SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2025

Most founders arent naturally great at recruitingits a skill you have to force yourself to develop. Force Yourself to Interview 30 Candidates for VP Roles Yes, 30. Use Screening Filters Create simple tests to weed out unqualified candidates before the first interview. Almost no one is.

Software Review 156

Software Review Interviewing Engineering Startup 156

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 22, 2025

Interviewers also face a new challenge: developing golden standards to evaluate AI fluency. Of course, this modern interview won’t exclude the other critical components of a high quality process , identifying characteristics of teamwork and sales skills or marketing expertise. 1 Fueled by AI.

Interviewing 113

Interviewing AI Sales Recruiting Construction 113

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2025

The CRO Hiring Playbook Has Forever Changed The interview process for revenue leadership roles now at Owner includes a mandatory AI component. They’ve increased revenue-generating activity time by 25-30% by automating CRM updates, note-taking, and pipeline management.

Sales Hiring 231

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team AI Scale 231

SaaStr

MAY 9, 2025

Listen to the Exit Interviews Our vendor finally built this feature because they started taking cancellation calls seriously. Find that magical 10x feature that will truly delight, surprise and improve the lives of your existing customers. They’re still with you — for now. So go build it for real, and just ship it.

Social Media 169

Social Media Outsourced Development Interviewing Retention 169

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development. Is a CRO right for you?

Sales Hiring 299

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Acquisition 299

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2024

They’re Late Many will challenge me here, but if they’re late to the interview, they’ll be late to customer calls, too. They Can’t Sell You This Pen I don’t know if these days, a sales rep has to come to the first interview being able to do a strong sales demo of your sales product. That’s fine.

Sales Hiring 303

Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing compliance 303

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2019

How can the business develop multiple channels of customer acquisition and avoid channel conflict? These questions are also excellent interviewing questions. When evaluating candidates, use structured interviews and work projects to maximize chances of success. The unstructured interview (let’s have a conversation!)

Product Marketing 267

Product Marketing Startup Marketing Interviewing 267

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2024

Jason Lemkin has interviewed some of the best founders on his podcast, SaaStr Annual. He approaches interviews with profound respect for the founders he interviews. He believes that he is good at interviewing founders because he is better at interviewing than they are.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Technical Review Scale 293

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 6, 2024

I quickly saw how much more impactful this approach was, how showing up for podcast interviews and other media opportunities and offering my unique expertise and point of view on PR and business-related topics made new clients much more excited to work with me. 

Business 115

Business Social Media Leadership Sales Hiring 115

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Many companies strategically use the event to meet potential hires, conduct interviews, and build their talent pipeline. Teams can divide and conquer across different tracks, then reconvene to share insights and collaboratively develop action plans.

Sales Recruiting 183

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 183

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

Define your ideal account executive profile and use that when interviewing potential reps. When we interview someone to become an account executive at Databricks, part of that process is going through a mock sales call or meeting. This score is then taken and compared to top performers already in our sales organization.

Scale 261

Scale Leadership Sales Hiring Sales 261

FastSpring

JULY 26, 2024

In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview Adam Lieb of Gamesight about his thoughts on: Why video game marketing is so complex. Podcast Full Interview: Audio Listen online or find it on more podcast services. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about developing a winning KPI strategy for game marketing.

Development 158

Development Strategy Marketing Forecasting 158

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

To answer this, let’s explore: What a market development strategy is. Real-life SaaS examples of successful market development attempts. A step-by-step process to build a viable market development strategy. Product development : Focuses on creating new products or enhancing existing ones to meet the needs of your current market.

Development 105

Development Strategy Marketing Technical Review 105

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

In the latest episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. The SDR Interview We’ve determined the profile we want to hire for dedicated outbound folks, so now, let’s look at the interview itself.

Sales Hiring 311

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 311

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview Lizzie Mintus Founder and CEO of Here’s Waldo Recruiting and host of The Heres Waldo Podcast about her thoughts on: The most effective recruiting strategies for SMBs. Podcast Full Interview: Audio Listen online or find it on more podcast services. Learn more and listen here.

SMB 107

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 107

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2023

More here: A Simple Commitment Test For You And Your Co-Founders – SaaStr Not doing enough potential customer interviews. This can save you 6–9 months of product development time in the early days. Don’t Forget the 20 Interview Rule. Too many founders shoot from the hip on what they think customers want. That is important.

SMB 274

SMB SaaS B2C Interviewing 274

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 3, 2020

We know it’s hard to apply and interview for a new job. When you interview for a design job, the process is usually mysterious: did you say the right things? When you interview for a design job, the process is usually mysterious: did you say the right things? On-site interviews. Show the right work? 5 ways to stand out.

Interviewing 290

Interviewing Systems Review Compensation Travel 290

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

So, salespeople must find different techniques to succeed and develop trust. When you interview salespeople for your startup, do you consider their experience at a market leader or market challenger? As the business scales, the company will have developed those playbooks. How does that map to your business?

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Interviewing 261

FastSpring

JANUARY 9, 2025

In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview gaming D2C and creator marketing expert Justin Sacks of Nexus about his thoughts on: What winning strategies AAA and AA publishers use for D2C in mobile. Podcast Full Interview: Audio Listen online or find it on more podcast services. Jump to video. Jump to transcript.

