SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

While many startups aspire toward unicorn status, only a few achieve it. To achieve this level of success, startups need a combination of strong financial performance, innovative products or services, and a favorable market environment. Lesson 1: Everything is about your team. Lesson 6: Pivoting isn’t a bad thing.

Scale 246

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Scaling Interviewing 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Sometimes it’s VP Sales (OK, often, this is the most common mishire — another post here on what a really great VPS can do for you, and how a poor one can wreck your company, coming). The #1 reason to do a start-up is Career Development. Third, There are Gems At These Top Brands. Sometimes it’s VP Marketing.

Sales Hiring 335

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Startup 335

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 13, 2018

Product positioning, knowledge and brand awareness are your first ports of call in the early days. A bad version of this opportunity is spending half of your annual marketing budget on sponsoring a conference closing party. Any company’s first events team member will need to be a curator, then a promoter and lastly a producer.

Branding 205

Branding Outsourced Development Scale Travel 205

Trint

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

I’d never been exposed to software developers and the mysterious world of coding. I was introduced to a team of software engineers who’d been working on tech that aligned audio and text so that you could follow it like karaoke. I remember saying to the team, “We just invented the future.” You need to have the brand story.

Branding 130

Branding Advertising Underperforming Technical Team VP of Engineering 130

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 10, 2020

I hope this post allows people and teams to safely talk about Product Judgment. If you ever had to face a Manager, Director or Exec as they make bad product decisions and you’re struggling to persuade them otherwise, this post will help you. It takes years to build, and therefore ranges from very weak to very strong.

Underperforming Technical Team 291

Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Communication B2B 291

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

Whats important to note is that each model targets a distinct customer persona and, therefore, has a unique approach to the customer journeyfrom brand awareness to sales and, ultimately, conversion. Your sales team may need to map out all potential targets and how to access potential buyers within those larger businesses.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

This is the recipe for a mediocre sales team. Like a sports franchise, a top team should be both collaborative and competitive. It’s a timely conversation for us, coming hot on the heels of the release of our book Intercom on Sales last month and Steli’s own book The 2020 Startup Sales Playbook this week. to Close.com.

Sales Hiring 184

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales 184

Sales Hacker

JUNE 17, 2025

But behind every product launch and revenue milestone is a team – and building that team is one of the hardest and important parts of the journey. Build the team that builds the company.” – that is part of your go-to-market strategy responsible for growth. Partner TriNet, a trusted HR provider to startups and scaling companies.

AI 82

AI Technical Advisors Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 82

FastSpring

JANUARY 23, 2025

I built a marketplace for specialty food and I’ve worked in the Valley based in San Francisco across a number of, well across one startup and then a very established online publishing business called Lonely Planet, which of course at one point in It’s the biggest guidebook publisher in the world. Blake Hutchison (28:59) Yeah.

Scale 119

Scale Entrepreneurship Scaling Underperforming Technical Team 119

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2022

Jason Lemkin: You certainly can hire a whole content team and build 10,000 pieces of content, but I will tell you what I have always seen work is one incredible piece a week. Getting access to the crown jewels and highly sensitive data as a four-person startup is hard, but if it’s a segregated piece of data and a pilot.

Scale 289

Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 289

Sales Hacker

MAY 9, 2025

In 2023, we saw a surge of SaaS brands adding anything AI-powered or AI-driven into their website headlines. A quick use of Wayback Machine for the top 100 SaaS brands will show you just how pervasive it was. Many venture capital firms shifted their investments almost entirely into AI startups. Its expected, not a value add.

AI Search 85

AI Search AI Scale SaaS 85

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

If you don’t have tickets, lock in Early Bird pricing today and bring your team! When you get that thing where you’re a rational person and you think it will be great and 99 out of 100 people think it’s bad, that’s when you have opportunity. I was a software developer, a product person. Most startups do fail.

