SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

Daniel Kahn, Global Open Finance Lead @ Plaid. Sara Hicks, VP of Product, Commerce @ Mailchimp. Devon Rutherford, Managed Services Program Manager & Pre-Sales Manager @ Leaseweb. Mariela Towers, Head of Marketing @ BEE. Jules Costa, Content Manager @ BEE. Amy Appleyard, VP Sales @ VMWare.

VP of Engineering 261

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder CTO Coach CTO Hire 261

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

As a founder/CEO, building your first management team is something that you often lose sleep over. Which role should you hire for first? For starters, your first hire should be someone who can complement your skills, someone who is strong in areas where you’re weak, but it goes much deeper than that. And for good reason.

Sales Hiring 252

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 252

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2020

343: Kyle Parrish is the Head of Sales @ Figma, the company that helps teams create, test and ship better designs from start to finish. To date the company has raised over $132M in financing from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, a16z, Index, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins to name a few. What worked? What did not work?

Sales Hiring 186

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Advisors 186

OpenView Labs

JUNE 3, 2021

If you aren’t clear on what product marketing is, how it’s different from product management, and what the responsibilities of a product marketer are, you’re not alone. Engineering manages IT. Hiring managers take on HR responsibilities. CEOs “hit the streets” and sell.

Product Marketing 93

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Startup Scale 93

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

As part of our last three annual finance and operating benchmarks surveys, we’ve asked nearly 2,000 startup founders and leaders of B2B SaaS businesses this simple question: “What’s keeping you up at night?”. Startup founders are seeing hiring become their day jobs . Software companies are hiring significantly more than ever before.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2022

Yet, it’s crucial to understand how to set the right goals for your sales teams to ensure optimal growth. When to Set Your First Target: At the early startup stage, founders are focused on acquiring the first customers, finding the right product-market fit, and getting their company off the ground.

Sales Hiring 252

Sales Hiring Revenue Finance Startup 252

OPEXEngine

APRIL 12, 2022

For a CFO, do you require an accounting or finance background? Remember it’s a mutual sales process. Unless you’re blessed to be at the hottest company in town, always remember that recruiting is a mutual sales process. And, yes, we succeeded with the hire!) Have a product marketing manager give a presentation.

Sales Recruiting 40

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Finance 40

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Katrina Wong, VP Marketing and Demand Generation @ Segment. Asawari Samant, Head of Marketing @ Anyscale. Amy Appleyard, VP Sales @ VMWare. Michelle Benfer, VP, Head of North America Sales @ HubSpot. Kady Srinivasan, Head of Marketing @ Klaviyo. Jessica Weimer Vice President, Global Revenue Marketing @ Podium.

VP of Engineering 265

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder CTO Coach CTO Hire 265

Tom Tunguz

JULY 21, 2022

Finance told us our budget is decreasing by 20%.” Management teams expect to reduce operating expense by 20% predominantly through headcount reductions or hiring freezes - everyone from sardine startups to public megalodons. Account executives selling mission-critical software should breathe easy.

Sales Hiring 139

Sales Hiring Headcount Software Finance 139

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Initially, most companies start by focusing their marketing on where they have the most product market fit. At this stage, your marketing team should be laser-focused on finding out what resonates with your ICP: what are their needs are, how to serve this market, how to differentiate yourself vs competition.

Scale 186

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 186

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

In this article, we’ve outlined the major roles that move the needle in terms of product growth alongside their KPIs and current salary ranges. Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects.

Sales Hiring 88

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 88

OPEXEngine

JUNE 16, 2020

Most of the time, in my experience, VCs run in advice/support mode, but if a company starts to have continual performance problems, is considering a new financing, or evaluating potential exit opportunities (e.g., Hired CEOs: It’s the Board’s Company vs. It’s My Company to Run. However, some do [5]. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Venture Capital Technical Advisors 59

Kellblog

AUGUST 31, 2022

To adapt Julius Caesar’s famous opening line of the Gallic Wars : marketing as a whole is divided in three parts. Product marketing (prodmkt), responsible in a word, for the message and how well it resonates with customers in the market [1]. New, Traditional Marketing Structure.

Underperforming Technical Team 144

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Marketing Startup 144

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. I should have hired someone in some role like six months ago, a year ago. None of that changes.

Sales Recruiting 241

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 241

Kellblog

APRIL 26, 2020

Many moons ago when I was young product marketing manager, I heard a new VP of Marketing speak at a marketing all-hands meeting. What he said were six words that changed my career: Marketing exists to make sales easier. First, you hire a team to build your product.

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Marketing Sales Engineering 132

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 21, 2022

Yesterday, Office Hours welcomed Lee Kirkpatrick , former CFO at Twilio to share his experiences managing through three different recessions: the dotcom era, the Global Financial Crisis, and today. Lee headed finance for the company from $15m in ARR to more than $1b. Lee shared a counterpoint to the reflex to cut GTM spend.

Startup 161

Startup Sales Hiring Outsourced Development Compensation 161

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

For a CFO, do you require a accounting or finance background? Remember it’s a mutual sales process. Unless you’re blessed to be at the hottest company in town, always remember that recruiting is a mutual sales process. And, yes, we succeeded with the hire!) Ask a seller to role-play a sales call.

Sales Recruiting 109

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Finance 109

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 14, 2017

The cash conversion cycle is a key metric for startups, but one that often isn’t talked about until a business hires a CFO. Once a business established product market fit, the cash conversion cycle is a key metric of a company’s cash efficiency - how quickly a company can convert a dollar of investment into a dollar of cash flow.

