SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Investing at a breathtaking pace. In many ways, your Quality of Life will simply be awful. Your quality of life will simply be awful if your co-founders aren’t as committed as you, and if they aren’t at least close to as good as you. This friend is one of the hardest working people in the industry. Do not pass go.

Part-Time VPE 281

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 281

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Does it cost so, so much to host a few million lines of code on AWS? Don’t wait to invest in customer success and account management. Why did sales-driven Qualtrics get to $100m+ in ARR without ever raising a nickel, and generating more than $20m a year in free cash flow ? So is SaaS cursed? I know this seems counter-intuitive.

Scale 280

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 280

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Investing in things that enable us to move faster and leaner for the long term. Our engineers also write a lot of Ruby code, which knits together a lot of AWS, infrastructure, platform and SaaS technologies that form the core of Intercom’s backend infrastructure. Best in class public companies (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Apple).

Software Review 224

Software Review Outsourcing Services Software Outsourced Development 224

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

” “I hated Katie at that company meeting, it was awful.” So, for those of you thinking, “Hey, I’m going wait on the ROI of our culture, or I’m going to wait to invest in our employee experience,” wait no longer. ” “Our benefits are terrible.” It’s really tough.

Part-Time CTO 262

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 262

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

To invest in you when there’s no logical reason to. But they are often just awful managers. You have to convince people to join you. To drag the troops up the hill. To do the impossible. You probably haven’t done it before. Turns out, first-time CEOs are often the most successful.

Sales Hiring 279

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AWS Churn 279

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

I’m talking about product-led growth as an investment strategy, but really my background is 10 years of operating experience in the product-led growth world. Now I’m investing in that. I say investment strategy, but really it’s like how do you build a company that’s focused on product-led growth?

Investment 100

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Software Review 100

User Pilot

AUGUST 16, 2023

What’s more, data visualization tools allow them to communicate ideas clearly with stakeholders that may not be involved in product development directly, like senior leadership. Here are a few options Data warehouse – data warehouses like AWS Redshift enable you to consolidate your data in one place. Userpilot integrations.

Data 80

Data Technical Review Government Data Analysis 80

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

It was around that time about 12 years ago that Jeff Bezos launched AWS, and some of you may remember that, when he did this, Wall Street analysts were looking at him and saying, “Why would you take what’s already a very unprofitable business and drive it further into the red by investing in this AWS initiative?”

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 31, 2019

The wave of SaaS companies that built themselves on the likes of AWS and Azure have reinforced the pre-eminence of cloud computing. Apple survived the death of Steve Jobs in October 2011 under the thoughtful stewardship of Tim Cook, and continued to essentially be the iPhone company, while branching into wearables and services. .

Payment Solutions 259

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Software SaaS Payments 259

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

We’ve done a ton of terrific sessions with the Twilio leadership over the years, including 4 different deep dives with Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder. At the end of the day, Twilio still sells communications, AWS still sells servers, but the way we’re selling it is different than how it was done in yesteryear.

Scale 287

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Wireless 287

Audacix

AUGUST 11, 2023

But you should also be able to use these penalties to make a strong business case for reasonable and necessary investment in cyber security within your organisation. But the list below should help you understand which types of automation you will eventually need to invest in. Examples include: Veronis, Azure Purview, AWS Macie.

Outsourcing Services 52

Outsourcing Services Technical Review Cybersecurity Data 52

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2020

And I remember like AWS was growing really quickly. And at the time there was a big debate of, “Will big companies ever really use AWS?” And at the end of the day, that’s a leadership decision from founders of saying, “What kind of place do we want this to be for people to work?” As a team together.

Sales Hiring 172

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Recruiting 172

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2020

I’ve held a bunch of technology leadership roles in startups, in rocket ships and turnarounds, including about 10 years at Google, and just over three years leading efforts at Evernote. So over the course of those 20 or so odd years in technology leadership roles. Thank you, Jason and the SaaStr community, for including me.

