SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m He asked which to hire first. If you have a few nickels in the bank, and you somehow find a great VP a half stage or even full stage early, just hire her. Hiring is so hard as it is. Make the hire now. ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m More here: [link].

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

As your SaaS company grows and you go through various fundraising stages, your company size also grows. You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? David Sacks: SaaS Background and Investments.

CTO Hire 253

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 253

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and management team : SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. SaaS products get too complex to hack a product roadmap too long. Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be.

Part-Time VPE 239

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: About 70% of SaaS Public Companies Are New Versions of Existing Categories of Software (Updated) Growth Slowed Down About 33% On Average For Everyone in Q1 The Top 20 SaaStr Tips to Getting a SaaS Start-Up Going When Should You Add a Second Product?

CTO Hire 203

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Scaling 203

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. I just see this time and time again.

Part-Time VPE 299

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 299

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Does Anyone Want To Be a Unicorn Anymore? Ode to the $100,000,000 Exit Dear SaaStr: Should You Hire Someone That Seems Good … But Always Job Hops? TAM is Great. If So, How Much? Top Podcasts This Week: 1.

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 205

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Zendesk and Anaplan: A Tale of Two Very Similar, And Very Different, $10B SaaS Acquisitions. The Ultimate Guide for Hiring a Great VP of Sales. Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? Top Videos This Week: 1.

CTO Hire 199

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Scale CTO 199

SaaStr

JULY 23, 2021

Brian Peterson, CTO @ Dialpad. Nicole Culver, Director of Product Marketing, SaaS @Bandwidth. Dave Walters, CTO, Hired. Christa Diaz, Senior Director, Customer Success, Hired. Amy Pisano, CRO, Hired. Jenn Knight, Co-Founder, CTO, AgentSync. Zach Kitschke, CMO, Canva. Tom Clayton, CRO @ Bill.com.

VP of Engineering 281

VP of Engineering New CTO CTO Hire Sales Hiring 281

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . “A Hiring in a streamlined manner with a rigorous selection process initially builds momentum for long-term goals.

Scale 205

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 205

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Confused about trying to understand SaaS roles? SaaS companies have many moving parts, and it can be difficult to determine who does what. TL;DR SaaS, or “Software as a Service,” is a business model that delivers centrally hosted software to subscribers over the internet. What is a SaaS business model?

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

Hundreds of thousands of experts are telling you how to succeed in SaaS. SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares the 10 worst pieces of SaaS advice, excuses, and mistakes founders make, and what to do instead You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. Hiring someone too junior. Yes, you do.

Part-Time VPE 181

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 181

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR. Fixing it yourself becomes the biggest time sink and excuse for not hiring there is. You end up spending all your time backfilling roles you should have hired. And even worse, you often sort of give up trying to make the hire. And hire against it. More here.

Part-Time VPE 274

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 274

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

There, Amplitude has become part of the core product stack for many SaaS and software leaders for product analytics. Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. Folks come out differently here, but while Amplitude charges per volume, in part, it doesn’t make a material amount from overages.

Scale 276

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 276

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

I hear again and again from SaaS founders growing to $5m, $10m ARR or even more that they don’t need a certain VP — with the exception of a VP of Sales. Basically, in SaaS, everyone “gets” that they need a VP of Sales. Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10. That it’s time to bring in someone that knows.

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 356

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. But even if you’ve hired the world’s best VP of Sales … you can’t opt out of sales entirely. You still need to spend 15-20% of your time in sales. Hire a VP of Finance or even a CFO Early if You Are Growing Quickly.

Part-Time VPE 281

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 281

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

Because as a SaaS founder especially, it can be hard to know. ” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” I recently asked on Twitter when folks knew their startup had something … great. 20% conversion.

CTO Hire 285

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 285

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

They’ll revolt when you make a senior or mid-level hire that as a group, they simply cannot suffer one day longer. But I forced us to hire him, over my CTO’s strong objection and my VPE’s grudging acknowledgment we had no choice. It was a hire I wasn’t really in favor of, but it was an experiment.

Part-Time VPE 281

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 281

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

This post will walk you through what SaaS companies need to know about sales tax compliance, how to know when and from which customers you should collect sales tax, and best of all, how to automate sales tax so you can check “Do something about sales tax” off your to-do list once and for all. Why is sales tax such a pain for SaaS companies?

Merchant Services 181

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 181

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on.

CTO Hire 285

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 285

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

They’re able to actually swipe a credit card, and what starts off similar to a freemium self-serve product can turn into a six-figure contract in just a few months. It might even be months later that a VP of Engineering or a CTO or CFO realizes that they’re built on a new platform. The contract size grows.

