What makes a senior GTM leader leave a successful career behind and bet on a company taking on one of the biggest challenges in AI?
In this episode of Hunters and Unicorns, hosts Ollie Kuehne and Simon Kouttis sit down with Alex Varel, EVP of GTM at Cerebras, to unpack the decision that brought him into the world of AI infrastructure. Alex shares what he saw in Cerebras, why the demand for AI compute convinced him, and what he learned from moving between companies like MongoDB and Cerebras.
In this episode:
• Why Alex chose Cerebras over other opportunities
• What makes Cerebras' AI infrastructure different
• Taking on established players like NVIDIA
• The importance of product differentiation in GTM
• What Alex saw when he first met Cerebras' leadership
• Why challenging markets attract great sales leaders
• The mindset behind building and scaling a GTM organization
A conversation about AI, enterprise sales, GTM leadership, career decisions, and what it takes to bet on a massive opportunity before everyone else sees it.
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About Our Sponsor: Big thanks to Aurasell for sponsoring this episode. Aurasell is an AI-native GTM platform designed to intelligently automate every aspect of the sales cycle—from prospecting and deal management to forecasting and coaching.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Trailer
1:45 — Welcome & Introduction
4:17 — How Did You Know Cerebras Was the Right Bet?
8:46 — How Cerebras Came to His Attention
11:37 — Meeting Andrew Feldman & the Taco Story
17:10 — Getting Up to Speed on a Technical Product
20:14 — Tackling a Highly Technical Sale
22:32 — Shifting From Feature Selling to Value Selling
26:35 — Growth & Scale — What It Looks Like Now
27:50 — How He Sees the Market Changing in 3 to 5 Years
32:03 — How He's Had to Change as a Leader
34:20 — Hanging Back & Proving Himself First
37:25 — What From the Old Playbook Transferred
43:34 — The No BS Culture at Cerebras
48:08 — Why You Don't Need a Large Sales Team
49:31 — European Expansion
51:42 — Advice for Anyone Making the Hardware Leap
54:30 — How to Assess a Comp Plan
56:47 — Imposter Syndrome at Cerebras
57:53 — Closing
