SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2024

What’s the Business Model Behind Automattic and WordPress? A year later, they created Automattic as a commercial services business around WordPress. WordPress is its own ecosystem, a vibrant community of hundreds of thousands of people who create add-ons, plugins, and develop sites. It’s not meant to be a consumer brand.

Underperforming Technical Team 329

Underperforming Technical Team Social Media Government Subscription 329

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

We pulled from my prior marketplaces experience and dove into their business quickly to develop a point-of-view on the opportunity. a16z has long had an investment theory that we should invest behind strengths of a business model and opportunity, not lack of weakness. It truly has been a team effort.

Marketplace as a Service 140

Marketplace as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Scale Construction 140

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

We had run around the world and we would show up to a company using technology in some interesting way and we would teach them for four, maybe five days straight, and that was our business model. His name is Nate Walkingshaw and he has a book out on product leadership that was recently published, which is an incredible book.

B2B 173

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 173

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

And as Travis mentioned, we’ve had lots of great recent guests, Hollie Wegman, CMO at Segment, Adam, the head of developer relations at HashiCorp, G.C. Over the past seven years, she’s been responsible for scaling Stripe’s worldwide business operations. Her team loved working for her. COO, what does it mean?

CTO Coach 164

CTO Coach Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 164

Kellblog

JULY 18, 2019

Great core/founding team. Thus, there is a good chance one or all of the founding team will be around, and in influential positions, for a long time. Bad startups are feature addicts who pile feature upon feature atop a deteriorating architecture, creating an Augean Stables of technical debt. Startups are about people.

Underperforming Technical Team 80

Underperforming Technical Team Startup Software Technical Cofounder 80

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2019

Scaling the company’s employee base, sales teams, marketing, and operations—all while preserving its culture—has required a laser focus on first principles, smart processes, and effective hiring. Know who is the foundation of your product and build your product for that user (in Stripe’s case, developers). Know your forever user.

Scale 159

Scale Payment Services Payment Methods Scaling 159

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. So how do you create a strong, enterprise-ready team? Leveraging customer insights across your business.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Strategy 177

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

Which is why customer feedback is a big deal to all of our teams – it’s really integral to what we do and how we build. we’ll be answering that by chatting with the people that make it happen: the R&D team members who take your feedback and turn it into the tools that you use. Then this podcast has the answers.

Mobile 212

Mobile Scale Underperforming Technical Team Engineering 212

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2019

We collectively as a company were fortunate in doing all those things and, boy, was it a heck of a team effort, and it was a lot of fun. The business, while it had decelerated, it was still an extraordinary service. We had a great easy-to-use pricing model. Sameer Dhokalia: The go-to-market model was magical.

Scale 152

Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 152

Kellblog

MARCH 11, 2020

Some SaaS startups develop a form of zero-sum delusion early in their evolution, characterized by following set of beliefs. If the StartFast doesn’t work, it’s not a big deal because the Customer Success team’s mission is to offer free clean-up after failed implementations. They know how to do this.

Underperforming Technical Team 100

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Consulting Forecasting 100

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

Historically, growth of a sales team was based on the revenue starting with $0M on day 1 of the year. However, in a SaaS model , the customer acquisition team can grow revenue to $1M in year 1. If the same team keeps performing at the same growth it will achieve $2M in year 2 – whilst the renewals come in at 100%.

Scale 101

Scale Growth Hacking Scaling Sales Hiring 101

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 7, 2020

These companies will help you to strategize, collect relevant email addresses, create, and manage email marketing campaigns that drive business growth. Our team at Neil Patel Digital vetted hundreds of email marketing companies based on their brand reputation, client portfolio, ratings, and their areas of expertise. Bad content!

Software Review 102

Software Review Marketing Technical Review Outsourced Development 102

Neil Patel

DECEMBER 3, 2020

Even for fully-staffed marketing teams, it can be overwhelming. In this case, look for an email marketing agency that is exceptional at developing strategies and tactics to help increase your open and click-through rates. Thought Leadership. Align your in-house team. The agency should have plenty of examples to point to.

Marketing 111

Marketing Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Scale 111

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 7, 2019

Renaud Visage, Co-Founder of Eventbrite, and Romain Huet, Head of Developer Relations at Stripe, know what it takes to effectively evolve your offering into a platform without losing what made offering appealing in the first place. Romain Huet | Head of Developer Relations @ Stripe. Want to see more content like this?

Payments 169

Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payment Services 169

ChurnZero

JUNE 11, 2021

Customer health scores give Customer Success teams a deep understanding of a customer’s health and are a leading indicator that there may be an issue with an account or customer. If you do not currently use health scores, you can use this resource as a framework to set up scoring for your team.

Software Review 96

Software Review Systems Review Underperforming Technical Team Scale 96

OpenView Labs

MARCH 24, 2021

For either one, the bottom line is that the cost of a bad hire is significant. I’ve talked a lot about the hidden costs of a bad sales hire. Develop a bulletproof hiring process that celebrates candidate experience. Spend time with your team and buyers to understand their needs and potential blindspots.

Sales Hiring 56

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Company Culture Interviewing 56

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2019

With the complexity of multiple stakeholders and the increasing purchasing influence of end users, the bar is higher than ever for enterprise UX as companies pioneer business models beyond traditional SaaS. She founded Box’s growth team as well as the product operations team. So Bela, you founded the growth team.

Enterprise 162

Enterprise Underperforming Technical Team Scale B2B 162

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2021

The same was true when I ran the People function at a software development consultancy that doubled its headcount to ~100 while reducing attrition from 40% to 5% voluntary in 18 months. The question becomes: “Who do I want on my team—and why?”. A final comment on purpose: It should come from your team. Simon Sinek.

