Kellblog

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

With capital scarce and expensive, with companies increasingly trapped in Schrödinger’s startup paradox , and with more startups than ever focused on positive cashflow and The Rule of 40 , it’s safe to say that Silicon Valley is still very much in a cost-cutting mood. It’s been a tough year. Why do we forget this?

VP of Engineering 130

VP of Engineering Travel Underperforming Technical Team Headcount 130

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

You might say it’s one of the strongest advantages a startup has. But as the business becomes more successful – and there are resources to build a support team – additional layers begin to separate executives from their customers. Here are five quick takeaways: Most sales and support teams talk about their jobs as a funnel.

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 29, 2019

It’s no surprise that one of the key levers for growth as you go from startup to scale-up is your sales team. How quickly you’re able to accelerate growth depends on your ability to build a nimble sales org and develop a strong sales strategy. These lay the foundation that enables your team to run as efficiently as possible.

Scale 172

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Payment Services 172

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

In August of 2016, Rachel Hepworth embarked on a unique challenge: start a growth marketing team at one of the most successful startups of this generation – one that had long relied heavily on word of mouth. The role that started me on this path was joining a very small startup a little over a decade ago, Climate Corp.

Growth Marketing 174

Growth Marketing Scale Marketing Outsourcing Services 174

Sales Hacker

JUNE 3, 2025

The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Rick Kelley is the former VP of Metas Global Business Group, where he led a $10B+ revenue organization and played a pivotal role in building out Metas go-to-market teams across North America and EMEA. So, in 2002, I went to go and work at Yahoo.

Sales Hiring 83

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 83

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

We’re still learning what world we’re in — some people interview over Zoom, some are focused on how to build teams in the current age, and many are dealing with a weird overhang from the SaaS explosion of 2021, quiet quitting, layoffs, and team turnover. The last thing a VP of Sales wants to do is start without a team.

Sales Hiring 157

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 157

Chart Mogul

MAY 7, 2020

Onboarding a new member of your sales team is challenging on its own, but especially so when they have to call prospects out of the blue. Providing the right cold calling training can make or break the success of a new team member. Explain their existing sales process and what they learned in the course of developing it.

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Marketplace as a Service Headcount 121

FastSpring

JANUARY 31, 2023

These additional features can satisfy the needs of some early-stage startup companies, however, most companies end up needing more robust options. Luckily, most developers find it easy to integrate Stripe with most other software (however, you have to pay for each software separately). Read the NotePlan case study here.

Payment Services 147

Payment Services Payment Methods Merchant Services Software Review 147

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). This begs the question: how much room is left for emerging startups? The median growth rate of startups with $1-2.5M They aren’t alone.

Scale 96

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 96

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 12, 2018

As VP of Corporate Strategy at Twitter, Elad Gil was a key player as company headcount skyrocketed from 90 to 1,500 employees. This wasn’t Elad’s first experience with hyper growth – Google grew headcount 10x during his time as a product manager there – nor the last. The second is employees.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

And yet, downplaying your team’s needs undermines CS’s current impact and future revenue-driving potential. According to our 2022 Customer Success Leadership Study, CS teams are already underfunded and under-resourced. This is something that I’m doing with fractional headcount allocation. Now we have a name for this.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 98

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 14, 2019

At the forefront of this change is what we at Engagio call, Account-Based Everything (ABE), some people know it as Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD), and others call it Account-Based Marketing (ABM). We’re going to look at what data you need to develop an account targeting strategy and where to get that data.

Underperforming Technical Team 74

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Data Development Team Review 74

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Scale 106

Sales Hacker

MARCH 12, 2020

If you’re in a position to fill a sales role, you’re likely already feeling the pressure, because your revenue targets are built on the assumption that your team is fully staffed. These factors can quickly derail a sales team. Some roles don’t work if you have a bad hire. Implement career development and specialized training.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Compensation Underperforming Technical Team 92

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2021

The same was true when I ran the People function at a software development consultancy that doubled its headcount to ~100 while reducing attrition from 40% to 5% voluntary in 18 months. The question becomes: “Who do I want on my team—and why?”. A final comment on purpose: It should come from your team.

Scale 98

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Software Review 98

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). This begs the question: how much room is left for emerging startups? The median growth rate of startups with $1-2.5M They aren’t alone.

Scale 69

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 69

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

Pipeline analytics: Offers sales managers a view of their teams’ pipelines that goes beyond what’s available in their native SFA applications. I am super unimpressed with the current Go-to-market tech stack options…If I found the right team to start a company to take out all of them I would. A couple of big challenges & trends.

AI 95

AI Revenue Scale ChatGPT 95

OpenView Labs

JUNE 10, 2019

For proof, might I suggest the classic post Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager , which presents a very different vision for the role of product manager than most of us have today). They know the immense value of user input and customer development. Team Alignment. 90% of startups fail. Table of Contents.

Management 75

Management SaaS Scale Sales Recruiting 75

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a business function that focuses on maximizing revenue by aligning the teams that directly impact the bottom line. … Or, simply put, it’s a connecting link between your sales, marketing, and customer success teams. But as your company scales, relying on headcount growth alone won’t cut it.

