Technology - FY27 International Sales Kickoff
No one summits alone.
How Explore Performance became the red thread across Elastic’s International Sales Kickoff - turning 650 people in a room into a team on a mountain.
650+
Sales leaders - EMEA, APJ and emerging markets
75 min
Of facilitated Everest experience
2
Sessions bookending the keynote morning
$1.5B
Elastic’s 2029 revenue ambition
The Challenge
Inspiration isn’t enough. 650 people need a shared experience.
Elastic’s International Sales organisation gathered in Las Vegas for their FY27 Sales Kickoff - 650+ people from across EMEA, APJ and emerging markets, representing every function from Account Executives to Field Engineering, SDRs to Services Leaders. Bold ambition on the table: $1.5 billion by 2029.
The challenge was more than logistics. With a theme of Ascend Together and a leadership team that wanted more than a motivational keynote, the brief was specific: create something that would land the message that alignment, shared values, and collective decision-making are what turn individual performance into team performance at scale.
They needed an experience that could hold a room of 650, create genuine interaction, and leave people with a felt sense - not just a heard sense - of what it means to climb together.
The Approach
The red thread across a half-day.
Rather than taking a single keynote slot, Explore Performance designed a 75-minute interactive Everest experience - For Those Who Dare - structured as two sessions that bookended the entire International Keynote morning. EP became the narrative frame that gave the whole half-day its shape.
The Approach
Opening - Setting the Frame
Teams of 3–5 self-formed across the 650-person room. Every team named themselves, assigned roles, and entered a simulated Everest expedition - but one deliberately designed to fail. Participants made high-stakes decisions as individuals: without alignment, without shared values, without communicating intent. The mountain punished them for it.
The Risk or Return scenario placed teams under real pressure at altitude, and the outcomes made the lesson visceral rather than theoretical. Before the break, the lead facilitator introduced the concept of antifragile teams - the idea that the highest-performing organisations don’t just survive pressure, they get stronger under it. The formula: aligned purpose, empowered individuals, accountable decisions, transparent communication. Teams then chose their own values and prepared for a second attempt.
Session 2 - 30 minutes
Close - Bringing It Home
After Geo Keynotes, Functional Leader Q&As, Partner sessions and awards, EP brought the room back to Everest. This time, teams returned to the mountain with their values in place. Two further scenarios - The Summit Window and Window One or Window Two? - placed them in genuinely complex, high-pressure decisions. This time, alignment changed everything.
The Outcome
650 people in a room. Nobody passive.
Designing for interaction at this scale is a genuine craft challenge. EP structured engagement at three levels simultaneously:
Team level
Small groups of 3–5
Ensured no one was passive. Every individual had a role, every team had a decision to make, every outcome was shared. The room was full of 130+ independent teams, each fully engaged.
Room level
Collective momentum
Live scenario voting and visible outcomes created collective momentum. The room experienced the same moments simultaneously - failure in Session 1 landed across 650 people at once. The scale amplified the impact rather than diffusing it.
Room level
Collective momentum
Live scenario voting and visible outcomes created collective momentum. The room experienced the same moments simultaneously - failure in Session 1 landed across 650 people at once. The scale amplified the impact rather than diffusing it.
The four strategic pillars - Customer, Ambition, Scale, You - were introduced at the close not as a slide but as a lived experience. Each one had a direct equivalent in what teams had just been through on the mountain.
The Outcome
A shared reference point for 650 people.
The Everest experience gave Elastic’s International Kickoff something that’s hard to manufacture at scale: a shared reference point. By the time the awards ceremony closed out the morning, every person in the room had been through the same journey - struggled on the same mountain, made the same mistakes, and found a better way together.
The theme of Ascend Together was no longer just a conference headline. It had become an experience.
“The idea was to use Everest as the red thread - high energy to open and set the tone, then bring it back at the close to reinforce alignment and commitment. It gave the whole morning a shape it wouldn’t otherwise have had.”
- Tom Cooke, Managing Director, Explore Performance
Programme Used
Everest: For Those Who Dare - Interactive Keynote Format
Two sessions bookending the keynote morning. 650+ participants, Las Vegas. Available for any audience size.