Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

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. If a business has to manage physical assets with drivers, there’s a Samsara product for it. Sales Efficiency. -.

CTO Hire 358

CTO Hire CTO Coach Benchmarks Scale 358

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? 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 252

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 252

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2021

There’s a slide I see again and again from start-ups: 2 of the early sales reps are at 100% of quota, sometimes 150%-200%. You’ll continue to see that over time to some extent. So why so often, do only 2 of the first 8-10 sales reps perform? They get CTO training. You have to join their first few sales calls.

Scale 342

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 342

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

I hear again and again from SaaS founders growing to $5m, $10m ARR or even more that they don’t need a certain VP — with the exception of a VP of Sales. Basically, in SaaS, everyone “gets” that they need a VP of Sales. Hire not just 1-2 reps, but 10. That it’s time to bring in someone that knows.

Sales Hiring 359

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 359

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. From $1m to $10m ARR or so, as you build your first management team: You shouldn’t be the VP of Sales Anymore As You Scale. And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. Add a layer.

Part-Time VPE 273

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 273

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR. Fixing it yourself becomes the biggest time sink and excuse for not hiring there is. And even worse, you often sort of give up trying to make the hire.

Part-Time VPE 270

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 270

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. Another time, a rather long time ago, I had a senior product hire that was pretty brilliant.

Part-Time VPE 273

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 273

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2019

We then had our own mini rocketship, hitting challenges and being acquired, and then being part of an IPO. But I got to part of the management team and make mistakes, and work cross-functionally with the other leaders and managers. Third, I then managed a small team. To hire our CTO, our first VPE, etc.

Part-Time VPE 158

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 158

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. But you have to see progress in one sales cycle. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 188

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 188

Outseta

APRIL 11, 2019

Why most SaaS companies are blind to some of the best talent on the market By Geoff Roberts 9 min read I believe that most SaaS companies are missing out of a major opportunity when hiring—the opportunity to hire more part-time help, where the employee acts as a fully integrated (albeit part-time) member of the team on an ongoing basis.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Sales Hiring B2B New CTO 52

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Chief Operating Officer: Responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations, providing strategic advice, and managing the company’s operations. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects.

Sales Hiring 97

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 97

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. We all underresource customer success vs. sales. Are we sure?

CTO Hire 284

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 284

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 174

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 174

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

Just like filing your income tax returns or hanging that state-mandated safety poster up in your break room, sales tax is a back-office pain point, not a profit center. . That makes sales tax compliance easy to ignore… until it becomes a problem. . Why is sales tax such a pain for SaaS companies? There are a few reasons.

Merchant Services 172

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 172

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. Bottom-up sales. Management might even know that they’re using a product.

Underperforming Technical Team 185

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 185

Valerian Tech

JULY 5, 2023

Increasing Efficiency and Streamlining Operations Efficiency is vital in managing the complex operations of a hospitality business. Property management systems centralize operations, encompassing reservations, inventory management, housekeeping, and more.

Payment Services 52

Payment Services Technology Payment Solutions CTO Hire 52

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

A Couple SaaS Generations Ago… Traditional software companies managed sales, product development, finance and HR in siloed organizations by function. Cross functional management was attempted but often not effective. In the early SaaS days, management structure was essentially the same.

Part-Time CTO 69

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Hire Management 69

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

This led to our first meet-ups in 2013 and 2014, the first SaaStr Annual in 2015 , the industry’s leading podcast in 2016, the first SaaS founder coworking space in 2017, and SaaStr Pro , the first learning management system for SaaS founders in 2018. Teams saw on another in-person instead of behind a screen for the first time.

Scale 283

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 283

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

analyzing how often Directors and Executives are involved in the sales process. Scott pulled the research from Chorus, which reported that over five weeks (~May-June 2020), 88% more directors have been joining calls and 72% more executives are joining sales calls on the sell side. Playing the right roles.

Underperforming Technical Team 121

Underperforming Technical Team CTO Hire CTO Coach Technical Review 121

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

I’ve been reminded of this question in several meetings lately where founders are doing pretty well, getting to and past Initial Traction, but with hindsight it’s interesting that the founder that took the CEO gig perhaps was better suited to a different role, say CTO or SVP of Sales or President or COO or SVP Product.

Sales Recruiting 315

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital CTO Hire CTO 315

Valerian Tech

MAY 30, 2023

By analyzing order data, shipping times, and customer feedback, businesses can identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and recommend improvements. They can implement order management systems, shipping automation tools, and real-time tracking solutions to enhance order fulfillment efficiency.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Data Business CTO 52

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2019

What should your first management team look like? Egnyte General Manager of EMEA Charles Lawson and Egynte SDR Lara Badanes break down how to build a pipeline with no brand and sometimes no market. When I first spoke to Charles about speaking at Europa he recalled a sales rep closing a deal with Redbull.

