The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later. Here’s why.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Startup Leadership Challenges. Working on shortcomings in these areas is essential if you want to reduce burnout and improve all areas of your startup. This will usually center around PMF (product-market fit) or growth. Also, reward employees for good work recognition, thoughtful thanks, and compensation.

Retention 130

Retention Leadership Compensation Communication 130

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 19, 2016

What is the optimal contract length with for your SaaS startup? It’s common to see SaaS startups initially price their products on a monthly basis, then add an enterprise “Call Me” plan which hides behind it an annual contract. Annual contracts bring predictability to a SaaS startup.

Outsourced Development 100

Outsourced Development SaaS Payments Startup Sales Hiring 100

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 20, 2015

How much should your startup pay its sales people? This figure doesn’t vary much on whether your startup’s salespeople are inside reps or outside/field sales reps. It’s rare to see salespeople consistently close more than 2 deals per month (unless the company has exceptional product/market fit).

Startup 100

Startup Outsourced Development Compensation Sales 100

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 9, 2015

As a startup scales and surpasses its first organizational breaking point of 8 employees, it’s time to start thinking about organizational design. The strategy a startup chooses in their market should determine their organizational design. Google is a good example. But organizational design doesn’t stop at structure.

Sales Recruiting 101

Sales Recruiting Startup Scale Systems Review 101

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

With capital scarce and expensive, with companies increasingly trapped in Schrödinger’s startup paradox , and with more startups than ever focused on positive cashflow and The Rule of 40 , it’s safe to say that Silicon Valley is still very much in a cost-cutting mood. Ditto for product marketers. Workflation.

VP of Engineering 107

VP of Engineering Travel Underperforming Technical Team Headcount 107

User Pilot

OCTOBER 15, 2023

A growth marketer is a professional who leverages experimentation and optimization techniques to increase customer lifetime value, drive retention, and fuel business expansion (referral programs, upsells, etc.). In contrast, traditional marketing managers primarily concentrate on classic marketing campaigns for customer acquisition.

Growth Marketing 95

Growth Marketing Marketing Customer Lifetime Value Scale 95

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

There are about 20,000 active SaaS companies today, startups, pre IPO. So I think we all know that if you make 10 posts about how amazing your product is, it pales in comparison to a raw video that someone posts on Instagram about your product, whether good or bad. Are you post product market fit? We want that.

B2C 280

B2C Scale Consulting Software Review 280

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

Still, they don’t always nail down the details when it comes to the things that might entice a prospective salesperson — like a well-rounded sales compensation plan , for example. Think about the compensation structure of various sales roles. While it can be daunting to create such a plan, be kind to your future self.

Sales Hiring 83

Sales Hiring Compensation Sales Payments 83

OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

One quarter of these companies started to implement usage-based pricing within the last 12 months, including public companies like New Relic; fast-growing startups like Kong (#68 on the Cloud 100), Cypress , and Trifacta ; and even industry stalwarts like Autodesk (founded in 1982). This absolutely includes marketing and product marketing.

Pricing 64

Pricing Customer Success Scale Compensation 64

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 5, 2021

Are your compensation plans setting your business up for longer-term success or subscription contraction? You’ll know you’ve found your product-market-fit when strangers start becoming paying customers. “Nearly a quarter of startups use 45+ apps—not all of them contain sensitive customer info but many do.

Customer Success 95

Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value Compensation 95

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2020

So, the company starts getting divided up into functional areas, or silos, product management, sales, customers support, marketing and so on, and this siloing of the org chart I think means that not everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and there’s a general feeling of disorganization or chaos in most startups.

Startup 275

Startup Software Review Scale Systems Review 275

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

This is so different than the days of 2021 when a $200M ARR company might’ve had 2,000 or more employees, and maybe a startup doing just $50M had 700 employees. Gone are the go-go-days of 2021 where you had to pay high-end of market because any single candidate likely had 11 other job offers.

Sales Recruiting 286

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 286

Sales Hacker

MARCH 15, 2022

Asad Zaman : We specialize in helping companies build their go-to-market teams. We went from sales to the entire go-to-market org, practices, technical sales, and executive search. Product marketing, customer success, etc. We established operations in Europe and Asia, building those markets out.

Sales Hiring 94

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Acquisition Development 94

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2019

How does a startup that launched during the financial crisis in 2008 become a unicorn company in 2019? Product-market fit has been really important. Felix : So that’s when you start to actually get, get more customers, get them more, reputable, repeatability and kind of proving the market. So it’s been awhile.

Sales Hiring 174

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Government 174

Sales Hacker

JUNE 20, 2018

Tune in to episode 12 of the Sales Hacker podcast with Jaimie Buss , VP of Sales, North America for Zendesk as she talks about startups careers and transitions! Building your career in startups and managing different career transitions. Differences between startups with a product-market fit and those without.

Scale 82

Scale Sales Hiring SMB Interviewing 82

Sales Hacker

MAY 26, 2021

A startup sales operations manager will handle all of these dimensions. Here, you can use your sales operations skills to get into your reps’ heads by creating compensation and incentive plans. Collaborate with HR and accounting when building sales compensation rules, procedures and policies. Sales Operations Career Path.

Scale 60

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development 60

Sales Hacker

APRIL 10, 2018

However, pursuing a new segment needs to be a company initiative—it may even require you to re-look your product-market fit. In Mid-Market, the value of a specific product is obscured by many other products and often you find yourself selling to only a small group or department at best.

SMB 73

SMB Strategy Outsourced Development Marketing 73

OpenView Labs

MAY 14, 2020

“Even while we were still building the product, we started selling it to people. Delivering—and being compensated for—value has been baked into our DNA from day one.”. By waiting, you can also ensure you’ve found product-market fit before throwing money at expediting market domination. .

