SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

So there’s a sort of org chart you’ll probably end up with at least twice as you start scaling in SaaS: The “Headless” Sales Org. It’s a bunch of sales reps without anyone to manage them other than … you. But if you end up not hiring a VP of Sales at that perfect moment in time (and most don’t), you’ll end up headless.

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SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

On the investing side of life, the toughest meeting of all for me at least is probably the Right Co-Founder, Wrong CEO start-up. But after that, it starts to break down when you have to recruit a true management team, and in many cases, additional capital. They’ll know … Who can best recruit a management team?

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SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

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. Lead generation tools do change, but the basic motions of sales and marketing haven’t changed much.

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SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

The backup of 2020 was great, 2021 comes in and somehow we have 600 unicorns and everyone can burn 500 million a year or have huge sales teams. This is so different than the days of 2021 when a $200M ARR company might’ve had 2,000 or more employees, and maybe a startup doing just $50M had 700 employees.

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SaaStr

MAY 21, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: SaaS Capital: Across 1,500 SaaS Startups, Yearly Contracts Don’t Actually Increase NRR Dear SaaStr: How Long Should a CEO Continue Being the Head of Product? SaaStr CRO Confidential: Howard Lerman, Founder & CEO @ Roam on Founder-led Sales 3.

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SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

In 2020-2021, many SaaS startups faced a unique challenge. CRO at Wiz, Colin Jones, shares how this traditional startup evolved, thrived and grew from 0 to $100 million in just two years. Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success.

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SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. We were coming off an environment where startup funding was as fruitful as ever. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

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SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. Now, I just invest in SasS companies. SaaStr is Turning 10!

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OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

So if scaling your sales organization is a priority in 2020, here are the things you need to be aware of to make sure you do so successfully. In my experience both as a salesperson and as a recruiter, it’s primarily been four things: They want the work they’re doing to matter to them. that you’re invested in their success).

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2023

So backstage at SaaStr Annual this year, and in a number of other conversations since, I’ve had a chance to get a few quiet moments with maybe two dozen top CROs and VPs of Sales. Yes, macro issues come up, and how they have to sell to more stakeholders now, and sales cycles are longer. But the best long ago adapted.

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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. Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales?

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SaaStr

MAY 1, 2021

Q: I’m a startup founder weighing multiple VC term sheets at similar valuations. Who can help me find that first VP of Sales? A lot of folks will want to invest in the next round of their startups. This does help with recruiting and partnerships. There are just so many startups. How should I choose?

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SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development. Is a CRO right for you?

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Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Today, she advises and invests in companies on these topics and others. Should you hire a COO for your startup? How you should you go about recruiting the right person? Allison is an incredible builder of teams. She’s written extensively on the topic and co-authored a book The Customer Success Economy.

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Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Chuck is the co-founder of Blueprint Expansion , a GTM roles recruiting firm that has helped over 50 VC-backed companies make amazing Sales, Marketing, & Customer Success hires. By using the power of AI to identify and engage the accounts and buying groups most likely to purchase.

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SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

I thought it might be helpful to assemble a checklist of 22 reasons I almost immediately pass on investing in start-ups that are still interesting. If I wouldn’t work for you … then I can’t help you recruit folks that will. You’re in sales. Recruit the VPs? Others bet on traction. And/or Late.

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SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

Accountants are responsible for ensuring the company has clean financial statements and data. This function can be outsourced in the early days of a startup, but it is usually brought in-house after Series B. This role can be recruited through headhunters or your network. Invest in next-gen finance tooling.

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SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

He completely misunderstood the value prop of the startup. It’s so, so easy to stand out in recruiting if you’ve actually done your homework. Invest those extra cycles. Then I’d let them know how I prepared for the meeting so they knew I invested my time to get ready. A week later, he emailed me back — “Aha!

