SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2020

343: Kyle Parrish is the Head of Sales @ Figma, the company that helps teams create, test and ship better designs from start to finish. To date the company has raised over $132M in financing from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, a16z, Index, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins to name a few. What worked?

Sales Hiring 191

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Advisors 191

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

I walk them through this when I hire them. Mistake: On the other hand… not betting on the team that got me there “Everything will be fine once we get a new head of [X]” -every startup CEO ever (also me, frequently) When you launch a company, the initial team is usually whoever you can get. The execs that we hired too quickly moved on.

Sales Hiring 262

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 262

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 25, 2019

Paul Graham puts it like this: “A startup is a company designed to grow fast”. In general, growth is a good problem to have – it means you’ve found some measure of product market fit and you’re generating real revenue from active users. Making sure culture scales as you grow.

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 136

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

They talked about product adoption, sales alignment, freemium models and lessons they have learned throughout their successful SaaS careers. As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. They don’t care like you had a successful company or not in the past. None of that changes.

Sales Recruiting 247

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 247

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

Sam Blond, CSO at Brex explains why recruiting, networking and employee happiness is the key to this playbook on recruiting your sales team. Sam Blond | Chief Sales Officer @ Brex. I’m doing The Playbook To Recruiting Your Sales Team. She was my first VP of Sales. Brendan Cassidy, second VP of Sales at EchoSign.

Sales Recruiting 129

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 129

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

Companies that have great, happy, productive employees do better by every single return. Katie Burke : So, the inevitable question, maybe one of the reasons you’re all here, is you’re sort of thinking, “Well, I’m exploring product market fit. Long before they show up at your doorstep.

Part-Time CTO 258

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 258

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

Ben Braverman explains how Flexport entered a competitive market with a unique model and continues to grow. Hiring senior leaders can set companies up to fail and see how sticking with a current, successful model can be the key to hypergrowth. So we did about 442 million in sales last year. Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020.

Scale 195

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 195

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2020

333: Bridget Gleason is the Head of Sales and Customer Success @ Tidelift, the company providing managed open source, backed by maintainers. Before Tidelift, Bridget was VP of Sales @ Logz.io and before that was VP of Corporate Sales @ Sumo Logic where she drove ARR up by a record 237%. What works?

Sales Hiring 192

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Outsourcing Services 192

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

To answer this question, focus on how much you really need to get to that stage where you have product market fit. And as someone who scaled a company to $5B, Kimball says this sentiment is true. How Much Does Culture Matter, And How Do You Build One That Pays Dividends? We hear this everywhere — culture is everything.

Scale 186

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 186

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

I was the new Vice President of International Sales & Managing Director for a work management software company called Wrike. Starting Your International Sales Team. The key to starting an international sales team is having the right people in your landing team. We took all of these hires very seriously.

Sales Hiring 101

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 101

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

He provides an in-depth guide to driving revenue growth at your company and what to expect at each stage. The three stages are product-market fit, then go-to-market fit and lastly growth and moat. What is sales? What is sales? Isn’t sales really around customer value creation?

Scale 211

Scale Sales Hiring Revenue VP of Engineering 211

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

Sales and marketing are still significant, but consider dedicating more research and design to the user experience. Know how to market your product. Product marketing can bring the focus back onto the value your clients get from your product. Grow from entrepreneur to CEO. Key Takeaways.

Scale 215

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring SMB 215

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. So we decided to take you to know three specific topics which are hiring, culture and sales. Let’s start with hiring. Hiring is key.

Sales Hiring 112

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Company Culture 112

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2020

As for Ryan, he has spent an incredible 9 years at Okta in numerous different roles starting with running the product marketing team before moving to run the marketing team, leading to his promotion to CMO close to 5 years ago now. Why does Ryan believe you should hire two in marketing to start?

Sales Hiring 165

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Technical Review 165

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

Immediately told them to hire 50 reps in a different city, in a different city, and they did. Jason Lemkin: 50 reps in a new city that you’ve never met, and hired in 60 days when you’re in the low millions ARR. What’s that going to do to your company? They hired good people. They hired good managers.

Sales Hiring 243

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 243

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2019

She will share her top 5 lessons learned in building and scaling SaaS businesses from $1M to $500M in ARR including expanding to serve upmarket customers, moving from product to platform, and how to hire well to drive breakthrough customer experiences and business growth. Show it to them in the context of your existing product.

Scale 195

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Strategy 195

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Building a sales team that can go from $0-$50M (Video + Transcript). Gaetan Gachet | SVP of Sales @Algolia. It’s an honor to be here with this mythical creature, this sales leader that goes from zero to 50 million in the same job. He has a whole French sales team and office that only speaks English in Paris.

Scale 134

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 134

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2019

We help companies understand what data they have, where they can find it, and ultimately that they can really trust it. Product-market fit has been really important. The people you hired, the culture you make, the first 10, 20 hires really make the rest of the culture of the company.

Sales Hiring 174

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Government 174

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2020

To meet buyers’ high expectations and manage the challenging sales landscape, companies must involve their entire organization in maturing the sales process- including after prospects sign on the dotted line. And then later in Miami,, hiring about a hundred people from 11 different countries. It works really well.

Scale 212

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 212

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Why startup founders should treat fundraising like a sales funnel. Beware of flashy hires from big corporations. There are always exceptions, but when brought in early on, these kinds of hires tend to flounder. . Get your COO on board and hire for operations roles earlier than you think. Hire for brand even earlier. .

