Among other factors, salespeople have a large variable component to their compensation. They tend to be highly economic animals in a way that most engineers are not. Hence a former boss can easily convince them to join up by making a compelling argument about their prospective earnings.
- Hire new CRO or President of sales.
- He "builds out a team" generally consisting of people he's already worked with in the past.
- Sales org grows.
- CRO moves to next company. wash rinse repeat ad infinitum.
Why would this process breakdown given a team of proven, successful engineers who have shown to be capable of building/scaling a product in the past?