User Pilot

NOVEMBER 23, 2023

Investing in product analytics software can be a worthwhile investment as it helps you attain deeper insights into user behavior. TL;DR Hotjar is a product experience insights platform with heatmaps, surveys, and interviewing capabilities. The free version of Hotjar Engage lets you conduct up to five interviews per month.

Pricing 91

Pricing Investment Software Review Scale 91

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2020

Yes, VCs themselves have to raise the money they invest. Manage existing investments. In addition, in some cases VCs spend a material amount of time interviewing executives and others for portfolio companies. Hint: Most of It Isn’t New Investments appeared first on SaaStr. Let’s break it down a bit.

Investment 174

Investment Interviewing Startup Management 174

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 2, 2020

For Pam, it all stems from a long-held belief that investing in the customer’s success will chart a direct path to the company’s. In the return of the Scale podcast, Pam details her support philosophy and the investments she’s making to drive better customer outcomes, for the long term.

Outsourcing Services 253

Outsourcing Services Investment Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 253

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

Ok the title here is a bit dramatic, but certainly seed investing is in an odd place in 2024. Harry and Jason did a deep dive on this and so much more here: Intro (00:00:00) Seed investing is broken due to limited founders capable of triple-digit growth. The best investments grow from $1 million to $10 million in 5 quarters or less.

CTO Hire 176

CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 176

Trint

DECEMBER 1, 2020

London-based Edge Investments supported the round, led by The New York Times Company LONDON—December 1, 2020— Trint , the leading speech-to-text platform for content creation, today announced the close of its Series A Acceleration round with an investment of £5M (~$6.7M). Individual investors were also part of the round.

Investment 130

Investment Artificial Intelligence Banking Entertainment 130

ChurnZero

JUNE 30, 2021

To help you make sure you are adequately evaluating your Customer Success Manager candidates consider pulling from this list of interview questions. 20 Interview Questions to Ask Your Customer Success Manager Candidates. The post 20 Customer Success Interview Questions to Ask CSM Candidates appeared first on ChurnZero.

Interviewing 72

Interviewing Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale 72

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2023

They spend most of their time on existing investments. Working with CEOs, recruiting for your existing investments, speaking, events, etc. Just doing VP interviews alone takes a lot of time if you do a lot of them. Best case, that leaves 30-35% of your time to look at new investments. 9 boards x 8 meetings a year x 0.5

Travel 221

Travel Interviewing Investment Business 221

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2023

For an Investment That is Very Good, But Not Great. We settle when we don’t interview at least 30 candidates for every position. But that’s rare. It’s just so, so hard to truly build something huge and important. Good but not great founders don’t get you there. Good but not great traction?

Interviewing 242

Interviewing Investment Marketing 242

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

You’ll be able to download the interview scorecard template that I use with my clients. Part two of this scorecard series will help you create a sales interview scorecard to land that sales role you’ve been dreaming about. Who is involved in the interview process, onboarding process, and ongoing support and training process?

Sales Hiring 95

Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 95

OpenView Labs

JANUARY 8, 2021

Great interview questions tell you who a person is, what motivates them, how they think and solve problems, and what they’d be like as a teammate. To help us all conduct better interviews, we asked some of the smartest leaders in SaaS to share their favorite questions. takes the cake as the worst question ever.

Interviewing 75

Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Scale 75

OpenView Labs

JULY 20, 2020

Interviewing is hard , and interviewing candidates for sales roles can be doubly so. Why is effective interviewing so important? Better interviewing = better sales teams. The following details some of my learnings around sales hiring and interviewing, as well as some tactical advice for candidates seeking sales roles.

Interviewing 73

Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 73

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

With nearly a full hour of Q&A with a phenomenal communicator as our guest, our “Off The Record” interview with Pat Grady (Partner at Sequoia Capital) surfaced a number of actionable insights for Founders. We’ve excerpted 10 key highlights from our interview below: #1 – Habits Of Exceptional CEOs.