CTO Hire 150

CTO Hire Scale Sales Hiring CTO 150

SaaStr

AUGUST 18, 2019

Even if you don’t like sales, or big companies, or whatever. Not hiring a good enough CTO. Not managing the cash burn with extreme precision. If you never thought you’d sell to sales reps, and even sort of hate sales, but that’s your core customer — embrace it. SaaS is so competitive these days.

Growth Hacking 117

Growth Hacking CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring 117

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Building a sales team that can go from $0-$50M (Video + Transcript). Gaetan Gachet | SVP of Sales @Algolia. It’s an honor to be here with this mythical creature, this sales leader that goes from zero to 50 million in the same job. He has a whole French sales team and office that only speaks English in Paris.

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 136

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 4, 2023

Most growth-stage CEOs I work with know how to tell if they’re efficiently allocating capital in every part of their budget with one glaring exception: research and development (R&D). Focus on performance management of your product and engineering teams as early indicators for what R&D investments are working, and which aren’t.

Underperforming Technical Team 125

Underperforming Technical Team Benchmarks CTO Hire New CTO 125

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They have service and all this, but the second cloud for them was sales. They wanted to sell the Amplitude product, I forget, to sales or somebody else, and that was their mistake. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. That’s how you manage your burn rate.

Outsourcing Services 193

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 193

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

Continuous risk management. Hiring and cultivating incredible talent on our Information Security team. Our InfoSec team members implement guardrails rather than gates by leveraging our skills to make balanced security risk management decisions. . Evolving our security program through a continuous process of risk management.

Data 118

Data compliance Technical Review CTO Hire 118

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Here’s an overview of the series: Part 1: How to Categorize Expenses in a SaaS Startup v2.0 Even without any breakdowns, obviously the CEO was fully aware of the company’s increased spending in sales and marketing. Even without any breakdowns, obviously the CEO was fully aware of the company’s increased spending in sales and marketing.

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

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. These were some of the things I learned from Pete.

CTO Coach 102

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 102

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 11, 2019

At Hired, we started out with a transactional model that was—at the time—a super disruptive approach and one of our key differentiators. I’ve had roles in almost every function from sales to product to customer success. At Hired , we help top R&D, engineering, and tech talent find jobs they love. Customers called us.

Sales Hiring 40

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Technical Review 40

OpenView Labs

MARCH 10, 2020

Adapting sales cycle expectations for the enterprise. Enterprise sales cycles are significantly longer and more complex than those of smaller customers. A lot of our clients want to target CTOs or C-level executives,” said Valentino Volonghi, CTO of AdRoll. That’s not always the best way to go, practically speaking.

Enterprise 52

Enterprise Software Review CTO Hire Software 52

Kellblog

APRIL 4, 2021

I’ve worked with scores of founders and companies over the years and I’ve come to make bright-line distinction between founders and managers. The CEO said to the CTO as we were leaving, “spend the $9M anyway.” At that moment I realized the difference between a manager and a founder.

CTO Coach 99

CTO Coach CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO 99

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Will Larson , CTO of Calm. Maggie Hott , Director of Sales at Webflow. Des Traynor , Co-founder and CTO of Intercom. And no one knows this better than Zanade Mann, founder and Managing Director of the Black Women’s Business Collective. But what if the manager role is not for you?

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Scale Technical Review Outsourcing Services 118

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

Which is why you should sign up for the 2 for 1 Insider Sale and get two people for the price of one. That’s the advice, Petri Hollmén picked up on the more technical side of things from the opening session on Day 2 with Cal Henderson, CTO of Slack. Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth. Covering all ground won’t be easy.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

Does Bob agree with the notion that channel sales have completely died in the world of SaaS? 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? Why is this? What are the drivers of its death?

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 132

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Perhaps the single most important thing you can ever do in SaaS, at least after $1m in ARR or so, is hire the best VPs you can. We’ve talked a lot over the years about how not to hire a wrong VP of Sales — 70%+ of the first VPs of Sales don’t make it even 10 months. You need to hire up-and-comers.

Part-Time VPE 329

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 329

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2020

What other elements of the contract should startups really spend a lot of time focusing on? How can startups clearly and articulately present their plans for security, compliance and change management? And we mentioned all the same kind of change management and real efficient change management being important for CIOs.

CTO Hire 134

CTO Hire compliance Scale Startup 134