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. Are brand-new companies that seem epic with no revenue really worth $1.5B It’s a rocket ship.

CTO Hire 147

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 147

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

Going above and beyond, being thoughtful and we try to say, how do we infuse Southern hospitality into our brand and make that a differentiator rather than being stressed about the fact that there are some negatives of being where we are. We ended up signing that contract in the uber back to the airport on the way home.

CTO Hire 178

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 178

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Join this panel of investors from Connect Ventures, Blossom Capital, Dawn Capital, The Family, and Indico Partners as they provide an overview of the current investment landscape, and discuss whether the seed stage is emerging as the new Series A. We are a $50 million fund based in Lisbon, and we invest mainly in seed stage.

New CTO 182

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 182

Outseta

APRIL 11, 2019

Why most SaaS companies are blind to some of the best talent on the market By Geoff Roberts 9 min read I believe that most SaaS companies are missing out of a major opportunity when hiring—the opportunity to hire more part-time help, where the employee acts as a fully integrated (albeit part-time) member of the team on an ongoing basis.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Sales Hiring B2B New CTO 52

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

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

A thanks to [Marsh 00:00:34] for stepping in at the beginning of the month, and a great session with our own Jason Warner and Adrian, the CTO of Zendesk. Lionetti, the CMO at Confluent, and most recently, the CTO from Zendesk, Adrian. Tomasz Tunguz: Well, there’s two parts to the question. Excited to be back emceeing.

CTO Coach 164

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 164

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. They had occasional advertising here and there. Here’s Rachel.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring CTO Hire Acquisition 215

Neil Patel

JULY 7, 2021

Experience is kind of the holy grail when it comes to customer interaction, from marketing and sales to customer service and brand loyalty. When do we actually achieve a great customer experience in our brands ? By definition, it’s software that allows you to create, manage, and share your brand’s content.

AI Search 124

AI Search CTO Hire Scale Artificial Intelligence 124

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. Work on developing your brand. Branding, branding, branding is one of the key ideas Vassilena Valchanova picked up from multiple speakers. So consumers turn to brands.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

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 145

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 145

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

CEO Joel Gascoigne tells us about the decision to invest in new analytics tools and how Buffer sustained long-term growth thanks to growing their ARPA. Buffer’s mission is to empower their customers to build their brand and engage their audience on social media. The Solution: Invest in a revamped data infrastructure.

Payment Solutions 113

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Social Media 113

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

Sales Hacker

JUNE 12, 2020

How to overcome no brand in market. How to overcome no credible timing event. How to overcome no brand in market (01:23). ? How to overcome no brand in market (01:23). First and foremost, overcoming no brand in market. This is a relationship worth investing in. How to overcome limited sales support.

Enterprise 82

Enterprise CTO Hire Startup Technical Cofounder 82

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Will Larson , CTO of Calm. Des Traynor , Co-founder and CTO of Intercom. In this episode of Inside Intercom, our Director of Brand Marketing Sarah Tran had the honour of sitting down with Amanda for a chat about how governments can leverage technology to build better services and empower its citizens.

VP of Engineering 118

VP of Engineering Technical Review Scale Outsourcing Services 118

BetterCloud

AUGUST 6, 2021

” At that time, I said, “You know what, I think I really want to become a CIO or CTO.” When I decided I wanted to be a CIO or CTO , I was an associate director or what other companies might call a junior director. I really learned from the managers who came before me, including the person who hired me.

Technology 98

Technology CTO Coach CTO Hire New CTO 98

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 20, 2024

You could either spend, you know, you raise some venture funding, you could either spend some of that funding on hiring out a whole team and developing all those competencies, or you can spend that on making your model even better. You’ve got to think about taxes. There’s just a lot of work. Adam: Yeah.

AI Search 143

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 143

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

Outseta

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

And many CEOs simply fail to understand the nuances of the role and the future building benefits of marketing investments made in areas like “brand” where the return on investment is not immediately recognizable on the balance sheet. This is empowering and allows me to execute at a dramatically fast pace than I otherwise could.

Sales Hiring 50

Sales Hiring CTO Coach CTO Hire Underperforming Technical Team 50

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.”. Engagement: How do they interact with your brand? Get it done faster.

Startup 91

Startup Scale Systems Review Technical Review 91

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 9, 2022

More and more people are hiring leaders, not for past experience, but for capability and capacity. It can be hard to convince PE firms to invest in the customer. How did you get your PE colleagues to invest in the customer experience? We hire a third-party firm. Find the hardest problems to solve and you will succeed.

