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. Q: How Do You Get Sustainable Output In A Startup?

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

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 278

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 278

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

Indeed this was also my #1 mistake and the #1 I see from so many startups learning to go upmarket. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on. Are we sure? A bit more here.

CTO Hire 321

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 321

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

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.”

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

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 258

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 258

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Last night I read this question on Quora : In general terms, what is the ideal size and make-up of a team for a pre-revenue SaaS startup? I think the second part of the question is more important. This can be a huge advantage, especially for a bootstrapped startup that can't afford to hire many people.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

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. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 283

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

But as time went on, we shared lessons, what best practices were in customer success and revenue retention and all these things are, right. They were aware of it, but startups that I work with closely or invested in, if they got all the way to 25 million with 75% NRR, I would tell them to quit today. Jason Lemkin: Our base.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Many people are doing great, even private companies like Netskope, which are growing over 30% at $500M in revenue. Canva is growing at 40% and has a revenue of $2.3B. Klaviyo is growing 42% at $750M, coming up on a billion in revenue, and number one in the Shopify ecosystem. How does a startup benefit from this?

CTO Hire 141

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 141

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

So even the freshest new SaaS startup celebrating their 50th customer may find themselves dealing with sales tax in multiple states. . Last but not least, if your sales tax noncompliance gets too out of hand, dealing with multiple states’ sales tax laws means that 46 state departments of revenue can potentially come after you for back taxes.

Merchant Services 192

Merchant Services Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring 192

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.

Sales Hiring 246

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.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale VP of Engineering 92

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

We ended up signing that contract in the uber back to the airport on the way home. It was our largest contract to date, kind of helps the other quarter. He was a VP of product at a series D startup, so a little bit ahead of us and we just had a real connection. For example, I referenced hiring a Chief Revenue Officer, Bill.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 171

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. After building their initial prototype, the team presented at Startup Weekend in Columbia and won. “The Cadence: How to Turn Your SaaS Startup into an Army.”

Payment Services 111

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 111

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

After four months of an unprecedented global crisis, SaaS companies are bouncing back while product led growth businesses are trading at almost 2x higher revenue multiples they started with. Now’s the Time to Revisit Your Pricing. Don’t leave revenue on the table, drive growth by optimizing your pricing. Find out here.

Pricing 138

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 138

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.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

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?

Scale 117

Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 117

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. How to Increase Revenue by 19% [36:37]. How to Increase Revenue by 19%.

Sales Hiring 89

Sales Hiring Revenue CTO Coach CTO Hire 89

User Pilot

MARCH 7, 2024

This could be explained by the fact that it was women, more often than men, who had to step down and work part-time to take care of stay-at-home children during the pandemic. Then I got hired at a tech company in Lithuania before I knew what tech even was. Sima Banijamali – Sr. I knew nothing about tech.

Technical Review 105

Technical Review CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire 105

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Here’s an overview of the series: Part 1: How to Categorize Expenses in a SaaS Startup v2.0 Cost of Revenue Let’s start with your Cost of Revenue. The gist of it is that Cost of Revenue includes costs that go into providing your Software as a Service. Use area charts for more detail.

Startup 90

Startup Merchant Services DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Since 2010 we’ve seen more startups, funds, and capital than ever before, but with this drastic increase, investors are seeing unexpected new trends reshaping the future of the industry. I think it’s more around a consciousness of what you know, or what you may not know, and then hiring around it to become successful.

New CTO 171

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 171

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. What to do before building a team for your SaaS company You can’t just jump into hiring without some forethought, or you’ll make many mistakes. Before the hiring process, take some time to decide on your current needs and hire as your company grows.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

In this framework, you’ll learn how to design a scoring system that aligns to your growth strategy, brainstorm and select leader indicators of success, and operationalize the system across your startup. Accurately forecast revenue retention and expansion. Through this work, it can drive new revenue opportunities.

