SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10. That it’s time to bring in someone that knows. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. I Need a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 363

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2021

The first 2 scaled reps you hire that hit plan (some may churn before then) get special training. They get CTO training. Usually, this is sort of solved when you find a strong first VP of Sales. And so we see reps 3-10, or reps-from-#3-until-The-VP-of-Sales-is-Hired … fail. Simplify to a 1 page contract.

Scale 347

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 347

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

You just close more, and churn less, and upsell more, when you show up. You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Are we sure?

CTO Hire 321

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 321

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

Which role should you hire for first? For starters, your first hire should be someone who can complement your skills, someone who is strong in areas where you’re weak, but it goes much deeper than that. Obviously, I can’t imagine a chief executive not having loss of sleep over building a management team. Mallun : Sure.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 258

ProfitWell

JANUARY 29, 2019

On this episode of the ProfitWell Report, Brendan Schwartz , Co-Founder and CTO at Wistia , wants to know what proportion of paid plans should be annual versus monthly. The beauty of the subscription model is that for the first time in the history of business, relationships are baked directly into how you make money. Click to enlarge.

Churn 103

Churn CTO Hire Data CTO 103

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

” For companies like ZoomInfo, their tech cohort of customers went from its fastest-growing for two decades running to now reducing spend or just churning outright.

New CTO 305

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 305

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2019

I remember my CTO once arguing with a Fortune 500 company on a “security” concern they had which really made no sense. But the ones I didn’t, were the ones that silently churned. More here: I Never Lost a Customer I Actually Visited | SaaStr Not hiring a full-time RFP person. Not being responsive to every key concern.

Sales Hiring 173

Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 173

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. You’ll find out tomorrow.

Part-Time VPE 282

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 282

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

Previously, he was an operating partner at Fractal Software, helping launch vertical software companies and find product-market fit. If you missed GTM 134, check it out here: Build your AI Outbound Machine with ChatGPT | Jordan Crawford Highlights: 05:03 When to hire your first sales reps. What does Joe look like at that time?

Sales Hiring 89

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale VP of Engineering 89

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

What I mean is Ben broke the rule that he didn’t care what NRR and churn were. So I think my learning is just know the rules, know the KPIs, they’re all public, find public comps and copy them. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. More likely than not, but barely.

Outsourcing Services 242

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 242

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

They’re able to actually swipe a credit card, and what starts off similar to a freemium self-serve product can turn into a six-figure contract in just a few months. It might even be months later that a VP of Engineering or a CTO or CFO realizes that they’re built on a new platform. The contract size grows.

Outsourced Development 207

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 207

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

Adam Risman: What were some of the aha moments you experienced in those early days when you were trying to find a product/channel fit? And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team. You find a bunch of nuances in there that are very interesting. Here’s Andrew.

Outsourcing Services 216

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 216

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Deals are contracting, not because of layoffs, but because people are managing budgets so tightly. It Takes Time To Bounce Back Jason was the first investor in RevenueCat , a company that automates mobile subscriptions on your phone. Maybe if you have the ex-CTO of Github, but that’s still a super speculative bet. in 12 months?

CTO Hire 141

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 141

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. The different roles in SaaS companies: Chief Executive Officer : As the highest-ranking executive, this person ensures the company runs smoothly and employees are happy and engaged.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

The volume of transactions was low enough that they could get by using database queries to calculate their MRR, churn, and even to perform some cohort analysis. However, as the company grew, their systems started to fail all the time, prompting the team to re-think their approach and look for a scalable solution. Click To Tweet.

Payment Solutions 113

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Social Media 113

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

A successful price increase helps you acquire better customers, who are more serious about using your product and less likely to churn. Time and time again SaaS companies are promising customers that they will save hundreds of thousands of dollars, but their pricing strategies are only capturing a tiny fraction of that savings.

Pricing 138

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 138

ProfitWell

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

When Co-founder and CTO of Chargify , Michael Klett isn’t brewing his own beer, he’s crafting billing experiences. This can range from help with pricing, retention, and churn, as well as providing subscription financial metrics so a customer can see everything that is going on from acquisition all the way through to retention.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 98

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

After missing the mark on product/market fit for their first startup, the founders decided to find a new business idea and validate it with potential customers. The problem was, it was very hard to find people to talk to about your prototype and conduct your research. As people or members of the same team, we’re biased.

Interviewing 76

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 76

Natalia Luneva

APRIL 30, 2021

All-in-all, the community is the best way to keep users on top of the updates, and it certainly reduces the churn rate. ”. Of course, our team is involved to an extent, and we have an external part-time moderator for support. But mostly our members help each other, and it works like a charm.

