SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

Brendon Cassidy, my VP of Sales wrote a version of this piece a while back. I though an updated version of this would be good for founders thinking about hiring a VP of Sales … VPs of Sales themselves … and VPs-to-be to read — Jason, ed. … 10 Rules to Being a VP of Sales in a Startup.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 291

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2025

Codium is one of the fastest-growing startups in the AI coding assistant space, having scaled its go-to-market team from 3 to 75 in just under a year. Before hiring their first sales reps, the founders personally closed millions in revenue. Their strategy?

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting AI 176

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

When building a list, try to define your potential customer as granularly as possible – size, location, industry, ideal buyer, sales process, technology stack, etc. This will allow you to be much more targeted with your messaging when reaching out and will help you optimize your sales funnel. Pricing is always evolving.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 314

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 18, 2019

Over the last decade or so, I’ve compiled a metrics sheet to summarise a SaaS business. Redpoint SaaS Metrics Template. The template is broken into six sections: People, Bookings & Revenue, Cash, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success. People is the first section because people are a startup’s most important element.

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Metrics Sales Recruiting Startup SaaS 250

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2024

Dear SaaStr: I’m Being Recruited by a Startup That Just Raised $5m. So how you can do your own diligence as the first senior sales exec going in? Ask to join a customer call and listen to a few Gong calls and see if you really believe you can level up things Way too many sales execs don’t do this.

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Sales Recruiting CTO Startup Sales 278

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

What was the first warning sign your VP of Sales wasn't going to work out? A lot of veteran SaaS revenue leaders protested, but most of them, upon reflecting on it, came to agree the point was right. A new VP of Sales doesn’t always double sales in 30 days — although it can happen in SMB sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 267

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, continues a mini-series on founder-led sales with Colin Zima, founder and CEO of Omni. Key Takeaways Building a successful startup is hard work, but you can leverage the resources available to you to accelerate that success.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media Sales 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer. So many VPs of Sales disagree with me here — at least at first when I make the point.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 293

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

Sam Blond, the former CRO at Brex with 15 years in tech sales, took the stage at SaaStr Europa 2024 to share nine easy sales concepts that so many get wrong. Sam got his first job in tech sales as an SDR for Jason Lemkin’s company, EchoSign, which later sold to Adobe and launched his career. They did this right at Brex.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 281

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Biggest Problems You Face as a Startup Founder? More here: If You’re Going to Do a SaaS Start-Up … You Have to Give it 24 Months – SaaStr Post-Revenue: Staying the Course When Revenues Are Trivial. From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. This challenge never ends.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 275

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint welcomed Maia Josebachvilli , the VP of People and Strategy of Greenhouse. Specifically, she champions a metrics-based approach for developing world class recruiting teams. Maia reports these five strategic recruiting metrics to the executive team each quarter.

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Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Data Analysis 113

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2020

It seems like everyone wants to be a SaaS founder these days. I meet with great VPs of Sales and Product in particular who are Ready. Start their own SaaS company. I’d like to recruit you to be a VP at one of my companies, but I get it. That just doesn’t happen in paid SaaS apps. >>

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Sales Recruiting SaaS Interviewing Consulting 363

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: SaaS Multiples Are Down 75% From a Year Ago. The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. SaaStr 602: Secrets To Combining PLG and Enterprise Sales with Grammarly CEO Brad Hoover. ?. Billion in ARR.

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Sales Recruiting CTO Compensation Software Review 291

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 9, 2013

One number investors use to benchmark SaaS startups across sectors and industries is sales efficiency. There are a handful of variants of this metric, sometimes called the magic number, but ultimately they all aim to provide some sense of the incremental revenue returned by sales and marketing investment.

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Benchmarks Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 160

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. Figma: “We’d Been Talking to Adobe Since 2012” Half of Public SaaS Companies Trade At Under 6x ARR Today.

