SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

I’ve come to almost exclusively invest in founder-CEOs that are engineers. Or at least where the co-founder CTO is a true equal partner to the CEO. Unless again, you have a true CTO as well, that is also leading the company. But usually there is an amazing CTO from Day 1. I look at the 25+ seed investments I’ve done.

Outsourcing Services 234

Outsourcing Services Engineering CTO Scale 234

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2020

Q: What was your failed investment experience and where will you never invest funds again? I’ve made about 30 material investments. Most have been successful, but of course not all have and I’ve been reflecting on the ones that didn’t, because they still had attractive elements when I invested. Great CEO But Mediocre CTO.

Technical Cofounder 222

Technical Cofounder Investment New CTO CTO 222

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2022

Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone, discuss how different approaches have helped each brand reach its target audience and accomplish its goals, the potential of product-led growth, and how to scale growth strategies to yield desirable results. tip their toes in new growth strategies.

New CTO 195

New CTO CTO Scale Innovation 195

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

Co-founder and CEO of Plato, Quong Hoang, the #1 mentoring platform for engineering leaders , helped moderate a discussion between CTO of Change.org, Elaine Zhou, and Head of Engineering at Notion, Michael Manapat, on this subject. As a company, you need to invest as much in your employee’s personal growth as they do.

CTO Coach 212

CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO CTO 212

Valerian Tech

DECEMBER 14, 2022

There are many benefits to hiring a fractional CTO, also known as a part-time or interim CTO. A fractional CTO can bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to your organization without the added expense of a full-time executive. Overall, Valerian Technology can provide many benefits to your organization.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Technology 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2024

My experience across leading 30+ seed investments, including 4 billion+ exits so far, on why startups fail: Not 200% committed to winning no matter what. There are other reasons startups something do “Good But Not Great” or just OK, but that don’t lead to failure IMHE: Great CEO, Merely Good CTO.

Startup 204

Startup Scale CTO Pricing 204

Valerian Tech

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

However, they are still relatively new and their value can be extremely volatile, making them a high-risk investment for some people. How can CTO’s help ensure the Success of a Cryptocurrency Project? Foster community engagement: The CTO should engage with the community and seek to understand their needs and feedback.

Part-Time CTO 52

Part-Time CTO CTO CTO Coach CTO Hire 52

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

I’ve come to almost exclusively invest in founder-CEOs that are or were engineers. Or at least — where the co-founder CTO is a true equal partner to the CEO. But usually there is an amazing (in terms of cleverness, if not always pure skillset) CTO from Day 1. I look at the 25+ seed investments I’ve done.

Outsourcing Services 177

Outsourcing Services Engineering CTO SaaS 177

TechEmpower SaaS

OCTOBER 9, 2023

It gives stakeholders an opportunity to assess the benefits and challenges before making additional investment on iterative improvements. cto , infotech , innovation , product , project , saas However, you often get a 70% solution pretty quickly through a Proof of Concept - and it’s often already better than the existing search.

AI Search 519

AI Search Artificial Intelligence Generative AI AI 519

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

David Sacks: SaaS Background and Investments. David Sacks has invested in over 20 unicorn companies, including Airbnb, Bird, ClickUp, Facebook, Slack, and Uber. David considers product to be its own department that should also report directly to the CEO, instead of falling under the CTO. CTO (40 Employees). Team Size: 12.

CTO Hire 234

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 234

SaaStr

JULY 24, 2022

Personally, I’ve made about 30 VC investments (see SaaStrFund.com), 6 of them unicorns, and 0 CEOs have been fired. However, perhaps more importantly, the 2 CEOs I’ve invested in that have decided to bring on an outside CEO, in both cases with the encouragement of the board. That’s when they can fire you.

Technical Cofounder 234

Technical Cofounder Venture Capital Startup CTO 234

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2023

A few that I’ve seen across the handful of investments I’ve made … that didn’t work out: Not really committed to going long. A great CTO usually can solve this problem just in time to save the customers, but without one, revenue stalls. What are some qualities of a bad startup CEO/founder in Silicon Valley?

