Meet Philip Stenholm, District Manager for Major Accounts in the Nordics, based out of Stockholm. As a district manager for major accounts, his team is focused on twenty of the largest, most strategic accounts in the region - commonly facing long, complex sales cycles with lots of stakeholders, political decision-making, and fierce competition. In today’s blog, Philip shares how his professional growth and progression has taken off since joining Snowflake right out of university.

How long have you been with Snowflake, and what motivated you to join?

I joined Snowflake five years ago, after finishing my masters degree at the Stockholm School of Economics, and haven't looked back. I knew I wanted to experience the startup world, so I moved to the center of the action in Silicon Valley. Being a Swedish citizen, I needed a visa to work in the US, so I sought work at the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco for six months while I networked in the area. Through that network, I learned about Snowflake and was immediately interested.

From my first interview, I knew Snowflake was different. The company had such a strong foundation of impressive talent, and was very early in attracting experienced top executives at such an early stage. Because of this, I could see myself learning a lot from the leaders and knew Snowflake would be a great place to launch my career. This alone made Snowflake really stand out in comparison with the other Bay Area-startups I was looking to join.

How has the company evolved since you joined?

Our global presence and rapid scaling has been the most transformational change since my first day. When I first joined, I spent six months at headquarters in the US where we were 100 or so employees, and then was asked to take on a role in London in 2017, where I would cover the Nordic market. At the time we were a small group of 10 in total in Europe. Fast forward to today, there are over 60 people supporting the Nordics alone with over 800 employees in Europe!

What’s really exceptional - and I think it boils down to the kindness and humility of our brilliant founders and initial team - is that the culture has remained intact. Throughout this journey, it feels very much like the same company. Despite leadership transitions across the company, a common thread the organization has maintained is the culture, which motivates me to continue on my journey here.

How has Snowflake supported you in your career growth and quick progression?

When I think of my own journey, it’s apparent that the culture around meritocracy is quite remarkable at Snowflake. From my initial days as a sales development representative (SDR), I have quickly progressed between roles, and I attribute that success to both culture and great leadership. In fact, mentorship has been the most powerful force in accelerating my career progression and leadership development. Both Thibaut Ceyrolle and Alison Tierney, our former and current VP of EMEA, have been very transparent about how I should and shouldn’t be operating, and encouraged me to elevate my focus and look towards the horizon. Alison in particular has pushed me to aim high while both acting and performing at the level above before being promoted to the next role.

It’s clear to me, through my experience, that Snowflake embraces the people we already have here by looking internally to grow and develop its own people. The company has just been remarkable in that sense, supporting me in my career. At every point in time, I got the chance to raise my hand and was given the opportunity to prove myself. And I’m not the exception; I can think of many other examples of remarkable career journeys at Snowflake.

What is your advice for other new university grads who want to be successful in sales?

“Be a student of what you sell,” is the mantra of CRO Chris Degnan. Go above and beyond when it comes to understanding the product, industry, competition, and the latest use cases that are important to your customers. In areas where I was less experienced, I felt I could make up for my lack of experience by staying on top of the latest data, technology and market trends. This allows you to be more of a partner to your customers; in a way, you’re there with them on this journey and helping them evolve with what Snowflake can enable.

After five years, what excites you most about the future of Snowflake?

I'm probably more excited about Snowflake now then when I joined five years ago. Back then, we were this company that was 10x better than the competition, growing super fast, and it was exciting from a corporate perspective to see us adding on more people and scaling at such a rapid pace. Now, we are truly transforming the data industry and it's really about building the ecosystem for data in every company and every single industry vertical. It intrigues me so much when I can speak about Snowflake’s ability to unleash the power of their data, and also making data accessible for everyone. Some of the biggest and most respected companies still feel futuristic about the data revolution, but it’s happening. It’s happening now, and it’s so exciting.