[Un]Churned · 1 Apr 2026 · From the week of 30 March
Why Replit's CRO is Hiring 200 GTM People in 12 Months ft. Ghazi Masood (Replit)
These are notes on the conversation, checked against its transcript. The episode itself has the full discussion.
In brief
Ghazi Masood, CRO of Replit, speaks with host Josh Schachter about building the go-to-market organisation at an AI app-building platform that he says went from about $2M to about $150M in revenue during 2025 and is targeting $1B by year end. He describes how non-technical staff build internal tools on Replit, a GTM catalog library that prevents duplicated work, enterprise governance controls, usage-based credit pricing, a product-advocate post-sales model, and plans to grow sales and marketing all up from about 40 to over 230 people. He argues that large enterprises will keep their systems of record while smaller companies sometimes replace SaaS with custom builds, and that coding tools from Cursor, Claude and OpenAI are mostly noise for a user base that is about 90% non-developers.
For founders
- Replit moved enterprise pricing from seats to a platform fee plus prepaid credits that the whole company can draw on, which Ghazi says is easy to roll out without restricting who can use the product.
- Ghazi says the biggest enterprise IT question is what governance, audit and security guardrails can be placed on what gets built, so Replit's built-in security scanner and per-team and per-user build limits were central to closing financial services and government accounts.
- Ghazi said a large credit card issuer's security review took a few weeks to a month, not years.
- Replit starts enterprise adoption with one team or division, aims to make it very successful there, and expects usage to spread naturally from that base.
- When hiring, Ghazi weights product passion and the ability to explain what AI makes possible above years of sales experience, and says people who have never built on Replit will likely not do well there.
For revenue leaders
- Replit's post-sales model assigns each new customer a product advocate who combines the classic CSM, renewal and expansion roles, working alongside field engineers.
- Ghazi says a product advocate's book is currently about 30 to 40 accounts in commercial and about 10 to 20 in enterprise.
- Ghazi says the first team a customer starts with determines the buyer, with a product-led start usually rolling up to the Chief Product Officer and a finance-led start to the CFO.
- Replit's field engineers cover both pre- and post-sales, and Ghazi says the product is so easy to demo that AEs often show it on their own without a solutions engineer, so field engineers spend most of their time post-sales.
- Ghazi says enablement matters as much as hiring speed when a go-to-market team is growing very fast, drawing on his experience at Auth0.
What was said 22, most useful first
Replit went from about $2 million to about $150 million in revenue in less than a year during 2025. Listen
He attributes the jump to Replit's agent launch and a global community of users that had been built over about 19 years. He says revenue has nearly doubled since then.
“the business went from 2 million to like 150 million in less than a year in revenue”
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Replit keeps a GTM catalog library of internally built assets, owned by Rev Ops, that teams check before building anything new. Listen
Ghazi says the biggest challenge of everyone building is duplication, with three or four people building the same thing without talking to each other. If an asset exists the team discusses it, and if there is a gap they build it. Tools that are core to the business, such as the customer health dashboard, are rallied around, trained and supported with enablement, while personal tools stay with individuals.
“that's our, you know, our, our system of record that we go check in first before we actually go build what we want to do”
Replit has moved enterprise pricing from seats to a platform fee plus credits that customers prebuy for 12 months and that anyone in the company can consume. Listen
Ghazi says the enterprise side was seat-based and is now evolving to a usage-based model. The platform fee depends on customer size and a small team starts with a smaller credit pool, while more teams committing means more credits. He says the model is easy to roll out and puts no handcuffs on who can use the product.
“you pre buy basically credits that you think you would need for the next 12 months”
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A product advocate's book is about 30 to 40 accounts in down-market commercial and about 10 to 20 in enterprise. Listen
He says books are set by segment and gives these as the current numbers. He also says the team still needs repeatable assets, such as a list of use cases for product designers, rev ops and marketers, to help customers after their first few builds.
“It's probably about 30 to 40 accounts right now, right?”
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Ghazi values product passion and the ability to explain the art of the possible over years of sales experience when hiring. Listen
He says Replit gives at-bats to people without five to ten years of sales experience who are deep in AI, the mission and the product, and expects them to do well if they can carry that into customer conversations. He says this matters across roles, while field engineers need deep technical knowledge, and that anyone who has never built on Replit will likely not do well there.
“we give a lot of at bats to people who may not have the, you know, 5-10 years of sales experience”
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In SMB he has seen customers replace traditional SaaS with systems built on Replit, including a Workday-style HR system. Listen
He says he can count on both hands the SMB customers who replaced SaaS this way, with examples including a smaller CRM and BI dashboards. He argues that a fifty-person company does not need all of Workday's features if it can get by with about 90% of what Workday does.
“I have an example of a customer who basically built their instance of work day.”
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At Replit, the person with the idea builds the internal tool themselves, and a pre- and post-sales leader produced a working prototype within hours. Listen
Ghazi says the leader had a vision, got input from his team on what they wanted, and built a prototype without waiting for engineers. The team then spent time refining and iterating on it before it was ready for wider use.
“had a prototype within hours”
Replit's GTM team has built its own forecasting tool modelled on Clari and a customer health dashboard, both on Replit, and uses them internally. Listen
Ghazi says Replit dogfoods its own product across the stack. The forecasting view lets reps quantify deals, see top deals for the quarter and view forecast categories, and the customer health dashboard was just launching with enablement planned for the team.
