Remove 2007 Remove Sales Hiring Remove Venture Capital
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Venture capitalist Harry Stebbings on getting into venture

Intercom, Inc.

What the soon-to-be podcast host and venture capitalist calls to mind is a somewhat forgettable scene where Peter Thiel becomes Facebook’s first major investor. It was the first time Harry came across venture capital, and, he tells us, he was instantly hooked. There’s no right way to do venture. Delighted to have you.

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SaaStr Podcasts for the Week with Jennifer Tejada, Ben Chestnut, and Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

Jason Lemkin: Maybe it’s because you didn’t raise 11 rounds of venture capital, which we’ll touch into and bang your chest on TechCrunch every week with another huge round or maybe it’s because I wasn’t a marketer by training, right and I just grabbed an app here or there. Jason Lemkin: It will, right?

Scale 154
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Busting the Myths About Startup Success with BlackLine’s Founder CEO (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

Even after we did our pivot to the accounting automation and optimization, we still had desperate moments. year sales cycles. You have to learn things like how do I scale my sales force? How do we sell to accountants? Venture capitals are playing a numbers game. They move at a glacial pace. How do we market?

Startup 267
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7 Lessons Helping Start Pardot, SalesLoft and Calendly (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

We started the business in 2007. We raised $0 of venture capital. SalesLoft, why was that Pardot, I tried to recruit this guy, Kyle Porter, to come run sales at Pardot. Let’s be 50/50 co-founders and let’s start a company in the sales space.” And at time of sale, we had burned all $3 million.

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SaaStr Podcast 215: Ryan Smith, Qualtrics Co-Founder & CEO On The Things Nobody Tells You About an $8 Billion Acquisition

SaaStr

Ryan Smith: And so we had to switch and we chose Qualtrics, and it was the best thing we’ve ever done because everything we ever wanted to do, pivot the company or get away from surveys, which in 2007 were like, “Whoa, this is way bigger.” Jason Lemkin: Everyone stopped hiring salespeople.

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Key Lessons from a $5B SaaS Category Leader (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

I’ve been in venture capital for about 20 years, made my first SaaS investment about 18 years ago and have really been focused on this space for a long time. I work at a firm called Shasta Ventures. And Marketo very, very early on had to make a very significant team change in our first VP of sales.

SaaS 138
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8 Tough Lessons from Closing 12,000 Customers at WebPT (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

Then I went over to the sales department. The demo is the sale and we close everybody in month. I would’ve had to hire IT staff to deal with hardware. When we actually did our market research, we found that 80% of physical therapists were still using and documenting on pen and paper back in 2007.

Scale 165