SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Vimeo just hired their first sales rep 3 years ago to spearhead $20k+ deals … and now they have 100 reps, and are on track to double that headcount. But that moat can be brand, #9. My Top 10 Learnings: #1. Lean In Early With a Strong Lead on International Expansion — Even Now. 50% of Vimeo’s revenue is international.

Enterprise 292

Enterprise Scale Sales Hiring Headcount 292

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2019

But specializing across the sales process will take more headcount. We have a mini-brand, and then a brand. If your brand truly explodes, growth will be cheaper. Whatever it is, you’ll want to move away from a generalist approach. In the end, you can raise AE quotas to pay for this, at least in theory.

Sales Hiring 269

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Venture Capital 269

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2023

It may have some, if it adds value, builds your brand, etc. The Right Amount of Headcount Is Far Less Clear When Bootstrapping. You see it, but you aren’t quite as sensitive to it. Crappy Revenue Isn’t Worth It A zero-margin product has little value when bootstrapping. But that’s it. Probably Far Less is The Answer.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Headcount Startup Revenue 245

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 23, 2022

With increasing business costs and reduced headcount, companies are feeling the squeeze as they also grapple with rising consumer expectations. Support plays a critical role in customer retention, with 32% of consumers citing bad customer service as the main reason they discontinued business with a brand.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Retention Headcount Customer Lifetime Value 211

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

With precise headcount and budget needs. Each year, referrals, word-of-mouth, and your mini-brand get more and more important. I’ll Keep it Simple. I just want you to find a way to do 5 things: First, it’s time to build a real financial and operating model for next year — NOW. How many reps. How many SDRs.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Acquisition 278

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Their responsibility would include attracting local talent, running the US and creating an employer brand in the US. To attract A talent, one needs to build an A brand. Often, founders are unsure about the headcount split between India and the US. For developer tools and infra, it is skewed towards brand and community.

Scale 286

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Cybersecurity 286

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2021

They wait for two reasons: first, it’s another headcount, which costs money, which can seem expensive when you have say just $5k-$10k a month in MRR and 6 months of runway left before you’re out of cash. But those early customers that somehow found you, with no brand, no PR team, no Platinum Booth at Dreamforce.

Sales Hiring 286

Sales Hiring Customer Success Headcount Churn 286

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

We all become new customer-oriented, so we say we’re focused on the existing base, but once the sales team becomes 30-40% of headcount, it tends to dominate every conversation. Long-term marketing spend Holding customer success spend flat The study found that 62% of CS teams are maintaining or decreasing their non-headcount budget.

Customer Success 292

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 292

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Reduced headcount, longer working hours, and a spike in queries have led to burnout. I’m sure we’ve all been caught in an endless unhelpful bot loop when seeking support from another company, and it does nothing for brand loyalty when it’s quite clear a company absolutely does not want to speak to you.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Trends Technical Review Headcount 211

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2019

With precise headcount and budget needs. Each year, referrals, word-of-mouth, and your mini-brand get more and more important. I know you’re maxxed out already, but you have to find a way to do 5 things: First, it’s time to build a real financial and operating model for next year — NOW. How many reps. How many SDRs.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Acquisition 240

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

. #4 Change in Marketing As You Scale : Brand Investment — Right Time, Right Place Kady shared a story on the workshop of how she recently spoke to a couple of founders at sub-$500k in ARR. They said they wanted to build out their brand right away and wanted to know if it was wise to invest in the brand. Kady said no.

Scale 268

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 268

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2024

Vimeo is turning 20, which not many internet brands have achieved. One of the great things about Vimeo is there aren’t a lot of companies that have this kind of brand recognition and internet traffic. When you have a brand that people love, like Vimeo, how do you ensure you don’t over-monetize? It’s an unbelievable asset. “We

AI Search 268

AI Search SaaS Advertising Sales Hiring 268

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 10, 2021

What to do: Increase your efficiency without increasing headcount using bots and automation. Home furnishing brand Living Spaces uses Intercom to handle 8,000 weekly conversations and maintain a first-response time of under one minute. Read more: The custom bot that saved logistics platform Stuart over 2.5k hours per week.

