From IC to CEO: Steve Corndell on Scaling Sales in Infrastructure Startups
May 21, 2025
Welcome to Built Not Born: The Startup Go-To-Market Podcast, the podcast for early-stage founders and startup leaders who know that great companies aren’t lucky… they’re built through smart execution and a bulletproof go-to-market strategy.
In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with Steve Corndell, CEO of env0, to reveal what it takes to build and scale a high-performing technical sales team. Steve shares lessons from his own journey in enterprise sales leadership, including developing non-traditional sellers, leading through tough quarters, and creating a learning-driven culture. Whether you're a founder or sales leader, you'll gain practical strategies for building resilient, effective go-to-market teams in technical and infrastructure startups.
Welcome to Built Not Born: The Startup Go-To-Market Podcast, the podcast for early-stage founders and startup leaders who know that great companies aren’t lucky… they’re built through smart execution and a bulletproof go-to-market strategy.
In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with Steve Corndell, CEO of env0, to reveal what it takes to build and scale a high-performing technical sales team. Steve shares lessons from his journey in enterprise sales leadership, including developing non-traditional sellers, leading through tough quarters, and creating a learning-driven culture. Whether you're a founder or sales leader, you'll gain practical strategies for building resilient, effective go-to-market teams in technical and infrastructure startups.
Here’s what you will learn:
- Transitioning from individual contributor to sales leader with technical expertise
- The "Both-And" principle for sales success
- Why pipeline inspection must be meticulous and systematic
- How to build a sales team culture through transparent performance metrics
- The "Customer-Centric Learning" approach
- Why technical founders should prioritize team chemistry over sales experience when hiring
- How to maintain sales team momentum through market shifts
- The "Velocity Framework" for scaling deal sizes
Steve Corndell is the CEO of env0, a leader in infrastructure as code management. With an extensive background in enterprise sales and go-to-market strategy, he has scaled multiple high-performance sales teams from the ground up, most notably at Turbonomic before its successful acquisition by IBM. Known for his technical sales expertise and ability to build customer-centric teams, Steve has transformed organizations from early-stage startups to enterprise-level operations.
Episode Resources:
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