OpenAI, SpaceX and Cognition All Hire Sales Talent from the Same 'Playbook Mafia' Sourcing Firm
thedealdirector · x · 2026-10-06
A deep-dive into the 'playbook mafia' of tech sales: OpenAI, SpaceX and Cognition all claim to build 'the best GTM team in the world,' yet the same sourcing company handles hiring for all three, drawing sales leaders exclusively from Snowflake, Grafana, MongoDB, Zscaler and peers.
The lineage traces to 1990s enterprise firm PTC, where sales leader John McMahon popularized the MEDDPICC qualification framework. The post also details consulting firm Factory's costly entanglement with playbook advisors—forced exec firings, equity-based fees, team purges and narrative control—only for those advisors to later work with Factory's largest competitor.
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