Kellblog

JULY 18, 2019

Great core/founding team. Thus, there is a good chance one or all of the founding team will be around, and in influential positions, for a long time. Bad startups are feature addicts who pile feature upon feature atop a deteriorating architecture, creating an Augean Stables of technical debt. Startups are about people.

Underperforming Technical Team 79

Underperforming Technical Team Startup Software Technical Cofounder 79

FastSpring

MARCH 27, 2023

Ryan Austin had VP-level experience in training when he decided to start a consulting business to help enterprise-level companies with their corporate learning and development initiatives. Ryan and his team noticed so many inefficiencies across the L&D workflows. “It That’s really when it got us thinking about that.

Payment Solutions 95

Payment Solutions Payment Services SaaS Payments VP of Engineering 95

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 12, 2023

About My First 16 Our new video podcast series My First 16 features interviews with founders and CEOs of fintech companies about how they acquired their initial customers and the hard lessons they learned along the way. And those teams really wanted APIs and web hooks and event logs, and those developer things.

Payment Solutions 115

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payment Services Payments 115

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

How can you develop the technology while making sure it really gets to the people who need it the most and has an actual impact on their lives? Interview with Little Otter CEO Rebecca Egger. This is Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on driving business growth through customer relationships. Caught your interest?

Scale 223

Scale Artificial Intelligence Healthcare Technical Review 223

Kellblog

MARCH 11, 2020

Some SaaS startups develop a form of zero-sum delusion early in their evolution, characterized by following set of beliefs. If the StartFast doesn’t work, it’s not a big deal because the Customer Success team’s mission is to offer free clean-up after failed implementations. Interview customers.

Underperforming Technical Team 99

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Consulting Forecasting 99

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2021

The same was true when I ran the People function at a software development consultancy that doubled its headcount to ~100 while reducing attrition from 40% to 5% voluntary in 18 months. The question becomes: “Who do I want on my team—and why?”. I’ll often start interviews with a simple “What’s your why?”, Simon Sinek.

Scale 84

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Software Review 84

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. How can you capture, qualify and convert the right leads for your business while working within your means? Short on time?

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

What does it take to scale a sales team successfully? How can one determine a closer in the interview process? Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Andy. I’ve heard so many good things from Kobie, now at Upfront, and then also the team at Openview. How does Andy think about discounting?

Sales Hiring 200

Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Sales Enablement 200

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2019

Prior to Harness, Stephen was VP of Marketing at Glassdoor, managing a team of 52 in product marketing, helping grow B2B revenue from $19m to $90m in just 2 years, leading to their $1.2Bn acquisition. Steve has previously said, “Sales and marketing must be one team.” What does this mean for the processes used by marketing teams?

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

Totango

JULY 18, 2018

Customers often turn to Customer Service or Customer Support teams for help throughout the customer journey. With the right tools, Customer Support teams can become agents of Customer Success, and their work can lead to increased customer satisfaction, customer retention, and bottom-line growth. The current state of Customer Support.

Customer Support 56

Customer Support Customer Success Retention Underperforming Technical Team 56

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Some SaaS startups develop a form of zero-sum delusion early in their evolution, characterized by the following set of beliefs. First, some SaaS companies deliberately run with a low set-up product, little to no services, and a customer success team that takes care of implementation issues. Interview customers.

Underperforming Technical Team 52

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Consulting Forecasting 52

OpenView Labs

MARCH 27, 2020

Whether your company has paused hiring, is still hiring or will be in the future, having the right people for your business and stage will always be a priority. Building an effective (and committed) enterprise sales team for the long haul starts with the people you hire. So, yes, building the right team is absolutely key.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Enterprise Underperforming Technical Team Scale 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

What can teams do to bring their themes to life? Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Latané. As I’ve said before, I’ve heard so many good things from Brian and the team at Venrock. And so I started to build some of classic demand gen functions, like BDR team. Who is involved?

