User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Confused about trying to understand SaaS roles? SaaS companies have many moving parts, and it can be difficult to determine who does what. TL;DR SaaS, or “Software as a Service,” is a business model that delivers centrally hosted software to subscribers over the internet. What is a SaaS business model?

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Outseta

APRIL 11, 2019

Why most SaaS companies are blind to some of the best talent on the market By Geoff Roberts 9 min read I believe that most SaaS companies are missing out of a major opportunity when hiring—the opportunity to hire more part-time help, where the employee acts as a fully integrated (albeit part-time) member of the team on an ongoing basis.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Sales Hiring B2B New CTO 52

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2019

We passed a new milestone on Quora — crossing 50,000,000 total views. What makes a bad CTO? What are the advantages of being a startup vs being an established business? What happens to the clients of a mission-critical, B2B enterprise SaaS startup when it fails? What is the cheapest thing a salesperson did to you?

CTO Hire 146

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Payment Methods 146

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on. “That it was much easier to do more in order to keep that customer than to get a new “top” customer.

CTO Hire 280

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 280

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

The main benefits of categorizing your SaaS company’s expenses are more accurate metrics and forecasts, and getting a better understanding of your company’s overall spending. Here’s an overview of the series: Part 1: How to Categorize Expenses in a SaaS Startup v2.0 What’s their new CAC Payback Time?

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

This post will walk you through what SaaS companies need to know about sales tax compliance, how to know when and from which customers you should collect sales tax, and best of all, how to automate sales tax so you can check “Do something about sales tax” off your to-do list once and for all. Why is sales tax such a pain for SaaS companies?

Merchant Services 172

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 172

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Doing Business with Developers. Well, in the past several years, there’s been a tremendous number of companies that have built specifically for developers and use this as a way to get into these new markets, to displace incumbents and disrupt the competition. Anyone who says the developer market is not strong is behind the times.

Underperforming Technical Team 182

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 182

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

And it really makes no sense because I’ve asked so many of the best SaaS CEOs that are public how to go multi-product. And the best one of all, if you didn’t see it, we did it at one of our digital events this year was Spencer Skates, CEO of Amplitude, one of my favorite SaaS CEOs. And I don’t mean in an edgy way.

Outsourcing Services 189

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 189

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

A Couple SaaS Generations Ago… Traditional software companies managed sales, product development, finance and HR in siloed organizations by function. In the early SaaS days, management structure was essentially the same. The SaaS operating model requires execution across functional activities. Chief People Officer.

Part-Time CTO 69

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Hire Management 69

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. First, hire a management coach to work with you as the company grows. The best ways he found to learn leadership skills was to hire a management coach to meet him once per month, to talk through the issues facing him at Optimizely.

CTO Coach 101

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 101

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

As a SaaS business, Intercom is a data processor: our customers entrust us with their data, which we store and process on their behalf. Hiring and cultivating incredible talent on our Information Security team. Shipping quickly and securely. Continuous risk management. Intercom is no exception.

Data 118

Data CTO Hire Technical Review compliance 118

The Angel VC

OCTOBER 18, 2012

Continuing my little series using the "minimum viable" approach , here is my 2nd DO for SaaS startups: Build the right team I've written about the topic before, so if you've read this post from early this year most of what I'm going to write now won't be new for you and you may want to skip this article. What comes next?

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup Outsourced Development 121

Natalia Luneva

APRIL 30, 2021

In my guest post on CustomerThink I talked about the benefits of community building and how it helps SaaS companies get a few steps ahead of their competition. To get more practical, I recently interviewed over 10 SaaS companies and asked them 4 questions: Which platform(s) do you use to run your community? .

Marketing 98

Marketing Social Media SaaS New CTO 98

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

As a global technology provider powering thousands of SaaS companies, Google is at the forefront of driving exciting and innovative technologies to market. You’ll also learn how leading SaaS companies are able to scale and thrive in this complex, dynamic environment. Who’s here on a CEO or more on a business hat SaaS?

Cloud 168

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 168

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 11, 2019

Pricing is an incredibly important part of any SaaS product’s go-to-market strategy. In a market that requires companies to earn their customers’ business each and every day, it can literally make or break your entire business model. With twenty-five years in the software business, I’ve seen my share of pricing exercises.

Sales Hiring 40

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Technical Review 40

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

CEO Joel Gascoigne tells us about the decision to invest in new analytics tools and how Buffer sustained long-term growth thanks to growing their ARPA. I realized we had better data in the first 2-3 years of the company when we were using improvised solutions, than with our sophisticated business intelligence platform. What is Buffer.

Payment Solutions 113

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Social Media 113

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

To date, they have raised over $73M from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst and Point Nine to name a few. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Sam made his way into the world of SaaS with Dropbox and how that led to his leading the sales and success team today @ Loom.

Scale 173

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 173

Outseta

OCTOBER 15, 2018

By Geoff Roberts Last year Clement Vouillon of Point Nine Capital wrote an article entitled The Rise of the Non “VC compatible” SaaS Companies. And it expressed a growing sentiment in the world of SaaS start-ups; for the majority of SaaS founders the traditional VC model is a clusterfuck that makes very little sense.

