SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Developers act, think, and behave differently than your average customer. As an API-first company, WorkOS focuses on selling primarily to developers. Doing Business with Developers. Developers haven’t typically been the buyers in enterprise software, so why should you build for developers?

Underperforming Technical Team 184

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 184

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 29, 2018

Those unfamiliar with what product engineers do could be forgiven for assuming that it’s all broadly the same job. The shift from one type of job to another has highlighted for me the stark differences between different engineering disciplines. Being a Consultant Engineer.

Consulting 169

Consulting Engineering Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team 169

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 15, 2018

As a startup scales, the importance of infrastructure engineers simply can’t be overstated. They’re the ones making sure your app is secure, that uptime looks good, and that the rest of your engineering org has the right tools to build features your users need and want. The tenets of foundation engineering at Stripe.

Engineering 214

Engineering Management Merchant Services DevOps as a Service 214

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 25, 2019

That attitude can extend to engineering, too. When trying to solve a problem with software, it can be tempting to build an exciting, complex solution. At our event Building Intercom in Dublin, I argued that when it comes to building software, we should avoid excitement and embrace boring. How do we develop with it locally?

Software 168

Software Underperforming Technical Team Technology Engineering 168

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 20, 2018

I came to Intercom from a company with a culture of heavyweight engineering processes. From an engineering perspective, it successfully kept you focused on coding. Processes have to serve the development of the product. No separate QA team. It was a well-oiled machine with battle-tested and often updated procedures.

Engineering 212

Engineering Underperforming Technical Team Innovation Consulting 212

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Scaling a support team is challenging enough as it is. Maybe you’ve just extended support hours and it’s becoming harder to plan shifts for different time zones; maybe you’re spending hours figuring out schedules for the week ahead; maybe the inflow prediction was a bit off and now your team is under or overstaffed.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 10, 2020

I hope this post allows people and teams to safely talk about Product Judgment. If you ever had to face a Manager, Director or Exec as they make bad product decisions and you’re struggling to persuade them otherwise, this post will help you. It takes years to build, and therefore ranges from very weak to very strong.

Underperforming Technical Team 291

Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Communication B2B 291

Audacix

MAY 11, 2023

A vulnerability assessment tools or virtual app scanning for your software team has become as important as your git repository or your ticket management system. API vulnerability scanner API security testing ensures business data packets that move between two software applications and ip addresses are secure.

Underperforming Technical Team 52

Underperforming Technical Team Software Cloud Software Engineering 52

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

In engineering, you want to move fast, ship often and solve real customer problems. Yet competition and the exponential rate of change in software are pushing against that mission. Enter our philosophy of Run Less Software. Rich: Today I’m the Senior Director for Foundations Engineering at Intercom.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

More business people than engineers. Learn about your investors previous bad investments (this could determine your fate!). #2 Causes: Weak previous relationship. 5 Slow product development. Engineers aren’t involved in park decisions. Bad co-founder relationships. Discouraged or disengaged engineering team.

Underperforming Technical Team 178

Underperforming Technical Team Startup Engineering Retention 178

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

Their goal is to build a cohesive revenue engine with ever-growing disjointed parts. That’s why I’ve built out the Revenue Engine Framework to help drive you to success. Revenue Engine Optimizers Focus on the Entire Customer Lifecycle. PEAS explains the what of the Revenue Engine. This is the how of the revenue engine.

Technical Review 121

Technical Review Development Team Review Systems Review Engineering 121

Neil Patel

JANUARY 25, 2021

Everyone has questions when it comes to choosing data analysis software. Luckily, data analysis software can seriously simplify data analysis—provided you choose the right one. How to Choose the Best Data Analysis Software for You. Data analysis software isn’t a cheap investment, so use caution when making a selection.

Data Analysis 128

Data Analysis Software Data Scale 128

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 15, 2018

On day one as Reddit’s new VP of Engineering, Nick Caldwell faced a dilemma. He had just spent 13 years at Microsoft, most recently as the head of 300 engineers. At Reddit, he led a team of 35 – none of whom knew how to manage other engineers. Managers oversee their team members’ work and career development.