Scale 173

Scale Sales Hiring Software Review Technical Review 173

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2019

Scaling the company’s employee base, sales teams, marketing, and operations—all while preserving its culture—has required a laser focus on first principles, smart processes, and effective hiring. Know who is the foundation of your product and build your product for that user (in Stripe’s case, developers). Know your forever user.

Scale 152

Scale Payment Services Payment Methods Scaling 152

Sales Hacker

MAY 24, 2021

We get the best results when both the sales and the marketing teams’ content is based around the customers and their desired outcomes. We can’t do this without a shared effort from Sales and Marketing running customer development and jobs-to-be-done interviews. Alex is the boss. Their primary concern is growth and making money.

Marketing 71

Marketing Sales Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 71

Navint

MAY 21, 2019

That was the focus on the morning keynote led by our own Jeff Wissink and featuring an interview with Jay Fulcher, CEO of Zenefits. He said he was intrigued by the compelling business problem that Zenefits was trying to solve and that end-customers found immense value in the platform. What got us here won’t get us there,” he said.

Scale 45

Scale Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Business Model 45

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2019

Scaling the company’s employee base, sales teams, marketing, and operations—all while preserving its culture—has required a laser focus on first principles, smart processes, and effective hiring. In fact, more than 80% of Americans in the last year bought through Stripe, but obviously through a business that ran on Stripe.

Scale 117

Scale Payment Services Payment Methods Sales Hiring 117

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

Prior to Crossbeam, Bob founded Stitched, a powerful ETL service built for developers that was acquired by Talend in 2018. Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Bob. Prior to Crossbeam Bob founded Stitched, a powerful ETL service built for developers that was acquired by Talend in 2018. Harry Stebbings.

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 132

Outseta

SEPTEMBER 11, 2017

Before we get into the interview, a bit of background - I have hired Soren’s team at Working Planet multiple times. Soren: This was 2003, and I was working as Head of Business Development for a web engineering company in Boston. We kicked the idea around and launched Working Planet two weeks later. Geoff: 50%-95%!

Interviewing 40

Interviewing SaaS Payments Payments Technical Advisors 40

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2019

235: Andrew Filev is the Founder & CEO @ Wrike, the cloud based collaboration and project management software that scales across teams in any business. Why SaaS is your business model, not your mission. Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Andrew Filev. We had a pretty big team.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Sales Recruiting 145

ChurnZero

JULY 12, 2019

Perhaps product problems, loss of a key user in the account, a bad use case… Sure, these are some reasons why customers may churn, but the reality is that your churn rate is deeply connected to the quality of onboarding journey your users go through. Do you need to improve team communication? Check Slack. Online meetings?

Scale 75

Scale Onboarding Customer Success Underperforming Technical Team 75

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. So how do you create a strong, enterprise-ready team? Leveraging customer insights across your business.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

Kellblog

DECEMBER 27, 2021

My point was that this is normal and healthy: you can long Miami and Austin without shorting Palo Alto which, by the way, would have been a bad idea in 2020. Is web3 going to change everything because, as Chris Dixon argues, the best entrepreneurs and developers have learned not to build atop centralized platforms? Web3 hype peaks.

Blockchain 143

Blockchain Technical Review Venture Capital Sales Hiring 143

Natalia Luneva

JANUARY 13, 2021

However, the subscription business model can’t survive if you keep on acquiring new custo mers but the old ones keep on walking away. I also interviewed dozens of SaaS founders and marketers to understand the main factors behind high SaaS churn rate. Richman’s former company was Halp, a help desk for operations teams.

SaaS Payments 105

SaaS Payments Payment Methods Churn Payment Services 105

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2019

Here’s what Eyal and Megan talk about: How to develop software faster. Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Vikas Bhambri. I do want to break the interview today up into a couple of different parts really. This podcast is an excerpt of Eyal and Megan’s session at SaaStr Annual 2019. Eyal Manor.

