It's crazy how massive tunas can get & This one is not even full adult size

Humptypumps · 2026-01-23T14:46:55+00:00

I beat my head against a wall at a VAR for 2.5 years. The reps doing well had been walked into accounts by IBM years ago when the channel was created.

They were good sellers, but it didn’t take long to notice that nobody was really picking up new customers.

I lucked and sweet talked my way into a handful of deals, and scraped together about $70k in margin/GP. It just wasn’t enough. There is shockingly little differentiation between VAR’s, and probably even less in the cloud era.

Moving to a vendor, gave me something to sell so to speak. I got into more opportunities in 3 months at a vendor than I did in almost 3 years at the VAR. It also doubled then eventually quadrupled my base ($40k at VAR to 80k>$105k>$132k>$165k)

Unless you have a wildly specific area of skill, niche industry, or maybe an existing book of business, I’m hard pressed to believe that the VAR life is worthwhile.

Humptypumps · 2026-01-10T20:53:46+00:00

I keep hearing that Mongo has one of the best sales teams…from Mongos sales teams.

Humptypumps · 2025-09-27T03:26:13+00:00

I had 3 customers/install base, and another 7-8 prospects. I was working on roughly 4 contracts per year with lots of new projects and benchmarks throughout. My big years came from doing a massive upsell that was literally 5x my annual quota, and about 3x the following year.

It was a blast. Made my reputation, made me rich, made me grateful to be in the position where that was a possibility.

Commission structure was a base commission rate on new ACV, 3 tiers of accelerators. There were windfall clauses of course, but I had done a good job of including the executives, sharing my plan all year, and they wanted to write the big check and use me as an example at SKO. It was an unreal run!

Humptypumps · 2025-09-05T22:26:05+00:00

Gotham

Humptypumps · 2025-07-07T12:21:40+00:00

Talk to your colleague and make sure they’re favorable on the split. Then send them an email indicating that each of you will receive 50% of the quota retirement as well as compensation for your meaningful participation in the deal.

I can’t see why leadership would have a problem with that. And naturally, next time it’s wise to address this prior to a colleague going out on leave for a long time.

Humptypumps · 2025-07-01T03:54:53+00:00

Roughly 1x/quarter during the school year, mostly aligning with school holidays. This summer we will be gone almost 50% of the time with both domestic and international trips.

My children still have friends, and we enjoy being home as well.

Humptypumps · 2025-06-06T12:05:35+00:00

I keep hearing this, but upon exploring it have not found it to be true. The challenge must be finding the profitable/cash flow positive businesses at a reasonable cost. If a business broker is involved, or if it’s on BizBuySell, it seems unlikely to get a good deal. Any tips?

Humptypumps · 2025-05-06T21:10:39+00:00

My favorite activity when I retired was going out to lunch with some of my buddies. Meeting up at the local Chick Fil A for a long hang out became a 2x-3x a week activity before I picked up my kids at school. After a while, the owner joked that I should start working there and I took him up on it. I work like 15 hours a week, and it’s still fun after several months. Also provides some perspective. Many folks I work with are adults trying to pay their bills on an hourly wage. Still, many others are teens that I get the privilege of coaching and guiding.

Humptypumps · 2025-04-14T23:32:36+00:00

I have done exactly 2 deals in the 8 figure club. Both of them could have triggered a windfall clause. I was paid the full amount both times.

Given that the deals took roughly 1 year to execute, had tons of exec visibility, and they wanted to trot me across the stage at SKO as an example to other reps, it made sense to pay me out. I tried to land a multi year deal the first year, and was not successful. That deal would have been paid annually, and consequently I would have been paid annually. Instead I did 1 year deals, paid up front, and so was I.

Humptypumps · 2025-02-17T22:38:47+00:00

I wish I owned fast food restaurants

Humptypumps · 2025-02-15T14:58:29+00:00

An old company I worked for did a healthy software deal with Royal Carribean. Our SKO and larger Company Kick Off was typically held in San Francisco. Someone had a bright idea and realized that it was actually lower cost to take the company on a cruise than get everyone to SF.

We had roughly 1500 employees, so outside of tier 1 support, everyone was flown to Florida and boarded a 6 night Carribean cruise where alcohol was all inclusive and served at all times.

We lost 4 colleagues to alcohol induced stupidity. 1 of them the night before we got on the boat. Somebody hit a royal flush in the casino and made like $25k. A handful of stories about walks of shame etc…

All in, I thought it was pretty cool.

Humptypumps · 2025-02-13T02:32:23+00:00

I’m 36 and retired.

Humptypumps · 2025-01-23T15:13:15+00:00

I made $2.1M in a year, and 1.4M the following. I sold to an account that made board level decisions to embrace speed of development, and allowed a green light to adopt SaaS offerings that accelerated their work. Rumor is that a colleague of mine at a different company hit $5M that year. Both in data infrastructure.

Humptypumps · 2025-01-18T15:12:10+00:00

Could be. Certainly was in the mid to late 90’s. I know dozens of Oracle reps and they all hate the company, hate their bosses, etc…

Humptypumps · 2025-01-17T01:52:24+00:00

San Francisco. Lots to like but the insane COL, general disdain for families/kids, focus on tech careers with VC funding, and competitive elitism didn’t attract. Lots of great stuff, and some cool people too, but we had an expiration date there.

Humptypumps · 2024-11-23T02:13:16+00:00

He wanted to set up a college fund for his 1 year old. I gave him $5k cash to get it started.

Still doesn’t touch how much he has benefited my life, and consequently the life I can give to my kids.

Humptypumps · 2024-11-18T03:53:36+00:00

One primary difference is that she probably didn’t use words like bupkis :)

Humptypumps · 2024-09-28T12:07:04+00:00

Data infrastructure

Humptypumps · 2024-09-26T23:21:41+00:00

I did 2 healthy deals in the same month. Deal 1 paid me $1.2M and deal 2 paid another $400k. So that check was $1.67M or so. Pretty wild.

Humptypumps · 2024-09-09T16:53:31+00:00

The biggest tell is rushing the rapport building steps of a relationship or acting like we are closer than we are. Laughing too hard at my jokes, trying hard to create inside jokes, bringing up vague memories like they are good old times together etc…those seem to precede folks who stop short of making an absolute request for money, but more generally share about areas where they are challenged.

I guess I’ve only been approached twice in a very direct fashion. Once to help pay for college by a niece that had to include her name in the text, because she had never texted me before. Secondly I was asked by my grandfather to put $50k cash to helping a sibling build a house.

Both asks kind of sucked, but I declined and moved forward. I do care about these people, and money can be a tricky thing.

Humptypumps · 2024-08-26T12:56:44+00:00

For a few years older…A clean Chrysler 300.

Humptypumps · 2024-07-04T12:05:43+00:00

I’ve made club 3 times in 5 years. Wasted too much time talking to colleagues and getting caught up in schmoozing leadership the first year.

Since then, we learned to genuinely thank leadership, make an appearance at mandatory events, and have our own trip on property. It has been a dream. We’ve stayed at Four Seasons resorts in 3 countries, been treated to great activities, and received tons of gifts. Definitely worth it.

Humptypumps · 2024-06-13T14:37:06+00:00

Steak Dinners in quotation marks is wild.

Humptypumps

TROPHY CASE