Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2022

Public software median inflation rate rests at 5% annually, including shares for new employees, retention grants for current employees and primary stock sales in the public market to raise cash. Early businesses tend to create more instruments to hire, grow, and incentivize. Trailing 2 Year Inflation Rate. Founded Year.

Startup 313

Startup Sales Hiring Government Outsourced Development 313

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

Boterri’s company Accel invested in PayFit in 2017 and again in 2021. They built their sales funnel in the same fashion to empower customers with autonomous product discovery and conversions. Smaller organizations don’t typically respond to the long sales cycle or constant conversations and negotiations that an enterprise needs.

SMB 244

SMB Sales Hiring Scale B2C 244

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2020

(Note: I wrote a version of this in 2017 when times were good. Your second-order revenue engine still needs to work. Even if sales cycles have slowed down. Hiring, marketing, retention, fundraising, everything. It’s just as relevant today, more so really, but thought it could use some updates. In the media.

Sales Hiring 350

Sales Hiring Startup Investment Revenue 350

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2023

App Layoffs Were Brutal, And Hiring Is Slowly Resuming If you haven’t worked in Fortune 500 or tech companies, you’ve never seen this. The reality is there was an explosion in sales and marketing and other categories in 2021 when the goal was to grow, grow, grow. They’re a public pure-play leader in sales and marketing.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring SaaS Headcount Compensation 284

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2019

In 2017, Zoom’s cash burn was exactly equal to its Gross Proft. Sales gets a little over budget. They’ll automatically prioritize when and how to make hires, expenses, etc. Sales will know that one hire can wait. But as a founder, it jumped out at me. But — not a penny more. And they hit it.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Finance Engineering Revenue 240

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

In 2017, Zapier, Walkme and Dialpad were all beginning to break out. As a founder/CEO, building your first management team is something that you often lose sleep over. Which role should you hire for first? Obviously, I can’t imagine a chief executive not having loss of sleep over building a management team.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 8, 2020

Many businesses struggle to strike a balance between freemium’s light-touch customer engagement with the more involved enterprise sales process. For every company that’s executing the freemium model successfully, there are hundreds more that struggle and the tension it can create between sales, marketing, and product teams.

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring Software Review Technical Review 205

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2021

and we’ll have tons of leaders in sales, marketing, and product. Customer Success, Sales Ops, VP Product, European Founders). Building a Product Both CIOs and Devs Love; Infrastructure for Non-Devs: What CEOs Really Need to Know in 2017; Grow 10x Faster & Cheaper with Product-Led Growth. What is your format?

Sales Hiring 227

Sales Hiring Scale Outbound Sales Team Interviewing 227

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2022

2017: $30m rev. We took the series A, interesting enough, the first executive hired by, thanks to the sales coaching, actually was marketing. Growth for us is about massive scaling and hiring. It took us having a very … we had to go, we make an investment, hire the right person, ex-Barclays CIO. seed round.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 274

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

This led to our first meet-ups in 2013 and 2014, the first SaaStr Annual in 2015 , the industry’s leading podcast in 2016, the first SaaS founder coworking space in 2017, and SaaStr Pro , the first learning management system for SaaS founders in 2018. 2017 The Third SaaStr Annual: Scale Together. 2020 SaaStr Annual At Home.

Scale 307

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 307

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

But back in 2017, CEO and co-founder Peter Gassner joined us after Veeva had recently IPO’d with a market cap less than a tenth of that size. That’s what really matters, so iterative decisions every day about what product to make, when to cave into a customer, when not to, who to hire. ” I have apples for sale.

Sales Hiring 339

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Headcount 339

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2024

They went to video production professionals, agencies, and even Hollywood, but the tech hadn’t matured enough in 2017. How Mark Cuban Became an Angel Investor In 2017, they tried to raise their first round. Once they built the first product and hit the inflection point, they hired a team to build the whole SaaS platform.