Revenue 52

Revenue Technical Review Sales Hiring Scale 52

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 15, 2021

During one of our BIG RYG Hyper-Workshops on budgeting for Customer Success headcount, Kristen Hayer of The Success League, framed this shift by explaining that as a CS leader, you’re not running a happiness team, you’re running a revenue team. Your team will start to get pushed on the money side of things.

Customer Success 97

Customer Success Benchmarks Scale Underperforming Technical Team 97

Sales Hacker

JULY 8, 2020

Michael has 15 years of experience running global sales and product teams across multiple software and FinTech companies. Overseeing the growth of their sales and business development organization from 2 to 30 teams across the U.S. Michael Coscetta: I feel bad for those three people because they are definitely missing out.

Scale 122

Scale Scaling VP of Engineering Technical Review 122

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Scale 61

Chart Mogul

MAY 7, 2020

Onboarding a new member of your sales team is challenging on its own, but especially so when they have to call prospects out of the blue. Providing the right cold calling training can make or break the success of a new team member. Explain their existing sales process and what they learned in the course of developing it.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Marketplace as a Service Headcount 52

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). This begs the question: how much room is left for emerging startups? The median growth rate of startups with $1-2.5M They aren’t alone.

Scale 40

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 40

ChurnZero

JUNE 3, 2022

For starters, the CS role has earned its rightful spot as one of a startup’s first ten hires. VC and PE firms now ask founders about the metrics owned by CS teams, specifically NRR and GRR , within the first ten minutes of conversation. You Mon: When I think about being a leader, it’s all about how do I get my team to succeed.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Hiring B2B Technical Review 52

ChurnZero

JUNE 3, 2022

For starters, the CS role has earned its rightful spot as one of a startup’s first ten hires. VC and PE firms now ask founders about the metrics owned by CS teams, specifically NRR and GRR , within the first ten minutes of conversation. You Mon: When I think about being a leader, it’s all about how do I get my team to succeed.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Hiring B2B Technical Review 52

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 29, 2021

And so, Mark Rudden and his team had to figure it all out by themselves. Fortunately, Mark had quite a bit of experience working and scaling teams in demanding, hypergrowth environments. Building a great sales team: How Intercom fosters and maintains its sales culture. Onboarding, but make it remote. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Sales Hiring 224

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 224

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 16, 2019

Growing a sales team isn’t as simple as putting a bunch of A players in a room and getting them to start selling your product. When done right, your sales team won’t just accelerate your company’s growth; they’ll enrich your company’s culture and help build a better product too. 12 steps to build a world-class sales team.

Scale 157

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scaling 157

Sales Hacker

MAY 13, 2025

He also co-founded WGI Group, LLC, to provide growth capital to early and expansion stage startups in enterprise software, consumer internet and digital media industries. 29:00 The shift from product-led to intelligence-led SaaS development. Previously, Michael was co-founder and Chairman of Moat Inc. Thats where TriNet comes in.

AI Search 71

AI Search AI ChatGPT Software Review 71

Kellblog

JUNE 4, 2023

About three years ago, I had a conversation with an old friend that led to a post, Ten Pearls of Enterprise Software Startup Wisdom from My Friend Mark Tice. In that (quite popular) post, I shared Mark’s top ten list of mistakes that enterprise software startups make in sales and go-to-market. starter kits). It’s hard work.

Sales Recruiting 128

Sales Recruiting Compensation SaaS Sales Hiring 128

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

As for Karl, prior to founding the company he spent 6 years at Google in some fascinating roles including Head of Patents, Head of Business Development in China and running Google’s energy investments. Then I got a call from a friend who actually was the first lawyer at Google and he was looking for someone to start the patent team there.

Sales Hiring 232

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach 232

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 12, 2020

Learn how Some Hot Tech Startup increased productivity by 115%.”. Lars Nilsson, the co-Founder of Sales Source, did this when running worldwide Sales Development for Cloudera. Encourage all the executives on your team and your colleagues to share screenshots in the Slack Group whenever they actually take a meeting or respond.

Scale 127

Scale Scaling AI Search Underperforming Technical Team 127

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 7, 2025

With a background that includes leadership roles at AWS, Microsoft, and Lenovo, Fred brings a wealth of experience in building high-performing teams and driving revenue growth. It helps me and the team be so much more productive. And I always found it, because I’d be in there with my team, an enjoyable market to cold call into.

Outsourcing Services 110

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development AWS 110

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

403: Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader.

Scale 230

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 230

Baremetrics

JULY 25, 2019

Because of its immense impact on warfare and commerce, weather forecasting has commanded significant research and development focus since the 1980’s, second only to cryptography in global consumption of compute cycles. It feels hotter outside than yesterday” : “Our sales team has more momentum than last month.” Yes and no.

Forecasting 88

Forecasting Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 88

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2025

Wiz discovered a direct correlation between territory size and productivity: the tighter the territories, the more effective their sales team became. While scaling from 3 to 75 go-to-market team members, Codeium / Windsurf found that AI transformed their sales process in completely different ways depending on the size of the customer.

Scale 200

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Headcount 200

Sales Hacker

MARCH 11, 2025

Why executive compensation should align with key business metrics for better team alignment. As a key GTMfund partner, they equip sales and marketing teams with top performers. If you’re hiring for sales or marketing roles, reach out to Pursuit at pursuitsalessolutions.com/gtm or message a GTMfund team member.

Scale 75

Scale Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Technical Review 75