SaaStr

MAY 16, 2021

But what they don’t have is a good enough founding team: Sometimes, if the prospective founder isn’t super technical, then the CTO/VPE isn’t really great. They’ve got a rent-a-CTO. Or sometimes they are great, but the team members are just not great enough for their new C-level roles (CEO, CTO, CMO, CSO, CBO, C?O).

Part-Time VPE 257

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire New CTO CTO 257

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2024

Some are decades-old problems, while others have emerged from this new world we’re in. They hire a VP of Sales who doesn’t want to sell or learn the product. You also don’t want to hire a VP of Sales who won’t carry a bag. There wouldn’t be enough time for them to carry a bag for six months and hire those ten people.

CTO Hire 204

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO Venture Capital 204

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Hiring an expert produces 1000x better results than someone with interests elsewhere. . “A Hiring in a streamlined manner with a rigorous selection process initially builds momentum for long-term goals.

Scale 256

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 256

Valerian Tech

DECEMBER 30, 2022

The role of a Fractional Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is to provide technical expertise and leadership to a company on a part-time or temporary basis. This can be a useful option for startups or small businesses that may not have the resources to hire a full-time CTO or may not need one on a permanent basis.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

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. “That it was much easier to do more in order to keep that customer than to get a new “top” customer.

CTO Hire 321

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 321

Valerian Tech

JANUARY 5, 2023

It can be beneficial to hire a fractional CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in a variety of situations. When you don't have an in-house technology leader: If you don't have a CTO or a similar technology leader on your team, a fractional CTO can fill that role.

Fractional CTO 52

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Part-Time CTO CTO 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. Jason Warner , who was CTO of GitHub before and during my time as COO there (and a former partner at Redpoint!) Check that out here. What’s your most recent disclosed investment?

Management 268

Management CTO Hire New CTO CTO 268

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2019

We passed a new milestone on Quora — crossing 50,000,000 total views. What makes a bad CTO? What are the advantages of being a startup vs being an established business? Do all SaaS companies in the USA put late payment fees in their contract? What was the biggest ousting of a CEO that ever occurred?

CTO Hire 164

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Payment Methods 164

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. You’re not building a product or getting any new customers. You can’t hire a magician Head of Product.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 278

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. This is Dan, CEO of WalkMe, and Wade, CEO of Zapier, and Mallun, Chief Business Officer of RPX, and Craig from Dialpad.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 258

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 226

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 226

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

Is the CTO involved in these decisions? App contraction is still happening, and AI is absorbing all of the energy in the industry. You can lose deals to feature gaps, and Jason has seen rampant loss of business due to not having feature parody. Q: What Teams Should Be Involved to Fully Leverage AI and Get in Front of the Wave?

AI 292

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 292

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. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 283

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 283

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Since 2010 we’ve seen more startups, funds, and capital than ever before, but with this drastic increase, investors are seeing unexpected new trends reshaping the future of the industry. The panel that we are in is called Is Seed the New Series A, and this is a question that I’ve been asking informally yesterday and today.

New CTO 174

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 174

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

If you’re running a smaller digital business, you may find it challenging to hire great talent. If you’re facing challenges winning the best candidates for your roles, or if you have a small number of roles and every hire really matters, then don’t miss this episode of Growth Stage. Listen or watch now!

SMB 105

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 105

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 27, 2018

Intercom’s mission is to make internet business personal. Uptime is critical to the success of our business, and not just because our customers are paying us, but also because we heavily dogfood our own product. Back in the early days of Intercom, our CTO Ciaran was the entirety of the on call team, both in and out of the office.

Engineering 209

Engineering Software Review Technical Review Systems Review 209

USIO

JUNE 28, 2024

is committed to empowering businesses to build powerful enterprise grade applications without the need for extensive coding expertise,” said Ben Hubbard, CTO at ues.io. This will allow our users to streamline their workflows, improve customer experiences, and unlock new revenue opportunities.” Through this partnership, ues.io

Payments 130

Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payment Services 130

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

I’ve learned so much … most importantly, I think, that I love being a fractional CTO, a role that allows me to make use of everything I’ve learned and experienced over a long technology-focused career. What’s changing, rather, is the entity I’m delivering through – a new company called Crafty CTO.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Headcount 40

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

Jason Lemkin: I think I noticed a pattern, and I wrote it up a couple of years ago and refreshed it, and then I’ll add a new anecdote. Your core models for sales, for marketing spend, for hiring and engineering and product. Because this could happen to any business here. And the best CTO I know in the world is the CEO.

Outsourcing Services 243

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 243

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Doing Business with Developers. Well, in the past several years, there’s been a tremendous number of companies that have built specifically for developers and use this as a way to get into these new markets, to displace incumbents and disrupt the competition. Anyone who says the developer market is not strong is behind the times.

