SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

In the latest episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. For context – Ashley had previously helped Sam scale Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR as Senior Director of SDR.

Sales Hiring 287

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 287

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2020

This post is part of a series leading up to SaaS Office GTM Edition on June 24 in which we’re reviewing the results of the 2020 Redpoint GTM survey. Today, we’re answering the question: how do teams grow as a startup scales? The median startup with between 1-5M in ARR will have 12 engineers, 6 in sales and 3 in marketing.

Scale 354

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 354

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

General Partner Doug Pepper and General Partner and Head of Analytics at ICONIQ Growth, Christine Edmonds, share the art and science of scaling GTM at this year’s SaaStr Annual. Because founder-led sales worked really well for most of the early stages, but you eventually start running out of juice around $15M ARR.

Scale 262

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 262

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2022

Q: Dear SaaStr: What are Some Common Decisions SaaS Startups Make that Hurt Their Ability to Scale? The problem here is that instead of hiring an accretive resource, you hire a cost center than can’t deliver sales/leads/upsells. More here : 12 Things You’ll Look Back On in SaaS … And Regret. But not before.

Scale 257

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 257

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Mark Roberge , SaaStr fan-favorite and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital brought together some of the top CROs in SaaS during the SaaStr Annual to share some of their greatest learnings and pivotal moments leading some of the Cloud 100 SaaS companies. From a GTM execution standpoint, they weren’t focused.

Scale 259

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 259

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2024

As Christian’s been the CRO of Splunk for over seven years now, he’s a wealth of knowledge on what it really takes to be successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales. ” In essence – re-train your sales team to think about pipeline requirements based on actual data vs. gut instinct. Marketing or Sales?

Enterprise 284

Enterprise Scale Sales SaaS 284

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2024

So just a little while back, Lenny Rachintsky had me on his hyper-popular podcast to talk about scaling sales, from the perspective of a founder who hasn’t really done sales. They really are a great checklist when you are starting to scale sales in SaaS: #1. And sales go down, not up. #2.

Sales Hiring 285

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 285

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

To $300k-$400k+ per employee at scale. With “SaaS” about $200 Billion of that. Most of you are, in fact: According to our latest unscientific but directionally correct survey of over 2,000 SaaS execs, 64% of you are growing your sales team in 2024. So cuts continue. I bet you get an interview.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 300

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2023

A rough structure from 1–25 sales reps: Early days: CEO acts as VP of Sales. Then : Have to scale from reps 3–8 or so. CEO starts looking for true VP of Sales by $1m ARR, ideally hires one by $1m-$2m in ARR. VP of Sales hires next 5–10 reps herself. If VP of Sales is good, most of reps 5-10 perform.

Sales Hiring 317

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Compensation 317

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Can You Grow a SaaS Startup Without Spending a Ton on Sales and Marketing? Qualtrics has a sales-led motion, but kept a very tight lid on costs until they could scale. And Atlassian is a classic PLG play, and used partners to do the heavy lifting in sales and enablement.

Scale 243

Scale Venture Capital Startup Marketing 243

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2023

So leading growth stage VC Iconiq has published its latest and very detailed Definitive Guide to Sales Compensation here. It’s very detailed and oriented more toward growth-stage scale-ups — but it’s excellent. Renewals, if they are done by sales, are paid out at about 40% of an initial commission.

Scale 291

Scale Compensation Sales SMB 291

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Lower interest rates lead to SaaS multiple reflation, likely during 2H’24 It’s not clear how truly tight the link is between interest rates and SaaS multiples, but the overall correlation is clear. Lower inflation and the fed lowering interest rates should lead to an expansion of SaaS multiples.

Scale 292

Scale SaaS AI Innovation 292

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

Check out the session here: Algolia also summarized their Top 5 take-aways here , and below: Most SaaS founders start out the same way— armed with ample expertise of the technical details that go into a product and with limited experience of other aspects of scaling, such as sales. On acquiring customers consistently.

Scale 262

Scale Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Scaling 262

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

So I’ve been doing SaaS for a while, and the costs of doing business have just gone up. based SMB sales positions. SaaS sales execs with even a little bit of experience at other SaaS companies are looking for higher and higher OTEs, often with lower effective attainment and high support costs.

SMB 301

SMB Scale Sales Hiring Sales 301

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

As a growing SaaS company, there is a lot to think about in a day: How is my ARR doing? And, when you do, do you even think about sale tax compliance? vary on how they handle sales tax and SaaS. It can be confusing to understand how and where you should charge sales tax. Are we delighting our costumes?

Payment Services 299

Payment Services compliance SaaS Payments Scale 299

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

2021 will be the year SaaS sales evolves the most since the Appexchange ecosystem started to take off ~15 years ago, which spawned the entire notion of a true sales app stack. The permanent move to distributed sales teams. Almost every SaaS VP of Sales and CRO I’ve talked to in the past few months isn’t going back.

Sales Recruiting 353

Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 353

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2020

A little while back we put together some of the top sales & marketing mistakes SaaS companies and founders make, especially in the early days. Sales: Hiring any reps you wouldn’t buy from yourself. Later, once you have a strong VP of Sales, it’s fine though. Your sales reps need to eat. Yes, Box is SaaS.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Marketing 363

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2024

The post The Top 8 SaaStr Tips to Building an Effective First Sales Team (per Perplexity) appeared first on SaaStr. I think it did a pretty good job The summaries we do might be better, but this is a great place to start. I think it did a pretty good job The summaries we do might be better, but this is a great place to start.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Scale AI Search Compensation 240

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? You can back into how many sales reps you’ll need in SaaS. And they will take at least some time to scale. That may actually be high, especially if you are scaling quickly and make a few hiring errors. Assume 1 sales manager for each 8 sales professionals.

