SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

Many companies believe excellent product design comes from hiring the best engineers and signing up for the latest software instead of building from the users’ perspectives. Stripe’s CTO, David Singleton, shares how they use a system of feedback, iteration, and fast shipping to create products that meet users’ expectations.

CTO Hire 292

CTO Hire CTO Payment Methods Payment Solutions 292

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. I just see this time and time again.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 318

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

Front-end, mid-end, back-end engineers of all sorts and types. Anyhow the one thing I learned, beyond getting help screening and hiring for these positions from domain experts, is to look for Flags. For signs the prospective hire just won’t work out, no matter how strong they might look on paper. You get the picture.

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 257

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2022

Miguel Carranza, CTO at RevenueCat, shares ten learnings from firsthand experience in architecting an API & SDK that is currently on 5,000+ apps and has seen 3x growth Year-over-Year. . But at scale, people will use your API in crazy ways that you might not imagine, so some margin of the unexpected is unavoidable.

CTO Hire 246

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Scaling 246

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2023

Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares five essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. Register for SaaStr Annual and join 12,500 Cloud and SaaS Founders, VCs, and Execs at SaaStr Annual for three full days of workshops, sessions, and networking — all to help you scale faster.

CTO Coach 242

CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 242

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Some leaders like Slack have seen the same, but most Cloud leaders at scale with high NRR end up getting more and more of their revenue from their existing base, not new customers. Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. They’re growing even faster at scale. More on that here.

Scale 307

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 307

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Our 10th Annual Meet-a-VC program to opt-in ahead of time, to set up VC-Founder matchmaking, Note: the above programs are only for Cloud / SaaS / AI founders and executives. Speakers share their playbooks on everything from achieving product-market fit to optimizing CAC:LTV ratios and scaling go-to-market strategies.

Sales Recruiting 187

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 187

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2019

From large scale mainstage sessions to intimate workshops and even a dedicated lounge, we are carving out some of SaaStr Annual just for developers and engineers. ” When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster. ” When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster.

CTO Coach 179

CTO Coach Engineering CTO Hire Development 179

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Scaling a PLG company While it’s great to figure out a PLG model that allows you to scale your revenue with inbound, it cannot stop there. Take stock of customer satisfaction at each point of the journey—product, engineering, design, growth, presales, support, and post-sales. Hire a CTO and unify the entire data function.

Scale 244

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 244

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

You’ll need to hire aggressively to get to the next level and continue that rapid growth. But what roles should you hire for, and what will your org chart look like at each stage? Positions Needed: Enterprise AEs, Mid-Market & SMB AEs, SDRs, Sales Ops, Sales Engineer. CTO (40 Employees). CTO (114 Employees).

CTO Hire 284

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 284

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

They’ll revolt when you make a senior or mid-level hire that as a group, they simply cannot suffer one day longer. It’s happened to me, and I think for whatever my faults, I have a pretty high EQ and am a half-decent manager. The three times it happened to me: A very senior engineer that we just HAD to have.

Part-Time VPE 284

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

in ARR, get to Initial Traction , we then realize we have to scale. Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10. That it’s time to bring in someone that knows. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. My CTO and dev team is building all the features we need.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 363

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 27, 2018

On call work like this can be a powerful customer orientated activity that connects engineers to the value customers get from your product. Back in the early days of Intercom, our CTO Ciaran was the entirety of the on call team, both in and out of the office. The history of on call at Intercom.

Engineering 209

Engineering Software Review Technical Review Systems Review 209

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

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. And even worse, you often sort of give up trying to make the hire. Get on a jet, at least twice a quarter.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

SaaStr

JUNE 12, 2022

SaaStr 559: Secrets to Building Your Marketing Engine To Drive Scale with Airtable CMO Archana Agrawal. Top 5 Mistakes Building & Scaling Global Product Teams | HubSpot GM & VP, Products Poorvi Shrivastav. with Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO 237

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2023

In my first start-up, there were literally only a handful of engineers who understood our technology. The best we made our CTO. But what if our CTO gets hit by a bus? He scaled up our technology in a way folks for years had thought was impossible. Sometimes, still hire them. I remember when it happened to me.

