SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

” – Colin Jones, CRO Emeritus at Wiz You may have seen the news that Google is making its biggest acquisition — by far — of Cloud and SaaS security leader Wiz for a stunning $32 Billion (!). Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team.

Scale 188

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 188

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development. Is a CRO right for you?

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 302

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

In this post, we’re featuring our Recruiting Manager, Elizabeth Faddis! As part of the P&C organization, I help to drive transformation and operational efficiencies within the talent organization and create talent attraction and acquisition programs. What made you passionate about joining the recruiting world?

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Management Technical Review 128

Tom Tunguz

JULY 6, 2017

Every acquisition process might run a little bit differently, but these are some of the patterns that I have observed after about nine years in the venture business, and also having evaluated a handful of acquisitions when I was at Google. Large corporate often have very strong sales teams. Unsuccessful acquisitions don’t.

Startup 186

Startup Sales Recruiting Acquisition Development 186

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

In 2020-2021, many SaaS startups faced a unique challenge. CRO at Wiz, Colin Jones, shares how this traditional startup evolved, thrived and grew from 0 to $100 million in just two years. Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 263

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 17, 2024

The challenges and rewards of founding and growing a startup for nine years. 15:41) Scaling Twitter’s ad business and managing hyper-growth. (26:54) 26:54) The existential dread of being a startup founder. (37:56) 45:40) Debunking the myth of sacrificing personal life for startup success. (49:07) Youre not alone.

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Scale Engineering Acquisition Scaling 102

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

So read on, and hopefully, your SaaS sales journey will be less about trial and error and more about steady progress toward success. Whats important to note is that each model targets a distinct customer persona and, therefore, has a unique approach to the customer journeyfrom brand awareness to sales and, ultimately, conversion.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 22, 2015

On December 2, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Maia Josebachvilli , VP of Strategy and People at Greenhouse, a fast growing recruiting software company. Before Greenhouse, Maia founded Urban Escapes, a DC-based startup she sold to LivingSocial. She was also selected for Inc’s 30 under 30.

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Sales Recruiting Metrics SaaS Sales Funnel 100

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. I think things do catch fire and then acquisition will get more affordable. When you have one website, one marketing team, and one sales team, and you’ve got only one shot to talk about your product, how do you balance those two things?

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Startup 263

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 18, 2024

Jonathan Moss (EVP at Experity) showcased an Account Plan GPT that streamlines sales and marketing account research for outbound efforts. Examples of automating workflows to solve ongoing challenges: Everyone shared use cases they’re trying for sales account research and lead generation workflows. Link to GPT.

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Sales Recruiting Software Review Scale AI 108

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.

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Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

Today I'd like to tell you a bit more about what we at Point Nine Capital are looking for in SaaS startups (other sectors are something for another blog post). To put it as simple as possible, the health of a SaaS business is mainly determined by two factors: Customer lifetime value (CLTV) and customer acquisition costs (CAC).

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Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

An open discussion with Sam Blond, CSO at Brex, and Kristen Habacht, VPS at Atlassian, about adjusting their sales process during Covid-19. Kristen Habacht runs EDR sales at Atlassian, which I got a check today, $40 billion-$50 billion company. She manages a huge global team. Four, people in the sale? Jason Lemkin: None.

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Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 262

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. As a startup, it’s tempting to try and do everything.

Scale 276

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 276

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 13, 2014

As I’ve watched a handful of startups grow, the pattern I see emerging from most of them is their ability to persistently transform chaos into process. At the beginning, each of these companies pursued product development with something akin to Lean Startup Method. And then continuously improve the way they do things.

Sales Recruiting 113

Sales Recruiting Development Startup Sales Hiring 113

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

At the helm of Udemy for Business’ customer acquisition machine is their VP of Marketing Yvonne Chen. When Yvonne joined in 2016, the business unit consisted of just 10 people across product, engineering, sales, and marketing. This is Season Two of Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on moving from startup to scale-up.

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Marketplace as a Service Scale Sales Recruiting Business 243

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Founders may reduce staff, particularly in recruiting or new projects that the company prefers not to finance. All of the cost of customer acquisition for a SaaS company is borne in the first month or so. Each subsequent month, the startup receives another $1k in cash and breaks even on that customer a year later.

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SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Payment Services 124

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

In fact, Peter Thiel wrote about brand as a core asset of the best startups in his recent book, Zero to One. This long term view shapes the culture of a startup’s workplace and reinforce values that will attract talented people whose mission aligns with the business. Even if they can’t measure it.

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Sales Recruiting Startup Branding Acquisition 113

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Join Qualtrics Co-Founder and CEO alongside SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin as Ryan reflects on the survey software maker’s acquisition by SAP this year. Ryan Smith: The backstory here is we turned down an acquisition offer for $500 million in 2012. I don’t think we thought we were going to do a startup.