Scale 188

Scale Sales Hiring Pricing Sales Recruiting 188

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2019

Tables have turned because I first met Mikkel when just after I was working for previous fund index, he had just invested. Mikkel : Well again, the public cloud, AWS, was the dominant leader. So I am here, I guess, about 7 years after we first met. It was 7, 6 years. Obviously that’s not really so relevant today.

Cloud 186

Cloud Sales Recruiting Scale AWS 186

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2019

I’ve been in venture capital for about 20 years, made my first SaaS investment about 18 years ago and have really been focused on this space for a long time. We make early stage Series A investments in both consumer and enterprise companies. I was lucky enough to invest when it was three founders and a PowerPoint deck.

SaaS 144

SaaS Sales Hiring Scale Innovation 144

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2020

How does John think about the role of leadership in a crisis such as this? Where does John believe many leadership teams go wrong in times such as this? How can leadership teams ensure that a crisis is not self-fulfilling and how can one prevent that mindset? You’ve got executive people who want thought leadership.

Scale 215

Scale Leadership Strategy Technology 215

ChurnZero

AUGUST 11, 2020

You and I both know how awful it feels to have someone disregard what we say and focus on their end goal instead. Investing in customer relationships has always been a central focus for leaders, but now more than ever, those relationships need to be expanded and nurtured. Get a 360-Degree View of Your Customers .

Retention 97

Retention Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Software Review 97

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

Jason Lemkin: The highest stage of venture is crossover, crossover funds, TCV is one of an early one, but even mutual funds that invest in unicorns. A few can, Andreessen and maybe Sequoia, but 99% of the VCs you meet, legally, they can only invest in startups, whether they’re late stage or early stage. It could come back.

Sales Hiring 209

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 209

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 25, 2019

Or, your SKO can be a colossal waste of time and money that will leave your sales reps questioning your leadership. Meet with your leadership team ahead of time and determine what the primary purpose of your SKO will be. As a general rule, we humans are pretty awful at retaining information. Our downfall is in our memory.

Sales Hiring 63

Sales Hiring Sales AWS Leadership 63

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

We’ve all seen AWS and what they’ve done with their platform. One of the early co-investments with my prior firm in Bessemer was in Shopify. If you look at companies like Cornerstone OnDemand, which we invested in a long time ago, it took them some time to get to 100 million of ARR. It is staggering.

Sales Hiring 158

Sales Hiring Scale Payments Cloud 158

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

And what that has resulted in is that you have CIOs and their leadership teams are basically involved in architecting systems across the company and what those basically mean. The group therapy dinner really has been there to help founders and help VCs to get an unfiltered opinion on either investment ideas or product road maps.

Technical Advisors 160

Technical Advisors Scale Technical Review Payment Solutions 160

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Our private membership connects you with a network of thousands of like-minded peers and resources, where you can tap into leadership opportunities, training, mentoring, and other services made for high-growth leaders like you. We work really closely, we have the sales leadership, Jed Smith is my peer. Amy: Totally.

Sales Recruiting 79

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 79

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2020

And then I spent a year at Salesforce working on Marc Benioff’s extended leadership team, and really had a chance to learn how important trust can be, and also really learn from Salesforce, from Mark, how do you really build a global SaaS leader at scale? And that company grew very quickly.

Software Review 181

Software Review Scale Technical Review SaaS 181

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Bringing Sales & Leadership with Heart and Ladies Happy Hour to the sales community. I went through a VP of Sales Program with SaaSy Sales Leadership — the moment I realized I didn’t want to be a VP of Sales. Invest in your development internally and externally. She is a Speaker and Hostess for LinkedIn Live.

Scale 130

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 130

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2019

Sameer Dhokalia: It turns out if you do ask those two basic questions of 100 people in your business, you will learn an awful lot about what needs to be focused on. And that was an important shift, I think, for our leadership team. What are we screwing up that you would say, “Please, Sameer, help us go fix this tomorrow”?

