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When Code is Not the Bottleneck
Former OpenAI Sales Leader: How Founders Win 2026




guest speaker: Learn From Practitioners
Session replay
Aliisa Rosenthal was OpenAI's first commercial hire, joining when the company was a research lab with a handful of sales reps and no GTM playbook.
She built OpenAI's sales org from scratch, growing its revenue run-rate from $10M to $10B.
As a General Partner at Acrew Capital, Aliisa works with founders building next-gen AI-native enterprise companies, helping turn promising pilots into scalable businesses.
In this fireside chat, Aliisa shared lessons from the front lines of the AI platform shift, including:
- How AI moved from experimentation to enterprise deployment.
- How startups earned trust and proved ROI inside large companies.
- Why early GTM decisions shaped long-term outcomes.
- How to build AI products that grow in value beyond the pilot stage.
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