SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

As part of that, we wanted to look back at some of our most iconic content and sessions. One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). I’m doing this thing for the first time. SaaStr is Turning 10!

VP of Engineering 279

VP of Engineering Sales Revenue SaaS 279

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. A Rockstar engineer really is 10x better than the next tier. And yet … is it worth waiting 6-9 months to hire a VP that’s a true Rockstar, if you’ve struggled to make the hire? It’s true.

SaaS 289

SaaS Customer Success Sales Engineering 289

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

Especially the money part. “Give the VP of Sales More Time” This is always terrible advice. If a VP of Sales can’t improve things in one sales cycle or less — she never will. As CEO, you need to find a way. Find a way. “I don’t need a real VP of Marketing … Yet.”

SaaS 306

SaaS Outbound Sales Team Revenue Sales 306

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. That means often it’s not entirely clear who the first VP of Product should report to. A few general learnings: A VP of Product that Reports to CTO / Engineering Rarely Meets With That Many Customers.

CTO Hire 310

CTO Hire CTO SaaS Engineering 310

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2021

but you can’t afford to hire all the people you need to meet their needs. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the startup. You have to love, or at least commit to, recruiting constantly. You have to hire so many functions in SaaS?—?VPS, VPS, VPM, VPP, VPCS, VPE, etc. You will have a Year From Hell here.

SaaS 299

SaaS VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) B2C Startup 299

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR.

CTO Hire 287

CTO Hire New CTO CTO SaaS 287

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2020

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. Front-end, mid-end, back-end engineers of all sorts and types. Just pass here, nine times out of ten at least.

CTO Hire 258

CTO Hire SaaS Sales B2B 258

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and management team : SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. You’ll need more than 5–6 core engineers to go big. Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders?

CTO Hire 243

CTO Hire CTO Growth Hacking SaaS 243

BetterCloud

MAY 7, 2021

Prior to joining BetterCloud as our new VP of engineering, she served as a director of engineering at Twilio. We sat down with Brandon to discuss her vision for engineering at BetterCloud, her approach to building teams, and her advice to young female engineers. I’m a big fan of creating innovation time.

Engineering 52

Engineering Innovation Technology Leadership 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 23, 2022

My general learnings: By 20-30 employees, you should have 1-2 good managers in place such that at least 50% of the company can run based only on weekly staff meetings, 1-on-1s, and “grab me when you need me-s” E.g., a great first VP of Sales that can just handle sales. You spend all your recruiting time just on VPs and above.

Startup 210

Startup Engineering Customer Success Sales 210

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2020

An organization that has come together voluntarily to take on a mission, at least in part. They’ll revolt when you make a senior or mid-level hire that as a group, they simply cannot suffer one day longer. The three times it happened to me: A very senior engineer that we just HAD to have. Something organic.

CTO Hire 290

CTO Hire Engineering New CTO CTO 290

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

But I think the biggest, #1, mistake successful first-time entrepreneurs in SaaS make time and time again these days is they micromanage too long. I think it’s a byproduct, in part, of the fact that founders are just so much better these days. Engineering. Go hire them. In every single function.

SaaS 314

SaaS Customer Success Finance Sales 314

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

And if your team knows how to spend it, correctly — find a way to get them the capital they need to grow even faster than plan. And importantly, you need to spend more time with your existing customers (vs. But even if you’ve hired the world’s best VP of Sales … you can’t opt out of sales entirely.

CTO Hire 290

CTO Hire Outbound Sales Team Deferred Revenue New CTO 290

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales. But most of us are first-time founders, or close to it. But most of us are first-time founders, or close to it. The director that wants a shot at VP.

CTO Hire 238

CTO Hire VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) SaaS Startup 238

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2019

We then had our own mini rocketship, hitting challenges and being acquired, and then being part of an IPO. But I got to part of the management team and make mistakes, and work cross-functionally with the other leaders and managers. But I started to learn what it took to recruit, inspire, and yes fail a team. I’m still learning.

CTO Hire 168

CTO Hire Startup CTO Management 168

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

You know how everyone says you'll never look and wish you'd kept a bad VP as long as you did? That when you make a mis-hire, you'll always look back and say you should have made a change 3-4 month earlier? A lot of classic SaaStr advice has been how to spot the best potential VPs. When to hire them.

Sales 218

Sales SMB Scaling Churn 218

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Goodness this is one of the toughest parts of scaling. I remember Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, and I discussed this at one of the SaaStr Annuals, when he lost his VP of Engineering. All I can tell you is this: First, if you hire great VPs, it partially takes care of itself. We’ve all lived it. I still live it myself!

Scaling 193

Scaling Startup Engineering Management 193

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2022

Dear SaaStr: Do My VP of Eng and My VP of Product Have to Be Technically Excellent? A Great VP of Engineering must either: Either have been a truly great IC engineer; and/or. A pretty good IC who still is a hacker and enjoys coding in their free time. This has been pretty much my experience.

Engineering 247

Engineering Management 247

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

And he made an observation to me that I’d been thinking about for a very long time, but didn’t know how to express. And for the most part, these were incredibly stressful times, when I was very underpaid, overworked, and worked to the bone. Not just being part of something great — but, Being Great.

CTO Hire 299

CTO Hire AWS New CTO CTO 299

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2021

But what they don’t have is a good enough founding team: Sometimes, if the prospective founder isn’t super technical, then the CTO/VPE isn’t really great. But great teams find great markets, so that doesn’t really matter}. At least an acqui-hire. As individuals, they are amazing. At least a single.

