article thumbnail

What CEOs Should Know About Recruiting Top Talent

OpenView Labs

Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups. Nine out of 10 founders and CEOs I connect with are involved in recruiting on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Many of them are learning on the fly and trying to juggle being CEO and Chief People Officer/Lead Recruiter/Brand Evangelist all at once.

article thumbnail

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Biggest Problems You Face as a Startup Founder?

SaaStr

From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. Later, once you have a brand, you’ll be competing with Hot Startups nipping at your heals for top VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. More here: From Initial Traction to Initial Scale (~$10M in ARR): The Hardest Phase. It never ends.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Biggest Pains as CEO?

SaaStr

The toughest part in the end is always recruiting. Recruiting. Over time, that’s recruiting more and more senior folks, so the target changes. As your company scales, you’ll start to hit 15%+ attrition in your employee base just naturally each year. You’ll have to be recruiting new ones all the time.

article thumbnail

What Does — And Doesn’t — Get Easier After $10m ARR

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: Does it get easier or harder to scale SaaS as your company grows? Generally, it gets easier to grow at a “good”/modest rate at you scale, but harder to grow at an outsize rate. Once you cross $5m-$10m in ARR, then usually: You have a brand. At least, you have a mini-brand in your niche. This helps a lot.

Scale 198
article thumbnail

The Top 10 Mistakes Made in Hiring Your First Sales Team

SaaStr

I know we’ve hit a number of these points individually before on SaaStr, but after getting asked about the top mistakes hiring your first sales team so many times over the years, I thought it would be worthwhile to assemble a Top 10 List. Make fewer of them and you’ll scale faster with less stress. Yes, you may be terrible at sales.

article thumbnail

The #1 Best Hack to Making Sure a VP of Sales or Top AE Will Work Out

SaaStr

We’ve talked a ton on SaaStr over the years on how to make sure your VP of Sales and top hires really work out. We can pretty much summarize a lot of it into the following: Your VP of Sales should have lots of experience selling at your average ACV. for that type of sale. That they are the right ones. Ask who they are.

article thumbnail

The 48 Types of VP Sales. Make Deadly Sure You Hire the Right One.

SaaStr

Ah the VP of Sales. The first post is What a Great VP of Sales Actually Does. The second post is a script for you to use (and modify as you see fit) – 10 Great Questions to Ask a VP Sales Candidate. Just so you know, there are 48 Different Types of VP Sales. The toughest hire. Such a high failure rate.