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”. What does this mean for product design and product management? the night before it was to IPO).

Product Marketing 78

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 78

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. A sign to hire a real sales leader. Over the years at SaaStr we’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales, when it works, when it does, and how it moves the needle. To stick with founder-led sales longer than most folks do, i.e. past $1.5m-$2m ARR or so.

Sales Hiring 304

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 304

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

Dig deeper on a lot of titles during recruiting. A "VP of Product Marketing" rarely knows anything about demand gen, ABM, etc. A "VP of Revenue" often knows nothing about inside sales or building a sales team. A "CRO" often doesn't want to do sales anymore. Sales is hard.

Sales Hiring 294

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Growth Hacking Product Marketing 294

Sales Hacker

APRIL 23, 2024

Before Common Room, Linda led product marketing for serverless computing at Amazon Web Services, where she saw firsthand the impact connected data and person-level insights had on accelerating product adoption, earning new customers, and expanding account revenue.

Sales Recruiting 85

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Management 85

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

Sandi Lin, CEO and Co-founder of Skilljar, and Kathy Lord, its CRO, know a thing or two about Chief Revenue Officers. You might never have considered a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) because it’s not been a common role until very recently, and because you might not have the kind of revenue that needs its own manager.

Sales Hiring 256

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 256

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. The Founder isn’t willing to be the first salesperson Many of the best founders we work with don’t have a sales background and are either product or engineering focused.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

Because that’s rather low for a true VP out here in the Bay Area (see typical VP Marketing comp packages here ). No lead commit, or revenue commit. I see this all the time in marketing hires that come out of non-demand gen roles. A head of sales that doesn’t recruit at least one strong rep in the first 90 days.

Sales Recruiting 333

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SMB Engineering 333

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

From B2C consumer-focused tech to the next B2B enterprise cloud giants, B2B, and B2C technology companies are springing up left and right and sprinting toward multi-billion dollar valuations (whether on the private or public markets) faster than ever. What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)?

VP of Engineering 93

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 93

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 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 255

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Likewise, the new products you launch do not determine your success. Instead, how you launch them into the market is a huge factor in success. Today, we’re diving straight into the details with product marketing leaders. Use timing as a forcing function. Frame solutions, rather than features alone. Show, don’t tell.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Generative AI AI AWS 100

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

Able to close first $1m in revenues (sales); or. Able to architect and lay out The Next Big Thing (product); or. Able to magically bring customers and users to almost any product (marketing). If the founder/CEO is a magician in one area, and is tenacious and driven, she or he can recruit the rest.

Sales Recruiting 174

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Engineering Product Marketing 174

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Mark Roberge, the Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot, has spent 20 years in startups. As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. The first step is hiring a sales leader.

Sales Hiring 184

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Compensation 184

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

If you don’t think you need a great VP of Sales, Product, Marketing, Customer Success, and Engineering — then all that all that means is you’ve never worked with a great one. What I do know, is if you leave this position vacant for even a month — you’re putting Second Order Revenue at risk.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 278

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 7, 2020

Fortunately, more organizers than ever before are consciously seeking out female sales experts for panels, presentations, and podcasts. At Sales Hacker, we’re serious about diversity, and for that reason, we’ve compiled a list of 530+ female sales experts to consider for your next event. Sales Development. Sales Growth.

VP of Engineering 121

VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Payment Services 121

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

Still, some VCs want to see at least one solid VP on the team, or at least, one solid manager you can scale under. Some VCs will pay up even for very little growth and revenue so long as the management team is strong. And there is a lot of truth to this. Pilots-Don’t-Count Risk. It just varies.

Scale 342

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 342

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Customer Onboarding Specialist: Responsible for helping new customers get up and running with the company’s products. Account Managers: They serve as the lead point of contact for all customer account management matters. A higher revenue growth rate generally indicates positive business performance.

Sales Hiring 90

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 90

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

It’s an approach that’s served him well along the road to building the HubSpot sales team, where he was CRO for nine years. That experience led to his bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. The framework consists of three elements: product-market fit, go-to-market fit, and growth and moat.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

Once a startup has found an initial product market fit, the business must evolve the way it models its growth. Before product market fit, a startup’s financial projections focus on costs. The company has no visibility into their revenue growth. How much cash do we need to hire those teams?

Sales Recruiting 111

Sales Recruiting Revenue Startup Sales Hiring 111

Sales Hacker

MARCH 17, 2021

Getting past the first stage of revenue growth and building an initial customer base is the easy part, but what happens when you hit a revenue plateau and can’t seem to take that next step? Combatting missed revenue growth for second-stage startups. 5 revenue growth mistakes second-stage startups make.

Scale 93

Scale Revenue Startup Sales Recruiting 93

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 30, 2018

Welcome to Sales Hacker’s first-ever Influential Women in Sales list! In this exclusive list, we wanted to honor not just female leaders that promote their own sales platform (no shame in that!) They say “You can’t be what you can’t see,” and the sales floor is no exception.

