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“Seed is Broken But There is More Seed Funding That Ever”: The Latest Deep Dive with Harry Stebbings and Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

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 188
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30+ Tough Learnings from Losing a Top Customer

SaaStr

You just close more, and churn less, and upsell more, when you show up. Another top mistake SMB folks make trying to sell enterprise. 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. Few things are worse than churn-and-burn deals.

CTO Hire 283
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Making the jump from Customer Success to CEO with FranConnect’s Gabby Wong

ChurnZero

More and more people are hiring leaders, not for past experience, but for capability and capacity. We hire a third-party firm. We had to say: what does SMB want? So, we combined our 20 products into one and said here’s a package for SMB, here’s a package for mid-market, and here’s a package for enterprise.

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Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot: From Day 0 to IPO. What Went to Plan. What Most Certainly Didn’t (Video, Podcast + Transcript)

SaaStr

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. You will fail if you: 1) try to build a suite of products out of the gate, 2) focus solely on SMBs, or 3) have an MBA. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

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What’s New at ZoomInfo with CEO Henry Schuck

SaaStr

So to serve both segments at the simultaneously, ZoomInfo has been rolling out a Product-led sales motion, that gives the ability for an SMB customer to sign up directly on their website for a free trial and grow into a paid customer, without ever having to talk to an sales rep or go through a demo process.

New CTO 257
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CEOs of Zapier, Walkme and Dialpad: How to Build Your First Management Team (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

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. I am guessing it’s probably the hardest problem to solve, hiring a job, let alone at this level. And for good reason.