Mark Schopmeyer is the co-founder and co-CEO of CaptivateIQ, a modern commission-management platform that scales incentives for revenue teams. Prior to building his own company, he led finance and strategy operations at BrightRoll and worked extensively in growth-equity technology investing. Under his executive leadership, the company has scaled to serve nearly 1,000 customers globally, including enterprise giants like Netflix and Stripe. In this episode, he breaks down the psychological flaws of spreadsheet-driven management and outlines his core framework for spotting elite leadership talent.

- Copied comp plans from larger firms lack authenticity and can easily drive your team in the opposite direction of your actual business objectives.

- Spreadsheet math often misleads finance teams into keeping quotas artificially high due to a false belief that sales reps stop working once they hit their targets.

- Top performing sales representatives are driven by a desire to maximize their paychecks rather than hitting a bare minimum quota.

- When introducing short-term spiffs, leaders must define a clear narrative and exit strategy to avoid the incentive implicitly becoming permanent.

- Cultural screening must be an explicit, dedicated stage in the recruiting funnel rather than a casual addition to tactical manager interviews.

- Skill barriers have collapsed with the rise of artificial intelligence, making a candidate's intrinsic will the primary determinant of hiring success.

- Elite executive hires can be effectively filtered by evaluating just two core qualities during the interview process, clarity and energy.

Timestamps:
00:00 The origin story of CaptivateIQ and broken compensation
4:35 Finding a co-founder and the Y Combinator experience
09:12 Why venture capital will not magically build your company
13:03 The fundamental flaw in copying other companies' compensation plans
17:16 Why finance leaders misunderstand sales rep motivation at quota
23:27 How to design effective short term spiffs without breaking culture
28:07 Designing a strict interview process to protect your core values
32:38 Strategies for maintaining company culture across international borders
36:55 Why AI agents cannot replace the accountability of a human sales rep
41:53 The clarity and energy framework for hiring legendary executives

Where to find Mark Schopmeyer:
Website: https://www.captivateiq.com/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mschop/
Email: mark@captivateiq.com

Where to find Luiz Cent:
Website: https://latamcent.com/
Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Elio Narciso is the co-founder and CEO of ScaleStack, an AI-powered go-to-market infrastructure layer powering billions of data points for enterprise customers, and the host of the Revenue Engine Masters podcast. Before ScaleStack, he spent four years at AWS running their global startup program with front-row seats to hundreds of companies building revenue engines, became a certified Amazon Bar Raiser with veto power on hires, and built two prior companies including one that cleared $50M.

In this episode, he breaks down the Bar Raiser system, the follow-up question framework that exposes BS candidates, and why AI has raised the hiring bar so high he wouldn't hire his own past self.

- Why lowering the hiring bar at Amazon during COVID created cascading effects, including missing the AI wave entirely

- How the Amazon Bar Raiser program works and why veto power changes hiring behavior across an entire org

- The follow-up question method that breaks down rehearsed answers and AI-assisted interview scripts

- Why Elio flips the interview by making candidates ask him questions first, and what their questions reveal about curiosity

- The "what did the customer say?" question that exposes whether a candidate is truly customer-centric or shallow

- Why ScaleStack shares interviewer feedback before debriefs, breaking from Amazon's protocol

- How to evaluate a co-founder using complementary skill sets, kindness in failure, and humility in success

- Why "AI slop" first drafts are an instant red flag and what real upleveling looks like in 2026

- The closing rule for founders making their third or fourth hire: be your own bar raiser

Timestamps:

00:00 Cold open: scripts, agents, and rising expectations

01:00 From AWS to a third startup: what changed in hiring

03:30 Becoming an Amazon Bar Raiser and how veto power works

06:30 Follow-up questions that kill rehearsed and AI-assisted answers

10:50 The ScaleStack interview system and cultural fit values

13:50 Flipping the interview to test for curiosity

17:30 Pre-briefs, live docs, and debrief structure

21:50 "What did the customer say?" and exposing BS candidates

24:50 Choosing co-founders you actually know

35:50 "I wouldn't hire myself two years ago" in the AI era

40:00 Final advice: be your own bar raiser

Where to find the guest:

Elio Narciso on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elionarciso/

ScaleStack: https://scalestack.ai

Revenue Engine Masters Podcast: https://scalestack.ai/podcast

Where to find Luiz Cent:

Website: https://latamcent.com/

Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/

Meg Bear is the former President of SAP SuccessFactors, where she led a global 4,000+ person business past $2.5B in revenue with double-digit YoY growth. Before SAP, she spent two decades building enterprise software at Oracle, and today she serves as a public board director, investor, and advisor to companies reinventing work with AI.

In this episode, Meg reveals her frameworks for surviving the AI transformation as a CEO, why "intellectual humility" is the new operator superpower, and what boards are actually demanding from leadership in 2026.

What you'll learn:

- Why "the first rule of holes" applies to every CEO leading through AI transformation right now

- The exact 3-question framework Meg uses to coach CEOs into making their own jobs obsolete

- Why waiting on AI is "the worst of all postures" and how skeptics will be "very, very wrong"

- Why nervous system regulation is the hidden leadership skill nobody is talking about

- The hiring rule every founder should follow: hire smarter than you, hire for learning agility

- Why boards see revenue per employee as the new battleground for capital allocation

- How to hack your own curiosity even if it doesn't come naturally

- Why human connection still wins, but only with intentionality

Timestamps:00:00 Ex-SAP President Who Scaled SaaS to $2.5B: 3 Questions to Ask Before AI Replaces You01:12 Meet Meg Bear: From Oracle to SAP President01:53 Why Human Capital Became Human Experience03:16 The Cognitive Dissonance of Layoffs in HR05:00 Why 80% of CEOs Are Scared Right Now06:39 Make Your Job Obsolete Before Someone Does09:01 The 3-Question Framework for CEO Reinvention14:16 The Whiplash FOMO Moment in AI18:08 Big Companies vs Startups: Who Wins the AI Race21:19 Nervous System Regulation as Leadership25:13 What Boards Get Right About Hiring29:30 Why Engineers Now Cost 2X Their Salary34:31 Remote vs Hybrid: Which Org Performs Better37:39 Inventing the Future of Work40:56 Meg's #1 Hiring Rule for Founders

Where to find Meg Bear:Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megbear/The Meg and Amy Show: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMegandAmyShowWebsite: https://www.megbear.com/

Where to find Luiz Cent:Website: https://latamcent.com/Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/