Payments 164

Payments Mobile Payment Methods Revenue 164

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2021

Top SaaStr Blog Posts This Week : The Top 10 Questions to Ask a VP of Marketing in an Interview. 10 Marketing Tactics That Always Work for Early-Stage SaaS StartUps. What’s the “Right” CAC These Days? The One You Can Afford. The Top 100 Private Cloud and SaaS Companies Now Have an Average Valuation of $5.2

Interviewing 277

Interviewing Cloud Startup Strategy 277

Trint

AUGUST 24, 2021

I joined Trint in the fall of 2019 as a BDR (Business Development Representative), and I’m now settling into my CS (Customer Success) role, which I started in March. When I had my interviews with Trint, I just remember thinking that the interviewers were my kind of people. What do you do at Trint and when did you join?

Outsourced Development 246

Outsourced Development Interviewing Leadership Enterprise 246

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2021

“From Developer to Founder to CEO: Engineering to Enterprise with Elastic” Elastic’s CEO Shay Banon doesn’t speak that often, so this was a special session on how Elastic became the global leader it is today. #3. “Klaviyo’s $9.5B “Klaviyo’s $9.5B

Scale 273

Scale Interviewing Enterprise Engineering 273

Tom Tunguz

MAY 20, 2019

Delegation is the only way a leader of a team or company develops leverage in the organization. Someone told me about a Vanity Fair interview with former President Obama. With it, leaders empower people and develop tremendous leverage from the organization, and the company becomes much more than the sum of its parts.

Interviewing 276

Interviewing Startup Leadership Communication 276

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Sometimes this can work, especially in a heavily freemium model, and especially when you sell to very small businesses or individual developers or small teams. At least, begin the interviewing process the month you realize new bookings growth isn’t accelerating anymore without a VP of Sales. You are growing fast enough.

Sales Hiring 326

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 326

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2023

Updated) The Top 10 Questions to Ask a VP of Marketing in an Interview (Updated) Around Year 5, You’ll Have to Build Your Third Management Team Top Podcasts This Week: 1. Implement the 5-Visits-Plus-2-Badges Rule. For Your Customer Success Team — And You. SaaStr APAC 2023: Stage A Streaming LIVE 2.

CTO 243

CTO Scale Interviewing Retention 243

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

To solve this, Deel interviewed 200 founders seeking answers to the question, “If you’re open to hiring internationally and remotely, what are your biggest challenges, and what kind of product can we build to solve them? Interview personally and define hiring values to build your team. Listen to your team.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 274

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Before starting JFrog, the founders had built a successful IT consulting firm, AlphaCSP, which focused on developing Java solutions. In other words, they got first-hand experience of the pains of software development. JFrog offered 11.6 million shares at $44 each and they spiked about 47% — putting the market cap at $6.6

New CTO 275

New CTO CTO Benchmarks Consulting 275

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

Culture — developing sub-cultures within sales that enable the team to scale successfully. A designated partner means lower rejection rates at the very first interview. Instead, develop a scalable, streamlined enablement process to eliminate any bottlenecks in success. Opt for an exclusive in-house or RPO recruiting partner.

Scale 273

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 273

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 10, 2020

These experiences, whether it is observing someone use your product, or interviewing them about your product, need to be wide ranging. The ability to ask perceptive questions is critical to running high signal interviews from which you can learn the most. This is why when I run customer interviews, I always cover a lot of ground.

Underperforming Technical Team 291

Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Communication B2B 291

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Some companies have a recruiting team and a separate talent sourcing team to identify candidates for initial phone interviews, while others have hiring managers in charge of the end-to-end talent acquisition process. Stage 3: Employee Development. Phase 3: Development . Stage 2: Employee Onboarding . Stage 4: Employee Promotion.

Underperforming Technical Team 246

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Acquisition Company Culture 246

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

Jason recently interviewed a SaaStr superfan, and about 40 minutes in, the person said they didn’t want to do some of the work required for the job. Jason recently interviewed a SaaStr superfan, and about 40 minutes in, the person said they didn’t want to do some of the work required for the job. I’m out of here.”

Sales Hiring 302

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 302

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

I sent cold emails and LinkedIn messages and ended up with nine interviews. From those nine interviews, I received four offers. Going into the interviews, I knew what I wanted out of a job– that part was simple. Together, we developed sales pitches, built out a robust sales process in just a couple of weeks.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Underperforming Technical Team 284

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 13, 2021

That’s why we’re upfront with candidates about what we look for in designers before they interview with us. We developed principles to help us make better decisions as we faced choices along the way: Explicitly build on Intercom’s core values and principles. Design candidates can better prepare for their interviews.

Interviewing 271

Interviewing Leadership Engineering Communication 271

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2022

In addition to marketing, do you also need business development representatives (BDR)? After doing the legwork of developing a GTM model, it’s time to actually build your organization—and the strength of this foundation starts with its people. Develop a simple strategy that drives interest to the top of the funnel. Sales Cycle.

Scale 273

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 273

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

After three months, this talented guy came to Harbaugh with the recognition that LaunchDarkly’s customers were developers. He didn’t like to sell to developers, so he quit. Be clear and careful when interviewing people about what they actually want. They sold to marketers, and LaunchDarkly sold to developers.

Sales Recruiting 293

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 293

Tom Tunguz

JULY 25, 2020

In interviewing great CMOs , the product marketing leader is the first marketer most startups should recruit, and often the first key mishire. Product marketing is the vital work of developing a customer lifecycle journey, pricing, sales support materials, analyst relations, and press. This makes sense.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

They developed the Open Source predecessor to their company. Like I was interviewing the CEO of $9.5 There are founders who strategically figure out what they’re going to build from Day 1. You have Databricks, they just raised 35,600,000,000 years, growing 75%. That’s very strategic.

Entrepreneurship 260

Entrepreneurship Venture Capital Interviewing Cloud 260