SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2021

What a next level acquisition! Salesforce is good at mega-acquisitions. They know how to take an established brand and grow it faster, and build or expand a new core offering around it. Salesforce may not be great at creating brand new things anymore. Bret Taylor is President and COO of Salesforce — and Facebook’s ex-CTO.

VP of Engineering 150

VP of Engineering New CTO CTO Acquisition 150

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

With Aaron Levie, Stewart Butterfield, David Sacks (fresh off Yammer’s acquisition for $1b+, which seemed so high at the time), Leyla Seka from Salesforce, David Ulevitch from OpenDNS (who sold to Cisco just a few months later for $800m, which again seemed enormous at the time), and the list went on. It was awesome.

Scale 272

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 272

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

5/ Moving from CTO-led -> VPE-led dev team. Most of us hire a VP of Engineering to take over from our CTO because we see the CTO is getting burnt out, or has trouble building a dev team > 8-9 folks, or gets disinterested in solving technical debt, bugs, etc. That’s when you want to lean in. More here.

Part-Time VPE 257

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 257

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Customer Onboarding Specialist: Responsible for helping new customers get up and running with the company’s products. Time to Market for New Products : Also known as velocity, this metric measures the CTO’s effectiveness and speed in rolling new products /features. Come up with product and new feature ideas.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

What’s their new CAC Payback Time? New Gross Margins? You’ll need Cost of Revenue to calculate your Gross Margin, which in turn you need to calculate Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Payback Time and to understand your company’s unit economics in general. Let’s start with Payroll – Support.

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Well, in the past several years, there’s been a tremendous number of companies that have built specifically for developers and use this as a way to get into these new markets, to displace incumbents and disrupt the competition. You have the opportunity to upsell new features and capabilities to them. The contract size grows.

Underperforming Technical Team 173

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 173

FastSpring

DECEMBER 22, 2020

With this new investment, we are already increasing our pace of innovation and have a very exciting roadmap of things to come over the next 12 months. As the worlds of sales rep driven commerce and ecommerce converge, the acquisition of SalesRight will help us create a leading solution to enable this trend. We acquired SalesRight.

Payment Methods 87

Payment Methods Payment Services Payment Solutions Payments 87

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 5, 2021

In conversation with Blake Bartlett , she walked us through how B2C and B2B growth strategies compare across each phase of the customer journey from acquisition to retention and expansion. At Acorns, my team included user acquisition, CRM marketing, and growth product.” Acquisition. Defining Growth . Hila explains. Activation.

B2C 65

B2C B2B New CTO Acquisition 65

OPEXEngine

JANUARY 4, 2022

It’s the kind of notoriety that is leading to a wave of consumption pricing for new software companies and causing established companies to consider whether they too should switch to a usage-based model. “Subscription-based pricing is dead: Smart SaaS companies are shifting to usage-based models” headlined a recent TechCrunch article.

Pricing 52

Pricing New CTO CTO Metrics 52

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

To combat this and be more agile, SaaS management is morphing and restructuring functional management and multiplying the number of new C-Suite titles like Chief Customer Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, and Chief Product Officer, not to mention Chief Performance Officer and Chief Security Officer. Chief Product Officer.

Part-Time CTO 69

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Hire Management 69

Point Nine Land

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

There are several reasons for this line of thought: The US is by far the largest market, it’s relatively homogenous (compared with Europe), and it’s where you’ll find most early adopters of new technology. It led to a 3x increase of MRR within a few months and created the foundation for a scalable, profitable customer acquisition engine.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital New CTO Scale CTO 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. We also measure NPS, and we benchmark that across all acquisitions. Q: Based on your acquisition experience, are for-sale businesses focusing on the customer and NPS?

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

Point Nine Land

APRIL 9, 2021

So if you’re a US-based startup, you might be able to shoot slightly higher ;) Unlike SaaS companies which have been around for years, B2B marketplaces are a relatively new category and not many investors have invested in them yet. Economics and Acquisition ?? Economics and Acquisition ?? Market Characteristics ??

Marketplace as a Service 59

Marketplace as a Service Payments B2B SaaS Payments 59

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2019

Every week we’ll be rolling out new winners until we get to the very pinnacle of our list. Dug Song founded Duo Security in 2019 and grew the company as CEO until it’s acquisition in October of 2018. Using magic (standard deviation) we came up with the best of the best of our sessions as voted by you, our SaaStr community.

CTO Coach 28

CTO Coach New CTO CTO Web Development 28

Outseta

APRIL 11, 2019

Think of the best CTO-level software developers that you know—do you think your product would progress faster if they were building it 2-3 days per week, or if you hired an average developer in a full-time capacity? . ” For example, maybe your company sells its products primarily online using a low-touch customer acquisition model.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Sales Hiring B2B New CTO 52

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

This acquisition reinforces Sprinklr’s mission to define and lead the customer experience management industry with the world’s first Unified Front Office. This helps brands manage customer-facing functions in their entirety, from marketing and advertising to research, care, and social engagement. Congrats on the collaboration, friends.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader. Are marketing becoming the new sales team with their content being used more and more in the sales funnel? Bret was formerly the CTO at Facebook.

Scale 171

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 171

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Since 2010 we’ve seen more startups, funds, and capital than ever before, but with this drastic increase, investors are seeing unexpected new trends reshaping the future of the industry. The panel that we are in is called Is Seed the New Series A, and this is a question that I’ve been asking informally yesterday and today.