Scale 84

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Software Review 84

BrightBack

AUGUST 19, 2019

Here are three ways to grow your business utilizing customer retention. Organize your teams around the customer relationship. A subscription business model requires proving a consistent return on investment (ROI) to your customers. In my experience, this is much easier said than done.

Retention 55

Retention Underperforming Technical Team Strategy SaaS Payments 55

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 4, 2023

The focus is on developing new demand and reconstructing market landscapes to make rivals obsolete. It pushes businesses to question long-standing industry and strategic assumptions. Develop creative “what-if” scenarios to design potential blue ocean offerings. New capabilities and skill sets will need development.

Strategy 90

Strategy Technical Review Business Innovation 90

CustomerSuccessBox

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Our Top recommendations: Customer Success: How to Quantify the Impact of Bad-fit Customers. David and his blog cover topics such as the SaaS business model and Metrics, 9 steps to get to repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth, Time to Wow!, Why customer success is your golden ticket to business success.

Customer Success 64

Customer Success Underperforming Technical Team Consulting Software Review 64

OPEXEngine

MARCH 9, 2021

“I’ve talked to countless entrepreneurs who are anxious about the next step—first seed round, hiring a team, landing a board member, etc.,” However, if the basic ingredients for growing a sustainable, high-performance business are missing, you’re setting yourself up for frustration.”. However, this model was unsustainable.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

When shelter in place started, the conversation we’ve had internally on our team is we have to think of ourselves as Navy SEALs, where we’re at base camp right now, and we’re going to train and we’re going to work on our playbooks and do our research. Personally, our team has been holding back a little bit.

Investment 207

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 207

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

And their city by city Unleash summit series road shows, along with top notch thought leadership content. But we’re fortunate in, to some degree, because of the nature of our business model. We had an early glimpse into what was coming because of the events business. Check them out at www.outreach.io.

Scale 85

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Communication 85

OpenView Labs

JULY 8, 2019

The situation was this: our engineering team was constantly innovating and adding new functionality. My job, once the bad feedback started coming in, was to figure out what the less vocal customers were thinking and propose a plan to move forward. Like any core piece of your business, pricing requires regular, intentional attention.

Pricing 61

Pricing Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS 61

OpenView Labs

MARCH 27, 2020

Whether your company has paused hiring, is still hiring or will be in the future, having the right people for your business and stage will always be a priority. Building an effective (and committed) enterprise sales team for the long haul starts with the people you hire. So, yes, building the right team is absolutely key.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Enterprise Underperforming Technical Team Scale 52

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Some SaaS startups develop a form of zero-sum delusion early in their evolution, characterized by the following set of beliefs. First, some SaaS companies deliberately run with a low set-up product, little to no services, and a customer success team that takes care of implementation issues. They know how to do this.

Underperforming Technical Team 52

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Consulting Forecasting 52

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 30, 2019

Justin helped build the sales team in ZocDoc. He then went on to help build PatientPop to over 60 million in recurring revenue and now he’s consulting to SMB businesses. Sam Jacobs: We are incredibly excited today to have a friend and rising star amongst thought leadership in the world of high growth companies.

Sales Hiring 53

Sales Hiring Revenue Scale Underperforming Technical Team 53

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

And the team deck doesn’t say who the CEO is? We called ourselves a team of four, actually, who operate and make decisions, and it’s just how we rolled. I mean we targeted the academic market, which is a horrible business model. Our developers want to develop products that everyone’s going to use.

Acquisition 157

Acquisition Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 157

SaaSOptics

MARCH 1, 2022

What makes finance teams throw up their hands and say, “I just need a tool that can do X!” finance teams are responsible for planning the financial roadmap of an organization and keeping everything in balance. Most finance teams are familiar with enterprise and integrated solutions (think Netsuite, Sage Intacct.).

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payments Payment Services Payment Features 52

Chargify

AUGUST 17, 2017

NPS and raising NPS scores usually falls to your customer success team, but in times of stalled growth it is important for customer success to start at the executive level. Leadership should then make it clear to every department how each employee plays an important role in helping customers succeed with your product.

Scale 53

Scale Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence SaaS 53

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 4, 2023

The focus is on developing new demand and reconstructing market landscapes to make rivals obsolete. It pushes businesses to question long-standing industry and strategic assumptions. Develop creative “what-if” scenarios to design potential blue ocean offerings. New capabilities and skill sets will need development.

Strategy 52

Strategy Technical Review Business Innovation 52

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. Many of these are names that you know, and this is actually the largest we’ve seen in history. I think it’s a really staggering stat.

Cloud 113

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 113

Sales Hacker

MARCH 2, 2020

Sales Development and Prospecting. The Sales Development Playbook. The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. Wooden on Leadership. Here are the best books on selling (and related disciplines) that can help you hit your goals and develop your career. Sales Models and Fundamentals. Selling to Big Companies. Top of Mind.

Scale 143

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 143

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

With the rise of SaaS industry and most companies shifting their business model to subscription-based, the rise in customer success jobs is understandable. This has given them the confidence to scale their customer success team ruthlessly. Your job is to both supervise your customer success team as well as to report to the CEO.

Customer Success 8

Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team Software Review 8

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Developing a sales strategy is one of the core activities every business will have to undertake. Go without one and risk seeing your business flame out. When done correctly, your sales strategy will help your sales team execute with focus – SMB or enterprise, inbound or outbound, hunting or farming.

Scale 177

Scale Strategy Sales Underperforming Technical Team 177

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

And it’s not without good reason: nearly all software products with dominant market share started as apps but grew to the point where third-party developers began building valuable integrations on top of what these companies had already created. New Relic’s General Manager, Mark Weitzel, weighs in on how you can support your developers.

Underperforming Technical Team 170

Underperforming Technical Team Marketplace as a Service Outsourced Development Development 170