Startup 184

Startup Sales Hiring Payment Solutions Payment Services 184

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

For us, it’s about fixing this problem, serving the customer well, so a very service driven mindset, which I gave a talk on a few days ago here, has been a big part of Gusto and affected our hiring from the early days. Certainly, at YC where our version of hiring is basically choosing which founders to fund. Get tickets here.

VP of Engineering 250

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 250

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

Your first few hires are so influential in the success of your company. As Des Traynor, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Intercom, says, your first few hires are so influential in the success of your company. Using Brex also saves time for your finance team (or, depending on headcount, your finance person ??)

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 7, 2019

As Head of Sales for Spendesk, Nico was initially inspired by the vision of founder Rodolphe Ardant who had spotted a gap for ‘spend management’ in the B2B market based on personal banking trends. So they created a software that provides control, visibility, and payment methods for corporate finance teams.

Scale 162

Scale Payment Methods Payment Solutions Marketing 162

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 2, 2018

There’s only one requirement: you must be able to sell your product while you’re building it. Step 1 is reaching product market fit, the point at which some group of potential customers will pay. This minimum viable product is likely very thin. And every startup can benefit from this advance.

Sales Hiring 186

Sales Hiring Outsourced Development Finance Engineering 186

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 15, 2020

In this episode, Bob and I chat about his new book Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress. If you’re short on time, here’s some quick takeaways: Bob has worked on over 3,500 products. What is it about sales that makes academia hesitant to teach it? Where are the sales professors?

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Sales VP of Engineering Underperforming Technical Team 265

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 2, 2023

Financial transparency is especially close to our hearts, which is why we’re proud to share Open Books, a series of small business owners giving us a peek inside their books in the spirit of being open about finances as well. Marketing expenses are things like ads and sponsorships. I started hiring contract help immediately.

Payment Methods 114

Payment Methods Sales Hiring Payments Business 114

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2019

How to Design a Sales Comp Plan to Get You to $100M with Work-Bench, Movable Ink, MongoDB and Concert Finance. This panel will speak tactically to various comp design options as a way for management to determine and promote ideal behavior in their front-line teams. Meghan Gill | VP of Sales Ops @ MongoDB.

Sales Recruiting 128

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 128

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

In part two, we are going to look at 5 go-to-market prerequisites that you need to consider if your expedition into enterprise is going to be a success. Sales strategy. 1) Marketing: Does your marketing appeal to enterprise orgs? When you are selling to SMB and MM, you can get away with fairly lean marketing.

Sales Hiring 71

Sales Hiring Enterprise Technical Review SMB 71

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2020

As for Ryan, he has spent an incredible 9 years at Okta in numerous different roles starting with running the product marketing team before moving to run the marketing team, leading to his promotion to CMO close to 5 years ago now. Why does Ryan believe you should hire two in marketing to start?

Sales Hiring 162

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Technical Review 162

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 17, 2015

The most potent weapon in sales is understanding a buyer’s perception of time. As Mark Roberge wrote , “At HubSpot, this lacking sense of urgency is the number one objection we face in the sales funnel.” ” To succeed, SaaS startups’ sales teams must consistently create urgency in the sales process.

Sales Funnel 100

Sales Funnel Sales Hiring Sales Finance 100

Tom Tunguz

JULY 7, 2018

The startup raises capital sooner, hires people, builds the product, markets and sells the product, grows more, and raises capital. This theory suggests that irrespective of the category, the winner should capture most of the market value. Venture capitalists finance competitors to pursue a market opportunity.

Sales Hiring 153

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Finance 153

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2019

But when you need a CFO, let’s say, or you need an outstanding VP of engineering or maybe a VP of sales, which is even more different to find for an engineer, you don’t know who these people are. What were some of the key next hires that they made? I’m not sure I’m at product market fit yet.

Merchant Services 219

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 219

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 19, 2016

At the outset, when the business prices on a monthly basis, the startup is looking for as much information about the strength of their product market fit as possible. Monthly payment plans minimize the friction associated with new users signing up and using the product, while still testing their willingness to pay.

Outsourced Development 100

Outsourced Development SaaS Payments Startup Sales Hiring 100

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Overall, COOs ensure that an organization is operating and managing their revenue and budgets efficiently in order to meet their goals. Many COOs arrive at the role with extensive backgrounds in finance, HR, and may have even once been CEOs themselves. . Reminders on Hiring a COO . There’s no one clear path to becoming a COO.

Scale 75

Scale Sales Hiring Finance Company Culture 75

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

You can think of Horizontal SaaS as broad-based tech that is industry agnostic; a sales person at a Cybersecurity company can use HubSpot the same way a sales person at a Health Supplements company might use it. But it’s not always clear when and how to find the right finance leader.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 24, 2020

Hire a consultant, hands down. In a nutshell, they can give you expert opinions, analysis, and recommendations that can help ensure a more objective-based approach to grow your business and maximize sales – all at the same time. Unfortunately, your in-house team doesn’t have the required expertise to push through change.

Consulting 132

Consulting Sales Hiring Technical Review Sales Recruiting 132

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

You’re investing resources in hiring and training the right people, tracking different metrics at different stages, adding more and more complexity with each increase in headcount, use cases, and customers. I think that the hiring competitive landscape is extremely difficult. Scaling a support team is challenging enough as it is.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

I think it is possible to get some revenue-based financing here, for sure, both from SVB and others, and also new emerging vendors from Pipe and on, you can get some. As they scaled, they radically changed how they did sales. Today how many customers do you have using the non-collaboration version of the product?

Scale 206

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 206

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2019

But when you need a CFO, let’s say, or you need an outstanding VP of engineering or maybe a VP of sales, which is even more different to find for an engineer, you don’t know who these people are. What were some of the key next hires that they made? I’m not sure I’m at product market fit yet.

Merchant Services 191

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 191