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Dear SaaStr: I’m Bootstrapped. How Can I Afford to Hire Any VPs?

SaaStr

Here are some rough rules: You want a VP of Everything (Sales, Marketing, Product, Eng) by about $1m-$2m ARR. ARR VPCS: $2m ARR VPP: $3m-$4m ARR VPE: $5m-$6m ARR CFO: $10m ARR COO: $20m ARR. How can a CEO hire those C-level positions for the first time as a CEO and entrepreneur? What skills should he or she look for? A bit more here.

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Dear SaaStr: When should a bootstrapped startup hire a (CFO, COO, CMO)?

SaaStr

Here are some rough rules: You want a VP of Everything (Sales, Marketing, Product, Eng) by about $5m ARR, and ideally, Sales and Marketing well before that. ARR VPCS: $2m ARR VPP: $3m-$4m ARR VPE: $5m-$6m ARR CFO: $10m ARR COO: $20m ARR. How can a CEO hire those C-level positions for the first time as a CEO and entrepreneur?

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The Top 5 Things Everyone Should Know Before Starting a SaaS Company

SaaStr

The top 5, with links to the related posts: It may well take 24 months to get to true product-market fit and Initial Traction. VPS, VPM, VPP, VPCS, VPE, etc. If you budget any less, you probably will fail. This isn’t B2C and virality won’t accelerate the process. You have to love, or at least commit to, recruiting constantly.

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Do Your VPs Have a Mentor Budget?

SaaStr

I do this myself for a handful of VPs of Sales and Marketing at companies I work with. But what would be even better would be to also have an experienced peer that is a true VPS or VPM or VPCS. To work through how much budget to argue for. I’m the informal mentor, and I think it’s helps them.

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What Order Should You Hire Your Management Team In?

SaaStr

ARR VPCS: $2m ARR VPP: $3m-$4m ARR VPE: $5m-$6m ARR CFO: $10m ARR COO: $20m ARR. He’d found several good First VP candidates, in particular, a strong first head of marketing and a strong first head of product. And your first VP of Marketing just increases qualified leads by 25%. ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m More here: [link].

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SaaStr Annual Prices Go Up $400 (!) Tomorrow!! And Check Out Our 300+ Amazing Speakers!!

SaaStr

Well: CEOs of Zoom, Okta, Box, PagerDuty, Mixmax, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Airtable, Dialpad, Gainsight, Gitlab, HackerOne, Zapier, Front, Cloudinary and 100+ more!! CIOs of Adobe, Zendesk, Nutanix, Ciena, Google Cloud and 200+ more! You can come now for 40% less. Grab the final 2019 priced tickets here.

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Bet On Up-and-Comers. But Add One Veteran For Each $10m ARR.

SaaStr

That driven marketer that wants their shot to own a number and run the whole shop, this time. And a truly experienced VP of Marketing will know how to consistently hit their commit, rather than see everything just … plateau. Maybe start with marketing, that’s often easiest. The director that wants a shot at VP.