Leadership 141

Leadership Engineering Part-Time VPE CTO Coach 141

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

While running my financial modeling software business Flightpath (Now Forecast+) , we often get the question “Which SaaS billing platform should we use” from our customers. If you get the setup wrong, you end up with bad data, incorrect reports and forecasts, which has a material impact on the business.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payments Software Review 52

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2021

As it turns out, he’s also quite the writer – since the last time we spoke , he has published not one but two books on engineering. After writing An Elegant Puzzle about the challenges of engineering management in high-growth organizations, his focus shifted to a career path that’s much less understood – the technical leadership track.

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 19, 2018

As up and coming engineers in Silicon Valley, Jean Hsu and Edmond Lau long sought more influence and impact in their respective positions – but they couldn’t shake the feeling of being stuck. Many engineers feel like they must make a jump into management to lead. Jean: Especially with engineering teams.

Engineering 135

Engineering Leadership Software Review Technical Review 135

OnStartups

MAY 18, 2021

All the points below have been pulled from startup sales teams that I think work pretty well (including the team at CRM software company, HubSpot). Building Startup Sales Teams. You're an engineer/designer/whatever. Don’t think VP of Sales — think “Revenue Engineer”. Don’t hire sales people too early.

Sales Hiring 110

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Startup 110

User Pilot

APRIL 6, 2023

Developing and releasing sophisticated products with all the bells and whistles imaginable might seem like a great idea. After all, you want your newly released software to be as good as it gets when it’s finally launched, right? Low feature adoption is one of the symptoms of over-engineering. Book the demo!

Underperforming Technical Team 89

Underperforming Technical Team Management Interviewing Scale 89

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

They are hiring leaders, building teams, and attracting advisors in the US while devouring the SV SaaS playbook. Software demand is softening. AI is likely the next platform, dev tools are strategic given the scarcity of developers, cybersecurity is front and center for enterprises, and the data stack is still going strong.

Scale 219

Scale Sales Hiring Cybersecurity Underperforming Technical Team 219

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

TL;DR SaaS, or “Software as a Service,” is a business model that delivers centrally hosted software to subscribers over the internet. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams.

Sales Hiring 94

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 94

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

We pulled from my prior marketplaces experience and dove into their business quickly to develop a point-of-view on the opportunity. Prior to founding Instacart, Apoorva was a fulfillment optimization software engineer from Amazon. It truly has been a team effort. Grocery is the largest retail category in the U.S.,

Marketplace as a Service 142

Marketplace as a Service Scale Underperforming Technical Team Construction 142

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 5, 2021

Over the past decade, software has created tremendous value for investors and businesses, thanks largely to its transformative effect on the economy , its role in developing new cloud-based business models, and its ability to increase efficiency in operations. Sticky after all. Four ways to drive value.

Software Review 52

Software Review DevOps as a Service Software Underperforming Technical Team 52

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

A market gap can be caused by missing functionality or poor user experience. Tracking user behavior in-app enables product teams to find ways to improve product experience. Competitor analysis enables PMs to find areas where rivals fail customers and develop sound positioning and differentiation strategies.

Underperforming Technical Team 91

Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Market Research Outsourced Development 91

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

sales team. We disrupted this space and ended up pushing out software vendors that had been doing this for 25, 30 years. I did all sorts of things there from sales, to project management, to running the engineering team, hiring. This is where I got my chops in growing and scaling enterprise sales teams. I love Duo.”

Scale 221

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 221

Casey Accidental

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

This can make it tricky to evaluate as an engineer, designer, product manager or CEO if the investment will bear fruit and whether one should keep going. I’ll explain how I think about these decisions as a product leader and give more context on the journey of developing entirely new products inside a company.

