SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2025

While competitors invested in huge sales teams, Atlassian actually restricted direct customer interaction. Instead of treating feature requests as a liability, they used them as market research for third-party developers. 5 Nonobvious Learnings from Atlassian’s Path to $10B 1.

Sales Recruiting 202

Sales Recruiting Marketplace as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Scale 202

SaaStr

JANUARY 15, 2021

Maybe you think developers are weird beasts that type on a keyboard pushing out code, and then as soon as they become indispensable, they quit. At his core, Jeff Lawson is a software developer first, and the CEO of Twilio second. In turn, developers need to adapt. You may ask, “When can we ship this?”

Sales Recruiting 233

Sales Recruiting Development Software Review Management 233

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.

Sales Hiring 296

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Acquisition 296

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

They hired their first VP of Sales with a wonderful pedigree and experience at some of the hottest startups. 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. because they needed to rebuild the sales team.

Sales Recruiting 290

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 290

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. Lead generation tools do change, but the basic motions of sales and marketing haven’t changed much.

Scale 281

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 281

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

They talked about product adoption, sales alignment, freemium models and lessons they have learned throughout their successful SaaS careers. As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. 20 VCs do come to me to invest in the company now. Jyoti Bansal: Let’s switch topics to sales.

Sales Recruiting 260

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 260

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

David Sacks: SaaS Background and Investments. In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. David Sacks has invested in over 20 unicorn companies, including Airbnb, Bird, ClickUp, Facebook, Slack, and Uber. Head of Sales. VP Sales (45 Employees).

CTO Hire 281

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 281

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

The team is typically highly cross-functional, working together with sales, product, engineering, and marketing, and the goal is to help the other teams make better decisions through data and financial modeling. This role can be recruited through headhunters or your network. Invest in next-gen finance tooling.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

In 2019, the founding team at Storyblok set out to create a content marketing solution that worked for everyone—developers and marketers alike. Storyblok started with a leadership-first hiring plan and a recruitment strategy that involved the following: A test to know how candidates handle different tasks and their expertise level.

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 245

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2021

And at a sales perspective, they’ll move to optimizing revenue per lead, over closing every possibly lead. Once sales and marketing gets to be all about the top line, you need to let some marginal customers just go, if for no other reason than holding on price. Harder to Recruit. More on that here.

Scale 288

Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 288

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

For example, sending a kickoff gift tailored to a customer’s recent experiences or interests shows you’re paying attention and invested in their journey. GTM 120: Avoid the AI Sales Skills Atrophy Trap with Peter Kazanjy Pete Kazanjy is a serial founder, and seasoned early stage Saas executive, advisor, and investor.

Scale 109

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring AI Search 109

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. The opportunity emerged out of a shift in how we practice sales. Starting a new sales team is not unlike doing improv.

Sales Hiring 172

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 172

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. Being willing to invest in an internal recruiter or talent manager (or more broadly, an HR person) early on requires pretty big balls a lot of confidence.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2022

We took the series A, interesting enough, the first executive hired by, thanks to the sales coaching, actually was marketing. Luciana: I had been telling people that the inflection point came when Accel invested, but I guess it was market and product and all that good stuff. We do have a network of recruiters. Luciana: Right.

Sales Hiring 271

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 271

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2019

Andrei Brasoveanu will sit down for a conversation with Agnes Bazin Doctolib on how to create a targeted and effective sales process tailor-made for SMB. Agnes Bazin | Chief Development Officer @ Doctolib. She’s part of the founding team Doctolib, and the current chief development officer for the company. Andrei B.:

Sales Recruiting 121

Sales Recruiting SMB Scale Sales Hiring 121

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

So the other day I looked back at about 25 SaaS seed investments I’d made that had scaled well past $10m-$20m and reflected on the top themes. They are all avoidable : #1: Stepping Out of Sales Ok really this is mistake #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5. Instead, how they spend time in sales changes. And so sales goes down.

Sales Hiring 309

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 309

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. Define your ICP as early as you can and segment your sales team accordingly.

Scale 271

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 271

How To Buy Saas

MAY 21, 2025

Whether youre a startup , an SMB , or a global enterprise , the right ATS can streamline your recruitment process, save time, and help attract top talent in a competitive market. Recruitee Best Collaborative Recruiting ATS Pricing: Key Features: Ideal Use Case: 4. Whats the difference between an ATS and a recruitment CRM?

Systems Review 52

Systems Review Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review 52

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

I want to come be your VP of sales and, you’re going to meet me for the first time. Spencer : For me, the key things for a VP of sales is, “OK, tell me about your best reps. We’re trying to recruit someone that’s way above our weight class, so that we can actually scale. You hire a search firm.

