SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. As a startup, it’s tempting to try and do everything.

Scale 231

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 231

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. At Point Nine, we aspire to continuously share what we learn with our community and the extended startup ecosystem.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

Kellblog

JULY 17, 2022

In general, I think branding is a potential marketing rathole for startups, particularly early-stage ones. Some startups put the cart in front of the horse. Create a product. Get product-market fit (PMF), i.e., determine some problem you solve for some person with some product. Go sell some software.

Branding 131

Branding Startup Software Sales Recruiting 131

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later. Here’s why.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

David Sacks: SaaS Background and Investments. David’s first foray into SaaS was in 1999 when he joined a startup that would become PayPal, starting as the product leader and later as the COO. In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Founder/CEO.

CTO Hire 249

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 249

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. How defendable is the technology of the product or the business model? Dev Ittycheria : Thank you.

Sales Recruiting 249

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 249

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?”. It’s simply about which areas startup founders feel like they may be coming up short, not doing enough, or missing the mark.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

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. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Kyle made his way into the world of SaaS and sales and came to be Head of Sales at one of the fastest-growing companies in Figma. What worked?

Sales Hiring 195

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Advisors 195

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

Once a startup has found an initial product market fit, the business must evolve the way it models its growth. Before product market fit, a startup’s financial projections focus on costs. In other words, how much cash investment is required to double or triple or quadruple revenues in the next year.

Sales Recruiting 111

Sales Recruiting Revenue Startup Sales Hiring 111

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

To some extent, if you have the hottest startup in the world, the full package, you can play some games with investors. 99% of startups aren’t that. For 99% of startups, when you want money, tell VCs you want money. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” But you have to see progress in one sales cycle.

Part-Time VPE 185

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 185

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Customer Onboarding Specialist: Responsible for helping new customers get up and running with the company’s products. Account Managers: They serve as the lead point of contact for all customer account management matters. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 93

Sales Hacker

MARCH 17, 2021

While every entrepreneur dreams of scaling their startup into a multi-million dollar company, many do not understand all that goes into that dream. Strict sales volume does go a long way in achieving long-term revenue growth, but processes and cross-department alignment are what allow sales volumes to scale in the first place.

Scale 93

Scale Revenue Startup Sales Recruiting 93

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

There’s a time and a place for it, but a startup, the lifeblood, is getting s**t done. I want to come be your VP of sales and, you’re going to meet me for the first time. Spencer : For me, the key things for a VP of sales is, “OK, tell me about your best reps. This thing in the product, or how we do culture.

VP of Engineering 264

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 264

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

356: Pete Kazanjy is the Co-Founder @ Atrium, the startup providing proactive, always-on insights for sales operations, managers, and leaders. Alongside Atrium, Pete is also the Founder of Modern Sales Pros, a community of 15,000 focused on sales operations and sales management. Stop asking questions.

Part-Time VPE 201

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 201

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

At a16z’s recent Connect/Fintech event, a16z Partner Alex Immerman sat down for a broad conversation with Immad Akhund , co-founder and CEO of banking startup Mercury , and René Lacerte, founder and CEO of financial services company BILL. We’re experimenting with it, but we haven’t made a massive investment.

Payments 107

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 107

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

I was the new Vice President of International Sales & Managing Director for a work management software company called Wrike. Starting Your International Sales Team. The key to starting an international sales team is having the right people in your landing team. A mercenary is driven by the sale.

Sales Hiring 99

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 99

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

What Nobody Tells You About Seed Investing with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Cowboy Ventures Founder and Partner Aileen Lee. I think it gives us a perspective that maybe we don’t get in some other places, in addition to many great investments over the years. Aileen Lee | Founder @ Cowboy Ventures. Jason Lemkin | Founder @ SaaStr.

Investment 160

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 160

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 15, 2021

Invest in great managers early. Let’s compare the organizational chart of two different startups. On the left, the startup is flat. When startups start, they tend to look like the company on the left. Post-PMF, the organization must evolve: it has to grow headcount and then manage that headcount well.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 363

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2019

Keith Rabois is an investment partner at Khosla Ventures where he focuses on consumer Internet, education, enterprise, financial services, and digital health investments. Lloyed : Startup-. Join him as he shares his top lessons in building great teams. Lloyed : Awesome. Keith : Started Opendoor. Keith : From scratch.

Merchant Services 227

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 227

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

Opening video: Hey, all these startups, they have a lot of trouble getting corporate credit cards. How they came up with the idea of Brex, and product market fit. Henrique: And we figured out there were all these startups in YC that couldn’t get a credit card, and had raised millions of dollars. Let us know.

Sales Hiring 160

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 160

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2020

321: Anthony Kennada is the CMO @ Front, the startup that provides your team with better email so they can treat every customer like your only customer. How is marketing being pushed further into the realms of CS? What is the optimal relationship between CS and marketing?

