Kellblog

AUGUST 13, 2019

This is a sister post to my recent one, Career Decisions: What to Look For in a Software Startup. That piece is all about what to look for when considering taking a job at a software startup. This piece is kind of the opposite: what to look out for when considering an executive job at a software startup. moving both feet).

Software Review 76

Software Review Startup Sales Hiring Software 76

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

After working on NASA’s Space Shuttle Main Engine, he went on to develop Portfolium, a social networking platform that allows students and graduates to showcase skills beyond the traditional resume to potential employers. Portfolium was eventually acquired, but the team behind it never stopped thinking about a better way to do it.

Scale 211

Scale compliance Software Review Technical Review 211

Point Nine Land

MARCH 15, 2022

If you take a look at a 50 person sales team, you’ll likely find it to be very data-driven. They usually track low-level metrics about their app performance or errors, and agile teams have burn-down charts. Previous attempts failed or didn’t get a lot of adoption, usually because of some combination of these issues: Poor data quality.

Investment 52

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Engineering 52

ProfitWell

JANUARY 6, 2020

If you don’t have product-market fit, you could be advertising to the wrong buyer personas and attracting the wrong buyers, leading to higher churn and poor retention. A high churn rate might be indicative of poor product-market fit. His startup, founded in 2015, strives to be the fastest email experience in the world.

Product Marketing 52

Product Marketing Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Advertising 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

297: Bob Moore is the Founder & CEO @ Crossbeam, the startup that helps companies find overlapping prospects and customers while keeping the rest of their data private and secure. Prior to Crossbeam, Bob founded Stitched, a powerful ETL service built for developers that was acquired by Talend in 2018. Loving our podcast content?

Sales Hiring 131

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 131

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2019

And if you work for a CEO, whether you’re on the e-staff or really any position in a startup, I’m hoping that by understand how the CEO thinks and how the CEO looks at certain issues that you’ll be better able to add value and it will help your career. Startups are like sharks. Do I have the right team?

Sales Hiring 116

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scale Startup 116

Kellblog

APRIL 4, 2021

We are team members in an organization, after all. To investors [4], advisors, and startup execs as a reminder that founders are not managers, even though sometimes we might like them to act more as if they were. They apologize for missed quarters or bad hires. Founders own the team. We disagree and commit.

CTO Coach 99

CTO Coach CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO 99

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2019

237: Parker Conrad is the Founder & CEO @ Rippling, the startup that gives you back your time from payroll to employee computers, Rippling makes it unbelievably easy to manage your company’s HR and IT – in one system. How can one prevent their customer support team from being a wall of protection for the product and eng team?

VP of Engineering 132

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review 132

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

Point Nine Land

MARCH 7, 2019

Lemkin recently posted a tweetstorm about his observation that most startups are bad at finance. As you’d expect from Jason, he didn’t try to sugarcoat things: A top trend I have noticed past 3 years: Startups are MUCH, MUCH worse at finance. Like, all of them. So, when is the right time to hire a CFO? Some time around the $0.5–1.5

Sales Hiring 72

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Payment Services Finance 72

Trint

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

I’d never been exposed to software developers and the mysterious world of coding. I was introduced to a team of software engineers who’d been working on tech that aligned audio and text so that you could follow it like karaoke. I remember saying to the team, “We just invented the future.” I ran one of my interviews through it.

Branding 130

Branding Advertising Underperforming Technical Team VP of Engineering 130

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

If you look at any SaaS startup, in the first couple reps, they always find one guy or gal that’s just amazing, just killing it. You have to create a repeatable process if you’re going to scale up the sales team. The Number One Job of a VP Sales is Recruiting a Great Team. Whatever you do, hire two. Who did you hire?

Sales Hiring 251

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 251

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

What does it take to scale a sales team successfully? I’ve heard so many good things from Kobie, now at Upfront, and then also the team at Openview. So taking us off, how did you make your way into the world of startups and how did you come to be CEO in UserTesting today? How does Andy think about discounting?

Sales Hiring 190

Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Sales Enablement 190

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2021

One of the most popular sessions at SaaStr Annual, Busting the Myths About Startup Success with BlackLine CEO and Founder Therese Tucker is up at the top of our must-watch list. My marketing team wanted me to do the world’s most boring video. Don’t be that guy with your startup. The reality is most startups fail.

Startup 269

Startup CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO Coach 269

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 14, 2022

It was the first time Harry came across venture capital, and, he tells us, he was instantly hooked. Not long after starting the podcast, Harry got into investing himself, and in 2020, he leveraged the success of his show to launch his own venture capital fund, 20VC fund. There’s no right way to do venture.

Venture Capital 129

Venture Capital Interviewing Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 129

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Before I joined the venture capital industry many years ago, I was a software developer, and I worked for a startup around the 2000 time period. Now, I’m a venture capital investor. Many of these are names that you know, and this is actually the largest we’ve seen in history.

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

The second is pulling more around values, and how we approached team building. Even as a three person team, we went through an exercise to figure out what do we stand for, as a team? Sam : This is not my insight, but someone else says… I really do believe it, that the team you build is the company you build.

VP of Engineering 253

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 253

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 61

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

I’ve been in software since the ’90s and for over 20 years, nearly that entire time, we’ve been talking about digital transformation, developing strategies, architecting new technologies, and moving beyond digitization to rethinking our businesses, our products, and our services in a way that’s optimized for a digital world.

Scale 158

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Branding 158

FastSpring

DECEMBER 8, 2022

And we had a variety of software offerings, everything from WordPress themes and plugins, a local development tool called Local and then had very SaaS like elements to our offering there. EJ Brown 06:10 I think there’s a common idea that startup culture in particular. I think that was surprising for me.