“We've built kind of our version of Clari on Replit where you can do like forecasting”
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Replit's enterprise build environment includes a built-in security scanner, and an app that fails security cannot go any further. Listen
Ghazi says enterprise IT organisations ask first what governance, audit and security guardrails can be put on what is built, and that Replit provides a fairly robust set of these from the start. He says most organisations do not run it as a free-for-all and he would not recommend that approach.
“We actually have a built in security scanner that if like whatever reason you're app doesn't pass security, you can't go any further”
A large credit card issuer's security review for Replit took a few weeks to a month. Listen
He said Replit closed the account a few weeks before the recording. He said enterprise annual contracts go through security assessments, security reviews and governance reviews before deployment, and that such reviews do not take years.
“we just closed a large credit card issuer a few weeks ago. It took us like a few weeks and a month to kind of get past their security.”
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Replit's usual enterprise rollout starts with one team or division, aims to make that team very successful, and lets adoption spread from there. Listen
Ghazi says the team typically starts with a single group such as product and design, lets them see productivity gains for themselves, and then opens it to other departments like HR or marketing. He describes this as the usual playbook rather than a fixed rule.
“Usually we start in with a team and a division and get them ultra successful and comfortable using Replit”
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Cursor, Claude and OpenAI's coding tools are mostly noise for Replit because they target engineers, while about 90% of Replit's users are non-developers. Listen
He says these tools make engineers and developers more productive, so Replit does not usually lose deals to them. He concedes that an engineering organisation may buy Cursor over Replit, but says a finance analyst who knows nothing about Cursor would never select it.
“Our persona, 90% of our users are non developers and non engineers.”
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Replit's buyer depends on which team it lands in first: a product-led start usually rolls up to the Chief Product Officer, while a finance-led start goes to the CFO. Listen
Ghazi says the team engages whichever organisation it starts with and the buyer follows that team's reporting line. He describes how the first team sets the path into the organisation.
“If we start in finance, probably goes up to like the CFO.”
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Replit assigns each new customer a product advocate at the moment they become a customer, and that advocate combines the classic CSM, renewal and expansion roles. Listen
Internally the role is called account manager and externally product advocate. The advocate onboards the customer and works with the field engineering organisation to keep bringing new things to build on Replit. Ghazi describes it as designed with an AI-first mindset rather than the classic CSM and renewal structure.
“And basically you, you will get assigned A Replit product advocate the moment you become a customer.”
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Replit's field engineers, formerly solutions engineers, work both pre- and post-sales, and Ghazi says the product is so easy to demo that little pre-sales specialist help is needed. Listen
He says AEs can often show the product on their own without an SC, so the field engineers spend most of their time post-sales helping customers get value and grow. Field engineers are expected to be technical.
“Anybody can do a demo, right?”
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Sales and marketing all up is about 40 people today and Replit wants it north of 230 by the end of the year. Listen
He says the figure covers sales and marketing all up, even though marketing is not in his organisation. He describes it as a crazy amount of hiring across the board with very lofty goals.
“we want to be north of 230 people by the end of the year and we're a team of about what, 40 right now”
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Enablement is just as important as the speed of hiring, based on his experience during Auth0's hyper-growth. Listen
He says anyone hiring this fast must invest in enablement so every new hire is trained and has the talk track for their discipline. He says enablement was a huge differentiator at Auth0 and still holds true at Replit.
“So enablement is just as important at the as the speed of hiring”
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Ghazi's personal view is that large enterprises will keep their systems of record such as ERP and CRM and build dashboards on top of them. Listen
He says large enterprises are too big and have too much invested to get rid of their ERP or Salesforce-type systems. He says he sees a lot of wrappers and additional capability built on platforms like Replit to make those systems more agile, with separate dashboards pulling data from Salesforce and other systems.
“You're not going to go get rid of their ERP system or their, you know, their sales force system or their CRM system.”
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In Ghazi's opinion, vertical AI companies with deep domain expertise are the ones likely to survive as general LLMs get commoditised. Listen
He says LLMs will get commoditised and hopes prices come down. He says that although copycats have appeared, which makes it harder to pick winners, vertical AI companies offer an immediate cost benefit for older industries.
“these vertical AI companies, you know, that are like domain experts in, you know, a specific vertical. I think those are the companies that will survive is my opinion.”
Replit is pacing ahead of its goal of $1B in revenue by the end of this year. Listen
He describes the target as a billion dollars all up by year end, alongside establishing Replit as the leading vibe coding solution for the enterprise. He says reaching it requires scaling the team massively and expanding internationally into Europe, Asia Pacific, India and Latin America.
“we've nearly doubled and are well pacing ahead of where we want to be at a billion dollars by the end of this year”
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Replit administrators can limit who can build and how much each person can build, by team, by individual, or by credits per user. Listen
Ghazi says these fine-grained controls are available to organisations and the team typically discusses them with enterprise customers. He notes that Replit has large financial services organisations and government agencies among its users.
“You can actually control who can build and how much they can go build. So if you're an organization, you can only limit it to certain teams, certain individuals, certain credits per user.”
Ghazi relies on recruiting support, internal referrals and inbound applications to fill a very large hiring plan. Listen
He says the company has a ton of recruiting help and many internal referrals. He says the funding and launch news the day before produced an unusually large amount of inbound applications from its website in a single day.
“we've got a ton of recruiting help and a ton of folks internally that are referring us”
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