Distributed GTM, Unified Impact: Jon (Snowflake)
President (APJ) @ Snowflake
Snowflake’s President (APJ), Jon Robertson has spent 30+ years scaling enterprise tech across APAC. Currently, he is leading Snowflake to build a decentralized, go-to-market engine tailored to APAC’s complexity.
Since the opening of the first office in Sydney 8 years ago, the company has grown many times over, now supporting over 1,700 customers that are using Snowflake as their platform of choice for AI and data across 11 countries with over 1,000 employees in the region.
In this conversation, Jon unpacks how to localize GTM, scale AI in fragmented markets, and avoid the pitfalls of the “APJ-as-one” mindset.
Q: You’ve built and scaled GTM teams across APJ for decades. What are you trying to do differently at Snowflake?
Jon: I’ve worked in APAC my entire career - Japan, ASEAN, ANZ, Korea, India - and I’ve seen the same thing over and over, a centralized HQ taking a top-down regional, one size fits all approach to Asia Pacific. In my view - You end up with large bureaucratic teams who don't understand the local markets, and can’t earn the trust of local customers.
When I joined Snowflake, I wanted to try something different. I focused my efforts on hiring the right people in each region, and empowering them to make the decisions about how to build a business that serves the needs of their local customers. For example, our bilingual marketing leader is in Australia. Our Japanese CFO is in Singapore. I’m in Tokyo, speaking Japanese and helping HQ bridge cultural gaps.
This model continues to fuel our growth across the region. It has been critical to building trust in the various countries we operate in.
Q: How do you evaluate whether someone is a good fit as a local leader?
Jon: Two levels.
At the APJ functional level, I handpick leaders I’d worked with before - people I trusted and who were known operators in the region, leaders who can build teams, attract talent - the kind of people who are aligned with the Snowflake culture and values. I told them: you don’t have to move, stay where you’re strong.
At the country level, I hired GMs or “local CEOs.” In Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia, India, each country's leader has real autonomy. They’re not just sales heads. They’re accountable for the business, empowered to meet with the CEO of a customer as a peer, not just as a vendor. My job is to support them - not the other way around.
Q: AI adoption varies widely across APAC. How are you navigating that from a GTM perspective?
Jon: There is no AI strategy without a data strategy. And that message resonates with our customers. We now have over 1,700 customers in APJ. Half are already experimenting with AI use cases - from insurers using Document AI in Japan and Australia, to retailers and telcos in Southeast Asia analyzing loyalty behavior and deploying in call centers.
And a lot of our product philosophy, which is rooted in things like simplicity, security, product cohesion is key with AI. You're not buying anything new with Snowflake. It comes as part of the platform. We've always had that one platform mentality and AI now becomes this needed element to unlock the value of unstructured data on top of those things that we are doing with structured data. That's what positions us to be really well, to succeed in the Data AI space with everything that we have done over 14 years, creating an efficient data platform, an easy-to-use data platform - now AI becomes an accelerant for all of these things.
Q: Has your GTM motion evolved as the region matured?
Jon: Absolutely. When I joined four years ago, we had less than 100 people in APJ. Most of our revenue came from English-speaking markets like Australia and Singapore, and we had minimal partner involvement.
Today, we’re over 1,000 people across 11 countries, and 75-80% of transactions go through partners. In many cases we had to build that ecosystem from scratch, especially in markets like Japan and Korea, where systems integrators are essential.
In every market, we typically start with cloud savvy (digital native) startups as customers who understand the value of the data platform. From there we build local GTM and support, then use this foundation to expand into new enterprises and verticals tailored for each region across APJ.
Q: Founders often get stuck in pilot limbo. How do you break through to full deployment?
Jon: Especially in Japan and Korea, there’s always a POC phase. You can’t avoid it. But you can shorten it - if you localize properly. Translate the content. Provide local-language support. Bring in trusted partners.
You also need to think in use cases, not products. Don’t pitch a “platform.” Pitch a problem. If the customer has a clear pain point, like pulling insights from their silos of data, we can say, “Here’s how Snowflake + AI solves it.” That’s when they buy, see value and then come back for the next use case.
Q: Final thoughts on what most companies still get wrong?
Jon: APJ is not a single region, don’t approach it that way. Every country is at a different stage of development, cultural nuances, language, different GTMs, technology adoption and maturity. Think of global best practices, but build local.
And when it comes to AI - stop thinking hype. Start thinking about data readiness. If your data’s not clean, governed, and accessible… no model in the world will help you.