Outsourced Development 207

Outsourced Development Underperforming Technical Team Development Part-Time VPE 207

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

So even the freshest new SaaS startup celebrating their 50th customer may find themselves dealing with sales tax in multiple states. . Here’s what SaaS businesses need to know about simplifying sales tax. hiring in-house talent). There’s no chapter on sales tax in the Comprehensive SaaS Business Owner’s Manual.

Merchant Services 195

Merchant Services Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring 195

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

In part, my shift in thinking could pertain to not being the “front man” handling the pitch. But thanks to our VP of Business Development, I realize team-based selling for an early-stage startup or company is still likely a necessity, and far outweighs specialization when your sales org is fewer than five people or so.

Underperforming Technical Team 131

Underperforming Technical Team CTO Hire CTO Coach Technical Review 131

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2019

Vlad will highlight what defines success in each stage of the growth journey, and how to create a winning business with the right product, team, and culture. Jonathan: And you describe yourself as a technologist first, or a business person? When the founder is a technologist versus a business leader? Jonathan : Hotel business?

Scale 199

Scale Business Sales Hiring CTO Hire 199

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

Fractional CTO services can be a valuable asset for businesses that want to take advantage of technology to grow and improve their operations, but don’t have the resources or expertise to do so in-house.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Technology 40

Stax

AUGUST 14, 2024

a leading payment technology provider, has appointed Jeremy Krahl as the SVP, ISV Business Development. I am passionate about working with partners to grow existing relationships and forging new partnerships to ultimately help grow businesses through product innovation and Stax is the perfect place to do this.” and Canada.

Payments 88

Payments Stax Payment Solutions Payment Services 88

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 19, 2018

Our team’s mission is to help Intercom evolve, scale and be trusted by every internet business in the world. Rich: In the world we work in today, in this business, there are some harsh realities. They include that time is short, opportunities are fleeting, competition is fierce, and engineering resources are scarce.

Outsourcing Services 192

Outsourcing Services Part-Time VPE Software AWS 192

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. It’s hard to measure the things that deliver the right value to your business.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire SaaS Business Underperforming Technical Team 98

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

376: In part two, ZoomInfo founder and CEO Henry Schuck shares how he built a business from scratch and grew it into one of the most successful IPOs of the 21st century—and what it was really like…the good, the bad, and most of all, the ugly. You start this business. They’ve invested in all of these other businesses.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 246

The Angel VC

OCTOBER 18, 2012

Continuing my little series using the "minimum viable" approach , here is my 2nd DO for SaaS startups: Build the right team I've written about the topic before, so if you've read this post from early this year most of what I'm going to write now won't be new for you and you may want to skip this article. What comes next?

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup Outsourced Development 121

CloudGeometry

JULY 8, 2021

When you treat your cloud provider as a fractional colo. When business-critical applications move out of the data center with “lift and shift”. What starts as an easy hack for a new feature that accesses the database directly sprawls quickly into reads and writes that conflict with all kinds existing functions.

Well Architected Framework 130

Well Architected Framework Payment Methods CTO Hire Payment Solutions 130

Valerian Tech

MAY 4, 2023

Introduction: Digital transformation can be challenging for any business, but it can be especially daunting for legacy businesses with entrenched cultures and systems. However, embracing digital transformations is essential for staying competitive in today's fast-paced business environment.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Business 52

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. First, hire a management coach to work with you as the company grows. The best ways he found to learn leadership skills was to hire a management coach to meet him once per month, to talk through the issues facing him at Optimizely.

CTO Coach 113

CTO Coach Sales Hiring CTO Hire Startup 113

OpenView Labs

APRIL 12, 2019

Getting hiring right is absolutely critical. I’d like to talk about two different companies with two very different approaches to hiring post-seed raise. I’m focusing on engineering in these examples, but the experience applies to other areas of the business. To get the team started we hired several junior developers.

CTO Hire 64

CTO Hire Investment New CTO CTO 64

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2019

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. I make time for it and that even means getting up, taking early morning flight and heading home on a red eye to do a day trip to the Bay area, I’ll do it.

CTO Hire 174

CTO Hire Travel Underperforming Technical Team CTO Coach 174

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

Julian Lemoine, Co-Founder, and CTO of Algolia will share his lessons learned on how to stay focused and innovative as you scale while also avoiding the innovation for innovation’s sake pitfalls. Julien Lemoine | Co-founder and CTO @Algolia. So I’m Julien, Co-founder and CTO of Algolia. Want to see more content like this?

Scale 164

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 164

Buffer Resources

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Plus, I knew these company leaders were busy — when would I have the opportunity to pick their brains again?    Thankfully, the conversations flowed, and I only had time for the question at the top of my list:  “Give me one piece of advice for succeeding at Buffer.  

VP of Engineering 124

VP of Engineering Part-Time CTO New CTO CTO 124

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