← Cockroach Labs
Cockroach Labs role-play cheat sheet
For the mock cold call at the end of most SDR interviews.
What they sell, in one line
CockroachDB is a database that keeps apps running and in sync across many locations, even when servers fail.
Who you'd be calling
VP/Director of Engineering, Head of Platform or Infrastructure, Enterprise Architects, and database leads at large companies in finance, retail and SaaS
Your opener
“Hi Taylor, this is Alex from Cockroach Labs. We help companies keep their critical apps online even when a database server or whole data center goes down. Is uptime something your team is worried about right now?”
Problems you solve for them
- Database outages stop the business and cost revenue
- Growing apps outgrow a single database and become hard to scale
- Serving customers in many countries needs data in many regions
Discovery questions to ask
- What happens to your customers if your main database goes down for an hour?
- How are you handling growth today: bigger servers or splitting the data up?
- Do you need your data to live in specific countries or regions?
Objections they'll throw at you
“I'm busy right now.”
→ I understand. Could I send a calendar invite for 10 minutes next week so you can pick what works?
“We're not interested.”
→ No worries. Is your database setup something you feel fully confident in for the next few years of growth?
“We already use Postgres, Oracle or another database.”
→ That's very common, and CockroachDB speaks a Postgres-style language, so teams often keep much of their code. Are you hitting any limits with scaling or downtime today?
“Send me an email.”
→ Of course. Who else on your team cares about database uptime that I should include?
Competitors worth knowing
Amazon Aurora, Google Cloud Spanner, YugabyteDB, TiDB
Interview tips for this company
- Learn the terms 'distributed SQL' (one database spread across many machines) and 'resilience' (staying up when parts fail).
- The About mentions a new product called Cockroach Continuum; read the company site first so you can name it correctly and not over-explain.
Written from public information about Cockroach Labs to help you practice. Ask an insider what their role play looked like; it's the best prep there is.