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.

Scale 215

Scale Startup Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 215

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

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 22, 2015

On December 2, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Maia Josebachvilli , VP of Strategy and People at Greenhouse, a fast growing recruiting software company. Before Greenhouse, Maia founded Urban Escapes, a DC-based startup she sold to LivingSocial. She was also selected for Inc’s 30 under 30.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Metrics SaaS Sales Funnel 100

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

When You Fall Out of Product-Market Fit. The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. Top Podcasts This Week: 1.

Sales Recruiting 229

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 229

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. Engineering manages IT. Hiring managers take on HR responsibilities. CEOs “hit the streets” and sell.

Product Marketing 93

Product Marketing Sales Hiring Startup Scale 93

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development.

Sales Hiring 243

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 243

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

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. At Point Nine, we aspire to continuously share what we learn with our community and the extended startup ecosystem.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

The Return to the Startup Game. Says Bansal, “You should be doing what you enjoy…I realized I really enjoyed the journey of building a startup.” Product-Market Fit: There’s no shortcut –– finding the perfect target will always take time and hard work to get right. What Was Equally Challenging.

Sales Recruiting 201

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 201

The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later. Here’s why.

Sales Hiring 168

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Software Review 168

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

Kellblog

JULY 17, 2022

In general, I think branding is a potential marketing rathole for startups, particularly early-stage ones. Some startups put the cart in front of the horse. Create a product. Get product-market fit (PMF), i.e., determine some problem you solve for some person with some product. Go sell some software.

Branding 131

Branding Startup Software Sales Recruiting 131

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. The head of product would prefer someone with product marketing experience. And when I say pillar, I mean like a product marketing problem, a growth problem, or brand marketing problem. Thank you, Hollie!

Sales Hiring 248

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Acquisition 248

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. As a startup, it’s tempting to try and do everything.

Scale 233

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 233

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 251

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 251

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. And then some track record of execution either as the new startup or in the past.

Sales Recruiting 250

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 250

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

As part of our last three annual finance and operating benchmarks surveys, we’ve asked nearly 2,000 startup founders and leaders of B2B SaaS businesses this simple question: “What’s keeping you up at night?”. It’s simply about which areas startup founders feel like they may be coming up short, not doing enough, or missing the mark.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

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

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. Yet in Mark’s experience working with and mentoring startups, he’s found that many entrepreneurs go with intuition over information.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. 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. The very best of the best.

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 273

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

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 Fundamental Unit of SaaS growth is the atomic go-to-market team of a startup.

Sales Recruiting 111

Sales Recruiting Revenue Startup Sales Hiring 111

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. For 99% of startups, when you want money, tell VCs you want money. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” But you have to see progress in one sales cycle.

Part-Time VPE 187

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 187

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2019

Since writing The AI Agency: A Novel GTM for Machine Learning Startups , I’ve been meeting many companies who operate this way. These startups use machine learning to disrupt an industry traditionally dominated by agencies: law, accounting, recruiting, translation, debt collection, marketing…the list is long.

AI 191

AI Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Machine Learning 191

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 94

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 94

Sales Hacker

MARCH 17, 2021

While every entrepreneur dreams of scaling their startup into a multi-million dollar company, many do not understand all that goes into that dream. Strict sales volume does go a long way in achieving long-term revenue growth, but processes and cross-department alignment are what allow sales volumes to scale in the first place.

Scale 93

Scale Revenue Startup Sales Recruiting 93

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. What does this mean for startups and tech companies? There is no startup ecosystem to speak of. I’m from South Africa.

Scale 163

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SaaS Payments 163

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 132

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 132

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 15, 2021

Invest in great managers early. Let’s compare the organizational chart of two different startups. On the left, the startup is flat. When startups start, they tend to look like the company on the left. Post-PMF, the organization must evolve: it has to grow headcount and then manage that headcount well.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 363

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. So we did about 442 million in sales last year. The top 25 freight forwarders combined to do 100 billion a year in sales. Obviously, all of you have found a product market fit, it sounds like.

Scale 199

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 199

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

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 7, 2015

When a potential customer enters the consideration phase of the buyer journey, the marketing team transitions the lead to his sales account executive, who educates the customer from the consideration stage through purchase. In either case, marketing ushers customers through substantially more of the funnel, than in the past.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Marketing SaaS Startup 100

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

At a16z’s recent Connect/Fintech event, a16z Partner Alex Immerman sat down for a broad conversation with Immad Akhund , co-founder and CEO of banking startup Mercury , and René Lacerte, founder and CEO of financial services company BILL. Immad: Yeah, I’ve been doing startups a long time, and like fintech is great.

Payments 107

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 107

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

Opening video: Hey, all these startups, they have a lot of trouble getting corporate credit cards. How they came up with the idea of Brex, and product market fit. Henrique: And we figured out there were all these startups in YC that couldn’t get a credit card, and had raised millions of dollars. Let us know.

Sales Hiring 161

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 161

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 1, 2013

Startups, you are doing data science wrong. Weald echoes DJ Patil’s idea : “product-focused data science is different than the current business intelligence style of data science.”. By combining theory and exploratory research, these data scientists improve products. Research data scientists create insights as a product.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Startup Data Sales Hiring 100

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.” Why does he believe this is so important?

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Customer pull is an amazing feeling for a startup. In addition, vibrant word of mouth proxied by social media mentions/follows, Github stars/forks for open source projects, and newsletter subscriber counts mark products with substantial latent demand. Product engagement remains high.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media compliance 100