Ron Gabrisko
Chief Revenue Officer at Databricks
About Ron Gabrisko
Ron Gabrisko is the chief revenue officer of Databricks, the data and AI platform company. He joined in 2016, when Databricks had less than $1 million in ARR, and has led its worldwide sales and go-to-market organization through its growth into one of the largest private software companies. Before Databricks he held senior sales roles at Cloudera and IBM. He holds an MBA and a master's in engineering from Stanford and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Purdue.
He is one of the most cited sales leaders in enterprise software, and in 2026 he has been outspoken about what AI changes in a large sales organization: who you hire, how outbound works, and how you price.
Career Highlights
- Chief Revenue Officer at Databricks since 2016, scaling revenue from under $1M ARR to billions
- Senior sales leadership roles at Cloudera and IBM
- Board member at XBOW (appointed December 2025)
Notable Positions
On AI-First Sellers
Every Databricks rep has to certify on Genie, the company's AI product, and build their own industry-specific demos. Candidates are asked to build and walk through a demo during the interview.
On SDR Teams in the Agent Era
Agents now handle account research, personalized outreach and proposal prep, so Databricks adds AEs and SAs while SDR headcount stays flat. He keeps the SDR team as a training academy for future AEs rather than eliminating it.
On Usage-Based Pricing
Find the base unit that scales with customer value, add multipliers for premium features, and avoid seat fees and large upfront commitments. Databricks saw consumption jump after making users free.
Key Quotes
- "I think the day, the old day of the show up with a PowerPoint is gone." (on selling with working demos)
- "consumption went out the roof once I did user base for free." (on removing per-user fees)