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. We're gearing up to bring together 10,000 of the best in SaaS, Cloud and AI at 2025 [link] May 13-15 in SF Bay!

Scale 194

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Scaling 194

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . “A Hiring in a streamlined manner with a rigorous selection process initially builds momentum for long-term goals.

Scale 259

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 259

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. I just see this time and time again.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 318

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2023

Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares five essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. Register for SaaStr Annual and join 12,500 Cloud and SaaS Founders, VCs, and Execs at SaaStr Annual for three full days of workshops, sessions, and networking — all to help you scale faster.

CTO Coach 242

CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 242

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Amplitude is a quiet Cloud leader that you might not have heard of — unless you are building software. There, Amplitude has become part of the core product stack for many SaaS and software leaders for product analytics. Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. This is rare.

Scale 307

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 307

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

2019 saw SaaStr Annual’s biggest event yet – 12,000 global community members came together to take over the Bay Area and it became the event Where the Cloud Meets. total attendees, e.g., a CEO + a VP of Sales and a VP of Customer Success, or two Co-Founders, or CEO + CTO, etc. VPs were able to recruit and make new hires.

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Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire New CTO 307

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

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. PLG is like the Cloud. There are no Cloud magicians, and you can’t hire a PLG magician.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

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

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

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? Second, AI is changing how ZoomInfo ranks and prioritizes accounts.

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New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 312

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

Join us for a fireside chat between Google Cloud and Zenoss, a leader in software-defined IT operations, as we discuss the most common and emerging challenges facing SaaS companies today for both technical and non-technical backgrounds. Eyal Manor – VP, Engineering @ Google Cloud. They wanted real-time results.

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Artificial Intelligence 173

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

That includes all of our cloud strategy, cloud operations, backend engineering, IT and security. You can think of them beginning from very base infrastructural technologies, and in our case we’re betting exclusively on AWS as a cloud vendor. Ciaran, our CTO , came up with this magical line. Who do we outsource to?

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

CloudGeometry

JULY 8, 2021

When you treat your cloud provider as a fractional colo. Bottom-up cost transparency is a key feature of any public cloud platform. Cloud compute spend is another form of technical debt; more on that in a future post). An alternative: the Cloud Container Solutions Cloud Native Maturity Matrix. Containers!

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework Payment Methods CTO Hire Payment Solutions 130

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They have service and all this, but the second cloud for them was sales. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. And the best CTO I know in the world is the CEO. Then I was the CTO at another YC company, Standard Treasury, acquired by Silicon Valley Bank.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

MongoDB was down 23%, a great Cloud stock consistently growing in the 30s. 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. It’s a rocket ship.

CTO Hire 144

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 144

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

That was when a new vision formed beyond the physical classroom to what would later become our cloud, where we can teach anyone anywhere the digital technology skills of the future. That was in 2010, and we committed the company to go big with this cloud-based SaaS business model that would allow us to reach individuals anywhere in the world.

B2B 173

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 173

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Today on the show, we’ve got Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, a company that applies AI to your contract. Sam Jacobs: Today on the show, we’ve got Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, a company that applies AI to your contract. Sam’s Corner [28:45]. Show Introduction [00:10]. What is LinkSquares?

Scale 117

Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 117

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Dee: And you’ve worked in the industry for more than 22 years, so you have an incredible insight into the expansion of cloud networks, enterprise and data center technologies. Tim: I was hired in 2010, when Facebook was what I like to call a “teenage company”. That was actually a pretty tall order at the time.

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Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

I wanted to have another fun, informal conversation with, one of, I think, the most insightful and smartest cloud investors, Sunil Dhaliwal. Interesting for a couple reasons, but Sunil’s been investing in cloud internet since before almost anybody. Just like a whole bunch of people said, “I’ll never hire remote.”

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Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Technical Review Sales Hiring 219

Valerian Tech

JULY 18, 2023

Introduction Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate by increasing agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. In this blog post, we will delve into the world of cloud computing, exploring recent trends and developments. It provides flexibility and scalability for cloud-native applications.

multi-cloud Kubernetes 52

multi-cloud Kubernetes K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) Cloud CTO Hire 52

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

And as nice as verbal assurances and a handshake are, as you grow and try to sign with more established, enterprise-level companies, you’ll find yourself more and more having to provide proofs of compliance before closing the deal: The shift to the cloud, more and more data breaches – it really put a magnifying glass on third-party risk.

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Scale Software Review compliance Technical Review 211

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 8, 2018

Follow the Demand and Hire Accordingly [16:07]. Chris was actually the first sales hire at Snowflake. They are now well past $100 million in ARR and one of the most successful enterprise technology businesses to come out of Silicon Valley and, in fact, out of the US in a long, long time. Follow the Demand and Hire Accordingly.

Scale 81

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 81

BetterCloud

AUGUST 6, 2021

” At that time, I said, “You know what, I think I really want to become a CIO or CTO.” When I decided I wanted to be a CIO or CTO , I was an associate director or what other companies might call a junior director. I really learned from the managers who came before me, including the person who hired me.