New CTO 146

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 146

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

Before that Bob co-founded RJ Metrics, where he built a global base of online retailers leading to their acquisition by Magento Commerce in 2016. With more companies launching and thriving outside of Silicon Valley, regions such as ‘Silicon Slopes’ in Utah and ‘Silicon Alley’ in New York City are gaining traction within the startup scene.

Sales Hiring 131

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 131

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah shared with us how they got there — and the top mistakes they made — just 3 quarters after their IPO. We have someone that probably 98 percent of you know virtually or socially in some sense, Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 212

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 212

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

We’ll also hear Andrew Chen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, talking about the changing landscape of customer acquisition. For Slack, that was clearly the engineering and dev communities, who love new tools. And it was very successful. We have a lot of people going to slack.com, and it’s very simple to start a team.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

She is active on LinkedIn, where she helps SaaS companies optimize their customer acquisition, demand generation, product positioning , and growth plans. He is known for his knowledge and expertise in SEO, SaaS demand, and paid customer acquisition. One of the top SaaS influencers is Dharmesh Shah , co-founder, and CTO of HubSpot.

VP of Engineering 10

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10

SmartKarrot

JANUARY 24, 2022

It can even be due to mergers and acquisitions taking place in an organization. Your current role as a CS leader can become temporary after the merger or acquisition. If you take the consultant route to the C-Suite, it can open new doors in the career. This can be an effect of consolidation and restructuring in the organization.

Customer Success 10

Customer Success CTO Coach Leadership New CTO 10

Mucker Capital

APRIL 6, 2023

If you're generating something that's brand new, like a brand new category, nobody understands about it. In my past roles at ACORN, GitLab, whenever I started as a head of growth, one of the data points I will look into is what's the percentage of new users coming back the second day or coming back second month?

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2019

I used to be a CTO and operator, co-founder of a SaaS start up. And something of insight so we are New York based, global venture and equity investor. So acquisitions could be for a number of reasons. So you might say that you are so focused on core growth, how would you ever manage an acquisition and then integrating that?

Outsourcing Services 107

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Technical Review 107

ProfitWell

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

RevOps isn’t new—some form of revenue operations has been around for a very long time, it simply lacked a title. When Co-founder and CTO of Chargify , Michael Klett isn’t brewing his own beer, he’s crafting billing experiences. Said hops came from a new cultivar out of the Pacific Northwest called Cascade. Key takeaways.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 98

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

We launched REGIE, our product, back in February, but we’re releasing the new and improved REGIE now. I go to the 500th floor of this enormous edifice in New York, and I walk in. We brought in this brilliant CTO who’s got a PhD in informatics. Then last is do-it-yourself, and we’re really excited.

Scale 71

Scale Artificial Intelligence Sales Recruiting Consulting 71

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

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. When we made the acquisition, I remember being in a meeting with our senior executives. About four months after we made the acquisition, we announced to the team we were changing the name.

Sales Hiring 239

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 239

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 155

Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 155

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. How did they formulate and approach creating a new set of values with the 2 companies coming together? Prior to founding Twilio, Jeff was the founder and CTO at Nine Star Inc. Just to name a few.

Underperforming Technical Team 118

Underperforming Technical Team Development Software New CTO 118

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Major challenges facing a new CEO [19:40]. We went through an acquisition and we got bought. I got into the game there, obviously went through the acquisition, that’s how we came up with the idea for the company. It really lended itself to being this new category, this post signature type of contract product.

Scale 107

Scale CTO Hire Scaling CTO Coach 107

ProfitWell

JANUARY 2, 2020

Not only does your sales team need to bring new customers through the door, but they also need to ensure that what they’re selling matches up exactly with those customers’ expectations. Traditional sales teams live mainly on the acquisition stage in the cycle. That’s what makes subscription sales so difficult. Marketing efforts.

B2C 52

B2C Subscription Payment Features Payments 52

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 9, 2020

And I’m a writer of a newsletter called Tech Bound, in which I hone in on marketing strategies and customer acquisition. The customer or user acquisition strategy is product-led and follows this concept of land and expand. I first got started in SEO, I think at around 16 years old. I’ve always been a pretty curious kid.

Technical Review 199

Technical Review Scale Underperforming Technical Team Software Review 199

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. Real connection, but there was a catch. This was a problem.

CTO Hire 156

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 156

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

And by the time the song comes out, you’re not even going to really appreciate it because you’ve written 20 new songs, and those are the ones that you can’t wait to hear. And I always just also love to hear about companies that are started outside of New York City and San Francisco. So it’s a great story.

Marketplace as a Service 94

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Data 94

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

New for 2020: SaaS Pricing and COVID-19. In this brand-new report, we finally answer the question “Freemium or free trial?” Pricing Low-Touch SaaS: How to Approach Pricing and Packaging a New SaaS App, by Example. SaaS pricing is one of the most important (but difficult) decisions a new business makes.

Pricing 135

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 135

ProfitWell

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

For example, if you subscribe to the New York Times , you pay a flat price per month or year. Spotify, on the other hand, added discounted tiers for Spotify Premium in a bid to increase acquisition and retention. What is flat rate pricing? Who is using a flat rate pricing strategy? The reason for this success? And lots of them.

Pricing 59

Pricing Technical Cofounder Scale New CTO 59