SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2019

I remember my CTO once arguing with a Fortune 500 company on a “security” concern they had which really made no sense. More here: I Never Lost a Customer I Actually Visited | SaaStr Not hiring a full-time RFP person. Not hiring a full-time Chief Security & Compliance Offer. Didn’t matter. They were concerned.

Sales Hiring 173

Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 173

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2022

The Ultimate Guide for Hiring a Great VP of Sales. Top Podcasts This Week: SaaStr 568: Mind the Gap: Balancing Growth and Efficiency in Tougher Times with Point Nine Managing Partner Christoph Janz. SaaStr 569: Classic Episode: Succeeding As a Young Enterprise Founder with Front Co-Founder and CEO Mathilde Collin.

CTO Hire 209

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Scale CTO 209

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

This is the sort of organic upmarket path you see with a lot of leaders who don’t go 100% “all in” on enterprise but aggressively support it: #2. Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. CEO Spencer Skates owns 8.5%, CTO Curtis Liu 8.0%. From 41% in 2020 to 51% in 2021! 119% NRR.

Scale 282

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 282

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

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. But I’ve found many great SaaS founders take longer, too long, to decide to hire the other VPs. Make you Truly Enterprise.

Sales Hiring 360

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 360

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” “When customers get back $100k’s in minutes and want to pay us more” — Kanat Bekt, founder/CTO, SupplyPike. 20% conversion. ” — Drew Naugher.

CTO Hire 294

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 294

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. Hard go truly enterprise without it.

Part-Time VPE 278

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 278

SaaStr

JUNE 12, 2022

SaaStr 560: Enterprise Communities: The What, Who, Why, When & How with Venafi Head of Community, Holly Firestone. with Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone. Attract, Hire & Build a Diverse Sales Team | Handshake VP, Employer Partnerships Jessica Peluso.

Scale 179

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire CTO 179

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. But even if you’ve hired the world’s best VP of Sales … you can’t opt out of sales entirely. You still need to spend 15-20% of your time in sales. Hire a VP of Finance or even a CFO Early if You Are Growing Quickly.

Part-Time VPE 278

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 278

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

“For large enterprise customers, your stakeholder map is almost always too small” — Alex Farmer, VP CS, Cognite Data. Another top mistake SMB folks make trying to sell enterprise. You lose enterprise deals when someone that knows the playbook outsells you by getting to all the stakeholders. A good one.

CTO Hire 293

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 293

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

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. More time may make them better if they’re already progressing, even if it’s just 10-15% in the first sales cycle. Hiring someone too junior. That often compounds.

Part-Time VPE 191

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 191

OpenView Labs

MARCH 10, 2020

At some point in every software company’s growth comes the great challenge of tackling the enterprise market. In a panel for DevGuild: Enterprise-Ready Products, devtools accelerator and fund Heavybit, Inc. brought together CTOs from PlanGrid, One Medical and AdRoll to discuss what they look for when evaluating software.

Enterprise 52

Enterprise Software Review CTO Hire Software 52

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2019

What makes a bad CTO? What happens to the clients of a mission-critical, B2B enterprise SaaS startup when it fails? What happens to the clients of a mission-critical, B2B enterprise SaaS startup when it fails? Do all SaaS companies in the USA put late payment fees in their contract? Does this work?

CTO Hire 151

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Payment Methods 151

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

We had Lew Cirne, Founder & CEO of New Relic, Dharmesh Shah, Co-Founder & CTO of HubSpot and for the first time at Annual, we added office hours with the top VCs in SaaS. total attendees, e.g., a CEO + a VP of Sales and a VP of Customer Success, or two Co-Founders, or CEO + CTO, etc.

Scale 292

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 292

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Developers haven’t typically been the buyers in enterprise software, so why should you build for developers? They’re able to actually swipe a credit card, and what starts off similar to a freemium self-serve product can turn into a six-figure contract in just a few months. The contract size grows.

Underperforming Technical Team 191

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 191

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Your CTO probably does not need to be on the first Demo, but instead that could be an opportune time to loop in a Manager or director. After all, a CTO can’t handhold the entire deal cycle, but they can jump in and provide clarity and an expert voice at critical points. Who doesn’t love a good combo of ham, egg and cheese?

Underperforming Technical Team 121

Underperforming Technical Team CTO Hire CTO Coach Technical Review 121

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

Before Quip, Sam spent an incredible 3 years at Dropbox where he was the first enterprise sales rep in the entire company. 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? Bret was formerly the CTO at Facebook.

Scale 181

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 181

ProfitWell

JANUARY 29, 2019

On this episode of the ProfitWell Report, Brendan Schwartz , Co-Founder and CTO at Wistia , wants to know what proportion of paid plans should be annual versus monthly. The beauty of the subscription model is that for the first time in the history of business, relationships are baked directly into how you make money. Click to enlarge.

