SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

A problem many founders are trying to solve right now is going upmarket to Enterprise, and Lemkin and Grinich have a passionate perspective that every startup should take steps to check those Enterprise boxes in their first year. Today, companies spend over $10M/month on AWS — companies like Lyft, Pinterest, and Stripe.

Enterprise readiness 289

Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 289

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

This function can be outsourced in the early days of a startup, but it is usually brought in-house after Series B. In 2014, storage had historically been Dropbox’s most significant cost driver, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on AWS. They will also take charge during an audit if the situation arises.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

I’m an investor in maybe 30 SaaS startups. Does it cost so, so much to host a few million lines of code on AWS? I’m doing a lot of this financial planning now. And one thing I can tell you is I see a lot of different plans for next year even at fairly similar ARRs. Some are barely burning any cash. So is SaaS cursed?

Scale 299

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 299

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. But not making the hire at all is pretty awful, too. I know these days we’re all talking about Unicorns and Decacorns , but not too long ago, it was all about Rockstars. The very best of the best. It’s true.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 290

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

Cockroach Labs’ CEO Spencer Kimball shares hard-won lessons from scaling from $0 to $5B and his time as an angel investor for more than 80 different startups. And his answer, like many answers in startups, is it depends. You’ll notice an evolution in how you approach customers, board meetings, and leadership.

Scale 243

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 243

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 24, 2018

Together we felt like we were growing something from scratch, everything from our work processes to our team identity contributed to a strong sense of being part of “a startup within a startup”, related to but distinct from the broader Intercom family. Working on your own also makes you incredibly resourceful.

Sales Hiring 149

Sales Hiring Company Culture Scale Customer Support 149

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Get your leadership team together, re-evaluate each juncture in your GTM process from customer discovery to upsell, and re-imagine a better way to engage your customers using these new advancements in AI. Enterprise AI startups: Companies focused on safely implementing AI for enterprise-specific use cases, especially privacy and security.

Artificial Intelligence 125

Artificial Intelligence AI Generative AI Blockchain 125

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

You can see the growth on the platform side with Azure, Google, and AWS and how much it’s accelerating in AI. How does a startup benefit from this? If you squint, this is the top 10% of all VC-backed startups by top-tier seed funds. “Maybe endless price increases,” Jason says. A lot of it is moving to versions of AI.

CTO Hire 147

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 147

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 14, 2019

Products like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the rise of engineering talent globally have reduced the barrier of entry for software startups in recent years. Building a culture of transparency needs to start at the leadership level if you want it to cascade through every part of the organization.

Software Review 162

Software Review AWS Social Media Artificial Intelligence 162

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). This begs the question: how much room is left for emerging startups? The median growth rate of startups with $1-2.5M

Scale 70

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 70

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2019

This was anyone from a marketing analyst at a small startup, to a junior analyst at my firm, to a cloud CEO like him. Sameer Dhokalia: It turns out if you do ask those two basic questions of 100 people in your business, you will learn an awful lot about what needs to be focused on. That really stuck with me. That was perfect.

Scale 159

Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 159

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 30, 2024

I had my own startup, but then really it was the internet that changed everything. And so when Amazon called me and they’re like, “Hey you want to come with us and do you want to actually start the mobile services, backend business within AWS?” And then I started selling. ” I jumped to the opportunity.

Development 109

Development Technical Review AWS AI 109

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. Retail was mentioned twice, that’s it, and AWS was mentioned 78 times, so it’s probably not surprising that they’re doing this. I think it’s a really staggering stat.

Cloud 113

Cloud Scale AWS Artificial Intelligence 113

FastSpring

DECEMBER 21, 2020

In about 2002, I got into more of a leadership position for satellite offices of larger companies. Given that I was running a startup for the last two and a half years, I don’t have many hobbies. But I do enjoy running an awful lot. I’m going to date myself. My first job in tech was in 1998 as a software developer.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Development Team Review Software Review AWS 78

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

And made a lot of sense that I felt the confidence that I also have the networking side of Boston, a great, great startup community and really welcoming, and really helpful. And we continue to be in a very competitive startup scene, which is awesome, in a thriving ecosystem here in Boston. Also, there were my angel investors.

Scale 120

Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach Scaling 120

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2019

So everything you do at a startup you’re treating it like an experiment, right? I think maybe once we saw the deck that they were using and it was pretty awful. More along the lines of Fortune 500 companies. So our first tip that I’m going to talk to you about is this. They gave a presentation to their boss.

Underperforming Technical Team 222

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SMB Enterprise 222

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). This begs the question: how much room is left for emerging startups? The median growth rate of startups with $1-2.5M

Scale 51

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 51

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 1, 2020

If you’re setting out on your roadmap journey it’s important that it reflect the point of the journey that you’re on – having everyone in a startup of 5 or 6 sharing daily tasks each morning makes sense as they work together to build a feature but in a larger company it’s a recipe for chaos.

VP of Engineering 165

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Engineering 165

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 1, 2020

If you’re setting out on your roadmap journey it’s important that it reflect the point of the journey that you’re on – having everyone in a startup of 5 or 6 sharing daily tasks each morning makes sense as they work together to build a feature but in a larger company it’s a recipe for chaos.

VP of Engineering 165

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Engineering 165

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

Thought I wanted to be an engineer, quickly realized I actually prefer the customer facing side of the startup world. I’m sure all of you that are startup founders love your companies and your products, but I have so much love for all of them. .” Was obsessed with mathematics, went to college at 16, became an engineer.