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Marketing 82

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

Not only for the product side, but for the sales and marketing side. Eric Yuan : It really depends, if you think you’ve learned a lot where you were before, at other companies, you really can start as a sole founder. Eric Yuan : However, transitioning from engineer to engineer manager probably, is straightforward.

Sales Hiring 129

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 129

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

How should sales and marketing work together on pricing? Rob Gonzalez: Operationally, I look at, in particular, my experience at Endeca, but also another startup that sold to pharmaceutical companies and other life sciences businesses and financial services companies called Cambridge Semantics. Rob Gonzalez: Yeah.

SaaS Payments 256

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Services Payment Solutions 256

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2019

What you need to know about hiring, firing, advisors, and culture. You just need to hire more people. And from that perspective, I do think that there is in view, sort of a proven formal and [inaudible 00:08:17] expand where you figure out your product market fit. Missed the session?

Sales Hiring 143

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Sales Recruiting 143

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

Prior to Figma, Amanda held numerous roles at Zendesk including SVP of Marketing and Sales Strategy. Amanda joined Zendesk as the first marketing hire and over the next 7 years Zendesk grew to over 2,000 employees. Before Zendesk, Amanda worked on the marketing team for Google’s Enterprise SaaS businesses.

Sales Hiring 106

Sales Hiring Communication Scale Interviewing 106

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Managing teams of functional leads from across the organization (Marketing, Sales, IT, HR etc.) . Develop policies that promote company culture . The COO has to balance budget and strategy alongside culture and people management. Reminders on Hiring a COO . mergers and acquisitions) .

Scale 75

Scale Sales Hiring Finance Company Culture 75

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2019

For those that do not know, HelloSign is the company reimagining how you approach your most important business agreements with their award-winning e-Sign solution. As for Whitney, she directly leads the organization’s go-to-market efforts, including sales, marketing, business development and customer operations.

Sales Hiring 130

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Underperforming Technical Team 130

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

Does Bob agree with the notion that channel sales have completely died in the world of SaaS? In terms of replacement, what does Bob believe will be the emerging trends in SaaS Go To Market that will replace it? * How does Bob think about when is the right time to hire a Head of Partnerships? Why is this?

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 132

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 26, 2021

Catherine Brodigan , Business Development Partnerships Manager, sees this value at work across the sales team. “As Her team is hiring , and her experience watching the team grow fuels her enthusiasm when she talks to potential candidates. We think big and start small.

Sales Hiring 138

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Customer Support Engineering 138

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

How did her time at Gusto teach her about the right way to build company culture? What does Jaleh believe is the biggest problem in SaaS marketing today? And so, when I started Mutiny, I was very thoughtful about what type of company did I want to create. * What were Jaleh’s biggest takeaways from her time at Gusto?

Scale 182

Scale Sales Hiring B2B Scaling 182

OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

As the balance of power within companies shifts to technical roles, and sales teams understand that selling to developers is about building with them, not talking at them – progress is being made. Still, many shy away, creating an advantage for those companies that can engage. This isn’t the typical SaaS sales approach.

Underperforming Technical Team 40

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Payments 40

OPEXEngine

MARCH 9, 2021

I’ve talked to countless entrepreneurs who are anxious about the next step—first seed round, hiring a team, landing a board member, etc.,” It’s not just about delivering a superior product to the marketplace; rather, several stars must align,” he says. Company Culture. Sales Strategy. What problem are you solving?

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2019

Prior to Harness, Stephen was VP of Marketing at Glassdoor, managing a team of 52 in product marketing, helping grow B2B revenue from $19m to $90m in just 2 years, leading to their $1.2Bn acquisition. Steve has previously said, “Sales and marketing must be one team.” Why does he believe this is so important?

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

Chargify

APRIL 23, 2019

The “primary risk [during pre-startup] is the failure to design a business plan and strategy that will enable the company to become profitable as it makes sales and earns revenue. You’ll also hear this stage called validation or the product/market fit stage. Finding channel/market fit. Making key hires.

Scale 74

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling Payment Services 74

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 12, 2018

Here are four quick takeaways: Before hiring a COO, founders first need to ask themselves whether the function is best served with a single hire or distributed through multiple roles. Founders of breakout companies – just like founders of earlier stage companies – tend to ask more or less the same sets of questions.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 4, 2019

A: I believe it’s common practice to treat Customer Success as Account Management or just a support function. If implemented well, it will have mutually beneficial outcomes for the company and customers. Q: What characteristics do you look for when hiring CSMs? Brooke Goodbary, Customer Success Expert, dataxu.

Customer Success 40

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 40

OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

There are a lot of under-appreciated markets out there. Step 2: WHO – Assigning and Hiring the Most Effective Team. Your new market is kind of like a startup – the first ten people you bring in can make or break your business’ trajectory. You should hire them first. It’s important not to hire too many too soon.

Payment Methods 40

Payment Methods Sales Hiring Payment Services Payments 40

SaaSOptics

MAY 6, 2022

A thoughtfully-designed HR Core can significantly impact the employee experience at early-stage companies—it improves company culture, reduces employee turnover, streamlines onboarding and offboarding, and determines how your company is perceived in the job market. Delay hiring a CFO for 1-2 years.

SaaS 76

SaaS Scale Underperforming Technical Team Forecasting 76