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. SaaStr APAC 2023: Stage A Streaming LIVE 5.

Scale 214

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 214

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. 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.

Part-Time VPE 237

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 237

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 177

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO 177

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. Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? Top Videos This Week: 1.

CTO Hire 204

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Scale CTO 204

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. Rhonda SekaBuehler Senior Vice President of Global Sales Engineering @WalkMe. Zach Kitschke, CMO, Canva.

VP of Engineering 273

VP of Engineering New CTO CTO Hire Sales Hiring 273

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? In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Sales.

CTO Hire 253

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 253

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2021

There’s a slide I see again and again from start-ups: 2 of the early sales reps are at 100% of quota, sometimes 150%-200%. You’ll continue to see that over time to some extent. So why so often, do only 2 of the first 8-10 sales reps perform? They get CTO training. You have to join their first few sales calls.

Scale 342

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 342

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. 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.

Part-Time VPE 270

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 270

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. Rather, it uses overage events to trigger a call from sales to buy more. #4. CEO Spencer Skates owns 8.5%, CTO Curtis Liu 8.0%.

Scale 273

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 273

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

I hear again and again from SaaS founders growing to $5m, $10m ARR or even more that they don’t need a certain VP — with the exception of a VP of Sales. Basically, in SaaS, everyone “gets” that they need a VP of Sales. Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10. That it’s time to bring in someone that knows.

Sales Hiring 359

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 359

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. From $1m to $10m ARR or so, as you build your first management team: You shouldn’t be the VP of Sales Anymore As You Scale. And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. Add a layer. the prospects).

Part-Time VPE 273

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 273

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

AUGUST 25, 2023

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. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 189

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 189

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

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. Bottom-up sales. 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.

Underperforming Technical Team 186

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 186

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 285

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 285

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

Just like filing your income tax returns or hanging that state-mandated safety poster up in your break room, sales tax is a back-office pain point, not a profit center. . That makes sales tax compliance easy to ignore… until it becomes a problem. . Why is sales tax such a pain for SaaS companies? There are a few reasons.

Merchant Services 172

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 172

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 93

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 93

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. Using historical sales data, businesses can predict demand patterns, identify popular products, and adjust stock levels accordingly.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Data Business CTO 52

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

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Building a sales team that can go from $0-$50M (Video + Transcript). Gaetan Gachet | SVP of Sales @Algolia. It’s an honor to be here with this mythical creature, this sales leader that goes from zero to 50 million in the same job. He has a whole French sales team and office that only speaks English in Paris.

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 136

ProfitWell

JANUARY 29, 2019

On this episode of the ProfitWell Report, Brendan Schwartz , Co-Founder and CTO at Wistia , wants to know what proportion of paid plans should be annual versus monthly. The beauty of the subscription model is that for the first time in the history of business, relationships are baked directly into how you make money. Click to enlarge.

Churn 103

Churn CTO Hire Data CTO 103

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They have service and all this, but the second cloud for them was sales. They wanted to sell the Amplitude product, I forget, to sales or somebody else, and that was their mistake. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. And the learning is sell two things to buyers.

Outsourcing Services 194

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 194

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2019

When I first spoke to Charles about speaking at Europa he recalled a sales rep closing a deal with Redbull. “How to Build A Pipeline with No Brand and Sometimes No Market” Egnyte General Manager of EMEA Charles Lawson and Egynte Sales Development Manager Lara Badanes. His next call? Monster Beverage.

CTO Hire 150

CTO Hire Scale Sales Hiring CTO 150

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How does a First Time Founder Identify 10x Hires? How do you hire a great CTO, a great VP of Product, a great VP of Sales … if you’ve never worked with one? There’s a reason almost every founder you talk to had a mis-hire for their first head of sales. It’s hard.

Sales Hiring 207

Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 207

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 249

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 249

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

A Couple SaaS Generations Ago… Traditional software companies managed sales, product development, finance and HR in siloed organizations by function. Separate Sales, Marketing, R&D, Accounting/Finance organizations were headed by a senior executive. The CRO leads Sales, Marketing, and Operations, plus often Customer Success.

Part-Time CTO 69

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Hire Management 69

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

Which is why you should sign up for the 2 for 1 Insider Sale and get two people for the price of one. That’s the advice, Petri Hollmén picked up on the more technical side of things from the opening session on Day 2 with Cal Henderson, CTO of Slack. Read all of Petri’s thoughts and observations on his blog . Full post. .

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

Does Bob agree with the notion that channel sales have completely died in the world of SaaS? How does Bob think about when is the right time to hire a Head of Partnerships? Where do most startups go wrong both in hiring for partnerships and in the engagements themselves? Why is this? What are the drivers of its death?

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 132

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years.

Sales Hiring 158

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 158

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

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.

Part-Time VPE 330

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 330

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

That’s what David Apple—customer success and sales guru at Notion— is asking. But after years of research and thinking about this problem at typeform.com and Notion , David decided to write a blog post explaining why this question is so hard to answer. How many CSMs should you hire? What is their ROI? Weekend Wisdom.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

Natalia Luneva

APRIL 30, 2021

We don’t necessarily think it affects our sales, but it definitely impacts overall customer satisfaction. . Of course, our team is involved to an extent, and we have an external part-time moderator for support. We have been running our community for more than a year now. .

Marketing 98

Marketing Social Media SaaS New CTO 98

ProfitWell

JANUARY 24, 2020

So they dropped a blog post all about the common problems that marketers face when focused too much on brand affinity. But once they dug deeper into the data, they found out that their campaign generated the same amount of web traffic as a reasonably successful blog post, converted minimal leads, and generated barely any business.

Sales Recruiting 40

Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO Sales Hiring 40

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 31, 2019

From speaking with a variety of CFOs and VPs of Finance recently, here’s what we are hearing they are looking for in their FP&A hiring, outside of traditional Finance, math, accounting and reporting skills. When he came out, the first thing he asked me was, how do you define a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)? Finance skill sets.

Finance 40

Finance CTO Hire Headcount SaaS 40

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

A VP of Sales and Success A VP of Sales and Marketing A VP of Sales and Anything Else. Is usually not really a VP of Sales. Sales managers back when I never managed sales. Anyhow the one thing I learned, beyond getting help screening and hiring for these positions from domain experts, is to look for Flags.

Sales Hiring 251

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 251

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it’s not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times. Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales?

CTO Hire 187

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 187