Hunters and Unicorns
Hunters and Unicorns
huntersandunicorns
Cerebras EVP: His CEO Said One Thing and He Quit Everything to Join Him
1 hour 1 minutes Posted Sep 23, 2026 at 11:49 am.
— Trailer
— Welcome & Introduction
— How Did You Know Cerebras Was the Right Bet?
— How Cerebras Came to His Attention
— Meeting Andrew Feldman & the Taco Story
— Getting Up to Speed on a Technical Product
— Tackling a Highly Technical Sale
— Shifting From Feature Selling to Value Selling
— Growth & Scale — What It Looks Like Now
— How He Sees the Market Changing in 3 to 5 Years
— How He's Had to Change as a Leader
— Hanging Back & Proving Himself First
— What From the Old Playbook Transferred
— The No BS Culture at Cerebras
— Why You Don't Need a Large Sales Team
— European Expansion
— Advice for Anyone Making the Hardware Leap
— How to Assess a Comp Plan
— Imposter Syndrome at Cerebras
— Closing
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Show notes
What makes a senior GTM leader leave a successful career behind and bet on a company taking on one of the biggest challenges in AI?
In this episode of Hunters and Unicorns, hosts Ollie Kuehne and Simon Kouttis sit down with Alex Varel, EVP of GTM at Cerebras, to unpack the decision that brought him into the world of AI infrastructure. Alex shares what he saw in Cerebras, why the demand for AI compute convinced him, and what he learned from moving between companies like MongoDB and Cerebras.
In this episode:
• Why Alex chose Cerebras over other opportunities
• What makes Cerebras' AI infrastructure different
• Taking on established players like NVIDIA
• The importance of product differentiation in GTM
• What Alex saw when he first met Cerebras' leadership
• Why challenging markets attract great sales leaders
• The mindset behind building and scaling a GTM organization
A conversation about AI, enterprise sales, GTM leadership, career decisions, and what it takes to bet on a massive opportunity before everyone else sees it.
Subscribe to Hunters and Unicorns for more conversations with the leaders building the future of technology and sales.
About Our Sponsor: Big thanks to Aurasell for sponsoring this episode. Aurasell is an AI-native GTM platform designed to intelligently automate every aspect of the sales cycle—from prospecting and deal management to forecasting and coaching.
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