CTO Hire 65

CTO Hire CTO Coach SaaS New CTO 65

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

Don’t overextend your resources when testing new SaaS growth ideas. Here is what he writes: Kieran Flanagan , VP of marketing at HubSpot, shared some interesting insights on approaching new ideas for scaling up your business. Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth. Don’t build the architecture of your biggest dreams.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CEO of ZoomInfo , Henry Schuck. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo? The Takeaway — There has to be a pathway.

New CTO 253

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring AWS 253

OpenView Labs

JULY 16, 2020

” I explain my job to my kids by saying that we help people in businesses get really important feedback so that people know what to do. We did a song to launch our new mission, vision and values at SurveyMonkey, and I also rewrote “Shallow” for our CFO who left last year, then performed it with our President, CTO and General Counsel.

CTO Hire 55

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Underperforming Technical Team 55

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Bob made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Crossbeam. * What were the core mistakes that he made with RJ Metrics? * Does Bob agree with the notion that channel sales have completely died in the world of SaaS? Loving our podcast content? What did he mean by this? Why is this?

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 132

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 9, 2022

But promotional paths are a-changing, according to a time-series by Spencer Stuart summarized in Harvard Business Review’s “ Finding the Right CEO.” Additionally, “leapfrog” candidates—those who come from a level below the C-suite, such as senior vice presidents—now make up roughly 5% of new chief execs.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

The question is not whether a CSM is a valuable asset to a SaaS business, but rather, how valuable are they? How many CSMs should you hire? Sprinklr scooped up the social advertising business this week in a perfect complement to what Sprinklr has been building for the past decade: one platform for customer experience management.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2020

What other elements of the contract should startups really spend a lot of time focusing on? What can they do to enforce a sense of urgency when signing new clients? And second, just last week he started an incredibly exciting new opportunity with his new company. Where do founders make mistakes in negotiation?

CTO Hire 133

CTO Hire compliance Scale Startup 133

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

CEO Joel Gascoigne tells us about the decision to invest in new analytics tools and how Buffer sustained long-term growth thanks to growing their ARPA. I realized we had better data in the first 2-3 years of the company when we were using improvised solutions, than with our sophisticated business intelligence platform. What is Buffer.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Outsourcing Services 52

Point Nine Land

APRIL 9, 2021

Over the last few years, we’ve published a number of SaaS funding napkins as well as marketplace napkins. So if you’re a US-based startup, you might be able to shoot slightly higher ;) Unlike SaaS companies which have been around for years, B2B marketplaces are a relatively new category and not many investors have invested in them yet.

Marketplace as a Service 59

Marketplace as a Service Payments B2B SaaS Payments 59

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

In today’s data-driven SaaS scene, these can affect hundreds of millions of users and cause damage in the billions of dollars, and as compliance frameworks become requirements to do business, businesses are turning to third-party services that can help expedite and facilitate the process. It’s becoming the bare minimum.

Scale 211

Scale Software Review compliance Technical Review 211

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) Check that out here. Why did you do the deal?

Management 225

Management CTO Hire New CTO AI 225

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

In it, we cover the SaaS community’s most pressing questions about Artificial Intelligence (AI), pricing, efficiency, and funding. The average public SaaS company is marching toward $400k in revenue per employee. Is the CTO involved in these decisions? Is SaaS dead right now? You have to be so much more efficient.

AI 239

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 239

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Each year, tens of thousands of SaaS fans attend SaaStr Annual. For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. So what’s a founder to do?

Scale 244

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 244

BetterCloud

AUGUST 11, 2020

A large portion of Deputy’s clients are retail and hospitality businesses—and many of them were impacted directly by the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re also unique in that we’re entirely SaaS-based and didn’t have a lot of overhead in the legacy environment that I know a lot of other people probably have.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO Identity management Scale 52

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

Erica Schultz is Chief Revenue Officer @ New Relic, the company that gives you the real time insights your software driven business needs to innovate faster. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Erica made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be Chief Revenue Officer @ New Relic. Welcome to Episode 214!

Scale 171

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 171

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah shared with us how they got there — and the top mistakes they made — just 3 quarters after their IPO. We have someone that probably 98 percent of you know virtually or socially in some sense, Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 223

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 223

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2021

But what they don’t have is a good enough founding team: Sometimes, if the prospective founder isn’t super technical, then the CTO/VPE isn’t really great. They’ve got a rent-a-CTO. Or sometimes they are great, but the team members are just not great enough for their new C-level roles (CEO, CTO, CMO, CSO, CBO, C?O).

Part-Time VPE 206

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire New CTO CTO 206

CloudGeometry

JULY 8, 2021

When you treat your cloud provider as a fractional colo. When business-critical applications move out of the data center with “lift and shift”. What starts as an easy hack for a new feature that accesses the database directly sprawls quickly into reads and writes that conflict with all kinds existing functions.

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework Payment Methods CTO Hire Payment Solutions 130

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Software as a service or SaaS has been growing as a leading software distribution model. The world of SaaS has simplified software creation and distribution making access easier than before. Leveraging the power of cloud technology, SaaS has re-engineered the way we look at modern technology and software. Aaron Levie.

VP of Engineering 10

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10