Marketing 98

Marketing Social Media SaaS New CTO 98

ProfitWell

JANUARY 2, 2020

Because the contracts are typically much higher in these sales agreements, B2B subscriptions often require a much longer sales process before your customer will consider making a purchase. When you’re just starting out, this information can be difficult to find. Contract length. B2C contract length. B2B contract length.

B2C 52

B2C Subscription Payment Features Payments 52

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

He references Dan Steinman from Gainsight , who says, “the natural tendency for customers is towards churn.”. If we fail, our customers will churn. How many CSMs should you hire? But we know customer success reduces churn and increases expansion revenue, so CSMs do have a very serious purpose in an organization.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Traditionally, it’s the chief officer of finance or operations. But promotional paths are a-changing, according to a time-series by Spencer Stuart summarized in Harvard Business Review’s “ Finding the Right CEO.” Find the hardest problems to solve and you will succeed.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

Crafty CTO

APRIL 17, 2023

Find nothing—vacuum. Drill down on the current AI emergence, find so much that, like me, you’ll have trouble even keeping up. Caught in the churn If we really are at the early stages of an emergence, what are the implications? Corey ’s fantastic sci-fi series The Expanse known as “the churn.”

Artificial Intelligence 8

Artificial Intelligence CTO Hire ChatGPT AI Search 8

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

Seema: Would love to talk about finding those initial customers who you tested with. I knew that we had something here when we were in the Postmates office in San Francisco. That proves not only our customer service and our technology, but the strength of those relationships that we’ve maintained over time.

Merchant Services 81

Merchant Services Payment Methods Payments Payment Solutions 81

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

The volume of transactions was low enough that they could get by using database queries to calculate their MRR, churn, and even to perform some cohort analysis. However, as the company grew, their systems started to fail all the time, prompting the team to re-think their approach and look for a scalable solution. Tweet this quote.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Features Outsourcing Services Payments 52

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

After missing the mark on product/market fit for their first startup, the founders decided to find a new business idea and validate it with potential customers. The problem was, it was very hard to find people to talk to about your prototype and conduct your research. As people or members of the same team, we’re biased.

Interviewing 52

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 52

Natalia Luneva

APRIL 30, 2021

All-in-all, the community is the best way to keep users on top of the updates, and it certainly reduces the churn rate. Of course, our team is involved to an extent, and we have an external part-time moderator for support. But mostly our members help each other, and it works like a charm.

Marketing 40

Marketing Social Media SaaS New CTO 40

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2025

Co-founders Dharmesh Shah (CTO) and Brian Halligan (Chairperson) shared at SaaStr Annual the unfiltered truth on building an SMB powerhouse, pivoting to product-led growth, and why the “M” segment is SaaS gold. Focus obsessively on churn. They improved customer dollar retention from an initial 70% to around 90% over time.

Scale 177

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Scaling 177

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

Public valuations are still at a fraction of their 2021 peaks, but seed rounds are more expensive than ever. To IPO, companies need to triple their market share in their core market and have a churn rate of less than 3-4% per month. The Qualities of Great CTOs (00:15:54) To identify great CTOs, it may take interviewing 20 candidates.

CTO Hire 277

CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 277

SmartKarrot

AUGUST 16, 2022

Why do some experts consider QBRs to be a waste of time? These are the primal questions you will find answers to in this article. You can prevent customer churn before it actually happens. These annual executive business meetings are a wonderful time to discuss contracts. What are QBRs? What are EBRs? What is QBR?

Technical Review 10

Technical Review Systems Review Business CTO Hire 10

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin. Yousuf Khan: Well, the CIO is fundamentally owning the business technology function of the company. My advice is hire earlier rather than later. And does it fundamentally prevent churn? Yousuf Khan.

Technical Advisors 218

Technical Advisors Scale Technical Review Payment Solutions 218

Sales Hacker

MARCH 11, 2025

Guest Speaker (Cassie Young): LinkedIn Primary VC Host (Scott Barker): LinkedIn Newsletter Find GTMnow (GTMfund’s Media Brand): Website LinkedIn Twitter/X YouTube Podcast Sponsor: Pursuit The best talent isn’t actively job hunting. Pursuit helps companies hire elite go-to-market talent on a non-retainer basis.

Scale 75

Scale Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Technical Review 75

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

At SaaStr Annual we had a great session with HubSpot Founder & CTO, Dharmesh Shah, and their Chief People Officer, Katie Burke, on building happier employees. So, I’m Chief Technology Officer, and years ago I was volunteered by my co-founder to work on culture.

Part-Time CTO 278

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 278