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.

Sales Hiring 154

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 154

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: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales?

CTO Hire 182

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 182

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Michael Seibel, YC Partner and CEO of YC’s Startup Accelerator @ Y Combinator. Jeffrey Yoshimura, CMO and Customer Experience Officer @ Snyk. Amy Appleyard, VP Sales @ VMWare. Michelle Benfer, VP, Head of North America Sales @ HubSpot. Christine Spang, Co-Founder and CTO @ Nylas. Dave Walters, CTO @ Hired.

VP of Engineering 269

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder CTO Coach CTO Hire 269

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

Devon Rutherford, Managed Services Program Manager & Pre-Sales Manager @ Leaseweb. Jules Costa, Content Manager @ BEE. Michael Seibel, YC Partner and CEO of YC’s Startup Accelerator @ Y Combinator. Amy Appleyard, VP Sales @ VMWare. Michelle Benfer, VP, Head of North America Sales @ HubSpot.

VP of Engineering 263

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder CTO Coach CTO Hire 263

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

There are roughly 2 types of start-up management teams. The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. They often staff up their teams with folks they already know and have been successful with at their last startup. Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales.

Part-Time VPE 233

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 233

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2022

The Ultimate Guide for Hiring a Great VP of Sales. Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? Top Podcasts This Week: SaaStr 568: Mind the Gap: Balancing Growth and Efficiency in Tougher Times with Point Nine Managing Partner Christoph Janz. 10 Common Misconceptions About Getting Funded.

CTO Hire 197

CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Scale 197

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.” But you have to see progress in one sales cycle.

Part-Time VPE 183

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 183

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So to serve both segments at the simultaneously, ZoomInfo has been rolling out a Product-led sales motion, that gives the ability for an SMB customer to sign up directly on their website for a free trial and grow into a paid customer, without ever having to talk to an sales rep or go through a demo process. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo?

New CTO 249

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring AWS 249

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

One of the most popular sessions at SaaStr Annual, Busting the Myths About Startup Success with BlackLine CEO and Founder Therese Tucker is up at the top of our must-watch list. I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. Don’t be that guy with your startup. The reality is most startups fail.

Startup 270

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 270

The SaaS Garage

DECEMBER 15, 2022

repath , an emerging Impact startup founded in Hamburg in 2021, raises €1.2 “It’s important and that we are in line with the current state of the art in science and that we see ourselves as a research-based impact startup.” The post Impact startup repath raises 1.2 repath raises 1.2

CTO 52

CTO Startup Venture Capital Transportation 52

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2022

All startups have issues and challenges, and all deals have some “hair” on them. While startups have ups and downs, if you tell the VCs you’re going to hit $250,000 in revenue this month … make 100 percent sure you hit that projection. This is surprisingly common in startups with more than two or three founders. Who is the CEO?

Finance 278

Finance Technical Review CTO Hire New CTO 278

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

As a founder/CEO, building your first management team is something that you often lose sleep over. 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. And for good reason.

Sales Hiring 254

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 254

OpenView Labs

MARCH 17, 2020

When you ask average questions, you get average hires. If a potential senior hire has gotten so far as to talk with the CEO , she’s probably someone the company wants. Related: Are You Hiring for Culture Fit or Culture Add? For example, I met with a new client recently, the CTO of a fin-tech startup.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team 52

OPEXEngine

JUNE 16, 2020

The 90-Day Rule , which argues that new managers need to be decisive about who stays on the teams they inherit. Startup CEOs generally fall into one of two categories and the category is likely to predict how they will approach the ownership issue. Hired CEOs: It’s the Board’s Company vs. It’s My Company to Run.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Venture Capital Technical Advisors 59

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. The different roles in SaaS companies: Chief Executive Officer : As the highest-ranking executive, this person ensures the company runs smoothly and employees are happy and engaged. Average salary: $46,035/yr. Average salary: $105,761/yr.