Headcount 195

Headcount Customer Support Scale AI 195

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

Now you have the iconic brand, at least in your verticals. Peter : In the early days, [laughs] you don’t have any brand. You want to start doing more on brand and other marketing that isn’t ROI positive. I actually drive revenue from headcount, but I make sure I have enough stocked away. Peter : Yeah.

Sales Hiring 337

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Headcount 337

SaaStr

JULY 24, 2023

CIOs and others want to concentrate their budget on vendors they trust, so if you have a strong brand, you can benefit from this trend. They kept the headcount kind of flat. Yet leaders like MongoDB are growing quicker than startups, and it’s usually the opposite. Mongo’s $1M+ customers are up 30%, which is pretty epic. And it worked!

Revenue 245

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Cloud 245

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 2, 2019

How do you ensure a great customer experience globally without adding a ton of headcount? For online businesses, our customers can come from any part of the world and at any time. In the United States alone, roughly 20% of the population doesn’t speak English at home. Multilingual support can overcome other product weaknesses.

Scale 209

Scale Outsourcing Services Scaling Technical Review 209

Sales Hacker

JUNE 27, 2025

GTM efficiency is no longer headcount-driven In the new world, team output = humans × agents. That’s great for scale, but it also risks erosion of brand trust if buyers don’t know who (or what) they’re engaging. .” If you’re job searching: expect more scrutiny and higher expectations per seat.

60

60

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

Bots are already enabling customer support teams to scale personalized experiences without added headcount. Here are four brand new features that take automated support to the next level. We believe automation will transform the way that businesses support their customers. We’ve given Resolution Bot a lot more than a new name.

Headcount 40

Headcount Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Customer Support 40

Payrix

APRIL 10, 2025

The typical trade and field service business relies on revenue from sales and service to run operations, manage headcount, and drive operational growth. in interchange fees (which will vary by card brand) and 0.2% However, these profit levers alone may not be enough to help a business achieve its true potential.

Payments 100

Payments Payment Services Outsourcing Services Payment Solutions 100

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

According to a Microsoft Global State of Customer Service report , 90% of respondents said that customer service is an important factor in their choice of, and loyalty to, a brand. And if their support expectations aren’t met? Nearly two-thirds (58%) would sever their relationship with a business due to poor customer service.

Technical Review 222

Technical Review Systems Review Customer Support Headcount 222

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2018

For B2B buyers, having an emotional connection to a brand is paramount, and they’re willing to pay for it too. But it’d be far more effective to share how Snapt uses Custom Bots to qualify and book meetings at scale, without additional headcount. 3 steps to tell effective stories in live chat.

Scale 172

Scale Headcount Communication B2B 172

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

The best SaaS companies are able to build strong brands, develop scalable products and hire teams to bring those products to market effectively. The chart above shows the headcount growth of the median publicly traded SaaS company from year four through year ten of the company’s life. The second chart shows the magic of leverage.

Headcount 100

Headcount Sales Hiring SaaS Benchmarks 100

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 4, 2019

This is episode four of Scale , a brand new podcast series on moving from startup to scale up. Despite the exponential growth they’ve gone through, Stripe have been refreshingly conservative about how quickly they grown the company from a headcount perspective. We just were never going to get that headcount.

Scale 162

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Payment Services 162

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

Now, let’s look at ten learnings that Dorian gathered while scaling Grammarly from a Consumer to an Enterprise brand with B2B offerings. But as you expand and start productizing everything in your journey, it’s easy to get under the assumption that more headcount equals better performance.

Scale 246

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 246

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

You’re investing resources in hiring and training the right people, tracking different metrics at different stages, adding more and more complexity with each increase in headcount, use cases, and customers. I think the name has worked out quite well for us in being able to build a brand. If you can, it is the way to go.

