SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer. Don’t make this hire. Don’t hire this person. Or puts in the effort to do so.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 221

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Today, she advises and invests in companies on these topics and others. She’s written extensively on the topic and co-authored a book The Customer Success Economy. In this conversation, we’ll clarify the COO, talking about topics like: What does a great COO do? Should you hire a COO for your startup?

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Customer Success 299

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2023

So raises are a nuanced topic in start-ups. And because so many folks are doing hiring slowdowns, hiring freezes, and/or layoffs. In the early days, most of your team won’t even have been there for a year. So there’s often seen as no point in raises. They’d rather focus them on the top performers.

Startup 237

Startup Compensation 237

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

So to go a bit further in on this topic, we thought we’d also bring in SaaStr Fan Fave and expert on Customer Success, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, together with Jason to share their predictions for the future of customer success in 2024. They paused hiring for a year (rather than cut) and got profitable. The world has changed.

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Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 239

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

And the playbook has mostly been as follows for those with tougher times: Cut the burn Freeze hiring If growth is really slow, look at layoffs if necessary and Cut marketing to almost zero To some extent, this makes sense. So times aren’t tougher for everyone in B2B and SaaS, but they’re tougher for many.

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Marketing Scale B2C B2B 214

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2023

It may seem counterintuitive to seek out a sales leadership hire during this time of slowed hiring, but it’s the number one topic that many founders talk about and many SDRs, AEs, and sales managers ask about. . Founders may ask, “how do I find the right sales leadership hire?” They have some startup experience.

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Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Sales 189

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Ok my top list, with a SaaStr article on the topic: Take your time to find a great co-founde r. If you hire someone to do the first sales, you’ll never understand it yourself. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2. You need to hire 2 to really see what works, and what doesn’t. A bit more here.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 300

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Some companies have a recruiting team and a separate talent sourcing team to identify candidates for initial phone interviews, while others have hiring managers in charge of the end-to-end talent acquisition process. Phase 1: Hiring . Promotion can be a really sensitive topic. Retention is another sensitive topic.

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Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Acquisition Company Culture 207

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2023

So Carta recently put together some dat a on a topic I’ve wondered about: just how many startups allow option exercises beyond the traditional 90 day window? So a standard 90 day exercise period … does help you get back more options to grant to new hires. Still, a longer window is very employee-centric. So how often do startups do it?

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Startup Trends Data Compensation 222

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 20, 2021

Our own Hollie Wegman , currently an EIR at Redpoint and formerly CMO at Segment, who joined Office Hours as a guest, will change seats and host Daria to guide founders through three topics: the role of internal communications, how it differs from public relations and marketing, and where it resides in an organization.

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Communication Startup Scaling Marketing 306

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Hiring a VP of Sales isn’t new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. SaaStr’s own Jason Lemkin shares the top 10 mistakes he sees during the hiring process during Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. While this topic isn’t new, you want to avoid getting this hire wrong.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 148

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

There were a lot of flags in this hire, but I remember one vividly. So I thought it might be helpful to brush off the topic of alignment between Sales and Marketing by updating a classic post on the topic. A: You’ve stated that the VP of sales is one of the most common mis-hires SaaS companies can make.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 300

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Whether you manage a team of engineers, a team of regional sales managers, or the company, your first responsibility is to hire and successfully manage the seven people who will form your leadership team. Managers who hire those seven people - either from talent inside the company or outside the company - will be more effective.

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SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

Hire Early. Hire your first customer success manager as early as you can afford to once you have some larger customers. A classic on founder compensation, always one of the most searched topics. Why We’re All Ready for a CRO or COO Earlier These Days Jason explains why his thinking on when to hire a COO or CRO has changed.

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Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Compensation Outsourced Development 219

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

Companies are waiting too long to hire a CFO or VP of Finance. Companies Are Waiting Too Long To Hire A CFO or VP of Finance A lot of founders hire a VP of Ops instead. The VP of Ops shows seven years of runway, and they’re also the most dangerous hire people make. Don’t wait too long to hire a VP of Finance.

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Sales Hiring Headcount Finance Technical Review 219

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2020

We did an update of that classic post below together with this brand new video on the topic: Use this script for hiring that first VP of Sales. Ready to hire your first VP Sales? Before we get there, as a reminder, I strongly recommend you hire 1-2 sales reps (ideally 2) before you hire a VP Sales at a minimum.

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Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Sales 293

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

SBC / Dilution SBC goes in and out of being a hot topic of conversation, but it’s something every startup founder should always be thinking about. For startups, dilution from employee hiring isn’t always top of mind. The chart below shows the data for the companies to report so far (those who give full year guidance).

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Cloud Pricing Startup Revenue 195

Casey Accidental

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

When founders of startups start to hire employees to work on various parts of the business, it tends to be uneasy for both the founder and the employee early on. The founder may have done that job in some capacity before they hired for it, but they are not an expert. The opposite actually tends to be true.

Startup 141

Startup Scaling Strategy Management 141

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2023

How do you reduce bias in hiring talent? The first is Ovum Medical, a MedTech startup focused on the sensitive topic of solving problems around fertility. Talent Customer Service App modernization Talent None of us can build a successful company without thinking about talent. But acquiring the right talent is a difficult task.