SaaS Payments 132

SaaS Payments Cloud Technical Review Scale 132

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2019

With the complexity of multiple stakeholders and the increasing purchasing influence of end users, the bar is higher than ever for enterprise UX as companies pioneer business models beyond traditional SaaS. She founded Box’s growth team as well as the product operations team. So Bela, you founded the growth team.

Enterprise 132

Enterprise Underperforming Technical Team Scale B2B 132

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

As for Krish, under Krish’s leadership the team has grown to over 300 people and over 5,000 clients making it one of the next generation in truly global SaaS businesses started in India. First, what is continuous customer development? Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Krish Subramanian.

Scale 128

Scale SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Payment Services 128

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 15, 2018

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we interview well-known SaaS executive & Gainsight CEO, Nick Mehta. If you missed episode 28, check it out here: PODCAST 28: How High Growth SaaS Companies Build and Lead Sales Teams w/ Chris Degnan. Aircall is a phone system designed for the modern sales team. What You’ll Learn.

Customer Success 47

Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team Retention 47

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

Now, without further ado, let’s listen to this interview with Jim Sharpe. But we’re fortunate in, to some degree, because of the nature of our business model. We had an early glimpse into what was coming because of the events business. We assured the team of the strength of our company.

Scale 67

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Communication Outsourced Development 67

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2019

Before Optimizely, Travis spent 6 years at Salesforce in a number of sales roles including building the first Platform Sales team. What does Travis advise founders when it comes to uniting customer facing teams? * Why does Travis believe that SaaS has upended the economic model but not the engagement model? Travis Bryant.

Underperforming Technical Team 158

Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Payments Payment Services Technical Advisors 158

The Marketing & Growth Hacking Publication

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Preparing for the future As an app marketer in 2019, the best way to prepare for mounting competition and further technological transformation, is to embrace a curious outlook, a dynamic approach, and an obsession with both professional and performance development. You can opt for 1–1 user interviews or make use of their bulk testing.

Mobile 40

Mobile Marketing Growth Hacking Technical Review 40

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

The SaaS Business Model & Metrics: Understand the Key Drivers for Success by David Skok, Matrix Partners SaaS Metrics — 201 A slightly deeper dive into SaaS industry metrics. We trust leaders to make decisions on what tools they need to get the most out of their teams. Keep an eye out as we will be making regular updates.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

SmartKarrot

SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

B2B or B2C, no matter what business model you operate, the key aim is to “grow and earn profits.” Owing to this importance, businesses emphasize getting customer feedback right from the preliminary stages of product development through post-purchase experience. Let us talk about it in detail . Customer Feedback.

Systems Review 10

Systems Review Scale Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 10

Sales Hacker

MARCH 2, 2020

Sales Development and Prospecting. The Sales Development Playbook. The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. Here are the best books on selling (and related disciplines) that can help you hit your goals and develop your career. Sales Models and Fundamentals. Selling to Big Companies. The Pirate’s Guide to Sales. Top of Mind.

Scale 141

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 141

ProfitWell

AUGUST 18, 2020

In this new business model, customers hold the power--they expect better service, better products, better experiences, and better prices from companies they purchase from. The risk to switch is so low that one survey found that 63% of DTC customers leave after one poor customer experience. The New Customer-First Paradigm.

SaaS Payments 111

SaaS Payments Payment Methods Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 111

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2020

We’ve got an interview with Brandon Meyers , the chief revenue officer of ADARA. He even managed to help pivot the company from a programmatic transactional revenue model to a subscription model over the course of, not just the last three months during COVID, but over the course of the last few years. We’re on iTunes.

Subscription 106

Subscription Payment Features Scale Underperforming Technical Team 106

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

Adapting to remote work and eschewing business travel has forced a change – the events of the last year has already fundamentally changed how and where we do business. There’s opportunity in change, already this serial entrepreneur is looking at new business models born out of the current situation.

Transportation 183

Transportation Business Travel Underperforming Technical Team 183