VP of Engineering 290

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 290

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2019

Andrei Brasoveanu will sit down for a conversation with Agnes Bazin Doctolib on how to create a targeted and effective sales process tailor-made for SMB. Agnes Bazin | Chief Development Officer @ Doctolib. She’s part of the founding team Doctolib, and the current chief development officer for the company. Andrei B.:

Sales Recruiting 110

Sales Recruiting SMB Scale Sales Hiring 110

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

1: How Sales and Marketing Have Shifted Since 2020 Expectations and the types of people working in SaaS have shifted over the past few years, and much more in sales, marketing, and customer success. . #1: I can leave my horrible sales job making $240k OTE and be a solopreneur. You can listen to the full podcast here. #1:

Sales Hiring 299

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 299

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

An open discussion with Sam Blond, CSO at Brex, and Kristen Habacht, VPS at Atlassian, about adjusting their sales process during Covid-19. Kristen Habacht runs EDR sales at Atlassian, which I got a check today, $40 billion-$50 billion company. She manages a huge global team. Four, people in the sale? Jason Lemkin: None.

Merchant Services 255

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 255

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2017

It’s another thing altogether to have the sales team staffed to close that amount of business. The bookings capacity of the business is the amount of business a sales team should book in a certain period. They build a pipeline, learn the sales motion, and close a few accounts in the first few months.

Sales Hiring 124

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 124

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

What Nobody Tells You About Seed Investing with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Cowboy Ventures Founder and Partner Aileen Lee. I think it gives us a perspective that maybe we don’t get in some other places, in addition to many great investments over the years. You have two partners and one or two other investing?

Technical Review 202

Technical Review Investment Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 202

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Co-founder and CEO at Greenhouse, Daniel Chait, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin to share what’s new at Greenhouse, a successful recruiting software company at $200M in ARR today. The swing nature is true for where to invest marketing dollars, so founders need to be thoughtful when running a portfolio of bets.

Sales Hiring 277

Sales Hiring AI SMB Scale 277

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 20, 2022

Strong sales reps are the lifeblood of your business and how you choose to invest in them matters. For frontline sales managers, attributes like competency, quality of work, ease of execution, and length of contribution indicate reps’ overall job success, but you can’t rely on those inputs to tell you if they are personally satisfied.

Sales Recruiting 114

Sales Recruiting Scale Retention Sales 114

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

“The shift from serving just consumers to serving consumers and companies is a massive one” For Udemy, investing in a B2B arm seemed too obvious, and too good, an opportunity to ignore. When Yvonne joined in 2016, the business unit consisted of just 10 people across product, engineering, sales, and marketing.

Marketplace as a Service 243

Marketplace as a Service Scale Sales Recruiting Business 243

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Founders may reduce staff, particularly in recruiting or new projects that the company prefers not to finance. This company invests $12k in month one to acquire a customer and receives $1k in payment, netting -$11k in cash flow. Growing this way requires a lot of cash to finance the acquisition investment. Six months to ramp.

SaaS Payments 124

SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Payment Services 124

InsightSquared

MAY 15, 2019

It’s one of my favorite questions to ask a fellow professional in sales operations. Insurance sales rep. Account Manager. Sales Operations is Still Developing. Sales operations as a profession is growing, yet it is a comparatively new function in businesses. Sales Ops is Many Disciplines in One.

Sales Recruiting 110

Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 110

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Sales leaders like Florin Tatulea (Director of Sales at Barley) feel the impact from the past few years alone: “Pure cold outbound is 3x harder than it was in 2021.” Sales team members should capable of understanding at least a few key signals and knowing which subsequent actions based on those signals will have the greatest impact.

Sales Recruiting 120

Sales Recruiting Strategy Systems Review Sales 120

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

“Researchers acknowledge and invest in the ‘ what’, but often forget to slow down and understand the ‘ why’ – the people behind the numbers and emerging trends”. They acknowledge and invest in the “what”, but often forget to slow down and understand the “why” – the people behind the numbers and emerging trends. Disproving assumptions.

Sales Recruiting 157

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Trends 157

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Your sales team is integral to your business’s success: not only do your salespeople bring in the big deals, but they also represent your company and culture to every new and potential prospect. So why is sales team culture still an afterthought for so many organizations? People all across the company are so proud of our sales team.

Sales Hiring 144

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 144

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be. Sanj has plenty of experience scaling sales teams at growing businesses, and that’s precisely why, as of November of last year, he‘s overseeing EMEA sales at Intercom.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

It was, kind of, like a developer friend who had a startup, so they saw their transactions on the terminal. It took probably six months developing all the back, and infrastructure, KYC, AML, and all the regulatory requirements to be able to issue a card in five minutes. Because in a way, they’re also investing in you, in somehow.

Sales Hiring 212

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 212

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 2, 2021

By failing to acknowledge the differences early, teams risk misallocating their focus and energy when solving problems, investing too much or too little in each one. “ Investment . Investment. If not, investment will be higher. That said, ranking investment shouldn’t be driven purely by estimating effort.

Innovation 251

Innovation Sales Recruiting Investment Strategy 251

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 25, 2019

Given that the primary metric we measure growth in is revenue, it follows that sales feels growth more acutely than almost any other function. As the Senior Vice President of Sales for Pipedrive , she’s currently responsible for building nimble sales teams who drive sustainable revenue.

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 136

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 28, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast , we talk to Jamie Scarborough , Co-Founder of the Sales Talent Agency, one of the largest sales recruitment firms in North America. . The keys to building your own business as a career sales professional. Moving into sales from other industries. We’re on iTunes.

Sales Recruiting 94

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Management 94