CTO Coach 52

CTO Coach Customer Success VP of Engineering CTO Hire 52

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

CEO Joel Gascoigne tells us about the decision to invest in new analytics tools and how Buffer sustained long-term growth thanks to growing their ARPA. Buffer’s mission is to empower their customers to build their brand and engage their audience on social media. The Solution: Invest in a revamped data infrastructure.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Features Outsourcing Services Payments 52

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? How many CSMs should you hire? This helps brands manage customer-facing functions in their entirety, from marketing and advertising to research, care, and social engagement. And Sprinklr acquires Nanigans.

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

I didn’t see the company as this consumer brand long term. We were talking to Sean Place, who was the co founder and CTO, and it turned out that they were just giving gift cards to these drivers, but they had no way to authorize the right transaction at the right time for the right amount. It was a strategy of hope.

Merchant Services 81

Merchant Services Payment Methods Payments Payment Solutions 81

Point Nine Land

APRIL 9, 2021

Having invested in 9 B2B marketplaces and gathered data from 20+ different investors, here are our findings on what it takes to raise money in 2021 for B2B marketplaces. A technical co-founder or CTO is always a great-to-have at this stage and becomes a must-have as the business scales beyond seed. Market Characteristics ??

Marketplace as a Service 59

Marketplace as a Service Payments B2B SaaS Payments 59

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. If you're generating something that's brand new, like a brand new category, nobody understands about it. You need to invest at least a year or even two years. That will never work.

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

BetterCloud

MAY 17, 2021

Secondarily, I had a chance to chat with [CTO Jamie Tischart ] even before he joined the company. I can talk to someone and get advice with little effort and investment, but at the end of the day, will you take the chance on me? I’m sure many QA candidates that we want to hire have several options to choose from.

New CTO 52

New CTO Part-Time VPE CTO Coach CTO Hire 52

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years. Roughly 90%.

Sales Hiring 232

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 232

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

Is it wanting to control their brand? What’s the interaction here with owning your brand and owning your channel versus a third party? Because it is that you and I can talk as a consumer and the brand, without this middle in the way, right? You don’t have time for that, don’t you just want to be a brand?”

Payment Methods 273

Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 273

SmartKarrot

AUGUST 16, 2022

In QBR meetings, you can notice any signs of distrust in the brand. Customers choose a product with one goal, and this goal evolves over time. These annual executive business meetings are a wonderful time to discuss contracts. The idea is to provide customers with value to keep them invested with the company.

Technical Review 10

Technical Review Systems Review Business CTO Hire 10

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2019

I remember when I was in business school the internet was brand new and back then the hero was Jerry Yang. And at that same time I met two Stanford computer science students. And so once I had the idea I convinced my father to invest and become a customer. He was investing in internet companies.

Sales Recruiting 233

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Payments 233

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2019

That means lots and lots of hiring and I don’t want to say firing, we did fire anyone, but people get reshuffled, you know? Okay, so what were the stages of investment rounds that you took? But the first one was, yeah, I mean, who are you and why should we invest in you? Vlad : Well we did have to hire a new CFO.

Scale 207

Scale Business Sales Hiring CTO Hire 207

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

When is the right time to hire the first sales rep? Should you hire 2 at a time? What does one look for in their first sales hire? We were hired into the same role, same start date, competed head to head. Bret was formerly the CTO at Facebook. I met Molly, who was the COO at the time, Molly Graham.

Scale 252

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 252

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

When I was a couple of years into my tenure at Oracle, I moved down to Latin America to Argentina, sight unseen actually, and built out a telesales group in Argentina and then later in Miami, hiring about 100 people from 11 different countries and that early building experience really whet my appetite. I came back to North America.

Scale 214

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 214

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2020

And so I quickly raised my hand and said this is an awesome opportunity for me to get sales leadership experience, but also get the expat experience, which at that time I looked at as something incredibly valuable for me. So I found myself in London, a one of one employee introducing this new brand to advertising agencies in Europe.

Subscription 117

Subscription Payment Features Scale Underperforming Technical Team 117

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund – sharing go-to-market advice from the top 1% of revenue operators including the 350 executives behind the fund, news, and our viewpoints from working with hundreds of portfolio companies. Arrows – launched brand new CRM Cards for HubSpot.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Scale Technical Cofounder New CTO 76

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2018

At our inaugural SaaStr Europa last June, podcast host-with-the-most Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. There’s investment arms all over the UK.

Technical Advisors 232

Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 232

Kellblog

JANUARY 29, 2020

Third-order benefit: that means you protect your company’s reputation and your valuable brand. Unless you are solving a brand-new problem (e.g., So don’t give a list of company brand names who may or may not be active users. Why are you and your team the best people to invest in? Be realistic about this.

Startup 99

Startup Sales Hiring CTO Hire New CTO 99