Outsourcing Services 206

Outsourcing Services Scale Software Sales Hiring 206

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

This requires effort from your entire organization, and Handshake VP, Employer Partnerships Jessica Peluso outlines some changes that you can make to your brand, and your application, interview, and offer process that will help find the talent you are trying to attract and hire. You have to work on your brand. So this is a big one.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 258

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 20, 2022

It’s important beyond the product team – the speed of R&D is, at the very least, affected by the speed of our surrounding functions, whether that’s finance for giving us headcount or marketing for bringing us to market. And whether you like it or not, that becomes a part of your brand. And that’s dangerous too.

Underperforming Technical Team 249

Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Sales Hiring Scale 249

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 29, 2019

When I started, they had a big growth plan as far as headcount, but they were a little bit looser on processes and cadences and things like that framework I was talking about. So again, we got aggressive headcount to see the growth, and we put together a plan where we can actually see maybe even a little bit more growth with the same people.

Scale 172

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Payment Services 172

ChurnZero

MARCH 22, 2023

As a CS leader, these tools help keep your team lean, standardize your operations, and give your C-suite visibility into decisions about headcount and tooling. Once you arrive at a ratio of customers to CSM, you have what you need to meet with your finance team to discuss budget and headcount in a data-driven way.

Customer Success 97

Customer Success Headcount Finance Leadership 97

Sales Hacker

JUNE 3, 2025

It was tier two brands, agencies and things of that nature. And basically building out a sales channel for EMEA, again, more on the mid-market segment, the tier two brands and so forth. Or how do I in a limited resource and limited headcount way, how do I go about choosing the allocation of different headcount?

Sales Hiring 86

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 86

FastSpring

JANUARY 31, 2023

You’ll be able to manage all aspects of the payment lifecycle from your FastSpring dashboard without adding extra software or headcount. FastSpring FastSpring lets you customize every aspect of your checkout, from custom fields to branded colors. Most companies need additional headcount to manage this.

Payment Services 147

Payment Services Payment Methods Merchant Services Software Review 147

Neil Patel

DECEMBER 13, 2022

The main reason why revolved around these 3 main points: Save money by automating content creation Reduce the amount of time spent on creating content Ability to reduce headcount in the content department. Very few companies planned on reducing headcount related to email marketing efforts. Email Marketing.

Marketing 145

Marketing AI Search Software Review Social Media 145

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 26, 2022

Loyal, engaged customers are the lifeblood of your company’s success, providing a steady and reliable revenue stream as well as positive word of mouth for your brand. Use automation to make your headcount count for more. That’s no surprise: as professional services firm PwC says, customer experience is everything. Time savings: ????.

Payment Methods 118

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments Payment Services 118

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 31, 2019

But how do you staff live chat for your marketing without ballooning your headcount? As you’re putting together your first few chatbots, keep these tips in mind to ensure an on-brand, positive experience. With the right setup, a chatbot can power your marketing as well so you never miss a lead. By using chatbots.

Marketing 177

Marketing Pricing Headcount Engagement 177

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

Powered by a modern business messenger , it scales your ability to answer more questions from more customers without increasing headcount, budget, or hours logged. You can also proactively follow up with detractors to resolve their issues or reach out to happy customers to turn them into brand advocates and retain them for life.

Technical Review 249

Technical Review Customer Support Payment Methods Payment Solutions 249

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

Sales now accounts for about 7% of the company’s headcount–a similar share of their workforce as marketing or product management. I’d even argue that the company is still under-resourced in sales; sales accounts for only 7% of Atlassian’s headcount compared to 25% of headcount at the average PLG business. This is a good thing.

Sales Hiring 90

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 90

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

This is something that I’m doing with fractional headcount allocation. The pilot programs aren’t meant to be these big bells and whistles, not even after you launch an official full-time headcount on something. It’s going to be the growth team, and we’re going to put three to four headcount on it.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 98