SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How does a First Time Founder Identify 10x Hires? How do you hire a great CTO, a great VP of Product, a great VP of Sales … if you’ve never worked with one? There’s a reason almost every founder you talk to had a mis-hire for their first head of sales. It’s hard.

Sales Hiring 217

Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 217

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

So you were the first sales hire. Talk to me about the sales hires that you made back in the early days and talk to me about how it changed through the different stages. So my first sales hire was beginning of 2015. The very first few sales hire are I would say not your typical reps. Laura Bilazarian : Awesome.

Scale 138

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 138

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

There are enough stories of data breaches and cyber attacks to chill even the savviest security engineer to the core. An aerospace engineer turned entrepreneur, Adam learned early the best way to earn trust was proving you deserve it. Evernote’s CTO on Your Biggest Security Worries From 3 to 300 Employees. Caught your interest?

Scale 211

Scale compliance Software Review Technical Review 211

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 9, 2022

More and more people are hiring leaders, not for past experience, but for capability and capacity. We hire a third-party firm. That third-party firm does what they call IDIs, or in-depth interviews, to get a sense of the customer experience. We also need to change the way that we make hiring decisions.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

When is the right time to hire the first sales rep? Should you hire 2 at a time? What does one look for in their first sales hire? Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Sam. We were hired into the same role, same start date, competed head to head. Harry Stebbings. Sam Taylor.

Scale 180

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 180

OpenView Labs

JUNE 18, 2020

I tell them that I do what I do with music, but with software engineers. And hiring people who are better than you. Read more interviews with the most interesting humans in SaaS. ICYMI: Meet Mailchimp’s CTO Eric Muntz. How do you explain what you do to your parents, friends, kids, or non-industry people?

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Software Engineering 52

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. In this interview, David Sacks talks about how 70-80% of investor time is spent looking at AI.

Scale 260

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 260

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2020

What other elements of the contract should startups really spend a lot of time focusing on? 300: When it comes to seamlessly scaling your applications, a top-notch engineering team will be your foundation. Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Yousuf. Where do founders make mistakes in negotiation?

CTO Hire 135

CTO Hire compliance Scale Startup 135

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

How does Bob think about when is the right time to hire a Head of Partnerships? Where do most startups go wrong both in hiring for partnerships and in the engagements themselves? Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Bob. 298: Startup success is not exclusive to Silicon Valley. Harry Stebbings.

Sales Hiring 133

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 133

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years. Roughly 90%.

Sales Hiring 163

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 163

Outseta

OCTOBER 15, 2018

The company had for a few years prior followed a growth-first path, hiring aggressively and prioritizing projects designed to make an immediate impact on their growth rate. After the Series A, Buffer fell into a similar trap to Wistia - they hired too quickly, specifically to accelerate product development. The company even took $2.5M

CTO Hire 65

CTO Hire CTO Coach SaaS New CTO 65

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

. * How does one know when we need to hire generalists vs specialists? Karl has been in every interview for every new hire for the first 6 years of the business, why? * Karl has been in every interview for every new hire for the first 6 years of the business, why? How does Karl structure the hiring process today?

Sales Hiring 220

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach 220

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

What started as a series of interviews by co-founder Des Traynor soon bloomed into hundreds of episodes where we explore how businesses are driving growth through customer relationships and how to build successful products at scale. I’m recording the first in what I expect to be a series of interesting interviews.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Today on the show, we’ve got Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, a company that applies AI to your contract. Sam Jacobs: Today on the show, we’ve got Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, a company that applies AI to your contract. Sam’s Corner [28:45]. Show Introduction [00:10]. Check them out.

Scale 107

Scale CTO Hire Scaling CTO Coach 107

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

When I was a couple of years into my tenure at Oracle, I moved down to Latin America to Argentina, sight unseen actually, and built out a telesales group in Argentina and then later in Miami, hiring about 100 people from 11 different countries and that early building experience really whet my appetite. I came back to North America.

Scale 184

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 184

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

You can watch the full session , and if you missed the podcast with the first half of the interview, you’ll find that here. Immediately told them to hire 50 reps in a different city, in a different city, and they did. The CEO was deferential because that was 10 times what he’d ever raised before, and did all of it.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

A thanks to [Marsh 00:00:34] for stepping in at the beginning of the month, and a great session with our own Jason Warner and Adrian, the CTO of Zendesk. Lionetti, the CMO at Confluent, and most recently, the CTO from Zendesk, Adrian. Excited to be back emceeing. That was the start of the Month of Scale.