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AI Technology Scale Startup 229

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

So the other day I did a 20VC with Harry Stebbings, and one of the topics that came up was the Hopin founder ‘s $100m+ secondary that the CEO took out of the company. The issue is that it undermines trust in the investing, and hiring, processes if the founders don’t come last. Mock VCs if you want.

Startup 221

Startup Venture Capital Investment Scaling 221

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

A fun watch here: Summary from Pavillion: Let’s dive into this episode’s key topics… The AI Bubble Watch here In 2020 and 2021, we saw tech companies raising a lot of capital, and beginning in 2022, we saw a decline in performance leading everyone to believe that these organizations have been overvalued.

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Investment Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 148

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

The CEO wants to hire someone with demand generation experience. What’s your advice when hiring a CMO? When you think about how to hire a really good CMO, you’re actually thinking about how to hire somebody that’s gonna do that. They may fix those problems, but they’re maybe going to do that through hiring.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Acquisition 249

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2021

We did a super deep dive on so many SaaStr classic points, from super-stretch VPs of Sales, to demand gen hiring, to much more. If you want to learn about 20+ of the top SaaStr topics, with real case studies and learnings, they’re here. It’s pretty good.

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Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Revenue 154

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

A niche topic, but one I’ve been learning a lot about lately and working on. On average, you got a 33%+ boost in revenue when you hired your first VP of Sales. Hire a great VP of Sales, and revenue goes up. Almost no one has found hiring to be any easier in 2022. 60% of you hired a real VP of Product by $4m ARR.

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Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 278

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 3, 2022

The survey covered topics like management effectiveness, perks, focus on employee growth, and overall company culture. We hire smart, ambitious people and empower them to do the best work of their careers. We’re hiring – check out our open roles. Best Workplaces awards the company cultures that thrive in the face of adversity.

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Company Culture Innovation Compensation Development 211

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2022

Hiring has never been easy in SaaS. This is a big topic, and in part beyond the scope of this piece. Sometimes, that’s where you end up for the first few hires. In the old days, it was hard just because there weren’t enough seasoned candidates. It’s always been hard. This is just really tragic.

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Revenue Sales Hiring Compensation Startup 249

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

By doing this, 90% of the update content will have been covered and you can focus the agenda on more strategic topics. For topics that can’t be covered in the allotted time, schedule a follow-up meeting. Plan to cover one or two deep-dive topics: This is ideally what the board meeting is all about.

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Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Startup 232

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 20, 2023

It is extremely important to encourage sellers to post their own authentic spin on topics. Learn more about their Sales Intelligence platform today: [link] More for your eyeballs: Cool visualization on the first 10 hires across 20 top B2B startups. See more top GTM jobs here. That’s all this week. Have a great weekend.

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Sales Hiring Marketing Sales Sales Enablement 105

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2021

A waus back Salesforce.com asked me to write 5 ideas on the topic. Never stop hiring sales reps. If you don’t constantly hire reps, you’ll never grow the top line as fast as you could. You need to Always Be Hiring Sales Reps. So if you don’t have a great VP of Marketing, hire one. Because SaaS compounds.

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Sales Hiring Scale Engineering Customer Success 270

Tom Tunguz

JULY 25, 2020

By hiring two focused people, the startup is free to find the best person in each role. On the topic of challenges, there’s also convincing an aspiring marketing leader to accept a smaller team size and mandate, in exchange for a higher likelihood of success. Eventually, the startup may hire a CMO to manage the marketing team.

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Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 213

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

So you end up with very rich content, which in this case lasts significantly longer than 20 minutes. More like 72, but who’s counting?)

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Sales Hiring Forecasting Interviewing Customer Success 86

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

Whereas a decade ago, a board might have hired a professional CEO to scale the operations of a startup, today, more boards seek COOs. Regardless of the reasons, more startups are looking to hire a COO. If you’d like to read more about this important topic, Allison delves into much more detail here in her recap of the event.

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Sales Recruiting Startup Scale Sales Hiring 193

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

Pricing Is Over-Discussed Founders want to know if there’s a sweet spot on pricing, but the topic is over-discussed. If you raise money, hire a few good people to de-risk the investment and get it off the ground. Most engineers don’t want to do this even though it’s not super complicated. The only thing you’ve suffered is dilution.

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Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 229

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2021

It is, after all, a conference with founders talking about the scintillating topic of enterprise software. This year, we’re creating even more opportunities to find your peers by role, department, and company stage, as well as more ways to connect with investors, partners, and potential hires. . Learn from the best in the business.

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Startup Investment Enterprise Pricing 279

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 13, 2023

These—along with more practical topics, such as GTM strategy and product-market fit—were among the issues discussed at our recent Connect/Enterprise event, which brought together top executives from across the a16z network.

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Enterprise Travel Sales Hiring Generative AI 103

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

A ways back, we did an extremely popular post entitled, Hire the Right Type of VP Marketing or You’ll Just End Up With a Bunch of Blue Pens with Your Logo On Them. The basic idea was to help folks who haven’t hired a VP or Director of Marketing hire the right one for a pre-Scale sales-driven SaaS company.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Marketing 300

SaaStr

JULY 24, 2022

The Ultimate Guide for Hiring a Great VP of Sale s. A recent deep-dive from SaaStr Europa on the top topics on scaling from 100,000 votes on our SaaStr surveys. If we are headed into a recession, it’s a strange one — with SaaS still on fire, and total spend on business software increasing $100 Billion next year. A SaaStr Classic.

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