Payment Methods 78

Payment Methods Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Software Review 78

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 1, 2020

If you missed episode 137, check it out here: Team Selling: A Comeback Story for 2021 with Trish Bertuzzi. Learn how modern sales teams win deals now at 6sense.com/saleshacker. It’s a bad look, it’s a bad way to end your relationship. And a lot of that early founding team came from ExactTarget lineage.

VP of Engineering 63

VP of Engineering Branding Scale Marketing 63

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2022

Jason Lemkin: So you have like a great profile irrespective of what your startup’s doing. And so that might mean I’m deploying capital at a third the rate that I was last year, a third the rate. There’s dealing with your startup that was growing 80% last year and is growing 0% this year, and has 12 months of cash.

Scale 185

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling SaaS 185

Baremetrics

APRIL 16, 2021

Future capital providers love to see that you’ve invested more than your time into your endeavor. If you’re unable or unwilling to self-fund your startup, you may want to consider getting a job for the time being and part-timing your startup until you’re able to and comfortable with personally financing your company.

Venture Capital 66

Venture Capital Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team SaaS 66

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Source 16 Startup Metrics by Jeff Jordan, Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen, and Preethi Kasireddy, a16z We have the privilege of meeting with thousands of entrepreneurs every year, and in the course of those discussions are presented with all kinds of numbers, measures, and metrics that illustrate the promise and health of a particular company.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 19, 2022

And also on the side, doing a strategy of pure, just changing our ICP and fully picking it and making it super narrow and super focused, and having 25% of the team doing that. And 75% of the team continuing business as usual. No one has an engineering team with the time to build anything. Jason Lemkin: Yep. So, thanks.

Scale 203

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling VP of Engineering 203

Neil Patel

JANUARY 11, 2021

You can then use it to arrange for the required capital to launch your product or service. Follow this up by building your team and finding a location if you’re opening a physical store. After all, your customers would prefer more of a good thing and less of a bad thing. Solve a problem you identify.

Underperforming Technical Team 128

Underperforming Technical Team Business Sales Hiring Scale 128

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 20, 2018

Take notes, highlight the best parts, and share important takeaways with your team. Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast. Producer/Host: Bowery Capital. Bowery Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm with a soft spot for tech startups. Experiment, test, record, and optimize! to 50 mins.

Scale 111

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Social Media 111

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

When it comes to launching sales teams in hyper-growth startups, few people have walked the walk as much as Maggie Hott. We recently sat down with Maggie to chat about all things sales – from laying down a solid foundation to hiring the right people and, finally, scaling the team into hyper-growth. Look for the team players.

Scale 118

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 118

Neil Patel

MARCH 21, 2023

We all have a great team and support network behind us. If you don’t respect your partner(s), your team won’t last long. Fill your team with people who have great character and you’re well on your way to success. Plan Your Finances Startups and entrepreneurial businesses need money. It’s just a part of the lifestyle.

Entrepreneurship 92

Entrepreneurship Underperforming Technical Team Entertainment Company Culture 92

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

The SaaStock team will be landing in São Paulo to run the region’s first Pan-Latin American SaaS conference, SaaStock LatAm. He was also Coordinator and Trainer of startup sales at Gama Academy, the first sales training program for Brazilian startups. He’s been running SaaSholic, a blog where he writes about startups and SaaS.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Scale Entrepreneurship Sales Hiring 207

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Do you gun straight for the glamour (and pressure) of venture capital investment? What about a venture capitalist who might be sympathetic to your mission? Going into the pursuit of funding without a plan can lead you nowhere—or, even worse, leave you saddled with a funding plan that’s bad for you and your business.

Venture Capital 56

Venture Capital Scale SaaS Benchmarks 56

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2020

To give it to you as a startup for example, let’s say that the markets were paying 10 times trailing multiples for revenues. We were warning startups to expect a degree of uncertainty in the year ahead anyway. That happens in venture capital, and that’s happening right now. I suggest we probably aren’t.

Technical Review 192

Technical Review Payment Services Payment Methods Development Team Review 192

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 19, 2019

Lauren Bailey’s award-winning sales firm Factor 8 has been instrumental in helping sales teams with their sales and management development programs. She also understands that even the most well-intentioned sales leaders may need guidance to include more women in their sales teams. Bill Binch – CRO at Pendo.

VP of Engineering 11

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Underperforming Technical Team 11

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

In Silicon Valley, I wrote, failure was a red badge of courage , a medal of valor on one’s resume for service in the startup wars, and a reference to the eponymous classic written by Stephen Crane. First, from a career development perspective, how one should manage the presence of such badges on your resume. ” [4].

Management 77

Management Underperforming Technical Team Scale Startup 77

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

How does David think about scaling sales teams? David Skok: So I graduated with a computer science degree in the early days of that craft and few months after leaving college, I found a problem and I wrote some code to solve it and accidentally without even thinking what I was doing, I ended up creating a startup.

Scale 189

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 189

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 29, 2020

Think about what you could be doing to bring more diversity into your teams and be more inclusive as a company, and go actively out of your way in order to achieve set goals. I usually do them with Paul or people from the product teams – it’s much more fun to be on a podcast with your boss. Be open-minded.

Payment Solutions 209

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 209

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Since 2010 we’ve seen more startups, funds, and capital than ever before, but with this drastic increase, investors are seeing unexpected new trends reshaping the future of the industry. Pietro Bezza | Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures. Ophelia Brown | Founder, Partner @ Blossom Capital. Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020.

New CTO 146

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 146