Underperforming Technical Team 185

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 185

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

SaaStr has now passed 10,000+ pieces of content, and we’ve somewhat gone on a journey from the early days of a SaaS company, through the growth phases, to the Unstoppable phase, and now has time has gone on, even to the Decacorn phase ?? Sometimes when you start a company it’s 100% obvious who the CEO should be.

Sales Recruiting 323

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital CTO Hire CTO 323

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

A Couple SaaS Generations Ago… Traditional software companies managed sales, product development, finance and HR in siloed organizations by function. In the early SaaS days, management structure was essentially the same. The SaaS operating model requires execution across functional activities.

Part-Time CTO 69

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Hire Management 69

Natalia Luneva

APRIL 30, 2021

In my guest post on CustomerThink I talked about the benefits of community building and how it helps SaaS companies get a few steps ahead of their competition. To get more practical, I recently interviewed over 10 SaaS companies and asked them 4 questions: Which platform(s) do you use to run your community? .

Marketing 98

Marketing Social Media SaaS New CTO 98

ProfitWell

JANUARY 29, 2019

On this episode of the ProfitWell Report, Brendan Schwartz , Co-Founder and CTO at Wistia , wants to know what proportion of paid plans should be annual versus monthly. The beauty of the subscription model is that for the first time in the history of business, relationships are baked directly into how you make money. Click to enlarge.

Churn 103

Churn CTO Hire Data CTO 103

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Well, we did the heavy lifting and highlighted a few here for you… “When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster. Wade Foster is Co-founder and CEO of Zapier, a SaaS company that allows users to integrate web applications they use. “The Cadence: How to Turn Your SaaS Startup into an Army.”

Payment Services 100

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 100

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

And it really makes no sense because I’ve asked so many of the best SaaS CEOs that are public how to go multi-product. And the best one of all, if you didn’t see it, we did it at one of our digital events this year was Spencer Skates, CEO of Amplitude, one of my favorite SaaS CEOs. We have a 60% chance that we can do it.

Outsourcing Services 186

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 186

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2019

Hear why he thinks that the next call should not have been to a competitor. “Hiring, Firing and Stretching: How to Build Your First Management Teams” ScaleX Founder and Managing Partner Dilek Dayinlarli and Insider Co-Founder and CEO Hande Cilingir and Atlassian Head of OpsGenie Berkay Mollamustafaoglu. His next call?

CTO Hire 156

CTO Hire Scale Sales Hiring CTO 156

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

As a global technology provider powering thousands of SaaS companies, Google is at the forefront of driving exciting and innovative technologies to market. You’ll also learn how leading SaaS companies are able to scale and thrive in this complex, dynamic environment. Who’s here on a CEO or more on a business hat SaaS?

Cloud 172

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 172

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Heading into the 2020 planning season, SaaS FP&A teams are working to finalize 2020 budgets and planning. Over the past decade benchmarking software and SaaS companies , I’ve had the chance at OPEXEngine to work with hundreds of amazing Finance execs who work incredibly hard at getting the right data to support their company’s goals.

Finance 40

Finance CTO Hire Headcount SaaS 40

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

Don’t overextend your resources when testing new SaaS growth ideas. He stressed the importance of not jumping at every SaaS growth idea that has potential, as it may easily lead to an overextension of your resources. Read all of Petri’s thoughts and observations on his blog . Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Bob made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Crossbeam. * What were the core mistakes that he made with RJ Metrics? * Does Bob agree with the notion that channel sales have completely died in the world of SaaS? Loving our podcast content? What did he mean by this? Why is this?

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 132

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Perhaps the single most important thing you can ever do in SaaS, at least after $1m in ARR or so, is hire the best VPs you can. We’ve talked a lot over the years about how not to hire a wrong VP of Sales — 70%+ of the first VPs of Sales don’t make it even 10 months. You need to hire up-and-comers.

Part-Time VPE 324

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 324

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2023

You’ll never truly understand how to lead a SaaS company until you’ve done it firsthand. Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares five essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. Software is Fractal A SaaS product is richly nuanced and contains multiple layers.

CTO Coach 182

CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 182

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

But after years of research and thinking about this problem at typeform.com and Notion , David decided to write a blog post explaining why this question is so hard to answer. The question is not whether a CSM is a valuable asset to a SaaS business, but rather, how valuable are they? How many CSMs should you hire? Weekend Wisdom.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Each year, tens of thousands of SaaS fans attend SaaStr Annual. For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. People don’t do that today.

Scale 249

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 249

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

Anyhow the one thing I learned, beyond getting help screening and hiring for these positions from domain experts, is to look for Flags. For signs the prospective hire just won’t work out, no matter how strong they might look on paper. Why join a start-up? Well reason #1 is personal and career advancement. Not for start-ups.

Sales Hiring 256

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 256

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it’s not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times. His answers didn’t disappoint. They wanted a one-call close.

CTO Hire 180

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 180