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?

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale VP of Engineering 98

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2022

Two SaaS Metrics That Actually Don’t Matter That Much in the Earliest Days: Absolute Churn and Sales Cycles. SaaStr 564: Top 10 Learnings Architecting a High Throughput Critical API with RevenueCat CTO Miguel Carranza. with Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone.

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CTO Hire CTO Sales Hiring Innovation 290

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Be Careful Hiring “Dualies” — Folks That Are a VP of More Than One Thing. Big Companies Don’t Churn. SaaStr 564: Top 10 Learnings Architecting a High Throughput Critical API with RevenueCat CTO Miguel Carranza.

CTO Hire 290

CTO Hire CTO Sales Hiring Scale 290

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and management team : SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be.

Part-Time VPE 308

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 308

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

In SaaS, once you have even a few million in ARR, the #1 challenge is recruiting top-tier VPs and building a truly top-tier management team: SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. She can be your CTO forever.

Scale 274

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 274

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.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 363

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2022

An updated classic SaaStr guide on how to know if that new VP you worked so hard to find, recruit and get on board … is really going to make it. The Challenge with SMB SaaS: High Growth Can Only Mask High Churn For Just So Long. SMB SaaS has a lot going for it, but one big existential challenge — inherent churn.

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New CTO CTO SMB Venture Capital 300

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. They get CEO training.

Scale 348

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 348

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 325

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 325

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.

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Churn CTO Hire Data CTO 103

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.

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Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

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.

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New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 312

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 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

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.

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Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 174

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2023

Customer Success Managers : Professionals focused on customer success, onboarding, and support can learn how to enhance customer satisfaction and reduce churn. Tech Enthusiasts and Students : Aspiring entrepreneurs, tech enthusiasts, and students interested in the SaaS industry can find valuable knowledge and inspiration.

ChatGPT 189

ChatGPT AWS SaaS CTO 189

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 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

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 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

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.

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Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

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. Net dollar retention and negative churn metrics are very favorable with developer products. What are some of the places that you can explore and places where you can find developers? A word of caution.

Underperforming Technical Team 210

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 210

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Then, MongoDB lowered to 12% growth from 57%, and even though there isn’t more logo churn, people are trying to use it less to manage spend. Maybe if you have the ex-CTO of Github, but that’s still a super speculative bet. Salesforce is pushing toward 40% margins, but where will you invest if you can’t hire anyone? in 12 months?

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CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 144

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

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

Unbounce

JUNE 24, 2020

By reducing one-month churn by several percentage points. By presenting customers with content they’re more likely to watch first, Netflix reduces churn. Say you’re part of a small team or a startup tight on resources. Yosem Reichert-Sweet, CTO, Unbounce. How does this work? Say you’re not Amazon or Netflix, though.

Artificial Intelligence 145

Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning AI Search Marketing 145

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. Find out here. The fundamentals of your business model and pricing structure are important to understand, and that knowledge is exactly what you’ll find in this article written by Yay?nlanma

Pricing 138

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 138

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

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

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

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

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

Baremetrics

MAY 4, 2020

When most SaaS companies talk about reducing churn, they’re usually referring to voluntary churn. However, there’s another type of churn that gets overlooked. I’m talking about involuntary churn. Just how much damage is involuntary churn causing? Cheers Paul Juicer CTO. Actively sending emails (a.k.a

Payment Methods 124

Payment Methods Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 124

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

Chargify

OCTOBER 4, 2017

A big part of the subscription billing iceberg effect relates to all the nuances you don’t think you’ll need, but find out are necessary to scale. Robert Kern, CTO & Co-Founder, PredictHQ. Lenin Batista, Co-Founder & CTO, SprezzaBox. These bugs end up clogging support queues, angering customers, and fueling churn.

Payment Features 51

Payment Features Subscription Merchant Services SaaS Payments 51

ProfitWell

JANUARY 2, 2020

The sales strategy required to win over a small business owner will be drastically different from the strategy required to convince an experienced CTO of your subscription’s value. When you’re just starting out, this information can be difficult to find. These customers tend to take less time to make a decision on their purchase.

B2C 52

B2C Payment Features Subscription Payments 52

ProfitWell

JANUARY 28, 2020

Sit down with Chargify CTO Michael Klett and I, as we unravel the mysteries of RevOps. Finding competitive landscapes. But as Dave explains, it’s hard to find the person in the company who cares about all of this. It’s tough to track, which will lead him to find a proxy for it. Value-based metrics.

Underperforming Technical Team 45

Underperforming Technical Team New CTO Technical Review CTO 45

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

SmartKarrot

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Let’s try to find that out in this write-up. Here is a list of people who I believe are predominantly found in the C-Suite role: Chief Executive Officer Chief Customer Officer Chief Financial Officer Chief Operating Officer Chief Technology Officer.

Customer Success 10

Customer Success Part-Time CTO CTO Scale 10