Scale 281

Scale Company Culture Interviewing Finance 281

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 22, 2020

By mastering your sales interview questions. As a longtime recruiting leader, I’ve worked with countless hiring managers looking to fill sales roles , and I’ve had a firsthand look at their interview process. 6 Sales Interview Questions to Find the Best Talent. How do you make sure your potential new hires have the right skills?

Sales Hiring 77

Sales Hiring Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 77

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

In this interview, David Sacks talks about how 70-80% of investor time is spent looking at AI. When Lemkin started investing ten years ago, his first five early-stage investments were wildly successful. Talkdesk is worth $10B, and he invested when it was just five people. Q: Should Early-Stage Companies Sprinkle in AI?

Scale 230

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 230

Valuize Consulting

MARCH 31, 2022

In this interview, Matthew shares his insights on the biggest challenges enterprise organizations face in their quest to unite their customer lifecycle data and reveals how organizations can leverage technology to streamline customer value delivery and realization. Building is a huge investment, and not just from a monetary perspective.

Interviewing 52

Interviewing Technology Data Scale 52

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

In the subscription economy, there’s no debate about whether or not to invest in Customer Success (CS); 70% of rapidly growing businesses say that Customer Success is extremely important ( Hubspot , 2017). When it comes to budget, organizations often haven’t established where the investment is coming from to fund the CS team.

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

CustomerSuccessBox

OCTOBER 31, 2021

This is why we, at CustomerSuccessBox, thought of interviewing CS leaders to understand their perspective of QBR. An example of a major win I personally experienced was with a customer that was having internal difficulties in positioning the tool they had invested in. 2) The standard BR template can be adapted where necessary (e.g.

Interviewing 59

Interviewing Technical Review Scale Communication 59

SaaStr

MAY 7, 2023

It was a really great deep-dive on where venture is right now: Multiples have fallen back to 2015 and 2016 Why VCs can’t justify investing at $100m+ valuations in many cases today How optimism is bleeding out of VC, and realism has seeped in Why the “next round” often isn’t coming anymore, and how everything got inverted in (..)

Interviewing 199

Interviewing Investment SaaS Sales 199

Valuize Consulting

MAY 18, 2022

Yet, with all its advances, Customer Success platforms have not reached the ‘must-have’ status of other enterprise software solutions like CRMs, ERPs and Marketing Automation, and many leaders are struggling to showcase the true ROI of their investments in this area due to the continued existence of legacy structures and mindset.

Technical Review 52

Technical Review Interviewing Technology Customer Success 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

Candid VC Interviews – Session #1 . For our very first session of “Off The Record” we are honored to interview Pat Grady from Sequoia Capital. Pat’s track record includes investments in Amplitude, Drift, Hubspot, Okta, Qualtrics, ServiceNow, Snowflake, and Zoom. Partner | Sequoia. Follow Follow.

Venture Capital 212

Venture Capital Interviewing Investment SaaS 212

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2022

In my own portfolio , more of my investments had a record month in October than a rough month. They aren’t perfect, but given how many CIOs they interview — over 2,200 for this survey — they’re one of my favorite sources for what’s happening in 2023. But is spending? I’m not so sure. Be honest.

Forecasting 229

Forecasting Artificial Intelligence Software Business 229

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

Enablement — setting your team up for success and investing in their professional growth. A designated partner means lower rejection rates at the very first interview. How do you set your team up for success and invest in their professional growth? Invest in enablement. Invest in the right tools to help enablement.

Scale 211

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 211

Valuize Consulting

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

Secondly, you need to invest in technology that optimizes your team’s operations. When making an investment in CS technology, there will be upfront costs that can make a company question the importance of the investment, or perhaps cut corners to bring these costs down.

Scale 52

Scale Technical Review Technology Interviewing 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

But I hadn’t really thought of them as a proxy for all SaaS companies until I saw the CEO’s interview from a few weeks back. Vista’s investments are older, established SaaS companies with brands. The companies they own a majority of are collectively at $24B (!) in ARR, so it’s second only to Salesforce in SaaS.

