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.

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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.

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Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 260

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2019

What makes a bad CTO? Do startups ever have one founder with substantially more equity than the other founder(s)? What are the advantages of being a startup vs being an established business? What happens to the clients of a mission-critical, B2B enterprise SaaS startup when it fails? Does this work?

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CTO Hire New CTO CTO Payment Methods 159

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

To some extent, if you have the hottest startup in the world, the full package, you can play some games with investors. 99% of startups aren’t that. For 99% of startups, when you want money, tell VCs you want money. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” Hiring someone too junior. Ask for money when you want advice.”

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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. In 2016, Hubspot was still a scrappy player that had only recently IPO’d, with a market cap around $1B. A SaaStr Classic!!

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Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 286

The Angel VC

OCTOBER 18, 2012

Continuing my little series using the "minimum viable" approach , here is my 2nd DO for SaaS startups: Build the right team I've written about the topic before, so if you've read this post from early this year most of what I'm going to write now won't be new for you and you may want to skip this article. What comes next?

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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.

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Enterprise CTO Hire Startup Technical Cofounder 79

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

Tips on Enterprise Pricing. Patrick Campbell deconstructs and walks through the elements of a pricing strategy that enables startups to more effectively acquire customers. There are Only 3 Pricing Strategies for Your Startup. As a startup, are you managing for revenue, market share or profitability? Find out here.

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Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 138

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

In part, my shift in thinking could pertain to not being the “front man” handling the pitch. But thanks to our VP of Business Development, I realize team-based selling for an early-stage startup or company is still likely a necessity, and far outweighs specialization when your sales org is fewer than five people or so.

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Underperforming Technical Team CTO Hire CTO Coach Technical Review 130

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

I was working with a company that … Because people will write big checks today into early stage companies, where someone came in very early and gave an early startup $50 million too early, and just started telling them how to raise the company, immediately told them to go buy competitors, which they’re not ready for.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

Before that, he was the first non-founder seller at three startups, turning early traction into a repeatable sales motion. If you missed GTM 134, check it out here: Build your AI Outbound Machine with ChatGPT | Jordan Crawford Highlights: 05:03 When to hire your first sales reps. 31:55 Hiring for grit, curiosity & determination.

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Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale VP of Engineering 89

Scytale

OCTOBER 21, 2024

Regardless of whether you’re running a startup or a more established business, this certification is the key to unlocking deals you once thought were out of reach. Streamlining the Sales Process: Ever been knee-deep in contract negotiations when the client suddenly asks, “Are you SOC 2 certified?” Uh-oh, now what?

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Technical Review Scale compliance CTO Hire 52

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

Along the way, we’ve interviewed trailblazers, business leaders, makers and doers to share their experience and insights on all things startup strategy, product management, design, marketing, customer experience, and much, much more. And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team.

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Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 216

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]. What is LinkSquares?

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Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 117

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

Suddenly, the team got to know SOC 2 Reports all too well and realized just how burdensome and unscalable it could become, especially for high-growth startups. Evernote’s CTO on Your Biggest Security Worries From 3 to 300 Employees. And then, it allows companies to be more enterprise-ready. Caught your interest?

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Scale Software Review compliance Technical Review 212

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. Dee: And you’ve worked in the industry for more than 22 years, so you have an incredible insight into the expansion of cloud networks, enterprise and data center technologies.

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Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169

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

Mucker Capital

APRIL 6, 2023

Hila Qu joined Mucker’s Tony Yang for an Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) conversation about Product-Led Growth (PLG) for Startups to kickoff the 2023 Mucker Growth Series. Hila Qu has been the Head of Growth or VP of Growth at a number of different companies and startups, most notably Acorns and GitLab. Are POCs part of the PLG play?

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Valerian Tech

JANUARY 22, 2024

Introduction Innovation – a term that resonates deeply within the halls of tech firms and startup incubators alike. At the core of every technological breakthrough and digital advancement lies a single, unifying element: the relentless pursuit of innovation.

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Upscope

JANUARY 5, 2020

A lot of startups built the equivalent of Dropbox but never became Dropbox. If you position around "time saved" you lose money Jason Cohen has built and sold several companies and is the Founder and CTO of WP Engine. and "In my experience, security and legal concerns tend to be the biggest hurdles blocking enterprise deals.