Underperforming Technical Team 63

Underperforming Technical Team Scale GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Startup 63

CloudGeometry

MAY 22, 2021

If only some developers in the past had been more virtuous, frugal, expert, what have you, we could have… (“Closed that deal! In modern software development, velocity is the intended outcome of distributed SaaS and cloud-native environments. Engineers do seem to like to blame technical debt on other engineers: more here ).

software development velocity 130

software development velocity Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Cloud 130

User Pilot

JANUARY 8, 2024

As you read on, you will learn: The power of search engines, content marketing, and existing user testimonials and how to leverage them to win new users. Leverage search engine optimization (SEO) in your marketing strategy Identify relevant keywords related to your product or service and optimize your website content accordingly.

Acquisition 100

Acquisition Strategy Social Media Underperforming Technical Team 100

User Pilot

AUGUST 21, 2023

Product managers often work in cross-functional teams and bridge the gap between multiple departments. Product managers need to put themselves in the shoes of company executives, other team members, and of course end users so a strong affinity for empathy will go a long way. What qualities do you look for in a strong product team?

Interviewing 82

Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Management Sales Hiring 82

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2019

Classic agencies don’t value the software enough to engender pricing power, develop fast sales cycles, or change the operations of their business to maximize the value of the ML innovation. Consequently, product market fit is weak. And they ought to develop that pricing power. Third, how to employ the labor force?

AI 191

AI Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Machine Learning 191

Point Nine Land

MARCH 15, 2022

If you take a look at a 50 person sales team, you’ll likely find it to be very data-driven. They usually track low-level metrics about their app performance or errors, and agile teams have burn-down charts. Previous attempts failed or didn’t get a lot of adoption, usually because of some combination of these issues: Poor data quality.

Investment 52

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Engineering 52

OpenView Labs

MAY 19, 2021

Though her early education didn’t include programming, she dabbled in HTML as a kid and wound up graduating with a degree in biomedical engineering. After college, Ashley joined Twilio and played a key role in helping the company reach, engage, and convert its developer audience. Core values: Getting it right with developers.

Underperforming Technical Team 52

Underperforming Technical Team Development Technical Review Marketing 52

ChurnZero

MARCH 15, 2019

Churn Monster #10: Bad Fit Customer . We’re talking about a bad fit customer. A bad fit customer is a customer who is unable to receive value from your product or service due to a mismatch of currents needs and offerings. You are worried you have acquired a bad fit customer. What do you do?

Underperforming Technical Team 45

Underperforming Technical Team Churn Software Review Compensation 45

Stax

JANUARY 29, 2024

For example, if you’re an invoicing software provider that lets SMBs manage their billing, then it makes sense to add payment processing tools to your platform. Sub-merchants are having a poor payments experience Another tell-tale sign of having a sub-optimal payments partner is if your customers (i.e., Look at your vendors.

Merchant Services 88

Merchant Services Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 88

Casey Accidental

MARCH 29, 2022

A common issue leaders in product management, design, or engineering face is justifying investment in the “non-sexy” stuff. Non-sexy things include general user experience improvements, performance, developer velocity, infrastructure, technical debt, and, fortunately less than it used to be, growth. User Experience.

Investment 139

Investment Underperforming Technical Team User Experience Scale 139

Kellblog

OCTOBER 21, 2021

Today, I call them “pipeline sources” but I’ve also heard them referred to as “pipegen sources” (as in pipeline generation) and even “revenue engines” which I think is an over-reach, if not a well intentioned one [2]. The over-reach is they’re not really engines, more fuel sources.

Underperforming Technical Team 131

Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Advertising Forecasting 131

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 7, 2019

At the Product-Led Institute, we developed the “Triple-A” sprint, which focuses on rapidly identifying problems, building solutions, and measuring impact. The Triple-A sprint gives you a way to build a sustainable growth process and can be used by any team in your business. Ask yourself: Which part of your business is underperforming?

Underperforming Technical Team 69

Underperforming Technical Team Development Churn Metrics 69

Baremetrics

OCTOBER 31, 2021

It distracts the team from writing new features + fixing bugs. You have to face challenging tradeoffs, the more of your team’s time you buy with hosted services, the less customization and higher cost you incur. Wait… that’s bad news. Decide how much DevOps you want in your Development.

AWS 115

AWS DevOps as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review 115