Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2022

Startups create products. After product-market fit, product teams hew the product roadmap from a panoply of options to the features best aligned with the company’s plans. In much the same way, CEOs architect the organization that builds, markets, sells, and supports the product.

Startup 360

Startup Acquisition Product Marketing Scaling 360

Tom Tunguz

JULY 25, 2020

Marketing has many disciplines. Howeve you may count and divide marketing skills, marketing is the team with the broadest mandate of different techniques to master. To handle this complexity, some startups have split the role under two leaders: a head of product marketing and a head of demand generation.

Sales Recruiting 206

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 206

Casey Accidental

APRIL 13, 2021

As a product leader with a background in growth, it’s surprising how much what I actually end up working on is product/market fit. Product people should only be focused on growth i.e. connecting people to the value of a product once they’ve confirmed the product is delivering value.

Product Marketing 145

Product Marketing Marketing Scale Retention 145

Casey Accidental

OCTOBER 31, 2022

I have written a lot about product/market fit in the past. Whether you are a founder, product or growth leader, being able to recognize and measure product/market fit is a critical tool to make the best decisions on driving success of a company. Frankly, it is just much harder.

Product Marketing 131

Product Marketing Marketing Scale Software Review 131

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

At Intercom, we believe the best products are built with the market in mind. That’s why some of Intercom’s first marketing hires were product marketers and why we’ve had a “seat at the table” from the early days of the company. . More and more, I see startups hiring PMMs as their first marketer ”.

Product Marketing 138

Product Marketing Marketing Sales Hiring Scale 138

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

DECEMBER 13, 2017

Intro Many potentially great companies fail each year because, while they have an incredible product, they don’t figure out how to get it to market fast enough. Figuring out how to reach customers and break through to Product-Market-Fit remains one of the hardest parts of building a successful startup.

Product Marketing 263

Product Marketing Marketing Startup Sales 263

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2022

As the fiscal quarters of many startups draw to a close, board members and management teams are having one of four conversations: The World is Your Oyster, Time to Strategize, Chewing Gravel, or Go Big/Go Profitable. The x-axis is the Zero Cash Date: when the startup runs out of money. Markets reverse in a moment.

Startup 343

Startup Outsourced Development Scale Banking 343

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 16, 2023

One of the toughest challenges for founders — and especially technical founders who are used to focusing so much on product features over sales — is striking “product-market fit”. What does this mean for product design and product management? Today’s episode continues our enterprise go-to-market podcast series.

Product Marketing 75

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 75

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Can a startup without any prior experience raise money from venture capitalists (VCs)? They can probably raise pre-product. You need to prove product-market fit and strong growth, at least relatively speaking in the early days. Of course, but the answer is a bit more complicated than that.

Venture Capital 210

Venture Capital Startup Product Marketing Marketing 210

User Pilot

MARCH 9, 2023

Before you rush into creating a product thinking people will love it, it pays to perform a product-market fit analysis. You want to be sure there is a demand for your product, so you don’t have to suffer the embarrassment of a massive flop. What is product-market fit? What is a product-market fit?

Product Marketing 98

Product Marketing Marketing Management Social Media 98

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. Specifically, I’m talking about product management and product marketing. Engineering manages IT.

Product Marketing 93

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Startup Scale 93

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2023

The first goal of sales at a startup isn’t to bring in revenue — it’s to get customer feedback. I’ve spent the last year working to find product-market fit for my startup, Dock. I’ve used our sales process to iterate our way to product market-fit and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way.

Sales Recruiting 88

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 88

Casey Accidental

JULY 12, 2021

When you actually launch new products to customers (which many teams don’t do), product managers and designers that have focused on scaling issues and optimization have to flex a new type of cross-functional muscle: how to work with product marketing. The Brand Marketing Pyramid. But they’re not all bad.

Product Marketing 121

Product Marketing Marketing Branding Scale 121

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2023

If a startup raised a top quartile Seed round, Series A, B, & C, they typically would have grown headcount by about 6% in the last twelve months. Startups with more business than they can handle should be scaling their teams to satisfy market demand. The headcount growth rate for all other companies? About double at 12%.

Headcount 223

Headcount Startup AI Scaling 223

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2023

This week we have Nivas Ravichandran, Head of Marketing at Spendflo! #1. Nivas Ravichandran heads marketing for Spendflo – Save up to 30% on your SaaS stack. Nivas brings 7+ years of SaaS marketing experience and has led multiple growth and product marketing initiatives at Freshworks. I’m using Hubspot.

Marketing 216

Marketing Product Marketing Startup Engagement 216

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2023

Last week we had a great one with Sarah Scharf, VP of Marketing of Vanta, check it out here. This week we have Jessica Gilmartin, Chief Marketing Officer of Calendly! #1. Jessica brings nearly 20 years of marketing and leadership experience to Calendly. What’s your core stack of apps today?

Marketing 240

Marketing Leadership Engineering Enterprise 240

User Pilot

MAY 13, 2024

Is your team struggling to determine the return on investment (ROI) of product marketing strategies? Or are you looking for ways to improve the performance of your marketing campaigns? In either case, marketing analytics tools can come to your rescue. It can help you monitor the effectiveness of in-app marketing efforts.

Software 105

Software Marketing Scale Social Media 105

The Angel VC

AUGUST 7, 2014

Product/market fit is a topic that I've touched on a few times on this blog. It's that extremely crucial but somewhat hard to define (and even harder to measure) step which every startup needs to cross as it goes from an idea to a product to a real, scalable business.

