SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” “When customers get back $100k’s in minutes and want to pay us more” — Kanat Bekt, founder/CTO, SupplyPike. 20% conversion. ” — Drew Naugher.

CTO Hire 347

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Healthcare 347

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Including: CEO Snowflake CEO HubSpot CEO DropBox CEO Descript CEO Clio CEO Flock Safety CEO Own CRO ServiceTitan CMO Databricks CMO Infinite Reality CTO Rubrik CCO Canva CCO Bill CCO GitHub VP AI Wiz CEO Calendly and 100s more!! In addition, this year Mayfield is sponsoring our VC AI Pitch Stage and will invest from $500k-$5m in the winner!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR. Fixing it yourself becomes the biggest time sink and excuse for not hiring there is. You end up spending all your time backfilling roles you should have hired. And even worse, you often sort of give up trying to make the hire. Less and you under-invest.

Part-Time VPE 300

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 300

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2023

I’ve invested in 5 start-ups that had a $1,000,000,000+ cash exit or IPO. Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Almost all of them had an amazing CTO or CPO, and hired a simply epic VP or two. Dear SaaStr: What Qualities Make a CEO The Best In Their Industry?

CTO Hire 289

CTO Hire CTO Investment Marketing 289

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. There are no Cloud magicians, and you can’t hire a PLG magician. Let’s jump right into the questions.

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 291

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Outbound fury is about getting customer attention through tactics like viral tweets, fun videos, controversial blog posts, and a constant presence in the media. It starts at the beginning when someone interacts with your brand.” – Kim Walsh Hiring and collaboration for growth The product marketing team is the first function to hire for.

Scale 244

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 244

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? We are currently investing out of our 9th Early Stage fund, a $650M vehicle.

Management 279

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 279

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it’s not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times. His answers didn’t disappoint. They wanted a one-call close.

CTO Hire 242

CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 242

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

You have to be careful to pair that with someone strong to manage the relationship, that has more time and that also can be trusted. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on.

CTO Hire 328

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 328

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

Which role should you hire for first? For starters, your first hire should be someone who can complement your skills, someone who is strong in areas where you’re weak, but it goes much deeper than that. I am guessing it’s probably the hardest problem to solve, hiring a job, let alone at this level. And for good reason.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 265

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah shared with us how they got there — and the top mistakes they made — just 3 quarters after their IPO. We have someone that probably 98 percent of you know virtually or socially in some sense, Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot. ” We didn’t do any annual contracts.

Part-Time VPE 297

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 297

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

The concept was the foundation for his popular talk and ultimately his classic, long-form blog post. This was a team value that became to talk, when led to a blog post and ultimately this conversation. Ciaran, our CTO , came up with this magical line. To extend that conversation, I hosted Rich on our podcast.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

You have to see: A couple of good hires brought in Improvement on some metrics A big deal or two hanging out there, brought in and closed Things taken off your plate. More time may make them better if they’re already progressing, even if it’s just 10-15% in the first sales cycle. Hiring someone too junior. That often compounds.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They were aware of it, but startups that I work with closely or invested in, if they got all the way to 25 million with 75% NRR, I would tell them to quit today. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. VCs can only invest in outliers. I want to invest in her.”

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

You can read blog posts, tweets about why you shouldn’t try to create a company outside the Bay area. We ended up signing that contract in the uber back to the airport on the way home. It was our largest contract to date, kind of helps the other quarter. For example, I referenced hiring a Chief Revenue Officer, Bill.

CTO Hire 179

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 179

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Deals are contracting, not because of layoffs, but because people are managing budgets so tightly. It Takes Time To Bounce Back Jason was the first investor in RevenueCat , a company that automates mobile subscriptions on your phone. Maybe if you have the ex-CTO of Github, but that’s still a super speculative bet. in 12 months?

CTO Hire 148

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 148

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2021

That question has been on Will Larson ‘s mind for a long time. For those who don’t know him, Will has over 10 years of experience in the likes of Yahoo, Digg, Uber, and Stripe, and he’s currently the CTO of Calm , the mindfulness app that helps millions of people to lower their stress levels and sleep better.

Technical Review 274

Technical Review Leadership VP of Engineering CTO Coach 274

Panintelligence

JUNE 7, 2024

In this blog, we asked Panintelligence CEO Zandra Moore and CTO Ken Miller what they think are some of the most frequent mistakes in SaaS development and offer actionable insights to help you steer clear of them. But the people you hire and lead are absolutely essential to the success of your business. We’re complex.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

Scytale

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

By integrating automation into your compliance strategy, your business can achieve and maintain ISO 27001 compliance at a fraction of the cost and in significantly less time. This includes the cost of productivity to get (and stay) compliant and the practical requirements related to ISO 27001 compliance. The result?

Systems Review 52

Systems Review Software Review CTO Hire compliance 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Well, we did the heavy lifting and highlighted a few here for you… “When to Hire and When to Automate” with Zapier CEO Wade Foster. David Sacks has a long history in tech from his time as a Founder and CEO of Geni.com and Yammer to his stint as COO of Paypal. So, how do you choose amongst the stable of unicorns?

