SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

The decision to leave a fairly scaled role leading 200+ AEs at LinkedIn to join a smaller-stage startup. The Worst Days of a CRO The job of CRO is a tough one, with lots of natural tensions in place between sales and marketing, sales and product, etc. The highs and lows always come, usually involving the people on your team.

Scale 228

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 228

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 23, 2023

I’m watching public company earnings to identify early weaknesses in the software market. Microsoft’s Ability to Cross-Sell its Suite is Driving Dominance in Many Categories GitHub is now home to 100 million developers. About 70% of commercial Office subscribers use Teams.

Azure 245

Azure Underperforming Technical Team Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 245

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2023

A bad experience with a revenue operations leader might taint your view of the position at all future companies, but that would be a mistake, as CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond learned first-hand. For example, how do you think about ICP, and what markets should you go after? Not every leader is created equally. Enablement.

Sales Hiring 184

Sales Hiring Education Scale Strategy 184

Kellblog

JULY 8, 2020

I was talking with my old friend, Mark Tice , the other day and he referred to a startup mistake as, “on his top ten list.” ” Mark’s been a startup CEO twice, selling two companies in strategic acquisitions, and he’s run worldwide sales and channels a few times.

Sales Hiring 139

Sales Hiring Startup Software Review Enterprise 139

User Pilot

MAY 1, 2024

Before starting his own venture, Lenny worked in the product and engineering teams of companies like Airbnb and Neustar. Renowned for his tenure on Airbnb’s product team, Lenny’s professional journey truly began in 2010 when he served as the CEO of a budding startup named “Localmind.”

Underperforming Technical Team 102

Underperforming Technical Team New CTO Interviewing CTO 102

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Unfortunately, things only get more difficult when it comes to running the whole business as a Shopify app developer. This article will cover 10 business tips for improving your Shopify app’s development, marketing, and sales. 10 business tips for Shopify app developers 1. The Shopify QA team are your friends 6.

Payment Solutions 98

Payment Solutions Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development 98

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Sometimes it’s VP Sales (OK, often, this is the most common mishire — another post here on what a really great VPS can do for you, and how a poor one can wreck your company, coming). Sometimes it’s VP Marketing. The #1 reason to do a start-up is Career Development. Or VP of Eng, or whatever. Only money.

Sales Hiring 271

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Startup 271

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 25, 2020

If you are looking to scale up your marketing, you will need talented people that can take charge of and execute your strategy. But should you build your own in-house marketing team or hire an agency partner? The Benefits of Working With a Digital Marketing Agency. The Benefits of Working With a Digital Marketing Agency.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 145

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

We recently hosted the Point Nine Founders Summit, featuring several panels and presentations from founders, CFOs, COOs, and sales execs on building early sales teams and hiring your first successful sales leaders. 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

TurnKey Labs

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Key takeaways: Why startups fail? It’s typically due to one or more key factors, such as a lack of preparation and planning, poor understanding of the target customer’s needs, and/or not developing a product or service that adequately solves customer pain points (which is more commonly known as not achieving “product-market fit”).

Startup 52

Startup Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Software Review 52

Tom Tunguz

MAY 25, 2017

The more interesting of the two for startups is the company level. In order to be successful, startups have to be good at many things. The startup often inherits this exceptional characteristic from one or more of the founders. Determining how to compete is a critical part of developing a startup idea.

Startup 100

Startup Underperforming Technical Team Strategy Azure 100

User Pilot

MAY 8, 2024

Also, it helps you make data-driven product development decisions instead of relying on guesswork. Based on the insights, you can inform your future product development. A comprehensive customer needs analysis can help you make data-driven decisions for product design and development. Book a demo now to get started.

Underperforming Technical Team 102

Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Trends User Experience 102

OnStartups

MAY 18, 2021

All the points below have been pulled from startup sales teams that I think work pretty well (including the team at CRM software company, HubSpot). Building Startup Sales Teams. They’re not bad people, they’re just different from you, especially if you're an introverted geek like me. The math won’t work.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Startup 52

Casey Accidental

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

In my recent essay about second products , I talked about how the goal of building a second product is not the traditional concept of product/market fit we’ve all been raised on regarding startups. First off, let’s spend a moment on this product/market fit point. The goal is to inflect the growth of the entire company over time.

Underperforming Technical Team 63

Underperforming Technical Team Scale GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Startup 63

User Pilot

APRIL 30, 2024

In many ways, he has shaped how successful products are built and how teams can be organized to work toward excellence. In this role, he drove the development of products that took eBay’s global e-commerce platform to new levels of success. Marty Cagan is a popular name in the product management world. Who is Marty Cagan?

Management 105

Management Underperforming Technical Team Innovation Generative AI 105

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 10, 2020

I hope this post allows people and teams to safely talk about Product Judgment. If you ever had to face a Manager, Director or Exec as they make bad product decisions and you’re struggling to persuade them otherwise, this post will help you. It takes years to build, and therefore ranges from very weak to very strong.

Underperforming Technical Team 291

Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Communication B2B 291

Kellblog

JULY 18, 2019

So, you’re thinking of taking a job at a startup, but are nervous about the risk, perhaps having trouble telling one from another, and unsure about knowing what’s really important in startup success. Great core/founding team. Startups are about people. We live in a founder-friendly VC era.

Underperforming Technical Team 78

Underperforming Technical Team Startup Software Technical Cofounder 78

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

What should you look for in an Enterprise rep vs. a Mid-Market rep? How should you handle presenting challenges to your C-suite team when you’ve just joined the company? Solving High Volume, Low Conversion at Lattice Dini Mehta joined Lattice at $3M in revenue when it had just 10 people in seat for Go-To-Market and 7 salespeople.