CTO Hire 217

CTO Hire New CTO CTO SaaS 217

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2021

You can catch up on YouTube on many of the top sessions here including : How to hire a Great VP of Engineering with Shopify’s VP of Engineering. How to scale a word-class sales team with Unity’s VP of Sales. How to build a Unicorn with Salesloft’s CEO Kyle Porter.

Engineering 164

Engineering Revenue Scaling Sales 164

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2021

Internships have sparked millions of successful careers, and they can be a valuable talent pool from which companies can eventually hire full-time employees. Interns are a pipeline for full-time talent. Your company could be one of them by hiring ambitious interns. Recruitment Tips.

Startup 164

Startup Engineering Business Scaling 164

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

But it turns out, the hardest part isn’t the Magic and the Impossible. The hardest part is this phase: the Possible, But Painful. If your VPE, or head of marketing, or someone key quits — you’re almost dead. But if you hire one VP after another, it will just take way too long. So first, buck up.

Scaling 260

Scaling SaaS Revenue Engineering 260

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 3, 2014

Meanwhile the equity stakes of founding VP of Engineering and VP of Product have remained relatively constant throughout the same five year period across all stages of company. Another cohort has a founding CEO and VPE. Another group has a founding CEO, VPE, VPP and so on.

Startup 100

Startup Venture Capital Entrepreneurship Trends 100

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2019

Pick a few that work for you: Get That Key VP Hire Done in Q1. Enough with the excuses for not having hired your real VP of Sales, or that VP of Engineering, or whatever. Hire a real recruiter. Drop other stuff to get this hire done. But anyhow — in January, find a way.

SaaS 296

SaaS Scaling Pricing Churn 296

SaaStr

JANUARY 22, 2021

As you try to hire up for your SaaS company, you’re going to be faced with a lot of choices and trade-offs. No hire is the perfect package. You can spend more time with prospects. Hire the smartest, bestest people you can. Do you take a risk on someone a little more junior than you’d like?

SaaS 278

SaaS Engineering Software Marketing 278

The Angel VC

JANUARY 4, 2015

At the beginning of December we had the idea that it would be cool to put together a "recruiting advent calendar" with job openings from within the Point Nine Family. Contactually is on the hunt for a VP of Engineering Referral bonus: $1,000 to the referrer and $1,000 to a charity of his/her choosing Tweet it!

User Experience 133

User Experience Engineering Sales Management 133

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 24, 2013

He had hired a recruiter to help him grow his team. But at some point in time, most quickly growing startups will need help forming their teams. One of my partners, Tim Haley, was a top recruiter in the valley for many years and having his experience and expertise has been invaluable. How to Pick a Search Firm.

Startup 100

Startup Interviewing Communication Engineering 100

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 13, 2021

I wrote a piece some time ago here, a person favorite, about Our Year of Hell. When a bad hire at a key time, and some confusion on strategy, led us to our worst year ever on a Year-over-Year growth rate basis. At least some times. I know you may be tempted to spend all your time on sales when sales slows.

Business 256

Business SaaS Revenue Sales 256

SaaStr

APRIL 29, 2019

Check out the line-up… “How to scale your engineering team” with Scality VP of Engineering Pierre Derome. How to give feedback to your teammates ” with Back Market Senior Engineering Manager Nicolas Tricot. How to set up a great hiring process” with Happn VP of Engineering Sebastien Preneta.

Engineering 163

Engineering B2B Scaling Management 163

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 28, 2014

Tho two tables below tell the story for VPs of Engineering (VPE) and VPs of Product (VPP) across the US broadly and in the SF Bay Area. In the past 5 years, VPEs have benefitted from a 10 to 16% increase in their cash compensation, but have seen their equity grants fall by 17-19%. Cash +10% +16%. Equity -19% -17%.

Compensation 100

Compensation Startup Trends Engineering 100

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

When is the right time to hire their first sales reps? What are the most common mistakes founders make when hiring their first reps? What can be done to minimize ramp time of new reps? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin.

Sales 220

Sales Technical Advisors SaaS Metrics 220

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2020

Todd McKinnon, CEO of Okta, for the first time joined us at a SaaStr event, SaaStr Scale 2020. Customers believed in the early days — but many investors and potential hires often didn’t. But VCs and many potential hires thought the space was too small and simple in the early days. That is was “just a widget.”

Cloud 187

Cloud Scaling Enterprise Revenue 187

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

you don't know what to do: 1/ Spend more time w/existing customers. 2/ Hire 1 great VP. Those are good times indeed. But there will be times when almost all of just not only struggle … but are just sort of out of ideas. Spend more time with existing customers. Hire 1 great VP.

Churn 237

Churn SaaS Revenue Sales 237

30 Day Leadership

MAY 10, 2022

4:33 - Surviving tough times - What were the circumstances that pulled Arash through growing pains? 23:06 - Identifying entrepreneurial mindset - How does Arash identify these traits during a hiring process? 4:33 - Surviving tough times - What were the circumstances that pulled Arash through growing pains?

B2B 52

B2B Entrepreneurship Leadership Engineering 52

30 Day Leadership

MAY 10, 2022

Arash Tadayon, VP of Engineering at Trainual, and I had an interesting conversation about this topic in this week’s episode of the B2B Leadership Podcast…. Find out how Arash has used curiosity to fuel his entrepreneurial and leadership career. If you always ask a question, you will always get a response….

B2B 52

B2B Entrepreneurship Leadership Engineering 52

SaaStr

JULY 6, 2020

Just go find the VP you need. Go find the VP you really need. I got the VPs of Sales, Product and Marketing I needed. I got the VPs of Sales, Product and Marketing I needed. But I should have taken a pause and just found our true VP of Engineering. You can miss a quarter if need be.

Market Segmentation 266

Market Segmentation Investment Retention Sales 266