Sales Recruiting 111

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale Sales Hiring 111

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

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. But you have to see progress in one sales cycle. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 194

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 194

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

That was the most over the top entrance that the sales leader for a company that moves boxes around the world has ever gotten. I’m Chief Revenue Officer at Flexport. So we did about 442 million in sales last year. The top 25 freight forwarders combined to do 100 billion a year in sales. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Scale 207

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 207

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

Nothing matters but recruiting and using your personal network. Sam Blond, CSO at Brex explains why recruiting, networking and employee happiness is the key to this playbook on recruiting your sales team. Sam Blond | Chief Sales Officer @ Brex. I’m doing The Playbook To Recruiting Your Sales Team.

Sales Recruiting 137

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 137

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2019

The Playbook to Building a Thriving Sales Culture with Fmr. The Playbook to Building a Thriving Sales Culture with Fmr. PatientPop SVP of Sales Justin Welsh. The Playbook To Re-Igniting Growth with Predictable Revenue Co-Founder and CEO Aaron Ross. SPEAKING OF PLAYBOOK SESSIONS. . Anaplan CMO Maria Pergolino.

Scale 146

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Sales Hiring 146

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2019

These startups use machine learning to disrupt an industry traditionally dominated by agencies: law, accounting, recruiting, translation, debt collection, marketing…the list is long. Increases in productivity don’t imply increases in revenue. Consequently, product market fit is weak.

AI 191

AI Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Machine Learning 191

Sales Hacker

JUNE 7, 2021

Sales customer insights. Let’s drill down into the market and customer insights that can really add value for salespeople, under the following sections: Qualifying characteristics: Things to look for in an organization that make it a good target. But what are these insights that will transform the conversations salespeople have?

Sales Recruiting 108

Sales Recruiting Payment Services Payment Methods Sales 108

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

I was the new Vice President of International Sales & Managing Director for a work management software company called Wrike. Starting Your International Sales Team. The key to starting an international sales team is having the right people in your landing team. A mercenary is driven by the sale.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 100

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

Whether it’s creating better tools to write code and test code, better tools for customers to engage with reps, better tools for sales teams to engage with their prospects, all those things are happening inside of Bill. One of the criticisms of SMB software is that each customer can only provide so much revenue.

Payments 110

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 110

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Competitive pressures and changing customer needs can be captured by a great marketing or product marketing lead. And the primary burden of your product and GTM execution can fall on an effective technical leader and proven sales executive. Accelerate hiring of internal recruiters.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2019

Giraffe is a mobile job matching platform that helps medium skilled workers get access to opportunities and helps businesses to recruit staff faster, and easier, and more affordably than any other way. Well, you have to build a direct sales force. We said, “How important is Giraffe to you in your recruitment process?”

Scale 169

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SaaS Payments 169

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2019

Prior to Harness, Stephen was VP of Marketing at Glassdoor, managing a team of 52 in product marketing, helping grow B2B revenue from $19m to $90m in just 2 years, leading to their $1.2Bn acquisition. Steve has previously said, “Sales and marketing must be one team.” What works? billion acquisition.

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

As for Ryan, prior to G2 he was Senior Director of Global Marketing at Hubspot where among many other achievements, he scaled HubSpot’s marketing-generated sales revenue by 330% year-over-year. Which cost us $6000 and within a couple years drove more than $64 million in net new revenue. It works really well.

Sales Hiring 136

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Software Review 136

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Building a sales team that can go from $0-$50M (Video + Transcript). Gaetan Gachet | SVP of Sales @Algolia. It’s an honor to be here with this mythical creature, this sales leader that goes from zero to 50 million in the same job. He has a whole French sales team and office that only speaks English in Paris.

Scale 141

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 141

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be. By the time he left to join Google Cloud as EMEA VP of Operations and Customer Growth, Salesforce had around 17 billion dollars in revenue and almost 50,000 employees.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 26, 2021

The exciting thing about prototypes is that large-scale experiments can be built through open-source projects , which companies like Netflix and Linkedin will do as a strategic way of recruiting top talent. . Why startup founders should treat fundraising like a sales funnel. Milestone: First traction and product-market fit .

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Marketing 82

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

Billion story from its launch in 2008 to its 2018 acquisition by Recruit Holdings. Hear about the early days of Glassdoor; tactical lessons on scaling—from building a business model and recruiting an all-star management team to advice on building a compelling, innovative company culture; and learn whyGlassdoor’s $1.2

Scale 133

Scale SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Payment Services 133

Sales Hacker

APRIL 16, 2018

On this episode of the Sales Hacker podcast, we talk with Jess Hun t , Head of Global Marketing, Sales & Strategy for Axiom about creating a revenue model. Why your CFO shouldn’t own the revenue model. Real world advice on how to successfully grow your company’s revenue. What You’ll Learn.

VP of Engineering 67

VP of Engineering Revenue Scale Sales Recruiting 67