SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Q: What are the top 20 pieces of advice for building a successful SaaS startup? Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2. A bit more here.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 306

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Emboldened by this seeming endorsement, I dashed off what turned into a lengthy email on interviewing and recruiting, a topic about which I am passionate not because I think I am good it, but because I think I am not. Thoughts on The Recruiting Process. Remember it’s a mutual sales process. Consider a try-and-buy.

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Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Finance 110

SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

It’s the most common objection you’ll get in SaaS sales … Not Right Now. It can’t strategically improve sales software, financial software, quoting software, recruiting software, QA processes, call center software, etc. And when you hire a real, great VP of Sales. Truly qualified leads and prospects. I Don’t Have Budget.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Software Review 306

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

So read on, and hopefully, your SaaS sales journey will be less about trial and error and more about steady progress toward success. Whats important to note is that each model targets a distinct customer persona and, therefore, has a unique approach to the customer journeyfrom brand awareness to sales and, ultimately, conversion.

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Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 240

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. We were coming off an environment where startup funding was as fruitful as ever. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 294

The Angel VC

JUNE 25, 2015

For most SaaS startups, the VP of Sales (along with the VP of Marketing) is one of the most crucial hires they need to make. Unless you have a no/low touch sales model and you're growing virally (a.k.a. hunting rabbits or deer ) or a field sales team (a.k.a. hunting rabbits or deer ) or a field sales team (a.k.a.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 185

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2020

I’ve worked with several startups that fell into the following pattern: Selling a SaaS application at a healthy price (e.g., And, depending on the initial contract duration, high customer churn [1]. churn of 25%, and services margins of negative 66% when I started working with them [2]. 100K to $200K ARR).

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Consulting Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 144

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Co-founder and CEO at Greenhouse, Daniel Chait, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin to share what’s new at Greenhouse, a successful recruiting software company at $200M in ARR today. Getting off the ground is one thing — an easy pitch of being an HR tech startup focused on improving hiring. He ran from the term.

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Sales Hiring AI SMB Scale 274

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

How do you diagnose and solve churn? Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. Can you start and stop a PLG motion?

Scale 268

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 268

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

So if scaling your sales organization is a priority in 2020, here are the things you need to be aware of to make sure you do so successfully. In my experience both as a salesperson and as a recruiter, it’s primarily been four things: They want the work they’re doing to matter to them. Hiring sales leaders will get harder.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Trends 78

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

Today I'd like to tell you a bit more about what we at Point Nine Capital are looking for in SaaS startups (other sectors are something for another blog post). One could almost say that CAC and CLTV are for a SaaS company what wholesale price and sales price are for a retailer. If CTLV is high, churn can't be that big.

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Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

You can be like, “OK, our culture is we’re going to work super hard, and churn out a lot of features, and sell a lot of product.” There’s a time and a place for it, but a startup, the lifeblood, is getting s**t done. I want to come be your VP of sales and, you’re going to meet me for the first time.

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VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 286

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

Check out this 2018 Europa session with Guillaume Princen, Head of France and Southern Europe @ Stripe, where he talks about the metrics you need to be focused on in your startup. One is your churn. SaaS businesses have churn. Churn, think we’re all familiar with what churn is. We talked about churn.

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SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

I started a software company in college to make it easy to update websites called Content Management Software Now, and I had this idea for Pardot, I wanted to make it easy for marketers to run campaigns online and measure their results. SalesLoft, why was that Pardot, I tried to recruit this guy, Kyle Porter, to come run sales at Pardot.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 198

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. Then, the sales team went to work. In his opinion, the hiring process is a preview of their sales technique.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 19, 2021

Sales recruiting is broken. The sad truth is that VP of Sales are turning over within 19 months —and that timeline is shrinking. . Not only that, the market has heated way back up and the VP of Sales is one of the most sought after roles. Image from First Round’s State of Startups Report. Therein lies the dilemma.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Scale 98

Baremetrics

JUNE 30, 2021

You've got a brilliant SaaS startup idea. A startup financial model is the plan. In fact, we've already built the SaaS financial model you'll actually use — but let's take a look at why this is especially important for SaaS startups. 1 What Is a Startup Financial Model? What Is a Startup Financial Model?

