SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

Overcoming challenges by optimizing for success In the early stages of setting up your SaaS business, it’s always a good idea to invest time thinking about the direction you want to take. Deel scaled the sales team from two to 250 account executives, but issues with productivity and enablement of the account executives cropped up.

Sales Hiring 219

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 219

ChurnZero

JUNE 30, 2021

To help you make sure you are adequately evaluating your Customer Success Manager candidates consider pulling from this list of interview questions. 20 Interview Questions to Ask Your Customer Success Manager Candidates. The post 20 Customer Success Interview Questions to Ask CSM Candidates appeared first on ChurnZero.

Interviewing 72

Interviewing Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale 72

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

In the subscription economy, there’s no debate about whether or not to invest in Customer Success (CS); 70% of rapidly growing businesses say that Customer Success is extremely important ( Hubspot , 2017). The question now is, how big should CS organizations be, and what’s the best way to staff and scale its success?

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

SaaStr

MAY 11, 2021

The earlier in your career you can learn how to manage people, the faster you can excel in learning to scale. Your best bosses, VPs, mentors and others will give you “audibles” — quick bits of micro-advice during pitches, customer meetings, interviews, etc. Let them grow and hire and scale as far as humanly possible.

Scale 279

Scale Compensation Interviewing Scaling 279

Totango

MARCH 15, 2022

Efforts to scale customer success team activity often fall short because of failure to avoid common mistakes. Your human resources practices, your project management procedures and your technology strategy all need to come together in order for you to scale up without overextending yourself.

Sales Recruiting 95

Sales Recruiting Customer Success Sales Hiring Scaling 95

OpenView Labs

JANUARY 8, 2021

Great interview questions tell you who a person is, what motivates them, how they think and solve problems, and what they’d be like as a teammate. To help us all conduct better interviews, we asked some of the smartest leaders in SaaS to share their favorite questions. takes the cake as the worst question ever.

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Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Scale 75

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 105

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 105

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2022

So as I’ve written about before, I’ve interviewed a ton of folks for CS roles in the past 12 months. Most for SaaStr itself (a lot of learnings there, but we have $30m+ of sponsors to keep happy), but also for a number of my investments and more. . — Jason Be Kind Lemkin (@jasonlk) October 9, 2022.

Customer Success 273

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing 273

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2022

So a top theme across SaaStr CEO interviews since 2017 or so, and across our 5 Interesting Learnings series with public SaaS companies, is … when should you go multi-product? Roughly: By $100m ARR, you probably have to be multi-product to scale at top-tier rates. For multi-market, this could be $100m in ARR.

Scale 242

Scale SaaS SMB Scaling 242

CustomerSuccessBox

OCTOBER 31, 2021

This is why we, at CustomerSuccessBox, thought of interviewing CS leaders to understand their perspective of QBR. She’s also the founder of Success Track Enterprise which helps companies define, refine, expand and scale their CS organizations through advisory services. Why is QBR/EBR important? How does it help your customers?

Interviewing 59

Interviewing Technical Review Scale Communication 59

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2021

I like to equate this stage to Warren Buffett’s famous law of uninterrupted compounding interest—there is a significant difference between investing early and often into an IRA versus starting later in life. . They started off by interviewing internal teams to understand the pain they felt as our product grew and changed.

Strategy 273

Strategy Scale Innovation Interviewing 273

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2023

But you’re falling, dodging, climbing, and hoping to scale the top of a mountain. For companies that already have customers, you can conduct interviews and surveys. Scale Intentionally and Make Trade-Offs As you grow your org, you may ask yourself, “What am I looking for? That’s how you want to think about scaling 1:many.

Scale 206

Scale Strategy Marketing Education 206

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Here are some things to remember when you think about scaling your next big SaaS company. When do you decide to scale? The steps required to scale aren’t natural to most founders, and they just are not going to be able to take fifty sales meetings a week. How are you going to scale without messing up? Flock Safety does 8!)

Sales Recruiting 170

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 170

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2022

This interview with CNBC’s Ari Levy took place in February 2019, shortly after Plaid raised a Series C round at a $2.7B In 2019, they also acquired Quovo, a company that focused on investment accounts, to make it easier for consumers to manage their investments. Up today: Plaid co-founder and CEO, Zach Perret.

Banking 229

Banking Scale Acquisition Interviewing 229

SaaStr

AUGUST 17, 2020

The earlier in your career you can learn how to manage people, the faster you can excel in learning to scale. Your best bosses, VPs, mentors and others will give you “audibles” — quick bits of micro-advice during pitches, customer meetings, interviews, etc. Let them grow and hire and scale as far as humanly possible.

Scale 361

Scale Business Interviewing Compensation 361

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2022

In my own portfolio , more of my investments had a record month in October than a rough month. They aren’t perfect, but given how many CIOs they interview — over 2,200 for this survey — they’re one of my favorite sources for what’s happening in 2023. But is spending? I’m not so sure. Be honest.

Forecasting 232

Forecasting Artificial Intelligence Software Business 232

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 16, 2021

In this interview, Naz shares her expertise on how to design a powerful CS strategy that equips your team with the right tools and resources to drive an exceptional employee experience and champion phenomenal growth. Empower your CSMs through efficient processes and a strategic plan for your CS technology investment.

Interviewing 52

Interviewing Customer Success Scale Government 52

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

Their CEO will join us at SaaSr Scale 2021 on December 15 to talk about using data to get to 10,000 SMB customers! 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. Build A Machine.

Scale 254

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 254

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

But I hadn’t really thought of them as a proxy for all SaaS companies until I saw the CEO’s interview from a few weeks back. Vista’s investments are older, established SaaS companies with brands. The companies they own a majority of are collectively at $24B (!) in ARR, so it’s second only to Salesforce in SaaS.

