article thumbnail

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. Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be. 95% of the time, your super-smart hacker co-founder is not that person. She can be your CTO forever.

Scale 262
article thumbnail

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. Make the hire now. ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m More here: [link].

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

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. Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be. 95% of the time, your super-smart hacker co-founder is not that person. She can be your CTO forever.

article thumbnail

The SaaS Org Chart Live with David Sacks (Podcast #491 and Video)

SaaStr

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? In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Sales.

CTO Hire 263
article thumbnail

Samsara S-1: How 7 Key Benchmarks Stack Up

Tom Tunguz

Founded by Sanjit Biswas, former CEO at Meraki and John Bicket former CTO at Meraki[link] Samsara builds software to manage physical operations: truck fleets, mining, food & beverage, oil & gas. Sales Efficiency. -. Enterprise Customers. But these contracts produce compelling economics. Revenue, $M. Gross Margin.

CTO Hire 356
article thumbnail

What are some of the biggest mistakes you made with enterprise SaaS sales?

SaaStr

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. They are too much work to just dump on a product person, success person, sales leader, etc. Didn’t matter.

article thumbnail

Top SaaStr Content for the Week: Bandwidth CMO, Flexport CEO, Hubspot VP of Products, WalkMe VP of Sales, and More!

SaaStr

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 186