Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Given that their guidance is so universal — both for people just stepping into new roles and those at fast-paced companies like Buffer — I thought I’d share their wisdom here. Andy Yates, Staff Engineer 📍Started at Buffer in June 2012 as iOS Engineering Lead 🌎 Location: California, U.S.

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VP of Engineering Part-Time CTO New CTO CTO 92

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

5/ Moving from CTO-led -> VPE-led dev team. Most of us hire a VP of Engineering to take over from our CTO because we see the CTO is getting burnt out, or has trouble building a dev team > 8-9 folks, or gets disinterested in solving technical debt, bugs, etc. That’s when you want to lean in. More here.

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 283

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. Something new to boost your ACV and TCV. Double your pricing for new customer, on the largest deals. At least by the time you are hiring 1 new employee per month. Add a layer. At least on the big customers.

Part-Time VPE 278

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 278

User Pilot

MAY 1, 2024

Before starting his own venture, Lenny worked in the product and engineering teams of companies like Airbnb and Neustar. Following the acquisition, he transitioned from engineering to the product team , marking a pivotal moment in his career. How did Lenny Rachitsky get started in product management?

Underperforming Technical Team 79

Underperforming Technical Team New CTO Interviewing CTO 79

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Throughout the year, we’ve talked to business leaders, experts, and pioneers about all kinds of topics: from creating world-class customer experiences to the challenges of running a business during the pandemic, from being an ally and addressing gaps in diversity to building technical leadership careers. Will Larson , CTO of Calm.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Scale Technical Review Outsourcing Services 118

BetterCloud

MAY 17, 2021

Since then, he’s risen rapidly through the ranks and has established himself as a true thought leader in the world of quality engineering. Prior to joining BetterCloud as our new VP of quality, Waithe was a director of engineering at MailChimp. ” That was the catalyst for me to think about leadership and management.

New CTO 52

New CTO Part-Time VPE CTO Coach CTO Hire 52

Casey Accidental

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Product: Product Leadership , Product Strategy , User Insights for Product Decisions , Product Management Foundations , Mastering Product Management , Data for Product Managers (new). Engineering: Scaling Product Delivery , Technical Strategy , Engineering Management (new). Product Leadership.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO Scale 52

OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

I’m focusing on engineering in these examples, but the experience applies to other areas of the business. What we didn’t have was a solid engineering foundation, and we needed to build an engineering team from scratch. What we learned, however, was that having engineers was not the same thing as having engineering.

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

SaaSHolic

MAY 5, 2023

The cost of capital has gone up, and digital markets have returned to normal market sizes, leading to a new environment of lower valuations and less money in the market. Responsible tech in an era of hostile tech Rebecca Parsons, CTO (Thoughtworks.) Web Summit Rio, day 3.

Technical Review 90

Technical Review VP of Engineering Development Team Review Software Review 90

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. The best ways he found to learn leadership skills was to hire a management coach to meet him once per month, to talk through the issues facing him at Optimizely.

CTO Coach 101

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 101

Frontegg

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Despite being extremely busy, Ramli is always open to new ideas and collaboration offers. #5 Co-Founder and CTO at Gainsight (Former GVP of Engineering at Marketo). Sachin is a seasoned PLG expert who is constantly developing new product strategies. He is consistently publishing new articles and insights on his website.

Social Media 52

Social Media CTO Coach Technical Review New CTO 52

Neil Patel

AUGUST 23, 2021

Why You Should Follow Gary: With video content that delivers day after day, Gary sounds off on the latest trends, serving as a weathervane for the digital community, as well as informational videos about leadership and self-care. What Rand is Known For: Co-founder of Moz, Rand knows all there is to know about search engine optimization (SEO).

Marketing 128

Marketing CTO Coach Entrepreneurship AI Search 128

Audacix

JULY 18, 2022

It is focused on making collaboration between developers and operations engineers (ops) easier, faster, and safer. After interacting with many new DevOps teams, my sense is that many of them are hamstrung by the imagination and risk appetites of their senior leaders, in a classic case of you don't know what you don't know.

DevOps as a Service 52

DevOps as a Service Technical Review CTO Coach Underperforming Technical Team 52

Audacix

JANUARY 1, 2019

After interacting with many new DevOps teams, my sense is that many of them are hamstrung by the imagination and risk appetites of their senior leaders, in a classic case of you don't know what you don't know. Amazon's tech innovation czar (and CTO) put it best as early as 2006, when he said: “You build it, you run it.

DevOps as a Service 75

DevOps as a Service Cybersecurity Scale New CTO 75

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

Are marketing becoming the new sales team with their content being used more and more in the sales funnel? Sam Taylor: On my first leadership role, I was the first enterprise sales rep, a manager of mid-market team. Bret was formerly the CTO at Facebook. And so I was their first sales leadership hire.

Scale 185

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 185

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Additionally, “leapfrog” candidates—those who come from a level below the C-suite, such as senior vice presidents—now make up roughly 5% of new chief execs. I would also encourage you as a new executive to have a separate executive coach. I didn’t want them to have to go through a CS leader to get to engineering.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

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! I’ll do whatever it takes.

Part-Time CTO 8

Part-Time CTO CTO New CTO Technology 8

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

Is the CTO involved in these decisions? But if you want to grow fast, you want to innovate and take care of those customers and the energy that goes into these pricing games, especially for new CROs and revenue teams. And funds aren’t just coming from new folks, but existing investors with bigger funds. That’s not true today.

AI 265

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 265

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

Erica Schultz is Chief Revenue Officer @ New Relic, the company that gives you the real time insights your software driven business needs to innovate faster. Prior to their IPO, New Relic raised over $214m in funding from some of the best in the business including Benchmark, Insight Venture Partners and Blackrock, to name a few.

