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

Frontegg

DECEMBER 2, 2021

Go-to-Market Strategy – New Complexity Level Unlocked. When building a company 5 years ago, the sales motion and who’s going to be the user/buyer/champion for a potential deal was pretty clear to the founding team. You simply don’t know who will be using your product – you only assume. freemium usage?

Underperforming Technical Team 93

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring DevOps as a Service Scale 93

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

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 1, 2015

In addition, vibrant word of mouth proxied by social media mentions/follows, Github stars/forks for open source projects, and newsletter subscriber counts mark products with substantial latent demand. As a seed stage company grows, hires a sales team and deploys the product to more customers, the signs of customer pull evolve.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media compliance 100

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2019

The age-old sales funnel has worked fine for decades…until now. Why is the sales funnel alone, no longer an appropriate way of thinking about customers? Brian Halligan: Whether we all like it or not, trust in sales and marketing is at an all-time low. We’re going to hire tele-sales reps who are going to cold call.

Scale 107

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 107

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Anytime I would hire a new product manager into my team, I would tell them you use search all the time. The thing that’s striking to me there is marketing and sales and the input that is so valuable from them into the product feedback loop. You think you understand search. You don’t.

VP of Engineering 245

VP of Engineering Software Review Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team 245

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

In this Ask Me Anything Part 1, Lemkin answers the questions: Many VCs talk about funding, yet you’re so focused on sales. Question #1: Why Are You So Focused On Sales When Other VCs Are Focused On Funding? Question #1: Why Are You So Focused On Sales When Other VCs Are Focused On Funding? Their sales doubled in 60 days.

Outsourcing Services 212

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 212

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

Because the business world is changing and your customers may demand that you run on certain locations and there are more and more regulations, compliance, GDPR, data residency that everyone in at a certain scale has to be compliant with. How is data being managed? What about compliance? Where is your storage?

Cloud 168

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 168

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Sales wants more features. Product gets bogged down with one-off requests. In this conversation recorded at ELC 2023, Segment’s former CRO Joe Morrissey and former chief product development officer Tido Carriero discuss how they turned sales-product tension into a successful $3.2B It’s a familiar story.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Underperforming Technical Team 98

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2019

The age-old sales funnel has worked fine for decades…until now. Why is the sales funnel alone, no longer an appropriate way of thinking about customers? Brian Halligan: Whether we all like it or not, trust in sales and marketing is at an all-time low. We’re going to hire tele-sales reps who are going to cold call.

Scale 48

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 48

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 13, 2018

When I started, for example, and as I was building the sales team, I did not realize you could not ask the same sales people to qualify the leads, to close the leads and to deploy the companies. John: It sounds like you learned quite a bit about how to actually structure your sales team and who does what.

Scale 151

Scale Marketplace as a Service Mobile Sales Hiring 151

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

At the moment a startup is founded, the business is product limited. You can’t do much without a product. After the company establishes product market fit, the pendulum swings to go-to-market. Now sales and marketing limits the company’s growth.

VP of Engineering 271

VP of Engineering Startup Sales Hiring compliance 271

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2019

286: Allie Janoch is the Founder & CEO @ Mapistry, the startup that makes environmental compliance simple. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Allie made her way from the world of Yahoo to founding the game changer of environmental compliance in Mapistry. How does Allie advise other founders on scaling sales teams?

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Technical Advisors Scale 132

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Katrina Wong, VP Marketing and Demand Generation @ Segment. Asawari Samant, Head of Marketing @ Anyscale. Amy Appleyard, VP Sales @ VMWare. Michelle Benfer, VP, Head of North America Sales @ HubSpot. Kady Srinivasan, Head of Marketing @ Klaviyo. Jessica Weimer Vice President, Global Revenue Marketing @ Podium.

VP of Engineering 272

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder CTO Coach CTO Hire 272

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

Your first few hires are so influential in the success of your company. As Des Traynor, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Intercom, says, your first few hires are so influential in the success of your company. Brex makes it simple for founders and startups to manage spending and ensure compliance. Questions to ask.

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

Sara Hicks, VP of Product, Commerce @ Mailchimp. Devon Rutherford, Managed Services Program Manager & Pre-Sales Manager @ Leaseweb. Mariela Towers, Head of Marketing @ BEE. Jules Costa, Content Manager @ BEE. Amy Appleyard, VP Sales @ VMWare. Dave Walters, CTO @ Hired.

VP of Engineering 265

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder CTO Coach CTO Hire 265

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 3, 2021

To start at the zoomed-out level, the different levers that you can have, any business can have, start with, of course, hiring more people and building more teams. If you’ve got a good setup, then more teams equal more product, and more product equals more marketing and more sales and all sorts of stuff like that.

