OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

It became clear after a month that our young team had a lot of enthusiasm, but lacked senior leadership. Does a new senior member have the right to challenge a historical decision made by a junior developer? We needed a CTO. But we can hire 3 x junior developers for the cost of a CTO!” Let’s talk about the CTO.

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

Less and you under-invest. At $8m in ARR, if you have $2m of cash in the bank, you get real nervous investing much more than $500k-$750k, $1m max. It’s subtle, but in SaaS I’ve learned you under-invest if you have < 50% of your ARR in the bank. 5/ Moving from CTO-led -> VPE-led dev team. More here.

Part-Time VPE 268

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 268

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2020

Your investors and others will learn a lot more hearing about sales from your VP of Sales, your CTO co-founder … and not you. Just assume none of your investors invest again. But there are 1,000+ new firms since 2016 alone. Professional investors can even write off any given investment if they have to.

Sales Recruiting 340

Sales Recruiting New CTO Scale CTO 340

User Pilot

MAY 1, 2024

He worked as a Product Lead at Airbnb for 7 years, where he managed a number of teams, supported strategy for the anti-discrimination team, and built new tools for hosts. He has also invested in businesses, like Figma, Vanta, and Webflow, among others. He later branched into hosting podcasts , called Lenny’s Podcast.

Underperforming Technical Team 76

Underperforming Technical Team New CTO Interviewing CTO 76

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Recently, I spent several hours with a new but great friend who has been on a vaguely similar journey to me. Investing at a breathtaking pace. In my first start-up as a founder, I had a great CTO and VPE and a pretty darn good VP Ops from the very beginning. This friend is one of the hardest working people in the industry.

Part-Time VPE 281

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire AWS New CTO 281

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Throughout the year, we’ve talked to business leaders, experts, and pioneers about all kinds of topics: from creating world-class customer experiences to the challenges of running a business during the pandemic, from being an ally and addressing gaps in diversity to building technical leadership careers. Will Larson , CTO of Calm.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Scale Technical Review Outsourcing Services 118

Valerian Tech

JUNE 13, 2023

It can be challenging to keep up with the evolving compliance landscape without a dedicated compliance team or the ability to invest in advanced compliance tools and technologies. Regulatory agencies frequently update guidelines and introduce new requirements to address emerging risks and changing industry dynamics.

Healthcare 52

Healthcare compliance CTO Hire New CTO 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

What sets apart some of the most successful, high-growth companies we see today—Slack, Dropbox, Atlassian—has been their ability to tap into and master a new GTM strategy: B2C2B. So we kept investing, we knew we were onto something, and little by little we saw our traction improve. Then something really interesting happened.

B2B 133

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 133

BetterCloud

MAY 17, 2021

Prior to joining BetterCloud as our new VP of quality, Waithe was a director of engineering at MailChimp. Secondarily, I had a chance to chat with [CTO Jamie Tischart ] even before he joined the company. ” That was the catalyst for me to think about leadership and management. That was very exciting to me.

New CTO 52

New CTO Part-Time VPE CTO Coach CTO Hire 52

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

Erica Schultz is Chief Revenue Officer @ New Relic, the company that gives you the real time insights your software driven business needs to innovate faster. Prior to their IPO, New Relic raised over $214m in funding from some of the best in the business including Benchmark, Insight Venture Partners and Blackrock, to name a few.

Scale 171

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 171

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 20, 2024

And so, the thing that was really new about LLMs was the ability to, at extremely low cost, generate an answer instantly to any question. Adam: And so, based on all that, we landed on building Poe as a new chat-oriented AI product. We thought about, [as Quora] , what is the role that we’re going to play in this new world with AI?

AI Search 143

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 143

SaaSHolic

MAY 5, 2023

The speakers believe that the next 10 years will be better for the region, with opportunities for investment in various industries using technology to solve problems. Latin America has interesting characteristics that make it a viable place for investment, including a high level of internet penetration and social engagement.

