Menlo Ventures Taps Industry Veteran Parm Uppal as GTM Advisor

We’re thrilled to announce a not-so-well-kept secret: Parm Uppal is partnering formally with Menlo Ventures as a GTM Advisor.

I’ve known Parm since my time as an investor at AppDynamics. As a board member, I always ask execs to tell me who the highest-potential up-and-comers are on their teams. At AppDynamics, they raised Parm’s name each time I asked this question—whether I was speaking to someone on the sales team or founder/CEO Jyoti Bansal. They viewed him as not just a star sales leader but someone who could ultimately be a CEO. This was notable as AppDynamics had the best sales organization I’ve worked with, and Parm stood out on a team of star players.

I made it a habit of staying in touch with Parm. Every time we spoke, he made me smarter about the key issues companies face. And he knew his stuff! We talked about everything from sales methodology to recruitment, development, and retention to territory management, pipeline, and lead-gen—even going deep on new metrics and leading indicators. It wasn’t long before Parm was my “go-to.”

After AppDynamics sold to Cisco (for $3.7 billion), Parm became CRO of DataRobot, building to over $150 million; an EIR at Sutter Hill; most recently, CRO of Luminary Cloud; and there will be another exciting announcement about him soon. Along the way, he took on a couple of formal advisor roles at Menlo’s portfolio companies, digging in deep and adding enormous value. We then approached him with the idea of working more closely with the team at Menlo and the companies we back, advising our companies on an ongoing basis. Several months into this work, Parm has proven his value, doing deep dives with several portfolio teams. 

Advisors are known for sprinkling pixie dust and high-level advice from on high. Sure, that can be helpful, but what we love about Parm is that he digs in deep. Our portfolio companies report that he gets to the crux of real issues and quickly unpacks them. He’ll attend sales meetings, interview candidates, coach go-to-market teams, teach methodologies, and do whatever it takes to give our companies an advantage. He is classically trained as part of the BMC diaspora under the legendary John MacMahon and Dev Ittycheria and at AppDynamics under Dali Rajic and Jeremy Duggan. That shows up in the high-accountability, high-performance, high-coaching mentality he brings to his company interactions.

Menlo has long been committed to helping companies scale as part of our Fuel program, which has two primary pillars: go-to-market and talent. Parm is an extension of that. He is a competitive, results-driven GTM leader with an incredible track record, but he is generous with his knowledge and thoughtful in applying it. In this current climate, with strong headwinds threatening GTM for many companies, Parm’s expertise in building world-class sales processes and teams is priceless.

Selling SaaS has gone from one of the easiest times in history to the hardest in a short period of time. Many companies are refactoring their GTM motions and teams. The art and science of closing customers is increasingly complex and multifaceted; companies will need new playbooks to prove ROI, time to value, and significant impact. As Parm says, companies must know if they provide a mission-critical “run the business” solution or a “change the business” solution, and how to position/sell accordingly. His “3 Ys” framework is timely (and timeless): What is the problem we are solving? Why are we uniquely positioned to solve it? Why wait/why now? We are excited to expose more of Menlo’s talented entrepreneurs and GTM leaders to this thinking as Parm shows them how to turn the magic and art of GTM into a repeatable science.  

Welcome to Menlo, Parm! We’re proud to partner with you.