SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2023

But Software? SaaStr 632: CRO Confidential: How To Adapt Your Sales Strategy To The Current Sales Environment with Sam Blond and Hannah Willson, SVP of Sales at Modern Health  2. SaaStr 630: Sales-led vs. Product-led? Today’s Startups Need Both with Jason Eubanks, CRO at Harness  5. That’s Still Growing.

Sales Recruiting 130

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Venture Capital Sales 130

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 219

Sales Recruiting Scale Generative AI AI 219

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 214

Scale Startup Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 214

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

And according to Gartner , by the time 2021 hits, the software industry will have grown another $113 billion. 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. Hiring sales leaders will get harder. What makes them want to choose you?

Sales Recruiting 53

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Trends 53

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

But Software? 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. Gartner: Overall IT Spend Has Slowed.

Sales Recruiting 213

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital 213

SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

It’s the most common objection you’ll get in SaaS sales … Not Right Now. No one needs another piece of business software. It can’t strategically improve sales software, financial software, quoting software, recruiting software, QA processes, call center software, etc.

Sales Recruiting 276

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Software Review 276

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?

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 152

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 152

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2023

This is the reason 70%+ of SaaS companies that IPO are just new version of old, successful things: About 70% of SaaS Unicorns Are New Versions of Existing Categories of Software | SaaStr But … but … Small markets can grow into large markets if you change the market or there is otherwise disruption in the market. One of the best sales people.

Sales Recruiting 227

Sales Recruiting Marketing Sales Hiring Market Segmentation 227

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.” Bansal felt passionate about enhanced software delivery, the need that Harness meets for developers. Recruitment: Getting the right talent onboard is a critical step.

Sales Recruiting 215

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Delivery Travel 215

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2020

I’ve worked with several startups that fell into the following pattern: Selling a SaaS application at a healthy price (e.g., If you sell: A recruiting app, running your first recruiting campaign. A sales enablement app, it’s training your first reps. 100K to $200K ARR). They’re worth it.).

Consulting 144

Consulting Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 144

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

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2020

The 2010s were the decade of software and SaaS, the era when Salesforce become the first SaaS company to sail past the $100B market cap mark. Database startups, data movement startups, data quality startups, data lineage startups, machine learning startups will be the zeitgeist of the decade as they shape the next wave of massive innovation.

Sales Recruiting 279

Sales Recruiting Blockchain Banking Machine Learning 279

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

It’s been a fun experience being on Quora for … a decade We’ve crossed 60,000,000 views of our answers there, so let’s take a look at the Top 50 most viewed SaaStr Answers on Quora in 2020: Why do many startup owners sell their firm and move on instead of planning on making it a big player like Google, Microsoft, etc.?

Software Review 283

Software Review CTO Coach Technical Review Sales Recruiting 283

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. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2. A bit more here.

Sales Hiring 303

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 303

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 125

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 125

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

The same is true in software. In this battle, I’ve found a secret weapon hidden within one of our core engineering strategies, an idea called Run Less Software. As well as being a critical philosophy behind how we build software, it also represents how I feel about the software industry and technology in general.

Software Review 224

Software Review Outsourcing Services Software Outsourced Development 224

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

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 Sales. VP Sales (45 Employees). Founder/CEO.

CTO Hire 263

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 263

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. If you’re hiring a sales leader, you don’t pass up an awesome sales leader that has a killer track record of closing deals just because in their previous company they sold success software, and then with your company, they’re going to sell MarTech.

Sales Hiring 248

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Acquisition 248

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. Dev Ittycheria : Thank you.

Sales Recruiting 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 255

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

Sales Hiring 191

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 191

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

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 2, 2016

When buying machine learning enabled software, it’s easier to sell like Ironman than Robocop; a product that complements and augments the user’s skills rather than a true replacement. These are some of the objections customers raise during those sales pitches. For SaaS companies, sales velocity is a competitive advantage.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Software Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 100

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

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 199

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 199

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 20, 2020

Handling HR for large companies is vastly different than doing the same at a startup or small business. Always make sure to talk with a sales representative and be as detailed as possible about your current and future situation to make sure they can handle everything you need. HR software. The size of your business.

Outsourcing Services 118

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 118

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

Whether you need to hire dozens of sales reps in the next few months or you’re a scrappy startup and need your first three sales hires, building a business will nearly always involve hiring for sales. According to Insightsquared, recruiting should take up to 20% of time for a C-level executive. Coachability.

Sales Hiring 139

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Enablement 139

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

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. When they pay us to do that, we give them access to a best in class software platform. So we did about 442 million in sales last year. We are not a software business. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Scale 206

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 206

Kellblog

JULY 18, 2019

So, you’re thinking of taking a job at a startup, but are nervous about the risk, perhaps having trouble telling one from another, and unsure about knowing what’s really important in startup success. Startups are about people. Great core/founding team. We live in a founder-friendly VC era.

Underperforming Technical Team 78

Underperforming Technical Team Startup Software Technical Cofounder 78

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. One of the holy grails of SMB software is, how are you going to acquire customers?

Payments 114

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 114

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

When I ventured out to build my first Customer Success department at a tech software company, my leadership team thought I was nuts. At the time, I was a sales engineer, and my job was to close deals and move on to the next prospect. However, I found there were two flaws in our customer management process.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

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 52

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 52

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 11, 2012

Tech startups write a ton of code. They are the skeleton of the startup. In AdSense operations, the average account manager supported more than 10,000 customers (!) Like Google, startups build many of these tools in house. In either case, these essential supporting cast members enable startups to grow much faster.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Travel 100