SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

1% equity considered low as a startup Director of Sales? How stressful is it to run a venture-backed startup? I’m Head of Product and I think our CEO is actively recruiting a VP of Product. How do Venture Capital Firms really feel about founder salaries? What do partners at venture capital firms do?

Software Review 286

Software Review CTO Coach Technical Review Sales Recruiting 286

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. You can do this.

Part-Time VPE 282

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 282

Sales Hacker

APRIL 19, 2022

In this article, I’ll outline the principles of compensation design , how to build sales compensation plans , and include resources to set OTEs and quotas that keep your reps happy and hungry for more. Why Sales Comp Planning is Key to Rep Retention. Who should be responsible for sales compensation planning?

Compensation 86

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Retention 86

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

You have to understand how venture capital works. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. But you have to see progress in one sales cycle. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will.

Part-Time VPE 200

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 200

Baremetrics

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

What is the difference between Equity Financing, Loans, and Venture Capital Funding? Venture Capital Funding When should you be thinking about Equity Financing? Debt financing is preferable for sales and marketing acceleration since it has a lower long-term cost and enables the company to expand quicker.

Finance 98

Finance Venture Capital SaaS Payments Payments 98

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2020

If you sell: A recruiting app, running your first recruiting campaign. A sales enablement app, it’s training your first reps. Involve your services team in the sale well before the contract is signed so they propose the right prix fixe package (e.g., A financial planning app, it’s making your first plan.

Consulting 144

Consulting Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 144

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. I don’t know anything about sales. More power to you.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 274

ChurnZero

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

The SaaS investor award selection process was driven by feedback from entrepreneurs and portfolio companies based on the value an investor adds, whether in terms of strategic advice, recruiting, fundraising, M&A, and network introductions. Promod Haque – Senior Managing Partner – Norwest Venture Partners.

Software Review 45

Software Review Sales Recruiting Technical Review Systems Review 45

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 4, 2020

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Matt Rizzetta , founder of North 6th Agency, which is a communications and PR firm based in New York City. Years later, he’s got a thriving business that is not venture capital backed. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. How to get better at sales [21:37].

Scale 105

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 105

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

OpenView Labs

MARCH 17, 2021

“He has the unique ability to move between strategic and tactical level of analysis, from positioning opportunities in the context of larger market trends, to discerning actionable sales and marketing insights.” My Partner Blake Bartlett says it best: “OpenView is a unique firm with a unique approach to venture capital.

Sales Recruiting 62

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital Construction Investment 62

Kellblog

MAY 29, 2021

Someone who, when times are tense, can work as an intermediary between the differing parties, often but certainly not always, the investors on one side and founders/management on the other. Former sales leaders often perform well in this situation [6]. Someone who can help make the game plan for getting something done (e.g.,

Sales Hiring 129

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting Government 129

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.

Scale 263

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 263

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2019

And the very first thing that I did, like any neurotic person is I Googled corporate venture capital. They might be sales operations challenges. Can we put our product on your paper and your sales team of 4,000, 5,000 people sell a product? That’s how much I knew about it. ” And not just open ended.

Development Team Review 131

Development Team Review Scale Technical Review Software Review 131

Kellblog

AUGUST 23, 2019

When we met, he was a pre-sales engineer and I was a technical support rep. We’ve each spent over 25 years in enterprise software, in mixed roles that involve both technology and sales & marketing (S&M). Jim went on to write a great book, Making the Technical Sale. I went on to create Kellblog.

Technical Review 65

Technical Review Software Review Sales Hiring Venture Capital 65

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Happily, in the past several years startups are increasingly recognizing the value of strong sales enablement and sales productivity teams. So it’s no surprise that I hear a lot about high-growth companies building onboarding programs to enable successfully scaling their sales organizations and sustain their growth.

Sales Hiring 45

Sales Hiring Onboarding Sales Recruiting Scale 45

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2019

Felix Van de Maele, Co-Founder and CEO of Collibra, will be joined by Teddie Wardi, Managing Director of Insight Partners, to unpack how he built a unicorn company from idea to conception to record growth. Teddie Wardi | Managing Director @ Insight Partners. We opened a small sales office in Wework. Felix : Yes.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Government 183

ProfitWell

JANUARY 23, 2020

Blake Bartlett over at OpenView , the expansion-stage venture capital firm, chatted with me a bit about product-led growth. And you claim that sales should be hired last when dealing with a product-led growth initiative. In product-led growth, product leads and sales follows. How can you do better inside sales?

Sales Recruiting 43

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Venture Capital Pricing 43

Kellblog

JULY 18, 2019

In venture capital (VC) land, you should view investors as long-term partners in value creation. While the sales-and-marketing types will emphasize “its proven-ness” you will want to know how much technical debt there is associated with this old architecture. You might well be doing so. Strong investors.

