SaaStr

JUNE 20, 2023

Others are very hands-on advisors, spending many hours per month at startups other than the one they work at. If a VP of Sales has a $500k+ OTE and a big team to manage, does it even make senses to sell courses on the side? Once you had something, once you had scale, then go help one other startup. That was the rough rule.

Underperforming Technical Team 288

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Startup 288

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

My top suggestions: Hire those “Bay Area VPs” now while they’ll (still) work with startups HQ’d anywhere. Do a lot more Business Development and Partnerships. Underperformers found it harder to hide after Covid, and many have already left or moved on. This one is perhaps the most actionable.

Underperforming Technical Team 318

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Travel Cloud 318

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

There is more capital available to startups than ever before. The influx of capital has made it easier for startups to raise money, but it has also led to higher valuations and more competition. Jason Lemkin discusses why pricing is worse than ever for startups. Startups are staying private longer.

CTO Hire 213

CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 213

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2022

Bernard , Suranga , Alice , Rob ) as well as my other European startup colleagues (e.g., The US poses numerous, often unique, challenges for a European technology startup. So is developing a geographic strategy. This series was both a lot of work and a lot of fun. I was able to leverage many of my Balderton colleages (e.g.,

Startup 117

Startup Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Compensation 117

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Scott’s newsletter makes a great point: as buying teams get bigger and bigger, our sales teams need to grow with them. In other words, the partners balance out each other’s strengths and weaknesses. First, identify your team member’s strengths and weaknesses. Business case development and IT/tech strategy.

Underperforming Technical Team 123

Underperforming Technical Team CTO Hire CTO Coach Technical Review 123

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

In the early days, it was about setting expectations that startups are hard and you must work hard to succeed. We are a tech startup, and in order to be successful, we expect you to put in a lot of hard work. The underperformers who aren’t putting in the effort get a conversation, and if things don’t change, it’s not a good fit.

Sales Hiring 207

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Revenue Sales 207

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2023

A bad experience with a revenue operations leader might taint your view of the position at all future companies, but that would be a mistake, as CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond learned first-hand. These leaders act as partners and build out a strong team. Not every leader is created equally.

Sales Hiring 211

Sales Hiring Education Scale Strategy 211

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Sometimes it’s VP Sales (OK, often, this is the most common mishire — another post here on what a really great VPS can do for you, and how a poor one can wreck your company, coming). The #1 reason to do a start-up is Career Development. 1/ Want the best startup VP Sales candidates in the world? Only money.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Startup 293

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Unfortunately, things only get more difficult when it comes to running the whole business as a Shopify app developer. This article will cover 10 business tips for improving your Shopify app’s development, marketing, and sales. 10 business tips for Shopify app developers 1. The Shopify QA team are your friends 6.

Payment Solutions 98

Payment Solutions Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development 98

TurnKey Labs

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Key takeaways: Why startups fail? It’s typically due to one or more key factors, such as a lack of preparation and planning, poor understanding of the target customer’s needs, and/or not developing a product or service that adequately solves customer pain points (which is more commonly known as not achieving “product-market fit”).

Startup 52

Startup Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Software Review 52

Kellblog

JULY 8, 2020

I was talking with my old friend, Mark Tice , the other day and he referred to a startup mistake as, “on his top ten list.” ” Mark’s been a startup CEO twice, selling two companies in strategic acquisitions, and he’s run worldwide sales and channels a few times.

Sales Hiring 139

Sales Hiring Startup Software Review Enterprise 139

Tom Tunguz

MAY 25, 2017

The more interesting of the two for startups is the company level. In order to be successful, startups have to be good at many things. The startup often inherits this exceptional characteristic from one or more of the founders. Determining how to compete is a critical part of developing a startup idea.

Startup 100

Startup Underperforming Technical Team Strategy Azure 100

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2024

The Journey of Selling Your Startup Harry was the co-founder and CEO of Periscope Data, which raised a seed round before finding customers, yet didn’t run out of money before becoming an overnight success 3-4 years later. It’s about the $50-$500M bread-and-butter, classic startup exit. How do these exits happen? Who does the acquiring?

Underperforming Technical Team 159

Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review Data Technical Review 159

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2024

They built one platform that does it all, but also made it simple so that these small businesses they wanted to serve, could actually use it to grow revenue without needing a developer that they didn’t have. They initially tried to sell to other startups on the basis that Klaviyo could help you with your customer marketing.

Revenue 275

Revenue Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 275

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 23, 2023

I’m watching public company earnings to identify early weaknesses in the software market. Microsoft’s Ability to Cross-Sell its Suite is Driving Dominance in Many Categories GitHub is now home to 100 million developers. About 70% of commercial Office subscribers use Teams. Yesterday, Microsoft announced earnings.

Azure 228

Azure Underperforming Technical Team Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning 228

How To Buy Saas

APRIL 24, 2024

In today’s moving software development arena the DevOps movement stands out as a game changer bridging the gap, between development and operations teams. With the rise of cloud computing DevOps has gained a partner that has propelled its growth and reshaped the landscape of application development.

DevOps as a Service 40

DevOps as a Service Application Development Underperforming Technical Team Cloud 40

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

These nine sales concepts, when done correctly, will greatly improve your sales and sales teams. #1: Most people think you need to hire more salespeople in a demand-poor environment. Demand-poor environments lead to problems like: Sales reps clinging on to opportunities for too long. That’s the wrong answer.

Sales Recruiting 233

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 233

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

The decision to leave a fairly scaled role leading 200+ AEs at LinkedIn to join a smaller-stage startup. The highs and lows always come, usually involving the people on your team. For Erica, the bad days are when they’re not executing or achieving growth the way they want. Each of these CROs describes what their worst day is.