Technical Review 90

Technical Review VP of Engineering Development Team Review Software Review 90

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

Great to see a lot of repeat attendees and some new ones. A thanks to [Marsh 00:00:34] for stepping in at the beginning of the month, and a great session with our own Jason Warner and Adrian, the CTO of Zendesk. Lionetti, the CMO at Confluent, and most recently, the CTO from Zendesk, Adrian. I’m Travis Bryant.

CTO Coach 129

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 129

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

They’ve invested in all of these other businesses. Jason Lemkin: 50 reps in a new city that you’ve never met, and hired in 60 days when you’re in the low millions ARR. So number six, thinking you’re getting away with under investing in management, up scaling in HR. We all under invest.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 244

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

Adam Risman , a former host of the podcast, asked Rachel what made that point when Rachel joined Slack in 2016 the right time to invest in growth marketing? For Slack, that was clearly the engineering and dev communities, who love new tools. They had occasional advertising here and there. Here’s Rachel.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

Neil Patel

AUGUST 23, 2021

Niche: Entrepreneurship, investment, mindset. Why You Should Follow Gary: With video content that delivers day after day, Gary sounds off on the latest trends, serving as a weathervane for the digital community, as well as informational videos about leadership and self-care. How can I find new marketing Instagram accounts to follow?

Marketing 128

Marketing CTO Coach Entrepreneurship AI Search 128

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2019

Prior to founding Twilio, Jeff was the Founder & CTO @ Nine Star Inc and enjoyed a spell at Amazon as a Technical Product Manager. Before that, he worked for 12 years at Trilogy, where he held key leadership roles helping the company grow from a start-up to a $300 million business. What were his core learnings from that? *

Underperforming Technical Team 124

Underperforming Technical Team Development Software New CTO 124

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

The catch was he had just moved his family four kids to New York city. We had no New York city presence. I had my CTO and everyone would be like, “You can’t do this. So, we decided to be flexible and through that we actually opened a New York office. Well, the good news is, it gets easier the bigger you get.

CTO Hire 157

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 157

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

Are marketing becoming the new sales team with their content being used more and more in the sales funnel? Sam Taylor: On my first leadership role, I was the first enterprise sales rep, a manager of mid-market team. Bret was formerly the CTO at Facebook. And so I was their first sales leadership hire.

Scale 174

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 174

SaaStr

JULY 19, 2019

Previously, Peter was also the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive where he brought CBS into the cloud. At Sun, Peter was the CTO of the Liberty identity consortium that designed SAML 2. How has Peter found the transition from CTO to CEO this time? ” Or, “Every lamb chop came from New Zealand?”

VP of Engineering 132

VP of Engineering CTO Hire Technical Review Sales Hiring 132

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

As you said, people take it hard if suddenly you say, “Hey, this is your new EVP. In the good sense, like go and build the kind of organization and process that made them successful in the past, but you need to hire that kind of person when you’re willing to make a big investment and a big change in that area. What is good?

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 255

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

Julian Lemoine, Co-Founder, and CTO of Algolia will share his lessons learned on how to stay focused and innovative as you scale while also avoiding the innovation for innovation’s sake pitfalls. Julien Lemoine | Co-founder and CTO @Algolia. So I’m Julien, Co-founder and CTO of Algolia. Want to see more content like this?

Scale 124

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 124

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

As for Karl, prior to founding the company he spent 6 years at Google in some fascinating roles including Head of Patents, Head of Business Development in China and running Google’s energy investments. Karl has been in every interview for every new hire for the first 6 years of the business, why? Loving our podcast content? What works?

Sales Hiring 218

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach 218

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

Your top subscription news. What’s the return on investment of your mom? On a global scale, on average, product marketers with strong leadership support earn almost $13k more a year than those without. Plus, the Product Marketing Alliance drops the Product Marketing Salary Survey. And Sprinklr acquires Nanigans. Weekend Wisdom.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

Outseta

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

And many CEOs simply fail to understand the nuances of the role and the future building benefits of marketing investments made in areas like “brand” where the return on investment is not immediately recognizable on the balance sheet. I’ve played the following roles at various tech companies.

