SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

Many companies believe excellent product design comes from hiring the best engineers and signing up for the latest software instead of building from the users’ perspectives. Stripe’s CTO, David Singleton, shares how they use a system of feedback, iteration, and fast shipping to create products that meet users’ expectations.

CTO Hire 234

CTO Hire CTO Payment Methods Payment Solutions 234

TechEmpower SaaS

DECEMBER 11, 2023

While the appearance matters, remember you are hiring the development firm primarily for its development skills, not its graphic design skills. Our blog post 53 Questions Developers Should Ask Innovators has a list of questions any good development team would ask. cto , product , saas Either way, we can help!"]

Software Development 443

Software Development Development Software Review Software 443

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

What started as a simple WordPress blog in 2012 has now become the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. SaaStr began in 2012 as a simple WordPress blog and a few answers on Quora sharing Jason Lemkin’s learnings of going from $0 to $100m ARR at EchoSign. SaaStr is turning 10! Now a staple!)

Scale 279

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 279

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

Co-founder and CEO of Plato, Quong Hoang, the #1 mentoring platform for engineering leaders , helped moderate a discussion between CTO of Change.org, Elaine Zhou, and Head of Engineering at Notion, Michael Manapat, on this subject. Focus on retaining your engineers from day one. More like this at 2022 SaaStr Annual, Sep 13-15 in SF Bay Area!!

CTO Coach 223

CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO CTO 223

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be. 95% of the time, your super-smart hacker co-founder is not that person. She can be your CTO forever. That’s a different, and critical, job than CTO. Marketing is also an art and science.

Part-Time VPE 234

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 234

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Yes, I needed to replatform my blog, but I also needed a web presence for my new fractional CTOing entity. The blog needed a new name, but I also working on naming the new entity, and realized it might be possible to find a name that would work well for both. Great question, with a great answer that still costs $0.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Software Engineering 40

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: About 70% of SaaS Public Companies Are New Versions of Existing Categories of Software (Updated) Growth Slowed Down About 33% On Average For Everyone in Q1 The Top 20 SaaStr Tips to Getting a SaaS Start-Up Going When Should You Add a Second Product?

CTO Hire 203

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Scaling 203

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Does Anyone Want To Be a Unicorn Anymore? Ode to the $100,000,000 Exit Dear SaaStr: Should You Hire Someone That Seems Good … But Always Job Hops? TAM is Great.

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 205

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Zendesk and Anaplan: A Tale of Two Very Similar, And Very Different, $10B SaaS Acquisitions. The Ultimate Guide for Hiring a Great VP of Sales. with Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone.

CTO Hire 195

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Scale CTO 195

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. I just see this time and time again.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 290

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2020

He joined StubHub as CTO, but didn’t get nearly as much equity as the other CTO — because he “wasn’t committed enough.” If your customers love your product now, hire reps. ” Times of crisis are actually great times to find hard problems to solve.

CTO Hire 342

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Airlines 342

SaaStr

JULY 23, 2021

Brian Peterson, CTO @ Dialpad. Dave Walters, CTO, Hired. Christa Diaz, Senior Director, Customer Success, Hired. Amy Pisano, CRO, Hired. Jenn Knight, Co-Founder, CTO, AgentSync. Take a look at our latest speaker additions here: Martin Mickos, CEO, HackerOne, Inc. Zach Kitschke, CMO, Canva.

VP of Engineering 273

VP of Engineering New CTO CTO Hire Sales Hiring 273

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2023

The best we made our CTO. But what if our CTO gets hit by a bus? They feed on each other, hire other toxic people, and turn the company against the mission and each other. Once in a while, the toxic but critical employee does mature out of it in time. Sometimes, still hire them. Well he was toxic. For a while.

CTO Hire 221

CTO Hire CTO Technology Engineering 221

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? David considers product to be its own department that should also report directly to the CEO, instead of falling under the CTO. CTO (40 Employees).

CTO Hire 245

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 245

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . “A Hiring in a streamlined manner with a rigorous selection process initially builds momentum for long-term goals.

Scale 201

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 201

SaaStr

JUNE 12, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: What All First-Time CEOs Should Know About Fundraising. with Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone. 5 Interesting Learnings from Zoom at $4.3B How to Handle, and Share, Bad News.

Scale 170

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO 170

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2021

The first 2 scaled reps you hire that hit plan (some may churn before then) get special training. They get CTO training. And so we see reps 3-10, or reps-from-#3-until-The-VP-of-Sales-is-Hired … fail. Simplify to a 1 page contract. And the others perform so poorly vs. the 2 that are doing well? So what can you do?

Scale 339

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 339

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Some wicked smart, some merely very smart. Some direct, some warm and friendly. But what made them great: Ability to attract amazing co-founders and execs. Not just great, but epic. Ability to iterate pretty darn quickly.

CTO Hire 217

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 217

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR. Fixing it yourself becomes the biggest time sink and excuse for not hiring there is. You end up spending all your time backfilling roles you should have hired. And even worse, you often sort of give up trying to make the hire. And hire against it. More here.