Technology 98

Technology CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO 98

Baremetrics

MARCH 16, 2021

what we use today) advanced mobile usage, cloud infrastructure, and interactivity through social media, Web 3.0 QuikNode wants to see technology transform decentralized applications, smart contracts, decentralized governance, voting systems, and more. Building for the Evolving Internet For those who may not be familiar, Web 3.0

Blockchain 90

Blockchain Artificial Intelligence Payment Solutions Payment Services 90

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

That’s the advice, Petri Hollmén picked up on the more technical side of things from the opening session on Day 2 with Cal Henderson, CTO of Slack. Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth. We loved this one in particular, the importance of hiring, which he picked up at a side event Notion Capital ran. Full post. . Full post.

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Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

Sales Hacker

MAY 5, 2021

As Director of RevOps, he scaled his team at Sendoso by hiring smart generalists to lead their own teams of MOps, SOps, CSOps. Ask him about his thoughts on what companies are looking for in a RevOps role or where companies go wrong trying to hire/ build their RevOps function.). Alex Miller , Director of RevOps at Sendoso.

Scale 120

Scale Technical Cofounder Technical Advisors Sales Hiring 120

Upscope

JANUARY 5, 2020

If only we had figured out how to explain to people why they needed cloud storage :-(." and created a word cloud with the results. Speed stood at the centre of that word cloud. Teamviewer is download based and not made for one click instant screen sharing now that everything is in the cloud. Product positioning matters!

Strategy 128

Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring Engineering 128

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

You’ll need Cost of Revenue to calculate your Gross Margin, which in turn you need to calculate Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Payback Time and to understand your company’s unit economics in general. You’ll probably want to include Contract Labor – R&D for any product-related contractors you work with.

Startup 90

Startup Merchant Services DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 20, 2024

You could either spend, you know, you raise some venture funding, you could either spend some of that funding on hiring out a whole team and developing all those competencies, or you can spend that on making your model even better. You’ve got to think about taxes. There’s just a lot of work. You know, incumbents versus startups.

AI Search 143

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 143

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 31, 2019

SaaS companies tend to have more Finance headcount than traditional, non-Cloud companies. From speaking with a variety of CFOs and VPs of Finance recently, here’s what we are hearing they are looking for in their FP&A hiring, outside of traditional Finance, math, accounting and reporting skills. SaaS Finance Benchmarks.

Finance 40

Finance CTO Hire Headcount Sales Hiring 40

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 21, 2020

Most recently, he started and founded Upserve and grew it to become one of the largest cloud-based point-of-sale platforms for full-service restaurants in the US with over 10,000 restaurant customers and a payments platform processing over $12 billion in annual volume. We were part of the office of the CTO.

Payment Methods 61

Payment Methods Scale CTO Coach SMB 61

Crafty CTO

JUNE 9, 2024

That led me down one final rabbit hole, but a very useful one, as I soon realized that Framework was a perfect fit for one of my fractional CTO client’s “data science reporting and dashboard” needs. Cloud API introduce a lot of latency? It’s build time, not runtime—time is measured differently here.

Data 52

Data CTO Hire Cloud New CTO 52

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Founded by Sanjit Biswas, former CEO at Meraki and John Bicket former CTO at Meraki[link] Samsara builds software to manage physical operations: truck fleets, mining, food & beverage, oil & gas. The first is the company sell 3 or 5 year contracts that are non-refundable and non-cancellable at relatively small ACVs of $35k.

CTO Hire 362

CTO Hire CTO Coach Benchmarks Scale 362

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

We’ve convinced more than a thousand great big companies to put their financial data into our private cloud. I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. It is much more painful to have to fire people and contract as a company than it is to grow. Your big money is going to go into hiring your employees.

Startup 284

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 284

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Leveraging the power of cloud technology, SaaS has re-engineered the way we look at modern technology and software. Byron Deeter is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and is an investor in SaaS and Cloud. He co-authored Bessemer’s iconic cloud computing and state of cloud report. Casey Winters. David Skok.

VP of Engineering 10

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

Julian Lemoine, Co-Founder, and CTO of Algolia will share his lessons learned on how to stay focused and innovative as you scale while also avoiding the innovation for innovation’s sake pitfalls. Julien Lemoine | Co-founder and CTO @Algolia. So I’m Julien, Co-founder and CTO of Algolia. Want to see more content like this?

Scale 169

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 169

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2019

And so we started building a cloud solution, but it was a long arduous journey. And I thank a lot of that to actually Met Gourniak, who I hired at that time. It’s in the cloud. We built a CPQ in the cloud, can we partner?” We became the number one partner for Salesforce in the cloud.

Sales Recruiting 231

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Payments 231

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

And we just have never seen this in the cloud before. But so it was four years, the last time when the cloud was smaller, right? Jason Lemkin: So it’s just inverting that ratio, and I think that means overall, when we talk with other cloud leaders and executives and CEOs today, the answers are more guarded.

Payment Methods 269

Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 269