Strategy 228

Strategy Software Review Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 228

SaaStr

MAY 17, 2019

So I want to discuss, first you mentioned the BigMachines, and post sales Oracle, you did version 2.0 But Max was struggling to build sales, to build a company around it. We actually just hired a full-time director, and G2 Gives is our philanthropic initiative. with Steelbrick.

Scale 149

Scale Sales Hiring Software Review Leadership 149

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2019

In addition, we believe that this data is representative, because if you look at the different kinds of buyers from the respondents, you see it spans everything from operations and marketing to sales and engineering, even down to legal. The first way is through features: compliance features, security features, Slack uses search.

Scale 212

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Payment Services 212

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2020

In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Anthony made his way into the world of SaaS starting in the sales team at Box and how that led to his entering the world of marketing and creating the customer success category. * How is marketing being pushed further into the realms of CS? Anthony Kennada: Totally.

Sales Recruiting 175

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 175

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. How do I hire a new type of executive whose function I don’t know about? What to consider when hiring a COO. Short on time?

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 9, 2024

In this conversation, a16z Growth general partner Sarah Wang speaks with Crossbeam CEO Bob Moore about his new book, Ecosystem-Led Growth: A Blueprint for Sales and Marketing Success Using the Power of Partnerships. Or, “are my sales reps selling into the same companies as your sales reps?” We think about SCR teams.

Scale 120

Scale Technical Review AI Sales Hiring 120

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2019

As for Ben, he spearheads global sales and go to market teams. What must founders try and figure out before hiring their sales leader? What are the leading indicators that suggest a sales rep has the ability to be a sales manager? How does Ben determine between a stretch VP and a stretch too far?

Scale 100

Scale Sales Hiring Systems Review Marketplace as a Service 100

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2020

304: If your SaaS business has a sales team, there’s no way to grow 100% year-over-year without also growing your sales leadership. In this talk, CircleCI VP of Revenue Jane Kim will talk about the 5 mistakes all new sales leaders make. How does Eugenio adopt a variable pricing mechanism that does not discourage usage?

Scale 173

Scale Sales Hiring Pricing Leadership 173

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.,” Furthermore, the company grew so quickly that it struggled to keep pace with compliance and governance, which was dangerous in a regulated industry. Every customer was a good customer.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service Underperforming Technical Team 52

Upscope

JANUARY 5, 2020

Product positioning describes the specific market you intend to win and why you are uniquely qualified to win it. It’s the underpinning of your go-to-market strategy and impacts everything from marketing to sales, to customer success and the product itself. Security information, HIPAA and GDPR compliance.

Strategy 128

Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring Engineering 128

SaaSOptics

MAY 6, 2022

Accurate and up-to-date financial records display the current state of your business, help you maintain GAAP/IFRS compliance, and prove to potential VCs that your company is worth the investment. Delay hiring a CFO for 1-2 years. Using a CRM that isn’t integrated with documentation for contracts and accounting.

SaaS 76

SaaS Scale Underperforming Technical Team Forecasting 76

Mucker Capital

APRIL 6, 2023

Today, a lot of the PLG SaaS tools require sales motion upfront because nobody understands those tools. Those types of tools actually require work in the initial days of the sales motion. Think Notion, Canva, Slack, all of those products. Can they go to your website, sign up, try the product, and checkout themselves?

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

If you can create a scenario where others are building on top of your product – and therefore evolving it in ways you may not have the resources to do yourself – your offering suddenly becomes even more valuable to your customers. Here, Ceci unpacks her thinking for Intercom’s Group Product Marketing Manager, Jasmine Jaume.

Underperforming Technical Team 170

Underperforming Technical Team Marketplace as a Service Outsourced Development Development 170

SaaStr

JUNE 10, 2021

Marten Mickos: And if you are a product manager, or if you are in charge of go-to-market, or sales, or you’re the CEO of the company, I encourage you to think about the whole product that you need to deliver to the customer, and think about the entire job that needs to get done. Is it the productivity?

Outsourcing Services 140

Outsourcing Services Marketplace as a Service Outsourced Development Scale 140

A Smart Bear

OCTOBER 4, 2017

By which they mean: Without stupid rules that assume employees are dumb or evil, without everything taking ten times longer than it should, without wall-to-wall meetings, without resorting to hiring anything less than the top 1% of the talent pool, and so on. — optimize myopically for speed-to-market.

Scale 61

Scale Government Scaling Sales Recruiting 61

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2019

Most of you who ever have done enterprise sales, you know enterprise sales are spreadsheet-driven. Where a normal sales guy, he might need to go and hit up five customers to make 500k, we can get that out of one cycle. Your product has value for them. We take complexity out. You get into an RFP. “Where are you?

Payment Solutions 147

Payment Solutions Payments Outsourcing Services SaaS Payments 147

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. And the reality is it started with very innocent beginnings.

Part-Time CTO 263

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 263