Payment Services 113

Payment Services CTO Hire Payments New CTO 113

Buffer Resources

JANUARY 30, 2023

Then he became CTO at Bezos Academy, a non-profit organization founded by Jeff Bezos. After leaving Bezos Academy, he decided to start a paid newsletter focused on career development, organization design, and hiring. “ I want to invest as little as possible to get 80% of the value.

Social Media 22

Social Media CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO 22

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

And then, invest your energy and time into the product. Mallun Yen : So, you were an engineer by training and then you became an engineering leader, as the CTO of Webex, and then you became a CEO. You’ve got to learn about sales, about marketing and, otherwise, you need to hire a lot of other people around you to help.

Sales Hiring 146

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 146

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 21, 2022

Adam Risman , a former host of the podcast, asked Rachel what made that point when Rachel joined Slack in 2016 the right time to invest in growth marketing? And so we hired somebody who had a lot of experience and could recommend ways to build the team. You can hear or read the full interview on the Intercom blog.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

Valerian Tech

JUNE 5, 2023

In this blog post, we will explore the different dimensions of cybersecurity for insurance companies. Therefore, investing in robust cybersecurity measures is essential to safeguard against these threats. With the increasing prevalence of cyber threats, insurance companies must proactively manage cybersecurity risks.

Cybersecurity 52

Cybersecurity CTO Hire CTO compliance 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

That was our first transitionary moment, and from that point forward, we began investing heavily in building a way to teach people technology skills outside of a physical classroom. So we kept investing, we knew we were onto something, and little by little we saw our traction improve. We were not an enterprise company yet.

B2B 173

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 173

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. What to do before building a team for your SaaS company You can’t just jump into hiring without some forethought, or you’ll make many mistakes. Before the hiring process, take some time to decide on your current needs and hire as your company grows.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Neil Patel

JULY 7, 2021

In more everyday terms, it’s a platform that allows you to build your website (and its content, such as pages and blog posts) with a backend interface that doesn’t require writing the code from scratch. Are sales at a point where we can justify investing in and learning a new platform?

AI Search 124

AI Search CTO Hire Scale Artificial Intelligence 124

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

I looked back at our investment memo, it was a 2K ACV when Jason invested after Y-C. So you were the first sales hire. Talk to me about the sales hires that you made back in the early days and talk to me about how it changed through the different stages. So my first sales hire was beginning of 2015.

Scale 150

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 150

Valerian Tech

JUNE 19, 2023

This blog will explore the importance of data security for healthcare companies and highlight some key components of robust data protection. Safeguarding Intellectual Property Healthcare companies invest heavily in research and development to drive innovation in medical treatments, technologies, and pharmaceuticals.

Healthcare 52

Healthcare CTO Hire Data CTO 52

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

That’s the advice, Petri Hollmén picked up on the more technical side of things from the opening session on Day 2 with Cal Henderson, CTO of Slack. If your tool is considered as a commodity (meaning, that it’s an essential part of daily life – like tap water), you have to target 100% uptime. Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

Eyal Manor : But there is a lot of investment in that direction. Megan Leuders: And when you were talking to CEOs and CTOs today, what do you believe is the biggest technology challenge that they are facing as a SaaS company? So deep integration from day one of the data pipelines in real time is super critical.

Cloud 173

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 173

Valerian Tech

JULY 5, 2023

In this blog post, we will explore the importance of technology in the hospitality industry and discuss various ways to leverage it to enhance customer experience, increase efficiency, streamline operations, and gain valuable customer insights through data analysis.

Payment Services 52

Payment Services Technology Payment Solutions CTO Hire 52

Valerian Tech

JUNE 13, 2023

This blog will explore the challenges faced by healthcare companies in achieving regulatory compliance. Resource Constraints Smaller healthcare organizations often operate under tight budgets and limited resources, which can hinder their ability to allocate sufficient time, personnel, and financial resources to compliance initiatives.

Healthcare 52

Healthcare compliance CTO Hire New CTO 52

Natalia Luneva

APRIL 30, 2021

Of course, our team is involved to an extent, and we have an external part-time moderator for support. 5 Sebastian Schaeffer, CTO at dofollow.io (B2B PR SaaS) says: “ Our community is primarily on Facebook and Linkedin and it has been live for over a year. But mostly our members help each other, and it works like a charm.

Marketing 98

Marketing Social Media SaaS New CTO 98

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

This made it hard to chart a clear course: Jebbit’s message to the market was a bit too broad, causing Sales to bring in customers across a range of personas, prompting CS to invest extra resources to keep a wide variety of customers engaged.”. This blog was originally published by Underscore VC. Get it done faster.

Startup 91

Startup Scale Systems Review Technical Review 91

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

What’s the return on investment of your mom? What about the ROI of spending time with your family, friends, or kids? But after years of research and thinking about this problem at typeform.com and Notion , David decided to write a blog post explaining why this question is so hard to answer. How many CSMs should you hire?

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

Mucker Capital

APRIL 6, 2023

Obviously if you target enterprise customers, you usually have a very large ACV (Annual Contract Value) and the product usually is complex. We talk about using the product complexity, your target customer size, your contract value, and whether there's individual use case–those four things--to help you decide if PLG is a fit.

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52