SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2022

While there is no legal definition for CTO or bright line between CTO and VPE, I’d suggest a start-up CTO really only has to do a few things — which are very hard: Assemble a small team (3–9) of very good engineers. That often were never anticipated and aren’t part of the job spec. Dear SaaStr: What Makes a Bad CTO?

CTO Hire 285

CTO Hire Part-Time VPE CTO Engineering 285

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.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 278

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders? 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.

Part-Time VPE 307

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 307

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.

Part-Time VPE 286

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 286

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.

Part-Time VPE 312

Part-Time VPE Outsourcing Services CTO Hire CTO 312

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.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 255

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2023

Ok now that some time has gone by I can reflect a bit more thoughtfully here. My top mistakes as a SaaS founder/CEO: Not convincing the very, very, very best VPE I knew to join as our VPE. I had a great CTO, but I also needed a truly great VPE to scale past $10m ARR and deal with all those issues.

Part-Time VPE 246

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting CTO Scale 246

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.

Part-Time VPE 284

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 284

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 Hiring 269

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Underperforming Technical Team 269

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.

Part-Time VPE 321

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 321

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.

Part-Time VPE 278

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 278

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. No one has time to have coffee with all of those folks. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. So no, more time does not make a VP of Sales better.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

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. It’s one of the biggest risks not just in the early days, but really just as you scale. Great VPs attract great directors and great ICs.

Part-Time VPE 220

Part-Time VPE Engineering Scaling Startup 220

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2024

Okta’s VP of Engineering, Monica Bajaj, and Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing, Priya Ramamurthi, share Okta’s playbook to PLG, developer experience, and Enterprise ARR. How do you scale PLG? How do you build a stellar developer experience and continue to scale when the user base skyrockets overnight?

Underperforming Technical Team 276

Underperforming Technical Team Enterprise Scale Payments 276

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2019

And that’s really good when you’re scaling part of the team that looks like yourself. So if you’re an engineer and you need more engineers, having a network of engineers is an awesome thing. You don’t know where to find them. You guys are awesome.

Merchant Services 274

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 274

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.

Part-Time VPE 325

Part-Time VPE Scale Market Segmentation Finance 325

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.

Part-Time VPE 184

Part-Time VPE Engineering Startup Business 184

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

Founder CEO Todd McKinnon was VP of Engineering at Salesforce and left to start Okta in the depths of the last downturn. Seat Contractions Have Brought NRR Down From 120% to 111% While 111% NRR is still quite an engine at this scale, the drop in NRR from seat contractions explains a good chunk of the headwinds Okta has seen. #2.

Fractional VPE 276

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 276

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. You scale with your brand.

Part-Time VPE 222

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Cloud 222

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2019

And that’s really good when you’re scaling part of the team that looks like yourself. So if you’re an engineer and you need more engineers, having a network of engineers is an awesome thing. You don’t know where to find them. You guys are awesome.

Merchant Services 222

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 222

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

It means reducing choices amongst engineering teams and standardizing technology, so our team can spend as much time as possible delivering value to customers. Rich Archbold , Senior Director of Engineering, has been at the forefront of codifying and scaling this philosophy over the past few years.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

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.

Part-Time VPE 171

Part-Time VPE Scale Engineering B2B 171

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2019

But with it comes immense benefits and competitive advantages such as the diversification of ideas, speedier product development, and representation in important regions and time zones. We got a chance to celebrate our initial public offering on the New York stock exchange back in September, which was a really exciting time for me.

Engineering 184

Engineering Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 184

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2020

SaaStr favorite Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures was gracious enough to sit down with Nick Caldwell, former CPO of Looker and current VP of Engineering at Twitter. Nick has vast experience when it comes to B2B and B2C, which is why we asked them to share their best tips for growing product and engineering orgs from 0 to IPO.

Engineering 277

Engineering Part-Time VPE Scale B2C 277

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

As part of the run up to 2021 SaaStr Annual in the SF Bay Area Sep 27-29 , we’re taking a look back at some of our favorite classic sessions. (And You’ll find out tomorrow. Another piece of very, very good startup advice that I’ve given myself a hundred times is the “Do one thing exceptionally well.”