Sales Hiring 338

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Headcount 338

Kellblog

JUNE 29, 2025

Every feature has benefits (the good things that happen when you have it) and consequences (the bad things that happen when you don’t). Beware knee-jerk brand spending. Ergo, we need to spend a ton on branding.” While brand spend might be a good thing for your company, it might not be. Selling benefits and consequences.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring Technical Review Venture Capital Underperforming Technical Team 93

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 4, 2019

The fastest growing software companies in recent years all have something in common – they started with little to no sales team. Yes, Slack started off with no sales team. Yes, Dropbox started off with no traditional sales team. It’s become apparent that for hypergrowth SaaS startups today, there are two distinct phases.

Scale 162

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Payment Services 162

Buffer Resources

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

In this article, I will share the competitive analysis framework my team and I have developed (through weeks of research and dozens of iterations), and give you some tips on where to look for data that isn’t publicly available so you can have a competitive advantage. Are they looking for a developer with a specific skill set?

Social Media 124

Social Media Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Sales Hiring 124

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

We work with brands across the industry, like IBM, Disney, Intuit, Microsoft to help them build better products to understand what their users are doing. The second is pulling more around values, and how we approached team building. Even as a three person team, we went through an exercise to figure out what do we stand for, as a team?

VP of Engineering 290

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 290

Kellblog

AUGUST 31, 2022

Corporate communications (corpcomm), responsible in a word, for communications , including branding, public relations, and corporate-level messaging [3]. Two important notes: There is an optional fourth part, sales development , i.e., managing the team of sales development reps (SDRs) who convert MQLs into stage-1 oppties.

Underperforming Technical Team 145

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Marketing Startup 145

FastSpring

DECEMBER 7, 2023

As the Director of Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships at WP Engine , Carl has worked on many acquisitions and partnerships, including brands like Flywheel, Perfect Dashboard, Block Lab, and recently, Delicious Brains. What factors beyond financials makes a target even more valuable. Jump to highlights.

Software Review 148

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Branding 148

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

Four years ago, after launching and failing my first startup I realized I had a lot to learn. I considered the four companies and chose Gorgias based on my experience with their team during the interview process. When I first joined the Gorgias team, there were two founders, two engineers, and myself as the first non-technical hire.

Scale 281

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Underperforming Technical Team 281

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 11, 2019

Startup marketing is tough. But today, marketing is the primary driver of revenue at your typical, fast growing B2B startup. But scaling a marketing team to the heights Segment have isn’t as simple as putting a bunch of A-players in a room and getting them to start churning out paid advertising. billion dollar valuation.

Scale 162

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Startup 162

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

Ultrasite is a global website builder, Chinafy is a tool for making websites China-compatible, and Connect is their collaborative content management platform for brands. was created by a team with 25+ years of experience in location-based tech, spanning various services and real-time asset tracking systems. Founded : 2013.

SaaS Payments 225

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Merchant Services Payment Methods 225

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 25, 2020

But should you build your own in-house marketing team or hire an agency partner? Digital agencies are companies that help other businesses perform a specific function such as marketing, development, or design. They act as a substitute for an in-house team, serving the same labor function but outside of the organization.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 145

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

Jyoti Bansal : So first thing Dev is, I know you started as an operator running a startup company, you took it public and then you became a VC and then you became an operator again. You can have the great product and a great team, but the market of small or very niche. Dev Ittycheria : Thank you. Now, running MongoDB as CEO.

Sales Recruiting 260

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 260

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

The SaaStock team will be landing in São Paulo to run the region’s first Pan-Latin American SaaS conference, SaaStock LatAm. In 2016, he co-founded Meetime, an Inside Sales Strategies company and now serves as its CMO, building a powerful branding and content creation operation. Talk: Sales is a Team Sport.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Scale Entrepreneurship Sales Hiring 207

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Join us for a candid conversation about leveraging feedback to understand your internal brand. What your internal brand is. Building your internal brand [20:19]. David Hershenson: About 20 years ago, I moved to San Francisco and interviewed with a little startup called salesforce.com, where there were less than 200 people.

