SaaStr

MAY 3, 2023

Scaling a company comes with all kinds of hiccups and failures. Sometimes the best way to avoid hard-to-fix mistakes is by hearing how other people flubbed it while they were scaling. An outsider will never learn what someone from the inside already knows about your company and culture.

Sales Hiring 169

Sales Hiring Scale Pricing Customer Success 169

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

This thought is usually accompanied by a vague statement like “this person isn’t scaling.” Mistake: Not scaling based upon leading indicators We’ve had 3 periods in history where we scaled up way too fast: Early on, when we thought the enterprise opportunity for Gainsight’s Customer Success product was huge after closing *1* enterprise deal!

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 255

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2019

Scaling the company’s employee base, sales teams, marketing, and operations—all while preserving its culture—has required a laser focus on first principles, smart processes, and effective hiring. In this talk, Claire will share these and other lessons for scaling high-growth organizations. Manual processes first.

Scale 152

Scale Payment Services Payment Methods Scaling 152

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2022

Starting with his time as an investment banker and later working in SaaS, Yancey Spruill, CEO at DigitalOcean , watched venture capitalists invest in seemingly strong companies, only to sell them off. Process is a friend, not a foe, in order to scale. With scale comes complexity, and complexity requires clarity.

Startup 243

Startup Leadership Innovation Scaling 243

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 22, 2020

As he puts it: In the latest episode in our Scale series, Intercom’s Dee Reddy caught up with Nate to learn how to tune in to the voice of the customer, and how a holistic approach to customer experience can be the ultimate brand differentiator. By investing in proactive support, you can erase common issues altogether.

Leadership 218

Leadership AI Scaling Engineering 218

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2019

Over Leyla’s incredible 11 year journey with Salesforce she has seen the team scale from 1,800 to over 40,000 and revenue scale from $500m to over $16Bn. What were Leyla’s biggest learnings on people and business model through seeing the first hand hyper-scaling of Salesforce from $500m to $16Bn?

Scale 131

Scale VP of Engineering Mobile Scaling 131

ChurnZero

JANUARY 20, 2022

As a Customer Success leader, you know you should invest more time and resources into planning and executing the long-term initiatives your team needs to scale. Rod Cherkas, CEO of HelloCCO, joined us for a webinar to share his approach to ensure your Customer Success team stays ahead of your company’s growth.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

She shares the challenges faced at critical stages of the company’s growth journey, the lessons learned, and how they grew to $100 million ARR in just 20 months. Deel scaled the sales team from two to 250 account executives, but issues with productivity and enablement of the account executives cropped up. Trust the process.

Sales Hiring 219

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 219

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2023

Do you want to avoid the common pitfalls of scaling a startup? Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, shares part two of his 10 top mistakes in 10 years at the company. Scaling a business will be different for everyone because every business is different.

Scale 207

Scale Leadership Scaling Customer Success 207

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2023

When starting and scaling a company, it’s important to keep returning to what makes you unique. When you leverage a combination of these, you can break through to become a $100M company. Remain conscious about what’s different and that it holds true as you scale.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Scale Strategy Metrics 171

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2023

First, VCs that attend regular board meetings are much, much more likely to invest again. All but the smallest VC firms hold “reserves” for second and even third checks into their portfolio companies. A few non-obvious ways you can use having regular Board meetings to help you. And to make intros for the next round.

Scale 221

Scale Investment Engineering Scaling 221

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2022

He highlights the three key strategies that helped TripActions scale and boost their revenue. Your mission and vision should be embedded into the culture and practices of your organization, centering everyone around the same long-term goals. Lean into your vision, mission, and culture. Develop a well-defined vision.

Travel 194

Travel Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Scale 194

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2022

If you want your start-up to succeed and scale, the first thing you have to do is build a stellar team. Sometimes you find that the customer is fond of your product while investors don’t want to invest because they don’t believe in it. The next step is measuring where you are going and where you are scaling.

Scale 186

Scale Marketing Scaling Communication 186

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2019

Scaling the company’s employee base, sales teams, marketing, and operations—all while preserving its culture—has required a laser focus on first principles, smart processes, and effective hiring. Here’s what Claire talks about: How to avoid trapdoor decisions when scaling. Lessons for scaling high-growth organizations.

Scale 116

Scale Payment Services Payment Methods Sales Hiring 116

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

We continued to adjust to working from home , and our company culture evolved accordingly. One of our core company values is that “we obsess over our customers’ success” and this post by Hayley Camille Morgan is a true reflection of that. We hit a huge milestone as our ARR grew well past $200M. Sharing Intercom’s Values.

Technical Review 196

Technical Review Scale Innovation Company Culture 196

Chargify

APRIL 23, 2019

According to a study by the Startup Genome Project of more than 3,200 startups, they found that “70% [of startups] fail because of premature scaling.” Understanding which stage your SaaS business is in can help determine the appropriate time to scale to the next phase—and do so successfully. Let’s get started. Pre-Startup.

Scale 74

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling Payment Services 74

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

UserZoom invested in a model where they didn’t just provide software, but services, in a model known as SaaS++. Pick the right partners to scale. Both venture capital and private equity firms can make enticing partners as you scale your business, but each provides vastly different benefits. Combine software with services.

Scale 204

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring SMB 204

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

Invest (more) in training and onboarding. Invest heavily in training your reps. Invest in optimizing lead routing, scoring and managemen t. And net negative churn is the secret to truly scaling. Get them more leverage to do what they do best. Do the opposite. Let your closers be closers. Have sane quotas.

Scale 241

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 241

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2023

If the answer’s no, is it still worth investing in at the expense of profitability? How Expensify Experimented with Outsourcing a Team Pre-COVID, Expensify had so much word-of-mouth growth that they never invested in scaling out their internal sales team. Is it truly scalable? Can it have a meaningful impact?