CTO Coach 129

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 129

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2018

At our inaugural SaaStr Europa last June, podcast host-with-the-most Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. Engineers like it. They kind of hate each other.

Technical Advisors 164

Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 164

Sales Hacker

JUNE 12, 2020

We should probably do an interview together. And if we’re talking to the right profile of person, they’re very interested in doing that interview and doing that case study. If you are trying to overcome no brand and market, you can’t ask somebody for a three year contract. It’s helpful early on.

Enterprise 69

Enterprise CTO Hire Startup Technical Cofounder 69

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

. “Take the work out of work, that’s my motto in life” Prior to that, I was the CIO of another large Fortune 500 company called KLA-Tencor, and the rest of my life has been in software engineering: building tools to help people get things done without having to do all the work. Balancing human-computer interaction.

Artificial Intelligence 169

Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire AI 169

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2020

Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Paul. An incredible company and founder making his foray into the public eye for the first time. Is there hiring decisions? Paul Rosania: So let’s imagine I went to you as a CTO. Harry Stebbings. Paul Rosania. Is it like a weekly update to the whole team?

CTO Coach 177

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Software Review CTO Hire 177

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

Instead, there’s one continuous streamlined customer-centric journey, leveraging the next generation of artificial intelligence, Outreach allows sales reps to deliver consistent, relevant, and responsible communication for each prospect every time enabling personalization at scale previously unthinkable. Are they hiring?

Marketplace as a Service 94

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Data 94

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Yousuf. And by business technology function I want to define that because sometimes there’s a overlap with the CTO from an engineering side. My advice is hire earlier rather than later. Harry Stebbings. Yousuf Khan. I want to try and be helpful there.

Technical Advisors 169

Technical Advisors Scale Technical Review Payment Solutions 169

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 21, 2020

We’ve got an interview with Angus Davis. Today’s sponsor is Outreach , the leading sales engagement platform that enables sales reps to humanize their communications at scale, from automating the soul-sucking manual work that eats up selling time to providing action-oriented tips on what communications are working best.

Payment Methods 55

Payment Methods Scale CTO Coach SMB 55

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 8, 2018

Chris is a 20 year Silicon Valley veteran having launched the first part of his career at EMC before finding his way to Snowflake in 2013. At Snowflake, he was the first rep and single-handedly built the outbound-engine on the way to scaling the business from pre-revenue all the way past $150M+ in ARR. What You’ll Learn.

Scale 65

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 65

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

Nick Mehta: I think it’s really well said and I think that what I’m seeing, actually, in some cases as chief customer officers getting value engineering, like you have in pre-sales, underneath them as well to tie that altogether. From contract signature to launch. I have a one year contract. I mean, I kind of care.

Payment Methods 216

Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 216

Outseta

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

The challenge in each case is the same—the company is hiring you at a lower level of commitment than a full-time hire, usually with the expectation that they will see some ROI relatively quickly. Full-time Head of Marketing I’ve been hired to lead marketing teams at four companies in a full-time capacity now.

Sales Hiring 50

Sales Hiring CTO Coach CTO Hire Underperforming Technical Team 50

ProfitWell

OCTOBER 1, 2019

When HubSpot first launched its culture code, Dharmesh Shah, CTO and Founder of HubSpot, felt it was important to share it with candidates. Since then, its culture code has been viewed more than 4 million times. Tell me, explain how you think about testing this in an interview. Chances are you'll hear some nuance in there.”.

Company Culture 40

Company Culture Sales Recruiting Scale Software Review 40

Sales Hacker

MAY 5, 2021

RevOps is still developing as a function, so people with a lot of different experiences, like moving from engineering to marketing for example, find RevOps to be a great place to put their problem solving skills to work. Listen to her webinar interview asking her guests about how to build a process for improving your sales process.

Scale 99

Scale Technical Cofounder Technical Advisors Sales Hiring 99

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

At SaaStr Annual we had a great session with HubSpot Founder & CTO, Dharmesh Shah, and their Chief People Officer, Katie Burke, on building happier employees. We hire remarkable people, and we give them a lot of freedom for how they’re going to get their work done. I was wondering what should we talk about?

Part-Time CTO 271

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 271

SaaStr

JULY 19, 2019

Previously, Peter was also the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive where he brought CBS into the cloud. At Sun, Peter was the CTO of the Liberty identity consortium that designed SAML 2. Why is it no longer to come into large enterprises with a small contract and expand? How has Peter found the transition from CTO to CEO this time?

VP of Engineering 135

VP of Engineering CTO Hire Technical Review Sales Hiring 135