Rev Ops Is Not a Tooling Job | How Pennylane and Pivot Built Early GTM Operations with Alexia Charbonnier (Pivot, ex-Pennylane)

What does RevOps actually mean when the company is still figuring out how to sell?And why do most early startups introduce tooling long before they understand the motion?This is an honest look at what RevOps really looks like in early-stage startups and why the job is less about dashboards and more about judgment, behavior, and fixing broken GTM fundamentals.Alexia Charbonnier (RevOps leader at Pivot, previously at Pennylane) built revenue operations from the ground up in high-growth environments where sales processes, ICP, and reporting were still evolving at the same time.In this conversation, we unpack what RevOps actually means before scale exists and why early operators often have to design systems while the company is still learning how to sell.We talk about:Why RevOps is not a tooling jobHow to design onboarding that actually builds real sales skillsWhat goes wrong when you assume reps already know the basicsHow Pennylane structured early GTM operationsWhy clean data is hard when the motion isn’t stable yetThis episode is for RevOps, Sales Ops, and GTM operators working in early-stage startups, as well as founders hiring their first revenue team and trying to make sense of pipeline, forecasting, and CRM chaos.In the Trenches is a podcast about how revenue actually gets built before playbooks exist.🎧 Follow the show for more operator-led GTM stories🔔 New episodes every Wednesday, 8:30AM CET