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SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

It’s the most common objection you’ll get in SaaS sales … Not Right Now. It can’t strategically improve sales software, financial software, quoting software, recruiting software, QA processes, call center software, etc. And when you hire a real, great VP of Sales. Truly qualified leads and prospects. I Don’t Have Budget.

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SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

It’s been a fun experience being on Quora for … a decade We’ve crossed 60,000,000 views of our answers there, so let’s take a look at the Top 50 most viewed SaaStr Answers on Quora in 2020: Why do many startup owners sell their firm and move on instead of planning on making it a big player like Google, Microsoft, etc.?

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The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later. Here’s why. Thanks to Jenny – our very own HR lady! -

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SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Q: What are the top 20 pieces of advice for building a successful SaaS startup? Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2. A bit more here.

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Kellblog

JULY 17, 2022

In general, I think branding is a potential marketing rathole for startups, particularly early-stage ones. Some startups put the cart in front of the horse. In this post, I’ll use a six-point branding framework and share my thoughts on how each element applies (or doesn’t) to startups. For startups, fewer is better.

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SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

So the other day I looked back at about 25 SaaS seed investments I’d made that had scaled well past $10m-$20m and reflected on the top themes. They are all avoidable : #1: Stepping Out of Sales Ok really this is mistake #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5. Instead, how they spend time in sales changes. And so sales goes down.

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SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. As a startup, it’s tempting to try and do everything.

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SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years. Roughly 90%.

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Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

In this Mucker Growth session, Mike Genstil with ValueCore delves into the concept of value selling and its application in enterprise sales. As a founder, ideally you want your sellers, marketers, and product leaders aligned in transforming product features into value-based messages to accelerate sales cycles and secure corporate deals.

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Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Database startups, data movement startups, data quality startups, data lineage startups, machine learning startups will be the zeitgeist of the decade as they shape the next wave of massive innovation. 2020 could be the best yer ever for startups. M&As and IPOs continue at torrid rates.

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SaaStr

MAY 14, 2023

Daniel, you grew to 3 million in ARR before you hired a VP of Sales. You had all the reps and SDRs reporting to you, managed it all yourself. How’d you manage all that? Daniel : We followed a lean start up approach to building our sales process. An engineering team and the sales team was me with a laptop.

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Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

I’ve never created LinkedIn content with the “goal” of lead generation or immediate-term sales. Another cool example I really like is Tito Bohrt — he stands out with the pseudo, “ Sales Mad Scientist ” — which demonstrates confidence and a unique identity online.

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Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. At Point Nine, we aspire to continuously share what we learn with our community and the extended startup ecosystem.

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Kellblog

MAY 10, 2021

In this post, I’ll present what I view as the minimum sales management framework for an enterprise SaaS startup — i.e., the basics you should have covered as you seek to build and scale your sales organization [1]. Pipeline management rules, with an optional stage matrix. Management rules (e.g.,

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SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Co-founder and CEO at Greenhouse, Daniel Chait, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin to share what’s new at Greenhouse, a successful recruiting software company at $200M in ARR today. Getting off the ground is one thing — an easy pitch of being an HR tech startup focused on improving hiring. Multi-Product vs.

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SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

David Sacks: SaaS Background and Investments. David’s first foray into SaaS was in 1999 when he joined a startup that would become PayPal, starting as the product leader and later as the COO. In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Sales.

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Baremetrics

JUNE 30, 2021

You've got a brilliant SaaS startup idea. A startup financial model is the plan. In fact, we've already built the SaaS financial model you'll actually use — but let's take a look at why this is especially important for SaaS startups. 1 What Is a Startup Financial Model? What Is a Startup Financial Model?

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SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. Turning over a sales team is very hard on the organization. A great VP of Sales is worth her weight in gold.

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SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2020

343: Kyle Parrish is the Head of Sales @ Figma, the company that helps teams create, test and ship better designs from start to finish. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Kyle made his way into the world of SaaS and sales and came to be Head of Sales at one of the fastest-growing companies in Figma. What worked?

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