CTO Hire 246

CTO Hire CTO Technology Engineering 246

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. There are no Cloud magicians, and you can’t hire a PLG magician. Let’s jump right into the questions.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. You have to see: A couple of good hires brought in Improvement on some metrics A big deal or two hanging out there, brought in and closed Things taken off your plate. But after a couple million in ARR, you can afford any hire if they’re accretive.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

In that case, is PLG cheaper for expanding the base than their sales-driven process? “I think it’s both if you look at scale,” Henry says. “PLG is cheaper, right? AI is synthesizing a whole bunch of noise to help deliver the right message to the right buyer at the optimal time, which is pretty exciting.

New CTO 312

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 312

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

In engineering, you want to move fast, ship often and solve real customer problems. It means reducing choices amongst engineering teams and standardizing technology, so our team can spend as much time as possible delivering value to customers. Rich: Today I’m the Senior Director for Foundations Engineering at Intercom.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

Which role should you hire for first? For starters, your first hire should be someone who can complement your skills, someone who is strong in areas where you’re weak, but it goes much deeper than that. I am guessing it’s probably the hardest problem to solve, hiring a job, let alone at this level. And for good reason.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

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. 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.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

If you’re running a smaller digital business, you may find it challenging to hire great talent. If you’re facing challenges winning the best candidates for your roles, or if you have a small number of roles and every hire really matters, then don’t miss this episode of Growth Stage. to working for smaller brands.

SMB 107

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 107

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. Keys to success when scaling a company [10:56]. 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.

Scale 119

Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 119

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah shared with us how they got there — and the top mistakes they made — just 3 quarters after their IPO. We have someone that probably 98 percent of you know virtually or socially in some sense, Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot. It got much better over time. A SaaStr Classic!!

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

hiring in-house talent). Scaling companies that need insight can get it easily with the help of a specialized platform that guides them through all the necessary and applicable sales tax obligations and processes. . Leverage automation to support scaling. “But with AutoFile, we’ve scaled to doing taxes in 40+ states.”

Merchant Services 197

Merchant Services Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring 197

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

WorkOS CEO Michael Grinich, Developer Success Manager Betsy Calender, and VP of Developer Experience Zeno Rocha share how to price your product for developers, how to market it to developers, how to how to support them as they scale and use the products. The contract size grows. Doing Business with Developers.

Outsourced Development 210

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 210

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

Being an engineer can give you the upper hand as a CEO because you understand the product. Mallun Yen : So, you were an engineer by training and then you became an engineering leader, as the CTO of Webex, and then you became a CEO. The only thing about my background as engineer, I do not think I can be a CEO.

Sales Hiring 141

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 141

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. For Slack, that was clearly the engineering and dev communities, who love new tools.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

We’re excited to continue the Month of Scale here for Redpoint Office Hours. 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. That was the start of the Month of Scale. Travis Bryant : All right, let’s get started.

CTO Coach 164

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 164

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. The LinkedIn Incident.

Scale 211

Scale Software Review compliance Technical Review 211

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. Pete was a Google Associate Product Manager for AdSense and launched Google App Engine. First, hire a management coach to work with you as the company grows. It’s the only way to scale the business. And you should do it right then.

CTO Coach 113

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 113

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

You’ll also learn how leading SaaS companies are able to scale and thrive in this complex, dynamic environment. Eyal Manor – VP, Engineering @ Google Cloud. And the same customer challenges that we were being presented, which was: How do you scale? Want to see more content like this session? Join us for SaaStr Annual 2020.

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 173

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 146

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 146

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Well, we did the heavy lifting and highlighted a few here for you… “When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster. Henrique and co-founder Pedro Franceschi founded the company as 22-year-old engineers in Brazil in 2017. At the time the duo had founded Pagar.me, a payment processor.

Payment Services 110

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 110

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams. Much of the success here depends on how competent and motivated the CTO and their team is.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

When a company is moving from the startup to the scale-up phase, there is the potential for productivity practices to be lost along the wayside. Technology helped us put a man on the moon, but the interface between the human and technology can have huge impact on whether or not we can take advantage of that, particularly at scale.

Artificial Intelligence 169

Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169