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You can start with a basic RevOps framework as an early stage startup (seed or pre-seed funding stage) or even as a small company without any external funding. Building your company’s go-to-market tech stack with RevOps in mind will reduce a lot of the potential headaches in the future.

In my opinion, the RevOps team should report to the CRO (Chief Revenue Officer), which in turn reports directly to the company CEO. However, the company must be big enough to have a CRO and, even so, in a lot of companies, the CRO function is mainly focused on the sales team (the perceived main drivers of revenue). Ideally, there should also be a VP of RevOps position (which reports to the CRO) positioned on the same level with the marketing, sales and customer success leadership teams.

Usually (but not mandatory), people moving into Revenue Operations roles are coming from other GTM (go-to-market) functions, such as Sales, Marketing, Customer Success or Operations. The benefit of a cross functional position is that people end up in RevOps from different places and perspective, which I consider an advantage. Depending from which function you’re coming from (GTM or other), it helps to start learning more about the other functions involved in RevOps.

Revenue Operations is a framework to aid in the growth of your business, so the earlier this framework is considered (and applied), the easier it will be to align your internal resources, which reduces the friction when the time comes to scale in earnest. The earlier you can justify, the quicker you can scale. Get the right people in to help you run faster.

There are many RevOps definitions out there, but most of them focus on a few key elements: alignment of go-to-market functions (GTM), meaning people, processes, data and tools. RevOps is all about people (skills), data (KPIs and reporting), processes (marketing, sales, customer success) and technology (tech stack) all aligned to a unified business strategy.