Branding 103

Branding Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 103

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

In August of 2016, Rachel Hepworth embarked on a unique challenge: start a growth marketing team at one of the most successful startups of this generation – one that had long relied heavily on word of mouth. The role that started me on this path was joining a very small startup a little over a decade ago, Climate Corp.

Growth Marketing 174

Growth Marketing Scale Marketing Outsourcing Services 174

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 20, 2022

Not too long ago, when Intercom turned 10 , we dedicated an entire episode to speed , or why startups should always strive to keep momentum as they scale. We surveyed and interviewed key people in our teams to understand how they worked and how they saw Intercom’s internal operations. Paul: Yeah. Some of this cut deep.

Underperforming Technical Team 249

Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Sales Hiring Scale 249

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 31, 2022

CX for Growth is a webinar series hosted by the Startups team at Intercom, a casual, interview-style monthly session featuring special guests and exploring customer experience topics that help to drive growth in your business. Our Advocacy team brought it to our RAD team, who had also seen it come up in the NPS.

Underperforming Technical Team 210

Underperforming Technical Team Construction Interviewing Scaling 210

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 14, 2019

As a brand new company, you might engage in plenty of initiatives that are inherently un-scalable – because there’s no better way to nurture customer love than through a personal relationship. It’s time to start thinking about retention at scale and bring onboard a customer success team. Why you need a customer success team.

VP of Engineering 108

VP of Engineering Customer Success Churn Scale 108

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

And we’re about to add basically a team collaboration tier on top of the product. The second question is more about, given that we’re basically users would be self qualifying into team management offering like a project management, et cetera. And you have to allow that, in fact, you have to support that in your sales team.

Scale 270

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 270

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 31, 2019

And as the organization grows, the work involved to get teams aligned on who you’re selling to and how you’re selling is not something to be taken for granted either. Ambient Strategy founder and CEO April Dunford on the symptoms of weak positioning. When you’re a small team, your time is everything. Speed is everything.

Underperforming Technical Team 165

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Benchmarks Sales 165

Incredo

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

But most SaaS startups don’t realize that. And end up wasting their time and resources with affiliates that underperform. I see many SaaS companies jump headlong into creating an affiliate program thinking it will bring in a large number of customers without much effort. What are and what are not SaaS affiliate programs?

SaaS Payments 139

SaaS Payments Payment Methods Merchant Services Sales Recruiting 139

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

This is season two of Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on moving from startup to scale-up. Tara and her team used it to take a deep dive into the customer’s journey through the product and make a focused effort to truly understand each step along the way. But, ultimately both teams have a shared end goal: increasing revenue.

Retention 34

Retention Scale Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 34

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 7, 2018

Today he’s the founder and CEO at GrowthHackers , whose software, community and annual conference help teams work together to drive breakout growth results for “must have” products and services. Sean: I came up with the phrase because I thought startups had no choice but to be super focused on growth.

VP of Engineering 196

VP of Engineering Growth Hacking Underperforming Technical Team Onboarding 196

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 15, 2020

Then I worked on “Pokemon: Mac and Cheese” for Kraft” Bob: When I was part of the new product team, we would not only design things we also worked with suppliers and would fly all over the world to actually get those lines up and running and do that kind of stuff. Because I think it’s an area that’s lacking in literature.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Sales VP of Engineering Underperforming Technical Team 265

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

Opening video: Hey, all these startups, they have a lot of trouble getting corporate credit cards. Anu: So, without further ado, Henrique, I know that when you first applied to YC, you actually applied with a VR startup idea, but the video showed all about credit card. Interested in sponsoring? Let us know. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Sales Hiring 212

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 212

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 5, 2018

Our chat covers how gaming principles influenced her growth experiments, her team’s most successful retention tactics, and much more. Adam: How was the transition from classic marketing to working more with designers and engineers on the growth team? What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the interview.

Underperforming Technical Team 223

Underperforming Technical Team Retention Engineering Metrics 223