Startup 191

Startup New CTO CTO Investment 191

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? We are currently investing out of our 9th Early Stage fund, a $650M vehicle.

Management 212

Management CTO Hire New CTO AI 212

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2022

And if they are seed investing in the round (surprisingly common) — disclose it! Half of a VC investment is in the CEO. If you don’t know who that really is, it’s difficult to invest. If it’s a party round, or at least, a group round … at least make sure the VCs in the round know who else is investing.

Finance 271

Finance Technical Review CTO Hire New CTO 271

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

I’ve invested in 5 start-ups that had a $1,000,000,000+ cash exit or IPO. Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Dear SaaStr: What Qualities Make a CEO The Best In Their Industry? The CEOs were all quite different. Some extroverted, some introverted. Some wicked smart, some merely very smart.

CTO Hire 206

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 206

TechEmpower SaaS

AUGUST 21, 2023

At TechEmpower, we’ve done over 50 technical reviews for budding startups, scaling enterprises, discerning investors, and ambitious companies seeking investment or acquisition. cto , infotech , innovation , product , project , saas Do I really know what’s going on under the hood?

Technical Review 390

Technical Review Software Review Development Team Review Systems Review 390

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 20, 2021

As a result, much of the evaluation, investment, and rollout of virtual training technology in 2020 was rushed, limited in scope, and poorly planned. Businesses must take a step back, evaluate their software investments, and rework their implementations. How to maximize customer training investment.

Investment 95

Investment Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Scale 95

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2022

But say this to a VC, and that’s not a sign of founders they want to invest in for the next 5–10 years. “We Our CTO is leaving.” We need the money to get sales and marketing going.” While logical, again, this isn’t what VCs want to hear. Not jump start it. Important to know.

CTO 275

CTO Engineering Startup Revenue 275

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2020

He joined StubHub as CTO, but didn’t get nearly as much equity as the other CTO — because he “wasn’t committed enough.” They wanted to invest in apps, not APIs. He went to $125,000,000 in value — all stock — for his start-up to … $0 in 18 months. But a few investors got it.

CTO Hire 335

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Airlines 335

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 15, 2022

Investing in education. We believe one of the most important ways we can contribute to diversity in the industry is by investing in education. Darragh Curran , our Chief Technology Officer, emphasizes how promoting diversity has to be more than just a question of how we hire.

Software Engineering 104

Software Engineering Engineering CTO Software 104

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

What makes a bad CTO? What types of due diligence are undertaken by VCs before investing in a company? As a CTO in a startup, what should I do when the CEO wants to interfere with making technical decisions? He has met Adam Neumann for only 4 minutes and decided to invest $4.4 What should I do? How much does a VC make?

Software Review 276

Software Review CTO Coach Technical Review Sales Recruiting 276

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Tips: to manage OKRs, and KPIs with ease with Kashinath Kadaba Shrish, Cofounder & CTO at Fitbots Leveraging new age AI technologies(GPT and NLP) to increase Organic Traffic using Scalenut with Saurabh Wadhawan, CoFounder at Scalenut What are the best marketing channels for SaaS B2B businesses?

VP of Engineering 228

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder Outsourcing Services CTO Coach 228

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2023

Ok we’ve now got the final speaker list locked down for 2023 SaaStr Europa in LONDON on 6-7 June: CEOs, CROs and CXOS : Edith Harbaugh, Executive Chair & Co-founder @ LaunchDarkly Nowi Kallen, Managing Director @ Salesforce Ventures Spencer Kimball, CEO @ Cockroach Labs Joe Thomas, Co-founder and CEO @ Loom Sterling Snow, Former CRO @ Divvy (..)

VP of Engineering 201

VP of Engineering CTO Coach New CTO CTO 201

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2023

Reference other great investments they’ve made, and why they are similar. Share up front why your first CTO left. And no one is in a rush today to invest. But hiding both doesn’t help. #3. Cold outreach and email does work but please, please slow it down and make it great. Truly hyper-personalize it. Share lots of details.

New CTO 237

New CTO CTO Banking Cloud 237

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When customers get back $100k’s in minutes and want to pay us more” — Kanat Bekt, founder/CTO, SupplyPike. Received 6 unsolicited angel investment offers from ordinary people. “When we had 1 in 5 people using our products across cafes.

