Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

They also talked about the difficulties — and potential advantages — of selling into small businesses, taking alternative approaches to interviewing candidates, and the importance of keeping culture a vital part of a company as it scales. We’re experimenting with it, but we haven’t made a massive investment.

Payments 92

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 92

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

From an R&D perspective, they invested in what they called vertical solutions to support those new use cases. So, Calendly decided to invest in going Enterprise. Kate has a simple framework for going upmarket: Product, People, and Process. From a product standpoint, you might think you have product market fit.

Scale 209

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 209

User Pilot

JUNE 20, 2023

Popular validation techniques include online surveys , user interviews and focus groups, and fake door tests. If you’re launching a brand-new product and have no user base, build a landing page and collect the contact details of prospective customers to gauge their interest. Is it the best way to invest the resources?

Underperforming Technical Team 98

Underperforming Technical Team Social Media Scale Interviewing 98

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2021

Here’s some advice for other product leaders from our journey at Pendo: $0-5M ARR: All hands on deck. Your primary focus in the earliest days of the company is achieving product-market fit. In most cases, this stage doesn’t require a dedicated product executive. This was the catalyst for product operations.

Strategy 267

Strategy Scale Innovation Interviewing 267

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

Leading him to some of his biggest mistakes when hiring: Not investing enough time. And for his marketing team, it didn’t just apply to marketing, demand gen, or brand, or PR. It was for everyone – product marketing, SDRs who reported in marketing, marketing operations, and sales enablement.

Sales Hiring 228

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 228

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

The three things that led to ramping up sales at Flock Safety were: Achieving product-market fit. If your product is selling at such a reliable rate, with consistent growth over multiple quarters, you’re probably at this point. When Garrett interviewed Alex, his challenge was to hire 30 reps within the first 30 days.

Sales Recruiting 166

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 166

User Pilot

JANUARY 29, 2023

Developing features without validation results in bloated products and unnecessarily drives the cost of development up. Product teams should invest in validation when developing the MVP. The process is also necessary to maintain the product-market fit. Is the investment worth it, given the forecast return?

Management 98

Management Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Scale 98

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

A mentor of mine suggested that I reframe my search to seek out companies that I would invest in, instead of the other way around. He told me, you can invest time, talent, or treasure. Unfortunately for me, I had little experience, not much talent, and lacked the treasure/money to invest. It seemed like the best investment! .

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 246

Brian Balfour

SEPTEMBER 26, 2017

Get the customizable Growth Interview Prep Worksheet that accompanies the post here. You walk into your growth interview after hours of preparation. But there’s one big problem you’ve overlooked - the interview isn’t actually about you. They all tie back to this one core error - thinking the interview is about you.

Interviewing 65

Interviewing Retention Metrics Social Media 65

User Pilot

APRIL 17, 2024

Want to understand what customers think and how they behave in your product ? If so, you need to invest in the right customer insight tools. These tools are perfect for providing valuable customer insights to make product improvements and optimize your customer experience. Read on to learn more. Enterprise : Custom pricing.

AI Search 103

AI Search Social Media Cross-platform App Design (Application) Systems Review 103

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

This will usually center around PMF (product-market fit) or growth. Employee Engagement: Show your employees that you are invested in their career goals and help them build a plan (that they own) to achieve those goals. Set expectations starting at the interview process on company values, pace, and vision.

Retention 130

Retention Leadership Compensation Communication 130

User Pilot

APRIL 19, 2024

Interviews. Product trials. Market research uses primary market research as an essential tool. This involves collecting new data directly from your target audience using various methods, such as surveys , focus groups, and interviews. Focus groups. Each method has its benefits.

Market Research 52

Market Research Sales Recruiting Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 52

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 30, 2017

You suspect you have initial product market fit. Sales, marketing, customer success, engineering, product management. The founders confirm product market fit with the first 10-20 sales and then hire an expert to scale the team and polish the process. Some require more investment of a founder’s time.

Sales Hiring 144

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Engineering 144

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 16, 2018

Here’s a summary of the frameworks and theory that I’ve aggregated over a decade of investing in startups. All of these disciplines fall under product marketing. Well run product marketing teams develop these perspectives before product launch. Why do we set prices? The competitive positioning?

Pricing 226

Pricing Market Research Interviewing Product Marketing 226

User Pilot

AUGUST 29, 2023

This article also introduces popular market validation methods and explains how product teams can develop a solid validation plan! TL;DR Market validation helps you answer the question of whether there are enough potential customers who are willing to pay for your product. Let’s get right to it!

Marketing 105

Marketing Scale Market Research Interviewing 105

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

For instance, Founders Fund doesn’t really invest in AI, health tech, or edtech, even if you’re growing 5x. If they don’t, they never will , and they’ll never learn the product. Whether it’s a little team or portfolio companies, Jason guesses that 80% of candidates who say they’ll do that end up quitting the interview process.

Sales Hiring 236

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 236

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2023

This is the same advice they give YC companies to become much more successful at fundraising when they’re pre-product market fit. But you aren’t convincing the investor to invest. They’re convincing themselves to invest, so the more they can talk, the more they can talk themselves into giving you money.

Payment Methods 205

Payment Methods Startup Payment Solutions Sales Hiring 205

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

Being willing to invest in an internal recruiter or talent manager (or more broadly, an HR person) early on requires pretty big balls a lot of confidence. This point in time will usually coincide with having found a decent level of Product/Market Fit and having raised a larger seed round. Here’s why.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

It helps keep the product team focused on customer feedback and providing value in exchange for revenue. So, ensuring the founder(s) have a finger on the pulse of product-market fit is key to growing revenue, and it also helps make it clear who to hire next and with which sales goals/targets. One way is to get the timing right.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

How can one determine a closer in the interview process? Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Andy. A much beloved product, that I’m sure we all engage with, and the CEO who runs this incredible company joins us. We actually can’t find product marketers full stop. Andy MacMillan.

