SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Justin Welsh, former SVP of Sales at PatientPop explains how he started in SaaS in 2009 as the second sales hire at Zocdoc. Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. Justin Welsh | SVP Sales @ PatientPop. Want to see more content like this?

Sales Recruiting 332

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 332

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Metrics, Metrics, Metrics The first thing Secureframe thinks about is metrics. If you don’t know your key company or North Star metrics, talk to your investors or other experts to figure out what they should be. So they can take action on the metrics in real time if they’re going in a direction they don’t like.

Sales Recruiting 305

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 305

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2022

Having learned from thousands of customers and prospects, Sarah Lash, Envoy’s head of enterprise sales, will talk about what it takes to guide and scale enterprise sales programs during an uncertain future. Metrics That Matter. In my first six months at Envoy , I grew the sales team from six to 17. Here’s how I did it.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 246

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

” – Colin Jones, CRO Emeritus at Wiz You may have seen the news that Google is making its biggest acquisition — by far — of Cloud and SaaS security leader Wiz for a stunning $32 Billion (!). Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team.

Scale 192

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 192

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Conversations about the state of the SaaS market in 2022 are everywhere, and it can seem overwhelming for entrepreneurs and business leaders to make sense of everything. A New SaaS Playbook. In 2021, there was much less focus on efficiency and more on revenue metrics like ARR.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 264

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. If you don’t have the time to watch the whole session, here are the main metrics you should be mindful of. Why do developers love SaaS products?

SaaS Payments 246

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 246

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 22, 2015

On December 2, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Maia Josebachvilli , VP of Strategy and People at Greenhouse, a fast growing recruiting software company. Maia is especially well known for her thought leadership in developing best in class recruiting metrics. She was also selected for Inc’s 30 under 30.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Metrics SaaS Sales Funnel 100

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint welcomed Maia Josebachvilli , the VP of People and Strategy of Greenhouse. Specifically, she champions a metrics-based approach for developing world class recruiting teams. Maia reports these five strategic recruiting metrics to the executive team each quarter.

Sales Recruiting 113

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Data Analysis 113

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

Sales Hiring 307

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 307

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

We’ve recently been posting polls on SaaStr’s LinkedIn account to get a feel for what SaaS companies are doing in the current environment. In the video below, he discusses the results and where he thinks SaaS companies are on track or need improvement. #1. This is particularly important for a VP of Sales.

Sales Recruiting 288

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 288

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

Gartner: SaaS Spend In the Enterprise Will Grow 17% to $195 Billion in 2023. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. Live: SaaStr Workshop Wednesday with Battery Ventures on SaaS Metrics.

Sales Recruiting 297

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 297

Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2021

That’s a reason the Redpoint SaaS metrics template includes Glassdoor score. The better the management hires for a business, the greater candidates' interest to work for a company. Often, employee satisfaction follows (also a metric in the template). However, some executive teams observe very little turnover.

Sales Hiring 197

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Branding 197

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Q: What are the top 20 pieces of advice for building a successful SaaS startup? Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. It just takes that long in SaaS and B2B, nine times out of ten.

Sales Hiring 318

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 318

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 9, 2013

One number investors use to benchmark SaaS startups across sectors and industries is sales efficiency. There are a handful of variants of this metric, sometimes called the magic number, but ultimately they all aim to provide some sense of the incremental revenue returned by sales and marketing investment.

Benchmarks 160

Benchmarks Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 160

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to increase the odds your first management team is a success. How to hire a great VP of Sales (tons on that here ). What a great VP of sales really does. How to manage customer success. About recruiting and helping you scale. When to hire her (more here ). All good stuff.

Sales Hiring 357

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 357

SaaStr

AUGUST 11, 2021

A ways back at SaaStr, we did a post “If Your VP Sales Isn’t Going to Work Out — You’ll Know in 30 Days” At first, so many VPs of Sales I know hated the post. A great VP can’t always double sales in a month or two. And just improving things quickly, in the first 30 days, has a big impact in SaaS.

Sales Recruiting 313

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Scaling 313

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2022

Investments I've made that didn't work out: – Momentum investment – CEO a bit of bulls**t artist – CEO good at sales but weak product team / CTO. Investments I've made that had so-so outcomes: – CEO not better than me – CEO couldn't control burn rate – Not really SaaS.

Investment 313

Investment Sales Recruiting CTO Startup 313

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

A VP of Sales and Success A VP of Sales and Marketing A VP of Sales and Anything Else. Is usually not really a VP of Sales. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had to recruit a lot of types of folks over the years where my domain knowledge was limited. I’ve had to recruit Ph.Ds.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 259

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

What’s the secret to SaaS success at YCombinator? Sam : We’re going to talk today about a lot of topics, but the general theme is, what’s the difference between good and great SaaS companies? When we do all hands meetings, we go through every KPI, every metric, ARR, margin, with every Gustee. How do you hire?”