CTO Hire 275

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 275

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

Less and you under-invest. At $8m in ARR, if you have $2m of cash in the bank, you get real nervous investing much more than $500k-$750k, $1m max. It’s subtle, but in SaaS I’ve learned you under-invest if you have < 50% of your ARR in the bank. 5/ Moving from CTO-led -> VPE-led dev team. More here.

Part-Time VPE 254

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 254

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2022

But it can blow up on you if the CTO has issues, or your co-founder is leaving, etc. 50% or more of each investment is in the team. Write your own investment memo. Forget the business plan, but instead, write a memo on why if you were a VC, you’d invest in your own company. Sometimes, they really will just invest Later.

CTO 244

CTO Investment Branding Churn 244

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Lightspeed has invested in companies for about 20 years, with roots in early-stage Enterprise investing. Enterprise technology spend has remained resilient , with Cloud spend tripling over the last year. In November of 2021, Abhay was the CTO at Adobe, and they were investing a lot in AI, but not GenAI.

AI 204

AI Artificial Intelligence Healthcare New CTO 204

The SaaS Garage

DECEMBER 15, 2022

In order to complete the platform and drive growth, Julius Proell and his co-founders Liza ALtena (Chief Sales Officer), Sebastian Bartels (Chief Technology Officer) and climate expert Dr. Thomas Remke (Chief Climate Officer) have collected 1.2

CTO 52

CTO Startup Venture Capital Transportation 52

OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

We needed a CTO. If the challenges around hiring a senior developer late in the game are high, hiring a CTO can be even tougher. But we can hire 3 x junior developers for the cost of a CTO!” Appointing a brilliant CTO became our number one talent priority. Let’s talk about the CTO. It feels really expensive!

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

BetterCloud

SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

Our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Andra Milender defected from a medical career track before finding her footing on a technology path. What does your role as the CTO entail? You wear all hats as CTO. The definition of CTO is so broad and that’s what I like about this role! Go Yankees!

Part-Time CTO 8

Part-Time CTO CTO New CTO Technology 8

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Amazing, great emails that are perfect, that solve your problems as a buyer for real right now, or are a jaw-dropping investment, get opened,” says Lemkin. Truly great founders that have a great CTO that can build amazing software and they do not quit and commit for years and understand a market, I’ve seen zero percent fail,” says Lemkin.

CTO Hire 174

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 174

SaaStr

JANUARY 22, 2021

Ciara Peter (Gainsight VP of Product & Design) and Mickey Alon (CTO & Founder of Gainsight PX) share their practical tips for product leaders looking to achieve business growth. The return on marketing investment is much faster. What does it mean to make your product the star in your SaaS growth strategy?

Scale 258

Scale New CTO CTO Acquisition 258

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2020

Your investors and others will learn a lot more hearing about sales from your VP of Sales, your CTO co-founder … and not you. Just assume none of your investors invest again. Professional investors can even write off any given investment if they have to. All-hands meetings, board meetings, whenever. Yes, you are the CEO.

Sales Recruiting 329

Sales Recruiting New CTO Scale CTO 329

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2020

As the year starts to wind to a close, one exercise I go through with many CEOs I’ve invested in or am close to is this: Did you ship at least 3 truly game-changing features this year? What were they, and how did they truly move the needle? You’d be surprised if CEOs are being honest how many fail this test. Not just at $0.1m

New CTO 209

New CTO CTO Engineering Investment 209

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

When Lemkin started investing ten years ago, his first five early-stage investments were wildly successful. Talkdesk is worth $10B, and he invested when it was just five people. Get a good CTO and commit to understanding your market and staying in the game. Pipedrive sold for $1.5B. Algolia’s valuation is $2.25B.

Scale 230

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 230

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Once this is in place, start investing in paid channels. Invest in a unified data platform. Hire a CTO and unify the entire data function. You need someone to focus on the funnel, understand the leaks, and get them fixed. Collaboration is complex, especially with big teams and multiple functions.

Scale 183

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 183