SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Be Careful Hiring “Dualies” — Folks That Are a VP of More Than One Thing. In The End, The “Covid Boost” in SaaS Was a Bust. Growing & Scaling SaaS Businesses from $1M to $500M in ARR with Intercom CEO Karen Peacock.

CTO Hire 213

CTO Hire CTO Sales Hiring Scale 213

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

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].

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

TechEmpower SaaS

JULY 24, 2023

Still, if you’re a business leader and your developers haven’t asked you these questions, look for a Fractional CTO to help navigate the critical early stage of development. The innovator/developer relationship needs to be a conversation.

Innovation 780

Innovation Development CTO Hire Technical Review 780

TechEmpower SaaS

DECEMBER 11, 2023

While the appearance matters, remember you are hiring the development firm primarily for its development skills, not its graphic design skills. cto , product , saas Quality of Work: The end product should not only look good but function as expected. tew_cta text="Do you have an idea for a software project?

Software Development 443

Software Development Development Software Review Software 443

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

As your SaaS company grows and you go through various fundraising stages, your company size also grows. 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? David Sacks: SaaS Background and Investments.

CTO Hire 237

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 237

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and management team : SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. SaaS products get too complex to hack a product roadmap too long. Or churn will increase, NPS will stagnate and decline, and upsell and revenue retention will be a fraction of what it could be.

Part-Time VPE 231

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 231

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers. I just see this time and time again.

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 283

SaaStr

JULY 23, 2021

Brian Peterson, CTO @ Dialpad. Nicole Culver, Director of Product Marketing, SaaS @Bandwidth. Dave Walters, CTO, Hired. Christa Diaz, Senior Director, Customer Success, Hired. Amy Pisano, CRO, Hired. Jenn Knight, Co-Founder, CTO, AgentSync. Zach Kitschke, CMO, Canva. Tom Clayton, CRO @ Bill.com.

VP of Engineering 273

VP of Engineering New CTO CTO Hire Sales Hiring 273

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. 71% is the public SaaS company median. But these contracts produce compelling economics.

CTO Hire 361

CTO Hire CTO Coach Benchmarks Scale 361

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: About 70% of SaaS Public Companies Are New Versions of Existing Categories of Software (Updated) Growth Slowed Down About 33% On Average For Everyone in Q1 The Top 20 SaaStr Tips to Getting a SaaS Start-Up Going When Should You Add a Second Product?

CTO Hire 195

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Scaling 195

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . “A Hiring in a streamlined manner with a rigorous selection process initially builds momentum for long-term goals.

Scale 193

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 193

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

What started as a simple WordPress blog in 2012 has now become the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. And SaaStr Europa brings 2,500+ SaaS execs, founders, and VCs together to Europe every summer. We were the first major SaaS event back in the SF Bay Area. SaaStr is turning 10!

Scale 272

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 272

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Confused about trying to understand SaaS roles? SaaS companies have many moving parts, and it can be difficult to determine who does what. TL;DR SaaS, or “Software as a Service,” is a business model that delivers centrally hosted software to subscribers over the internet. What is a SaaS business model?

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

Hundreds of thousands of experts are telling you how to succeed in SaaS. SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares the 10 worst pieces of SaaS advice, excuses, and mistakes founders make, and what to do instead You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. Hiring someone too junior. Yes, you do.

Part-Time VPE 174

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 174

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

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

Ode to the $100,000,000 Exit Dear SaaStr: Should You Hire Someone That Seems Good … But Always Job Hops? SaaStr 639: Scaling a SaaS Sales Team While Building Culture with Figma VP of Sales Scott Pugh   3. SaaStr 636: Extreme Product Design: Building Things People Actually Use with Stripe CTO David Singleton  5.

Scale 196

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 196

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Zendesk and Anaplan: A Tale of Two Very Similar, And Very Different, $10B SaaS Acquisitions. The Ultimate Guide for Hiring a Great VP of Sales. Balancing Growth and Efficiency in Tougher Times | Point Nine Managing Partner Christoph Janz.