Churn 103

Churn CTO Hire Data CTO 103

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

As we scale, we’re working with larger mid-market and enterprise customers with more complex needs and specifications. Hiring and cultivating incredible talent on our Information Security team. We’re committed to meeting the highest standards of security to protect our customers’ trust and love for our product.

Data 118

Data compliance Technical Review CTO Hire 118

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. Q: FranConnect has customers of all sizes, from emerging and growing to scaling and enterprise. And then enterprise, they’re typically going international; they’re doing joint ventures.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

The Angel VC

OCTOBER 18, 2012

What if you don't have that SaaS founder dream team – a CEO with domain expertise, a great CPO and a rock-star CTO? I'm going to assume that you want to build a modern SaaS solution for the "Fortune 5,000,000" – a great product that's easy to understand and so useful that it will almost sell itself. What comes next?

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup Outsourced Development 121

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

So mid-market, we’re about 40 to 50K ACV enterprise. And actually when we started, I see one face in the room that I recognize, Kurt Freytag, was one of our big customers at the time when I joined. So you were the first sales hire. So my first sales hire was beginning of 2015. We’re low six figures.

Scale 141

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 141

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2020

In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Yousuf made his way from the UK to the valley and how that led to his becoming one of the leading CIOs today in the rising prominence of CIOs in enterprise. What other elements of the contract should startups really spend a lot of time focusing on? This episode is sponsored by Brex.

CTO Hire 134

CTO Hire compliance Scale Startup 134

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

Why does Erica believe that enterprise is a “company sport?” Why does each department need to re-platform when making the move to enterprise? How can founders know when is the right time to make the move from SMB to enterprise? How does the move to enterprise fundamentally impact the sales team?

Scale 180

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 180

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? Let’s hire an amazing VP of product who’s going to answer this question for us and kind of have the frameworks to do it.

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 132

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So in Enterprise, they have around 2,000 companies spending $100k or more per year and dozens of companies spending over a million per year. So in Enterprise, they have around 2,000 companies spending $100k or more per year and dozens of companies spending over a million per year. Is it Cheaper or Better to go PLG? .”

New CTO 268

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring AWS 268

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

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. Why join a start-up? Well reason #1 is personal and career advancement. This isn’t personal.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 255

Kellblog

JANUARY 29, 2020

It’s great if the answer will broaden over time as the company grows and its strategy naturally expands, but up-front I’d name the people you are targeting today. Wrong: “The Office of the CIO in IT organizations in F5000 enterprises around the world.” Ditto for most hiring across the company.

Startup 99

Startup Sales Hiring CTO Hire New CTO 99

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) My co-founder and I only raised $1m for Bitnami, and we were acquired by VMware in 2019 when we were at 75 people and about to launch a new line of enterprise products. What’s your most recent disclosed investment?

Management 237

Management CTO Hire New CTO AI 237

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. Find and hire two other similar reps.

Scale 256

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 256

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 161

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 161

Sales Hacker

JUNE 12, 2020

In it, Co-Founder and CRO of Kronologic, Aaron Bollinger, shows us how to close enterprise level deals when you’re a startup. How to overcome no credible timing event. Download Aaron’s Checklist for Closing Enterprise Deals Here. Down the road, you can say, “ I demand a two year contract. What You’ll Learn. 3% (24:26). ?

Enterprise 69

Enterprise CTO Hire Startup Technical Cofounder 69

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

And as nice as verbal assurances and a handshake are, as you grow and try to sign with more established, enterprise-level companies, you’ll find yourself more and more having to provide proofs of compliance before closing the deal: The shift to the cloud, more and more data breaches – it really put a magnifying glass on third-party risk.

Scale 211

Scale compliance Software Review Technical Review 211

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

It’s changing the landscape for large enterprise that you are very familiar with. All of those at a certain scale are something that the large enterprise customers are a “must have” And you need a partner to work with you, go with you to the customer and kind of make sure the solution is well-designed.

Cloud 171

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 171

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it’s not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times. His answers didn’t disappoint. They wanted a one-call close.

CTO Hire 190

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 190

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. There are rules in starting an enterprise software company. They’re going to figure out that enterprise is the actual way to go, and it’ll be OK.”

Part-Time VPE 237

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 237

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

If not, add sales energy to compound the interest.” – Chris De Vylder How to define customer success Selling to enterprises is convincing an economic buyer that your product is the solution they are looking for. The next hiring focus should be growth marketing. Hire a CTO and unify the entire data function.

Scale 200

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 200

Valerian Tech

JANUARY 22, 2024

Our approach is multi-faceted: Client-Centric Creativity: We tailor our innovative solutions like fractional CTO services and enterprise architect software to meet the unique needs of each client, ensuring that our cutting-edge ideas translate into real-world success.

Innovation 52

Innovation Technology CTO Hire Artificial Intelligence 52