Scale 215

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 215

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 11, 2022

How to Navigate the Market Downturn. Everyone is starting to feel the squeeze of the market—especially those in the tech space. Seasoned industry vets may know what their next move should be, but navigating a changing market (especially one in a downturn) is an obstacle for any SaaS founder. Raise, Sell, Merge, or Scale?

Scale 97

Scale Scaling Technical Review Venture Capital 97

FastSpring

APRIL 13, 2023

Across markets, companies were “taking big data sets and visualizing them in interesting ways to create user experiences.” When Justin and his initial team started looking for a way to capitalize on VR/AR technology, they focused their attention on the “made-to-order” industrial market. Experience is the keyword here.

Payment Methods 142

Payment Methods Marketing Payments SaaS Payments 142

Kellblog

MAY 5, 2021

The other day I read a book on account-based marketing (ABM), entitled ABM is B2B , and I must say I disliked it. A marketing book written in marketing copy style. For marketers. ABM means account-based marketing. Just as ABM is one type of B2B marketing. Capital D disliked. Sentence fragments. Big claims.

B2B 142

B2B Marketing Software Review Underperforming Technical Team 142

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Duo Security is an Ann Arbor, Michigan based cyber-security startup. sales team. As everyone left to work for an investment bank in California or New York that summer of ’99, I went to work at a startup in Ann Arbor. Now, we did really cool stuff at this startup. So marketing owns a pipeline, not just a megaphone.

Scale 216

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 216

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2023

Many startups crash and burn when they hit the Series A crunch — that do-or-die time where many seem to lose their footing even if they’ve been successful up to that point. Mistake #1: Viewing Investors Only As Capital As founders build a team, they focus on obtaining complementary skill sets. That’s a mistake. Absolutely.

Development Team Review 209

Development Team Review Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team SMB 209

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2019

Since writing The AI Agency: A Novel GTM for Machine Learning Startups , I’ve been meeting many companies who operate this way. These startups use machine learning to disrupt an industry traditionally dominated by agencies: law, accounting, recruiting, translation, debt collection, marketing…the list is long.

AI 191

AI Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Machine Learning 191

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. Ditto for product marketers.

VP of Engineering 106

VP of Engineering Travel Underperforming Technical Team Headcount 106

Chart Mogul

OCTOBER 3, 2019

Marketing? . After your product/market fit, your business model is the most important consideration if you’re to save your business from the startup graveyard. Or it can be segmented by marketing channel, geography/market, cohort, or any other way that makes sense to your business. The design of your product? .

Acquisition 91

Acquisition Underperforming Technical Team Startup Customer Lifetime Value 91

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

Vertical SaaS requires a different go-to-market than horizontal SaaS companies. Vertical software companies, a recent important trend in SaaS startups, pursue customers only in a particular industry. They trade a more narrow customer base and consequent reduction in market size for a competitive advantage in that market segment.

Startup 103

Startup SaaS Underperforming Technical Team Marketing 103

Unbounce

JUNE 24, 2020

How often do you reflect on the ways technology changes your life as a marketer? We do our marketing… on the internet.”) Because when marketing meets AI , magic happens. To put it another way, marketing and AI is a love story for the ages. To put it another way, marketing and AI is a love story for the ages.

Artificial Intelligence 145

Artificial Intelligence AI Search Machine Learning Marketing 145

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

APRIL 1, 2021

Not necessarily in revenue, and often not in their core market. But in a related market that becomes strategically important. Some examples: Okta basically won the corporate side of identity (rocketed to #1) but wasn’t #1 on the developer side. Smaller deals can sometimes just be about experiments, and teams.

Underperforming Technical Team 189

Underperforming Technical Team Cloud Acquisition Communication 189

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”. So in that shift from product-market fit to product-market-SALES fit, how much should you optimize your go-to-market for product… and even the other way around?

Product Marketing 75

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 75

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 20, 2018

In the early stages of most SaaS startups’ lives, the CEO or founder often acts as the initial head of sales. Define your marketing personas. To do this it is necessary to create marketing personas that represent your ideal prospect or match your ideal customer profile. Iterate the product based on feedback.

Startup 178

Startup Sales SaaS Systems Review 178

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Is your leadership team world-class? Does your board think you have the right leadership team? Heck, does your leadership team think you have the right leadership team? new ARR), OKRs , or hiring goals — either in terms of number or quality (particularly when staffing their own leadership team).

Leadership 113

Leadership Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Scale 113

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

Do you have two sales teams? Who gets what part of the long-term development budget? Where does marketing allocate its resources? And most importantly, multiple products can be very distracting at the management team level. A second product can’t bail out your sales team. I wish I had some magic answers.

Underperforming Technical Team 349

Underperforming Technical Team Cloud Revenue Acquisition 349

Baremetrics

OCTOBER 10, 2021

Inbound marketing is the process of getting potential clients to find your company. Both of these tasks can rely on content marketing , for example events, podcasts, blogs, and social media posts. Whatever marketing strategy you choose, use Baremetrics to monitor your sales data. Table of Contents.

Payments 98

Payments Payment Methods Payment Solutions Marketing 98

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 20, 2016

The volatility in the stock market, the steady erosion of public multiples, and the broad decline of seed, venture and growth investment in Q4 2015 seem to portend a repricing of the startup market. When should a startup raise immediately? When should a startup raise capital later? This is the riskiest option.

Startup 100

Startup Underperforming Technical Team Forecasting Investment 100

User Pilot

APRIL 6, 2023

Developing and releasing sophisticated products with all the bells and whistles imaginable might seem like a great idea. Developers tend to overcomplicate code when they don’t have enough experience or want to show off their skills. Poor prioritization and external pressure are also common causes. Book the demo!

Underperforming Technical Team 105

Underperforming Technical Team Management Interviewing Scale 105