# Why 90% of CROs will fall behind in the next 2 years | Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/in-depth-1318680/why-90-of-cros-will-fall-behind-in-the-next-2-years-stevie-case-cro-vanta
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/in-depth-1318680/why-90-of-cros-will-fall-behind-in-the-next-2-years-stevie-case-cro-vanta.md
Podcast: [In Depth](https://stenobird.com/podcast/in-depth-1318680)
Published: 2026-02-19T12:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/FRCH2134104457.mp3
Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/FRCH2134104457.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/in-depth-1318680/episodes/why-90-of-cros-will-fall-behind-in-the-next-2-years-stevie-case-cro-vanta
Duration seconds: 4275

## Resource

Stevie Case is the CRO of Vanta, the trust management platform serving everyone from founders to Fortune 100 CISOs. A former pro-video gamer who stumbled into sales through a mentor's bet, Stevie has built one of the most unconventional paths to the C-suite in tech. In this episode, she unpacks why early revenue hires fail, what separates a true CRO from a VP of Sales, and why she believes fewer than 10% of current CROs will thrive by 2028. In today's episode, we discuss: Why early revenue hires fail What a top 1% CRO actually does The scaling mistake Stevie made by copying Twilio's playbook at Vanta Why Vanta remains 100% sales-led at every segment AI vs. humans in go-to-market References: Cursor: https://cursor.sh/ Gong: https://www.gong.io/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ Twilio: https://www.twilio.com/ Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/ Where to find Stevie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steviecase/ Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: 00:00 Why early revenue hires fail 02:23 Who to hire at $5M in revenue 04:16 Coin-operated sellers vs. long-term builders 05:57 What excellence looks like in the CRO role 07:44 Metrics, confidence, and velocity 12:04 Should CROs lead sales? 14:39 From shy seller to revenue leader 16:36 Learning to scale at Twilio 17:44 "There is no CRO playbook" 19:58 Stevie's scaling mistake at Vanta 22:16 Why Vanta stays 100% sales-led 23:16 The value of planning…

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