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Dear SaaStr: What’s The Number One Challenge for Scale-Up Stage Founders?

SaaStr

You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. You can smother customers with love alone in the early days, but as you scale, you need a seasoned customer success team and VP that has done this before. She can be your CTO forever. It’s the people.

Scale 248
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What Order Should You Hire Your Management Team In?

SaaStr

IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m He asked which to hire first. If you have a few nickels in the bank, and you somehow find a great VP a half stage or even full stage early, just hire her. Hiring is so hard as it is. And set you up for a ton more success, earlier. Make the hire now.

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What’s The #1 Challenge After $1m-$2m ARR?

SaaStr

You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. You can smother customers with love alone in the early days, but as you scale, you need a seasoned customer success team and VP that has done this before. She can be your CTO forever. appeared first on SaaStr.

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30+ Incredible New Speakers for 2021 SaaStr Annual

SaaStr

Brian Peterson, CTO @ Dialpad. Dave Walters, CTO, Hired. Christa Diaz, Senior Director, Customer Success, Hired. Amy Pisano, CRO, Hired. Jenn Knight, Co-Founder, CTO, AgentSync. Rhonda SekaBuehler Senior Vice President of Global Sales Engineering @WalkMe. Zach Kitschke, CMO, Canva.

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If You Don’t Think You Need a VP of Product, VP of Marketing, Etc. — Then You Haven’t Worked With a Great One

SaaStr

I hear again and again from SaaS founders growing to $5m, $10m ARR or even more that they don’t need a certain VP — with the exception of a VP of Sales. That they can get away without no one in the role, or a just a junior person in marketing, in product, in success, in biz dev, etc. Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10.

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10 Things That Would Have Helped Me Go From $1m to $10m Faster with Less Stress

SaaStr

No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR. Fixing it yourself becomes the biggest time sink and excuse for not hiring there is. You end up spending all your time backfilling roles you should have hired.

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30+ Tough Learnings from Losing a Top Customer

SaaStr

You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. We all underresource customer success vs. sales. Point #2 is key.

CTO Hire 276