Sales Recruiting 174

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 174

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Though, if we narrow it down to just the highly successful ones—that is, startups that exit for more than $100 million—it takes nearly double that time: 11 years. As of this year, Bloomberg reports that the median age of founders of successful startup s (which they define as companies that exited at more than $1 billion) was 34 years old.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Marketing 82

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2022

Jason Lemkin: Yeah, I think if you ask how applicable is SEO, programmable is maybe a different question, but I tell you every single SaaS company I have invested in or worked with that has made a commitment to building at least one high quality piece of content per week has seen significant ROI from SEO over a period of months or a year.

Scale 244

Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 244

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2019

Prior to Harness, Stephen was VP of Marketing at Glassdoor, managing a team of 52 in product marketing, helping grow B2B revenue from $19m to $90m in just 2 years, leading to their $1.2Bn acquisition. Steve has previously said, “Sales and marketing must be one team.” Why does he believe this is so important?

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2019

Keith Rabois is a General Partner at Founders Fund where he focuses on consumer Internet, education, enterprise, financial services, and digital health investments. Lloyed : Startup-. Join him as he shares his top lessons in building great teams. Lloyed : Awesome. Keith : Started Opendoor. Keith : From scratch. Lloyed : Yeah.

Merchant Services 192

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 192

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

An open discussion with Sam Blond, CSO at Brex, and Kristen Habacht, VPS at Atlassian, about adjusting their sales process during Covid-19. Kristen Habacht runs EDR sales at Atlassian, which I got a check today, $40 billion-$50 billion company. She manages a huge global team. Four, people in the sale? Jason Lemkin: None.

Merchant Services 179

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 179

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

I recently wrote that investors (myself included) should do a better job of making their investment criteria transparent to founders. Today I'd like to tell you a bit more about what we at Point Nine Capital are looking for in SaaS startups (other sectors are something for another blog post). along the way.

Sales Recruiting 155

Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155

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. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Sales Recruiting 132

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 132

Incredo

NOVEMBER 1, 2019

Do you want to grow your SaaS sales team and improve your processes? maintain healthy atmosphere in your Smarketing team, make smart choices regarding your SaaS sales model, strategy, pricing, . build smoother connections both with your prospects through optimized sales process. And from SaaS sales models to SaaS pricing.

SaaS Payments 157

SaaS Payments Payment Methods Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 157

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Without the product management, you won’t be able to actualize that vision, because there’s no one to handle research, logistics, and all the other elements that go into successfully building and marketing a product. This is why, even for early-stage startups, the sooner you hire your first product person, the better.

Sales Hiring 60

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Management 60

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2020

315: Harry Hurst is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Pipe, the startup that gives you control of your cash flow by giving you access to the full annual value of your monthly subscriptions, upfront. Harry has also angel invested in the likes of BreathePod and Try.com. Do you have to invest in it from Day 1?

SaaS Payments 213

SaaS Payments Payment Methods Finance Payments 213

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

Check out this 2018 Europa session with Guillaume Princen, Head of France and Southern Europe @ Stripe, where he talks about the metrics you need to be focused on in your startup. How much is a customer going to bring you over his lifespan using your product? The key here is knowing what your sales model is. MRR, obviously.

SaaS Payments 237

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 237

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2019

How does a startup that launched during the financial crisis in 2008 become a unicorn company in 2019? Felix Van de Maele, Co-Founder and CEO of Collibra, will be joined by Teddie Wardi, Managing Director of Insight Partners, to unpack how he built a unicorn company from idea to conception to record growth. People make the difference.

Sales Hiring 177

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Government 177

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2019

As for Tom, he joined Redpoint in 2008 and has since led investments in Kustomer, Looker, Expensify, and Gremlin all prior guests on the show, I hasten to add. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. Listen on Google Play Music.

Scale 116

Scale SMB Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 116

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

As for Ryan, prior to G2 he was Senior Director of Global Marketing at Hubspot where among many other achievements, he scaled HubSpot’s marketing-generated sales revenue by 330% year-over-year. We would generate 10x what we invested into that based on those people. Which is a super useful tactic.

Sales Hiring 131

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Software Review 131

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

Arthur is a Principal at Knight Capital – an investment firm that specialises in B2B software businesses. We found out that there is a lot of content surrounding product-market fit, there is also a lot of content around a company doing an IPO and the founder reflecting on the journey. Levers of scaling a SaaS company.

Scale 52

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting SaaS 52

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2020

313: Today we deep dive into what startups can learn from the large SaaS incumbents of today. To meet buyers’ high expectations and manage the challenging sales landscape, companies must involve their entire organization in maturing the sales process- including after prospects sign on the dotted line.

Scale 215

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 215