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Acquisition Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 162

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 25, 2019

If you’re reading this, you might be familiar with Paul Graham’s famous article “ Startup=Growth ,” where he lays out the difference between traditional businesses and startups. Paul Graham puts it like this: “A startup is a company designed to grow fast”. Making sure culture scales as you grow.

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 136

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.

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Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale Sales Hiring 111

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

Check out this 2018 Europa session with Guillaume Princen, Head of France and Southern Europe @ Stripe, where he talks about the metrics you need to be focused on in your startup. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). & Customer acquisition. The key here is knowing what your sales model is. MRR, obviously.

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SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 246

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

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 13, 2024

Prior to her role at Iterable, Adriana held influential senior leadership positions at Tableau, where she significantly contributed to the company’s remarkable growth from $250 million to over $1 billion, culminating in the successful Salesforce acquisition. The importance of post-sale marketing and customer lifecycle management.

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AI Search Sales Recruiting AI ChatGPT 123

SaaStr

AUGUST 27, 2019

How to Design a Sales Comp Plan to Get You to $100M with Work-Bench, Movable Ink, MongoDB and Concert Finance. This panel will speak tactically to various comp design options as a way for management to determine and promote ideal behavior in their front-line teams. Meghan Gill | VP of Sales Ops @ MongoDB. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 157

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 7, 2015

LinkedIn attracts hundreds of millions of consumers to post resumes online and sells this data and access to its audience to advertisers and recruiters and salespeople. Recruiters buy Talent Solutions to find, connect with and acquire talented people. In 2007, online sales generated 63% of revenue.

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Sales Recruiting Benchmarks Metrics SaaS 100

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2019

In this session, Anna and Sameer will highlight SendGrid’s journey from growth stage through acquisition and why focusing on people and culture is mission critical to success as a company goes through the scaling process. I’m Sameer Dholakia, CEO of now Twilio SendGrid as of Friday after our completed acquisition.

Scale 157

Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 157

Tom Tunguz

JULY 7, 2015

In every sales process for every SaaS startup, there is one ultimate internal champion advocating the purchasing decision. Software companies targeting Human Resources and Sales teams are in aggregate each worth about $50B. Salesforce Sales 92%. Nevertheless, the majority of the revenue remains from sales teams.

Sales Recruiting 113

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SaaS Scale 113

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 14, 2019

This is episode one of Scale, a brand new podcast series on moving from startup to scale up. “What I’ve always tried to do, for example when I’m recruiting for a customer advisory council, is to think very carefully about the company’s objectives. Use customer insights to boost customer acquisition.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Company Culture 178

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. The size of your business. Types of services.

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Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 118

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

One of the biggest decisions you can make when setting up your sales team is whether to focus primarily on inside or outside sales. They seem to be completely at odds, with one focused on clients with a high acquisition cost and high ACV (annual account value), the other focused on a high sales velocity.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 100

OpenView Labs

APRIL 24, 2019

As a recruiter, I hear from many founders and sales leaders regularly about how many salespeople they need and how quickly they need them. And I’ve seen many startups who fail to make this distinction create a cycle of diminishing returns that impacts the trajectory of their growth for the long haul… especially in enterprise sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 64

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 25, 2015

Here’s my stab at that list: CRM, Marketing Automation, ERP, Expense Management, Analytics, Email, Collaboration, Document Storage, Payroll, HRIS, ATS, IaaS, Customer Support, Recruiting. SaaS startups are either competing within these categories or creating a new category. More than 20% of end users log in mobile; 2.5%

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Sales Recruiting Data SaaS AWS 100

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded. 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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Scale 106

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 12, 2018

I hosted Elad on the podcast for a conversation that ranged from the key themes of his new book to scaling a healthy culture and ins and outs of mergers and acquisitions. Obviously, each startup is unique, and the context of a startup matters a lot, but you tend to have the same questions like: “How do I hire general counsel?

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 120

OpenView Labs

MARCH 8, 2021

B2B sales involves one business selling its product to another business. Those with experience in both B2B and B2C sales know that B2B is a lot tougher—the deals are bigger, there’s often more than one decision-maker, and the competition is intense. For all those reasons, hiring and management must be on point.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting B2B 80

Kellblog

MARCH 13, 2020

In days of yore, chief revenue officer (CRO) was just a gussied-up title for VP of Sales. If someone was particularly good, particularly senior, or particularly hard to recruit you might call them CRO. Chief revenue officer meant chief sales officer meant VP of Sales. Frank, the head of Sales, had a $1B number.

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VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Recruiting Acquisition 98