Outsourcing Services 231

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 231

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

Matt Turck talks with three hyper-growth stage Co-Founders and CEOs on three roadblocks when scaling past $15M ARR: hiring, culture, and sales. We invest all over the country and very much in Europe as well including Paris. So how do you build a hiring machine to get the team to that early scaling phase. Hiring is key.

Sales Hiring 114

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Company Culture 114

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2021

I’ve also invested in 24+ next-generation SaaS companies, mostly successes, and had a chance to watch and learn from them as well, with a new lens. And paying a little more for a lot more experience can be one of the top investments you’ll ever make. Investing in the Future is Easier. My salary is still $0.

Sales Recruiting 311

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 311

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. Jyoti Bansal : And then he started talking about sales and Dev during the breakfast he convinced me if you can marry the right kind of sales scaling and execution then that’s when your business will really, really take off. That fundraising is easier.

Sales Recruiting 242

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 242

Totango

JUNE 10, 2022

Most organizations are active on LinkedIn beyond marketing activities to promote hiring, share tidbits of company culture externally and to collaborate. I would start with liking other company posts, re-posting where appropriate and sharing your thoughts on them. And if so, do you have any tips on what to post? JD : Absolutely!

Customer Success 101

Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring Leadership 101

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2022

One challenge Twilio faced was balancing the scaling efforts of the organization and building a world-class team to support their growth ambitions—in a virtual environment. Invest in your team’s development. Be intentional about the culture you want to build. Key strategies to attract, nurture, and retain sales talent.

Sales Hiring 204

Sales Hiring Scale Retention Sales 204

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2023

At SaaStr Europa, UiPath’s Dines shared five insights from growing a company from nothing, so other founders can learn what it takes to scale a SaaS startup to $1B+ ARR. Finally, he understood what was needed to scale a business. And one of the most critical aspects to manage during this phase is your company culture.

Scale 195

Scale Artificial Intelligence Technical Review Software Review 195

OpenView Labs

APRIL 6, 2021

A robust, vibrant, living company culture needs strong feedback loops. Colocation, pizza, bowling nights, and escape rooms as a way to get to know people no longer scale. Colocation, pizza, bowling nights, and escape rooms as a way to get to know people no longer scale. One of the best ways to do this? The eNPS solution.

Scale 53

Scale Company Culture Sales Hiring Systems Review 53

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

Hiring is expensive, and there’s nothing worse than losing an employee prior to seeing the impact of your investment come through. . workers agree that the ability to work remotely would make them more likely to recommend their company to a friend. Employee referrals are key to scaling hiring across a company. 81% of U.S.

Business 152

Business Software Engineering Company Culture Retention 152

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2019

Invest in training and onboarding. Sales teams often do the worst investment in onboarding of almost any function. Invest heavily in training your reps. Invest in optimizing lead routing, scoring and management. And net negative churn is the secret to truly scaling. Do the opposite. Have sane quotas for 2020.

Scale 223

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Investment 223

SaaStr

APRIL 29, 2022

Managers often grapple with how to create and scale a global product team. Scaling a team isn’t about increasing the size, rather it’s about increasing the output of the teams and producing tangible value. For that reason, scaling teams require different leadership chains inside the company. Lesson #1: Feedback is a gift.

Scale 208

Scale Scaling Company Culture Leadership 208

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

Founded in 2015, PayFit is a software company that empowers entrepreneurs and SMBs to digitize payroll and HR processes. Boterri’s company Accel invested in PayFit in 2017 and again in 2021. As of 2022, Payfit has reached unicorn status –– after raising $289 million in Series E, the company is now valued at $2.1

SMB 181

SMB Sales Hiring Scale B2C 181

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 9, 2020

That is why we have called this first stage Resolve: the need to determine the scale, pace, and depth of action required at the state and business levels.”. Right now, many organizations are investing more deeply in these partnerships. We’ve adapted, having a 15 min morning ‘Daily Huddle’ allowing our team to connect.

Strategy 197

Strategy Business Scale Communication 197

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. And the same customer challenges that we were being presented, which was: How do you scale?

Cloud 168

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 168

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 22, 2021

If you don’t invest in your docs, you’re cutting your growth. Another guest, Paige Paquette built and scaled platform and developer marketing at Slack. Most companies delegate this to user research, annual surveys or maybe the founder’s gut. Company culture is a main driver of innovation. It’s not enough.

Scale 73

Scale Cybersecurity Entrepreneurship PayPal 73

SaaStr

JUNE 10, 2020

* People often suggest operators are suited to certain stages of a company lifecycle. What are the leading indicators an individual is struggling to scale? What are the biggest challenges of scaling transparency? Does David agree with this? How does one communicate that to them effectively?

Scale 164

Scale Cloud Sales Hiring Technical Review 164

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2019

235: Andrew Filev is the Founder & CEO @ Wrike, the cloud based collaboration and project management software that scales across teams in any business. In Dec 2008, Vista Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Wrike for a deal reportedly valuing the company at $800m. Where does culture begin to breakdown?

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Sales Recruiting 145

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

As you scale up a business, you’ll see an increase in demand for product, followed by an inevitable increase in sales. But how should you proceed when it comes to scaling your sales team? 5 ways to scale your SaaS and sales team. 5 ways to scale your SaaS and sales team. Invest in enablement.

Scale 220

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 220

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 29, 2021

How one company proved the ROI of its engrossing video series. This is Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on driving business growth through customer relationships. Dee: Joei, you are so very welcome along to Scale by Intercom today. You joined the company at a pretty interesting time. AMA with Joei Chan.

Content Marketing 118

Content Marketing Innovation Scale Marketing 118