Underperforming Technical Team 78

Underperforming Technical Team Startup Software Technical Cofounder 78

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 61

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Michael Cardamone is the CEO/Managing Partner at Forum Ventures (formerly Accleprise) which is a B2B SaaS focused seed fund & pre-seed accelerator with locations in SF, NYC & Toronto. Raising money and venture capital is not for most businesses. You basically want to run it like a sales process. Show Notes.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital Investment Technical Review 52

ProfitWell

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

The common thread among these companies, AngelList points out, is that, while their large growth numbers and massive addressable markets made them darlings in the venture capital world, their lack of profitability devalues them in the eyes of investors on the public market. And that’s a wrap for your September 30th subscription news.

Startup 40

Startup Technical Cofounder Sales Recruiting Healthcare 40

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

Does Bob agree with the notion that channel sales have completely died in the world of SaaS? Bob Moore: And I was t nerdy engineer in college, so getting the opportunity to have to pitch, it’s really a sales job at the end of the day. You’re selling capital and I think it was a really transformative experience for me.

Sales Hiring 133

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 133

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

One could almost say that CAC and CLTV are for a SaaS company what wholesale price and sales price are for a retailer. So for a bigger SaaS player, sales and marketing costs are the driver of profitability. along the way. The one area where we think you do have to excel is your product.

Sales Recruiting 155

Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

You’re in the valley, you raise venture capital. I want to come be your VP of sales and, you’re going to meet me for the first time. Spencer : For me, the key things for a VP of sales is, “OK, tell me about your best reps. Spencer : This is something we screwed up a lot of different times.

VP of Engineering 279

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 279

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2019

We burned through $23 million in venture capital and only had 1 million in revenue to show for it. And I started as an engineer and as an MBA and frankly in business school back then they didn’t even have a class on sales. And I think most of your teams, you need sales engineers, you need founders.

Sales Recruiting 180

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Payments 180

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

I started a software company in college to make it easy to update websites called Content Management Software Now, and I had this idea for Pardot, I wanted to make it easy for marketers to run campaigns online and measure their results. We raised $0 of venture capital. From a product point of view, our timing was impeccable.

Sales Recruiting 169

Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 169

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

When it comes to launching sales teams in hyper-growth startups, few people have walked the walk as much as Maggie Hott. She “stumbled” into it, as she told us, first as one of the earliest sales hires of Eventbrite, where she stayed for four years, and then into Slack in early 2015 as the first sales rep in the Bay Area.

Scale 118

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 118

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

If you missed episode 130, check it out here: Turning Junior-level Talent into Top Sales Professionals with Eddie Baez. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Sales enablement is easy. REGIE uses artificial intelligence to create entire outbound inbound, and even follow-up sales campaigns faster. We’re on iTunes.

Marketplace as a Service 94

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Data 94

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

With an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Rodrigo Baer launched a successful career in consultancy and entrepreneurship, and today is among the top figures in venture capital for early-stage tech companies in Brazil. Starting as VP of Sales, in less than two years he became CEO. Patrick Campbell, CEO, ProfitWell.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Scale Entrepreneurship Sales Hiring 207

Kellblog

OCTOBER 13, 2019

However, as soon as a founder/CEO raises venture capital (VC) they have decided to take investing partners along on the journey. Yes, there is a board of directors but the board/CEO relationship is not the same as the manager/employee relationship with which corporate execs are so familiar. Nothing can take that away.

Sales Hiring 75

Sales Hiring Venture Capital Sales Recruiting Startup 75

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

* Nick has previously said, “Burying customer success under sales does not work.” What should the optimal sales to customer success relationship look like? What does Nick mean when he says, “Product is to customer success what marketing is to sales.” Why does this have such a high rate of failure? We actually almost went public.

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Sales Recruiting 121

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2019

We’re over 600 employees, and we’re currently privately backed, and you could see the list of a lot of our venture capital backers who have some common Silicon Valley names. They are like Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures. First off, the land, this is your typical initial sale.

Sales Recruiting 171

Sales Recruiting Construction Scale SaaS 171

OPEXEngine

JUNE 16, 2020

However, as soon as a founder/CEO raises venture capital (VC) they have decided to take investing partners along on the journey. Yes, there is a board of directors but the board/CEO relationship is not the same as the manager/employee relationship with which corporate execs are so familiar. Nothing can take that away.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Venture Capital Technical Advisors 59

ChurnZero

APRIL 27, 2021

Other signs of explosive growth potential at this early stage are a highly efficient sales motion, though this is most often still a work in progress at this stage. Interest from channel partners and sales via channel partners can be another meaningful indicator. . I’ve seen this so many times that is has become predictable. .

Scale 98

Scale Customer Success Payments Underperforming Technical Team 98

Outseta

JANUARY 20, 2020

In light of the sale of Buildium last month I figured now is as good of a time as any to reflect on the most important ones. There was no strike price or vesting schedule associated with these units—they were simply granted to employees based on performance or as a recruiting tool. You read that right—two!

SaaS Payments 145

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Methods Payment Services 145

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

” From a sales perspective, how is that going to change sales? The fact that a lot of our portfolio comes in enterprise, they got a lot of sales done or relationship building done around conferences whether it’s-. What if this is 36 months? What if nobody can get on a plane until summer of 2021 the earliest?”

Investment 167

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 167