Cybersecurity 296

Cybersecurity SMB Interviewing Enterprise 296

OpenView Labs

MARCH 17, 2020

So I’m always on the lookout for provocative interview questions that help you learn much more about the person than just their canned answer to “What’s your biggest weakness?” ” I could see from his answer that this was someone who was investing in his own personal growth to be a better executive and leader.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team 52

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 16, 2021

In this interview, Naz shares her expertise on how to design a powerful CS strategy that equips your team with the right tools and resources to drive an exceptional employee experience and champion phenomenal growth. Empower your CSMs through efficient processes and a strategic plan for your CS technology investment.

Interviewing 52

Interviewing Customer Success Scale Government 52

Valuize Consulting

JULY 13, 2022

In this interview, Mary-Beth shares her expertise on how you can build a powerful CS Operations function that propels your entire organization towards market-leading Net Dollar Retention. What is the business going to invest in?

Interviewing 52

Interviewing Engineering Scale Revenue 52

GetUplift

JANUARY 16, 2019

I’m not gonna pumpkin-spice coat it: interviewing customers is hard. Prompting vulnerable sharing from complete strangers is not something most people consider fun… Which is why I’ve heard just about every excuse for not interviewing customers: I don’t have any customers. Customer interviews don’t give quantitative data.

Interviewing 66

Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Systems Review 66

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

Just note, you’ll need a strong balance sheet and stable investments — it takes money to make money. Market: products that aligned with her experience but that she was emotionally invested in and excited about. She used her interviews with investors to find out how they really felt about the product and their why.

Sales Hiring 224

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 224

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Hiring a VP of Sales Who Never Really Understands Your Product During The Interview Process Ok I know some even many will disagree, but I’m right here :). They never invest the time after they start, either. I recently interviewed a seasoned VP of Sales that lived in the South Bay in the Bay Area (San Jose).

Sales Hiring 217

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 217

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 26, 2024

This episode features interviews with payor and provider leaders about what they’re seeing and how they’re thinking about AI. Julie and Jay also authored an in-depth guide to commercializing AI in healthcare based on these interviews, available here.

AI 79

AI Healthcare Interviewing Investment 79

Tom Tunguz

JULY 20, 2014

In fact, I found only two books: a textbook on private equity and venture capital by HBS professor Joshua Lerner, and an out-of-print collection of 32 VC interviews called “ Done Deals ,” published in September 2000. By mid-1999, $300M was being invested in Internet companies each week. Mitch Kapor, Accel. John Doerr.

Interviewing 100

Interviewing Venture Capital Banking Benchmarks 100

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2022

As an example, Expensify includes a portion of their interview process where candidates solve a math problem on a whiteboard alongside their potential teammates. At a previous startup she worked for, management was constantly interviewing people from big companies to take leadership roles.

Compensation 203

Compensation Leadership Company Culture Headcount 203

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

What Nobody Tells You About Seed Investing with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Cowboy Ventures Founder and Partner Aileen Lee. I think it gives us a perspective that maybe we don’t get in some other places, in addition to many great investments over the years. Aileen Lee | Founder @ Cowboy Ventures. Jason Lemkin | Founder @ SaaStr.

Investment 155

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 155

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. For Google Workspace, they invested in expanding and building Google Meet and the rest of the workspace during 2020. It was interesting because they got to interview a bunch of customers and sales executives.

Cloud 225

Cloud Scale AWS AI 225

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2023

I see very mediocre executives that came into startups I’ve invested in and really get nothing accomplished in 6-9 months or more … then trade that experience for another VP role. It’s time to do them again: First, have the best VP in that role you know interview the VP candidate you want to hire. Again and again.

Sales Hiring 219

Sales Hiring SaaS Interviewing Startup 219

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

Klue , which operates an AI-based competitive analysis platform, announced a $15 million Series A investment this week. The round also saw investments from angels like Frederic Kerrest, who is the co-founder of Okta. . The engagement may last a few months and involve extensive interviews and online research (yes, lots of Googling!)

AI 261

AI Consulting Interviewing Innovation 261