SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales. Sam just finished 18 months at Founders Fund after joining in mid-to-late 2022.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 259

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 81

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 81

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. The distraction of building a real sales team isn’t worth it yet.

Sales Hiring 291

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 291

Sales Hacker

APRIL 23, 2024

Linda Lian is Co-Founder and CEO at Common Room, the all-in-one customer intelligence platform that automatically surfaces signals across 30+ channels, reveals the person and account behind the signal, and automates actions like email messaging and team alerts. Why a modern go-to-market approach requires moving beyond legacy CRM systems.

Sales Recruiting 83

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Management 83

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. Sanj has plenty of experience scaling sales teams at growing businesses, and that’s precisely why, as of November of last year, he‘s overseeing EMEA sales at Intercom.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

Rely on your success, know you are doing something right and scale faster. That was the most over the top entrance that the sales leader for a company that moves boxes around the world has ever gotten. We’ve scaled it pretty far pretty quickly. So we did about 442 million in sales last year. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Scale 199

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 199

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

Product-Market Fit: There’s no shortcut –– finding the perfect target will always take time and hard work to get right. Finding the product-market fit is still the same iterative process. Recruitment: Getting the right talent onboard is a critical step. In fact, you need both to optimally grow your sales efforts.

Sales Recruiting 200

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 200

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2019

SaaStr Scale is THIS THURSDAY in San Francisco! The Playbook to Building a Thriving Sales Culture with Fmr. PatientPop SVP of Sales Justin Welsh. The Playbook to Running Growth Experiments at Scale with Ex Machina Founder Guillaume Cabane. GRAB A FINAL, FINAL TICKET HERE ! VIEW THE FULL AGENDA. ATTENDEE PORTAL.

Scale 140

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Sales Hiring 140

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. Obviously little later stage market is much more well known. Dev Ittycheria : Thank you.

Sales Recruiting 249

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 249

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2019

If you must choose a long term headquarters for your startup, call an executive recruiter who focuses in that city. VP Engineering, VP Product, VP Sales, VP Customer Success, VP Marketing, or VP Operations. After establishing product market fit, the startups grow their management team to scale.

Sales Recruiting 215

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 215

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

That’s why some of Intercom’s first marketing hires were product marketers and why we’ve had a “seat at the table” from the early days of the company. . Product marketing looks different in every company, but one common trend is that many product marketing managers (PMMs) feel undervalued.

Product Marketing 138

Product Marketing Marketing Sales Hiring Scale 138

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2019

Join Anish Shivdasani, CEO of Giraffe, as he provides unique African experiences learned from scaling to 1M users. 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. How’s it guys?

Scale 162

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SaaS Payments 162

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

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

They see it as a key differentiator to win as you scale. They see every SaaS product starting as a hack, no matter who builds it. 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 want a world-class, proven, sizeable team with perfect pedigrees.

Scale 339

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 339

OpenView Labs

JUNE 3, 2021

If you aren’t clear on what product marketing is, how it’s different from product management, and what the responsibilities of a product marketer are, you’re not alone. Specifically, I’m talking about product management and product marketing.

Product Marketing 93

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Startup Scale 93

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. Now organizations can customize demos at scale even easier. Use timing as a forcing function.

Sales Recruiting 99

Sales Recruiting Generative AI AI AWS 99

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. Head of Sales – What Corners Can I Cut? A bad VP of Sales is a total disaster. And to some extent, vice-versa.

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 273

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

The most frequent mishire in startups is the first head of marketing. Many different disciplines fall under marketing’s purview. The question facing founders recruiting marketers is: which is the most important to prioritize? Each of these kinds of marketers have critical skills for a startup. Why is this?

Scale 215

Scale Startup Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 215

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

David’s first foray into SaaS was in 1999 when he joined a startup that would become PayPal, starting as the product leader and later as the COO. In 2008, he founded Yammer, an enterprise software company that David grew to 500 employees and $60 million in sales. Head of Product. Head of Sales. Head of Marketing.

CTO Hire 249

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 249

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. 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. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running. It never works, folks!

Part-Time VPE 185

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 185

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. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams.

Sales Hiring 96

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 96

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

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 131

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 131

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2019

Rick started Guru in 2013, after successfully founding Boomi (a cloud integration and data management company) and selling it to Dell. He joined me for a conversation on tackling issues that come up as you scale your customer experience. When scaling your customer experience, remember AI can’t simulate human empathy.

Scale 156

Scale Scaling AI Search Underperforming Technical Team 156

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 99

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 99

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

On this episode of the podcast, I interview Arthur Nobel and we discuss scaling SaaS companies. What we discovered is companies sometimes struggle with scaling so we dived into the reasons for that. Levers of scaling a SaaS company. He is passionate about enabling entrepreneurs to realize their vision.

Scale 52

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting SaaS 52

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 15, 2021

They write code, author blog posts, publish the website, attract customers, with the goal of achieving product-market fit. Post-PMF, the organization must evolve: it has to grow headcount and then manage that headcount well. How many hiring managers are in each of the two hierarchies from above? On the right, three.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 363

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

The market need for SaaS products has exploded and investment in SaaS companies has accelerated, requiring more talent to grow and scale. Competitive pressures and changing customer needs can be captured by a great marketing or product marketing lead. Accelerate hiring of internal recruiters.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

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 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 136

User Pilot

APRIL 19, 2024

Accumulating demographic information forms the basis for executing effective market segmentation strategies. Organizational scale. Product usage patterns. This segmentation helps in personalizing marketing and sales strategies effectively. Businesses prioritize obtaining user data such as: Job functions.

Market Research 52

Market Research Sales Recruiting Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 52

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 9, 2015

As a startup scales and surpasses its first organizational breaking point of 8 employees, it’s time to start thinking about organizational design. The strategy a startup chooses in their market should determine their organizational design. People spans recruiting, training and development. Google is a good example.

Sales Recruiting 101

Sales Recruiting Startup Scale Systems Review 101

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

They also talked about the difficulties — and potential advantages — of selling into small businesses, taking alternative approaches to interviewing candidates, and the importance of keeping culture a vital part of a company as it scales. It scales with your customers. Immad: Pre-product market fit, we’d definitely be in an office.

Payments 107

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 107

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

How they came up with the idea of Brex, and product market fit. One of the things that I feel like fintech companies really struggle with is what is product market fit? Did you have a product? How do you really … because it takes a long time in fintech for product market fit. Henrique : Yeah.

Sales Hiring 160

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 160

Casey Accidental

JANUARY 23, 2019

Once Uber had initial liquidity in these markets though, it ran into decentralization problems. Uber started to build up world class acquisition teams in HQ that didn’t have full control on how to scale customer acquisition. Local teams were still doing scrappy tests that didn’t scale, and not managing budgets as efficiently.

Scale 73

Scale Marketplace as a Service Outsourcing Services Scaling 73

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. What were Steve’s biggest takeaways from seeing the hyper-scaling at AppDynamics? What works? billion acquisition.

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

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 128

Scale SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Payment Services 128

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 23, 2023

It’s difficult to implement outcome-based roadmaps because stakeholders don’t trust product teams to deliver on business goals. Many companies lack differentiation strategies and drive product development by copying competitors. As companies scale, they often cannot satisfy customer needs equally well. Fake door test.

Scale 94

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting Software Review 94