Investment 113

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Software Review 113

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). This begs the question: how much room is left for emerging startups? The median growth rate of startups with $1-2.5M

Scale 40

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 40

Sylvia Ng

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

Comfort and delight in a small, intense, high-growth startup environment. Experience as startup founder. Building web applications in a corporate or startup environment. Work across the stack: mostly Python/Flask, PostgreSQL, JavaScript (React/JQuery/Backbone) and working with AWS. Love a good corporate partnership.

Engineering 74

Engineering Growth Hacking Scale Social Media 74

OpenView Labs

JUNE 17, 2019

The truth is, A+ candidates will always have options… they are investments that make startups money and they know it. Think about the last time you went to buy something and had an awful experience with a sales rep (in any capacity – the mall, a store, online, or at work). Many startups are still struggling to get this right!

Sales Recruiting 53

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 53

OpenView Labs

MARCH 7, 2019

Our data centers are shut down, but as I was telling you earlier, AWS barely existed when we started our transformation. It’s about negotiation, presentation skills, leadership styles, corporate finance. What do you see, you’ve been in supply chain most of your career, on the horizon for supply chain startups?

Cloud 60

Cloud Transportation New CTO CTO 60

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2019

Now, I have some background with luck because in between some long stints with other companies, seven years at Eventbrite and 15 years at Ticketmaster before, I spent five years of my life playing poker for a living and learned an awful lot about luck and positive outcomes as well.

Engineering 184

Engineering Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale 184

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 5, 2019

One of the biggest reasons I see segmentation fail is a disconnect between leadership and the SDR. Otherwise, you’re assuming an awful lot of risk that can hurt your business and then some later. Many startups blindly follow the segmented model because “that’s the SaaS sales model.” Incentivize the right behaviors.

Sales Hiring 41

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales AWS 41

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 31, 2019

The wave of SaaS companies that built themselves on the likes of AWS and Azure have reinforced the pre-eminence of cloud computing. Here, we trace some of the biggest trends and stories in technology over the past decade, and try to find a narrative to make sense of it all. .

Payment Solutions 259

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Software SaaS Payments 259

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2019

First of all, do we have any European SaaS startups here today? And there were no startup communities. No startup environment. Mikkel : Well again, the public cloud, AWS, was the dominant leader. So if you are a startup today what we spend nine months, twelve months initially, you could do that in like weeks today.

Cloud 245

Cloud Sales Recruiting Scale AWS 245

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Bringing Sales & Leadership with Heart and Ladies Happy Hour to the sales community. I went through a VP of Sales Program with SaaSy Sales Leadership — the moment I realized I didn’t want to be a VP of Sales. She is a Speaker and Hostess for LinkedIn Live. What is one a-ha moment you’ve had in your sales career?

Scale 137

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 137

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 7, 2025

With a background that includes leadership roles at AWS, Microsoft, and Lenovo, Fred brings a wealth of experience in building high-performing teams and driving revenue growth. And I know you’ve had some great experience, particularly while you were at AWS, running different partner sales, channel sales.

Outsourcing Services 121

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development AWS 121

Sales Hacker

MARCH 4, 2019

Dan talks about the key qualities of great sales leadership and how to be an effective executive in addition to being a great sales leader. Building a Repeatable Leadership System [19:04]. Dan’s got over 20 years of sales experience, and specifically has insights on sales and leadership. We’re on iTunes. And on Stitcher.

Leadership 73

Leadership Scale Sales Hiring Sales 73

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

And then I’ve watched, since she made this comment to me about 13 months ago, then I’ve watched with some startups I’ve worked with, where the first marketing hire comes in, and I asked them what their top five priorities are, and then I asked the CEO. And I remember being at that Dreamforce in 2009, which was awful.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

A few can, Andreessen and maybe Sequoia, but 99% of the VCs you meet, legally, they can only invest in startups, whether they’re late stage or early stage. Don’t wish that you ran a hotter startup. I’m going to get the numbers wrong, I think Amazon has 10,000 open positions out in AWS. Don’t move on.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 246

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

And we were using a solution from Amazon AWS… We had one big issue first, which was a number of regions they were supporting were not the same vendors. By luck, we have met someone in San Francisco that was launching a startup on DNS. So relying on a very small startup is a bit risky, but we decided to take the risk.

Scale 173

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 173

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

We’ve done a ton of terrific sessions with the Twilio leadership over the years, including 4 different deep dives with Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder. At the end of the day, Twilio still sells communications, AWS still sells servers, but the way we’re selling it is different than how it was done in yesteryear. Jeff : Yes.

Scale 306

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Wireless 306

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2019

And those of us and those of you who are involved in these companies, even the successful ones look an awful lot more like this. They pioneered things like content marketing, thought leadership. I think this is the misconception that many people have, that a successful company is a smooth up and to the right journey from the beginning.

SaaS 187

SaaS Sales Hiring Scale Innovation 187

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2020

Finally, before YesWare, she was VP of Sales @ Engine Yard, where she tripled monthly recurring revenue, over the course of her 3+ year tenure, in 3 key leadership roles. Did a lot of consulting for high tech startups, I really love the startup space. Then finally, there’s a company, Catalyst, which is a startup.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Outsourcing Services 264