SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

She was hired because they saw a bit of softening in new business growth, and she came to help diagnose what was going on and help scale the business. Lattice had a product-led growth flow on the website while the sales team was still trying to sell the PLG companies The good news is Lattice had a lot of activity and initiatives at play.

Scale 231

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 231

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

When a startup takes form, the first weeks and months and years are spent furiously. The startup raises capital. However, continuing this way isn’t the path to huge scale. To recruit 100 people. As the business increases it scale, the management team needs to plan further and further out in time.

Scale 228

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Startup 228

SaaStr

AUGUST 14, 2020

A mistake many founders make is hiring a VP of Sales who has many strengths — but not at sales per se. A VP of Sales who is smart, polished, and worked at the right place, in a management-level position. That can talk about quota attainment and sales operations and scaling and number. you might ask.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 363

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

Recently, Redpoint Office Hours welcomed Allison Pickens to clarify the COO role and when startups should consider recruiting one. Whereas a decade ago, a board might have hired a professional CEO to scale the operations of a startup, today, more boards seek COOs. A few hypotheses underpin this trend.

Sales Recruiting 192

Sales Recruiting Startup Scale Sales Hiring 192

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization? Does PLG really help scale by a large amount? The go-to-market playbook.

Scale 181

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 181

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. We were coming off an environment where startup funding was as fruitful as ever. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 259

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

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.

Sales Recruiting 236

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 236

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Ah the VP of Sales. The first post is What a Great VP of Sales Actually Does. The second post is a script for you to use (and modify as you see fit) – 10 Great Questions to Ask a VP Sales Candidate. Just so you know, there are 48 Different Types of VP Sales. The toughest hire. Such a high failure rate.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

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 231

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 231

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

MAY 14, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: 15+ of The Top Sales & Marketing Mistakes SaaS Startups Make (Updated) Cloudflare: Our Top Reps Are Hitting 129% of Quota. 7 Things All Founders Should Know About Sales with Dave Kellogg: SaaStr Workshop Wednesday LIVE 2.

Sales Recruiting 203

Sales Recruiting Scale Generative AI AI 203

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

SaaStr 630: Sales-led vs. Product-led? Today’s Startups Need Both with Jason Eubanks, CRO at Harness  2. SaaStr 629: CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment in 2023 For Candidates and Hiring Managers With Flexport’s Ben Braverman   3. It Was 114x in 2021.

Sales Recruiting 198

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital 198

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Pretty incredible at scale. You see this time and time again in startups that are late to “top” their first set of VPs. For example, a great Stretch VP of Sales might get you to from $50k to $500k a month in new bookings. Many first-time VPs just can’t recruit great managers under them.

Sales Recruiting 235

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Metrics 235

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Why VCs Love Founders That Respond to Email Almost Instantly 90%-95% of Salespeople Won’t Make It At Your Startup. SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  2. How to Scale a Platform and Ecosystem to $10B | @Atlassian CRO Cameron Deatsch 5.

Sales Recruiting 192

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 192

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

So if scaling your sales organization is a priority in 2020, here are the things you need to be aware of to make sure you do so successfully. In my experience both as a salesperson and as a recruiter, it’s primarily been four things: They want the work they’re doing to matter to them. Hiring sales leaders will get harder.

Sales Recruiting 53

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Trends 53

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

The most frequent mishire in startups is the first head of marketing. 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. 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

SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

An oldie but a good on that here: Your #1 Sales Rep Should Be Driving an M8 Convertible By Month 12. It also means cutting lose folks who after a sales cycle or two will never hit quota. Sales is hard. Done right, sales reps shouldn’t be that expensive in the early days. This sets an example for everyone.

Sales Recruiting 241

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Startup 241

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 COOs have become more common in management teams as ways for founders & CEOs to build the management team to scale a business.

Scale 293

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Customer Success 293

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

Your startup is just getting off the ground. You might have a few account executives and a sales leader in place; maybe some revenue and a handful of customers. The sales team costs real money, and the question before the company is: how do you know what quota plan to assign to the account executives?

Compensation 153

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 153

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

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. Sales: You must understand how to grow your sales machine, and it isn’t easy.

Sales Recruiting 200

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 200

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

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

If I wouldn’t work for you … then I can’t help you recruit folks that will. You’re in sales. Recruit the VPs? Folks with bigger investor wallets may be OK with this, but when I’ve invested in SaaS startups at the late seed-stage who just have too high a burn rate … it never works out.

Sales Recruiting 336

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 336

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

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. Turning over a sales team is very hard on the organization. A great VP of Sales is worth her weight in gold.

Sales Hiring 323

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 323

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 now it’s all about like, can you really scale and execute? Dev Ittycheria : Thank you.

Sales Recruiting 249

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 249

Kellblog

MAY 10, 2021

In this post, I’ll present what I view as the minimum sales management framework for an enterprise SaaS startup — i.e., the basics you should have covered as you seek to build and scale your sales organization [1]. Pipeline management rules, with an optional stage matrix. Management rules (e.g.,

Sales Hiring 111

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Enterprise 111

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 19, 2021

Sales recruiting is broken. The sad truth is that VP of Sales are turning over within 19 months —and that timeline is shrinking. . Not only that, the market has heated way back up and the VP of Sales is one of the most sought after roles. Image from First Round’s State of Startups Report. Therein lies the dilemma.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

In this Mucker Growth session, Mike Genstil with ValueCore delves into the concept of value selling and its application in enterprise sales. As a founder, ideally you want your sellers, marketers, and product leaders aligned in transforming product features into value-based messages to accelerate sales cycles and secure corporate deals.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Enterprise Cybersecurity 52

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

I’ve never created LinkedIn content with the “goal” of lead generation or immediate-term sales. Another cool example I really like is Tito Bohrt — he stands out with the pseudo, “ Sales Mad Scientist ” — which demonstrates confidence and a unique identity online.

Sales Recruiting 128

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 128

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2023

The first goal of sales at a startup isn’t to bring in revenue — it’s to get customer feedback. I’ve spent the last year working to find product-market fit for my startup, Dock. I’ve used our sales process to iterate our way to product market-fit and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way.

Sales Recruiting 88

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 88

Baremetrics

JUNE 30, 2021

You've got a brilliant SaaS startup idea. A startup financial model is the plan. In fact, we've already built the SaaS financial model you'll actually use — but let's take a look at why this is especially important for SaaS startups. 1 What Is a Startup Financial Model? What Is a Startup Financial Model?

Startup 98

Startup Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Deferred Revenue 98

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

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2021

“Lessons in Scaling a Low Code Platform with Airtable’s CEO Howie Liu” How did Airtable remake a cateogy? “The 5 things that kill startups after their seed rounds with Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator” A SaaStr classic from the last SaaStr Annual. #4. Learn from CEO Howie Liu here! #3.

Sales Recruiting 143

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Scaling 143

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. 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. 99% of startups aren’t that. For 99% of startups, when you want money, tell VCs you want money.

Part-Time VPE 185

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 185

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