Sales Hiring 91

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 91

User Pilot

MARCH 7, 2024

So I talked to several female leaders in SaaS – about their experience with breaking into leadership positions in tech startups – what challenges they’ve faced, and how they managed to overcome them. Melissa Kwan : “I quit my job in SAP and wanted to start a company that uses technology. Sima Banijamali – Sr.

Technical Review 103

Technical Review CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire 103

SaaStr

AUGUST 18, 2019

Even if you don’t like sales, or big companies, or whatever. Not hiring a good enough CTO. If you never thought you’d sell to sales reps, and even sort of hate sales, but that’s your core customer — embrace it. A bit more here: 15+ of The Top Sales & Marketing Mistakes SaaS Startups Make | SaaStr.

Growth Hacking 115

Growth Hacking CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring 115

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. Before Quip, Sam spent an incredible 3 years at Dropbox where he was the first enterprise sales rep in the entire company. Should you hire 2 at a time?

Scale 171

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 171

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

Indeed this was also my #1 mistake and the #1 I see from so many startups learning to go upmarket. 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.

CTO Hire 276

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 276

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 169

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 169

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2019

For me, it took a while to build up the experiences and confidence to get there: First, I worked with enough startups and CEOs to “get it”. I had a chance as a startup lawyer working in “Silicon Valley” to work with 20+ startups. Second, I joined the best startup that would have me, as a Director and then Senior Director.

Part-Time VPE 155

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 155

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

A big part of why we are seeing this growth is that our customers have found that when they use Intercom to engage their website visitors, conversion rates and sales increase by more than 80%! That means we’ll be hiring 350 people over the next 18 months across our offices in San Francisco, Dublin, London, Chicago and Sydney.

Scale 195

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Engineering 195

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 101

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 101

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

. * How does one know when we need to hire generalists vs specialists? Karl has been in every interview for every new hire for the first 6 years of the business, why? * Karl has been in every interview for every new hire for the first 6 years of the business, why? How does Karl structure the hiring process today?

Sales Hiring 215

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach 215

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 243

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 243

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

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 do have a slight preference with respect to the team size as well, but it's light because I've seen and worked with very successful SaaS startups with different team sizes.

CTO Hire 106

CTO Hire Startup Sales Hiring New CTO 106

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

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. They have service and all this, but the second cloud for them was sales. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product.

Outsourcing Services 188

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 188

Kellblog

JANUARY 29, 2020

The majority of startups solve a problem that is already being solved in some way today. Most interesting ideas attract several startups so, odds are, you have fairly direct competitors pretty much from inception. Some startups have relatively complete teams while others have only a CEO and CTO and a few functional directors.

Startup 99

Startup Sales Hiring CTO Hire New CTO 99

SaaStr

JULY 19, 2019

250: Peter Yared is the Founder & CEO @ InCountry, the startup that allows you to operate globally with data residency as a service meaning they store your mission-critical data in it’s country of origin, without compliance. Previously, Peter was also the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive where he brought CBS into the cloud.

VP of Engineering 130

VP of Engineering CTO Hire Technical Review Sales Hiring 130

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. You need a lot of education.

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2020

I retired from SunGard Treasury Systems as their CTO. Don’t be that guy with your startup. The reality is most startups fail. Even after we did our pivot to the accounting automation and optimization, we still had desperate moments. year sales cycles. You have to learn things like how do I scale my sales force?

Startup 154

Startup CTO Hire Scale CTO Coach 154

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. Identify ideal customers and hone sales personas. You can use customer health scoring in a few different ways: 1. Get it done faster.

Startup 91

Startup Scale Systems Review Technical Review 91

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 106

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Technical Review 106

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

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. The Gold: these are very rare and hard to achieve at the scale-up stage, so you’ll mostly encounter them with startups. Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth. Covering all ground won’t be easy. Full post. . Full post. .

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

A thanks to [Marsh 00:00:34] for stepping in at the beginning of the month, and a great session with our own Jason Warner and Adrian, the CTO of Zendesk. This is a program where we invite luminaries from the startup world to share their insights. Lionetti, the CMO at Confluent, and most recently, the CTO from Zendesk, Adrian.

CTO Coach 125

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 125