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 283

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.

Part-Time VPE 52

Part-Time VPE Engineering Innovation Leadership 52

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

WorkOS CEO Michael Grinich, Developer Success Manager Betsy Calender, and VP of Developer Experience Zeno Rocha share how to price your product for developers, how to market it to developers, how to how to support them as they scale and use the products. Anyone who says the developer market is not strong is behind the times.

Underperforming Technical Team 207

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Part-Time VPE 207

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2020

” In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, Aileen and SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin take a deep dive on how Aileen finds deals, her tips for a winning pitch, and the state of VC in 2020. 347: Ready to hire your first VP Sales? You can see the full video here , and read the podcast transcript below. But haven’t done it before?

Part-Time VPE 187

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Payment Methods SaaS Payments 187

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

We’ll have some time. It sounds minor or technical, but if you want to due diligence on a human being, I get to do it a few 100 times a year. I used it in kind of my breakfast pre warm-up, the crazy times we’re in. From Satya from Homebrew, we just heard that seed’s at an all time high.

Investment 204

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 204

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

You’ll also learn how leading SaaS companies are able to scale and thrive in this complex, dynamic environment. Eyal Manor – VP, Engineering @ Google Cloud. They wanted real-time results. And the same customer challenges that we were being presented, which was: How do you scale? FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Cloud 171

Cloud Scale Trends Artificial Intelligence 171

OpenView Labs

JUNE 23, 2021

It’s a great time to be a founder. Let’s qualify that statement: It’s a great time to be a founder of a revenue-generating, venture-funded company. These are optimistic times. Scaling a founder remains the biggest challenge of all. This is how the company has grown big enough to hire people.

Part-Time VPE 98

Part-Time VPE Scale Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 98

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2025

Every time I see a CRO that doesn't sell themselves, they fail. Every time I see a CTO that doesn't code themselves, they fail. Every time I see a CMO that doesn't market themselves, they fail. We’ve spend the most time on hiring a great first VP of Sales, but all the VPs are super important.

Part-Time VPE 300

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 300

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 11, 2019

Pricing is an incredibly important part of any SaaS product’s go-to-market strategy. At Hired, we started out with a transactional model that was—at the time—a super disruptive approach and one of our key differentiators. At Hired , we help top R&D, engineering, and tech talent find jobs they love.

Sales Hiring 45

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Technical Review 45

OnStartups

OCTOBER 4, 2017

Today the State of Remote Work 2017 report revealed that 63% of people in product and engineering roles work remotely at least once per week, which is 21% more than the average. When breaking down remote work by company size, the report found that smaller companies are 2X more likely to hire remote workers than larger companies.

Part-Time VPE 40

Part-Time VPE Startup Data Technical Review 40

OnStartups

OCTOBER 4, 2017

Today the State of Remote Work 2017 report revealed that 63% of people in product and engineering roles work remotely at least once per week, which is 21% more than the average. When breaking down remote work by company size, the report found that smaller companies are 2X more likely to hire remote workers than larger companies.

Part-Time VPE 40

Part-Time VPE Startup Data Technical Review 40

BetterCloud

MAY 17, 2021

Being a part of those journeys is the number one driver for why I stay in management. It’sone of the reasons people enjoy working with me;that they know I’m going to give them a good, honest conversation at all times. For me, when I’m assessing good hires, I look for some key things that I think can survive any of those things.

New CTO 52

New CTO Part-Time VPE CTO Coach CTO Hire 52

Sales Hacker

JULY 8, 2019

Finding Opportunity Through Humility and Curiosity [07:50]. Kim herself is an incredible executive, and she walks through both professional lessons about how to scale a customer success organization, but also life lessons about how to reenter the workforce. Finding Opportunity Through Humility and Curiosity. We’re on iTunes.

Customer Success 67

Customer Success Scale Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 67