CTO Hire 187

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Scale CTO 187

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

There, Amplitude has become part of the core product stack for many SaaS and software leaders for product analytics. Use overages to renegotiate contracts, not charge per event. Folks come out differently here, but while Amplitude charges per volume, in part, it doesn’t make a material amount from overages.

Scale 257

Scale CTO Hire New CTO CTO 257

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 350

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 350

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 272

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 272

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

Because as a SaaS founder especially, it can be hard to know. ” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” I recently asked on Twitter when folks knew their startup had something … great. 20% conversion.

CTO Hire 275

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 275

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. But I forced us to hire him, over my CTO’s strong objection and my VPE’s grudging acknowledgment we had no choice. It was a hire I wasn’t really in favor of, but it was an experiment.

Part-Time VPE 273

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 273

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. And hire against it. More here.

Part-Time VPE 257

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 257

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 170

Sales Hiring Enterprise CTO Hire CTO 170

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

The main benefits of categorizing your SaaS company’s expenses are more accurate metrics and forecasts, and getting a better understanding of your company’s overall spending. Here’s an overview of the series: Part 1: How to Categorize Expenses in a SaaS Startup v2.0 This is a v2.0 New Gross Margins?

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

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 146

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Payment Methods 146

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

This post will walk you through what SaaS companies need to know about sales tax compliance, how to know when and from which customers you should collect sales tax, and best of all, how to automate sales tax so you can check “Do something about sales tax” off your to-do list once and for all. Why is sales tax such a pain for SaaS companies?

Merchant Services 171

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 171

How To Buy Saas

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

Traditionally, a data annotation specialist is hired to perform this task manually, but numerous automated processes have also been developed to perform this activity through AI applications. Hiring an on-premises data annotator is a costly option. A remote CTO is effective in maintaining this perfectly.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence CTO 40

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. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on.

CTO Hire 268

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 268

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

SaaStr has now passed 10,000+ pieces of content, and we’ve somewhat gone on a journey from the early days of a SaaS company, through the growth phases, to the Unstoppable phase, and now has time has gone on, even to the Decacorn phase ?? Sometimes when you start a company it’s 100% obvious who the CEO should be.

Sales Recruiting 315

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital CTO Hire CTO 315

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

A Couple SaaS Generations Ago… Traditional software companies managed sales, product development, finance and HR in siloed organizations by function. In the early SaaS days, management structure was essentially the same. The SaaS operating model requires execution across functional activities.

Part-Time CTO 69

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Hire Management 69

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

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. It might even be months later that a VP of Engineering or a CTO or CFO realizes that they’re built on a new platform. The contract size grows.

Underperforming Technical Team 173

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 173

SaaStr

AUGUST 18, 2019

Here’s my list in SaaS: Being reluctant to go up-market. A bit more here: Why There Is a 50/50 Chance You’ll Tilt Upmarket in SaaS | SaaStr. A bit more here: Why There Is a 50/50 Chance You’ll Tilt Upmarket in SaaS | SaaStr. Not hiring a good enough CTO. SaaS is so competitive these days.

Growth Hacking 116

Growth Hacking CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring 116

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. First, hire a management coach to work with you as the company grows. The best ways he found to learn leadership skills was to hire a management coach to meet him once per month, to talk through the issues facing him at Optimizely.

CTO Coach 102

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 102

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?

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup Outsourced Development 121

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. Wade Foster is Co-founder and CEO of Zapier, a SaaS company that allows users to integrate web applications they use. “The Cadence: How to Turn Your SaaS Startup into an Army.”

Payment Services 100

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 100

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

And it really makes no sense because I’ve asked so many of the best SaaS CEOs that are public how to go multi-product. And the best one of all, if you didn’t see it, we did it at one of our digital events this year was Spencer Skates, CEO of Amplitude, one of my favorite SaaS CEOs. We have a 60% chance that we can do it.

Outsourcing Services 178

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 178