Part-Time VPE 265

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 265

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. Folks come out differently here, but while Amplitude charges per volume, in part, it doesn’t make a material amount from overages. CEO Spencer Skates owns 8.5%, CTO Curtis Liu 8.0%. But Amplitude has 51% growth in paying customers on top of 57% overall growth.

Scale 266

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 266

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” “When customers get back $100k’s in minutes and want to pay us more” — Kanat Bekt, founder/CTO, SupplyPike. 20% conversion. ” — Drew Naugher.

CTO Hire 283

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 283

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

They’ll revolt when you make a senior or mid-level hire that as a group, they simply cannot suffer one day longer. But I forced us to hire him, over my CTO’s strong objection and my VPE’s grudging acknowledgment we had no choice. It was a hire I wasn’t really in favor of, but it was an experiment.

Part-Time VPE 273

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 273

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10. That it’s time to bring in someone that knows. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. I Need a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 356

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

So once I made the decision to move ahead on the launch of Crafty CTO , I wanted to get on with it. Then came the decision to launch Crafty CTO and suddenly I had a burning need for art, starting with a logo. I’m finding that when writing in my blog, I can now create imagery on the fly without bogging down the process.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Artificial Intelligence AI ChatGPT 40

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. But even if you’ve hired the world’s best VP of Sales … you can’t opt out of sales entirely. You still need to spend 15-20% of your time in sales. Hire a VP of Finance or even a CFO Early if You Are Growing Quickly.

Part-Time VPE 273

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 273

Valerian Tech

JUNE 19, 2023

This blog will explore the importance of data security for healthcare companies and highlight some key components of robust data protection. The potential consequences of data breaches, such as financial losses, reputational damage, and loss of patient trust, highlight the critical importance of robust data security measures.

Healthcare 52

Healthcare CTO Hire Data CTO 52

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2020

In fact, right after that we hired a roundtrip employee as our CTO in my first start-up and it was amazing. Especially in tougher times, folks may be knocking on your door again. First, what doesn’t work, or at least hasn’t for me, is re-hiring: Folks that left for a company that was a better fit.

CTO Hire 254

CTO Hire CTO Scaling Management 254

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2019

“Juggling People, Processes, and Priorities: Leadership Lessons from Intuit, SurveyMonkey & Stitch Fix” with Heavy Bit GM Dana Oshiro Intuit CTO Marianna Tessel, SurveyMonkey CTO Robin Ducot and Stitchfix CTO Cathy Polinsky. ” When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster.

CTO Coach 142

CTO Coach Engineering CTO Hire Development 142

Valerian Tech

JULY 5, 2023

In this blog post, we will explore the importance of technology in the hospitality industry and discuss various ways to leverage it to enhance customer experience, increase efficiency, streamline operations, and gain valuable customer insights through data analysis.

Payment Services 52

Payment Services Technology Payment Solutions CTO Hire 52

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. What to do before building a team for your SaaS company You can’t just jump into hiring without some forethought, or you’ll make many mistakes. Before the hiring process, take some time to decide on your current needs and hire as your company grows.

Sales Hiring 94

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 94

Valerian Tech

MAY 30, 2023

In this blog post, we will explore the significant role of data analytics in driving e-commerce business growth and discuss effective strategies for leveraging this invaluable resource. Understanding Customer Behavior Data analytics enables e-commerce businesses to gain deep insights into customer behavior and preferences.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Data Business CTO 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

You have to see: A couple of good hires brought in Improvement on some metrics A big deal or two hanging out there, brought in and closed Things taken off your plate. More time may make them better if they’re already progressing, even if it’s just 10-15% in the first sales cycle. Hiring someone too junior. That often compounds.

Part-Time VPE 181

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 181

Casey Accidental

JUNE 8, 2021

I was able to hire a strong team, and we got to work, 100xing the size of our customer base over four years. As part of this process, a lot of what I tried to do was reduce distractions for the team. Many companies would not even let me write a blog like this while working there. We were definitely winning, after all.

CTO Hire 125

CTO Hire Venture Capital CTO Communication 125

Valerian Tech

JUNE 13, 2023

This blog will explore the challenges faced by healthcare companies in achieving regulatory compliance. By leveraging the knowledge and guidance of a Fractional CTO, healthcare companies can mitigate compliance risks, protect patient data, and ensure the delivery of high-quality healthcare services while maintaining regulatory compliance.

Healthcare 52

Healthcare compliance CTO Hire New CTO 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on.

CTO Hire 277

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 277

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

They’re able to actually swipe a credit card, and what starts off similar to a freemium self-serve product can turn into a six-figure contract in just a few months. It might even be months later that a VP of Engineering or a CTO or CFO realizes that they’re built on a new platform. The contract size grows.

Underperforming Technical Team 180

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 180

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

I’ve been reminded of this question in several meetings lately where founders are doing pretty well, getting to and past Initial Traction, but with hindsight it’s interesting that the founder that took the CEO gig perhaps was better suited to a different role, say CTO or SVP of Sales or President or COO or SVP Product.

Sales Recruiting 315

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital CTO Hire CTO 315