Scale 189

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 189

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

With more companies launching and thriving outside of Silicon Valley, regions such as ‘Silicon Slopes’ in Utah and ‘Silicon Alley’ in New York City are gaining traction within the startup scene. Bob Moore: And I was t nerdy engineer in college, so getting the opportunity to have to pitch, it’s really a sales job at the end of the day.

Sales Hiring 133

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 133

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 31, 2019

. “Take the work out of work, that’s my motto in life” Prior to that, I was the CIO of another large Fortune 500 company called KLA-Tencor, and the rest of my life has been in software engineering: building tools to help people get things done without having to do all the work. Balancing human-computer interaction.

Artificial Intelligence 169

Artificial Intelligence Scale CTO Hire AI 169

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

When it comes to seamlessly scaling your applications, a top-notch engineering team will be your foundation. Julian Lemoine, Co-Founder, and CTO of Algolia will share his lessons learned on how to stay focused and innovative as you scale while also avoiding the innovation for innovation’s sake pitfalls. Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020.

Scale 130

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 130

User Pilot

MARCH 7, 2024

of leadership roles. I wanted to learn more about what challenges are deterring women from entering leadership career paths in tech. I got my masters in Computer Science and I had different roles since I joined tech companies in 2013, in different roles: product, design, engineering.” Again…Why? Else : “Yeah absolutely.

Technical Review 105

Technical Review CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire 105

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

For Slack, that was clearly the engineering and dev communities, who love new tools. They love new ways of working and were happy to bring Slack into their functional teams and say, “Let’s experiment with this new way of working.” And it was very successful. Product can do a huge amount there. Is that what you mean?

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Leveraging the power of cloud technology, SaaS has re-engineered the way we look at modern technology and software. Know the best strategies to enhance your SaaS career Make use of key insights from leaders, companies, and communities Engineer your SaaS marketing strategy based on their expertise. Aaron Levie. Dharmesh Shah.

VP of Engineering 10

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

Great to see a lot of repeat attendees and some new ones. 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. Lionetti, the CMO at Confluent, and most recently, the CTO from Zendesk, Adrian. I’m Travis Bryant.

CTO Coach 129

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 129

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2018

At our inaugural SaaStr Europa last June, podcast host-with-the-most Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. Engineers like it. Ross : There’s loads.

Technical Advisors 167

Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 167

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

Being an engineer can give you the upper hand as a CEO because you understand the product. And also, we always prioritize the features requested by our existing customers over the new prospects. Mallun Yen : So, you were an engineer by training and then you became an engineering leader, as the CTO of Webex, and then you became a CEO.

Sales Hiring 136

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 136

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

So I would say that’s a leadership failure for a lot of CEOs, right? QUESTION 6: My company is a very technical product and somebody serious software and it’s a new category you were creating like scratch. He talked about how he’s selling a product in the engineering space or to engineering as a buyer.

Sales Hiring 167

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 167

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2019

Prior to founding Twilio, Jeff was the Founder & CTO @ Nine Star Inc and enjoyed a spell at Amazon as a Technical Product Manager. Before that, he worked for 12 years at Trilogy, where he held key leadership roles helping the company grow from a start-up to a $300 million business. What were his core learnings from that? *

Underperforming Technical Team 134

Underperforming Technical Team Development Software New CTO 134

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

Jason Lemkin: 50 reps in a new city that you’ve never met, and hired in 60 days when you’re in the low millions ARR. Not just in engineering and product, but in every level. Engineering always told you it was impossible. And 10 great engineers will do it, but then you need 30 people to support it.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2019

And my education, I went to MIT to study mechanical engineering, and I think I would have thought I was going to go into the pump business like my father. I remember when I was in business school the internet was brand new and back then the hero was Jerry Yang. I was more of an engineer, MBA. Number one, commit to the summit.

Sales Recruiting 182

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Payments 182

Upscope

JANUARY 5, 2020

When an engineer turned marketer helps position multiple companies to grow from, for example, $2 million to $70 million in 18 months, it's time to listen. 10 companies show you their positioning strategy How Superhuman achieved positioning by creating an engine Upscope's SaaS positioning lesson? This is not one of them.

Strategy 128

Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring Engineering 128

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

Karl has been in every interview for every new hire for the first 6 years of the business, why? I started my training on the technical side, thinking I wanted to be a scientist or engineer, in particular, thinking I wanted to do research. He had worked as a CTO at a startup when he dropped out of school. What works?

Sales Hiring 222

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach 222

Frontegg

FEBRUARY 1, 2023

2023 has commenced with a plethora of business challenges, but innovation is still going to be on the minds of engineering teams worldwide. LeadDev New York March 14-15, New York Tickets: Basic LeadDev Pass – $1499 LeadDev is almost here. Frontegg will be a sponsor of LeadDev 2023 New York.

VP of Engineering 59

VP of Engineering Development Cybersecurity New CTO 59

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 9, 2020

We look at the death of the 10 blue links and why Google is now an answer engine as opposed to a search engine. And that got me started thinking about this concept of search engines and that’s where it all came from. And then lastly, we also had a lot of thought leadership content. Kevin: Absolutely.

Technical Review 199

Technical Review Scale Underperforming Technical Team Software Review 199

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2020

Why does Paul believe that the builders are the new pro athletes? People are struggling ,as well as organizations, obviously, but they’re also super willing and keen to try new things to improve how they work. In a COVID world, where employee appetite is actually pretty high to try new tools. How will their comp change?

CTO Coach 181

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Software Review CTO Hire 181