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Leadership Learnings: 5 Things I Wish I Could Have Told My 2013 Self With Advisor and Former CTO of Heap Dan Robinson (Pod 663 + Video)

SaaStr

Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares five essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. What Your Job Is (And What It Isn’t) Your Job is to Make the Company Win A CTO may imagine their primary job is to provide technical expertise, lead engineers, and help build the product.

CTO Coach 187
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You Won’t Know Most of Your 10x Hires Are That Good on Day 1

SaaStr

He made many great leadership points, but one in particular rattles around my head a lot and I think deserves its own post: You usually won’t know if you’ve made a 10x hire … when you make the hire. A good / great employee can become 10x in a new environment was part of Auren’s point. Hire the very, very people you can.

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How to Build Happier Employees – Lessons From HubSpot’s CTO Dharmesh Shah and Chief People Officer Katie Burke

SaaStr

At SaaStr Annual we had a great session with HubSpot Founder & CTO, Dharmesh Shah, and their Chief People Officer, Katie Burke, on building happier employees. We hire remarkable people, and we give them a lot of freedom for how they’re going to get their work done. Who actually knows stuff and does things?”

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What Order Should You Hire Your Management Team In?

SaaStr

IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m He asked which to hire first. If you have a few nickels in the bank, and you somehow find a great VP a half stage or even full stage early, just hire her. Hiring is so hard as it is. Make the hire now. ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m More here: [link].

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“What Do You Mean They Quit?!” Don’t Give Your Engineers a Reason to Leave with Notion’s Head of Engineering: Michael Manapat, Change.org’s CTO: Elaine Zhou, and Plato’s CEO: Quang Hoang (Video)

SaaStr

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 227
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VPs That Can’t Hire … They Aren’t Real VPs. At Least, Not Yet.

SaaStr

Perhaps the single most important thing you can ever do in SaaS, at least after $1m in ARR or so, is hire the best VPs you can. We’ve talked a lot over the years about how not to hire a wrong VP of Sales — 70%+ of the first VPs of Sales don’t make it even 10 months. You need to hire up-and-comers. Get on jets?

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Calm’s Will Larson on how to build a technical leadership career

Intercom, Inc.

That question has been on Will Larson ‘s mind for a long time. For those who don’t know him, Will has over 10 years of experience in the likes of Yahoo, Digg, Uber, and Stripe, and he’s currently the CTO of Calm , the mindfulness app that helps millions of people to lower their stress levels and sleep better. How do we fix it?”