Scale 132

Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 132

OpenView Labs

JUNE 17, 2019

The truth is, A+ candidates will always have options… they are investments that make startups money and they know it. Think about the last time you went to buy something and had an awful experience with a sales rep (in any capacity – the mall, a store, online, or at work). hire them immediately. How did you feel? Final thoughts.

Sales Recruiting 53

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 53

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

Maria : Yeah, I think, coming from a marketing side and thinking about that as a marketer, marketing is all about investments. There’s none of the brands that you’ve seen get to an IPO or continue on to a Fortune 500 company that is not making some significant investments there. ” I’m like, that sounds awful.

Sales Hiring 205

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 205

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 1, 2020

And that was probably one of the things you invested your time in earliest. But you need to make sure that you’re aligned with the sales leadership. And then all the stuff that you know is going to help you drive revenue, keep the company healthy, give you that long-term future that you can invest in.

VP of Engineering 165

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Engineering 165

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 1, 2020

And that was probably one of the things you invested your time in earliest. But you need to make sure that you’re aligned with the sales leadership. And then all the stuff that you know is going to help you drive revenue, keep the company healthy, give you that long-term future that you can invest in.

VP of Engineering 165

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Engineering 165

Outseta

OCTOBER 30, 2020

Businesses choose who they do business with, decide on compensation, decide where to invest their dollars, send countless emails, and contribute to causes that many of their employees may not agree with… on a daily basis! In fact, in many ways that’s what a company is! For some reason this is viewed as “how business is done.”

Leadership 62

Leadership Branding Business AWS 62

Outseta

MAY 8, 2020

Invest millions of dollars into growth while running your business at a loss. I can assure you that most people in the tech industry spend countless hours thinking about how to make this happen, investing only a fractional percentage of time thinking about their impact. The lack of self awareness is real.

Part-Time VPE 102

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 102

OpenView Labs

MARCH 7, 2019

Our data centers are shut down, but as I was telling you earlier, AWS barely existed when we started our transformation. It’s about negotiation, presentation skills, leadership styles, corporate finance. So, it all started with that vision and then it was between eight to nine years of execution and we are 100% in the cloud now.

Cloud 60

Cloud New CTO Transportation CTO 60

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

People were investing a lot of time to have good performance, but they were not reaching a good enough results. Even if we decided to use bare-metal infrastructure, even if we decided to do everything ourself, we did try to lower our investment as much as possible. With this as products, they did all the investment.

Scale 124

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 124

SmartKarrot

JULY 27, 2021

Role: Head of Customer Success Location: San Francisco, CA, US Organization: Turn/River Capital As a Head of Customer Success, you will work with the leadership teams at 2 to 3 of the Turn/River portfolio companies to develop and implement retention and growth strategies and build operational best practices.

Development Team Review 10

Development Team Review Technical Review Customer Success Systems Review 10

Audacix

JULY 18, 2022

Talk to the people at the DevOps coalface Senior leadership in large and small organisations often fails to comprehend the nature and scale of the challenges and frustrations faced by those at the coalface. Tools require investment, but they also require planning to ensure that they are used by the right people in the right way.

DevOps as a Service 52

DevOps as a Service Technical Review CTO Coach Underperforming Technical Team 52

SmartKarrot

MARCH 2, 2023

Here are the top 15 venture capital podcast leaders shaping the industry with their visionary and thought leading podcasts covering a range of topics from startups, investments, trends, interviews, and more! He invested in more than 20 early-stage companies. Azeem is also a creator of the Exponential View newsletter and podcast.

Venture Capital 10

Venture Capital Scale Entrepreneurship EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) 10

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Mapistry is a small company and when we decided to make the move up market, we really had to invest a lot of time and a lot of resources into the effort, and if we didn’t do it in a smart way, we would be out a lot of money. I think maybe once we saw the deck that they were using and it was pretty awful. Lauren A.:

Underperforming Technical Team 155

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring compliance SMB 155