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Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring Engineering 128

Sales Hacker

MARCH 25, 2019

Simmone talks about her experience building Gilt City and Kidpass as a woman of color and how she advises companies to build diversity and inclusion into their hiring practices and sales teams. How to build diversity into your hiring practices. It really starts in how you’re hiring. Unconscious bias is a part of all of us.

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Sales Hiring Revenue CTO Coach CTO Hire 87

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2025

The latest one is all AI with a big enterprise / B2B slant and is very good but dense. China Is Playing a Different Game Entirely The Models Youve Barely Heard Of: DeepSeek R1: 93% performance of OpenAI’s o3-mini at fraction of training cost Alibaba Qwen 2.5-Max: AI use will be part of what we evaluate in performance reviews.

AI Search 243

AI Search AI CTO Hire ChatGPT 243

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 21, 2020

We were part of the office of the CTO. At that time, Marc Andreessen, the founder was the CTO of the company and there were only three of us in the group. It was pretty easy being an SDR for Marc Andreessen because he’d been on the cover of Time magazine. That sounds like an incredibly successful pivot.

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Payment Methods Scale CTO Coach SMB 60

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

Just prior to Sapper, my job was basically to go in and be the head of sales at a different startup. I am the head of sales for a startup company in a basement office in the Silicon Prairie of St. We brought in this brilliant CTO who’s got a PhD in informatics. I see this online all the time. I took a job.

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Scale Artificial Intelligence Sales Recruiting Consulting 86

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%.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 216

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2025

Co-founders Dharmesh Shah (CTO) and Brian Halligan (Chairperson) shared at SaaStr Annual the unfiltered truth on building an SMB powerhouse, pivoting to product-led growth, and why the “M” segment is SaaS gold. “To be successful, you have to be right about something everyone else thinks is wrong for a long period of time.”

Scale 182

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Scaling 182

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

Public valuations are still at a fraction of their 2021 peaks, but seed rounds are more expensive than ever. There is more capital available to startups than ever before. The influx of capital has made it easier for startups to raise money, but it has also led to higher valuations and more competition. Is it sustainable?

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CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 285

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise. 363: Small, Medium, or Enterprise, SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Shopify Plus GM, Loren Padelford, to discuss how to keep your customers happy at all stages. This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Loren’s session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise.

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Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 265

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 208

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 208

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

He writes on technology, enterprise, marketing, collaboration, and work culture. You can follow Ben to manage your SaaS startup finances and calculate growth metrics accurately. He is the managing director at Foundry Group, and his insights on technology startups are useful. He posts start-up advice very regularly on Twitter.

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VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

403: Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader.

Scale 226

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 226

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

Most recently Yousuf was the CIO & VP of Customer Success @ Moveworks, the advanced AI built for enterprise providing automatic resolution of IT issues. During his time at the company, they raised over $108m from Lightspeed, ICONIQ, Kleiner, Sapphire, and Bain Capital. 290: Yousuf Khan is a serial CIO, start-up and VC advisor.

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Technical Advisors Scale Technical Review Payment Solutions 224

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.” How do they solve that problem today? baldness cures [5]).

Startup 100

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SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2019

Today I wanted to talk to you about something a little bit unconventional, which is around doing M&A, as a startup yourself. I used to be a CTO and operator, co-founder of a SaaS start up. So on this topic, so how like what are the things, what would you consider, why would I start up, be buying another startup?

Outsourcing Services 110

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Technical Review 110

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2019

Join Vlad Shmunis, founder, chairman, and CEO of RingCentral as he discusses RingCentral’s journey from a two-person startup to a $7B market cap global enterprise communications company (NYSE:RNG) — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Jonathan : Did you have to do any sort of big steps hiring wise? We did not. Vlad : Oh absolutely.

Scale 189

Scale Business Sales Hiring CTO Hire 189

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 are the biggest green lights for CIOs when startups are pitching them? What must startups remember about how CIOs think about price?

CTO Hire 156

CTO Hire compliance Scale Startup 156

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. It was pretty interesting.

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Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 208