SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. They often staff up their teams with folks they already know and have been successful with at their last startup. Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales. The director that wants a shot at VP.

Part-Time VPE 254

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 254

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2019

For me, it took a while to build up the experiences and confidence to get there: First, I worked with enough startups and CEOs to “get it”. I had a chance as a startup lawyer working in “Silicon Valley” to work with 20+ startups. Second, I joined the best startup that would have me, as a Director and then Senior Director.

Part-Time VPE 181

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 181

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

To some extent, if you have the hottest startup in the world, the full package, you can play some games with investors. 99% of startups aren’t that. No one has time to have coffee with all of those folks. For 99% of startups, when you want money, tell VCs you want money. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.”

Part-Time VPE 237

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 237

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Q: How do you deal with bus factor in a startup? 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.

Part-Time VPE 200

Part-Time VPE Scaling Engineering Startup 200

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2019

Lloyed : Startup-. Keith : The other thing someone said to me that really resonated and has become an important lesson is you can raise the odds of success at any startup from the very early days from something like the proverbial one to 10 percent that people talk about to probably 30 to 40 percent just by changing the team composition.

Merchant Services 268

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 268

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.

Part-Time VPE 100

Part-Time VPE Interviewing Startup Communication 100

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.

Part-Time VPE 100

Part-Time VPE Startup Venture Capital Entrepreneurship 100

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. Customer Count Up 8% Year-over-Year to 18,950 It’s hard to find net net customers after $1B ARR. Way, way too many startups focus 100% on direct sales. Wow, what an engine at $2.5

Fractional VPE 279

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 279

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 168

Part-Time VPE Engineering Startup Business 168

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 28, 2014

Since 2008, there has been a secular trend to increase cash compensation and decrease equity to startup management teams. 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. Cash +10% +16%. Equity -19% -17%. Cash +26% +8%.

Compensation 100

Compensation Part-Time VPE Trends Startup 100

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2019

Lloyed : Startup-. Keith : The other thing someone said to me that really resonated and has become an important lesson is you can raise the odds of success at any startup from the very early days from something like the proverbial one to 10 percent that people talk about to probably 30 to 40 percent just by changing the team composition.

Merchant Services 201

Merchant Services Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 201

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

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. And grab the best deal ever on 2021 Annual tickets here ). Hubspot today is a $23B juggernaut. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 287

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 287

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2020

Lee coined the often-used Silicon Valley term unicorn in a TechCrunch article “Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups.” 347: Ready to hire your first VP Sales? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin.

Part-Time VPE 181

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Payment Methods SaaS Payments 181

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 178

Engineering Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 178

Tom Tunguz

MAY 1, 2014

Earlier this week, I wrote about the increase in cash compensation and decline in equity grants to VPs of Engineering and Product in startups. I dug a bit deeper into the data set to find an explanation. I received a lot of comments about the analysis, and in particular hypotheses to explain the data. Venture capitalists.

Trends 100

Trends Fractional VPE Startup Part-Time VPE 100

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 7, 2019

Though our second day of the event is focused on mythical creatures of all kinds, you’ll find that there are unicorns hiding in our agenda every day this year. Prior to Shopify, Jean-Michel was a VP of Engineering at Atlassian for four years and held several positions at IBM for six years. The Unicorns ??

Part-Time VPE 174

Part-Time VPE CTO Leadership Cloud 174

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 183

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 183

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

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 28, 2019

In his spare time, he also hosts his own growth-focused podcast, called The Growth TL;DR. Short on time? I’m really excited to be on your podcast; it’s one of the ones I listen to all the time. I joined HubSpot at a very interesting time when we were about 300 people globally, way back in 2013.

Part-Time VPE 137

Part-Time VPE Engineering Acquisition Metrics 137

Sales Hacker

JULY 8, 2019

Finding Opportunity Through Humility and Curiosity [07:50]. Our second sponsor is Outreach , the leading sales engagement platform that enables sales reps to humanize their communications at scale, from automating the soul-sucking manual work that eats up selling time to providing action-oriented tips on what communications are working best.