Product Marketing 133

Product Marketing Startup Marketing SaaS 133

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

In the new episode, Jason sits down with Drata CMO Sydney Sloan to talk about what’s new at Drata, the role of CMO at Drata vs. Salesloft, partner marketing, customer marketing, and more. Sydney pulled someone from Salesloft with a product marketing background who understands operations, running programs, and being strategic.

AWS 197

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 197

Kellblog

JULY 24, 2021

I sometimes get asked about how to structure an enterprise software marketing organization and the relative roles of product marketing vs. competitive analysis. My first job in marketing, which served as my bridge from a technical to a sales-and-marketing career, was as a competitive analyst.

Product Marketing 136

Product Marketing Marketing Sales Hiring Payment Services 136

Chaotic Flow

SEPTEMBER 22, 2015

Finding product-market fit is a central, early stage challenge of every startup. SaaS startups, however, have unique advantages. Unlike consumer Internet products, SaaS products are essential business tools. In other words, SaaS customers want product-market fit as much as the SaaS vendor.

Product Marketing 130

Product Marketing Marketing SaaS Software Development 130

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 1, 2018

The most important tasks for any early stage startup are to write code and talk to users. Looking back, I didn’t see these activities as marketing with a capital M, but they absolutely were. Founding a startup is a lot like this. I didn’t have a perfectly mapped out startup marketing strategy. Absolutely not.

Startup 201

Startup Strategy Marketing Social Media 201

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 3, 2020

Editor’s note: This article is part four of a four-part series that covers the most crucial product marketing activities for an early-stage startup. And all heads typically turn toward a marketing leader or marketing team. Play a stronger role in a few go-to-market (GTM) activities. Find the first part here.

Product Marketing 71

Product Marketing Startup Scale Marketing 71

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

How much should a SaaS startup invest in sales and marketing at different stages of the business? Sales and marketing investment depends on many different factors including establishing product market fit, the business’s sales model (inside, field, freemium), and not least, cash balance and fundraising capacity.

Investment 274

Investment Startup Marketing SaaS 274

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

This showcases a narrow segment of a niche market, and it’s missing a lot of startups. Any startup in any reasonable category likely has dozens of competitors, and Altman believes the best strategy to compete in 2023 and beyond is multi-product. What Caused This Crowded Software Market? Building new teams.

Scale 220

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 220

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2021

Folks want to start startups because they have a chance to look like this: The true definition of a tech startup is probably one that if it truly achieves product-market fit, can scale almost infinitely. That’s the biggest difference between a small business and a classic tech startup. In 2014, it had 6 employees.

Startup 278

Startup Scaling Investment Product Marketing 278

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

There is a lot to do in marketing. But a new VP of Marketing will really only do 3 things. I’ve interviewed 100s of VP of marketing candidates over the past years and I can tell you one think — it’s easy to spot the ones that won’t work out. How do you think sales and marketing should work together?

Interviewing 355

Interviewing Sales Hiring Marketing Branding 355

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Product-market fit is “ the only thing that matters ” early on in the startup journey, wrote Marc Andreessen in June 2007. Conventionally, product-market fit comes down to early signals that the market has voted your product as the best …

Product Marketing 93

Product Marketing Marketing Startup Enterprise 93

OpenView Labs

APRIL 3, 2019

90% of startups fail, according to an in-depth analysis of 3,200 companies as part of the Startup Genome Report. It’s no wonder that the startup community obsesses over finding product-market fit. It’s no wonder that the startup community obsesses over finding product-market fit.

Product Marketing 63

Product Marketing Pricing Scale Marketing 63

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

This is the theoretically ideal organizational chart of a startup. This is the org chart of the typical startup. As a startup evolves from product market fit to scaling, organizational design becomes an executive imperative. In the transition from product market fit to scaling, this is a key step.

Startup 263

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team Scaling 263

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

In this latest episode of CRO Confidential , Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Zapier, Giancarlo Lionetti (GC), to chat about Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Go-To-Market (GTM). First, we’ve talked about this a lot at SaaStr: product-led or sales-led, which is right?

Scale 249

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 249

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 7, 2015

Why did you choose this product? I’m digging for product differentiation, and to understand if there are different customer segments in the market who might use a different product to satisfy unique needs. Which teams in the company use the product, and how has that changed over time?

Product Marketing 121

Product Marketing Development Team Review Software Review Startup 121

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

Scaling a tech startup doesn’t come easy, and when you’ve tried all the conventional SaaS advice, it might be tempting to give up. It has now secured over $67M in funding and offers a robust platform for mid-market and SMB segments. And they mostly did this by ignoring four pieces of traditional startup advice.

Scale 190

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 190

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

The most frequent mishire in startups is the first head of marketing. Many different disciplines fall under marketing’s purview. The question facing founders recruiting marketers is: which is the most important to prioritize? Each of these kinds of marketers have critical skills for a startup.

Scale 214

Scale Startup Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 214

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2023

If you’re a seed-stage startup, Michael shares the best ways for you to present your company to startup investors. This is the same advice they give YC companies to become much more successful at fundraising when they’re pre-product market fit. What’s your market size? How big the market is is what’s important.

Payment Methods 211

Payment Methods Startup Payment Solutions Sales Hiring 211