Venture Capital 64

Venture Capital Scale Compensation Pricing 64

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2019

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales @ Logz.io, the startup that uses predictive analytics and machine learning to provide monitoring, troubleshooting and security. Then I did a bunch of consulting to these amazing startups in Silicon Valley. You want to be realistic about kind of the market and product market fit.

Sales Hiring 113

Sales Hiring Scale Sales SMB 113

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2019

Befofe that Manny was a Senior Product Manager @ Amazon where he engineered the compensation system for Amazon Associates and Web-Services which accounts for 15% of Amazon’s traffic. And I can only sell to other startups that were ready to take on risks and to whom I don’t look any different. That kind of evangelism.

Scale 141

Scale Sales Hiring Construction Education 141

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

Jyoti Bansal : So first thing Dev is, I know you started as an operator running a startup company, you took it public and then you became a VC and then you became an operator again. To convince someone how big the market is, it could this really be a billion dollar company if everything goes right? Dev Ittycheria : Thank you.

Sales Recruiting 249

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 249

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 30, 2018

She’s a sales leader with an accomplished background at several tech startups. She is adept at managing SMB, MM, and Enterprise sales coverage models, quota setting, and compensation plan design. Jo-Anne Jaspen i s a passionate growth strategist, B2B revenue leader, mentor, and startup advisor.

Sales Recruiting 111

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale Sales Hiring 111

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 7, 2019

If people aren’t looking for your solution, you have to educate them about the problem your product solves. Spendesk thinks about building its company in three stages: startup, growth, and scale. We are now between the growth and the scale, based on the different markets. That’s quite a large market.

Scale 162

Scale Payment Methods Payment Solutions Marketing 162

ProfitWell

MARCH 3, 2020

Dave Kellogg , the consultant, advisor, and blogger with an expertise on enterprise software startups—author of the cleverly titled Kellblog —recently posted a piece on Coronavirus and its correlation to CEOs everywhere. There is certainly a fear that with a product-led motion, you don’t have to pay sales compensation.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 59

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. What does this mean for the processes used by marketing teams? For Steve, what does devops really mean?

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2019

So once you reach a certain level I think like startups especially in the beginning you have very limited resources. Matt Turck: And you want to just give it very practical talk about how people are compensated when they go precisely from you know the 500 get the initial sale and the sale. Does it matter in terms of the stage?

Sales Hiring 112

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Company Culture 112

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

And so I’m so thrilled to welcome back Krish Subramanian, founder and CEO at Chargebee, the startup that lets you go beyond payment, billing, and recurring invoices to delivering subscription experiences that wow and what they’re doing now in the world of rev ops, trust me, it’s pretty mind blowing.

Scale 126

Scale SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Payment Services 126

Sales Hacker

MAY 8, 2018

Coordinating retention and revenue growth to ensure product-market fit. 5) How to pick the right startup to work with [14:20]. Particularly if you’re willing to give them some goals that they need to reach and some rewards for hitting those goals, not just compensation. How to Pick the Right Startup to Work With.

Sales Hiring 44

Sales Hiring Scale Management Sales 44

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2019

What advice does Leyla give to young people considering whether to found a startup, join a startup or join a hyper-growth company? Leyla Seka: You know, to me, Salesforce is still a startup. How did Leyla evolve and scale as a leader herself in those 11 years? Where do things start to break in the scaling of SaaS companies?

Scale 129

Scale VP of Engineering Mobile Scaling 129

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

356: Pete Kazanjy is the Co-Founder @ Atrium, the startup providing proactive, always-on insights for sales operations, managers, and leaders. Pete is also the author of Founding Sales, the canonical writing on early-stage startup sales. Pete is also the author of Founding Sales, the canonical writing on early-stage startup sales.

Part-Time VPE 198

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 198

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Source 16 Startup Metrics by Jeff Jordan, Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen, and Preethi Kasireddy, a16z We have the privilege of meeting with thousands of entrepreneurs every year, and in the course of those discussions are presented with all kinds of numbers, measures, and metrics that illustrate the promise and health of a particular company.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 19, 2022

And look, what happens with almost every B2B startup is your initial little micro… The way you get to your initial group of customers, how you acquire them, plateaus. Everything at marketing plateaus. You need to be honest, if you have product market fit. I have an earlier stage of startup.

Scale 214

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling VP of Engineering 214

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2019

What time frame from SAL to closed lead suggests product market fit? When I was about 17 I got my first taste of startups. I went to work at a startup in Washington, D.C. Tom Tunguz: And so that’s where the data suggests that startups should really be focusing. Tom Tunguz: I had a curious journey.

Scale 115

Scale SMB Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 115

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 23, 2020

As for David, prior to Hashicorp, he held some incredible roles including VP Marketing at Github and Hortonworks, Senior Director of Product Marketing @ VMWare, and then also spent over 5 years at Microsoft. As for David, prior to Hashicorp, he held some incredible roles, including VP of Marketing at Github and Hortonworks.

Scale 188

Scale Leadership Underperforming Technical Team Scaling 188

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

In the early days, what you really want as a CEO is to actually be the first sales rep, so you want to find some sort of product market fit. The reason that you want to do this, if you just hire one AE, you don’t know if they are good, which is why the product you’re really selling and the product is taking off.

Sales Recruiting 130

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 130

ChurnZero

JULY 12, 2019

Using Google apps is not perceived ‘startup-y’ anymore. Some psychologists underline the fact that it might take up to seven positive traits to compensate for a bad first impression. And I can imagine many of you also work with Google applications instead of using the most popular Office package. Why is that?

Scale 75

Scale Onboarding Customer Success Underperforming Technical Team 75