Customer Success 67

Customer Success Scale Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 67

Frontegg

FEBRUARY 1, 2023

Tanya Reilly, Principal Software Engineer @ Squarespace, Joy Ebertz, Principal Software Engineer @ Split.io, Izar Tarandach, Senior Staff Engineer @ Datadog, and Mike McQuaid, Principal Engineer @ GitHub will be talking about modern strategies that you must consider in 2023.

VP of Engineering 59

VP of Engineering Development Cybersecurity Part-Time VPE 59

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!

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2023

A mediocre tech team, a part-time CTO, or even just a decent CTO just doesn’t get you there. Wait until you find a great partner here. Finally you have great customers and traction — 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.

Part-Time VPE 288

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 288

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. More here: TAM is Great.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) B2C SaaS 293

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2025

Skip that part if you want. But the parts after were good. One game is actually making people money—finding companies early, making the right bets, paying the right prices, and selling. If you are in a startup and you don’t ship great products that convert to sales, you lose.” That’s a DPI game.

AI 215

AI Part-Time VPE Venture Capital SaaS 215

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2025

Joselyn Goldfein, Managing Director at Zeta Venture Partners Joselyn is a technologist-turned-investor who leads AI and data infrastructure investments at Zeta Venture Partners, focusing on inception through seed stage startups. But when you look under the hood, what you find is mostly experiments and POCs.

Scale 178

Scale AI Artificial Intelligence Venture Capital 178

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

356: Pete Kazanjy is the Co-Founder @ Atrium, the startup providing proactive, always-on insights for sales operations, managers, and leaders. Pete is also the author of Founding Sales, the canonical writing on early-stage startup sales. Pete is also the author of Founding Sales, the canonical writing on early-stage startup sales.

Part-Time VPE 264

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 264

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2019

Scott Beechuk, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, brings together world-class SaaS engineering leaders Claire Hough, Vijay Gill and Weiping Peng for a dynamic conversation on where SaaS technology is headed, how to build top performing engineering teams and what it takes to lead in today’s high-velocity engineering environment.

Engineering 145

Engineering Part-Time VPE Technical Review Fractional VPE 145

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 15, 2018

On day one as Reddit’s new VP of Engineering, Nick Caldwell faced a dilemma. He had just spent 13 years at Microsoft, most recently as the head of 300 engineers. At Reddit, he led a team of 35 – none of whom knew how to manage other engineers. Short on time? Nick Caldwell: I’m VP of engineering at Reddit.

Leadership 141

Leadership Engineering Part-Time VPE CTO Coach 141

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

I actually think I never met any company that have not made a few mistakes about build versus buy and most of the time it’s linked to the long term cost. First of all, I think any good engineer can easily give you 10 good reason to build instead of buy. It’s super easy, like we never find enough arguments to buy.

Scale 145

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 145

Chart Mogul

DECEMBER 12, 2024

This time last year, 24 SaaS experts predicted big things for 2024. Next we’ll be hiring it. However this will take time, so until then, companies will experiment with usage based pricing, and continue the debate whether usage based or licensing is the better pricing model in the long run. What will 2025 bring?

Fractional VPE 40

Fractional VPE Software Review SaaS Part-Time VPE 40

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 2, 2019

The farther you get into your startup journey, the bigger the challenges are likely to become. But challenges and obstacles are just part of the reality of entrepreneurship. If you feel that your startup’s getting caught in the doldrums, it’s important for you to show focus and determination. Bills may begin to pile up.

Startup 56

Startup Underperforming Technical Team Part-Time VPE Payment Solutions 56

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2025

Your VP of Engineering Now Costs $50M in Equity OpenAI’s $6.5B Top-tier engineering talent now commands equity packages that would have been unthinkable just three years ago. Ex-Stripe engineer building fintech infrastructure? The bar is narratively compelling backgrounds and market timing. Nobody gets fired.

Venture Capital 220

Venture Capital B2B Part-Time VPE Software Review 220

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2021

Ep: 413: Join four-time Founder and CEO Auren Hoffman as he breaks down how businesses can become the right model for explosive growth, emulate their strategy, and join the path to Unicorn potential in eight simple, hand-made steps. So hopefully we’ll have a lot of time for questions. This is also true with people you hire.

Part-Time VPE 274

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Outsourcing Services 274