Scale 289

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 289

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

One of the open secrets behind a lot of great SaaS companies is going multi-product. Will you have an overlay team that only sells the new product, or will you enable your entire sales force? This question exists whether you have 2, 12, or 50 sales reps. Prepare for post-sales on new products. What are those incentives?

Scale 266

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 266

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2022

Q; Dear SaaStr: I Just Received a $1M investment for My 3-year old Industrial SaaS Product to Scale. 1m isn’t enough to scale anything, at least not in the U.S., To hire a true sales & marketing team, you’re going to need about $3m-$4m. You can hire a sales rep or ideally two to help you sell. Not to “scale”.

Scale 222

Scale Sales Hiring Investment Scaling 222

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Everything from hiring on the GTM side to layering in a sales-led motion into PLG. Let’s dive into what’s making that hybrid model successful: PLG and Sales Led? Given this, you must understand the role that each facet of the business plays in promoting that product, from marketing and sales to customer service.

Scale 298

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 298

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

Ah, hiring those first 1 or 2 sales reps. But when you get that Sales Magician — they really can be a game changer. If that’s you, hiring your first few sales reps, here are our Top 10 SaaStr Posts on Hiring Your First Few Sales Reps: #1. When You Hire Your First Sales Rep — Just Make Sure You Hire Two.

Sales Hiring 256

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Startup 256

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2022

Dear SaaStr: Are Any SaaS Companies Really Profitable? SaaS companies can be quite profitable, but most these days that are able to raise capital tend to … take their time getting there. Atlassian has a very small direct sales force. And ZoomInfo sells data, which if done right, really scales.

Scale 318

Scale SaaS Scaling Revenue 318

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

PST — Former VP of Customer Success and current founder and Managing Partner at Success Venture Partners, John Gleeson, shares his lessons learned scaling customer success from $1M to $300M in ARR. In SaaS, you have three ways to make that curve stand out. Your selling team will 3x, and sales will become codified. Renewals.

Scale 169

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling 169

OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

Once dominated by relationships, sales today (especially SaaS sales) are equally propelled by technology. With the broad adoption of CRM, the rise of the sales tech stack, and the advent of social selling and other digital sales channels, the sales landscape has shifted dramatically. Scaling SaaS Sales.

Scale 91

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Technical Review 91

SaaStr

AUGUST 18, 2023

So while the media is full of stories of unicorns doing layoffs and massive cutbacks, the story is a bit different with leading public SaaS companies. Yes many public SaaS companies have done some sort of layoffs the past 12 months, they were often more really reorgs, though, without any net decrease in headcount. Billion in ARR!

Scale 229

Scale Headcount Point of Sale SaaS 229

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 20, 2024

Will AI sofware companies operate with better or worse profitability than a classic SaaS company? AI SaaS may be much more profitable than the -10% average net income margins of the current crop of public businesses. Microsoft & ServiceNow have seen the impact on their teams at scale. But now I’m not so sure.

AI Search 190

AI Search AI Scale SaaS 190

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

We’ve been doing the 5 Interesting Learnings at SaaStr for quite a while, looking at many of the public SaaS leaders and pulling out the top learnings for founders and SaaS execs. And that challenge some of your assumptions on how to scale. 60% of Asana’s customers come from self-service, 40% from sales.

Scale 362

Scale SMB SaaS Scaling 362

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. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

Sales Hiring 287

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 287

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

“My CEO Told Me To Stop Selling So Much” Recently, I met with a sales leader I’ve known for years, and he told me The Most Curious Story. His SaaS CEO asked him to stop selling so much. But … still … the sales team’s commissions consume cash in the very, very short term. Balance Sheet Rule.”

Scale 342

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Construction 342

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 7, 2023

Why will web3 companies dress like SaaS mutton? But web3-to-web2 sales must be the future for companies to scale. Web3 startups will sell software to web2 buyers & in the process become web2 SaaS businesses with unique & defensible architectural advantages & a different capital structure.

Blockchain 266

Blockchain SaaS Scale Cloud 266

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

JANUARY 23, 2021

A little while back, I gave a great SaaS Founder CEO a Gift. And I gave him an insanely great VP of Sales candidate. But like any candidate, this VP of Sales wasn’t perfect. He said he’d hire him … with a great package … but only as “Head of Sales” Not VP. A real gift. That Day.

VP of Engineering 347

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 347

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

Scaling a tech startup doesn’t come easy, and when you’ve tried all the conventional SaaS advice, it might be tempting to give up. But before the years of rapid scaling, it took the company a little while to hit its stride. What Did WorkRamp Do Differently to Scale? You Should Have an 80%+ Gross Margin in SaaS.”

Scale 232

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 232

SaaStr

OCTOBER 8, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: How Is AI Impacting The SaaS Landscape with a16z GP Kristina Shen What To Do if Your TAM is Too Small for VCs Making Less, But Working Less. Is It Part of the New World of SaaS? Top Podcasts This Week: 1. appeared first on SaaStr.

Scale 276

Scale Sales AI Startup 276