Cybersecurity 296

Cybersecurity SMB Interviewing Enterprise 296

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2022

Go Long — if you get to Initial Scale with happy customers and good growth. Interview at least 20 potential customers. This one took me a little while to figure out (thanks to Auren Hoffman for helping me see this clearly), but if you’re a founder, the best investment you can make is in yourself. 3. Go For It.

Scale 360

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Startup 360

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

In two one-hour interviews, FastSpring sales leaders Todd Stellfox and Tony Markov each interviewed Kurt about pricing strategies that work in volatile markets and beyond. Stream both interviews below and see highlights from each. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help you scale across borders to go farther faster.

Pricing 110

Pricing Payment Solutions Payment Services SaaS Payments 110

CustomerSuccessBox

JUNE 21, 2022

Yet, it’s often easy said than actually done, especially, when you’re looking for Customer Onboarding at Scale. To help you, we have compiled a list of the top 8 strategies that will enable you to carry out customer onboarding at scale. 8 Best Strategies for Customer Onboarding at Scale. appeared first on.

Scale 52

Scale Onboarding Scaling Strategy 52

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 4, 2019

In a recent interview, Sid Sijbrandij, the founder of Gitlab observed something about remote teams that I think is absolutely true. As company scale, they need to develop infrastructure to successfully manage and coordinate large numbers of people. I’ve seen it in many of the remote/distributed companies we work with.

Startup 220

Startup Interviewing Investment Communication 220

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

Leading him to some of his biggest mistakes when hiring: Not investing enough time. Mistake #5: Not Investing Early Enough in the Brand By investing early enough in branding, you lift demand gen higher. Databricks invested in the brand early, and it paid off with customers telling their story for them.

Sales Hiring 237

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 237

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 12, 2020

Scaling Your Personalization. AI can help scale this, but we need to be careful not to rely too heavily on it. To scale your outreach you need to build a system to ensure your message gets seen. The system you set up becomes even more important once you begin doing outreach at scale, but I’ll go over that more later.

Scale 107

Scale Scaling AI Search AI 107

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2021

Scaling your product from one specific use case to an enterprise offering with multiple features is a daunting task. Decide on your company model and stick to it as you scale, even if you lose deals because of it. You’ll have everything you need to scale. How do you balance these things while creating a great product?

Scale 232

Scale Cloud Scaling Interviewing 232

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2019

Alexandr Wang is the Founder & CEO @ Scale, the startup providing high quality training and validation data for AI applications. To date, Alexandr has raised over $23m with Scale from some of the best in the business including Index, Accel, Y Combinator, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, Justin Kan, Thumbtack’s Jonathan Swanson and more.

Scale 126

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Customer Success 126

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2019

Scaling the company’s employee base, sales teams, marketing, and operations—all while preserving its culture—has required a laser focus on first principles, smart processes, and effective hiring. In this talk, Claire will share these and other lessons for scaling high-growth organizations. Manual processes first. Names stick.

Scale 152

Scale Payment Services Payment Methods Scaling 152

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2020

My favorite strategy looking across my portfolio of investments is not charging customer that right now are struggling. And finally, while we aren’t all at Slack’s scale yet … you can see from our recent interview with Stewart Butterfield that their Free plan has been on fire. Haven’t seen this strategy fail yet.

Scale 166

Scale Interviewing Revenue Strategy 166

Valuize Consulting

JULY 15, 2021

This exact same Product Owner role is critical to your success in adopting and realizing value from your investments in CS technology. Jason is a Certified Product Manager who helps market-leading enterprise software companies maximize the impact, scale and efficiency of their CS technology investments.

Technology 52

Technology Customer Success Interviewing Scale 52

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2021

I’ve also invested in 24+ next-generation SaaS companies, mostly successes, and had a chance to watch and learn from them as well, with a new lens. And paying a little more for a lot more experience can be one of the top investments you’ll ever make. Investing in the Future is Easier. Sales — Not Easier.

Sales Recruiting 311

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 311

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

Premature scaling is the leading cause of failure, but businesses with two founders are 19% less likely to scale prematurely, as well as raising 30% more money and enjoying 3 times more user growth. But scaling is a unique phenomenon which needs to be constantly managed. Scaling is not optional and change is a prerequisite.

Scale 64

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 64

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

He helped scale the sales organization from 15 to 300 people, while growing annual recurring revenue from $25m to over $450m. Over the last few years he has advised and invested in many B2B SaaS companies, particularly focused on helping with Go-To-Market. During Sean ‘s most recent operating role he spent 4.5

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 90

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. What we discovered is companies sometimes struggle with scaling so we dived into the reasons for that.

Scale 52

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting SaaS 52

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

For instance, Founders Fund doesn’t really invest in AI, health tech, or edtech, even if you’re growing 5x. You can’t scale either of those channels or people until you’re happy with the efficiency of those people and processes. Each VC has a different “flavor.” If that’s true, then you should absolutely hire more salespeople.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 245

Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

Surveys, Interviews, and Focus Groups Gathering direct input from customers through structured questioning or group discussions. As for tools, start with simple and inexpensive options like Google Sheets or Notion to aggregate feedback, and consider investing in a CRM with direct integrations as you scale.

Engineering 52

Engineering Systems Review Scale Interviewing 52

Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 12, 2023

Scale 📈 Lastly, systems enable creators to scale their content from solo operations into media businesses. However, with the right systems, creators can scale their operations to meet this demand without compromising quality or burning out. As a creator's audience grows, so does the content demand.

Systems Review 105

Systems Review Social Media Technical Review Scale 105