Sales Hiring 50

Sales Hiring CTO Coach CTO Hire Underperforming Technical Team 50

Audacix

JULY 18, 2022

After interacting with many new DevOps teams, my sense is that many of them are hamstrung by the imagination and risk appetites of their senior leaders, in a classic case of you don't know what you don't know. 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

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Additionally, “leapfrog” candidates—those who come from a level below the C-suite, such as senior vice presidents—now make up roughly 5% of new chief execs. It can be hard to convince PE firms to invest in the customer. How did you get your PE colleagues to invest in the customer experience?

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

I would say that’s number one for me personally, which means I may never work full time again, but finding a founder that you want to go invest four to five years of your life with and for because it really is. So I would say that’s a leadership failure for a lot of CEOs, right? New category. So he’s the CTO?

Sales Hiring 156

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 156

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2018

At our inaugural SaaStr Europa last June, podcast host-with-the-most Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. In a new one, it was tough to keep up. Ross : Yeah.

Technical Advisors 158

Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 158

OPEXEngine

JUNE 16, 2020

The 90-Day Rule , which argues that new managers need to be decisive about who stays on the teams they inherit. However, as soon as a founder/CEO raises venture capital (VC) they have decided to take investing partners along on the journey. The scariest thing a new CEO can say is “it looks like you guys had a bad quarter” [9].

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Venture Capital Technical Advisors 59

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

And by business technology function I want to define that because sometimes there’s a overlap with the CTO from an engineering side. Is that a new innovation in org structures and the remit of the role? Yousuf Khan: Well, the CIO is fundamentally owning the business technology function of the company. Harry Stebbings: Totally.

Technical Advisors 160

Technical Advisors Scale Technical Review Payment Solutions 160

Sales Hacker

MARCH 25, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we interview Simmone Taitt , CEO of HeartSpace Consulting , and a longtime sales leader and consultant in the New York community. I’m an advisor at some of the best tech accelerators here in New York. It takes a good manager, and good leadership, colleagues, and peers.

Sales Hiring 68

Sales Hiring Revenue CTO Coach CTO Hire 68

BetterCloud

SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

Our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Andra Milender defected from a medical career track before finding her footing on a technology path. It was a little more of a journey than a direct mission, and it was all because of a teacher who took the opportunity to invest in his students that initiated my pivot to technology.

Part-Time CTO 8

Part-Time CTO CTO New CTO Technology 8

Teamgate

JANUARY 14, 2019

In my opinion, the biggest downside to working in-house, whether it is a big brand or a startup, is that the messaging remains the same: the tech can evolve and it may have new features, yet the story around it tends to remain the same. Nobody buys anything new without googling everything about the company.

Interviewing 81

Interviewing Startup Technical Review Technical Advisors 81

OpenView Labs

MARCH 7, 2019

So, this started, it was a nine-year slog actually, and it started not with the CIO or the CTO, it started with the CEO and then started with a technology vision- we’re going to go to the cloud and shut down our data centers. It’s about negotiation, presentation skills, leadership styles, corporate finance. Casey: Oh wow.

Cloud 60

Cloud New CTO Transportation CTO 60

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2020

We’ve got two sponsors, including a new one called Sapper Consulting. That means we need new pricing models, we need to figure out new delivery mechanisms for our data, so on and so forth. So I found myself in London, a one of one employee introducing this new brand to advertising agencies in Europe.

Subscription 106

Subscription Payment Features Scale Underperforming Technical Team 106

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2019

I remember when I was in business school the internet was brand new and back then the hero was Jerry Yang. And so once I had the idea I convinced my father to invest and become a customer. He was investing in internet companies. This was in 1997, and I spent two years. He and I went to MIT together.

Sales Recruiting 170

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Payments 170