SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

Founder CEO Todd McKinnon was VP of Engineering at Salesforce and left to start Okta in the depths of the last downturn. Seat Contractions Have Brought NRR Down From 120% to 111% While 111% NRR is still quite an engine at this scale, the drop in NRR from seat contractions explains a good chunk of the headwinds Okta has seen. #2.

Fractional VPE 282

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 282

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2024

The best engineers and CTOs build and release better software faster than the competition. That placeholder for the VP of Finance never gets the financials done, and the VP of Marketing talks and talks but hasn’t ever worked with a sales team. When you hire that VP of Engineering who never learns the product, it doesn’t work.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Venture Capital Fractional VPE 306

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2019

Come and hear about the typical pitfalls (and how to avoid them) from Pat Poels, an executive with over seven years under his belt leading Eventbrite’s now 300+ strong engineering team that sits across North America, South America, and Europe. I started right at the end of 2011, and I started in the role of VP of engineering.

Engineering 184

Engineering Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 184

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 210

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 210

Tom Tunguz

MAY 1, 2014

Earlier this week, I wrote about the increase in cash compensation and decline in equity grants to VPs of Engineering and Product in startups. The graphs are broken out by last Series of investment (A, B, C and D) and show the equity compensation trends of CEOs, VP of Engineering and VP of Product.

Trends 100

Trends Fractional VPE Startup Part-Time VPE 100

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Hire the VP of Marketing, MBA, the VP of Sales, MBA, the VP of Customer, MBA, the VP of Engineering, MBA, and now, the odds of any semblance of survival, let alone success, are vanishingly small at this point. The issue the SMBs had was, “Well, I’m a 20-person consulting company.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 290

Outseta

MAY 8, 2020

Best of all, the types of smart people that you run into in tech run the gamut from highly technical software engineers, to massively creative designers and marketers, to analytical data wizzes and finance experts. As a US citizen, it’s very clear to me that many of our best and brightest go into this field.

Part-Time VPE 102

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 102

Sales Hacker

JULY 8, 2019

With Conga, you can simplify documents, automate contracts, and execute e-signatures so you can focus on accelerating sales cycles and closing business faster. They were engineers who invested in properties and over time built what is the foundation of the platform, and then over the years it has grown and scaled to what it is today.

Customer Success 67

Customer Success Scale Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 67

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2019

Scott Beechuk, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, brings together world-class SaaS engineering leaders Claire Hough, Vijay Gill and Weiping Peng for a dynamic conversation on where SaaS technology is headed, how to build top performing engineering teams and what it takes to lead in today’s high-velocity engineering environment.

Engineering 155

Engineering Part-Time VPE Technical Review Fractional VPE 155

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2022

Dave Kellogg, Principal @ Dave Kellogg Consulting. Michael Manapat, Head of Engineering @ Notion. Krista Moroder, Director of Engineering @ Checkr. Pierre Alain Bouchard, VP of Engineering @ Zendesk. Pierre Alain Bouchard, VP of Engineering @ Zendesk. Giorgos Ampavis, VP of Engineering @ Tide.

Technical Cofounder 246

Technical Cofounder Fractional VPE CTO Engineering 246

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

There are a handful of us, but most of us are either from engineering or product backgrounds. It’s pretty rare that a VP of sales comes out and founds his or her own SaaS company. One of maybe the top 10 mistakes everybody makes is they want to hire this VP of sales too early. I’ve made a bad VP of Sales hire.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 284

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

When it comes to seamlessly scaling your applications, a top-notch engineering team will be your foundation. Like none of that would be possible, we’ve got a very strong engineering and product team. We all see the positive effects of having a great engineering team. As I mentioned, a good engineering team like challenges.

Scale 169

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 169

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

Like a VP of engineering would go to some conference, and hear someone on stage talking about how they need to be spending all their time doing recruiting, etc, etc. ” Then it turns out that a VP of engineering doesn’t have time in their day to do searching, and writing outbound emails, and so on and so forth.

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 283