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Startup Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Deferred Revenue 98

OpenView Labs

APRIL 24, 2019

As a recruiter, I hear from many founders and sales leaders regularly about how many salespeople they need and how quickly they need them. And I’ve seen many startups who fail to make this distinction create a cycle of diminishing returns that impacts the trajectory of their growth for the long haul… especially in enterprise sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 89

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 5, 2024

He currently leads Atrium, makers of sales performance management software to help organizations measure and improve sales performance. Previously, he founded TalentBin, a talent search engine and recruiting CRM that was acquired by Monster Worldwide in 2014. 17:58) The importance of accountability in sales management. (22:32)

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Sales Recruiting AI Search AI Sales 99

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2019

How to Design a Sales Comp Plan to Get You to $100M with Work-Bench, Movable Ink, MongoDB and Concert Finance. This panel will speak tactically to various comp design options as a way for management to determine and promote ideal behavior in their front-line teams. Meghan Gill | VP of Sales Ops @ MongoDB. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 150

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2022

As a tiny startup who might be commercializing its first product, are there any general guidelines that you can stick to that would prevent the massive companies out there from crushing the baby? And you can build that in a way with the startup that you can’t in a bigger company. But even the CEO of a four-person startup.

Scale 286

Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 286

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Customer pull is an amazing feeling for a startup. As a seed stage company grows, hires a sales team and deploys the product to more customers, the signs of customer pull evolve. The company transitions from pilots with friendly customers to product sales. Product engagement remains high.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media compliance 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2016

As machine learning continues to become a key differentiator among SaaS products, a secular and positive trend, startups are learning how to sell the promise of the software better and better. These are some of the objections customers raise during those sales pitches. For SaaS companies, sales velocity is a competitive advantage.

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Sales Recruiting Software Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 100

Incredo

OCTOBER 17, 2019

common software sales comp plans, 2. what factors to consider before defining your SaaS sales commission percentage. We will share 8 ideas on how to increase your sales team’s productivity and help them close more deals. We will share 8 ideas on how to increase your sales team’s productivity and help them close more deals.

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SaaS Payments Compensation Payment Services Sales Recruiting 150

Incredo

OCTOBER 17, 2019

common software sales comp plans, 2. what factors to consider before defining your SaaS sales commission percentage 4. and finally figure out how much that SaaS sales salary should be. In the end, a bonus section is waiting for you! What are 5 common SaaS sales compensation models? We will write about: 1.

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SaaS Payments Compensation Payment Services Sales Recruiting 144

OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

The value of your contracted subscriptions taking into account revenue added/lost from components such as new sales, renewals, upsells, churn, etc. Churn Rates. Customer Churn = # of customers lost / total #of customers. Revenue Churn = # MRR this month / # MRR lost from last month.

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Benchmarks Scale Metrics Sales Recruiting 98

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

When I first wrote this article, we were in a very different place, with unemployment at an all-time low and sales hiring a top priority. Part two of this scorecard series will help you create a sales interview scorecard to land that sales role you’ve been dreaming about. Sales chops. What sales system do we use?

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 121

Stax

MARCH 18, 2025

The Challenge That SaaS Companies Face: Failed Operations and Limited Growth Opportunities Despite being a financially lucrative space with investors and startups, the SaaS industry is littered with thousands of failures. Churn rate. Churn is the percentage of customers that end their subscriptions within a certain amount of time.

Scale 117

Scale Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments 117

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Scale 106

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

At the time, I was a sales engineer, and my job was to close deals and move on to the next prospect. However, I found there were two flaws in our customer management process. There were also a number of customers who turned us into shelfware or essentially churned. We had presales, and we had post-sales.

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Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

With the rise of AI, new sales technology and automation at the forefront of the sales echo chamber these days, we thought we’d take a moment to bring it back to BASICS – that’s why we’ve rounded up this complete glossary of sales terms and definitions to help you remember where it all started.

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Scale Payment Methods Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments 105

Kellblog

MARCH 13, 2020

In days of yore, chief revenue officer (CRO) was just a gussied-up title for VP of Sales. If someone was particularly good, particularly senior, or particularly hard to recruit you might call them CRO. Chief revenue officer meant chief sales officer meant VP of Sales. Frank, the head of Sales, had a $1B number.

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VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Recruiting Acquisition 98

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Account Managers: They serve as the lead point of contact for all customer account management matters. Product Marketing Manager: This person is tasked with developing product marketing campaigns , crafting compelling marketing messages, and coming up with ideas to retain customers. Average salary: $46,035/yr.

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Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Baremetrics

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Another financial factor to examine is the amount of churn a business suffers every month as this reflects the company's capacity to develop and retain connections — or to lose them. It is ideal to have a low churn rate and a high MRR/ARR. The primary constraint for a startup business is the unpredictability of financial flows.

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Finance Venture Capital SaaS Payments Payments 98

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

Then we needed to hire a sales guy who had experience selling to enterprise. We got the guy who ran enterprise sales at Rackspace. This is my third startup. UberConference started as this freemium, kind of funnel builder for later sales product. The only thing that I can manage them is the KPI. You need a CFO.”

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Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 258

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 12, 2018

Obviously, each startup is unique, and the context of a startup matters a lot, but you tend to have the same questions like: “How do I hire general counsel? If you really hate sitting through a dozen sales comp meetings, maybe you should find somebody who can really fulfill that role. Are people leaving the company?

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120