAVE

CLIP

The Power of Agenda: Managing Your Board (Marcus Ryu)

Feb. 12, 2026

Most founders approach board meetings like performance reviews: exhausting themselves trying to look good while board members gradually encroach into operational decisions. Marcus Ryu reveals this is a failure mode. In this episode, he reframes the board relationship from governance to advisory, ex…

00:20:07

SAVE

CLIP

The Role of CTO in AI Companies (Mohit Aron)

April 21, 2026

Most CTOs talk about AI productivity gains in the abstract. Mohit Aron, Founder of Cohesity and Nutanix, has a concrete system — one he built by taking his pre-AI coding methodology and mapping AI directly onto every phase of it. He still writes unit tests, runs two coding agents in parallel for di…

00:17:22

SAVE

CLIP

How to Choose the Right Problem to Work On (Marcus Ryu)

Jan. 28, 2026

Marcus Ryu built a $20 billion insurance software company by answering a question most founders never ask: why has this problem persisted unsolved? In this episode, Markus walks through his framework for strategic coherence — defining your market attack with enough precision to build an excellent …

00:18:14

SAVE

CLIP

Culture as Competitive Advantage (Marcus Ryu)

Feb. 25, 2026

Most founders delay culture work until later. Marcus Ryu made it foundational at Guidewire when they had no customers—because no one would talk to them about a non-existent product. That decision became their survival mechanism through a product failure, an existential lawsuit, and multiple breakin…

00:16:45

SAVE

CLIP

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Front Lines, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.