Sales Hiring 184

Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Sales Enablement 184

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 24, 2023

The previous version was almost five years old, and we knew that we needed an ambitious and clear vision to bring a next-generation Messenger to the market. Surveying the landscape First, we zoomed out from day-to-day execution and evaluated Messenger across multiple dimensions – product, market, customers, and business.

Leadership 118

Leadership Branding Engagement Interviewing 118

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

They’ve made tons of great investments. The irony of that story is if that firm would’ve invested $1 million into Podium at that time, today it would be worth over $200 million. Now the first, the only thing when we were going from zero to one, this is in 2014, the only thing we cared about was product market fit.

Scale 112

Scale Sales Hiring Software Review Scaling 112

User Pilot

JUNE 13, 2022

We covered the best blogs on SaaS growth, product marketing , UX analytics, venture capital, and sales. The Userpilot blog provides well-researched, in-depth articles on user onboarding, product growth, product growth, user experience, and so much more. How to Build a B2B SaaS Product Development Strategy Using Data.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital SaaS Data Scale 52

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 21, 2014

These qualitative analyses provided Zendesk insight into the top five reasons users recommended product and the top five reasons users didn’t convert to customers, informative data for adjusting marketing tactics and guiding the product roadmap. In addition, content is the second largest marketing team at Zendesk.

Scale 192

Scale Marketing Growth Hacking SaaS 192

FastSpring

APRIL 13, 2023

Dopple’s earliest customers are already seeing a 40% increase in conversions, and 71% of their visitors interact with 3D-enabled products. Jera Brown interviewed Dopple founder and CEO Justin on how he launched Dopple and found success by pivoting to a new market. This is an investment. But that’s not how we live.

Payment Methods 115

Payment Methods Marketing Payments SaaS Payments 115

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Product Marketing Manager: This person is tasked with developing product marketing campaigns , crafting compelling marketing messages, and coming up with ideas to retain customers. A positive NPV indicates that the project is expected to generate more financial value than the initial investment.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Neil Patel

MARCH 22, 2021

There’s no need to buy fancy cameras or invest in new technology. Instagram Live Rooms bring a fun new dimension to product marketing. Since they’re free to host, the Rooms may be a cost-effective way to market your goods and services. Interview Influencers in Your Field. The best part?

Branding 133

Branding Social Media Interviewing Education 133

FastSpring

MARCH 27, 2023

He also shares insights about how Cognota is maintaining ownership over the category they created while encouraging dialogue and collaboration in the market. Stream the full interview below or find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Were interviewing larger customers, figuring things out, and they were in Houston.

Payment Solutions 91

Payment Solutions Payment Services SaaS Payments VP of Engineering 91

Sales Hacker

MAY 20, 2020

To be successful, organizations have to have good product-market fit , customer trust, and a fantastic customer experience throughout the entire customer lifecycle. As such, much of sales and marketing’s focus is external to attract customers, and rightly so. But as a leader, be prepared.

Sales Enablement 121

Sales Enablement Underperforming Technical Team Sales Communication 121

User Pilot

JUNE 6, 2023

PMs implement product analytics to evaluate product performance, identify user needs and wants , and make informed decisions to improve the product and drive customer loyalty. Apart from product teams, product analytics benefit product marketing managers , UX designers , customer success managers, and developers.

Data 88

Data User Experience Churn Retention 88

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2019

How does the product and what you invest in proactively need to change as you move into enterprise? Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Andrew Filev. And so, it’s all incremental investments, incremental risk, so it can get your product very far. Andrew Filev. Andy Wilson.

Sales Hiring 143

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Sales Recruiting 143

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 23, 2023

As they get larger or introduce new product lines too quickly, we often go too broad with the market that we’re serving and start losing touch with the customer’s needs. In other words, the product-market fit becomes weaker for some of the target audience. The product momentum gap by Dave Martin.

Scale 105

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting Software Review 105

OpenView Labs

JUNE 10, 2019

Here’s some good news: there are tons of amazing product management resources out there. We’ve compiled our favorite articles, advice, podcasts and interviews in this guide. These companies have fewer sales reps (or none at all), meaning more resources get invested into product and engineering. This Is Product Management.

Management 55

Management SaaS Scale Sales Recruiting 55

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Q: Should Product Marketing Work for Product or Marketing? Product marketing is a weird art, with many over-indexing. These days, CEOs are looking for too much magic from product marketing. Maybe we expect too much, even up to $10-20M ARR, and expect magic from product marketing.

Scale 224

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 224

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

ABOUT MY FIRST 16 Our new video podcast series My First 16 features interviews with founders and CEOs of fintech companies about how they acquired their initial customers and the hard lessons they learned along the way. 7 engineers, if you include me, one designer and one kinda product slash everything else, who’s my co founder.

Sales Hiring 86

Sales Hiring Banking Scale Pricing 86

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

On this episode of the podcast, I interview Arthur Nobel and we discuss scaling SaaS companies. Arthur is a Principal at Knight Capital – an investment firm that specialises in B2B software businesses. Focus more on things that show you have product-market fit and afterwards go-to-market fit and some other metrics can come later.

Scale 52

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting SaaS 52

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 29, 2021

From there, it’s easier to develop an accurate profile of the kind of person who can either establish or round out the key competencies—research, data analysis, product marketing, growth, etc.— Create a Profile of Your Ideal Product Manager. Hiring Product Managers: The Ideal Interview Process.

Sales Hiring 60

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Management 60