Startup 91

Startup Scale Systems Review Technical Review 91

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

An early entrant to the SaaS field, the company has pioneered a number of fields that are now commonplace in the industry — content marketing, the transparent startups movement, and remote work. Joel had what he calls “an honest conversation” with Buffer’s CTO Dan. Established in 2010, Buffer hardly needs an introduction.

Payment Solutions 113

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Social Media 113

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Tim has spent his entire professional career focusing on productivity, from Sybase to TLA-Tencor to Facebook where, over his six-year tenure (2010 – 2016), the amount of revenue per employee doubled to $1.8 Tim: I was hired in 2010, when Facebook was what I like to call a “teenage company”. million apiece. Calendars are broken.

Artificial Intelligence 169

Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire Technology 169

Sales Hacker

MAY 5, 2021

Here are just a few topics that our RevOps leaders talk about in Linkedin posts, articles and podcasts: Revenue acceleration plans. A career in RevOps is a great way to help your career, and have a big impact on revenue. Asia Corbett Director of Revenue Operations, Postal.io. Fixing visibility issues in your sales org.

Scale 119

Scale Technical Cofounder Technical Advisors Sales Hiring 119

Baremetrics

MARCH 16, 2021

QuikNode is a Miami-based startup powering blockchain applications with lightning fast Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polygon, BSC and xDai nodes. QuikNode wants to see technology transform decentralized applications, smart contracts, decentralized governance, voting systems, and more. There are so many things that can be evolved,” says Shklovsky.

Blockchain 90

Blockchain Payment Solutions Artificial Intelligence Payment Services 90

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 20, 2024

You could either spend, you know, you raise some venture funding, you could either spend some of that funding on hiring out a whole team and developing all those competencies, or you can spend that on making your model even better. I think different startups will choose different paths here. Adam: Yeah.

AI Search 143

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 143

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

The Gold: these are very rare and hard to achieve at the scale-up stage, so you’ll mostly encounter them with startups. 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. Full post. . Full post.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

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. That is a natural hurdle for PLG motion.

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

Hacking Revenue

AUGUST 4, 2016

We can put together a WordPress website and we have some fancy badges in CodeAcademy, but no CTO in his right mind will let either of us touch their production environment and/or keyboard. We know the tools, we know the methods and we know how to hire and manage people. With the full BOOK of instructions, we get busy hiring.

Software 75

Software CTO Hire Scale New CTO 75

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Will Larson , CTO of Calm. Des Traynor , Co-founder and CTO of Intercom. On this episode of Scale by Intercom, we spoke with Farhan to learn more about where the future of customer support is heading, and how understanding customer behavior can help to drive revenue in the future. A few years later, joined a startup.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Technical Review Scale Outsourcing Services 118

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. Why positioning matters? It's worth a billion dollars How many companies "could" have been Dropbox or Slack?

Strategy 128

Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring Engineering 128

Point Nine Land

APRIL 9, 2021

So if you’re a US-based startup, you might be able to shoot slightly higher ;) Unlike SaaS companies which have been around for years, B2B marketplaces are a relatively new category and not many investors have invested in them yet. In general, European rounds tend to be slightly smaller and valuations slightly lower than they are in the US.

Marketplace as a Service 59

Marketplace as a Service Payments B2B SaaS Payments 59

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

An early entrant to the SaaS field, the company has pioneered a number of fields that are now commonplace in the industry — content marketing, the transparent startups movement, and remote work. Joel had what he calls “an honest conversation” with Buffer’s CTO Dan. Established in 2010, Buffer hardly needs an introduction.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Features Outsourcing Services Payments 52

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2025

The Infrastructure Math Is Unprecedented The Capital Intensity Is Off The Charts: Big Six tech CapEx: $212B annually (63% YoY growth) Microsoft AI business: $13B run-rate (175% YoY growth) NVIDIA data center revenue: $39B quarterly (78% YoY growth) Amazon AWS CapEx as % of revenue: 49% (vs. 80% cheaper than predecessor, costs 0.2%

AI Search 254

AI Search AI CTO Hire ChatGPT 254