VP of Engineering 300

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 300

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2020

You can also totally change your sales team. In a way, this is the same point as #1, almost — except you can recruit even more of the team here. The sales team can call back every single prospect, not just the good ones. NPS is A Great Core Metric. There are only 40-50 hours in a sales week. Drive up NPS.

Sales Recruiting 351

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Churn Onboarding 351

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 240

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

Signal can come from many places (sales team notes, customer support tickets, etc) IT Incident Management: Similar to the security alert example. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Top 5 Median: 22.2x

Systems Review 146

Systems Review Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence 146

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

I’ve had the privilege to invest one way or another in about 35 SaaS companies, both as a VC and as angel. Especially when some other crappy company just got funded last week with worse metrics. Let me make a list, of at least 10 Risks Different SaaS VCs Do and Do Not Like To Take. Others … really don’t care.

Scale 344

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 344

Kellblog

MARCH 17, 2020

Rephrasing Lewis Carroll, “if you don’t know what you’re recruiting for, any candidate looks great.” ” I liken executive recruiters to Realtors. ” That know-not-what, by the way, is that it’s for sale. Let’s switch to executive recruiting. Sound judgment and maturity.

Sales Recruiting 86

Sales Recruiting Sales Enablement Startup Communication 86

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. Recruiting is easier, but the things that don’t change are customers don’t care.

Sales Recruiting 265

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 265

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2021

I bet the freemium metrics appeared good, with positive growth and solid conversion rates. But that’s not Disruption — in SaaS at least. Sometimes in SaaS, there are natural monopolies. But more often, SaaS categories with significant complexity in workflows and features end up in natural oligopolies.

Scale 294

Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 294

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

So read on, and hopefully, your SaaS sales journey will be less about trial and error and more about steady progress toward success. Whats important to note is that each model targets a distinct customer persona and, therefore, has a unique approach to the customer journeyfrom brand awareness to sales and, ultimately, conversion.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

Recently, we welcomed Hollie Wegman to SaaS Office Hours to talk about marketing to developers. A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. Do the metrics suddenly change? It was our first virtual event, and we had hundreds of people attend. The full transcript is here.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Startup 263

OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

OpenView, Work-Bench , Primary Venture Partners , and Lerer Hippeau just hosted the fourth and final session of SaaS Growth Camp—a series for the firms’ portfolio companies tailored to the complex ideas behind SaaS growth and go-to-market strategies. Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2024

Back then, remote first was a recruiting advantage. The way the co-founders looked at the stages in the early days of no funding and a community-focus were: Step 1 – No sales or customers, only building freely available open-source software. All they sold was the visualization layer with no sales team. Today, not so much.

Scale 298

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 298

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

Hundreds of thousands of experts are telling you how to succeed in SaaS. SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares the 10 worst pieces of SaaS advice, excuses, and mistakes founders make, and what to do instead If you want advice, you probably won’t get it from VCs, but ask anyway. #2 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.”

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

How do you win with a high-velocity sales strategy in a fast-moving, competitive market? In a special session of Workshop Wednesday, Gorgias Founder & CEO Romain Lapeyre and Gorgias VP of Sales & Partnerships Aasif Osmany share their learnings, advice, and hacks for optimizing your sales process. Sign up for free.

Sales Hiring 203

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 203

How To Buy Saas

MAY 21, 2025

Whether youre a startup , an SMB , or a global enterprise , the right ATS can streamline your recruitment process, save time, and help attract top talent in a competitive market. Recruitee Best Collaborative Recruiting ATS Pricing: Key Features: Ideal Use Case: 4. Whats the difference between an ATS and a recruitment CRM?

Systems Review 52

Systems Review Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

I’m excited to be here today to share a few stories from the SaaS world. So Pardot, SalesLoft and Calendly, you’re thinking, “How is this random guy from Atlanta 2000 miles away at the starting floor, at the ground floor of three pretty interesting SaaS companies?” Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020. All right.

Sales Recruiting 202

Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 202

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2020

We’re going to actually really dissect and go through a lot of the conventional wisdom of how to run a SaaS company and we’ll do that together. The first thing is, and this is a little crazy, but recruitment is incredibly overrated. How many people out here spend more than a third of your time recruiting?

Sales Recruiting 200

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Management Marketing 200

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

When Yvonne joined in 2016, the business unit consisted of just 10 people across product, engineering, sales, and marketing. Since then, she’s helped grow the Udemy’s B2B SaaS arm to more than 5,000 enterprise customers, which include the likes of Pinterest, Adidas, and General Mills.

Marketplace as a Service 243

Marketplace as a Service Scale Sales Recruiting Business 243

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

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). To put it as simple as possible, the health of a SaaS business is mainly determined by two factors: Customer lifetime value (CLTV) and customer acquisition costs (CAC).

Sales Recruiting 155

Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155