Scale 250

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 250

OnStartups

MAY 18, 2021

All the points below have been pulled from startup sales teams that I think work pretty well (including the team at CRM software company, HubSpot). Building Startup Sales Teams. They’re not bad people, they’re just different from you, especially if you're an introverted geek like me. The math won’t work.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Startup 52

Scytale

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the compliance requirements of running a startup? As a startup founder trying to build your new organization from the ground up there’s a ton to do – And one of the commitments is keeping security compliance regulations and industry standards, and all that red tape! You’re not alone.

compliance 59

compliance Systems Review Development Team Review Startup 59

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 10, 2020

I hope this post allows people and teams to safely talk about Product Judgment. If you ever had to face a Manager, Director or Exec as they make bad product decisions and you’re struggling to persuade them otherwise, this post will help you. It takes years to build, and therefore ranges from very weak to very strong.

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Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Communication B2B 291

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

We recently hosted the Point Nine Founders Summit, featuring several panels and presentations from founders, CFOs, COOs, and sales execs on building early sales teams and hiring your first successful sales leaders. At Point Nine, we aspire to continuously share what we learn with our community and the extended startup ecosystem.

Sales Hiring 124

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 124

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. Great core/founding team. Startups are about people. We live in a founder-friendly VC era.

Underperforming Technical Team 78

Underperforming Technical Team Startup Software Technical Cofounder 78

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

Lexi Reese, Gusto COO uses her 20+ years of experience to provide advice on building high performing teams using authenticity, empathy and logic. Lexi explains the importance of team trust, driver and passenger mindsets, and much more. So sort of going from older to more and more startup land. Who was the highest engaged teams?

Scale 176

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Scaling Leadership 176

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Duo Security is an Ann Arbor, Michigan based cyber-security startup. sales team. As everyone left to work for an investment bank in California or New York that summer of ’99, I went to work at a startup in Ann Arbor. Now, we did really cool stuff at this startup. Want to see more content like this? .”

Scale 219

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 219

Casey Accidental

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

In my recent essay about second products , I talked about how the goal of building a second product is not the traditional concept of product/market fit we’ve all been raised on regarding startups. By general standards, the team found product/market fit, but will never be able to inflect growth of the combined company.

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Underperforming Technical Team Scale GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Startup 63

Chart Mogul

OCTOBER 3, 2019

After your product/market fit, your business model is the most important consideration if you’re to save your business from the startup graveyard. Every team has their own slightly different way of calculating the cost of customer acquisition. Poor distribution — not product — is the number one cause of failure. Peter Thiel.

Acquisition 91

Acquisition Underperforming Technical Team Startup Customer Lifetime Value 91

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Is your leadership team world-class? Does your board think you have the right leadership team? Heck, does your leadership team think you have the right leadership team? new ARR), OKRs , or hiring goals — either in terms of number or quality (particularly when staffing their own leadership team).

Leadership 115

Leadership Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Scale 115

Baremetrics

AUGUST 6, 2021

HR in Today’s Startup World Be Proactive Hire in a way that makes sense for your company Don’t assume and get help where you need it Communicate clear expectations and make realistic promises Problem-solving with deep listening In Closing. Plan your hiring process long before adding people to the team. Table of Contents.

Underperforming Technical Team 130

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Consulting Scale 130

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

APRIL 1, 2021

Some examples: Okta basically won the corporate side of identity (rocketed to #1) but wasn’t #1 on the developer side. Smaller deals can sometimes just be about experiments, and teams. Buy a pre-revenue startup in space with a strong team. Buy a pre-revenue startup in space with a strong team.

Underperforming Technical Team 210

Underperforming Technical Team Cloud Acquisition Communication 210

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 190

AI Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Artificial Intelligence 190

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

With capital scarce and expensive, with companies increasingly trapped in Schrödinger’s startup paradox , and with more startups than ever focused on positive cashflow and The Rule of 40 , it’s safe to say that Silicon Valley is still very much in a cost-cutting mood. It’s been a tough year. Why do we forget this?

VP of Engineering 117

VP of Engineering Travel Underperforming Technical Team Headcount 117

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2024

The three core areas to focus on are: Evolving your growth engine Building and solving for when to become a multi-product platform Investing in your people and team #1: Evolving Your Growth Engine Let’s start with some context for Bitly’s journey. You might have to rebuild your marketing team. Optimize your acquisition funnel.

Scale 260

Scale Scaling Underperforming Technical Team User Experience 260

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 20, 2016

The volatility in the stock market, the steady erosion of public multiples, and the broad decline of seed, venture and growth investment in Q4 2015 seem to portend a repricing of the startup market. When should a startup raise immediately? When should a startup raise capital later? This is the riskiest option.

Startup 100

Startup Underperforming Technical Team Forecasting Investment 100

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 20, 2018

In the early stages of most SaaS startups’ lives, the CEO or founder often acts as the initial head of sales. It is important that these friendly connections represent the target persona market you have outlined, as otherwise, the feedback loop is likely to be weak. Iterate the product based on feedback.

Startup 178

Startup Sales SaaS Systems Review 178

User Pilot

MAY 1, 2024

Before starting his own venture, Lenny worked in the product and engineering teams of companies like Airbnb and Neustar. Renowned for his tenure on Airbnb’s product team, Lenny’s professional journey truly began in 2010 when he served as the CEO of a budding startup named “Localmind.”

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Underperforming Technical Team New CTO Interviewing CTO 75