Enterprise 293

Enterprise AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence 293

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 25, 2021

We have achieved a great deal in the past decade – we have built a lot of great product , hired hundreds of wonderful people , and helped thousands of amazing companies form lasting relationships with their own customers. The 2017 tour ran for six months, visited 10 cities with 12 speakers, and had around 6,000 attendees in total.

Scale 220

Scale Sales Hiring Branding Investment 220

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Imagine having an entire company’s data infused with ChatGPT Enterprise so they could query all the top sales deals and common trends and have all of that come back. The short of it is that AI will fundamentally change how sales roles operate and look. First, let’s touch on how sales has changed over the years. Personalization.

Artificial Intelligence 309

Artificial Intelligence AI ChatGPT Software Engineering 309

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

The company’s best-selling book, Predictable Revenue , details the hugely successful outbound process and sales created specifically for Salesforce. Afterward, he delved into education management by creating his own business, Mestreduca, a platform targeted at educational institutions. Talk: SaaS.City Bootcamp: Sales Leadership.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Scale Entrepreneurship Sales Hiring 207

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

Anu: March of 2017. And can you talk a little bit about touching on the hiring point, because you did say that you focused a lot on talent, and recruiting. So, talk about … You were one of the few startups that I saw had a GC in your, pretty much, the first five hires. Anu: So, the CFO was the first hire.

Sales Hiring 214

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 214

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

They started in the point of sale market, and then as the company scaled, they rolled out new value props and modules for payroll, or Toast capital, or ways to manage your employee base. This is really founder-led sales. Byron gave a great example with Toast, one of my favorite portfolio companies. That’s your CAC.

Sales Hiring 232

Sales Hiring Scale Payments Cloud 232

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Jonathan joined Toast as the SVP of Sales in 2017. A Glance at Toast’s Hypergrowth Journey When Jonathan joined Toast as the SVP of Sales, the company was Series B with $20M in ARR. Jonathan says around 75-80% of their sales team are field-based sales reps. Just six years later, he’s the CRO of the company.

Payment Methods 267

Payment Methods Acquisition Scale Payments 267

Sales Hacker

MARCH 5, 2019

Last year, we started a new Sales Hacker tradition: the Top 50 Awards. Most other sales awards end up going to the most popular influencer. The Sales Hacker Top 50 is different. These awards go to practitioners: people who not only did a fantastic job, but also elevated the sales profession through their actions last year.

Sales Hiring 110

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Leadership 110

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Monday has gone from $7m in 2017 to over $700m in revenue today, showcasing the sheer power of compounding revenue. Now, they have monday Sales CRM, a complete organization within the company. Slowing hiring won’t help you over the long term, so measure for that from the beginning and make it a part of your company’s DNA.

Scale 176

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 176

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Building a sales team that can go from $0-$50M (Video + Transcript). Gaetan Gachet | SVP of Sales @Algolia. It’s an honor to be here with this mythical creature, this sales leader that goes from zero to 50 million in the same job. He has a whole French sales team and office that only speaks English in Paris.

Scale 146

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 146

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

Not only for the product side, but for the sales and marketing side. Eric Yuan : However, transitioning from engineer to engineer manager probably, is straightforward. You’ve got to learn about sales, about marketing and, otherwise, you need to hire a lot of other people around you to help. Speed is everything.

Sales Hiring 141

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 141

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2020

How to create boundaries and norms with the sales team, how to find customer advocates, how to build and scale your program, as well as the difference between incentivized vs. reward program. Customer reference program went from something that was nice to have and important to absolutely critical to our new business sales cycle.

Scale 188

Scale Payment Services Sales Hiring Payment Methods 188

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 13, 2024

A $1B Acquisition with a Singular Leader for Both Sales and Customer Success In 2017, tech leader Vikas Bhambry found himself at a crossroads. Kustomer, a SaaS startup navigating leadership changes, unexpectedly handed him the reins to both sales and customer experience/success. Lets get into it. Lets get into it.

Scale 109

Scale Sales Hiring Acquisition Customer Success 109

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 23, 2018

Before we get into our 2017 recap and 2018 road map, I wanted to provide some quick background on how Sales Hacker came to be. How It All Began: The Story of Sales Hacker. I can’t believe it’s been 4 years since we threw our first Sales Hacker Conference in September of 2013. 2014: Full Time on Sales Hacker.