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Sales Recruiting Compensation Cloud Retention 282

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

The best SaaS companies Lightspeed has seen in their portfolio are maniacal about defining these key metrics and tracking them with specific targets in mind on a consistent basis. That’s a lot of time in startup land and doesn’t work, so you want to think about how to compress these onboarding times so employees hit their stride much quicker.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 289

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

What are the top 10 mistakes founders are still making today when hiring their VP of Sales? In this post, we’ll delve into the common pitfalls founders encounter when hiring a VP of Sales. 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. . #1: 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. This one is newer.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 294

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.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Compensation 184

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

Founders are responsible for ensuring a startup always has enough money, setting the vision for the company, and driving things forward. Lesson #1: If You Aren’t Making Mistakes, You Aren’t In A Startup If you do things that always work and maintain the status quo, you’re likely at a major company like Microsoft. And it was true.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 283

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

This happens with some regularity in SaaS, I’ve learned (and to be clear: I’m not talking about any company I’ve invested in, am an advisor to, board member of, etc – Because when it’s still a very small team, with no true management team … co-founders can kind of hack it to $1m-$2m in ARR together.

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Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 266

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

So read on, and hopefully, your SaaS sales journey will be less about trial and error and more about steady progress toward success. Whats important to note is that each model targets a distinct customer persona and, therefore, has a unique approach to the customer journeyfrom brand awareness to sales and, ultimately, conversion.

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Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

” – Colin Jones, CRO Emeritus at Wiz You may have seen the news that Google is making its biggest acquisition — by far — of Cloud and SaaS security leader Wiz for a stunning $32 Billion (!). Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 176

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

So did startups. If there really is a slowdown (and I’m not sure will be in SaaS), folks will have to work harder. So I’m not yet convinced times are really tougher for SaaS companies. But buyers are still buying more SaaS than ever, far more than just last year and far, far more than even 2 years ago. We All Need To).

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 312

SaaStr

JUNE 9, 2021

A ways back, I asked Brendon Cassidy, VP of Sales at LinkedIn, Adobe Sign / EchoSign, and Talkdesk to put together his playbook for double sales. … How We Increased Sales Nearly 100% In One Quarter at HackerRank – Brendon Cassidy. Just an FYI: I’ve done some iteration of this 4 times in early stage startups.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 275

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Throughout her time there, she scaled the SaaS company from $1M ARR to pre- IPO, along the way, creating the category of customer success software, and paving the way for Gainsight’s $1.1B Should you hire a COO for your startup? How you should you go about recruiting the right person? How does the role work with the CEO?

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Customer Success 299

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. We were coming off an environment where startup funding was as fruitful as ever.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 290

Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2021

In terms of time cost to the startup, a failed executive hire is roughly similar, 9 months. That’s a reason the Redpoint SaaS metrics template includes Glassdoor score. The better the management hires for a business, the greater candidates' interest to work for a company. That’s at the individual contributor level.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Branding 197

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it’s not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times. Q: Where Should SDRs Report — Marketing or Sales?

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CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

As your SaaS company grows and you go through various fundraising stages, your company size also grows. David Sacks, Co-Founder and General Partner at Craft Venture,s shares wisdom from his years of experience in SaaS to help you build your org chart for each step of your company’s fundraising journey. Head of Sales.

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CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 275

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

So there’s a sort of org chart you’ll probably end up with at least twice as you start scaling in SaaS: The “Headless” Sales Org. It’s a bunch of sales reps without anyone to manage them other than … you. But if you end up not hiring a VP of Sales at that perfect moment in time (and most don’t), you’ll end up headless.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 246

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

The top SaaS companies grow faster than ever these days. There are roughly 2 types of start-up management teams. The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. Veterans of the SaaS journey.

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Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 283

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

Every SaaS founder dreams of their company becoming a unicorn. 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.” Recruitment: Getting the right talent onboard is a critical step. We had to pivot at Harness as well.”.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 266

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2023

So one recent survey we did really brought out a healthy debate: does your VP of Sales really need to be a product expert? Many of the comments said it was more important a VP of Sales understand process and leadership more than the product itself. They often melt. I say, you just gotta know the product. Not just with buzzwords.

Scale 282

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 282

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

Gartner: SaaS Spend In the Enterprise Will Grow 17% to $195 Billion in 2023. 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.

Sales Recruiting 281

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 281

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.

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Sales Recruiting Metrics SaaS Sales Funnel 100

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Q: What are the top 20 pieces of advice for building a successful SaaS startup? Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. It just takes that long in SaaS and B2B, nine times out of ten.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 303

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2022

Investments I've made that didn't work out: – Momentum investment – CEO a bit of bulls**t artist – CEO good at sales but weak product team / CTO. Investments I've made that had so-so outcomes: – CEO not better than me – CEO couldn't control burn rate – Not really SaaS.

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Investment Sales Recruiting CTO Startup 297