Sales Recruiting 108

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Sales 108

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

At the start of 2017, we decided we were going to swing the other way and actually have small projects again. In 2017, back to small things. ” But the people we hire don’t come in to work to fix bugs, they come in to work to build things and make new things. Third swing: hiring vs. onboarding.

Sales Hiring 160

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 160

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

This is a level that hasn’t been commonly encountered since 2017-2018. Freeing up the budget, which was then directed into four main areas – hiring more salespeople, more sales engineers, professional services personnel, and creating a business value engineering team. Also, giving salespeople a renewal target.

Investment 157

Investment Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 157

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2019

But, there were a few things that were true about event bright and the environment and trying to hire in San Francisco in that moment. That meant that starting with 40 engineers in my team, I had to be able to hire six engineers every year just to stay flat. 18 hires a year I had to make in San Francisco.

Engineering 184

Engineering Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 184

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

From its bootstrapped founding in 2002 all the way to a $5 billion valuation in 2016, Atlassian famously had no sales people. ‘No No sales’ became nearly as synonymous with Atlassian as ‘no software’ was with Salesforce. Atlassian now has a sales team. Public PLG Businesses Are Doubling Down on Sales.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

Sales Hacker

MARCH 19, 2019

At the beginning of March, we announced the winners of the 2nd annual Sales Hacker Top 50 Awards, presented by Bravado. We searched through all of the reasons for nominations we received and picked out the stories about people in sales who do the hard work of elevating the sales profession.

Scale 106

Scale Sales Hiring Development Team Review Sales 106

Sales Hacker

APRIL 30, 2024

In this role he oversees all aspects of G2’s revenue generation, including global sales and customer success, enablement, partnerships, and revenue operations. Prior to his tenure at Upwork, Eric held a number of leadership roles at CareerBuilder, most recently as President of Vertical Sales.

Scale 123

Scale Enterprise Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 123

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

The charts below show the change in quarterly revenue YoY (so Q1 ‘24 rev - Q1 ‘23 rev) going back to 2017. Sales Efficiency: Gross Margin Adjusted CAC Payback Demonstrating the ability to efficiently acquire customers is the fifth aspect of a successful quarter.

Cloud 318

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 318

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 3, 2020

At Sales Hacker, our Community Leaders help build relationships with our members. Add them to your network and give them a warm welcome, because you’ll be seeing them all over Sales Hacker in the coming months! WHY SALES HACKER? Sales Hacker provides a network of sales professionals dedicated to helping others in similar roles.

Scale 128

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 128

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Sam Jacobs: This week on the show, we’ve got Luke Rogers, the Vice President of Sales at Instabase. He now leads the sales function at a really promising and high-growing unicorn called Instabase. Learn how modern sales teams with deals, win deals now. We’re on iTunes.

Scale 117

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Review 117

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

Here are five quick takeaways: Most sales and support teams talk about their jobs as a funnel. We said, “Oh, we could build a service component in here,” and now we have a marketing hub, a sales hub and a service hub. Everybody in marketing and sales and probably even customer service uses the concept of a funnel.

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

Sales Hacker

MARCH 1, 2018

This is part one of a five-part series to help you develop the sales coaching approach that’s guaranteed to make you an unstoppable sales leader! 4 Steps to Approach Sales Coaching Carefully and Tactically: Use role perception to improve your sales coaching model. Commit to the 4 non-negotiables in sales coaching.

VP of Engineering 111

VP of Engineering Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Sales 111

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 27, 2018

As a VP of Sales, you’re probably not too familiar with SaaS metrics or costs — that’s the CFO’s job, right? Well today, we’ll breakdown how to understand SaaS costs basics, and then explain how to accurately set sales goals and metrics that drive success. Compare Marketing and Sales costs. for every $1 in ARR.

Sales Hiring 94

Sales Hiring Development Sales Growth Hacking 94